Focal Point

Pastor Mike Fabarez: The Father dwells in unapproachable light in a place called heaven. That's his real house. Christ himself is resurrected and now is seated at the right hand of that unapproachable light. But there's a third person of the Godhead, the Spirit of God. You yourself, your very body itself is a place that houses the Holy Spirit. I am the temple of God. That's an amazing truth.

Dave Drew: Where does God live? Well, we don't know the exact address, but we'd say God resides somewhere in heaven. But then why was the temple once called God's house? And does God ever take up residence inside our churches?

Today on Focal Point, Pastor Mike Fabarez says because of Jesus, God has a new home. And the place he has chosen to live is nothing short of amazing. We'll discover God's latest address, detailed in Hebrews chapter 8. Pastor Mike calls the message, "Why Don't We Have a Temple?"

Pastor Mike Fabarez: Why don't we have a temple? If you ask that question of modern 21st-century churches, some people will say, "Well, we do. We just call it the church." If you do a search on the internet for churches and church names in any large city or small city, you're going to find names of churches that have actually adopted the word temple, or you even find tabernacle or house of God.

Even famous preachers like Spurgeon in London. What was the name of his church? The Metropolitan Tabernacle. But it's important for us to make a clear line of delineation. I know that Spurgeon knew the difference. I want to make sure that we know the difference so that we don't get into the pattern of thinking that in some way some tilt-up cement building takes the place of God's Old Testament tabernacle or Old Testament temple.

Turn with me to the Old Testament book of 2nd Chronicles. 2nd Chronicles chapter 6. Let's jump into a discussion that's going on with Solomon talking about the construction of his temple, which was a big, big deal. God was going to have a house. Now the discussion you'll find includes phrases that a lot of people take literally as, "Wow, this must mean that God lives there." No, they knew that when they were building it, that God couldn't live in this box.

Look at how they described it. This is 2nd Chronicles chapter 6, verse 6. "But now I have chosen Jerusalem for my," this is interesting. What? "Name to be there." And "I have chosen David to rule over my people." Solomon says, "My father David had it in his heart to build a temple for the name of Yahweh, the God of Israel." Now they just said God's going to dwell there. Well, they know God isn't going to live in a house.

But his name is going to be there. There's going to be a place that is so representative of God, it's like his name is there. And that's all a name is. Do you have a name? You've got a name. Is that you? No, but it represents me. It's just a few letters. It's a few phonetic sounds. But it's not me. I'm different than my name. But my name is a representation of me. The name, I hope, brings thoughts of who I am when you say Mike Fabarez, you think of the person.

And that's what a name does. And so there is some manifestation, a representative manifestation of God there. And he says it's like God's putting his name there in the city and in this temple. Verse 8. "But Yahweh said to my father David, because it was in your heart to build a temple for my name, you did well to have this in your heart. Nevertheless, you're not the one to build the temple. But your son who is your own flesh and blood, he is the one who will build the temple for my name." Who's that? Solomon.

Drop down to verse 17. Now he's going to dedicate this with a prayer. He's built the temple. It's all decked out. He says this, "And now oh Yahweh God of Israel, let your word that you promised to your servant David come true. But," just so anybody looking on they might think God's living in a house, "will God really dwell on earth with men? No. The heavens and even the highest heavens cannot contain you. How much less this temple I have built?"

Please don't think these are primitive people that think they got God locked away in the inner room of the temple. They don't. They realize this is just like a name. It just represents God. It's a special manifestation of God's presence, but it's not God in a box. There's not a tent or a building in the Old Testament that anybody thought God lived in. They knew that God lived in heaven.

Now why would God do this? God did it for the same reason my kid this summer when we took our little summer vacation went into the gift shop at the Hoover Dam and bought this little plaster of Paris little two-and-a-half-inch tall picture of the Hoover Dam. Now it wasn't a picture. It was a statue. So it was cool to an eight-year-old. You've been to the Hoover Dam? Impressive. Wow. That's an amazing place.

Why did my son want to buy that little thing? Well, he was so enamored with it, he wanted some representation of it. That's all the temple was. God had hoped that we would look at the temple if we were Old Testament saints and go, "Isn't God's dwelling place amazing?" It was the best building in town. It was the most elaborate and luxurious place you could find. Why? Because they wanted to remember God lives in an amazing place and God is an amazing person.

That's what the temple was all about. But it was easy to get myopic in your worship and think we were going to meet at a place where God lived. And what's great about this transition from a priesthood discussion to a temple discussion is not only is the priesthood a symbol and representation of what we need, an intercessor before a holy God, so is the place that we worshiped.

And he said, "You know what? That place is passé now." Why? Because the priest has now stepped into the presence of God. And the intercessor we need that was represented by the Levitical priesthood in the place of God's name dwelling, you know what? We don't need the priest anymore and we don't need the building anymore because Christ is pulling it off in the presence of God himself.

Was it important in the Old Testament? Absolutely. But everyone knew it, they understood it, that the temple was just a picture. Now of course God isn't physical, but he's saying, "Please get yourself in perspective." Your little gaudy house there that I told you to build that's supposed to remind you of me is a lot like a two-and-a-half-inch little painted figurine of the Hoover Dam. It's nothing compared to the real thing. And God wants us to recognize that.

As a matter of fact, let's put it this way as we get back to Hebrews chapter 8. If we understand God's houses from Israel's perspective, let us turn our attention to what's really going on in Christ's life right now. Because he's not in a temple like the Old Testament priest. He's in the very presence of God and that is a pretty huge and impressive magnanimous place. It's incredible.

The text says this. Take a look in verses 1 and 2 again. "The point of what we are saying is this: we do have such a high priest who sat down at the right hand of the throne of the majesty in heaven and who serves in the sanctuary." Not the earthly one, the heavenly one. And that was to take our attention to say not only do you not need the priests anymore, this little house, man, think about it. Our priest has entered the real house.

God's real house. Number two, needs to be appreciated. And I think for all of us as New Testament believers, we need to erase the caricature out of our mind and get back to thinking, "Now what is Christ really doing? Where is he right now?" Caught for just two seconds the movie *A Few Good Men* on TV last night. Love that Jack Nicholson line, "You can't handle the truth." Remember that? "You want the truth?"

When it comes to the throne room of God, here are people thinking, "You know what? Fine then. If this isn't where God lives, this is an amazing building, well then what's the real house of God all about?" See, I mean the real response from a New Testament perspective, you can't handle that. You can't handle the dwelling place of God. As a matter of fact, one passage, okay, two. Two passages on this.

The first I want you to see is 1st Timothy chapter 6. Start at the end of verse 13. "I charge you to keep this command," are you with me? 1st Timothy 6:13 and 14. "Without spot or blame until the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ, which God will bring about," verse 15, "in his own time." And then he goes off on God for a minute. "God, the blessed and only ruler, the King of kings and Lord of lords, who alone is immortal and who," this is an important phrase right here, underline it, "lives in unapproachable light."

Where does God live? Unapproachable light. "Whom no one has seen or can see." Because if you did, you'd blow up. Right? "To him be honor and might forever. Amen." The point of the New Testament authors like the Old Testament authors is if you got in a place where you really were to be in the living room of God, your head would explode because you can't be there. It's too amazing. It's too majestic. It's too perfect. It's too holy. You've never seen anything like it.

Why? Well, it's not even a physical place. What's interesting though about heaven is the confluence of a physical priest dwelling and living in a non-corporeal place and he is seated apparently next to some unapproachable beam of something there is that is the intellect and motion and will of the Father of the universe. And the Son now is forever incarnate in that body. And he lives in unapproachable light.

And if you say, "Wait a minute, which no man can see. How is that? Because there's lots of discussion in the Bible about people seeing God's dwelling place." Here's one, Isaiah chapter 6. Do you remember that? Isaiah who said heaven is God's throne, or at least God said through Isaiah, and the earth is an ottoman for me to put my feet on. He was one who in the beginning of his book in chapter 6 encountered a vision, and that's the important thing to say, of God.

These are what we call in biblical interpretation apocalyptic passages. Apocalyptic. By that I mean there is a genre of scripture that is highly symbolic. Apocalypse means revealing. When God reveals things that would blow our brains up if we could comprehend them, he puts them in symbols. The book of Revelation is called the Apocalypse. Why? Because he's revealing something to people that they couldn't really even take in.

So he's revealing this in symbolic fashion. So here is Isaiah. He has a vision of the throne room of God. Verse 1. Remember this text? "In the year King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord seated on a throne, high and exalted, and the train of his robe filled the," what? And we're not talking about the one in Jerusalem. This is the real place. "Above him were seraphs." What? Seraphs. Those are the interesting class of angelic beings who are pretty funky.

"Each have six wings. With two wings they cover their face. With two wings they cover their feet. And with two wings they're flying around and they're calling out to each other: Holy, holy, holy is Yahweh Almighty and the whole earth is full of his glory." There's reflections of his glory everywhere even on the planet. "At the sound of their voices, the doorposts and threshold shook and the temple was filled with smoke. Woe to me, I cried. I'm ruined. I'm a man of unclean lips. I live among a people of unclean lips. My eyes have seen the King, Yahweh Almighty."

Wait a minute, I thought no one could see God's dwelling place. Well, no one can. This is a vision that Isaiah is having. An apocalyptic vision, a symbolic vision of God's dwelling place. And if you want an expansion of this, write in the margin Revelation chapter 4 and Revelation chapter 5. And God has one physical item there. It's the person of the incarnate Son of God. And he's got one thing to do.

Stand there and represent me and represent you to a holy God that no one can even look at. And he's there saying, "You know that Jim guy? Hey Sally, Linda, those guys? I love them. I'm representing them. I know they're not holy. I know they don't deserve to live in your presence. But I'm here because of my righteousness. I want to represent them and I want to minister on their behalf."

And Jesus stands as our mediator, our intercessor, and he ministers for you and me in the presence of God. It's an amazing place. Appreciate God's real house. Now go back to Hebrews if you would. As you appreciate the house of God in your mind, here's the thing. You're not really going to heaven. Okay, you may go there at a short stop-off, but that is not your future home.

There is something else that's for us. It's called the New Jerusalem. It's going to come down out of heaven as a bride adorned for her husband. And he's going to set up for us a physical place where by the way the Lamb of God is going to rule from the center of that place. And that's where you and I are going to live. So even the living room of God, it's a distant place. And we'll go there as software for a while in spirit if you die before the coming of the kingdom.

But one day you will be placed in a new place. It's down here on earth. It's the new earth. And by the way, it's not that there's a new earth and that's it. He also creates according to Revelation 21 a new heaven and a new earth. Apparently he's going to rearrange the pictures on the wall or something's going to be different about the new heaven. No reference to sin anymore.

Back to Hebrews chapter 8. Look at verses 3 and 4. "Every high priest is appointed to offer both gifts and sacrifices and so it was necessary for this one also to have something to offer." That's his intercessory work. Christ is doing that. Not on earth. If he were on earth, he couldn't be that priest because there's people doing that right now and that's irrelevant, we learned in chapter 7. But what is Christ doing now? He's interceding for you and me.

Remember the picture we painted from the beginning of the book of Hebrews? Christ has done such a job representing us to a holy God, our creator who lets us live, not only live but live with his blessing, the only way we get into the presence and the grace of God is riding in on the robe of the great high priest. Remember that? That's the picture. His work is so good and so perfect that in the scripture, because I know we're thinking temple, temple, wait a minute, the Bible says something about the temple in the New Testament.

No, we don't have temples in the New Testament. Here's the amazing thing. Number three on your outline, we are the temple. And that becomes the amazing twist of theology in the new covenant. It's as though he has provided such a great intercessory work on our behalf that we now can stand back as the New Testament writers say, "I have such access to the presence of the living God that you can look at me and say no longer do I need a temple. I am a temple."

Take a look at it with me in 1st Corinthians chapter 3. Realize Christ's priestly work is so perfect it's like we become God's house. We become the dwelling place of God. 1st Corinthians chapter 3. When we talk about the temple of God, we often talk about verse 17 and we'll get there. But we should start in verse 7 because it's not what most people think. Verse number 7. "So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything."

They're rallying around their favorite teachers and he says, "Don't do that. But only God who makes things grow. The man who plants and the man who waters have one purpose and each will be rewarded according to his own labor. For we are God's fellow workers and you," now this is important because in Greek there's a difference between you singular and you plural. And the only place we have that in English is in the South. Right? They say y'all.

So put that in here. This is not you individually. Y'all, all of you, are God's field and what else are you? God's building. Here's the great thing. God doesn't have a building in terms of stucco and cement and brick and mortar. We are God's building. Now we're not a building clearly and we're not a field, but we are seen as that by God. Keep reading. "By the grace that God has given me, I laid a foundation as an expert builder."

Now Paul says when I worked on building your life and building faith into your life and building biblical knowledge and knowledge of Christ into your life, I was building. And then I left you. I was a missionary and someone else came and built on that. They taught you. "But each one should be careful how he builds" into the spiritual lives of the church. "No one can lay a foundation other than the one that's already been laid and that is Christ Jesus."

You have a relationship with him. "If any man builds on this foundation, if anyone tries to teach you and build you up in Christ using gold and silver and costly stones," truth and sincerity and integrity in their teaching. Man, that's great. Wood, but there's other things too. There's wood, hay, and straw. There's stuff that isn't sincere and it's not genuine and it's not always accurate. "His work," whoever builds on the church and builds into the church, "it's going to be shown for what it is because the day," the day of judgment, "will bring it to light. It will be revealed with fire and the fire will test the quality of each man's work."

What's the context here? The people that are investing in building up the body of Christ. "If what he has built survives, he'll receive a reward. But if it's burned up, he'll suffer loss. He'll be saved, but only as one escaping through the flames." He's going to have a tough time and there'll be some sorrow and some loss on judgment day. But he's saved, but he's a bad church leader. Verse 16. "Don't you know that you yourselves," that's helpful as plural, "are God's," here it is, not just building, he's going to up the word.

It's "you're God's temple and that the Spirit of God lives in y'all." There's the plural. "If anyone destroys God's temple," what are we talking about? The people of God, the organization of God, the church of God. "God's going to destroy him. For God's temple is sacred and y'all are that temple." Here's the first aspect that you need to know. We are like the house of God.

Not in the building that we meet, but as we gather together and we as the church do what the church does, and as a preacher stands up and preaches to you, and as we invest in one another's spiritual lives, we as an organization, as a network of believers who are meeting as one organization, the church, we are God's temple. Why? Because the intercessory work of Christ was so good.

His mediatorial work of leading us into the presence of God and making peace with the Father was so good that you and I are like that special representation of God placing his name on a building. Now he's placed his name, now watch this ironic point, he's placed his name, the name of the incarnate Son, Christ himself, on this organization. As a matter of fact, we like to call ourselves what? Christians.

See? The name of God, just like the Old Testament representation. We now as an organization represent God in this world and God has access to us and we have access to him because of Christ's work. We are the temple. Last week I said you don't need a priest why? Because you are the priesthood. This week you don't need a temple. There are no temples in the new covenant age because we are corporately the temple of God. See?

That's a big truth. Secondly though, as a part of that, if you've repented of your sins and put your trust in the great high priest, the mediator who makes you right before God and you've run in on the coat-tails of the great high priest and you now have access to God, here's the thing. You yourself, your very body itself is a place that houses the specialized and focused presence of God. It's called the Holy Spirit.

See, the Father dwells in unapproachable light in a place called heaven. That's his real house. Christ himself is resurrected and now is seated apparently next to that unapproachable light. But there's a third person of the Godhead, the Spirit of God, is sent now to have an active presence in my life that is even more glorious when we gather together in fellowship that we are corporately the temple and individually when I leave you tonight and I go to my own house, I can look at myself and say, "You know what? Because of God's active work in my life, I am the temple of God."

That's an amazing truth. We are corporately the temple of God and we are individually temples of the living God. That is a sobering and amazing truth. And across our lives should be the clarity of God's representative name. We are Christians. We are followers of the incarnate God. We are his people. How you live, how you think, how you act, what you do with your body, and what we do as a church is sacred.

You don't have to travel to Jerusalem anymore. We have access because of the mediatorial work of Christ to the holy God. That's good news. Let's pray. God, please give us a sense of the profundity of what it means to be a follower of Jesus Christ in an age when all of the ceremonies and the symbols of a representative place of presence on this earth has been exchanged from brick and mortar to individual lives.

Individual lives that network together in individual churches that you say are so important to you, you equate it to the Old Testament temple. Please God, help us to raise our own view and our own perspective and our own reverence for the work of God not only in our lives as I think most of us came in recognizing that we are the temple, but corporately as a church.

So God, change our thinking about this that we might recognize that those fancy buildings of the Old Testament, though it would have been interesting to walk through them and to see them, is nothing compared to the privilege that we have of housing ourselves, the third person of the Godhead, and joining together as a reflective and representative presence of the living God on this earth. God, make your presence glorious in our lives, corporately and individually. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.

Dave Drew: The Old Testament structure of the temple is no longer necessary because we are the temple. It's just one of the many ways that Christ changed everything. And that's the title of our mini-series today on Focal Point. It's one portion from a larger study in Hebrews with pastor and Bible teacher Mike Fabarez.

And if you missed any part, it's not too late to hear it. Just go online to FocalPointRadio.org or download the free Focal Point app to your phone or smart device. We hope you've already called or written to request the free resource we've set aside for you this month. It's a book titled *The Unfolding Mystery: Discovering Christ in the Old Testament* by Edmund Clowney.

Clowney walks you through the pages of the Old Testament showing how every thread, every figure, every sacrifice, every promise was pointing forward to Jesus all along. It's a rich, rewarding read that may permanently change the way you see both testaments and deepen your awe of the Christ who's always been right there at the center of it all.

Request your copy of *The Unfolding Mystery* when you make a gift to Focal Point today. Reach our team by phone at 888-320-5885, or give online at FocalPointRadio.org. And if you'd rather send your donation by mail, just write to us at Focal Point, P.O. Box 2850, Laguna Hills, California 92654. Every dollar you give makes a real difference, whether it comes as a single gift or as a recurring monthly commitment through being a Focal Point Partner.

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I'm Dave Drew, inviting you to come back next time for part 3 of our message titled "Why Don't We Have a Temple?" That's Thursday on Focal Point with Mike Fabarez.

Pastor Mike Fabarez: Pastor Mike here. We live in a culture where every point of view demands affirmation. It'd be easy to tell people what they want to hear. But we must teach the Bible accurately, unapologetically, and without compromising and without editing it. God's word is truth. If you want to send me a question, I encourage you to get in touch with us at FocalPointRadio.org. Today's program was produced and sponsored by Focal Point Ministries.