Recently I had another opportunity to preach on a Sunday morning. I took the opportunity to preach again on the Temple theme in Scripture, using 2 Cor. 6:14-7:1 as my text. I had preached on the Temple before, but this time I wanted to flesh out what it means that the church is the Temple today.
If you don’t have time to listen to the entire sermon (37 minutes), please do look over my notes. May God bless this sermon to all who hear it, for His glory and by His grace.
I mentioned in my last post that I found that variations of the following promise are found at least 28 times in the Old Testament: “I will be their God and they shall be My people.” Often it includes a promise that God would dwell with His people, or make His dwelling place among them. Seeing this great theme of Scripture and how it intersects with the Church – God’s people today, is both thrilling and educational. We can find our place in the narrative of Scripture and see the “already/not yet” fulfillment of these promises in our own experiences.
Today I thought I would just list these promises and let us meditate on them together.
Genesis 17:7-8 “And I will establish my covenant between me and you and your offspring after you throughout their generations for an everlasting covenant, to be God to you and to your offspring after you. And I will give to you and to your offspring after you the land of your sojournings, all the land of Canaan, for an everlasting possession, and I will be their God.”
Exodus 6:7 “I will take you to be my people, and I will be your God, and you shall know that I am the LORD your God, who has brought you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians.”
Exodus 19:5-6 (with 20:2) “Now therefore, if you will indeed obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession among all peoples, for all the earth is mine; and you shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation. Theses are the words that you shall speak to the people of Israel…. I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.”
Exodus 29:45-46 “I will dwell among the people of Israel and will be their God. And they shall know that I am the LORD their God, who brought them out of the land of Egypt that I might dwell among them. I am the LORD their God.”
Leviticus 26:11-12 “I will make my dwelling among you, and my soul shall not abhor you. And I will walk among you and will be your God, and you shall be my people.”
Deuteronomy 4:20 “But the LORD has taken you and brought you out of the iron furnace, out of Egypt, to be a people of his own inheritance, as you are this day.”
Deuteronomy 7:6 “For you are a people holy to the LORD your God. The LORD your God has chosen you to be a people for his treasured possession, out of all the peoples who are on the face of the earth.”
Deuteronomy 14:2 “For you are a people holy to the LORD your God, and the LORD has chosen you to be a people for his treasured possession, out of all the peoples who are on the face of the earth.”
Deuteronomy 26:18 “And the LORD has declared today that you are a people for his treasured possession, as he has promised you, and that you are to keep all his commandments,”
Deuteronomy 29:13 “That he may establish you today as his people, and that he may be your God, as he promised you, and as he swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob.”
2 Samuel 7:24 “And you established for yourself your people Israel to be your people forever. And you, O LORD, became their God.”
1 Chron. 17:22 “And you made your people Israel to be your people forever, and you, O LORD, became their God.”
Jeremiah 7:23 But this command I gave them: ‘Obey my voice, and I will be your God, and you shall be my people. And walk in all the way that I command you, that it may be well with you.'”
Jeremiah 11:4 “That I commanded your fathers when I brought them out of the land of Egypt, from the iron furnace, saying, Listen to my voice, and do all that I command you. So shall you be my people, and I will be your God,”
Jeremiah 24:7 “I will give them a heart to know that I am the LORD, and they shall be my people and I will be their God, for they shall return to me with their whole heart.”
Jeremiah 30:22 “And you shall be my people, and I will be your God.”
Jeremiah 31:1 “At that time, declares the LORD, I will be the God of all the clans of Israel, and they shall be my people.”
Jeremiah 31:33 “But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the LORD: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people.”
Jeremiah 32:38 “And they shall be my people, and I will be their God.”
Ezekiel 11:20 “That they may walk in my statutes and keep my rules and obey them. And they shall be my people, and I will be their God.”
Ezekiel 14:11 “That the house of Israel may no more go astray from me, nor defile themselves anymore with all their transgressions, but that they may be my people and I may be their God, declares the Lord GOD.”
Ezekiel 34:24 “And I, the LORD, will be their God, and my servant David shall be prince among them. I am the LORD; I have spoken.”
Ezekiel 34:30 “And they shall know that I am the LORD their God with them, and that they, the house of Israel, are my people, declares the Lord GOD.”
Ezekiel 36:27-28 “And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules. You shall dwell in the land that I gave to your fathers, and you shall be my people, and I will be your God.”
Ezekiel 37:23 “They shall not defile themselves anymore with their idols and their detestable things, or with any of their transgressions. But I will save them from all the backslidings in which they have sinned, and will cleanse them; and they shall be my people, and I will be their God.”
Ezekiel 37:27 “My dwelling place shall be with them, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.”
Hosea 2:23 “And I will sow her for myself in the land. And I will have mercy on No Mercy, and I will say to Not My People, ‘You are my people‘; and he shall say, ‘You are my God.'”
Zechariah 8:8 “And I will bring them to dwell in the midst of Jerusalem. And they shall be my people, and I will be their God, in faithfulness and in righteousness.”
Zechariah 13:9 “And I will put this third into the fire, and refine them as one refines silver, and test them as gold is tested. They will call upon my name, and I will answer them. I will say, ‘They are my people‘; and they will say, ‘The LORD is my God.'”
2 Corinthians 6:16-17 “What agreement has the temple of God with idols? For we are the temple of the living God; as God said, ‘I will make my dwelling among them and walk among them, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. Therefore go out from their midst, and be separate from them, says the Lord, and touch no unclean thing; then I will welcome you,'”
1 Peter 2:9-10 “But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.”
Revelation 21:3 “And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God.”
Revelation 21:7 “The one who conquers will have this heritage, and I will be his God and he will be my son.”
Once again, I had the privilege to fill in for our pastor this past Sunday, and deliver the Sunday sermon. With it being Communion Sunday, I was asked to keep the message to around 30 minutes. So I ended up cramming a lot of content into 35 minutes. I apologize in advance for that!
The topic: the Temple and the Church, has been on my heart a lot lately, and was driven home as I recently finished reading a book on this same theme by G.K. Beale The Temple and the Church’s Mission (IVP). I begin the sermon with a romp through the numerous OT texts promising that God would be “God” for His people, and they would be His special people, and that God would make His dwelling place with them. I found this promise some 28 times in the Old Testament with three (or more) reiterations of this in the New Testament. That was the launching point for this brief look at what it means that Jesus Christ is the True Temple, and that we, His Body, are also “being built up” into a spiritual Temple. What does it mean and how should it shape how we live our lives?
I’ve included my notes for the sermon as a .pdf file here. But please download the sermon and ponder these texts with me. At around 14 minutes in, there is a minute or two cut out of the audio as the battery on the microphone died and the sound guy replaced it for me. (Sorry about that too!) Let me know what you think, I’d love some feedback.
Place:Beacon of Hope Church, St. Paul Date: October 30, 2011 Title: “God With Us:” Jesus, The Temple & The Church Text: Matthew 1:23 & John 1:1,14 Notes:Download PDF Audio Link:Listen online or download (right click the link and save it to your computer)
Is the sixth time the charm? I don’t know but this is the 6th blog theme I’ve had for my blog. I don’t know if anyone remembers the red and tan original Blogger blog. Then we had an olive 2.0, an orange 3.0, then a very brief blue and green 4.0, and recently we’ve been all blue. (See below for samples of these previous looks.)
I think I’ve finally hit on the absolute best theme, and it’s been under my nose all along! I picked this theme for my KJV Only Debate Resource Center blog, and so I’ve shied away from using it for my main blog. But when I noticed that my blogging pal John Chitty recently updated his theme, it got me thinking. I checked out the themes again, and with WordPress’ new theme previewer, I found it easy to sample my options.
When I tested my idea of resurrecting my first header image (from 2.0), I was hooked. That hall with the stone arches (from St. Johns College at Cambridge) has always epitomized a “Reformed” feel to me. And the hallway leads you deeper in (semper Reformanda). There are many of you who haven’t seen this picture, so I hope you’ll give your impressions of it.
All along I’ve been looking for something green (not olive!). And I’ve finally found it. It has numbered comments with links, to boot. Plus it handles pictures and quotes well — no small feat compared to other popular WordPress blog themes. So Misty Look (the name of the theme), it is.
It didn’t take too much work to tweak my sidebar a bit, and rearrange my pages. But I couldn’t be happier with almost everything about this theme. I probably won’t change my KJVO blog either, since it is so rarely visited (in comparison to Fundamentally Reformed) and since it really isn’t a normal blog where I post all the time. What makes this really crazy is the fact that I’ve been maintaining another blog (of sorts) for my grandfather, and for that one I used Misty Look, too! That blog is designed more like a web page, which promotes some paddles he is selling to earn money for a missions’ cause.
Anyways, this new old look appeals to me. What say ye? If I can ever edit the older posts to make the colors consistent, I’ll probably be happy for a long time. But I can’t say a new and perfect edition of this blog won’t ever appear. 7.0 would only come if WordPress.com gives us a fantastic new theme. We’ll see.
UPDATE: For posterity’s sake, I’ve included near screen shots of the 5 previous designs for this blog:
For this first one, it had a tan instead of gray background, and was a blogger-template hack. (Picture obtained from themes.wordpress.net)
ADDITIONAL UPDATE: I’ve decided to also include in this old post, the version 6 and 7 screenshots. The current version of the blog is also included as version 8. –4/24/2010
About a year ago, I posted the pictures of a power point presentation my brother (Dave) had put together for a series of Sunday morning messages at his church. The series traces the covenants of Scripture and how they relate to the advance of God’s Kingdom. It is an excellent presentation and also serves as an excellent (albeit simple) introduction to covenantal theology (as opposed to dispensationalism).
Well lately I’ve received a few requests for the actual presentations themselves, rather than pictures of them, and so I updated the original post to include the power point files (which WordPress allows me to upload). The files actually take up much less memory than the pictures of each slide, and you are welcome to download them if you’d like.
Since I was updating the post, I thought I’d bring it back to the front page again as it really is one of my favorite posts of all time. If you’ve got the time, take a look at some of the presentations, just click on the picture above to go to that post.
Recently I had another opportunity to preach on a Sunday morning. I took the opportunity to preach again on the Temple theme in Scripture, using 2 Cor. 6:14-7:1 as my text. I had preached on the Temple before, but this time I wanted to flesh out what it means that the church is the Temple today.
I mentioned in my 
