Bible Chats: Dwelling Places of God

[00:00:02] Speaker A: Welcome to the YA podcast. Lean in as we dive into the practicals of life with Jesus as spirit filled young adults. [00:00:27] Speaker B: Welcome, everyone, back to the YA podcast. Today is a Bible chat. I am with Sam Adabago. [00:00:33] Speaker A: Hello. [00:00:34] Speaker B: It's a good time to be here talking about the Bible. Last week we chatted about a bit of an overview of the season, and we're talking the body of Christ, the unity of the body of Christ, the bride of Christ, all of these sorts of things. So having a listen to that, go back and have a listen. It's a good time. Did you listen to it, Sam? [00:00:56] Speaker A: I did. [00:00:57] Speaker B: Anything come up that you liked, Sam? Ed, it's all about podcasting. [00:01:01] Speaker A: Yeah. You naturally have to listen to it when you editing. I think I'm really excited for the season. I'm excited about unity. I've always loved the idea of unity. [00:01:11] Speaker B: I've always loved it. [00:01:13] Speaker A: No, no, no. But I think it's really important, especially. I think I've probably mentioned it to you, Thomas, as well. Especially in a time where sometimes it's easy to just get into arguments with other christians from other dominations and things like that and putting a focus on, like, we're all here to serve God and to extend the kingdom. That that's our key purpose. I think it's important to remember all of this type of stuff. [00:01:37] Speaker B: Yeah, totally. [00:01:37] Speaker A: Yeah. What God's original intention was for it and stuff. [00:01:40] Speaker B: Yeah. I might just jump on that before we actually delve into what we're talking about today. But last week I got to have a coffee with a youth pastor of an anglican church, and it was great to chat to him. And he had never been in any other church except for the church that he was a youth pastor at. Yeah. And so you probably couldn't have more different expressions of, like, an eglin versus Pentecostal. [00:02:06] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:02:07] Speaker B: And so he had all these questions. He was like, so what do you believe about this? And, like, what do your Sunday service look like? This. And it was so cool that we had this discussion, and in the end of it, he came away. We both came away feeling encouraged and like, we had more in common than differences. [00:02:23] Speaker A: Absolutely. [00:02:24] Speaker B: And that actually, our differences were not in theology or doctrine, but purely in just an expression. [00:02:30] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:02:30] Speaker B: Like, we would be like, oh, we do this, and it's because we believe this. And he'd be like, yeah, we believe that, too. We just don't do it that way. [00:02:35] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:02:36] Speaker B: I was like, this is awesome. [00:02:37] Speaker A: That's awesome. Yeah. So cool. [00:02:39] Speaker B: So, yeah, that's what we're that's why we're talking about it, because I think it does need to be spoken about more. [00:02:43] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:02:43] Speaker B: And even the way we sometimes talk in church of like, oh, like, Lord, you're doing this in your bride. I think sometimes we think that about, are you doing this in this church? [00:02:54] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:02:54] Speaker B: Whereas it's like, no, no, the bride is the entire church and the body is not what's happening here. It's the entire church. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And I mean, there are two metaphors. What's another metaphor for the church or the bride? The body and the talking about today? [00:03:15] Speaker A: The what? [00:03:16] Speaker B: Temple. [00:03:17] Speaker A: Temple. [00:03:20] Speaker B: So we're talking about temple today, Sam, if you didn't know. [00:03:23] Speaker A: Oh, gosh. Yes. [00:03:25] Speaker B: So let's jump into that. But heads up for everyone. We are going to do a bit of a theme study. So go through the Old Testament, go through the New Testament around this idea of the temple, a dwelling place for the presence of God. So that's what we're tracking today. We might not go in depth on too many scriptures, but we're going to track through in depth on a topic throughout the scriptures, which is going to be fun. If you've never done it before, come along for the journey. Sam, what's the first dwelling place of the presence that we can see in the Bible? [00:04:00] Speaker A: You definitely see it in Genesis. [00:04:02] Speaker B: Yeah, we love Genesis two. [00:04:04] Speaker A: Two, yeah, yeah, two in Garden of Eden. Yeah. Where man and woman. Man and woman are created and placed. [00:04:16] Speaker B: Multiple women. [00:04:17] Speaker A: No, there's just one woman created at the beginning and created and placed in the Garden of Eden. And God was there amongst it all, dwelling with them, unity with them and everything. So. [00:04:27] Speaker B: Yeah. And even that. That commission for them to work and tend to the garden. Yeah, we'll go there straight away. Like that language comes back up with the priests in the temple and the tabernacle of them tending to the presence in the tabernacle is the same wording for Adam and Eve to keep the garden and tend to the garden. So we're already seeing this correlation between Eden and what we know as like, the temple or the tabernacle. [00:05:03] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:05:03] Speaker B: Is this priestly service? [00:05:05] Speaker A: Yeah, I love that imagery as well, because you don't always look at the creation story and think of them as priests, and so you just see priests pop out later on. You're like, okay, this is a new type of role, but it's actually the original role. Yeah. [00:05:19] Speaker B: That mediator between God and the rest of creation was always meant to be the role. That's cool. Do you have anything else to say about Eden? [00:05:30] Speaker A: No. I think it's interesting as well to see, obviously, the center of it all is God, the tree of life. And that being we see later on being a representation of Jesus himself as well. [00:05:45] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:05:45] Speaker A: And everything being centered around it as well. Not to make an idol of the tree of life specifically, but, like, everything was centered around God and around that. That's where the community began to develop as well. [00:05:59] Speaker B: Yeah. And there's no divide, I think is a really great thing to talk about where there's just his presence was. And there's no divide. There's no start or end of it. Just, he was there. Yeah. And there's that perfect communion, constant communion kind of thing. And. Yes. You know, there's descriptions. You know, they would walk in the cool of the day and there's obviously, there's a physical element, but there's also this imagery and language pointing to just a constant there ness of his presence. [00:06:38] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:06:40] Speaker B: Which is like, wow, this is what, like, this is why we always, let's get back to Eden. Let's get back to Eden because of that. Just that there's no divide. There's no. Oh, this is when I talk to God and this is when I don't. [00:06:52] Speaker A: Absolutely. [00:06:53] Speaker B: Which is cool. [00:06:54] Speaker A: They were just dwelling together. Yeah, yeah. It was. There was an ease to it as well. [00:06:58] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then we kind of don't see a lot of, uh, dwelling places of the presence for a little while in scripture. Um, it doesn't come back up until after the exodus. [00:07:13] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:07:13] Speaker B: Which. Yeah. It's like, okay. Like, I mean, they heard from God. Um, there's some cool moments in Genesis, you know, like Abraham sat down having a meal with God. [00:07:25] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:07:25] Speaker B: Like, some different places like that. I'm not going into it, Sam. [00:07:29] Speaker A: And, like, Jacob. Jacob with the stairwell up to him. [00:07:32] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, exactly. So there's all these, like, yeah, cool places, but there's. There's none of this, like, same resting place and dwelling until we get to post Exodus and at Sinai. I love the hilariousness of scripture where Moses is up on the mountain getting the blueprint of the Israelites worship and how they should worship. And, like, God's telling him what Aaron's gonna wear as the high priest. [00:08:06] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:08:07] Speaker B: And Aaron is down the mountain making a golden calf, and God's talking to Moses about, like, fine linen cloths that Aaron's about to wear. [00:08:17] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:08:17] Speaker B: I think it's hilarious. I'm like, you're talking about this guy that's gonna be the high priest and he's down there making a golden calf. Right. This is scripture's great, but, yeah. So, like, we get to that point and there's this blueprint of the tabernacle, this center of worship, again, where we've only seen individual encounters. Now, this is a way for a corporate encounter. And there it is. The corporate is that tabernacle is the making the way for the corporate nation to house and live with the presence of God. [00:08:51] Speaker A: Yeah. A question I have moving is we're moving to the tabernacle and stuff because I think there's a lot of perception that, like, the tabernacle was a place that they had to almost keep away from because it was, like, too holy and you might get, like, struck down, all that kind of stuff. So if we're thinking about God making a dwelling place amongst his people. [00:09:13] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:09:14] Speaker A: Is that. Do you feel like there's a misconception. [00:09:16] Speaker B: That a little bit, yeah. Especially language wise, I think, like, one thing to think about. Let's just go with that whole idea of, like, we need to stay away the outer court. So I'm not sure if you've seen a picture of the tabernacle, but there's the tent and then there's actually a boundary outside that's made like a courtyard almost. In that they had the bronze altar, which was actually accessible to every israelite, necessarily. So because they needed to come to the bronze altar to sacrifice. [00:09:54] Speaker A: Yes. [00:09:56] Speaker B: So even that imagery of stay away, it's like, no, no, draw near. Because they would actually come to the bronze altar and sacrifice. [00:10:04] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:10:05] Speaker B: So that idea of needing a stay away is definitely. We're reading some things into it, I think, and even misunderstanding some language, even that idea of unclean versus clean had this conversation just today, actually. And it was. Being unclean wasn't sinful. [00:10:25] Speaker A: Yeah. Right. [00:10:26] Speaker B: That's important to actually say. [00:10:28] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:10:29] Speaker B: It was not a sin to be unclean. Being unclean just meant that you had come into contact with something that was considered to be a symbol of death. If it was sinful, that means that a woman on their menstruating would have been, like, in sin. What do you mean? That doesn't make sense. And so it would simply just be. No, you just need to cleanse yourself and have a period of time, and now you have removed yourself from the symbol of death and you're back in life. [00:11:00] Speaker A: And it's also about that whole being holy and set apart. Yeah. And it's ordering. [00:11:07] Speaker B: It's. The whole tabernacle in levitical system was about ordering their world in order to create presence and God to be the central element. So everything in their world, managing the sacred space around them, managing the time of the year around them, managing their status, that set apartness as God's people, was all about making sure that their whole life was diffused with the presence of God, that there was no start or end. And that's why it's important to understand these sorts of things, like clean, unclean. It's not a sinful thing. It's just, hey, you can't go into the temple right now. [00:11:47] Speaker A: Yeah, no, absolutely. And I think as well, with that whole, like, perception about, like, they. It was like the tabernacle was a holy thing that they had to stay clear of that. I think, um, it's cool to see that. Like, there was that outer kind of courtyard area that they were like. So this was actually something that was God coming closer to them, actually. [00:12:09] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. It was making a way for them to be closer. [00:12:11] Speaker A: Yeah, because before that, like, God couldn't really come close. There was no avenue for it, actually. [00:12:16] Speaker B: Interesting. Prior to the tabernacle being built, prior to Moses going up on the mountain for 40 days and 40 nights, there's a scripture that talks about God coming upon the mountain in, like, cloud and lightning and fire. And it was almost. He actually says to Moses, hey, bring the people out so that I essentially. So that I can introduce myself. [00:12:40] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. [00:12:40] Speaker B: And then he comes down in lightning and fire. [00:12:42] Speaker A: Yeah. Wonderful. [00:12:44] Speaker B: And the people, they shrink back and they say to Moses, no, you go up for us. So there's almost this desire of God to be with his people, but the people's not. People not being ready to actually be with God in that way. [00:12:59] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:12:59] Speaker B: And so again, the tabernacle then, is a housing of the presence to allow them to live in proximity where he wanted to be in proximity, but they couldn't in that way. [00:13:09] Speaker A: Yeah. So it's almost as well, them coming in the way of the proximity that God wants to be in with them. [00:13:16] Speaker B: So he's like, okay, well, I'm gonna create a tabernacle. So that's, you know, this is going to be a way to come near to me, and me to come near to you. [00:13:23] Speaker A: Yeah. And it's so cool to just see that, like, from the very beginning, like, it's always about God coming closer to us. He's always. That's been his original intention. [00:13:30] Speaker B: And corporately, too. [00:13:31] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:13:32] Speaker B: Like, individually, like I said, there's all these individual encounters. Moses has doesn't have a need for a tabernacle. He goes up onto the mountain and sees the backside of God and, like, all this sort of stuff, like. And. But it's. It's the desire for a corporate that he institutes. The tabernacle. [00:13:49] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:13:50] Speaker B: So that a nation could benefit from the presence. [00:13:53] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:13:54] Speaker B: So the nation could be close to them, close to him. [00:13:58] Speaker A: And then that nation can then be. [00:14:00] Speaker B: The avenue for the blessings of the whole world. [00:14:02] Speaker A: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. [00:14:04] Speaker B: Which is mind boggling. Really cool. Yeah. [00:14:10] Speaker A: And I think, as well, it's really cool as well to see, because talking about how it was God's original plan to always dwell amongst us and be in unity with us, to see the similarities between the tabernacle and Garden of Eden as well. Yes, because we're talking about the Garden of Eden being them dwelling with the Lord and just that ease of oneness with him. And then you see all that imagery coming back in through the design of the tabernacle itself with the cherubim. Yeah, well, that. [00:14:39] Speaker B: Well, mercy seat on top of the ark. [00:14:41] Speaker A: Exactly. [00:14:41] Speaker B: They're guarding the presence just as they guarded Eden. [00:14:44] Speaker A: Mmm. Exactly, yeah. And there's all this imagery coming back. It's a very clear link to. I'm trying to come close to you again. [00:14:51] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:14:52] Speaker A: At the very beginning. [00:14:53] Speaker B: Totally, yeah. I'm trying to restore something. There's this restoration motif that keeps coming back through, which then you get to Jesus and it's. It's, oh, oh, here we are. Cool. [00:15:02] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:15:03] Speaker B: And even now, we're still. We're still living in a restorative narrative because we're not there yet, which we'll come to in a moment. I mean, even just things like the jewels that the high priest wore and things like that, it's reminiscent of Eden again. So there's this. Even what their priests were wearing, it's bringing back that Eden motif constantly. The tabernacle, obviously, when they get into. Where am I going with this? The tabernacle, when they get into the promised land, remains still a tent, that sort of thing. It's not a temple. Until Solomon's reign, obviously, David made the way for that to happen. He really desired to build the temple, but he wasn't allowed to. And when you understand the clean and unclean being a symbol of death, when God says, no, you're a man of war, you can't build my house again. It's not because he did anything wrong. He did his very, like, calling. [00:16:01] Speaker A: Right, yeah. [00:16:02] Speaker B: But because he had encountered so much death, God was like, no, no, you won't be the man to build, but your son will be interesting. [00:16:08] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:16:08] Speaker B: David made way for that to happen. He put aside all the gold, all the silver, everything needed. And then we see this temple come up with Solomon's reign, which I love. Like they. The temple's built and then they're all just like, slain in the spirit. [00:16:23] Speaker A: Yeah. It's the coolest scripture. [00:16:25] Speaker B: It's just like, they just like, open up the temple and it's like, oh, the priest can't stand. If you want, like a biblical narrative for people being slain in the spirit. [00:16:33] Speaker A: Like, there it is. [00:16:34] Speaker B: There it is. They fell down. They couldn't stand up. No one caught them. [00:16:40] Speaker A: Gosh. There were no modesty course. [00:16:42] Speaker B: No, they were all on the floor anyway, so it didn't matter. No one was looking around. So these are like the temples there as well, which the temple is like just a bigger version of the tabernacle. [00:16:54] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:16:54] Speaker B: It's, again, still got that division of an outer court. And in a court holy of holies, it's got a bronze altar, it's got the inner. The altar of incense, it's got the bread of the presence. It's got everything. The tabernacle had just bigger, better, more. [00:17:11] Speaker A: Beautiful, more ornate and like, firmer structures. [00:17:16] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. Permanent. No longer moving. Yeah, yeah, and it's permanent. So there's this temple again. And the people of God can come in, they can sacrifice, they can do what they need to do. It becomes again the centerpiece of a nation's worship, a centerpiece of a nation's life again, that temple restoration, which I might actually jump into a couple of things before we jump. We might look at some individual elements within the temple and then what it meant for them and then maybe even an application for us in the New Testament before we jump into. What's the New Testament? Temple. [00:17:56] Speaker A: Yes. [00:17:57] Speaker B: So some elements within the tabernacle and the temple. So obviously, I've been talking about this bronze altar, the altar of sacrifice. That's where they would bring burnt offerings to sacrifice. They'd do the things that they needed to do. So obviously that was part of their worship, part of their repentance and all that sort of thing. [00:18:18] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:18:19] Speaker B: There's this cool thing in revelation six, verse nine. It's not a cool thing, it's a wrestling. You gotta wrestle with this. But revelation six, verse nine talks about the altar again. And the altar is now built on the martyrs of the church. [00:18:36] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:18:36] Speaker B: Those that have died for the faith. [00:18:38] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:18:39] Speaker B: And so this bronze, it's linking to this bronze altar and what once was built out of bronze to sacrifice animals is now, built off of a living sacrifice of the lives of the martyrs. [00:18:56] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:18:57] Speaker B: So it's that connection of, well, in our lives, the bronze altar of the temple and the tabernacle is actually us. It's our living sacrifice. [00:19:06] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:19:06] Speaker B: It's us dying to ourselves daily. And then revelation brings that to fruition, going, this altar has been built on the lives of those that have died. [00:19:15] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:19:16] Speaker B: Like I said, it's like, woof. Okay, cool. So it's that living sacrifice. [00:19:20] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:19:21] Speaker B: Couple other things in there. So then there's like, as you'd enter, you'd come past this massive bronze altar. Then before the tent, there'd be a bronze. It was called a bronze lava, essentially. A massive bronze thing that held, like, water. [00:19:37] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:19:37] Speaker B: This is where priests would come and cleanse their hands, wash themselves before they entered the tent. What would that be today? An application for that today. I didn't prep Sam on any of. [00:19:47] Speaker A: This, by the way, on whether they washed themselves. [00:19:51] Speaker B: Yeah. Before they entered the presence. [00:19:55] Speaker A: Correct me if I'm wrong. I'm talking about, like, baptism. [00:19:58] Speaker B: Could be. [00:19:59] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. [00:20:00] Speaker B: That's actually cool. I didn't even think about that. That's good. Um, but, like, washing being like, repentance. Right? [00:20:05] Speaker A: Right. Yeah. [00:20:06] Speaker B: They're cleansing themselves before they enter the presence. [00:20:08] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:20:09] Speaker B: Okay, so this is like something. Every time they enter the presence, they'd have to wash themselves. [00:20:13] Speaker A: Yeah. Right. [00:20:13] Speaker B: Um, with this, this was why it was a staple thing. Before they entered the tent was a massive bronze basin, essentially. [00:20:19] Speaker A: Yeah. Right. [00:20:20] Speaker B: So it's almost like our repentance is that daily washing as we come in, into the presence to repent quickly, you know? Although keep a short account with God. That's this kind of imagery of the bronze basin. Again, the lampstand. There's a lampstand that's burning constantly. It's the menorah, the thing that we think about, you know, the seven things today. What is that? [00:20:46] Speaker A: It would be like worship, I suppose. [00:20:48] Speaker B: No, no, we get into worship, Sam. Ah, damn. [00:20:50] Speaker A: I'm getting them all wrong. [00:20:51] Speaker B: This. This lampstand had oil and the oil was burning. [00:20:55] Speaker A: Okay, are we talking about oil and fire? Ah, the Holy Spirit. [00:21:00] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:21:01] Speaker A: Yes. There we go. [00:21:03] Speaker B: Hopefully, everyone coming along like they're yelling at their phones, going, Sam, just. Sam, what are you doing? Yeah, yeah. So the symbol of the Holy Spirit. [00:21:12] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:21:12] Speaker B: And the Holy Spirit's unifying of the body. The purity of oil was necessary for it to burn bright and long again. So purity of oil. Priests would have to tend to it in order for there not to be any silt in the tabernacle tent or in the temple, because that was seen as unclean. So there's this tending to the flame. All this imagery is New Testament. Right? [00:21:41] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:21:42] Speaker B: Super, super clear. Hopefully I don't have to explain it. Um, otherwise people might be like, well, Tom, what are you talking about? There was the bread of the presence. [00:21:50] Speaker A: Yes. [00:21:50] Speaker B: Loaves of bread sitting there on a table. Bread in the New Testament. [00:21:56] Speaker A: Like Jesus. [00:21:57] Speaker B: Yeah, Jesus. Yeah, yeah, Jesus. That's from communion. We get that. [00:22:03] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:22:04] Speaker B: Awesome. And then there's another altar. It's called the golden altar or the altar of incense. [00:22:11] Speaker A: The prayers. [00:22:12] Speaker B: Incense, yeah. And prayers. And present worship. And worship. [00:22:17] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. [00:22:19] Speaker B: It brings. Incense is like. Worship is an entirety. Right? [00:22:22] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:22:23] Speaker B: Today that is not just when we sing songs. [00:22:25] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:22:26] Speaker B: Intercession is incense. Prayer in general is incense. Obedience. [00:22:33] Speaker A: Yeah. Right. [00:22:34] Speaker B: Is incense. And I'm putting incense there. But it's. It's worship. So that should be stretching our terminology of worship to be obedience, prayer, intercession, all these sorts of things. And there's the holy of holies, which is just like God's glory, man. [00:22:51] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:22:51] Speaker B: Let's sit in that. Yeah. Is that helpful? [00:22:55] Speaker A: Yeah, that's really helpful. [00:22:56] Speaker B: Something that's like, when we read through, like, a temple or a tabernacle, we can start to go, oh, that's reality. [00:23:02] Speaker A: It's cool. Some of those I hadn't made the connections for, obviously. [00:23:05] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:23:05] Speaker A: But it's cool. Yeah, yeah. Because, like, everything represented something and has a link to something that's. [00:23:11] Speaker B: Now, I think that's. That's helpful to see that there's actually. It helps us kind of translate it into a New Testament reality. Let's jump into the New Testament reality before we wrap up. So we had Eden, we then have the tabernacle, we then have the temple. And all of these are dwelling places of the presence. We spoke about the tabernacle and the temple being the way to facilitate the corporate worship of God. Not necessarily individual, but the corporate worship of God. New Testament, what's the dwelling place? [00:23:45] Speaker A: Us, the church. [00:23:46] Speaker B: Us, the church. [00:23:48] Speaker A: It's gotta be. [00:23:49] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Individually or corporately? [00:23:54] Speaker A: Corporately, definitely. And some individual as well. Yeah, both, yeah. [00:23:58] Speaker B: So, you know, they talk about the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, and so that's very clearly there. I think Temple, we spoke about this a bit before we started recording, but temple, that image of the temple definitely becomes more of a corporate image in the New Testament. Do you want to just open to ephesians two and I'll open it up to another couple of scriptures. We're gonna do another episode on Ephesians, and we're gonna do a deep dive. And so hold up for that one. That's gonna be fun. But do you wanna just read Ephesians two, verse, like 18 to 22? I think it is. [00:24:44] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. 18 to 22. Yep. So we. Yeah. Ephesians 218 to 22. For through him, we both have access in spirit to the father. So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets. Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone in whom the whole structure, being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord. In him, you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the spirit. [00:25:23] Speaker B: We are all being built together. [00:25:26] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:25:27] Speaker B: To be a dwelling place of the Holy Spirit. [00:25:29] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:25:30] Speaker B: That takes unity onto a next level. Right, absolutely. Sorry, I'll rephrase. It takes the importance and the desire for a unified body of Christ to be all the more important if we're meant to be built together to be the dwelling place. [00:25:46] Speaker A: Absolutely. [00:25:47] Speaker B: So you can't be individual. [00:25:48] Speaker A: No, no, sorry. [00:25:50] Speaker B: If you were trying to do this walk on your own, you do actually have to be a part of a corporate gathering. But that. That also tells me that there's. Without the building together of the dwelling place, there's parts of the presence of God and parts of God we can't access without the corporate. [00:26:11] Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. I think it was really cool in that last episode with you and Kelsey, when I think Kelsey touched on it about the fact that, like, maybe someone isn't being. Isn't, you know, stepping in and serving in church and playing their part in church, that there's something that the church is actually missing out on. [00:26:30] Speaker B: Well, the temple's not finished. [00:26:32] Speaker A: Yes, exactly. [00:26:32] Speaker B: I'm missing a stone. [00:26:33] Speaker A: You're missing a stone. There's a gap there. [00:26:35] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:26:35] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:26:36] Speaker B: The temple and the dwelling place of Holy Spirit is not finished, then. [00:26:39] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:26:40] Speaker B: This is not negating the fact that we individually also temples of the Holy Spirit, but we're talking about the body specifically because I think we major too much on the individual and we forget that there's actually more New Testament scriptures about the corporate body being the temple rather than the individual being the temple. [00:26:59] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:27:00] Speaker B: So that's. Yeah, one. And it's. It's that Jesus made the way for us to be built together and be unified. And he talks about in, you know, before just beginning ephesians two, it talks about that Jesus broke down the dividing wall of hostility between man and woman, gentile, jew, free and slave. It's like all those divisions that we want to make today, Jesus has dealt with that. So if you have a problem with unity, just look at Jesus and be unified through him. [00:27:27] Speaker A: Yeah, and I think as well, like, it's scary to think about having to be everything just by yourself. [00:27:35] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:27:36] Speaker A: Obviously, we each come with our own gifts and strengths and talents and all that kind of stuff, things that God has graced us with. And even when we start talking about the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds, the teachers and stuff like that, that's a perfect example of that as well. That if we just had apostles, we wouldn't quite have the full picture of who Jesus is if we just had teachers. It's the same thing. We need all of them working together, uni. And then we get a pretty good image of who God and Jesus is. [00:28:05] Speaker B: You are a stone. Be put into the temple. [00:28:10] Speaker A: Exactly. [00:28:12] Speaker B: Another scripture. First Corinthians, chapter three, verse 16 to 17. Do you not know. Do you not know that you are God's temple and that God's spirit dwells in you? If anyone destroys God's temple, God will destroy him. For God's temple is holy and you are that temple. He yeah, this could be read individually, but it's actually talking corporately. We know that because of the context of the scripture. This is at the end of a discussion about different people in the corinthian church following different. He's like, oh, I follow Paulus teaching. No, I follow Paul's teaching. No, I just follow Jesus's teaching. And Paul's like, guys, stop talking. You're like way off. Like, just, you're missing the mark here. And so he's like, Jesus is the one building the church. I, Paul, am a servant of that building the church. And Apollos was also a servant building the church. You're all being the church, being the temple of the spirit. And that's why we can apply this corporately. So you are the God's temple. The corporate body is God's temple. And the spirit dwells in that. Not negating it dwells in you individually, but also the corporate body. If anyone destroys God's temple, just heavy. If anyone destroys the church, God will destroy him for God's temple. Remember, he's majoring on the metaphor here, but we understand God's temple being the church. The church is holy, set apart, sacred, and you are that temple. [00:29:55] Speaker A: Yeah. And I think that really puts into focus the way we should talk about the church, where you should treat the church all that kind of stuff as well. Like it's easy for us to see all the flaws in it. Obviously there are, because it's full of human beings who are all flawed. But seeing the scripture and seeing that it's holy, that should change the way we talk about it and treat it well. [00:30:22] Speaker B: It was the entirety of Israel's job, right. To maintain the sacred and holy of the presence. Yes. The priest did majority of that, but the entire nation took part in that, in making sure if they were unclean they wouldn't enter into the tabernacle. If they were unclean, they wouldn't enter into the temple. So they were taking responsibility for the holiness of the temple individually. So then today the temple is the church and I'm not talking about the building. The body of Christ is the temple. How are we individually taking responsibility for the holiness and sacredness of the church? [00:31:04] Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. [00:31:06] Speaker B: Like that's an important question. Or how are we profaning profane is making something holy unholy, making something clean unclean? How are we profaning the temple of God in the New Testament being the church? [00:31:20] Speaker A: Absolutely. [00:31:22] Speaker B: That's hectic. It's pretty hectic because that's destroying the church. That's destroying the temple like the scripture says. [00:31:28] Speaker A: And the church also the body of Christ. [00:31:31] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. [00:31:31] Speaker A: Even, yeah. Like takes it to a whole other level as well. [00:31:35] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. And I think that's an important thing that once you track the tabernacle through the temple into the New Testament church being the temple goes, oh, okay. Individually we've got a responsibility for the holiness of the church and for the sacredness of the church. [00:31:51] Speaker A: Yes. [00:31:52] Speaker B: Gossiping, destroying the church. [00:31:56] Speaker A: Absolutely. [00:31:57] Speaker B: Individually you can destroy the church that way. [00:31:59] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:32:01] Speaker B: You know, disunity. How are you disunifying the church? Because that's tearing down stones of the temple. [00:32:09] Speaker A: Yeah. And especially if we're going back to all the fact the conversation around the God dwelling with mankind as well, and now seeing the garden of Eden and Tabernacle, then temple and now the church, this is the avenue for God to dwell with mankind as well. It's very important that we, well, it's. [00:32:34] Speaker B: Now it's the representation of God's presence on earth. [00:32:37] Speaker A: Exactly. [00:32:38] Speaker B: It's the church. [00:32:38] Speaker A: It's the church. Yeah. [00:32:39] Speaker B: Yeah. That's some hecticness there. Let's finish up with revelation 21. [00:32:47] Speaker A: Yes. [00:32:50] Speaker B: Like we said, it's still not finished. Going from Eden to tabernacle. [00:32:55] Speaker A: There's more. [00:32:55] Speaker B: Yeah. Eden to tabernacle. To temple, to church, the body of Christ. It's still the restorative work of Christ in bringing about the presence of God and bringing himself close to humanity is not finished. Revelation 21. It talks about the new heaven and the new earth in verse 22. And I saw no temple in the city, for its temple is the Lord God, the almighty, and the lamb. And the city has no need for sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light. And its lamp is the lamb. By its light. The nations walk, and the kings of the earth will bring glory into it. Its gates will never be shut by day, and there will be no night there. They will bring into it the glory and the honor of the nations. But nothing unclean will ever enter it, nor anyone who does what is detestable or false. But only those who are written in the lamb's book of life brings this fruition back to a better Eden. [00:34:05] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:34:07] Speaker B: You know, all this, like, let's get back to Eden. No, no, no. We're after something. We're after a better Eden. [00:34:12] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:34:13] Speaker B: Because this is now, like, everyone is in the presence of God continually. There is no divide between sacred or secular. There's no divide between where the presence is and where the presence isn't, where God is, where, you know, it's just is. And Jesus, the lamb of God, the Lord God almighty, is the temple. There's no temple in the city. So he's taken it from us being his dwelling place as a corporate body, because we're the intersection between the kingdom of heaven and the kingdom and earth into. No, no. It's everywhere. It's a better Eden. [00:34:52] Speaker A: Yeah. And it's the perfect culmination of everything that the scripture was pointing towards in terms of. I think it was even in ephesians talking about Jesus ascending and filling all things and stuff like that, and we see it come to full fruition, all things being filled with the presence. [00:35:07] Speaker B: We don't need the sun because the sun s o n. Yes. Emanating so much glory. [00:35:13] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:35:13] Speaker B: That it lights up the whole world. [00:35:15] Speaker A: Amazing. It's pretty insane. [00:35:19] Speaker B: It's awesome. It's. [00:35:20] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:35:20] Speaker B: And. And this is the thing, right? It's, you know, we're saying we want to go back to Eden. We've got so much better than Eden waiting for us. [00:35:28] Speaker A: Absolutely. [00:35:29] Speaker B: So much better. [00:35:30] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:35:31] Speaker B: I'm not, like that metaphor is helpful, you know, like, I'm not saying. Let's not say that, but I think we also need to be aware that Eden is still only a shadow it. [00:35:42] Speaker A: Was amazing potential and everything, but then this is like it in its fullness. It's good. [00:35:50] Speaker B: Yeah, we're gonna wrap up there, but, yeah, hopefully that's helpful as we walk through talking about the different dwelling places of the presence of God and how that actually impacts our approach of the body of Christ, the corporate gathering, because the corporate body of Christ is the New Testament temple of the Holy Spirit. And what we do with that information really does matter as we've read through scripture today. I hope that's blessed you, and we'll see you next time.