(Talk given to Teens Ministry last week by T.)
Good morning brothers and sisters in Christ, Christmas is coming and we will soon be talking about the birth of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
But today, we are going to talk about temples. Let’s take a look at some of these pictures of temples. Each is a place where people who want to find that religion’s gods will go to look. Can you tell what religion each temple represents?
How about a Christian “temple”? What does a Christian “temple” look like?
Before Jesus Christ died and resurrected, worshippers of God worshipped in the Temple of God in Jerusalem. In the temple is a curtain covering the Holy of Holies, where God’s Holy Spirit stays.
Then Jesus said, "Destroy this temple, and I will raise it again in three days." (John 2:19).
So, Christ died and the curtain in the Temple of Jerusalem covering the room where God’s Spirit stays was torn in two, top-to-bottom(Matthew 27:51, Mark 15:38, Luke 23:45), meaning the Holy Spirit of God has left the Temple in Jerusalem and will not stay in there any more. 40 years later the Temple of Jerusalem was destroyed completely by the Roman army.
Three days after Christ died, He was raised and from then on God’s Holy Spirit lives inside all true believers so they begin to worship in Spirit and Truth (John 4:23), in the way they live. So, we are now temples of God that walk, talking, breathe and live because His Holy Spirit stays in us (John 14:17).
You remember what Brother Angga had talked about last week. He said that we are all temples of God now, in us lives the Holy Spirit of the Living God (1 Cor 3:15-17). Do you know that is how we are saved?
In Hebrew, Jesus’ name is actually Yehoshua, meaning “God rescues”. We all know Jesus is our Saviour, we know He saves by dying on the cross for our sins and we are saved by believing in Him and having faith in Him. But do we really know how this works?
Think about it, after Jesus died and resurrected, He went up to Heaven to be with our Heavenly Father, God. Why does Jesus not stay on earth forever to fight evil, do miracles, heal the sick, cast out the demons and preach the Gospel so more people can meet Him, believe and be saved?
Jesus explained to His disciples, “But I tell you the truth: It is for your good that I am going away. Unless I go away, the Counselor will not come to you; but if I go, I will send Him to you.” (John 16:7). Who is this “Counselor”? The Holy Spirit of God!
Now, do you know how we are saved because Jesus went back to our Father in Heaven so that the Holy Spirit of God can come to us? This Holy Spirit lives in us, but what shall It do for us? 500 years before Jesus Christ was born, the Lord God gave Ezekiel this prophesy, “And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws.” (Ezekiel 36:27).
What does this mean? It means nobody can do and continue to do God’s commandments and keep His laws on his own. To always obey God, we need God’s Holy Spirit in us to MOVE us to obey. We cannot do it on our own. Even Apostle Paul says, “I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing.” (Romans 7:18-19)
But Paul knows the secret and the mystery of stopping evil and sin in his life: “You, however, are controlled not by the sinful nature but by the Spirit, if the Spirit of God lives in you. And if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Christ.” (Romans 8:9). We need to be controlled by God’s Holy Spirit in us so we can stop sinning and obey God in all that He wants us to obey in.
And through this, God’s Holy Spirit in us will testify that we are God’s children (Romans 8:16), saved by God for God. The Holy Spirit is what God has put inside us when we believed in Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior; it is the Holy Spirit that guarantees we are saved and it is the seal, the stamp of authority on us to prove we are God’s children (2 Corinthians 1:21-22).
So what does this seal of Christ, this stamp of God’s authority, look like? It is just like how Jesus teaches us about telling what kind of tree by what kind of fruit that tree has. He said, "Make a tree good and its fruit will be good, or make a tree bad and its fruit will be bad, for a tree is recognized by its fruit.” (Matthew 12:33). Does an apple tree grow a durian? Do durian trees grow an orange? So what kind of fruit do we grow out so when people see that fruit, they can recognize we are God’s trees?
The Bible says, “(22) But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, (23) gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law.” (Galatians 5:22-23). Spiritual gifts like wisdom, prophecy and speaking in tongues are given by the Spirit but they will not last forever (1 Corinthians 13:8). But the Fruit of the Holy Spirit is forever. That’s why in the fruit of the Spirit, “greatest… is Love” (1 Corinthians 13:13).
Now, the Holy Spirit of God will ONLY come into His temple if that temple is clean and kept clean ONLY for God. And God did the cleaning by sending His only Son to become man and to die for our sins, so that those of us who believe in Him will have our sins cleansed in His blood (Hebrews 1:3). And after we are cleansed from our sins in believing in Jesus Christ, we need to have God’s Holy Spirit to come in us. And how do we tell, we have the Holy Spirit of God? By showing to everyone, everyday, “Love, Joy, Peace, Patience, Kindness, Goodness, Faithfulness, Gentleness and Self-Control.”
That is how a Christian “temple” look like.
That is why Jesus Christ came down from Heaven to be a man called Yehoshua, “God rescues”.
That is why we have Christmas.
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