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As pastor of RPF, I come to church on most Sundays wearing a coat and tie. Being a rational being, during the summer months I put away my coat and tie and wear my African shirts. When I leave church, the shirt may have absorbed a bit of sweat, but it is still basically clean. The sanctuary is also basically clean at the end of a service. There may be some bulletins or pew cards lying around, maybe a bit of other paper trash, but it is still basically clean. We come clean to a clean church and we leave clean from a clean church.
This was not the case for the temple in Jerusalem at the time of Jesus. If you want to know how it was in the temple, go to the sheep market here in Morocco before the big feast, Eid al Kabir that marks two lunar months after the end of Ramadan. Every family has to buy a sheep to be slaughtered so it is a busy place, lots of people, lots of sheep, lots of noise. You have to watch where you step and to get from here to there you have to wind your way through people buying and selling sheep and those who are there just for the excitement. It is a noisy, smelly, dirty, exciting environment.
This was the temple environment. People came with their sheep or goat or whatever sacrifice was going to be made or they bought one from those selling them in the temple. After bringing or buying your animal to be sacrificed, the animal was led, or if you have seen the sheep markets, dragged, to the altar. Sheep do not seem to go willingly to the altar. The priest in the temple courtyard was not wearing a clean shirt and tie, those are a very modern invention. He was not wearing a clean robe.
Remember what the priest had to do. He had to cut the throat of the animal and let the blood of the animal pour out over the altar. Then the animal was butchered with a portion of it put on the fire as a sacrifice and the rest taken to be used by the priests and their families for food.
When you think of a priest by the altar, think of a butcher with blood scattered over his clothes. Clothes were not washed every day so think of the priest wearing a robe that has been splattered with blood from a week’s worth of sacrificed animals.
The temple was not the clean, antiseptic environment we have here at RPF.
The reason I mention this is because I wanted to talk about cleansing the temple. With all the blood and animal carcases you would need more than a broom and dustpan to make the temple clean. But is this what it means when you read through the Bible and come to passages that talk about cleansing the temple?
When you read through the Old Testament, there are two major passages about cleansing the temple and these fall under the accounts of King Hezekiah and King Josiah.
After King Solomon died, the kingdom of Israel was divided into two. The northern kingdom kept the name of Israel and the southern kingdom was called Judah. In the 340 years of Judah’s history there were 20 kings of Judah before Jerusalem was conquered and destroyed by the Babylonians. Of these twenty kings, many of them are described as having done evil in the sight of the Lord. Two kings stand out in this period of history, King Hezekiah and King Josiah.
Why go through this history? It is because a major part of what these two kings did that made them great was that they cleansed and repaired the temple. They both instituted reforms and at the center of what they did, was the rebuilding, cleansing and purifying of the temple.
What does this mean? Are they credited for tidying up the place? When Hezekiah and Josiah ordered the cleansing of the temple, they did far more than sweep up the dust.
What was the condition of the temple when they made the decision to cleanse it?
Hezekiah’s father, Ahaz, ruled Judah for sixteen years. He worshiped the god Baal and since worship of Baal included the sacrifice of infants, he put his money where his mouth was and burned some of his infant sons as sacrifices to Baal. He shut down the temple and set up places around the city where people could sacrifice to other gods. When he suffered defeat at the hand of the King of Damascus, he offered sacrifices to the gods of Damascus, thinking that they were more powerful than the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.
So when Hezekiah came to power, the temple was not in need of cleansing because of a lot of blood and hides and bones, it was in need of cleansing because it had been cast aside as inferior and irrelevant.
When Hezekiah became king, the first thing he did was to reopen the temple, take out things associated with idol worship and destroy them. Temple vessels that had been misused by Ahaz were sanctified. In sixteen days, the temple was ready for worship and the worship of God as was instituted by Moses began anew.
When Hezekiah died, his son, Manasseh, reverted to the practices of evil kings. He did far worse than close the temple as his grandfather had done. He began to use the temple for the worship of Baal and cult prostitution to Asherah. Under Manasseh the temple was not being set aside as irrelevant, it was being actively used for worship of false gods. The temple itself was polluted by infant sacrifice and prostitution, practices detestable to God.
Manasseh’s son was 22 when he became king and Amon reigned for just two years. When he died, his eight year old son, Josiah, became king.
Probably because of the influence of Godly counselors, Josiah, when he was sixteen and had been king for eight years, began to institute far sweeping reforms. Like his great-grandfather Hezekiah, he destroyed all the artifacts associated with idol worship. The priests who had served the worship of Baal and Asherah were sent off into early retirement. The rooms in the temple where cult prostitutes had woven hangings for Asherah were reclaimed. The evil and detestable practices that had defiled the temple were removed and destroyed and once again, the animal and grain sacrifices God has instituted at the time of Moses were a daily ritual.
The temple was cleansed and purified.
Hezekiah and Josiah are ranked as two of the greatest kings of Judah and the cleansing and purification of the temple were central to how they were viewed. Why was the cleansing and purification of the temple such an important part of what they did? What was so important about cleansing the temple?
The modern equivalent of the temple is not the church. The church is a building where we meet to worship. The temple was not just where people came to make their sacrifices and pray, the temple was where God lived on earth.
It began with Moses in the wilderness when he met with God at Mt. Sinai. God gave instructions to Moses about how to build a portable temple that they were to carry with them as they moved through the desert. Within this portable temple was a tent called the holy place. Here priests would enter to make prayers and offerings. Within this tent was the most holy place, the holy of holies. Here the ark of the covenant that contained the stone tablets of the law, Aaron’s staff and a container of manna was kept.
This was such a holy place that a priest could enter this holy of holies only once a year. The priest wore bells on his robe, in part, so the people could hear him moving. If he were a heretic, he would die when he entered so if the people did not hear the bells, they would know he had died. I have not been able to track this down, but I have often heard that a string was tied around the priest’s ankle so if he died, he could be pulled out without anyone having to enter the holy of holies.
I say all this to help you understand the significance, the holiness of this place where God lived. This was a dangerous place. Little boys did not sneak in to see what was there. There was great fear of this place, great awe and wonder of this place. Of course, we know and Israel knew that God could not be contained by this small area, but it was regarded as the residence of God on earth and so was accordingly the most holy place.
The temple in Jerusalem was built by Solomon to replace the portable temple of the wilderness. When you read about babies being sacrificed to Baal in the temple or cult prostitution for Asherah in the temple, you can understand how offensive this was to God. This was bringing detestable practices to his home. It is one thing to do something detestable in the street but something altogether different when you do it in someone’s home.
When Moses was receiving the law from God at Mt. Sinai, the noise of the people of Israel celebrating and dancing around the golden calf idol they had made could be heard. In the absence of Moses and Joshua, the people who God led out of Egypt created a god they could worship and thank for their deliverance. God was so angry he told Moses he would destroy them all and start over with him, creating a great nation.
When God’s temple was taken over with the worship of Baal and Asherah, God’s anger was similarly provoked and the first step for godly leaders like Hezekiah and Josiah was to cleanse and purify the temple and return it to the worship of the one true God.
It is because of the character of God, because God is pure and holy, that the temple in which he dwells must also be pure and holy. A holy God requires a holy residence.
I said earlier that the modern equivalent of the temple is not the church. If not the church, what is the modern equivalent of the temple?
I Corinthians 3:16
Don’t you know that you yourselves are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit lives in you?
In these last days, the time since the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, those who are adopted into the family of God by accepting God’s free gift of salvation are God’s temple and God’s spirits lives in them. We who are Christians are the temple of God.
A holy God requires a holy residence and so we need to be holy.
This is mind-blowing truth and it is important to keep in your mind the connection between you and the temple of Jerusalem. It would be a good study for you to read through the Bible, paying attention to the construction of the wilderness tabernacle, the history of the ark of the covenant, the construction of the temple by Solomon, the further history of the temple and the rebuilding of the temple.
When you read these sections of the Bible, draw lessons from what you read about yourself as a child of God and the temple of the Holy Spirit. Read about the fearsome awe with which the holy of holies was viewed and then consider your attitude to yourself as God’s temple.
So, for example, when Paul was addressing sexual immorality in Corinth, he wrote this:
I Corinthians 6:18
Flee from sexual immorality. All other sins a man commits are outside his body, but he who sins sexually sins against his own body. 19 Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; 20 you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your body.
Christians, as well as non-Christians, struggle with sexual temptation. And the sad truth is that Christians are not much better at resisting sexual temptation than non-Christians. There are many reasons why it is healthy to restrict sexual activity to the marriage bed, but this is certainly one of the most significant reasons: if you are a Christian, you are a temple of the Holy Spirit. Do you really want to bring behavior that is detestable to God into his home?
If I were to go to a group of teenagers or single young adults and tell them they should not be sexually active before marriage because they are the temple of the Holy Spirit, they might laugh at me. But that would reflect their spiritual ignorance as much as anything else. Spiritually immature people might not find this a convincing argument, but those who are growing in their relationship with Christ will grasp this powerful truth very quickly.
When you engage in sexual activity outside of marriage, you defile the temple in the same way that Israel did when they installed cult prostitution in the temple in Jerusalem.
As a Christian, you are a temple of the Holy Spirit and so you must be pure and holy. And just as when the temple was defiled it needed to be cleansed and purified, so do you need to be cleansed and purified when you are defiled by sin.
How do you cleanse and purify yourself to make a pure home for the Holy Spirit?
This is where confession comes in. Over the past three weeks I have been talking about the fourfold pattern of prayer that follows the acronym ACTS. Adoration Confession Thanksgiving Supplication I have been a bit dyslexic in this, starting with Thanksgiving, going to Supplication, then Adoration and today Confession. But it seemed good to me to save Confession for today when we celebrate communion.
Confession is a tool God uses for us to be cleansed and purified.
When we were raised as children, we were told to wash our hands before we eat. Why was this? Was this simply some cultural ritual passed down from generation to generation? Or was there a more practical reason?
We wash our hands because we handle the food we eat with our hands and it is important to wash our hands so that we eat the food and not all the germs that were on our hands before eating.
In the same way, we confess our sins so that we are made clean and can worship and receive instruction from the Bible without ingesting spiritually destructive ideas and patterns of behavior.
We wash our hands so we can eat healthily and we confess our sins so we can live healthily.
In what Paul considered to be the second stage of salvation, we are being sanctified, we are being made holy. When we are saved, we are viewed by God as holy because the righteousness of Christ covers over our sins. But in sanctification, the Holy Spirit works with us to actually transform us into holy creatures.
When we confess our sin, we participate with the Holy Spirit in this process of sanctification.
In the children’s message before the sermon, John Guffey had two mugs into which he poured water. The mugs were the same size but he was able to pour much more water into one than the other. Why was this? One of the mugs was filled with rocks. When he took out some of the rocks, he was able to pour more water into the mug.
The rocks are like unconfessed sin in our lives. When we fail to confess sin, it blocks the work of God in our lives. When we confess sin, we open ourselves to receiving more of the Holy Spirt.
We confess our sin so we can live healthily. We confess our sin so we can be more filled with the Holy Spirit. We empty ourselves of sin and are filled with the Holy Spirit.
How do we confess our sin?
It would be easy if we had a checklist and we could go down the list each week and check off the ones that applied to us.
I kicked my dog.
I coveted my neighbor’s air conditioner.
I lied to my boss about when I came to work.
I got drunk.
At the bottom would be a place to check Do you want to confess these sins? Check yes and read the prayer and you could go on with your life.
But that is not what confessing sin is about.
I can remember several times in my Christian life when I have been in a service or at a retreat and we were taking time to confess sin in our lives. As I sat, I thought and thought and could not think of any sin I had recently committed. I thought through the list of sins in my head and came up clean.
I had not stolen anything. I had not lied. I had not killed anyone. I had not committed adultery. I went through the list and came up clean.
I knew I had to pray something and so would pray that sins I did not know about would be forgiven.
My problem was that I was still spiritually immature. When you are unable to see your sin, it is a sign that you have a lot of growing to do in your Christian faith.
Sin is not simply a list of things I have done wrong. Confessing sin is not just thinking through what I have stolen, lies I have told, inappropriate sexual relationships, gossip I have enjoyed hearing and passed on, anger I have held on to, possessions and circumstance of others I have envied and coveted.
My sin is not simply what I do but who I am. It is my nature that is sinful. It is my nature to put my trust in what I can see, smell, feel, taste and hear. I have to work against my nature to trust a God I do not know with my five senses.
At the heart of all sin is a refusal to believe in God, a lack of faith in God.
Let me give an example. If I walk into a store and steal something, what has happened? I have taken something that did not belong to me, that is true. But I have also shown that I do not trust God to provide for me what I need. It may be that I could not afford what I took but most people who shoplift do not do so because they cannot afford it. People who shoplift do so because of a psychological need they want to meet. Many people who shoplift are suffering from depression. Stealing something makes them feel better. For many shoplifters, taking something from a store is a “relief mechanism” for anxiety, frustration, boredom or depression.
Someone who shoplifts needs to confess the sin of stealing, but at a deeper and more significant level, the shoplifter needs to confess to God a lack of faith that God will help them and provide for them the mental and emotional strength they need to deal with whatever is bothering them.
At the heart of all sin is a refusal to believe in God, a lack of faith in God. This is our sinful nature for which we need forgiveness. It is good to confess specific sins, but necessary to go deeper and confess our inability to trust in God, to believe God will provide for us all that we need.
One of the better signs of Christian growth is our ability to see our sin.
You can see this in the life of Paul.
Paul wrote Galatians in 47 AD and in his introduction you can feel the sense of importance he has about himself.
Paul, an apostle—sent not from men nor by man, but by Jesus Christ and God the Father,
Eight years later when Paul wrote his first letter to the Corinthians, there is a bit of a shift that tells me Paul has matured as a Christian.
I Corinthians
For I am the least of the apostles and do not even deserve to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God.
Do you hear the humility in Paul that was missing in his letter to the Galatians?
Thirteen years after his letter to the Galatians he describes himself as a prisoner of Jesus Christ in Philemon and a year later in Philippians
Paul and Timothy, servants of Christ Jesus,
Seventeen years after he wrote the letter to the Galatians, at the end of his life, he wrote to Timothy and in this letter we see the progression of Paul, the spiritual maturity of Paul, the process of sanctification at work in Paul’s life
Here is a trustworthy saying that deserves full acceptance: Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners—of whom I am the worst. 16 But for that very reason I was shown mercy so that in me, the worst of sinners, Christ Jesus might display his unlimited patience as an example for those who would believe on him and receive eternal life.
Paul moved from an apostle sent not from men nor by man to the least of the apostles and the greatest of all sinners.
How did this happen? The more Paul grew in his faith, the closer he came to Jesus, the more aware he became of his sin.
It is like being outside on a summer evening. When you step off the porch and move away from the light, it is difficult to tell in the dark what color clothing you are wearing. But as you move closer and closer to the light, you see more and more clearly the colors of your clothes.
The more we grow in our faith, the closer to Jesus we come, the more clearly we see our sinfulness.
If you sit and cannot think of what to say when it is time to confess your sin, pray that God will speak to you and help you see where you have fallen, where you have slipped. Allow God to help you see your sinfulness.
This is always done best in the context of knowing you are loved by God. You are loved so much Jesus died for you. Within this knowledge and experience of being loved by God, ask for help in seeing your sinfulness.
When this prayer is answered, confess your sin, be cleansed and be filled with the Holy Spirit.
Confession of sin is not dragging your tail to come to an authority figure to say what bad thing you have done. Confession is an active part of participation with the Holy Spirit to build you into the holy person God wants you to be. Confession is a positive, not a negative step. Confession is an emptying of sin that leads to a filling of the Holy Spirit.
As a Christian, an adopted child of God, you are the temple of the Holy Spirit. Confess your sin, ask for help in confessing your sin. Then come forward this morning to the communion meal and receive spiritual food and be filled with the Holy Spirit.
