The Real Temple

I'd like to begin today from Matthew chapter 24, verse 1. Jesus left the temple and was going away when his disciples came to point out to him the buildings of the temple. He's walking out of the temple and he's not in the best of moods. How about this one? And the disciples say, look, Lord, turn around.

Look at those buildings. You have to admit that there isn't a building on this earth more beautiful. This is Israel's gem.

This is the dwelling place of the living God on earth. And that's really something to say because Jesus at that point was steaming. He had turned over the tables of the money changers.

And then he had given what we could call the temple discourse. You find it in Matthew 21, 22, and 23. Which moves, you know, step by step into a more and more and more severe judgment on Israel.

Until he's really burning and steaming. And now the disciples say, look at the temple. But they know that in spite of the fact that Jesus had spoken such hard words in that temple just a few moments ago, they knew that Jesus, like every other Jew, loved the temple.

He had been going to that temple since he was 12 years old. He called it his father's house. He loved the temple.

They loved the temple. There wasn't a place on this earth that they loved more. But these disciples, by looking at those gorgeous buildings up there on the temple rock, and drawing, as they were, a kind of confidence, were setting themselves up for trouble.

They were in fact saying to themselves, as long as those buildings are standing over there, God is in our midst. We're okay. And so, Jesus says in the very next verse of Matthew 24, You see all these buildings, do you not? Truly I say to you, there will not be left here one stone upon another that will not be thrown down.

If you attach your heart to the buildings, to the temple that you love so much, if you think that's where God is, and that as long as they're there, you're okay, you're heading for terrible disappointment. You're going to lose your faith. In fact, I'm asking you, he's saying to the disciples, to transfer your trust from those buildings to me.

From here on in, I am the temple. Those buildings are coming down. I stand.

Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up. He's calling them to get their trust centered in him, so that they will survive the days of trouble which are very close now. Things look peaceful and quiet, everything seems under control, but look out.

Get your attention on me, he said. And really, this is where we connect it with ourselves. Even though right now, for most of us, we're living through a time of relative calm, it's important for us to do exactly what those disciples were called to do, to get our eyes off every other temple, and transfer our trust to the true temple, which is Jesus, before the days begin, and they're very close, to come upon us when every other temple in which we put our trust is coming down.

And only one temple will remain, and that will be Jesus himself. And so in the succeeding verses, starting in verse 3 of Matthew 24, Jesus begins to describe how it's going to be. As he sat on the Mount of Olives, looking back over the temple, the disciples came to him privately, saying, Tell us, when will this be? And what will be the sign of your coming, and of the close of the age? And Jesus answered them, Take heed that no one leads you astray.

For many will come in my name, saying, I am the Christ. And they will lead many astray. And you will hear of wars, and rumors of wars.

See that you are not alarmed. For this must take place, but the end is not yet. For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom.

And there will be famines and earthquakes in various places. All this is but the beginning of the sufferings. Then they will deliver you up to tribulation, and put you to death.

And you will be hated by all nations, for my name's sake. And then many will fall away, and betray one another, and hate one another. And many false prophets will rise, and lead many astray.

And because wickedness is multiplied, most men's love will grow cold. But he who endures to the end will be saved. And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached throughout the whole world, as a testimony to all nations.

Then the end will come. Now, obviously, these events that Jesus describes in those verses are things, earthquakes, famine, war, and so forth. Things that have been happening all along, and certainly have been happening for the last two thousand years.

But it's not inaccurate to say, to point out that these events that Jesus describes in these verses, particularly, are found during the opening of the Church Age, and the closing of the Church Age. These are the events that attend the early reign revival of the apostolic period. Persecution, chaos.

And also, they are the events that attend the latter reign revival of the closing period of the Church Age. War, chaos, persecution. When we think of revival time, we like to think of a beautiful sunset.

The sun is setting, and it's just gorgeous. The sky is pink, and you hear quiet organ music coming from off in the distance, playing just as I am, without one plea. And people are just coming from all directions, with smiles of peace on their serene faces, on their way to church.

But the picture of revival that Jesus gives is something very different. The picture he gives us is that of an army of men and women who are aggressively proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom in the midst of a world that's falling apart. Things are going haywire all over the place, and here are these crazy people who don't even notice it.

They just go right on with this gospel. You know, they don't get led astray by false christs. And they don't get alarmed by all the terrible things that are happening.

And they aren't intimidated by persecution. They keep pressing on with this gospel all the way through. Now, Jesus gives, in this passage which we just read, some simple instructions.

You could pick out four instructions for these disciples, which they learn and practice well. Now they are for us to learn and practice well. First, take heed that no one leads you astray.

Watch out for the false christs. Second, see that you are not alarmed. Third, don't be shocked by persecution when it hits you.

And fourth, know that the gospel of the kingdom will be preached throughout the whole earth before the end comes. And you will survive those four instructions. You will keep them, he says to us, and you will survive the things that happen if you also understand that the temple is no longer that building over there on the hill, but it's me.

Don't trust in that temple, trust in this temple. Come into this temple and you'll be alright. First of all, take heed that no one leads you astray.

And Jesus answered them, take heed that no one leads you astray, for many will come in my name saying, I am the Christ and will lead many astray. What does it mean to be led astray by a false Christ? A false Christ is always a Christ that will offer you the kingdom without the cross. In other words, you can have the kingdom, but you can also pop a pill anytime you feel like it.

You can have the kingdom, but you can handle your money any way you want to. You can have the kingdom, and you can also play around sexually, at least in your head, maybe a little bit on the side. The false Christ will always offer you a compromise.

Always. Sometimes the false Christ comes in the person of a strong personality, man or woman, and they are so strong, and they seem to be so wonderful, that you say to yourself, as long as I have Jim Jones, I'm going to be alright. And Jim says, trust me, I'll get you through.

And that's alright, you can go ahead and get drunk once in a while, or pop those pills, or sleep with that lady who belongs to somebody else. But just stick with me. And people swallow this.

It's happened in apostolic days, it's happening now. Then there are false Christs that come in the form of ideology. A system of thought that you grab hold of, and it consumes you.

You believe as long as, you know, you're just soaked into your bones. You may never have read Karl Marx, and yet you're influenced by dialectical materialism, or you've never maybe read Nietzsche, but you're a fascist. And this becomes the source of your strength.

This ideology, this system of thought, becomes God in your life. Another way a false Christ comes is through things that look quite Christian. For instance, let's say we feel that we've arrived at the true Christian community.

We have arrived. We know how to truly be the apostolic body of Christ, true Christian community. And now Messiah, our Messiah church becomes God.

And we make an idol out of it. But the catch is, see, that you can cheat about the things of the kingdom that are clear by our Lord, as long as you hang in there with the rules and regulations of the community. So how do we avoid getting misled by a false Christ? Very simple.

Come into the temple, the true temple. I am the only door into the presence of the Father, Jesus said. I am the way.

I am the truth. I am the light. Abide in me.

Walk with me. Function in my body. Feed on my word.

Eat at my table. Walk in my spirit. And you will not be misled.

And we see this again and again. People who are very simple, they may not have the highest IQ in the world. They may not be walking Bible dictionaries, but they can spot a false Christ 50 miles away.

And they can spot a false prophet 100 miles away. They can sense it, they know it, because they are dwelling in the temple of the Lord. They are walking in Jesus.

Second, he says, see that you are not alarmed. You will hear of wars and rumors of wars. See that you are not alarmed, for this must take place, but the end is not yet.

For nation will rise against nation and kingdom against kingdom, and there will be famines and earthquakes in various places. All this is but the beginning of suffering. What does it mean to be alarmed? It means that you get so panicky that you take things into your own hands.

My house has been broken into again. I'm not going to put up with it. I'm getting me a gun.

And if I see that guy coming up on my porch, he's dead. I'm alarmed. I'm so fed up with what's happening that I'm going to do something rash.

Now, the troubles that Jesus describes in Matthew 24 have been going on for a long time. You know, chaos and famine and war and earthquake and all these things. But you could say that they're happening with a vengeance in December of 1984.

Read the papers, watch the news, or walk through any city on earth, not just Detroit. You can walk through any city on earth, I'm sure, Calcutta, Rio, Oslo, London, wherever, and you will see on the walls of the buildings the same shadow Jesus saw on those glistening temple walls that day, the shadow of approaching chaos. Now it took 37 years for the chaos to come to that temple and tear it apart.

My belief is that it won't take any 37 years for the shadow that we see now to become fulfilled. There will be chaos. There will be, in our lifetime, if we don't die tomorrow.

Maybe even before that, who knows. There will be, and he says, don't be alarmed. The end hasn't come yet.

Keep going. And we say, how in the world can I keep going when the economy's falling apart and the streets are dangerous and the whole world has turned into a war zone? How do I keep going? And Jesus says, get into the temple, the real temple. Come into me.

Enter with me into the Holy of Holies and you will find yourself in the presence of God and you will have peace even when the whole world is going mad. You'll be all right. You'll be protected.

Not to be alarmed. Not to be alarmed. I will see you through.

I will guide you. I will instruct you and teach you in the way that you will go. And so this comes down to specific disciplines for us.

It means, first of all, that we individually practice the presence of the Lord, Jesus, every day. That with an act of the will, we enter into his presence when we get up in the morning. And when we step out into the day, when we go off to our jobs, when we come home again, or whatever we're doing, we keep bringing our minds back to him.

We discipline ourselves to practice his presence until it's second nature to know that I'm in the temple all the time. Worshipping him. Worshipping him.

Praising him. Thanking him in my heart. And secondly, it requires the discipline of corporately practicing the presence of the Lord.

You know, many of us, I suppose you could say that all of us, we have yet to fully understand the value, the preciousness, of being able to come together and worship like this. The day may well come when it won't be possible to gather in groups this large. We'll be meeting in somebody's basement, you know, or back behind the bushes in somebody's who knows where.

But what a precious thing to be able to gather as we are now, practice the presence of God, and worship him. And make the most of it. That's what he's saying to us now.

Come into the temple. Learn how to worship together. Learn how to worship in the body.

Third thing he says, don't be shocked by persecution. They will deliver you up to tribulation and put you to death, and you will be hated by all nations for my namesake. And then many will fall away and betray one another and hate one another.

And many false prophets will arise and lead many astray. And because wickedness is multiplied, most men's love will grow cold, but he who endures pain will be saved. And to keep in mind, when Jesus spoke those words, there was absolutely no evidence of it.

I mean, it wasn't like things where all hell was breaking loose. Everything was quiet. It was just gorgeous.

It was a lovely, lovely afternoon or evening. He had just finished turning the temple upside down, and he got away with it. Nobody put him in chains.

Nobody arrested him. He was a free man. But before the week was over, he was hanging on the cross.

And before many more months passed, these same people who heard him say this began to experience true persecution. And if you and I say, well, things are calm. We live in a free country.

Everything's all right. We're deceiving ourselves. Persecution has already begun.

People all over this world right now are paying a price for following Jesus. And it's happening here too, and it will happen much more extremely in days to come. If you follow Jesus, you're not going to get the outstanding volunteer award of the year.

You're going to be hated by all nations for my name's sake. That's what he says. The prince of this world hates Jesus.

The principalities of this world, the power structures of this world, for all of them, with no exceptions, hate Jesus. And if you and I follow Jesus, we're going to get our share of that hatred. So how do we survive in this? By coming into the true temple and staying there.

And so that we don't suffer persecution in isolation ever, even if we're stuck in a jail cell by ourselves. We're never alone if we practice the presence of the Lord and get into the temple. And so he says in John 15, 18, if the world hates you, know that it hated me before it hated you.

If you were of the world, the world would love its own. But because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you. Remember the word that I said to you, a servant is not greater than his master.

If they persecuted me, they will persecute you. If they kept my word, they will keep yours also. But all this they will do on my account because they do not know him who sent me.

So when we begin to experience persecution and when we start to suffer, and we will, to remember that we're not alone, to stay in the temple of the Lord, stay under the protection of Jesus himself, and when they give us a hard time, and when things get rough, and when they may even threaten our life, to remember that we are invulnerable until our work is done, if we stay in the temple. Nobody can knock us out of the game until we finish what we've been called to do. And then when our work is done, if they kill us, they have done us a favor.

Finally, Jesus says, know that the gospel of the kingdom will be preached throughout the whole world before the end comes. And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached throughout the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come. And this will happen while temples, earthly temples, are falling left and right, and man-made religious organizations and structures will become monsters, but they will also crumble.

But while all this is going on, the word of the kingdom, the gospel of the kingdom will be going out with tremendous power. And who's going to take it out? We are going to take it out. And other people like us are going to be taking the gospel out with power.

And the way it works is that we first of all come into the temple, we draw near to him, we come to him, and then we receive the power. And so we read in 1 Peter, Peter who knows a lot about persecution by the time he writes these words, 1 Peter 2, verse 4. Come to him to that living stone rejected by men, but in God's sight chosen and precious. And like living stones, be yourselves built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Christ Jesus.

Come to him, that living stone, and let him build you into a temple with him. And now into this temple of living souls comes the Holy Spirit as we worship and praise and give thanks. And now in the power of the Spirit we go out with a message so powerful that it can't be mistaken for anything but what it is, the final invitation, the final call, the final warning.

What a privilege to be living at a time of revival, genuine revival, God-sent revival, unprecedented in the history of the world. But the revival that's going on already and will be gathering momentum in the coming days and months and years, if we have that long, is not something that will happen in a gorgeous sunset and the birds are singing and everything's peaceful. That comes later.

The revival we're talking about is something that takes place in the midst of upheaval, the north wind of trouble and chaos and war blowing all over the place. And in the midst of this will be this army of people, and may we be among them, who can't be led astray, who can't be caused to panic and be alarmed, and who can't be intimidated by persecution and who will take that word out with... And we will be those people if we stay in the temple that counts, get our eyes off the earthly temple and get it on the temple that cannot be seen with the natural eye. And so today the call goes out again, come to the temple, come to the living stone.

There may be people among us who haven't yet come in, today's the day to do it. Do it. Come to Him.

There may be those among us who have been there and drifted away and it's time to come back. Don't let another hour go by. Come to Him.

Let's all come to Him that He may anoint us afresh with the power of His Spirit, that we may be part of what He is doing on the earth at this time. Let's just take a little time in silence.