We Are God’s Temple
1 Corinthians 3:16-17

There is a scene from the movie "Hook" that I really love. It’s a contemporary version of the Peter Pan story. In this movie, Robin Williams plays Peter Banning, a.k.a. Peter Pan. You remember the story don’t you? Well in the movie version of it we have Peter Banning and his wife and children visiting Granny Wendy in England. And Peter, years ago when he was Peter Pan, fell in love with Wendy’s granddaughter and married her. The consequence of his marriage to a human was that he had to become one of us. He would forget all about Neverland and all the adventures there, forgetting who he really was as Peter Pan. Now he is married, with children working as an investment banker, who is always very busy making money.

Captain Hook, who still hates Peter Pan, finds out where he is and steals his kids, taking them off to Neverland. And they are frantic. They don’t know what to do. Well, Granny Wendy shows Peter Banning a book about Peter Pan, and a picture of himself, and she challenges him to go get his kids. He says that he can’t. Then comes one of my favorite lines of all cinema history. She looks at him and says, "Peter. Don’t you know who you are?"

That’s the problem we have! We don’t know who we are in Christ! We know who we think we are. We know our positive points, our limitations, our sins, and our failures as we see them. But after we came to know Christ all of that changed –– according to the Word of God. But the problem is that we haven’t understood the extent of that change. We haven’t understood the new creation we’ve become and so we don’t live like who we are.

We are like Peter Banning, a.k.a. Peter Pan. He didn’t know who he was. He didn’t know what he could do. And the only reason why he couldn’t do it was because he didn’t understand who he was. He couldn’t do what he could do as Peter Pan because he didn’t know he was Peter Pan. Isn’t that a tragedy?

Of course, in the movie it has a good ending. But in real life, if we never come to understand who we are in Christ, the ending will not turn out well. In fact, the living of life will be a chore, not a joyful adventure.

Do you see how this applies to us as Christians? A lot of times we don’t know who we are in Christ, what are the promises of God that are ours, what are the blessings that God has given us as his children. We act like who we were instead of acting like who we are. We don’t do things that we can do because we think we can’t do them. After all, we think, we never could do them.

We believe the lie of the devil rather than the Word of God. We need to see from the Word of God who we are. We need to believe that Word and act on that belief. And we will find that when we take that step of faith, we can do what he said we could do, because it is true.

With the call of God comes the power of God to obey God. God never calls you to do something that he will not give you the power to do. Why would he do that? He knows you can’t do it in your own strength. When he called Peter out of the boat, the power to walk on the water was given to Peter. When did he realize the power? When he was in the boat? No. You see, you’ll never know that you can walk on the water until you get out of the boat.

I wonder how many of you today are in the boat when you need to be out on the water. Get out on the water. Step out in faith. Don’t wait until you feel like it. Feelings are fickle. Keep your eyes on Jesus. Look at what happened to Peter when he got out of the boat and started walking on water. The Bible says as long as he had his eyes on Jesus he was OK. But when he looked away from Christ, looked around at the circumstances of the winds and the waves and realized where he was and that he couldn’t walk on the water, he began to sink.

Christian, don’t you know who you are? If you don’t, let me encourage you to get into the Word and find out. Who you are is not who I say you are. Who you are is not who your friends say you are. Who you are is not who your parents say you are. Who you are is not who your brothers or sisters say you are. Who you are is not even who you think you are. Who you are is who God says you are.

All of the "you’s" in these verses are plural. He’s talking to the corporate gathering of the Corinthians. And he’s telling them that they are the temple of the Holy Spirit. We are God’s temple. This is an important word about the body of Christ, the church. The message is that we need to see that we are something special in God’s eyes. We are the temple where he chooses to reside. We are together the church.

Let me share with you three aspects about God’s temple and what it means. First, it’s a dwelling place. God is there. In the Old Testament God said, "Make me a Tabernacle. I’ll come and I’ll dwell with you there." And then, of course, the Tabernacle became the Temple in Solomon’s reign. And God moved from the Tabernacle into the Most Holy Place in the Temple. It was there he met with the people of Israel.

Then in the New Testament, when Jesus Christ came, he indicated that things were now going to change. He told his disciples that he would send his Holy Spirit who would not just reside in one physical location but in the hearts of his people. When you come to Christ, the Holy Spirit comes to dwell in you. You become a temple for the Holy Spirit.

And what’s more, the Holy Spirit dwells in us in a special way when we’re gathered together like we are today. The Bible says that when we gather in Jesus’ name, there is a special manifestation of God’s Spirit. How else do you interpret what Jesus meant when he said that where two or three gathered in his name, he would be with them? Obviously he is always with every believer, is he not? So he must have meant that there would be a special sense of his presence where the church was gathered. And I believe that we have a special anointing of Christ’s presence when we gather corporately that we cannot experience individually.

When we’re gathered as the church, acknowledging Jesus as our Lord, there is a special anointing. There is a special presence of the Holy Spirit to do his work. There’s something about the assembling together of God’s people. That’s why we’re told in Hebrews not to forsake it, but to continually encourage one another to be faithful.

Secondly, God’s temple is a worship place. That’s what the temple was. If God is present then we worship there. And so when we gather together as believers, we come together to bring the sacrifices of praise to God.

In the Old Testament Tabernacle and Temple, they would come and bring their various sacrifices and offer them to the Lord. And when we come here, the Bible says we have a new kind of sacrifice to offer. It’s called the sacrifice of praise, the fruit of lips that give thanks to his name. So, when we gather, we experience the presence of God through praise, through the celebration of his goodness as we worship him in Spirit and in truth with our whole heart.

Worship should be a central activity of those who have been indwelt by the Holy Spirit of God. Because God dwells in us, we are a living place of worship. What an awesome thing to be a living container of the presence of the divine Lord of glory!

And then finally, God’s temple is a holy place. Why is it holy? Because God set it apart for himself when he commanded the building of the Tabernacle and then the Temple. He said, "Sanctify it to me. I’m going to come and dwell there. It’s going to be a holy place because I am holy."

Now listen, this is so important. If you don’t hear anything else I say hear this today. God has set you apart. He has made you a temple of the Holy Spirit. You are now holy because God is holy. And so you need to focus on being holy, on maintaining that holiness. Don’t spoil it. Don’t go back and do what you used to do. Don’t live like the world lives. Live like God’s wants you to live. You see, once God comes into your life, you’re holy. You don’t earn holiness. God makes you holy. Your task is to stay holy.

Right now you have a choice that you didn’t have before you came to Christ. The Bible says you were slaves to sin. You couldn’t help yourself. Now you can. Now you have a choice. You didn’t have a choice then. But now you can choose to say no to sin.

So what God is saying is that he has come into your life and made you holy. He has deposited his holy presence in your life. Now keep the temple pure by not letting in those things that ought not to be there. We need to put a guard at the gate of our mind and eyes and senses.

You and I need to say no to sin. Because if you don’t, two things happen. One, you can grieve the Holy Spirit. And two, you can quench the Holy Spirit. This is the reason why many people do not sense the power of God. If that is true in your life, it may be because you are in one of those two states of grieving or quenching the Holy Spirit.

You see, you still have charge of your life. God wants people to love him freely. Think about someone special to you. Do you want that person to love you because they have to? Would that be meaningful to you? No it wouldn’t. Someone that has to love you doesn’t really love you. But if someone chooses to love you, that’s special.

God wants us to choose to love and obey him, not because we have to. He can make a robot, but he chooses not to because we would not be free and our obedience would be meaningless.

You may say that you don’t care. You may say, "I’m going to choose to live my life my way." How that grieves the Holy Spirit, like it grieves a parent to watch his son or daughter walk away from the things that are so important and live in a self-destructive way. Some of you parents know what I’m talking about, don’t you? You see what your kids are doing and your heart is broken. How can they throw their lives away like that? They don’t see. But it still grieves your heart.

And it grieves you because you know that there is a consequence to sinful behavior. You know that they are going to be hurt. And so you hurt for them. But when you look at sin, you see that between the "s" and the "n" is the letter "i". Sin focuses on me, me, me. And it grieves the Holy Spirit.

And when we continue to persist in that sin, we begin to quench the Holy Spirit. When I was grieving my parents, they appealed to me, my Mom especially, to change. And I refused. I basically said, "I’m the master of my fate. I’m in charge of my life–– back off!" I didn’t say it like that, but that’s was the message. And that’s what we say to God when we continue to persist in sin. We say, "God–– back off." And you know what God does? He backs off.

He does that in his mercy because he knows that sooner or later we will hit the wall. That’s the only place we can go. And then when we come crawling back to God and say, "God, I really messed it up didn’t I?" you know what he does? He grabs us up by the throat and says, "I told you so." And then he gives us a lecture. Right? Wrong! We do that. God never does.

No. He sees us coming afar off as the Prodigal Son’s father did, and he runs to meet us. What a God! What a God! And he doesn’t lecture us. He doesn’t say that he told you so. He says, "Let’s rejoice for he that was lost has come home. What a God! That’s the God we serve.

But you can quench the Spirit if you persist in your sin. Do you know who the loser is? You are. You only hurt yourself when you continue to push God away. So be holy. Live like you should. Don’t engage in things that you know will grieve or quench the Holy Spirit in your life. When God asks you to be holy, what he is saying is that this is the way to fulfillment. This is the way to joy. This is the way to experiencing him and his power. Keep your life clean so that he can bless you. Keep your life clean so that he can use you. You’re his temple. Keep his temple holy and he will make sure it stays filled with himself. God created you to reflect his glory, and he will fill you with his glory if you keep unholy stuff out of his temple.

The only way you are going to be used and blessed of God is to keep yourself in a position to be usable and blessable. God will use holy vessels. God will bless holy people. Be clean. Be pure. Be holy, so that God can pour his grace, love and mercy through you. You need it and the world needs it.

You know, the only way people are going to see Jesus in this life is by seeing you. You’re created to be conformed to the image of Jesus (Romans 8:29). You are predestined to be conformed to his image so that you can reflect God’s glory. God wants you to reflect his grace, love, mercy, and forgiveness. He wants you to be Jesus to someone else so they can meet him for themselves. That is why you were created–– to be a holy temple for God’s Holy Spirit.

Don’t you know who you are? Don’t you know that you’re the temple of the Holy Spirit?

Copyright © 2002 J. David Hoke. This data file is the sole property of the copyright holder and may be copied only in its entirety for circulation freely without charge. All copies of this data file must contain the above copyright notice.

Except for the use mentioned above, this data file may not be copied (except for small quotations used with citation of source), edited, revised, copied for resale or incorporated in any commercial publications, recordings, broadcasts, performances, displays or other products offered for sale, or made available on the Internet without the written permission of the copyright holder. Requests for permission should be made in writing and e-mailed to J. David Hoke, at David@JDavidHoke.com.

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