God created and established the tabernacle and temple worship as a place where he would be able to meet with his people. They would be able to experience him and his power and glory.
This evening I’d like to take a look at why did God have the temple built. Why did he have first the tabernacle under Moses, and then the temple built by Solomon, and then the second temple built by Ezra and the returning Jews from Babylon, and then re-enhanced by Herod, and then we see that there’s going to be a temple which will be referred to as the temple of the Antichrist because it’ll be built by the Jewish people and they will be looking for the Messiah but instead they’ll embrace the Antichrist and we studied just a little bit about that. But then we have what is referred to as a fourth temple and that is the temple that the Lord himself will build when he returns.
And this evening I want to look at some reasons what are the purposes for this temple being built. First thing is it’s going to be a place of worship and we understand it’s a place of worship when you look at Ezekiel you’ll see that the Lord commands all the nations of the world to come once a year to the Feast of Tabernacles and to worship the Lord. The Lord himself will rule from Mount Zion, he’ll rule from the temple, and the people of the world are supposed to come.
We see in 1 Chronicles 29:1:
Furthermore David the king said unto all the congregation, Solomon my son, whom alone God hath chosen, is yet young and tender, and the work is great: for the palace is not for man, but for the Lord God.
In Deuteronomy 12:11:
then there shall be a place which the Lord your God shall choose to cause his name to dwell there; thither shall ye bring all that I command you; your burnt offerings, and your sacrifices, your tithes, and the heave offering of your hand, and all your choice vows which ye vow unto the Lord:
So we see that God created and established the tabernacle and temple worship as a place where he would be able to meet with the people and be able to really the tabernacle with them. They would be able to experience him and his power and glory in Deuteronomy 12:14.
but in the place which the Lord shall choose in one of thy tribes, there thou shalt offer thy burnt offerings, and there thou shalt do all that I command thee.
And we know that the place that it was built was in the city of Jerusalem and the tribes of Levi was the one that was to lead the temple worship to the descendants of Aaron.
Psalm 5:7
But as for me, I will come into thy house in the multitude of thy mercy:
and in thy fear will I worship toward thy holy temple.
We see these are words of David and that he was looking to find a place where he could come and to worship the Lord and the fellowship that he experienced when he came to the temple to worship and that God established it for that very purpose.
Psalm 138:2
I will worship toward thy holy temple, and praise thy name
for thy lovingkindness and for thy truth:
for thou hast magnified thy word above all thy name.
I remember one man saying, well, if you say that you honor the word of God and you want to obey the word of God, you’re placing the word of God above the Lord. Well, the Lord says himself that he places his word above himself because his word is an indication of his character and who he is and that by his word we understand who he is and that we are to honor his word and we’re to seek to live by his word and realize that his word really shows us how to worship and how to praise him, who he is and why he has sent his son that we could have eternal life.
The second thing I want you to see is that the temple is a place of peace, a place of peace.
Haggai 2.9
The glory of this latter house shall be greater than of the former, saith the Lord of hosts: and in this place will I give peace, saith the Lord of hosts.
Now, how does God give us peace at the temple? Well, it was the means by which the nation of Israel was to be realized the need of a sacrificial system to take away their sins.
And as the scriptures tell us, when we walk in our sins, we’re at enmity or at war with God. And this is a place of peace because it’s a place that God established to show us how he was going to send us the Lamb of God to take away the sins of the world and to establish once and for all peace between man and himself that we could once again have fellowship established with him and we could walk with him even as Adam did before he sinned. And so it allows us to be able to experience the peace of God.
The third thing that we see is the temple is a place of prayer. Jesus himself drove the money changers out of the temple and he condemned them because you have turned my father’s house into a den of thieves, which he was intended for a place of prayer or a house of prayer. And to inquire means that I go to him to pray.
Psalm 27:4
One thing have I desired of the Lord, that will I seek after;
that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life,
to behold the beauty of the Lord, and to enquire in his temple.
Isaiah 56:7
even them will I bring to my holy mountain,
and make them joyful in my house of prayer:
their burnt offerings and their sacrifices shall be accepted upon mine altar;
for mine house shall be called an house of prayer for all people.
This was not just for the Jewish people. And those of you who were here when we studied how the tabernacle was built and how the temple was established, we saw that there was a court of the Gentiles. The Gentiles were encouraged to come to the temple and they had a place where they could go and see how the temple worship was conducted.
They could be introduced to the sacrificial system, which pointed to Christ, and they could come to worship the Lord. It was a place of prayer and worship for all people, not just the Jewish people. The fourth thing that I want you to see is the temple is to be a place of remembrance.
1 Kings 8:21
And I have set there a place for the ark, wherein is the covenant of the Lord, which he made with our fathers, when he brought them out of the land of Egypt.
Now, what was the covenant and what was the ark put into the temple for as some of the instruments that were placed in the temple? Well, if you look at the covenant, within the ark of the covenant was placed the law, was placed manna, was placed Aaron’s rod, and there was placed things that would remind the people of how God had worked through them as they had wandered through the desert.
His calling on their life, the transformation that they were to experience through his love, and that all of this was enabled as it came under the covenant that was found in the ark, and the initial covenant was a covenant that was a conditional covenant through the law. The new covenant is through the blood of Jesus Christ, and there is no condition on it other than we receive the gift of salvation that is found. And even as the nation of Israel had within the temple instruments there that pointed to remember what God had done for them and remember how God had worked through them.
Jesus tells us during the Lord’s Supper to partake and do it in remembrance of him, or to have this as a remembrance service of him, and to remember what he has done and established for us. One of the things that you have and the people have problems with is they don’t look back and they don’t remember. The world wants to steal people from knowing what history has done, and they want people to not know the history of the church, the history of the scriptures, the history of God’s people, and the history of how God has worked through the lives of people and his whole purpose in sending Christ to come to earth.
If you don’t know history, you can be easily deceived. And so we see that within the temple, the people were constantly brought to a point where they could remember how God had worked in and through them. And likewise, when we gather together as his people, we are to look back and remember what God has done in our lives.
The fifth thing that we see is it is a place of teaching. It is a place of teaching. One of the things that we see that the temple was is a place that people would gather.
We know that Jesus oftentimes would be teaching on the steps of the temple. When we were in Israel, recently, the last time we were there, they had uncovered the steps on the south side of the temple. Prior to that, they had been buried under rubble and dirt.
The archaeologists had uncovered them totally. And as you went there and sat, as it was explained to us, this was the place where oftentimes rabbis would come out and teach the people. And Jesus would be there teaching.
You can read in the Gospels how Jesus would go to the temple and he would be teaching the people. And this is oftentimes where he would go and do that. After the temple was destroyed, the main place of teaching within the Jewish community became the synagogues.
Initially, they were a place where the scriptures were taught and God’s word was expounded and worship took place. But there was no sacrifices done there, but it was a place of teaching. And likewise, the church, as we gather together here, we are to be coming to be taught God’s word, to learn about it, to have it expounded to us, that we can grow in our understanding.
Well, this is one of the purposes of the fourth, fifth thing that we looked at was it was a place of teaching.
Isaiah 2:1-3
The word that Isaiah the son of Amoz saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem.
2 And it shall come to pass in the last days,
that the mountain of the Lord’s house shall be established
in the top of the mountains,
and shall be exalted above the hills;
and all nations shall flow unto it.
3 And many people shall go and say,
Come ye, and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord,
to the house of the God of Jacob;
and he will teach us of his ways,
and we will walk in his paths:
for out of Zion shall go forth the law,
and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.
We see that God is going to use the temple even when he comes and establishes his millennial kingdom as a place where people are taught about him. One of the amazing things that the scriptures tell us that will happen in the last days is that people will seek out Jewish people.
Today, they seek them out to persecute them. In that day, they’re going to seek them out to be taught. And they will grab a hold of the Jewish person and have them say, Teach me about the Lord.
And it’s going to be an amazing transformation that’s going to occur in the world as we see this. And the temple will be the center point of this teaching when Jesus establishes his millennial temple. The sixth thing, it is a place of praise.
Psalm 134:1-3
Behold, bless ye the Lord, all ye servants of the Lord,
which by night stand in the house of the Lord.
2 Lift up your hands in the sanctuary,
and bless the Lord.
3 The Lord that made heaven and earth
bless thee out of Zion.
And when we gather together, part of our worship is to bless God. Oftentimes, we have capitulated to the world’s philosophies, even when it comes to the way that we approach services and worship when we walk through the doors. Oftentimes, people today, when they come to church, they want to be entertained.
They want to feel good when they leave. And the main focus that they come to the doors is, What am I going to get out of this for me today? But it’s not necessarily, What am I going to learn on how to walk with Jesus more? But it’s, What can I get that will help me feel better and do better? But the thing is, the main purpose when we walk through the doors should be to focus on God and to worship Him. The scriptures tell us that as believers in Christ, one of the things that we’re to do is to seek to worship the Lord in spirit and in truth.
When we come through the doors, we’re to worship God in spirit and in truth. And oftentimes what’s happened today is the word of God has been compromised. So the truth of God’s word isn’t being taught.
So people can’t worship in truth because there are false doctrines that have been introduced. I just listened to a man this last week bring a message. And he was talking about in the last days, how Jesus warned that there would be all of this turning away from the truth.
He gave examples that Christ gave of parables, the parable of the sower and the seeds. And he gave basically three parables in a row. The last parable was of a woman who had implanted leaven in the meal.
There were three bowls and there was leaven in each of the meal. Well, leaven, whenever you see leaven in scripture, it refers to sin. It refers to rebellion.
The woman in the last days, the woman is seen really tied way back to the Tower of Babel and Nimrod. And when the false worships came and we see that women in the false worship were exalted. And they were always ones that would lead the people into deception.
And this woman comes and she was planting seeds of leaven in this meal. And one of the things that leaven does is yeast. And yeast permeates itself throughout the materials that you put it into.
For example, when you bake bread, you put yeast in dough. And I remember my mom used to bake bread and when she put the yeast in the dough, the whole dough would rise and you have to punch it down and it would rise again. And you wanted the whole dough to be infiltrated by the yeast to get all the air pockets in it.
But what the scriptures refer to as leaven is how it infiltrates and causes the whole thing to change from what God intended it to be. And he said in the last days, there would be leaven that would come into the church and cause false worship. And what he attributed as the three bowls because Jesus did give no interpretation to his disciples of these bowls.
But the church had not been introduced yet. But the church today really has three main parts. You have Roman Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy, and what would be those who aren’t involved in either of those oftentimes referred to as Protestants.
And these three, three elements of the church. And oftentimes people can see very easily the false teaching that is found within Roman Catholicism and within Eastern Orthodoxy. And you can look at those things that they teach that aren’t in the Bible at all.
They take people away from trusting in God and turn them back to works. Well, his point was that the third bowl, the Protestant bowl, is even worse and it’s less seen. And he started listing all the false teachings and all the different headings of false teachings, the types of false teachings and all the main teachers that were involved.
And he had long lists under each one of them. And I should put that together sometime for you so you can see it all. But it was rather amazing to see how quickly this leaven had spread throughout all of Christendom.
You have much of the church today, even as we were talking earlier, people trying to find a church where the word of God is taught, people trying to find a church where true worship occurs, people trying to find a church where the world hasn’t penetrated and placed its ideas in the place of worshipping the Lord in spirit and truth. And we see that the Scriptures tell us that it is to be a place of true praise and it is to be a place where to come of true worship. And so it is a place of praise and the praise is to be focused on God, not on us.
Psalm 143:1-3
Hear my prayer, O Lord, give ear to my supplications:
in thy faithfulness answer me, and in thy righteousness.
2 And enter not into judgment with thy servant:
for in thy sight shall no man living be justified.
3 For the enemy hath persecuted my soul;
he hath smitten my life down to the ground;
he hath made me to dwell in darkness, as those that have been long dead.
Behold, I bless you, the Lord, all you servants of the Lord, which by night stand in the house of the Lord. Lift up your hands in the sanctuary and bless the Lord, the Lord that made heaven and earth. Bless thee out of Zion.
Psalm 135:1-4
Behold, bless ye the Lord, all ye servants of the Lord,
which by night stand in the house of the Lord.
2 Lift up your hands in the sanctuary,
and bless the Lord.
3 The Lord that made heaven and earth
bless thee out of Zion.
We see here that the focus again is the Lord and focusing on God. If people would come to church and have the focus on the Lord and we would leave here with a totally different attitude than if we come, what’s in it for me? The seventh thing that we see was going to be found in this new temple is a true understanding that it is a place of the Lord’s presence. Now I want you to understand that the Christians of old understood that when they gathered together they sought to seek the Holy Spirit to be there amongst them, to minister to them as they worshiped God.
That truly as they were taught the Word of God they prayed that the preacher would have a holy unction upon him, that the Spirit of God could teach them through powerful words that would be based truly upon God’s Word and they’d be expounded from God’s Word through the unction of the Holy Spirit. So we see that it is to be a place where the Lord’s presence is experienced. When we come here we should experience the presence of the Lord in our fellowship with one another as the scriptures tell us that we are to come to encourage one another, to exhort one another unto good works, to help one another.
And so God’s presence is seen in that way as well.
Psalm 11:4
The Lord is in his holy temple,
the Lord’s throne is in heaven:
his eyes behold,
his eyelids try, the children of men.
His eyes behold, His eyelids try the children of men.
So God’s presence is there and His presence is here tonight. He says, Where two or three of you are gathered, there I am in the midst of you.
We can’t see Him, but He’s here. In His presence He’s everywhere and understands all things.
Ezekiel 48:45
It was round about eighteen thousand measures: and the name of the city from that day shall be, The Lord is there.
Zechariah 2:10
Sing and rejoice, O daughter of Zion: for, lo, I come, and I will dwell in the midst of thee, saith the Lord.
So we should come and as we fellowship together and have worship together, we’re worshiping in the presence of God. And in His temple, in that temple, He is going to literally be there to have the people come and worship Him.
The sixth thing that we see is, What is the promise to the believer? And we’re just going to close with this. What is the promise to the believer? Psalm 23.6, I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever. God tells us that we’re going to be able to dwell with Him forever.
The believer in Jesus Christ looks forward to that day. If the rapture will occur, if we don’t go to meet the Lord first through death, the rapture will occur and the dead in Christ will be raised first, Paul tells us. And then those who are alive shall be caught up in the air to meet Him in the air.
And we’ll be with the Lord forever. And then we shall return with the Lord with His ten thousands of saints, as it says in the book of Jude, that we’ll return with the Lord and we will come with Him when He comes back to establish His kingdom on the earth during the millennial kingdom. So we see that the promise is a promise that is given to the believer.
Well, I want you to understand that this is a real thing that’s going to happen where God, Jesus, is going to rule and reign from Jerusalem. In Ezekiel chapter 40 through 43, He explains how this temple is going to be built. He explains what it’s going to involve, and it’s a real place.
And Jesus is going to come and establish it, and He is going to rule from it. And like I mentioned earlier, once a year all the nations of the world will be gathered together to come and tabernacle with the Lord in the Feast of Tabernacles and to experience His presence in a real way in Jerusalem. Let’s just go to the Lord in prayer.
Lord, we thank You so much for the promises that You’ve given to us and the revelation, according to Your Word, that shows us the events that are going to happen in the future. Help us to look for those things to happen. Help us realize that this world is not our home.
We’re just passing through. And Lord, help us to long to experience the millennial kingdom where You shall rule and reign in righteousness. The time that we shall be with You, and You shall give us responsibility to rule and reign with You.
Lord, help us to long for the finality of all history where the new heavens and the new earth shall be established, and the marks of sin will be gone forever. And Lord, I pray that You would just help us to begin to focus on this fellowship with You now as we gather together and worship You in our services. And may we focus on the fact that You are to be the center of our worship, not us. And Father, may we worship You truly in spirit and truth. This we ask in Jesus’ name. Amen.