CREATED FOR A PURPOSE

CREATED FOR A PURPOSE

                Mankind was created to be a temple of God. Adam was created a triune being, body, soul and spirit. God breathed His Spirit into Adam’s spirit and man became a living soul or being. He was complete. He was a temple of God.

                It is then obvious what happened win the fall, when Adam and Eve chose another god. The Spirit of God departed from them and they became victims of the spirit of this world Satan. So the seed line of faith was carried down through time as God worked with faithful patriarchs and Matriarchs, but they were rare.

                Noah and his family of 8, including Himself were all that could be preserved from that antediluvian (preflood) race. And even after the flood the world was again in jeopardy as Nimrod sought to create a New World Order on the plains of Shinar. So God broke it up and scattered the people and confused their languages in order to delay as long as possible the proclivity of powerful men under the power of Satan to rule the whole world.

                We see Satan’s repeated attempts at globalism throughout history. Babylon, Medo-Persia, Greece and Rome were all attempts at global power, but they all fell under the weight of their own moral and spiritual collapse.

                So God called Abram out of Ur, right out of the kingdom of Nimrod and promised that He would make Abram into a nation through whom the whole world would be blessed. So everything that God did with His chosen people from that time on would be a living type and shadow of God’s ultimate plan. In fact HE introduced the New Covenant first through Melchizedek a priest of the Most High God.

                Melchizedek came bearing bread and wine with the implied promise that one would come who could bring this New Covenant to pass and to become an eternal High Priest after the order of Melchizedek. But before that could happen, god had to show the world in types and shadows just what that New Covenant would be. So God set up a temporary covenant based upon Law. This was necessary because sin had to be identified and a judicial system whereby mankind could be judged.

                One has to be condemned before he can be redeemed, so the condemnation of the Law was instituted and they in type an innocent lamb was offered in the place of the man’s death so that man would not have to die for his own sins as long as he accepted the blood of the Lamb that di3ed in his place.

                To further describe God’s ultimate plans, He had Moses build a tabernacle after the design He showed him on the Mount. This tabernacle was actually a picture of man as a temple of God and it showed us how God would redeem mankind so that we could once again become temples of the living God.

                The picture was clear. The three parts of the temple represented the three parts of man, body (outer court) soul (Holy Place) and spirit, (the Most Holy Place). And it was obvious that this was a picture of man as he would be in the New Covenant, because the Shekinah presence of God dwelt in there Most Holy place and after Jesus died for our sins and instituted the New Covenant Paul said to them: “Do you not know that you ae a temple of god and that the Spirit of God dwells in you?” 1 Cor. 3:16

                Paul was not inventing something new here. He was simply telling those who had received Christ through His Holy Spirit that they had become the living temples pictured by Moses. We should not miss the lessons implied here. Adam was a temple of God…Adam lost that presence in his spirit (Most Holy Place) and Jesus came to restore that Presence in man so that we could be made complete in Christ once again. In fact I dare say that anyone who teaches it differently than this has a false and or incomplete Gospel. Jesus came to restore that which was lost in the fall. He became our second Adam. He then became the sacrificial Lamb thus opening the way up into the Most Holy Place once again as He sprinkled His blood on the mercy seat in the Most holy Place.

                What Jesus did was to make in a place to house His eternal Spirit so that He who has the son has the life and he who has not the Son has not the life .This is also what it means that we HAVE eternal life for that which Jesus Christ has placed in us cannot die and in fact it cannot sin. (1 John 5:18, 1 John 4:9, 1 John 4:14.) So when we receive Jesus, we receive eternal life so that even though the outer man is decaying and headed for the grave, the inner man is being renewed day by day.

                And so, John the beloved who was closest to the Lord Jesus during His earthly sojourn said to us:          

                “These things I have written to you who believe in the name of the son of God, that you may know that you have eternal life. 1 John 5:13

                Shortly before Jesus died on the cross He said to His disciples:

                “If you love Me you will keep my commandments. And I will ask he Father and He will give you another Helper, that He may be with you FOREVER; that is the Spirit of truth whom the world cannot receive, because it does not behold Him or know Him, but you know Him because He abides WITH you and WILL BE IN YOU.” John 14:15-17.

                This is the difference between the Old and New Covenants. The Holy Spirit was WITH them, but not IN them for he could not enter into mankind until the true Lamb of God had shed His innocent blood for the remission of sins.

                Likewise some have construed it to say that Jesus is here referring His disciples back to Old Covenant Law. But why would He do that when He was about to die and to introduce a New Covenant. He was not in fact referring to the Law of Moses as His Commandments, but to all of the instructions that He had been giving His disciples for the last three years and in fact, he had previously said just a few verses earlier. “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another even as I have loved you, that you love one another.” John 13:34 and then in John 14:12, He had said to them:

                “Truly, truly I say to you he who believe in Me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do; because I go to the Father. And whatever you ask in My name, that will I do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son.” John 14:12, 13

                Do you see what a travesty it is for people to miss the whole point of the New Covenant that Jesus died to bring to us, by suddenly reverting back to the Law of types and shadows rather than to fully embrace the Holy Spirit and to live by the powers that would make it possible for us to carry on the same works that Jesus did and even greater works than these?  This is what Paul means when he says: “Does He then, who provides you with the Spirit and works miracles among you, do it by the works of the Law or by the hearing of faith. Gal 3:5

                We have indeed traded in the living and dynamic power of the Holy Spirit under the priesthood of Melchizedek for a dead law under the Levitical Priesthood and we have taken on a form of godliness, while denying the power thereof.

                Today there are so many Christians who struggle to try to receive the Holy Spirit and to walk in the powers of the age to come and it seems impossible because you can’t receive the Spirit of the New Covenant as long as you are clinging to the Old Covenant. It is an affront to everything that Jesus did to redeem us and to make us temples of the living God once again. This is what Paul talks about in all of His writings and particularly in the book of Galatians and yet we don’t get the message and so we go on trying to please God by observing the Old Covenant rather than living in the New Covenant that He brought to us by His sacrifice and the subsequent outpouring of His Holy Spirit.

                We have taken what Jesus did too lightly. We try to serve a big LAW and then we try to attach a little Jesus to it and that is not what was intended by the New Covenant. Jesus Christ is the absolute and complete fulfillment of all Old Testament Scripture, so that when we go back and try to add something to what Jesus did through the eternal Spirit, we are denying the fullness of the New Covenant to save us.

                The New Covenant is absolutely full and complete in every way for it is the complete fulfillment of all that was pictured in the Old Covenant and much more. It is the “new and living way.” It is based on better sacrifices and is now fulfilled in us by the indwelling Spirit of God rather than an external Law on stone… for indeed the letter kills. That is its job. But the spirit gives life.

                We really need to explore deeply what it means that we are now temples of the living God. We have become sons and daughters of God once again as Adam and Eve were a son and a daughter of God. We have been restored to that intimate relationship and that is Why Paul, in Romans 8 spends so much time telling us that we must learn how to live by that Spirit and not by our flesh.

                We need to get this my friends. Yes, the Law on stone has been done away having been nailed to the cross. But it doesn’t do away with obedience to God…in fact the requirement of the Law is fulfilled in us who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. It may look different now. It is lived in us in the form of the fruit of the Spirit which is love. And this is exactly what Jesus said He was bringing to us… new hearts that love God supremely and our neighbor as ourselves

                Indeed this law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus sets a much higher standard upon us than the Law on stone could every demand. It is relatively easy to keep the Ten Commandments with a little discipline, but humanly impossible to love one another even as Jesus loved us, or to love god with all of our hearts. We cannot do it without His Holy Spirit and that is why we must become temples of the living God.

                Our greatest need in the church today is to actually learn to live by His Spirit and not by our flesh… and because we have become satisfied with something halfway in between, we have become carnal and lukewarm… neither hot or cold… and this is not a condition we want to be found in when He comes.

                WE HAVE BEEN CREATED FOR A PURPOSE AND THAT PURPOSE IS TO BE A TEMPLE OF THE HOLY SPIRIT.