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Thank you, Juanita.

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I almost expect to see the organ smoke a little bit after a number like that.

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Maybe your fingers are.

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Would you take your Bible, please, and turn to the book of 1 Corinthians with me.

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The structure we today dedicate to the glory of God is not the most important one here.

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There is another building surpassing brick, mortar, and steel in its significance.

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And I am, of course, referring to the living temple of God.

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It's a funny thing about church buildings.

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There's almost a superstition about them.

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I think I related to you some time ago how I felt as a child entering a church building

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in our little town in Kansas.

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It was an old building.

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The doors squeaked, heavy, massive wooden things on squeaky hinges.

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And as one would enter, this rather musty old smell would hit you in the face.

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And yet, despite those negatives, I can remember entering that place and having this feeling

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as though I was in the presence of God and almost running through the sanctuary to get

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to the basement or whatever other room I wanted to go to because I felt like that God was

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there.

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People often think of a church building in terms of that's where God lives.

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And yet, of course, we recognize that that is not the case.

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But the terms we use often reflect that, don't they?

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For example, we speak of this room often as being the sanctuary.

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We talk about the altar of the church.

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And yet, actually, this room is not a sanctuary, nor is there an altar here.

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This probably reflects our awareness of the Old Testament period when in fact God did

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dwell in a sanctuary when in fact there was a material physical altar which was a part

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of the worship.

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God did live in that period of time in a material structure, first one made out of skins and

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cloth, later one made of wood, gold, silver, and bronze.

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But in this present age, God does not headquarter Himself in such a material building.

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He does, however, manifest Himself and live in a different kind of building.

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God dwells in a temple.

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This passage in 1 Corinthians 3 explains to us the kind of temple that God lives in today.

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Beginning in verse 9, the apostle says, we are God's fellow workers, you are God's

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field.

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And then he changes metaphors and says, you are God's building.

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Then he begins to elaborate on that.

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He says, according to the grace of God which was given to me as a wise master builder,

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I laid a foundation and another is building upon it.

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But let each man be careful how he builds upon it.

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For no man can lay a foundation other than the one which is laid, which is Jesus Christ.

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Now if any man builds upon the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood,

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hay, straw, each man's work will become evident.

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For the day will show it, because it is to be revealed with fire.

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And the fire itself will test the quality of each man's work.

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If any man's work which he has built upon it remains, he shall receive a reward.

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If any man's work is burned up, he shall suffer loss.

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But he himself shall be saved, yet so as through fire.

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Do you not know that you are a temple of God and that the Spirit of God dwells in you?

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If any man destroys the temple of God, God will destroy him.

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For the temple of God is holy and that is what you are.

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God dwells in a temple and there are four facts in the text that we've just read that

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I want to study regarding that.

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The first one is this, that God's temple has structure to it.

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Not a material structure, but a real structure nonetheless.

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It was difficult for people of that day to imagine anything else, and it still is difficult

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for us today to think in terms of a temple apart from a physical building.

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The pagans of Corinth were surrounded by temples.

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A temple to Apollos still stands in its ruins in the city of Corinth.

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It had been there 600 years already when Paul wrote this epistle.

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There was a temple to Venus or Aphrodite, as well as temples and altars to various pagan

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deities that they worshiped.

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Paul seems to build upon the imagery that was familiar to them.

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They were used to the concept of a temple.

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Paul wants them to understand that the true God also dwells in a building, a temple, but

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not the kind that they're used to.

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This building, however, does have a foundation.

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That foundation, he says, is Jesus Christ.

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Not church traditions, not apostolic traditions even, but he says the foundation is Jesus

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Christ, and it's the only foundation that one can lay.

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When the apostle says this, he is saying that the foundation of God's temple, the building

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that is being constructed, is the living person of Jesus Christ, the one whom he had preached

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to them as crucified, the one that he desired to know above all else among them, Jesus Christ,

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and him crucified and raised again from the dead.

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The basis of this temple, this living temple, says Paul, is a person.

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As a foundation of a building is its resting place, and as it provides solid support for

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the rest of the structure.

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So Christ is the resting place of our faith and is the solid support of it.

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The Lord Jesus Himself said that He would build upon this foundation.

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I'm reminded of His words to Peter as well as to the other disciples in Matthew chapter

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16.

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He asked them, who do people say that I am?

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And they responded honestly.

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Some say you're John the Baptist, and others say you're Elijah, and some say Jeremiah or

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another of the prophets.

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And He said, well, who do you say that I am?

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Peter responded with these words, you are the Christ, the Son of the living God.

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Jesus was pleased with that, and He responded to Peter's statement by saying, blessed are

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you Simon Bar-Jonah, son of Jonah, because flesh and blood did not reveal this to you,

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but my Father who is in heaven.

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In other words, He says, you are right, Peter, and it is my Father in heaven who has caused

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you to understand who I am.

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And then He said, I also say to you that you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build

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my church.

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Of course, from that statement there are those who say that Peter is the foundation, the

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rock of the church.

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But of course, Jesus is simply making a play on words here as the Greek text is clear.

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He says, you are Petros, using a masculine form of the word.

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You are a rock, Petros.

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Upon this Petros, using a feminine form, not the same Greek word, I will build my church.

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You say, what's the significance of that?

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The significance is that Jesus was not saying, Peter, upon you as a person I am building

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my church, but He was saying, upon what you have said, upon that truth that has been taught

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to you by the Father, I will now build that church.

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And what is that truth?

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That Jesus Christ is the Son of the living God.

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You see, that ties together exactly with what the Apostle says in 1 Corinthians 3.

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He says, for other foundation can no man lay than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ.

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He is the foundation of His church.

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Because the foundation of a building gives stability and cohesion to it.

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So Jesus Christ holds together this living temple in which God dwells in this age and

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provides its stability and its security for its destiny.

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Now, that is true regarding the church, but it's true as well regarding the individual.

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That is a legitimate application of what He is saying here.

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Jesus is saying as well that for you and for me as an individual, there is no other foundation

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than Jesus Christ.

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Yes, we can build our lives and do a fairly decent job in human terms of doing that, but

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if we have no foundation, our lives are in danger.

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In concluding the great sermon on the mountain, Jesus told about a man, a man who built a

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house upon a rock.

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And He said, when the storm came and the rains descended and the flood arose, the house stood

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firm that was built on the rock.

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And Jesus said, that is the man who hears what I say and acts upon them.

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But He says, the man who hears what I say but does not act upon them is like a man who

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builds a house, perhaps an equal house to the former man, maybe even superior.

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But his house is upon the sand and when the rains come down and as the winds blow and

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the floods arise and the storm beats against it, that house will collapse and great will

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be its fall.

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It is not enough, my friend, to know about Jesus Christ.

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It is not enough to attend an evangelical church where you hear His words, but each

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of us must come to that place where we are acting upon what Jesus said, where we have

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trusted Him as Savior and are living with Him as the Lord of our lives.

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And when we do that, then we build our house upon the rock.

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Jesus Christ is the cornerstone, the rock, the foundation of the church.

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And upon that foundation are built living stones that is saved people, people saved

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by His grace.

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You and I who have trusted Him, we have been united to that foundation that is added to

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it to provide a superstructure.

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These together then form the temple or the dwelling of God in the world today.

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Jesus Christ being the foundation, you and I who are saved being built upon Him as living

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stones in this temple.

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God does not live in a building or some room.

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God does not dwell in a cathedral.

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That is not His residence.

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But God today resides in the body personally of each believer and in us corporately as

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a church, as a local church, which is the context of 1 Corinthians 3.

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God's temple has structure today, but that temple is not made of brick and mortar.

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It is made of people, people who have been saved and cleansed by the blood of the Lord

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Jesus Christ.

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You see secondly that God's temple has workmen.

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The context here indicates that those workmen were the apostles and the leaders of that

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day.

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Paul says, we have laid the foundation.

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He says, I laid it as a wise master builder.

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The Greek word there is architect.

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The word then did not mean what it does today.

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It refers in its original context here to one who is a skilled contractor, not the designer.

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The designer is the Lord Jesus Christ.

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But the apostle says, I am a skilled contractor who has laid the foundation of the local church

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there in Corinth.

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And he says, now others are building as workmen on top of the foundation that I have laid.

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And so the application of this is primarily to church leadership.

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That is primarily who is in view in 1 Corinthians 3 in these words of instruction.

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But I think it's not stretching it too far to say that all of us are in view as well.

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The apostle himself seems to broaden it as the context of the passage goes on.

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He is suggesting that all of us in truth are workmen in this building of God, this temple

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in which he lives in this age.

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And he stresses that the important thing is how we build, how we build.

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Notice that, verse 10.

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And again the apostle draws upon familiar imagery to the Corinthians.

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He says that it's possible for us to build in such a way that we use lasting worthy materials.

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Or contrary wise, we can use passing and worthless materials.

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What does Paul mean by these things?

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Obviously the lasting things are the gold, silver, precious stones.

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That by the way does not refer to diamonds and rubies and precious stones of that sort.

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But it probably refers to marble or to granite.

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And then obviously the wood, hay, and stubble are those things that are worthless and passing

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in value.

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Paul is saying that it's possible for us to build with worthy materials, that is with

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methods and motives that are worthy of God.

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Or it's possible for us to use methods and motives that are not worthy of him.

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When our methods honor God and the motives of our hearts are pleasing to him, then we

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build in a way that is worthy of the Lord.

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We build in a way that uses materials as he suggests like gold, silver, and marble.

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That would immediately strike a note with the Corinthians because that's what their

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temples were made of.

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That's why the temple to Apollos still stands today because it was made out of granite.

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None of the gold or silver of course is still around.

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But they were used to seeing the temples to their gods made out of lasting, valuable materials.

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So Paul says, look, you are a living temple but it's possible for you in a way to build

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with lasting, worthy, valuable materials.

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And those materials are right doctrine and right motives.

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Build with the truth of the word of God and with hearts that are free from hypocrisy and

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pretense.

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And he says, in doing that you will build worthily.

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But he suggests as well that we can build out of hearts that have impure motives and

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with methods that do not honor God and with perhaps even doctrines that are false.

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Motives can be for the love of money.

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Motives for work can be for fame or for power or some kind of personal gratification.

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A preacher can have those motives.

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So can a Sunday school teacher or an elder or a choir member or anybody in the church.

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Indeed, all of us struggle throughout our lives to make sure that our motives are what

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they ought to be.

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We try to preserve them intact for the glory of God.

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But if we slip, then we begin to build in a way that does not please God.

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It is like building out of these materials that are mentioned.

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And once again he strikes a familiar chord because this is how their houses were built.

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Their common house in Corinth in that day had a wooden structure.

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Its bricks were made out of hay that had been mixed together with mud and then dried.

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That was the wall.

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And the roofs were made out of straw that was thatched together to provide protection.

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And so immediately they saw their own homes here, not the homes of their gods, but their

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homes which quickly went up in smoke should there be a fire.

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That's how passing the materials were.

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Now any religious Corinthian, saved or unsaved, would want a temple for his God that was worthy.

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Paul is saying to these saved Corinthians, as you build the temple of the living God,

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which is people, build in such a way that you use worthy materials.

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Do not allow your motives to become less than honest and sincere.

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Do not use doctrines that are false.

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And of course they had a real problem with that as Paul writes this first epistle.

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He suggests use methods that honor God.

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And in doing that, you will build a living temple that pleases the Lord.

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The application is obvious to us today.

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That's why those of us who are saved should have great concern regarding our service for

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Jesus Christ.

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Indeed, it is only by the grace of God that we can ever be sufficient for the kind of

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exacting eternally important construction work that is ours.

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In fact, Paul himself says in verse 10, according to the grace of God given to me, I'm a wise

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master builder.

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It's only by the grace of God, dear friend, that you can teach that Sunday school class

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in a worthy way.

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It's only by the grace of God that you can play that instrument or sing in the choir

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or work in the nursery or usher in the church or work in the parking lot with a motive that's

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right which pleases the Lord.

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It is only by the grace of God that you can conduct your ministry in that small church

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or out there in the office where you work or in the factory.

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It is only by the grace of God that we can consistently, day in and day out, build with

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those materials that please the Lord.

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We are all workmen of God's temple.

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God help us to be worthy workmen.

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We come then to the third fact regarding this temple of God.

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It is that it will be examined.

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Paul suggests that there is a day which will manifest what we have truly built.

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That day is the day of judgment.

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He does not differentiate it here, but we know from other passages that it would seem

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to be the day of the judgment seat of Christ which will occur shortly after the rapture

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of the church when we are caught up into the Lord's presence.

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The day, he says, we'll declare it.

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We'll expose it.

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We'll reveal it for what it is.

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In other words, the contribution or the part of each person in building the Lord's temple

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will be examined.

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Paul says it will be revealed with fire.

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Now there are those who see this as some kind of a purgatory.

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And yet if you look at the passage here, it is clear that Paul is using fire in a symbolic

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way in the whole paragraph.

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The fire is symbolic of judgment or examination by the Lord, a revelation in his presence

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of what is truly there.

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You see, fire consumes and it purifies, and anything that is unworthy is taken away.

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And through that process of examination, Paul says, the test will be revealed to show the

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quality of each man's work.

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That is, the true character of his labor will be made known.

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Now remember, we're talking primarily here in terms of a local church.

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I believe that there will be some way, a way that I do not know, in which a local church

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will be gathered before the Lord in that day at the judgment seat of Christ.

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In other words, I think that somehow God is going to reconstitute Grace Church Roseville

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as we have built it on that day.

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And that we as a church, as we are gathered together even during these days, will be gathered

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there if we're truly saved people.

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And that in some way what we have constructed is going to be represented.

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It has little to do with the size of a church that we become, with the fame that we may

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enjoy, with the financial worth or the reputation of what we do.

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It has very little to do with any of those things.

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What it does have to do with is the actual worthy work we have done.

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The sort of our work is what God is looking for.

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Of what sort it truly is.

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It is possible for a church to have a marvelous reputation or a facility that is beautiful

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and attracts even tourists to come and see it.

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And for all of that, in some manner, as it were, to go up in smoke at the judgment seat

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of Christ and to be nothing but ashes, as much as a Corinthian house would be left if

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a fire got started in it.

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Only ashes from the straw and the mud bricks and the wooden walls.

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Bernard Magee reminds us that a haystack is far more visible to the eye than is a gold

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coin, but which is more valuable.

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There are some churches that are imposing, that are far famed in their so-called ministry,

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who may enjoy even television.

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And I'm not even knocking that.

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But what I'm saying to you is that when it comes to the judgment seat of Christ, then

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will be revealed the real quality of the work that's being done.

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It has very little to do with any of the superficial things that we usually look at as success.

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It has everything to do with what's going on in your life and in my life in our response

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to the Lordship of Jesus Christ.

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God's temple will be examined.

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And the result will be on that day that the temple will be left containing only that which

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is eternal, precious, and worthy.

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And as a result of that examination, the workman will receive reward or possibly suffer loss.

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Remember, this is not a matter of salvation here because only Christians are at the judgment

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that I'm describing to you.

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He's talking about rewards.

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The rewards seem to be appropriate recognition some way by the Lord for the faithful labor

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that's been done.

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The Bible calls these rewards crowns, which suggests that they involve not only some physical

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token but perhaps even more the privilege of reigning with Jesus Christ in some aspect

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of His kingdom on earth.

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Perhaps His eternal kingdom is in view here as well.

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But the rewards have to do with crowns.

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Those are rewards that we earn by our faithfulness in what we do and the sort of our work.

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Loss on the other hand seems to be the forfeiture of these very same things.

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Perhaps there's going to be some way in which God will represent to us what we might have

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had.

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I don't know.

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But it does say that there will be the possibility of suffering loss, the loss of perhaps what

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one had thought to have accomplished in his life, the loss of commendation by the Lord,

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the loss of opportunity to serve Him, certainly the embarrassment and the shame as a result

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of the real exposure of what our lives have produced for Him.

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God's temple will be examined.

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You and I will be examined on that day.

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You say, well, that seems to be a little scary, a little frightening.

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It was to the Apostle Paul, for in 2 Corinthians 5, 10, and 11, he describes the judgment seat

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of Christ and he moves right ahead to say, knowing therefore the fear of the Lord, we

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persuade men.

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If any of us can think of the judgment seat of Christ and not have an element of fear

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within him, he's a fool, because the judgment seat of Christ will be a terrifying experience

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in one sense.

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Now there will be the joy of being able to lay at the feet of Jesus what has been brought

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from our lives and is worthy of His worship.

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But my friend, the experience of that fire, as it were, that examination is not one in

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which our humanity delights.

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There is a fourth fact that we see regarding the living temple of God, and that is that

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it's holy.

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God's temple is holy, verses 16 and 17.

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And I say that the local church is the context of what he's talking about here.

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He is saying that the local church as a body of people is a temple of God.

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He says, do you not know that, that all of you comprise the temple of God?

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The Spirit of God dwells in you, and that's what makes it holy.

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When he says it's holy, he's saying that it's set apart for divine use, for a sacred

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destiny, and then he warns us in verse 17, because of the nature of this temple of God,

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if any man destroys the temple of God, God will destroy him.

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Same verb used both times.

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The word means corrupt, to defile, to pollute, to ruin, to spoil.

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It does not mean to annihilate.

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But the apostle says here that there is some way it's possible for us to tragically destroy

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or to pollute or to ruin the temple of God, the local church.

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And he says that the man who does that, God, will himself ruin or defile or spoil.

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Now, there are commentators who say that this must refer to an unsaved person.

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I have a difficult time accepting that in the context here.

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I believe the apostle is warning even some of the Corinthians of the possibility of their

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destroying that temple of God in Corinth through the kind of lives they were leading, lives

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that were carnal and disobedient to the word.

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He is warning them, I believe, saved but disobedient carnal Christians of the danger of spoiling

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God's work.

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He says the temple of God is holy, and that is what you are.

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There are warnings throughout the Bible regarding this.

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We're going to look in a couple of weeks at a husband and wife in Acts 5 who learned

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the meaning of what Paul is saying here.

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But my mind reflects this morning back to the Old Testament to one of the great kings

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of Israel, of Judah, King Uzziah, a man who did a great deal for Israel politically, militarily,

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economically, a man during whose reign Isaiah lived in part because you remember that he

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saw his great vision of God in the year that King Uzziah died.

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But sometime before he died, Uzziah made a terrible mistake.

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He forgot what is said in these verses that God's temple is holy.

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Now he, of course, was dealing with a physical temple, Solomon's temple that had been constructed.

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But at that day Uzziah in a moment of haste and unbelief entered into the presence of

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God in the temple and began to offer incense there though he was not a priest.

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He forgot the holiness of God in that moment of rashness in his life and for that God struck

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him with leprosy.

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And until the day that he died, he suffered horribly from that disfiguring, debilitating

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disease.

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So we talked about the man who put his hand on the ark of God when the oxen stumbled.

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Remember that?

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And when he touched the ark, God struck him and he died immediately.

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You and I need to remember, we need to allow to soak into our hearts, into every corner

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of it this truth that God's temple in this age, the local church, is a holy thing.

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And rather than allowing ourselves even in carelessness to be a destroyer of it, to be

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faithful workmen.

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Well I want to conclude this morning by saying that as we dedicate this physical structure,

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what we really do as we said in the dedication statement is to dedicate ourselves as workmen

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in building the living temple, for that's the real building that's going on inside

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these walls.

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The foundation has been laid which is the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ, the living

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Son of God.

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And now we build upon that foundation.

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Let each man take heed how he builds thereupon.

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Let us ask God to give us understanding of what we are doing with our lives so that we

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might see now how to build more wisely, to be wise master builders so that on that day,

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the day when our church is gathered in his presence and examined by his holiness, the

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Lord Jesus Christ, it will pass the test of fire and that there will be something there

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left to the honor and glory of him who has loved us and saved us.

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Let's pray together.

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Lord it is so easy for us to live for ourselves and to deceive ourselves into thinking somehow

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that what we are doing is for you.

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Our hearts are deceitful and desperately wicked.

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Deliver us from those kinds of deceit which lead us to ruin.

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And I pray today that you will enable us by the discerning work of your Holy Spirit to

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see our lives as you see them.

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I pray that we can look back upon the last months and years of our lives and have some

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kind of an accurate picture of whether we've lived wisely or not.

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And whether what we have done would pass your judgment or not.

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And if there need to be corrections, steps of obedience, repentance, then bring us to

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that point quickly lest we continue fooling ourselves and waste life's brief day.

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In Jesus' name, Amen.