House of God
This week we are continuing our sermon series “Love Thy Neighbor”. When the Apostle Paul wrote to the Hebrews he opens the first part of chapter three by using the word house or house of God six times in six verses. The term house of God is often misunderstood, and the phrase is often used inappropriately today. Most often when we say a church we are referring to a building. The bible rarely calls a building the house of God, and some argue that it never does.
The early church certainly never referred to any building in that way. In fact, the early church didn’t have any buildings or “churches” for two or three centuries. They met in homes and had what we might call house churches. When they referred to the house of God they meant the people. A church is not a building, it is the people! Even in the Old Testament the temple or tabernacle was really not God’s house. Yes, it was termed that, but it was never meant to be the place where God dwelled. Isaiah records God’s words in his 66th chapter (Isaiah 66:1-2), he says, “Thus says the Lord: “Heaven is My throne, And earth is My footstool. Where is the house that you will build Me? And where is the place of My rest? For all those things My hand has made, And all those things exist,” Says the Lord.” NKJV
When Paul was speaking in the Areopagus in Athens he reminds the Athenians that God does not dwell in temples made by hands. He said this even though the temple in Jerusalem was still standing! God does not dwell in buildings. Where God dwells is in his people. He never intended to dwell in a building. He dwells in people, in men and women and children. His intention all along was to make us as human beings his tabernacle. In 1 Corinthians 6:19 Paul writes, “do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God?” God purpose is to inhabit your body and to make you the manifestation of his life, the dwelling place of all that he is! Listen in as we learn what it means to be the house of God!