temple of God – Moment to Moment (Bible blog)

What we let enter our hearts

When I was a kid, there was a song we used to sing in Sunday school: “Oh be careful little eyes what you see. Oh be careful little ears what you hear.”

Basically, it was a simple song about being careful about what we let into our hearts and minds.

Why is that so important? Because as I mentioned in my last blog, our bodies are the temple of the Holy Spirit who lives within us.

And so God told Ezekiel to command the people,

Give attention to the entrance of the temple and all the exits of the sanctuary.

Say to the rebellious house of Israel, “This is what the Sovereign Lord says: Enough of your detestable practices, O house of Israel!

In addition to all your other detestable practices, you brought foreigners uncircumcised in heart and flesh into my sanctuary, desecrating my temple while you offered me food, fat and blood, and you broke my covenant.” (Ezekiel 44:5–7)

Apparently, the people had allowed ungodly foreigners into the sanctuary where only the priests were allowed. As a result, they ended up worshiping idols in the temple itself, desecrating it before God.

Because of this, those Levites whose ancestors had worshiped idols in the temple were prohibited from becoming priests. Only those who had been faithful to God were able to be priests before God.

What about you? What do you allow to come into your temple gates, through your eyes and ears? And what do you allow to dwell within your heart?

What do you watch on TV? What kinds of messages and music are you listening to? And what do you let reign in your heart?

When we allow what is ungodly into our hearts, it pollutes the temple that God dwells in.

When we let the idols of money, possessions, sex, or whatever else it may be reign in our hearts, it desecrates the temple God dwells in.

Let us never do that. May we shut our doors to that which would pollute our hearts.

Instead, let us open our hearts wide to God, giving him the throne of our hearts that he might dwell there.

Made anew

I feel like I’m going back to the book of Exodus, plowing through these chapters.

Here, as in Exodus, we see extremely detailed information for the temple (albeit in Exodus, it was a tabernacle, not a temple).

With the current temple in ruins and stripped of all its glory, and with the Spirit of God himself departed from the temple, God here gives Ezekiel a vision of a new temple.

And in painstaking detail (and I mean painstaking) he talks about all the dimensions of this new temple, as well as a description of what it would look like.

Then in chapter 43, Ezekiel sees the glory of God return to the temple.

As God once had departed from the east (Ezekiel 10:18–19), he now returns from the east and fills the whole temple with his glory.

And God told Ezekiel,

Son of man, this is the place of my throne and the place for the soles of my feet. This is where I will live among the Israelites forever.

The house of Israel will never again defile my holy name…

Now let them put away from me their prostitution and the lifeless idols of their kings, and I will live among them forever. (Ezekiel 43:7, 9)

What can we take from this?

We were all created to have a relationship with God. We were created to be inhabited by his Spirit and to be his temple.

But by our sins we defiled this temple of our body that God built, and we were living in separation from God. As a result, this life God gave us was in ruins.

But when we turn to God, he clears away the ruins of our lives and makes us anew. He puts his Spirit in us and we become his temple as he intended from the very beginning.

And now God tells us the same thing he told the Israelites. As Paul wrote,

We are the temple of the living God.

As God has said: “I will live with them and walk among them, and I will be their God, and they will be my people.”

“Therefore come out from them and be separate, says the Lord. Touch no unclean thing, and I will receive you.”

“I will be a Father to you, and you will be my sons and daughters, says the Lord Almighty.” (2 Corinthians 6:16–18)

And again,

Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God?

You are not your own; you were bought at a price.

Therefore honor God with your body. (1 Corinthians 6:19–20)

By the blood of Jesus, we have been made anew and have become his temple.

So let us put aside our past sins, walking every day in relationship with the God who saved us.