Who's Building Our House?

In the Old Testament, the glory of God was found in “God’s House”, the temple, the tabernacle, a sacred physical building/tent. It was THE holy place where people came to worship, pray and communicate with God. Fast forward to the New Testament: the days of Jesus. There are only 2 times in the Bible where we see Jesus acting (not reacting) in anger. At the very beginning of Jesus earthly ministry, the Pharisees (the religious people; the “church people” who were devout to following the “law”) were caught conducting fraudulent business and ripping people off in God’s house.

They were caught taking advantage of people, using their religious power to manipulate people into buying from them, using THE TEMPLE to do it, AND were over-charging for these “holy goods”. Jesus was furious and drove the greedy, phony, religious people out of HIS TEMPLE with harsh words in John 2:16,19-21 “…Take these things away! Do not make My Father’s house a house of merchandise!…Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up. Then the Jews said, “it has taken 46 years to build this temple, and you will raise it up in 3 days? But He was speaking of THE TEMPLE OF HIS BODY.”  We hear about Jesus rising up in anger (controlled & righteous anger) only one other time in the Bible, at the very end of His earthly ministry. Once again, it was in response to people perverting the use of God’s house/the temple. Mat 21:12-13 Then Jesus went into the temple of God and drove out all those who bought and sold in the temple, and OVERTURNED the tables of the money changers and the seats of those who sold doves. And He said to them “It is written ‘MY HOUSE SHALL BE CALLED A HOUSE OF PRAYER’, but you have made it a ‘den of thieves’ “.

BOTTOM LINE: God is very serious about how His temple is to be used; about it being a place where God’s Glory is found.

In OUR GENERATION today, the age of grace, the generations beyond Jesus’ life, death and resurrection, WE are the temple, OUR BODIES are the place where God’s glory is supposed to reside. WE ARE THE TEMPLE OF THE HOLY SPIRIT. 

Paul refers to our physical bodies as an “earthly house” or “tent” – 2 Corinthians 5:1 “For we know that if our EARTHLY HOUSE, this tent, is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.” 

Psalm 127:1  “Unless the Lord builds the house, they labor in vain who build it” How are we building “our house”? What are we building and using it for? Is there anything Jesus wants to “overturn” in our hearts/lives?

JESUS CAN AND WILL put “our houses” back in order to be used for HIS GLORY