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Cleanse the House
John 2:13-16
And the Jews' passover was at hand, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem, and found in the temple those that sold oxen and sheep and doves, and the changers of money sitting: and when he had made a scourge of small cords, he drove them all out of the temple, and the sheep, and the oxen; and poured out the changers' money, and overthrew the tables; And said unto them that sold doves, Take these things hence; make not my Father's house an house of merchandise.
The time of passover was at hand, a celebration of God's deliverance wrought for the children of Israel. They were no longer slaves unto Egypt, no longer strangers and foreigners in a foreign land, no longer bound to the devices and decrees of a pagan king. Israel was now the purchased possession of Almighty God, a special and unique nation unlike any other in all the earth. As a matter of fact, there had never been, nor would there ever be, a nation like this one throughout the history of creation. Israel had become the inheritance of Yahweh, His lot, His portion. She was now to be a kingdom of priests, separate from the world, a witness unto the world of the one true and living God.
Passover was a time when the lamb of sacrifice was slaughtered, roasted, and eaten in combination with herbs and unleavened bread. All such intimate details of this meal foreshadowed the coming of a Lamb that would bring the only abiding deliverance from the most real slavery any man, woman, or child has ever known--the slavery of sin. Jesus Christ is the Lamb slaughtered from the foundation of the world, the Lord of Glory put to death at the hands of sinful men for sinful men. He is the Son of God Who became sin in order that we might become the righteousness of God in Him. And He did so by being bruised in unimaginable torment by the LORD Himself, even the Father--the obedient Son yielding Himself unto the death of the cross for His Father's ultimate pleasure and glory. Now that is sonship! Oh, the wonder of this most humble and meek Master of creation pouring out His soul unto death, His spotless blood as an offering for our sin. All glory to His Name forever. Amen.
It was in the context of this remembrance of Divine deliverance from slavery that the Son of God entered into Jerusalem to gaze upon the temple with piercing insight that the eyes of men could not dream to view. There was a perspective in the mind of Jesus that not even His disciples could yet grasp, though they had been with Him now for approximately three years. It was this single event that most precipitated the condemnation of this unique Prophet from Nazareth by the religious rulers of the Jews. The Son came to do what His Father had bid Him in ages of eternity past. Jerusalem was called by Jeremiah, "the throne of the LORD." It was supposed to be a city set apart in holiness unto the Holy Majesty on High, a resting place for His Glory to abide, a place where "all the nations shall be gathered unto it, to the name of the LORD, to Jerusalem" (Jeremiah 3:17). And these visiting foreigners would henceforth forsake all their idols, cast away the false gods they had embraced, reject the vanity taught them for generations, "neither shall they walk any more after the imagination of their evil heart."
But this city had become a center of religious excitement, housing the most hypocritical group of religious zealots in all the earth. And the temple in Jerusalem, an exemplar of spiritual magnificence erected by the hands of men, had become a house of worldly trade and merchandise. The house of prayer for all nations had been transformed into an altar of idolatry of the most insidious sort, so much so that thieves had found refuge in the resting place of God's Glory. Yet, "behold, even I have seen it, saith the LORD" (Jeremiah 7:11). The eyes of relentless fire and furious flame had fallen upon this place of worship at last in the physical optics of the Son of Man. The time of Israel's visitation has come.
"[Hezekiah] in the first year of his reign, in the first month, opened the doors of the house of the LORD, and repaired them. And he brought in the priests and the Levites, and gathered them together into the east street, and said unto them, Hear me, ye Levites, sanctify now yourselves, and sanctify the house of the LORD God of your fathers, and carry forth the filthiness out of the holy [place]...And they gathered their brethren, and sanctified themselves, and came, according to the commandment of the king, by the words of the LORD, to cleanse the house of the LORD" (2Chronicles 29:3-15, emphasis added).
It is most noteworthy that the cleansing of the temple of God took place before the celebration of the Passover. In both circumstances the habitation of God's holiness had been defiled by His own people. When Hezekiah was exalted into the position of king of Judah the temple was in shambles. Its doors had been shut by Ahaz, the laver had been removed from its base, the lamps had gone out and the light was passed--darkness had entered the very house of the Living God. The previous king Ahaz had strayed far from the Lord, committing whoredom with the gods of Damascus, even building an altar after the pattern of one he saw in this pagan city, adjuring a priest to fashion one like it by which he might offer unclean sacrifices. What a tremendous indictment against a nation and a people when even the sacrifices have become sin. "The sacrifice of the wicked [is] an abomination to the LORD: but the prayer of the upright [is] his delight" (Proverbs 15:8). The delight of the LORD has become despised in exchange for the worship of the works fashioned by men's minds and hands.
Into these tragic circumstances Hezekiah arrives on the scene, raised up as a man whose deeds would be compared with Israel's prototypical king, David the son of Jesse. And in the first year and the first month he sets out to reopen the house of God. Cleansing must take place before sacrifices can again be offered in holiness, that they might be acceptable to the Holy One of Israel. And before cleansing can take place in God's sanctuary the priests themselves and the Levites must be sanctified. Indeed, the very ones who would exact this work of sanctifying the holy things of the temple must themselves be subjected to the scrutiny of God's piercing perspective. Cleansing would therefore be a consummate work, one that leaves not one who would come into the habitation of Yahweh untouched by its effects, from the temple officers to the eventual worshippers who would dawn the holy ground of God's house.
Wrath had come upon God's people insomuch that the entire nation stood under the abiding curse that rests upon all the children of disobedience. Only there remains an acute awareness in the mind of Hezekiah that Israel itself suffered more severely for her sins, for she alone has known the secret things of the covenant of God, she alone had been bound to the Sovereign of heaven and earth as His special nation, His treasured possession. Thus, this twenty-something king seeks to enter into a covenant with the God of Israel, calling the entire nation into that covenant; including the estranged and remnant people of the northern tribes of Israel left over from the Assyrian destruction of Samaria.
This was to be a true covenant for Israel, one that invited her back into union with her ever-faithful God, the true bond of love with the Eternal Lord of creation and King of the nations. But before this covenant could be rendered binding between God and man cleansing was necessary. All of the filthiness, all of the idolatrous symbols, all of the uncleanness had to expunged from the temple of God. For in this single place has Yahweh chosen to reside as His unique resting place. Anything that might cause Him grief, anything that could cause Him sorrow of heart, anything that would invite censure must be removed. And not only removed, but utterly destroyed in the valley of Kidron, the destined place of destruction for all works of impurity. A destiny of fire unto absolute abolition and annihilation. When all has been cleansed, the temple will finally be the place of Israel's ultimate remembrance, the culmination of deliverance from bondage--the Passover will again be celebrated, along with all that this feast prophetically foreshadows of the first and second coming of the Lamb slaughtered from the foundations of the world (see 1Corinthians 11:23-26, Revelation 13:8).
We have forgotten what it costs to offer God Almighty sacrifices that are acceptable in His sight. Above all, it cost God absolutely everything in order to enable us to come unto Him acceptably. Jesus Christ offered Himself without spot or blemish unto the Father that we might come by Him into the Presence of His eternal glory. Every drop of priceless blood that was spilled was the blood of God as Man that purchased our redemption. The Son of God gave everything, so how is it that we think anything less than everything we have and everything we are is acceptable unto the Father of all majesty? "Be ye therefore followers of God, as dear children; And walk in love, as Christ also hath loved us, and hath given himself for us an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweetsmelling savour" (Ephesians 5:1-2).
The Lord Jesus is the firstfruits from the dead, and He calls this day to a host of dead saints, "Awake thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light" (Ephesians 5:14). Spiritual sacrifices, an offering of our very lives--body, soul and spirit--this is what is required by the Almighty of all His sons and daughters. "I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, [which is] your reasonable service" (Romans 12:1). The honor of God is at stake in our mortal bodies, in our very thoughts, in our most personal and intimate motives. What have you offered unto the God of creation this day in your thought life? Upon what have you meditated? In what way have you inched ever nearer the final placement of your life in the spiritual house built unto the Father for His holy dwelling? Or have you slipped out of the way, resisting the nudges of the Holy Spirit in the most simple of things of your life, because such matters are far too "trivial" for God to be interested in them. "Why, God is much too busy to be bothered by such impertinent requests for direction in the nitty gritty of life. He gave us a brain, we are supposed to use it!" Ah, the utter vanity and foolishness of such an argument. For it misses the sweet brooding of God's Spirit over all that we are, as He gently draws us deeper into the categorical Lordship and reign of Jesus Christ over all that we are, even in the most seemingly insignificant of matters.
When creation was taking shape the Holy Spirit hovered over the face of the deep upon the earth. And in the age of Christ's church we find that He now hovers over the new creation of sons and daughters who have been made anew in Christ, forming and shaping our lives as He did with the mountain heights and ocean depths; only this time such high heights and such deep depths are the unknowable places of our own souls that God is fashioning into the likeness of His Son. The redemption in Christ is a kind of new creation, which is borne witness to by John the apostle from the first few verses of his masterpiece on the earthly life of the Son of Man (see John 1). This is why the Passover is so important to the whole issue of cleansing the temple. For redemption's fullest work to take affect God's dwelling place must be clean and holy, "For the LORD thy God walketh in the midst of thy camp, to deliver thee, and to give up thine enemies before thee; therefore shall thy camp be holy: that he see no unclean thing in thee, and turn away from thee" (Deuteronomy 23:14). This was true for Israel as she escaped Egyptian captivity and was preparing to enter the promised land; it was true for Judah and remnant Israel as they prepared to renew their covenant with Yahweh; and it is true this day for the church of Jesus Christ as we enter into and live under the bond of the New Covenant. Cleansing and redemption are inextricably bound, the nexus being God's supreme holiness and worth and glory.
Cleansing, cleansing, cleansing! It must take place in the church of Jesus Christ once again. When we read of the remembrance of Christ's redemptive work in that wonderfully thorough instruction for worship contained in the first letter to the Corinthians we find a fearful passage. "...as often as ye eat this bread, and drink this cup, ye do shew the Lord's death till he come.Wherefore whosoever shall eat this bread, and drink [this] cup of the Lord, unworthily, shall be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord...For he that eateth and drinketh unworthily, eateth and drinketh damnation to himself, not discerning the Lord's body" (1Corinthians 11:26-29). God says very clearly that as a result of uncleanness within the body "many [are] weak and sickly among you, and many sleep," not as some random sickness passing from person to person, not as a result of general fatigue for over-exerting themselves in spiritual matters, but for not properly discerning and thereby respecting and ministering unto the Lord's church. Sin had creeped into this body and God had rendered a frighteningly immediate retribution to some who had been agents of this sin's perpetuation.
How could we possibly think that we are exempt from such retribution, who have strayed so far from the intended purpose of the Living God for His holy temple, the church. "Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and [that] the Spirit of God dwelleth in you? If any man defile the temple of God, him shall God destroy; for the temple of God is holy, which [temple] ye are" (1Corinthians 3:16-17). We have attempted to build upon the foundation of Jesus Christ a terribly hideous house erected by tools of lies, fashioned by unclean hands, and bearing a facade that is austentatious in outward display, but utterly void of the Holy Spirit within. Oh, God remember us for Your mercy.
We have carried on with our affectation, claiming to bring light and life to the world, all the while carrying on in darkness and death. Whether it be a false Gospel of prosperity or inward hypocrisy or lukewarm love for Christ, the church of the Living Christ in America is seemingly perfectly content to march on in death without any recognition of her own spiritual condition. Christian colleges grow in number and change their names to properly indicate their own estrangement from God, as they turn out more and more spiritually bankrupt believers into the world of American ambition. We complain about no prayer in schools when prayer is tragically absent in the lives of the overwhelming majority of churches across the nation. We have hired professional clergy who fill their days with meetings, and we want nothing more than to hear a good "word" from them on Sunday. What happened to the single aim of the ministry of the original apostles, "But we will give ourselves continually to prayer, and to the ministry of the word" (Acts 6:4)? We are no more the bride of Christ in our current state than a whore is the bride of the one buys her services for the night. For we walk on in iniquity unaware of such by virtue of our spiritual numbness, and appear before God once or twice, or more per week to raise unholy hands, offering unholy prayers unto the Holy One of Israel. Do not think, Bride of Jesus Christ in America, that you will not be held to account for your abandonment of God's Presence. He is coming, the Lord of the church, the Head of the body is coming to this nation and her church. Will you know the hour of your visitation? Cleanse the house!
Christ's visitation will bring a scourge once again to His house as He overturns the tables of the moneychangers, prosperity preachers, idle shepherds, and religious worshippers interested in their own glory, their own ambitions in life, their own earth-bound affections. Homosexual pastors, elders and deacons bound to pornography, child molestors in our pews, worldly entertainment chosen over worship and intercession unto the Living God--and we refuse to acknowledge our culpability in these transgressions--all evidence that we have cast away our First Love. We have been bought by the world for a pittance; or rather sold ourselves willingly into slavery to a dead system of corruption and vileness. We maintain our religious programs ad infinitum, offer empty prayers, refuse to wait upon God for more than a moment of silence, and walk on in darkness, destined for a land of promise that is void of God's Glory, because we neglected the only One for Whom we were promised that land to begin with. Those very prayers that we offer in uncleanness, those daily and weekly sacrifices offered from disloyal hearts will become the indictment against us when the Lord of hosts visits His church. Terror will be brought to this nation in a terribly real way, and its Author will be the Judge of all mankind, Who will stop at nothing to sanctify a people for His inheritance. "Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?" (Genesis 18:25). The time came in the land of God's promise that the nations who inhabited the territory were spued out by the land for their sin. We had better pay careful heed, "that the land spue not you out also, when ye defile it, as it spued out the nations that [were] before you" (Leviticus 18:28). Church in America, you will bear great responsibility for the lives of this nation. Are you ready to count the cost for your ambivalence toward God? Your spiritual blindness will be evidenced in the very absence of His Glory from your midst when you see darkness all around, and your lamps have gone out for want of oil. The Holy Spirit adjures us, "Dearly beloved, I beseech [you] as strangers and pilgrims, abstain from fleshly lusts, which war against the soul; having your conversation honest among the Gentiles: that, whereas they speak against you as evildoers, they may by [your] good works, which they shall behold, glorify God in the day of visitation" (1Peter 2:11-12).
Redemption, the purchasing back from slavery as a possession for the very One Who purchased at His own expense. Only the expense was incalculable, for it was His very blood that was the price. But the house of God had to be cleansed before the Passover Lamb was sacrificed. The Great High Priest entered into His Father's house and cast away all the impurity and rottenness and merchandise of men, as God entered His temple one last time before it would finally be destroyed in 70 A.D. And so it will be in the church. We cannot drink of His blood and eat of His flesh any longer in our estrangement from the Father's Presence and think that we shall be accepted upon the altar of His sacrifice. We have thought that we could place the ark of God's Presence upon a new cart thereby carrying it back to its rightful place in our lives. But the mercy of God will only strike down such ambition, creating a breach where we thought we were operating in a spiritually noble task (see 2Samuel 6). If only we were to inquire of God Almighty, we would soon find that we have treated Him in like manner as the heathen have treated Him, creating no distinction between His sheer majesty and holiness from the idols of the people around us (1Samuel 6).
Only the uniquely consecrated Levites could carry the ark of God into the city of David; only the priests and the Levites could remove all the filthiness from the temple of God in preparation for the renewal of God's covenant; only the true priests of God can rightfully and properly bear upon their shoulders the ineffable weight of God's Glory in the church. There shall be a sanctified remnant, a royal priesthood, who will be sent to tend to this work of calling upon the Lord day and night in prayer, in song, in worship--the very offering of themselves without revocation to Almighty God. "And he set the Levites in the house of the LORD with cymbals, with psalteries, and with harps, according to the commandment of David, and of Gad the king's seer, and Nathan the prophet: for [so was] the commandment of the LORD by his prophets. And the Levites stood with the instruments of David, and the priests with the trumpets...And all the congregation worshipped, and the singers sang, and the trumpeters sounded: [and] all [this continued] until the burnt offering was finished. And when they had made an end of offering, the king and all that were present with him bowed themselves, and worshipped" (2Chronicles 29:25-29). For so the church is intended to be that royal priesthood, serving the unutterably regal King of kings.
Before the final Passover of the Son of Man's earthly life would come Jesus set aside His garments, took up a towel, and began to wash the feet of His disciples, for "If I wash thee not, thou hast no part with me" (John 13:8). This is the Passover that was in view in the day when Moses spread the lamb's blood for a token that God's judgement might pass over His people Israel (see Exodus 12). And in this momentous event all leaven would be purged from the house. The leaven that was removed was a picture of the removal of all iniquity so that we could be made partakers of Christ, and be raised up an house of worship and dwelling unto the Son and the Father (see Hebrews 3). Thus, redemption would take place and the cleansing of the temple of Yahweh would be fully accomplished, that He might receive "the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints" (Ephesians 1:18). The High Priest and Passover Lamb had come to cleanse and redeem, purify and sanctify unto Himself a people from all nations, tribes, and tongues who would become living stones built into an holy habitation for the glory of God; and He will visit His church in America to this end. For Jesus Christ will have a holy bride joined in union unto Himself in the everlasting New Covenant.
God has set His holy gaze upon His church in this nation. His house is closed up, its doors sealed, the light is gone out. But the Lord of lords is going to visit His church once again. Will we be ready when He comes? Or will we be found asleep with lamps snuffed out, when we should have been watching with the fiery light of the Spirit of God ablaze in our hearts? Redemption and cleansing are going to be thoroughly wrought within the church of America. But what will be our end if we refuse to be cleansed? Judgement is the only alternative to the offering of life through Jesus Christ, and that judgement is a supreme mercy meted out by God upon all who strive against His Spirit. Oh, church of Jesus Christ in America, I will weep for you upon the high places, my heart will break for you for your breaking of God's covenant, my eyes will run down with tears for you if you do not return to your King and your God. "He which testifieth these things saith, Surely I come quickly. Amen. Even so, come, Lord Jesus." (Revelation 22:20).
Cleanse the house.
And the Jews' passover was at hand, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem, and found in the temple those that sold oxen and sheep and doves, and the changers of money sitting: and when he had made a scourge of small cords, he drove them all out of the temple, and the sheep, and the oxen; and poured out the changers' money, and overthrew the tables; And said unto them that sold doves, Take these things hence; make not my Father's house an house of merchandise.
The time of passover was at hand, a celebration of God's deliverance wrought for the children of Israel. They were no longer slaves unto Egypt, no longer strangers and foreigners in a foreign land, no longer bound to the devices and decrees of a pagan king. Israel was now the purchased possession of Almighty God, a special and unique nation unlike any other in all the earth. As a matter of fact, there had never been, nor would there ever be, a nation like this one throughout the history of creation. Israel had become the inheritance of Yahweh, His lot, His portion. She was now to be a kingdom of priests, separate from the world, a witness unto the world of the one true and living God.
Passover was a time when the lamb of sacrifice was slaughtered, roasted, and eaten in combination with herbs and unleavened bread. All such intimate details of this meal foreshadowed the coming of a Lamb that would bring the only abiding deliverance from the most real slavery any man, woman, or child has ever known--the slavery of sin. Jesus Christ is the Lamb slaughtered from the foundation of the world, the Lord of Glory put to death at the hands of sinful men for sinful men. He is the Son of God Who became sin in order that we might become the righteousness of God in Him. And He did so by being bruised in unimaginable torment by the LORD Himself, even the Father--the obedient Son yielding Himself unto the death of the cross for His Father's ultimate pleasure and glory. Now that is sonship! Oh, the wonder of this most humble and meek Master of creation pouring out His soul unto death, His spotless blood as an offering for our sin. All glory to His Name forever. Amen.
It was in the context of this remembrance of Divine deliverance from slavery that the Son of God entered into Jerusalem to gaze upon the temple with piercing insight that the eyes of men could not dream to view. There was a perspective in the mind of Jesus that not even His disciples could yet grasp, though they had been with Him now for approximately three years. It was this single event that most precipitated the condemnation of this unique Prophet from Nazareth by the religious rulers of the Jews. The Son came to do what His Father had bid Him in ages of eternity past. Jerusalem was called by Jeremiah, "the throne of the LORD." It was supposed to be a city set apart in holiness unto the Holy Majesty on High, a resting place for His Glory to abide, a place where "all the nations shall be gathered unto it, to the name of the LORD, to Jerusalem" (Jeremiah 3:17). And these visiting foreigners would henceforth forsake all their idols, cast away the false gods they had embraced, reject the vanity taught them for generations, "neither shall they walk any more after the imagination of their evil heart."
But this city had become a center of religious excitement, housing the most hypocritical group of religious zealots in all the earth. And the temple in Jerusalem, an exemplar of spiritual magnificence erected by the hands of men, had become a house of worldly trade and merchandise. The house of prayer for all nations had been transformed into an altar of idolatry of the most insidious sort, so much so that thieves had found refuge in the resting place of God's Glory. Yet, "behold, even I have seen it, saith the LORD" (Jeremiah 7:11). The eyes of relentless fire and furious flame had fallen upon this place of worship at last in the physical optics of the Son of Man. The time of Israel's visitation has come.
"[Hezekiah] in the first year of his reign, in the first month, opened the doors of the house of the LORD, and repaired them. And he brought in the priests and the Levites, and gathered them together into the east street, and said unto them, Hear me, ye Levites, sanctify now yourselves, and sanctify the house of the LORD God of your fathers, and carry forth the filthiness out of the holy [place]...And they gathered their brethren, and sanctified themselves, and came, according to the commandment of the king, by the words of the LORD, to cleanse the house of the LORD" (2Chronicles 29:3-15, emphasis added).
It is most noteworthy that the cleansing of the temple of God took place before the celebration of the Passover. In both circumstances the habitation of God's holiness had been defiled by His own people. When Hezekiah was exalted into the position of king of Judah the temple was in shambles. Its doors had been shut by Ahaz, the laver had been removed from its base, the lamps had gone out and the light was passed--darkness had entered the very house of the Living God. The previous king Ahaz had strayed far from the Lord, committing whoredom with the gods of Damascus, even building an altar after the pattern of one he saw in this pagan city, adjuring a priest to fashion one like it by which he might offer unclean sacrifices. What a tremendous indictment against a nation and a people when even the sacrifices have become sin. "The sacrifice of the wicked [is] an abomination to the LORD: but the prayer of the upright [is] his delight" (Proverbs 15:8). The delight of the LORD has become despised in exchange for the worship of the works fashioned by men's minds and hands.
Into these tragic circumstances Hezekiah arrives on the scene, raised up as a man whose deeds would be compared with Israel's prototypical king, David the son of Jesse. And in the first year and the first month he sets out to reopen the house of God. Cleansing must take place before sacrifices can again be offered in holiness, that they might be acceptable to the Holy One of Israel. And before cleansing can take place in God's sanctuary the priests themselves and the Levites must be sanctified. Indeed, the very ones who would exact this work of sanctifying the holy things of the temple must themselves be subjected to the scrutiny of God's piercing perspective. Cleansing would therefore be a consummate work, one that leaves not one who would come into the habitation of Yahweh untouched by its effects, from the temple officers to the eventual worshippers who would dawn the holy ground of God's house.
Wrath had come upon God's people insomuch that the entire nation stood under the abiding curse that rests upon all the children of disobedience. Only there remains an acute awareness in the mind of Hezekiah that Israel itself suffered more severely for her sins, for she alone has known the secret things of the covenant of God, she alone had been bound to the Sovereign of heaven and earth as His special nation, His treasured possession. Thus, this twenty-something king seeks to enter into a covenant with the God of Israel, calling the entire nation into that covenant; including the estranged and remnant people of the northern tribes of Israel left over from the Assyrian destruction of Samaria.
This was to be a true covenant for Israel, one that invited her back into union with her ever-faithful God, the true bond of love with the Eternal Lord of creation and King of the nations. But before this covenant could be rendered binding between God and man cleansing was necessary. All of the filthiness, all of the idolatrous symbols, all of the uncleanness had to expunged from the temple of God. For in this single place has Yahweh chosen to reside as His unique resting place. Anything that might cause Him grief, anything that could cause Him sorrow of heart, anything that would invite censure must be removed. And not only removed, but utterly destroyed in the valley of Kidron, the destined place of destruction for all works of impurity. A destiny of fire unto absolute abolition and annihilation. When all has been cleansed, the temple will finally be the place of Israel's ultimate remembrance, the culmination of deliverance from bondage--the Passover will again be celebrated, along with all that this feast prophetically foreshadows of the first and second coming of the Lamb slaughtered from the foundations of the world (see 1Corinthians 11:23-26, Revelation 13:8).
We have forgotten what it costs to offer God Almighty sacrifices that are acceptable in His sight. Above all, it cost God absolutely everything in order to enable us to come unto Him acceptably. Jesus Christ offered Himself without spot or blemish unto the Father that we might come by Him into the Presence of His eternal glory. Every drop of priceless blood that was spilled was the blood of God as Man that purchased our redemption. The Son of God gave everything, so how is it that we think anything less than everything we have and everything we are is acceptable unto the Father of all majesty? "Be ye therefore followers of God, as dear children; And walk in love, as Christ also hath loved us, and hath given himself for us an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweetsmelling savour" (Ephesians 5:1-2).
The Lord Jesus is the firstfruits from the dead, and He calls this day to a host of dead saints, "Awake thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light" (Ephesians 5:14). Spiritual sacrifices, an offering of our very lives--body, soul and spirit--this is what is required by the Almighty of all His sons and daughters. "I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, [which is] your reasonable service" (Romans 12:1). The honor of God is at stake in our mortal bodies, in our very thoughts, in our most personal and intimate motives. What have you offered unto the God of creation this day in your thought life? Upon what have you meditated? In what way have you inched ever nearer the final placement of your life in the spiritual house built unto the Father for His holy dwelling? Or have you slipped out of the way, resisting the nudges of the Holy Spirit in the most simple of things of your life, because such matters are far too "trivial" for God to be interested in them. "Why, God is much too busy to be bothered by such impertinent requests for direction in the nitty gritty of life. He gave us a brain, we are supposed to use it!" Ah, the utter vanity and foolishness of such an argument. For it misses the sweet brooding of God's Spirit over all that we are, as He gently draws us deeper into the categorical Lordship and reign of Jesus Christ over all that we are, even in the most seemingly insignificant of matters.
When creation was taking shape the Holy Spirit hovered over the face of the deep upon the earth. And in the age of Christ's church we find that He now hovers over the new creation of sons and daughters who have been made anew in Christ, forming and shaping our lives as He did with the mountain heights and ocean depths; only this time such high heights and such deep depths are the unknowable places of our own souls that God is fashioning into the likeness of His Son. The redemption in Christ is a kind of new creation, which is borne witness to by John the apostle from the first few verses of his masterpiece on the earthly life of the Son of Man (see John 1). This is why the Passover is so important to the whole issue of cleansing the temple. For redemption's fullest work to take affect God's dwelling place must be clean and holy, "For the LORD thy God walketh in the midst of thy camp, to deliver thee, and to give up thine enemies before thee; therefore shall thy camp be holy: that he see no unclean thing in thee, and turn away from thee" (Deuteronomy 23:14). This was true for Israel as she escaped Egyptian captivity and was preparing to enter the promised land; it was true for Judah and remnant Israel as they prepared to renew their covenant with Yahweh; and it is true this day for the church of Jesus Christ as we enter into and live under the bond of the New Covenant. Cleansing and redemption are inextricably bound, the nexus being God's supreme holiness and worth and glory.
Cleansing, cleansing, cleansing! It must take place in the church of Jesus Christ once again. When we read of the remembrance of Christ's redemptive work in that wonderfully thorough instruction for worship contained in the first letter to the Corinthians we find a fearful passage. "...as often as ye eat this bread, and drink this cup, ye do shew the Lord's death till he come.Wherefore whosoever shall eat this bread, and drink [this] cup of the Lord, unworthily, shall be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord...For he that eateth and drinketh unworthily, eateth and drinketh damnation to himself, not discerning the Lord's body" (1Corinthians 11:26-29). God says very clearly that as a result of uncleanness within the body "many [are] weak and sickly among you, and many sleep," not as some random sickness passing from person to person, not as a result of general fatigue for over-exerting themselves in spiritual matters, but for not properly discerning and thereby respecting and ministering unto the Lord's church. Sin had creeped into this body and God had rendered a frighteningly immediate retribution to some who had been agents of this sin's perpetuation.
How could we possibly think that we are exempt from such retribution, who have strayed so far from the intended purpose of the Living God for His holy temple, the church. "Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and [that] the Spirit of God dwelleth in you? If any man defile the temple of God, him shall God destroy; for the temple of God is holy, which [temple] ye are" (1Corinthians 3:16-17). We have attempted to build upon the foundation of Jesus Christ a terribly hideous house erected by tools of lies, fashioned by unclean hands, and bearing a facade that is austentatious in outward display, but utterly void of the Holy Spirit within. Oh, God remember us for Your mercy.
We have carried on with our affectation, claiming to bring light and life to the world, all the while carrying on in darkness and death. Whether it be a false Gospel of prosperity or inward hypocrisy or lukewarm love for Christ, the church of the Living Christ in America is seemingly perfectly content to march on in death without any recognition of her own spiritual condition. Christian colleges grow in number and change their names to properly indicate their own estrangement from God, as they turn out more and more spiritually bankrupt believers into the world of American ambition. We complain about no prayer in schools when prayer is tragically absent in the lives of the overwhelming majority of churches across the nation. We have hired professional clergy who fill their days with meetings, and we want nothing more than to hear a good "word" from them on Sunday. What happened to the single aim of the ministry of the original apostles, "But we will give ourselves continually to prayer, and to the ministry of the word" (Acts 6:4)? We are no more the bride of Christ in our current state than a whore is the bride of the one buys her services for the night. For we walk on in iniquity unaware of such by virtue of our spiritual numbness, and appear before God once or twice, or more per week to raise unholy hands, offering unholy prayers unto the Holy One of Israel. Do not think, Bride of Jesus Christ in America, that you will not be held to account for your abandonment of God's Presence. He is coming, the Lord of the church, the Head of the body is coming to this nation and her church. Will you know the hour of your visitation? Cleanse the house!
Christ's visitation will bring a scourge once again to His house as He overturns the tables of the moneychangers, prosperity preachers, idle shepherds, and religious worshippers interested in their own glory, their own ambitions in life, their own earth-bound affections. Homosexual pastors, elders and deacons bound to pornography, child molestors in our pews, worldly entertainment chosen over worship and intercession unto the Living God--and we refuse to acknowledge our culpability in these transgressions--all evidence that we have cast away our First Love. We have been bought by the world for a pittance; or rather sold ourselves willingly into slavery to a dead system of corruption and vileness. We maintain our religious programs ad infinitum, offer empty prayers, refuse to wait upon God for more than a moment of silence, and walk on in darkness, destined for a land of promise that is void of God's Glory, because we neglected the only One for Whom we were promised that land to begin with. Those very prayers that we offer in uncleanness, those daily and weekly sacrifices offered from disloyal hearts will become the indictment against us when the Lord of hosts visits His church. Terror will be brought to this nation in a terribly real way, and its Author will be the Judge of all mankind, Who will stop at nothing to sanctify a people for His inheritance. "Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?" (Genesis 18:25). The time came in the land of God's promise that the nations who inhabited the territory were spued out by the land for their sin. We had better pay careful heed, "that the land spue not you out also, when ye defile it, as it spued out the nations that [were] before you" (Leviticus 18:28). Church in America, you will bear great responsibility for the lives of this nation. Are you ready to count the cost for your ambivalence toward God? Your spiritual blindness will be evidenced in the very absence of His Glory from your midst when you see darkness all around, and your lamps have gone out for want of oil. The Holy Spirit adjures us, "Dearly beloved, I beseech [you] as strangers and pilgrims, abstain from fleshly lusts, which war against the soul; having your conversation honest among the Gentiles: that, whereas they speak against you as evildoers, they may by [your] good works, which they shall behold, glorify God in the day of visitation" (1Peter 2:11-12).
Redemption, the purchasing back from slavery as a possession for the very One Who purchased at His own expense. Only the expense was incalculable, for it was His very blood that was the price. But the house of God had to be cleansed before the Passover Lamb was sacrificed. The Great High Priest entered into His Father's house and cast away all the impurity and rottenness and merchandise of men, as God entered His temple one last time before it would finally be destroyed in 70 A.D. And so it will be in the church. We cannot drink of His blood and eat of His flesh any longer in our estrangement from the Father's Presence and think that we shall be accepted upon the altar of His sacrifice. We have thought that we could place the ark of God's Presence upon a new cart thereby carrying it back to its rightful place in our lives. But the mercy of God will only strike down such ambition, creating a breach where we thought we were operating in a spiritually noble task (see 2Samuel 6). If only we were to inquire of God Almighty, we would soon find that we have treated Him in like manner as the heathen have treated Him, creating no distinction between His sheer majesty and holiness from the idols of the people around us (1Samuel 6).
Only the uniquely consecrated Levites could carry the ark of God into the city of David; only the priests and the Levites could remove all the filthiness from the temple of God in preparation for the renewal of God's covenant; only the true priests of God can rightfully and properly bear upon their shoulders the ineffable weight of God's Glory in the church. There shall be a sanctified remnant, a royal priesthood, who will be sent to tend to this work of calling upon the Lord day and night in prayer, in song, in worship--the very offering of themselves without revocation to Almighty God. "And he set the Levites in the house of the LORD with cymbals, with psalteries, and with harps, according to the commandment of David, and of Gad the king's seer, and Nathan the prophet: for [so was] the commandment of the LORD by his prophets. And the Levites stood with the instruments of David, and the priests with the trumpets...And all the congregation worshipped, and the singers sang, and the trumpeters sounded: [and] all [this continued] until the burnt offering was finished. And when they had made an end of offering, the king and all that were present with him bowed themselves, and worshipped" (2Chronicles 29:25-29). For so the church is intended to be that royal priesthood, serving the unutterably regal King of kings.
Before the final Passover of the Son of Man's earthly life would come Jesus set aside His garments, took up a towel, and began to wash the feet of His disciples, for "If I wash thee not, thou hast no part with me" (John 13:8). This is the Passover that was in view in the day when Moses spread the lamb's blood for a token that God's judgement might pass over His people Israel (see Exodus 12). And in this momentous event all leaven would be purged from the house. The leaven that was removed was a picture of the removal of all iniquity so that we could be made partakers of Christ, and be raised up an house of worship and dwelling unto the Son and the Father (see Hebrews 3). Thus, redemption would take place and the cleansing of the temple of Yahweh would be fully accomplished, that He might receive "the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints" (Ephesians 1:18). The High Priest and Passover Lamb had come to cleanse and redeem, purify and sanctify unto Himself a people from all nations, tribes, and tongues who would become living stones built into an holy habitation for the glory of God; and He will visit His church in America to this end. For Jesus Christ will have a holy bride joined in union unto Himself in the everlasting New Covenant.
God has set His holy gaze upon His church in this nation. His house is closed up, its doors sealed, the light is gone out. But the Lord of lords is going to visit His church once again. Will we be ready when He comes? Or will we be found asleep with lamps snuffed out, when we should have been watching with the fiery light of the Spirit of God ablaze in our hearts? Redemption and cleansing are going to be thoroughly wrought within the church of America. But what will be our end if we refuse to be cleansed? Judgement is the only alternative to the offering of life through Jesus Christ, and that judgement is a supreme mercy meted out by God upon all who strive against His Spirit. Oh, church of Jesus Christ in America, I will weep for you upon the high places, my heart will break for you for your breaking of God's covenant, my eyes will run down with tears for you if you do not return to your King and your God. "He which testifieth these things saith, Surely I come quickly. Amen. Even so, come, Lord Jesus." (Revelation 22:20).
Cleanse the house.
posted by Bryan | 12:00 AM
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