A New Temple

“Listening to Stephen Preach About the Temple”

(Acts 7:44-50, Preaching: Pastor Stephen Magee, September 4, 2011)

44 “Our fathers had the tent of witness in the wilderness, just as he who spoke to Moses directed him to make it, according to the pattern that he had seen. 45 Our fathers in turn brought it in with Joshua when they dispossessed the nations that God drove out before our fathers.

Stephen was one of the first Christian preachers. Like all of the apostles, and so many of the first Christians, Stephen was a Jew who considered other Jews his brothers. He wanted the best for them. He wanted them to receive the Jewish Messiah, Jesus, as their Savior and Lord. He wanted them to be a part of a new resurrection community in Jesus Christ.

But the Jews who were against Stephen were also against Jesus. They accused Stephen of being a radical who was against the temple. In Acts 7, Stephen responded to their charges by teaching them about the temple.

What was the temple? Are we in a temple right now? People who worship at a church like ours do not come here for the building. If you come here for the building it is only in this sense, that you want to be a part of a church that is not overly dedicated to a building. You know that you do not need a building to worship God. You would rather not see this congregation spend millions of dollars on a cathedral.

But what about the Old Testament temple in Jerusalem? Wasn't that a special place to go and meet with God which was built according to God's command? Before the temple in Jerusalem was built, God gave very detailed instructions to Moses about the construction of a sacred place that could move with the Israelites on their way from Egypt and into the promised land. He told them to build a tent, a tabernacle. Skim Exodus 25 through Exodus 40. There is nothing like this level of detailed instruction for the building of a permanent structure until you get to the visionary building described in Ezekiel 40-48 which has never been built to this day.

The Israelites had this movable tent of witness in the wilderness. God had given Moses a vision of the plan for this tabernacle in heaven. Moses saw it, and he heard the Lord's very specific and extensive commands to build this tent, commands which he put down in writing for Israel, and which he personally saw that they carefully followed. There was no inherent problem with that tent that was solved by the later construction of the stationary temple building. God was able to be powerful when His people worshiped Him in that tent. He was present with them, and He defeated and dispossessed their enemies.

So it was until the days of David, 46 who found favor in the sight of God and asked to find a dwelling place for the God of Jacob. 47 But it was Solomon who built a house for him.

Why then was a temple built? David, the great king who lived 500 years after Moses had a desire within his heart for a better place for God to live. David lived in his own house. What about God? God lived in a tent... David wanted to fix this situation. But God would not allow David to be the one who would build the temple. His son Solomon would build a house for God.

God insisted on this. He also insisted that He Himself would build a house from David, not a temple made with stones, but an eternal dynasty that would come from David's descendants. God would build up the “house” of David, and would provide a special individual who would reign forever. See 2 Samuel 7. From that one person would come a different kind of temple, a temple made up of people connected to that eternal King. God would live in people. This is what the church is now, a moving tabernacle, a people filled with God, united in the Son of David.

48 Yet the Most High does not dwell in houses made by hands, as the prophet says,

49 “Heaven is my throne,

and the earth is my footstool.

What kind of house will you build for me, says the Lord,

or what is the place of my rest?

50 Did not my hand make all these things?”

God is the Most High. Have you considered His greatness as the uncaused Cause of everything else? He does not dwell in houses made by our hands. The temple building in Jerusalem that people had come to love so much could not really contain the God who has promised to renew and reunite all of heaven and earth in His Son Jesus Christ, a promise you are called to believe.

Jesus had a zeal for the temple of God. He was offended by the way that people had taken what He called “My Father's house,” and had made it a den of robbers. That's why He drove the money changers out of the temple courts. He knew what Isaiah had written about a bigger temple than that, a new heaven and earth temple where God would dwell forever. He also knew that He was the very center of that new temple, and that a new age was now here when people would be called to Him as the temple of the Holy Spirit, and that in Him they would become a dwelling place for the Almighty. He knew that He would die and live again to establish that new living temple.

Stephen was not an enemy of the temple in Jerusalem any more than Jesus was an enemy of that same temple building. It was a picture of something much bigger that was to come. What both Jesus and Stephen knew and preached was that the reality that the building stood for was now coming and the picture was going away. Stephen, just before he died at the hands of his enemies was calling the leaders of the Jews into the true temple of God, the resurrected Jesus Christ.

As an ambassador of this same living Temple, I urge you and all who would hear the voice of Christ, to come to Him. He is the Temple. He is the building. He is the resurrection. He is the new heavens and the new earth. Come to Him and be united to a community of faith and love.

The New Testament era is a time for people to see Jesus, and to enter the new temple. If there is something new in Christ, there is also something old in the present creation that is fading away. The people who would pick up stones and murder Stephen loved the old much more than the new. Jesus calls you and all people everywhere to enter a temple that is not made by human hands, a temple that will be a place of peace and righteousness forever.

1. What was the importance of the tent of witness?

2. How did tabernacle eventually become temple?

3. How could God dwell in any temple?

4. What is the Lord's eternal plan for His temple?

OT Passage: Isaiah 65:17-66:2