We are the Temple

By Dan Hickman, Worship Arts Leadership Team (WALT)

I have been thinking and reading about Old Testament worship over the past two years, which has been a nice complement to our 2019 and 2020 sermons on Ephesians and 1 Peter. The apostles give us important insights into the connection between New Testament worship and God’s will for Israel’s worship before Christ.

One point that Scripture makes clear is that the Old Testament places where God met with his people (the tabernacle and the temple) have been replaced by His people, the body of Christ. In John 2:21, we learn that Jesus saw his body as the temple. The temple was no longer the physical structure that stood in Jerusalem at that time. Paul confirms in 1 Corinthians 3:16-17 that we who are true believers in Christ, also known as the body of Christ, are God’s temple. And, as we are reminded by 1 Peter 2:4-5, both Christ and His followers are living stones, “being built up as a spiritual house”—a temple—”to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ,” with Christ as the cornerstone.

This imagery of each believer being a stone in a spiritual building was expressed in our church family’s online worship service on Sunday, April 26, when multiple worship team members were tiles in a grid on the screen during the worship music. I like to think of those tiles as cut stones that God had prepared to be a part of the structure that is His Church.

Our prayer is that each person in our church family is a living stone, actively offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.

How are you building up Christ’s body at this time of separation?

Each one of us “is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good” (1 Corinthians 12:7). Our worship team prays that you all will follow the Spirit’s leading in your lives to serve the body, starting by building up those living stones who are closest to you in this spiritual temple of Christ’s body (1 Corinthians 14:12).