Ancient Israel And The Church

Last year, for the Days of Unleavened Bread, I was in Turkey, and actually I gave the sermon, or split sermon, on the last Holy Day in Smyrna. Now, I had to think long and hard about, I'm going to be giving a sermon during the Days of Unleavened Bread in Smyrna. And of course, we toured the day before we toured all the ruins there of Smyrna, and they weren't quite as impressive as some of the other cities. I mean, the ruins of Ephesus or the rooms of Pergamum are just amazing.

But, I mean, they're still impressive to think this is a city that there were Christians in in the first century, and they would have walked these streets. You know, the stone streets are there, and some of these buildings that are just partly there, the ruins, they would have maybe walked in and out of these buildings. Well, I decided to give that same sermon here today. So, it's a little different than the way we may usually approach the first Day of Unleavened Bread.

Because when I gave the sermon in Smyrna, I was talking about the Days of Unleavened Bread and something that God was achieving through ancient Israel. And then it made me think about some events that had happened just a few hundred miles from Smyrna during the Middle Ages. And then I thought a lot about what is God doing in the church, and how do these three things combine? How did they combine into one story? That's what we're going to talk about. So, what we're really talking about today is the word theocracy.

Now, we all talk about we live in a country that has a democracy. Actually, we don't entirely. It's a republic. But a democracy, it comes from the Greek. It's a Greek word because democracy formed in ancient Athens, and its people rule. De mo means people. The people rule. Theocracy means God rules. So a theocracy is a form of government in which there are leaders, and there are priests usually, involved in the worship of this God. And of course, the Greeks used it to mean just all the gods.

So a theocracy was where all the gods ruled, but that's not how it was meant in its application, of course, to ancient Israel. It's where the one God rules. I want to look at that. We go back to, and the sermonists sort of set this up, we go back to what God was doing on that Passover when He spared the firstborn of the Israelites and killed the firstborn of all the Egyptians.

And so that they could leave, now they could leave, and they would leave and go out to the Red Sea where they couldn't get across, which we'll be looking at as we get to the end of the Days of Unleavened Bread. And how He had to perform that miracle, opening the Red Sea and taking them out into the desert. And they got out there, and it wasn't the Promised Land.

You know, they were told, God's going to give you a Promised Land. They got through the Red Sea, and they were in the Sinai Desert, and that wasn't the Promised Land. They couldn't even survive. They couldn't even live there. They would die. And they were on a journey to the Promised Land. During that time period where they were taken out of slavery, and they're in this journey, they are learning what it means to live under a theocracy, where God rules over who they are as a people.

Look at Exodus 13. In order to prove this to them, God did a number of things. And this one is very important. And it's very important, a little later in the sermon, as we explain what God is doing even now on the earth. Exodus 13 and verse 21. And the Lord went before them by day in a pillar of cloud to lead the way, and by night in a pillar of fire to give them light, so as to go by day and night.

He did not take away the pillar of cloud by day or the pillar of fire by night from before the people. Interesting. They saw a presence of God. In fact, the Jews have a word for this in Hebrew that literally means the special presence of God. It was this cloud when they built a tabernacle that came down into that tabernacle so that they could see, this is the presence of our God, the presence of the Lord.

Now, they didn't have the word theocracy. That's a Greek word. But they knew God is ruling over them. And God was carrying out a whole line of prophecies given to Abraham about his people would become his nation. And Abraham was a tribe in which God led that tribe by interacting with Abraham and his family. But he kept prophesying that they would become a nation and that nation would have as their ruler God.

You know, most kingdoms of the world, especially at that time, had a tyrant. And the tyrant would say, the gods speak through me. And of course, the gods weren't speaking through them. This was to be different. The very presence of God was to be involved in their nation. And they were to be truly a theocracy. He would go on and they would build a temple or tabernacle at that point. He would create a priesthood. Look at Exodus 19. Exodus 19.

God came and talked to them personally. They heard the voice of God, the one we know as Jesus Christ from Mount Sinai. God was directly interacting with them. Now, God didn't do that with any of the other people on the earth. God didn't do it, you know, where He actually interacted with people, where they could see His presence and they could, in this point, hear His voice.

And He says to them in verse 3, And Moses went up to God. So here we see the presence of God. They see a mountain and that mountain is shaking and it looks like it's on fire. We know at this point we're to what we call the Day of Pentecost. They'd moved across the desert, but they weren't to the Promised Land yet. God was leading them. But now, if they were going to be a nation, if they're going to actually live under theocracy, they have to have laws. They have to have the rules of what the government is, of what their society should be. And He would give them just the fundamental rules of what their society should be. Moses went up to God and the Lord called to him from the mountain, saying, Thus ye shall say to the house of Jacob, and tell the children of Israel, You have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and how I bore you out on eagle's wings, and brought you to Myself. In other words, on eagle's wings was, how did you get here? I destroyed the greatest empire on the earth. I killed tens of thousands of people. I destroyed in a nation. A nation I opened a sea for you to pass through. And every day, as you've been going through this desert, I give you food to eat. So here I am leading you. I am God. But now you're going to have to live under a theocracy, a government in which God rules. He says, Now therefore, if ye will indeed obey my voice and keep my covenant, then ye shall be a special treasure to me above all the people, for all the earth is mine. He says, I'm doing something special here right now that is not happening anyplace else in the world, he tells them. No place else in the world, even though I own the whole world. Remember, God let Satan rule. God never stepped off his throne. The theocracy still exists. It's just where is it being applied? I mean, the kingdom of God didn't go away. It's just not being carried out on this earth right now, except in a limited way. He says, I've come here so that you will become, verse 6, and you shall be to me, God says, a kingdom of priests and a holy nation. These are the words that you shall speak to the children of Israel. So that's exactly what he went back and told them. You are to be a kingdom where God rules, and you are his priests, and you are his kings. Now there would be kings in Israel. There would be a whole class of tribe, a whole tribe that served as a class of priests, but they all had a priesthood. They all were special in this nation because they were the place where God ruled on earth.

This was, in a very limited way, the kingdom of God on earth, because God was ruling in these people.

He's still allowed to have the earth for a while. As I mentioned before, the entire Bible is the story of God just every once in a while sticking his finger in Satan's kingdom to say, no, you don't get to do that. I'm still God. I let you do things, but no, that's it. This doesn't happen. This doesn't happen. This will happen. He just keeps keeping history move along to its final point, to the end that he has in mind, in spite of Satan being the temporary God of this earth. Because God never left his throne. Never. And here he is telling people, a group of people, you are being called by me to be my kingdom, to be my people, and to show you I keep doing these miracles, and I'm here, and then they would go build a temple or the tabernacle. God created, then, this covenant, and he said, in this covenant, you are my people, and here's the basis of my laws. Here's the basis of what it means to be and live under my rule. I am the ruler of this kingdom, and here's the basic rules. There are other rules he would give them. Many of them had to do with what it means to be a physical nation, a physical kingdom. But the first ten were spiritual. The first ten were, and that's why chapter 20 is him giving the Ten Commandments. Let's go to chapter 40, Exodus 40. So here we are in this time period where we are going through a rehearsal remembering these events, the events of the Passover, the first days of Unleavened Bread, and Pentecost. Exodus 40, verse 34.

Then the cloud, this is this cloud, the very special presence of God. Then the cloud covered the tabernacle of meaning, and the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle. The glory of the Lord, the special presence, and this is where the Hebrew word comes into play, the special presence of God. This isn't just God saying something should be done. This is the special presence of God on earth, which shows you the limits of Satan's kingdom, right? God comes down whatever he wants and appears whatever he wants and does whatever he wants, because God's still God. We have to remember that, or we can live in fear of Satan's kingdom. Satan's kingdom only exists because God lets it, and when God stops it, it's going to stop. So here, the tabernacle is filled with the special presence of God. You are my people. You are my kingdom. You represent me to the world, and He would tell them over and over again that the prophets would talk about how they represent, as God's people, they represent Him. You represent, in all these kingdoms, you represent me, and you are my people.

But Moses was not able to enter the tabernacle of meeting, verse 35, because the cloud rested upon it, and the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle. And it goes on, and they moved only when the cloud moved. At night, it turned into a pillar of fire, the special presence of God. This is a theocracy. It is a theocracy when God is directly involved in the operations of what's happening on this earth. The problem is, they failed. They were supposed to be a nation dedicated to God.

They would go on, and they would have kings. It wasn't His first intention that they would have kings, but they got into the Promised Land, they had a period of judges, and then they started. We want to have kings, so God gave them kings. And then God let Solomon build the temple. Now, had God abandoned them? No. It's interesting, when Solomon built the temple, he said, this is here for everyone, whatever nation comes, to worship the God of Israel. They should come here to do so. In other words, he was acknowledging that God is still the God of the universe, and they represented His kingdom on earth. And what happened? Second Chronicles, seven. Solomon built the tabernacle. I'm just going through the story. I'm telling you three stories today, because they all connect to each other, and I want you to see the connections.

Second Chronicles, seven. Solomon is dedicating the temple now in Jerusalem, because the capital city is now Jerusalem. It is the capital of the kingdom of Israel, which is supposed to be a theocracy. The kingdom where God rules. This is the kingdom where God rules, is in this theocracy. And Jerusalem has become the capital, and now a temple has been built. And when Solomon had finished praying, fire came down from heaven and consumed the burnt offering and the sacrifices, and the glory of the Lord, the special presence of God, filled the temple. And the priest could not enter the house of the Lord, because the glory of the Lord had filled the Lord's house.

God is still saying to them, generations later, you are my kingdom here. A representation of His kingdom. Satan is still the ruler of the world, but the representation of God's kingdom is right there. This is where I rule. You are my people to show I am God.

But they didn't do it. He kept interacting with them. He kept doing miracles. He kept sending them prophets, priests. Occasionally they'd get a good king. They ended up dividing among themselves into two nations, because they couldn't even get along. Israel, the northern tribes, was destroyed by the Assyrians. And then Babylon came along and took the Jews, Judah, into captivity. And the kingdom, this group of people that were supposed to be the kingdom of God, or representing the kingdom of God, ceased to exist.

But God told them why. And you know the story of why, but let's read it again. Jeremiah 31. Why they had failed.

Jeremiah 31. Why they had failed.

Jeremiah 31 and verse 31. They're taken into captivity. The very special presence of God was there, visible at different times in their history. God kept showing up and saying, you're my representatives. You are my kingdom here. You show that I have a kingdom in heaven. And they failed, and they failed, and they failed.

And then he sent Jeremiah to tell them this. Behold, the days are coming, a future prophecy. Says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah, not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant which they broke, though I was a husband to them, says the Lord. But this is the covenant I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord. I will put my law in their minds and write them in their hearts, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. The problem with the presence of God is that it wasn't enough to inspire most Israelites to live by the kingdom of God.

So he said, I will have to do something in you to make that happen. There are other prophecies which talk about how I will pour out my spirit in those days, and you will be my people. And then there are scriptures about how I will pour out my scripture on all humanity in those days, and they shall be my people, because the kingdom of God is going to eventually fill the earth. But it appears that the kingdom of God failed, but it didn't. The people failed, because the presence of God wasn't enough.

They had a problem. I'm going to talk about another kingdom of God, and I only brought this out because I was in Smyrna at the time, but I think it makes a good point. They failed not because of God. God had come to them. God had led them. God had given them the system by which their kingdom was supposed to operate. God gave them everything. But the kingdom of God can't work with human beings unless human beings are changed. So the presence of God externally wasn't enough. In 1095 AD, most of Europe was Catholic. The Protestant Reformation hadn't taken place yet. There are a few groups that weren't Catholic, but they were persecuted. Christianity had been a group of different competing religions for hundreds of years, and finally, it coagulated into one group with power. And by 1095, they have total power over what is now both Western and Eastern Europe.

They had a concept in which they called the church and where all Christians were, who were part of the Catholic Church. They were Christendom, Christ's kingdom. They were the kingdom of Christ on earth, and they talked about how God's going to reign on earth by sending Christ. And Christ is now on earth working in the church, Christendom.

There was also an interesting thing that happened at this time period. They started to believe Jesus Christ was coming back soon. They believed in amillennialism, that the time between the millennium is actually not after Christ returns, it's before He returns. And they started to figure it out and said, oh, it's been a thousand years since Christ was here a little more, so He's coming back. But there was a problem. You see, the capital of ancient Israel was Jerusalem. That's when the last time God had a type of kingdom on the earth. And since they were God's kingdom, they had to take Jerusalem back because they didn't own it, the Muslims owned it. So Pope Urban consolidated His power in a very interesting way. He got up and announced to all Christendom, I am the personal representative of God, so I am in charge of Christ's kingdom. That makes every one of you my soldier. Now, they were all different nations. They tend to fight with each other a lot, just like Europe has done for much of its history. And suddenly, He called on every army to come follow Him. And because of the belief that they were Christendom, they did. The kings were losing their power because their armies were leaving them. It is estimated that 100,000 people gathered to go take Jerusalem. They were going to go take Jerusalem so that Jesus Christ could come back to the earth and establish God's kingdom on earth, and they had already prepared it. He had prepared for His return by creating the kingdom. The kingdom was here. So let's go get there and wait for Jesus to come. The first group that started out were tens of thousands. Most of them weren't soldiers. They were mainly women, children, peasants, and priests. They got into modern-day Turkey, which was Asia Minor at the time, which was controlled by Muslims, and they slaughtered them. They slaughtered those, I mean, they were children and women. They weren't even, most of them weren't even soldiers. So the Muslims destroyed that first army they came across and came into Turkey. So while we were in Smyrna, that's the reason I brought this out in the sermon, that's only a couple hundred miles from here where that happened.

Well, the next army that came were the trained soldiers, and they came across the Bosphorus, and they came into what is modern-day Turkey, and they came across the first Muslim army and defeated it. They came to every Muslim town, fortified town, and defeated it. They marched right into it, and it took them months. And it was tough. They faced starvation. They took more and more casualties. It was terrible. Disease epidemics went through, and the army got smaller and smaller and smaller, but they kept going on. And then they brought Christendom to Jerusalem.

They brought Christendom to Jerusalem, and they realized they had run out of water now. And there was no... the Muslims poisoned all the water systems with any distance from Jerusalem. So in desperation, they attacked the city, breached the walls, went inside, and basically killed everybody they could get their hands on. Jews, Muslims, Christians, it didn't matter. They slaughtered them. Now, there were thousands that got away because they ran out and left the city. But if you stayed in the city, most everybody got killed. Then they mutilated their bodies because they found out that some of the Muslims were swallowing their gold and silver, hoping to retrieve it later, so they would mutilate the bodies to get the gold and silver out. And so, in this sea of blood, just in Jerusalem, they now gathered around, bloodied, wounded, and Jesus didn't return because it never was the kingdom of God. That was a lie. That violent travesty was actually against God. Christendom didn't exist. So the first time we have a kingdom of God on the earth, to put it in a... once again, very limited way... Israel, because they are the representatives, they are the kingdom. I will make you a kingdom, and there you are. You're a country, you're a kingdom. It failed because of the people. The second attempt to create Jerusalem as a capital failed because it never was of God. It never was of God. It was a complete fake. And those... the crusaders suffered terribly because they believed it. They were there because they've been told if they died in battle, all their sins would be forgiven. Which I wondered, what's that have to... now what have we done to Jesus Christ? You have to go die in battle? But the whole thing was just anti-God, anti-Christ. But it was the... it was Christendom.

There is a theocracy still because God never left Israel.

The first Christians in Asia Minor didn't see themselves as a nation with land. You know, the first Christians that were in Judea would have thought themselves, we're the people of God, and this is our land. But as the church spread out, they didn't have land. They had laws, but they didn't have land. They didn't... they weren't a nation. They were just a people. They didn't see themselves as Christendom with a sword, and that's what makes the... what the Christians went through in the first century so interesting. Never once did they fight back when they were being attacked for being followers of Jesus. Not once. Well, you find a case where they fought... now they... they hid. You know, I mean, they didn't... they wouldn't hit at times, but they never drew the sword to fight back, but, okay, I'm going to fight back because you're attacking me, because they weren't a kingdom. They didn't take up the sword to fight the Roman Empire. The Jews fought back. The Jews revolted numerous times, 70 AD, 117 AD, 130 AD. They kept revolting, because why? Well, they're a kingdom. They're a people. They're a nation. The Christians did not. They weren't a nation.

John 2. When Jesus conducted the Passover service, and you all heard it read, and he said, this is the new covenant. The first covenant, the Sinai covenant, which much of it still applies today, not all of it. You know why it doesn't? The parts that don't apply today? Because we're not a nation, and we don't have a Levitical priesthood. The moral law still applies, but the parts that apply to them as a kingdom, with the presence of God there for them to see, to inspire them, that's not what's happening right now. Now, that's why some people say, well, you don't have to keep these holy days. That's all part of the old covenant. Well, it's part of the new covenant, too. In fact, there is no better way to understand the work of God through Jesus Christ than through the Passover, Days of Unleavened bread, Pentecost, Feast of Trumpets, Day of Atonement, Feast of Tabernacles, and that eighth day. That is the gospel. The gospel is contained in the Holy Days, and there's no better way to celebrate the resurrection of Jesus Christ than coming to church every Sabbath on the day He was resurrected. So Easter is meaningless. Meaningless. We know when He was resurrected.

John 2, verse 13. Now, the Passover of the Jews was at hand. This is something that happened right before that last Passover. Well, I'm sorry. This happened. There were a couple of different occasions here, so this one wasn't exactly at that time. And He founded the temple, those who sold oxen and sheep and doves, and the money changers doing business. Well, He made a whip of cords. He drove them out of the temple with the sheep and oxen and poured out the money and overturned the tables. He said to those who sold doves, take these things away. Do not make my father's house a house of merchandise. And then His disciples remembered, and it was written, this is a quote from the Old Testament, zeal for your house has eaten me up. So the Jews answered and said to Him, What sign do you show us that you do these things? What right do you have to do this? You have to show us why you have the right to do this. And Jesus answered and said to them, Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up. The Jews said, It's taken 46 years to build this temple. Here's temple was remodeling of the rebel temple. It took 46 years to remodel. That thing was much bigger. And you will raise it up in three days. But He was speaking of the temple of His body. Therefore, when He had risen from the dead, His disciples remembered that He had said this to them and they believed the scripture and the word which Jesus had said. He brought a whole new concept to what the temple was. What they saw the temple was as either a tent or a building in which the presence of God appeared. He says, I am the temple. I am the presence of God. I am it! This was a whole new concept of the temple. No, the temple is a building. That's why Judaism requires land. It requires a Levitical priesthood. It requires some kind of temple. That's why for all these thousands of years, Jews say, you know, there's a saying among Jews next year in Jerusalem. Next year in the capital, we can be the kingdom again. Well, we can be in the land and have the temple. Jesus said, I am the temple. I'm the very special presence of God on earth right now.

He was changing everything in terms of an understanding of how God's kingdom interacts with humanity in this time under Satan's rule. God keeps interacting. God keeps doing His plan.

When Jesus was brought before Pontius Pilate, let's now go a little farther in this story. John 18, verse 33. Then Pilate entered the Praetorium again, and called Jesus and said to him, Are you the king of the Jews? And Jesus answered him, Are you speaking for yourself about this, or did others tell you this concerning me? He said, Do you think I'm a king, or did somebody else tell you I'm a king? And Pilate answered, Am I a Jew? You people are nuts. You're the craziest religion in the empire. I can't figure out anything you believe. So, you know, don't ask me a question because I don't know the answer. Your own nation and the chief priest have delivered you to me. What have you done? Of course, what he was looking for, what have you done against Rome? He didn't care what he'd done against Judaism. He was there to enforce the laws of Rome. And Jesus answered, Yes, I am a king. Pilate therefore said to him, Are you a king then? He said, You say rightly that I am a king. For this cause I was born, for this cause I have come into the world, that I should bear witness to the truth, and everyone who is of the truth hears my voice. And Pilate, probably the sarcastic man who had lived a hard life as a Roman soldier, and now was trying to rule over a part of the empire that was known as constantly being rebellious. I could just see almost improbably tired, like a tired man. What is truth? Explain to me what that even means. And when he had said this, he went out and said to the Jews, I find no fault in him. He's just a crazy prophet. He's one of your prophets. He says he's a king of a spiritual kingdom, whatever that is, but he's no threat to Rome. Rome is in the here and now. He's no threat to Rome. Jesus says there is a Christendom in which he rules over, but he said you have to understand it's not on earth right now. It's in heaven. But remember, God's theocracy never ended. There's always someplace where God is interacting. There is always someplace where God is carrying out, planting the seeds, making sure his kingdom, the work of his kingdom, continues to go on.

And that's where we get into the New Testament, where this gets expanded out and out to more and more concepts. On Pentecost, we celebrate the time when the very special presence of God, fire from heaven, just like the Israelites saw fire in the wilderness, they saw smoke and fire. At the time of Solomon, fire, visible presence of God came. But this one was different. It didn't stay in the temple. It went into the people who were there. The same presence of God that was in that pillar of fire and that pillar of cloud, that same presence of God is now in those who were called to be part of his kingdom now, today. But it's not outward, it's inward. And that's what we celebrate at Pentecost.

God's no longer working through the Jews or the Israelites to say, this is how my kingdom is supposed to work. He's not doing that anymore. He stopped doing that a long time ago. What he's working through are people that he gathers from all nations and says, now, you're going to be my representatives on earth. You're going to be my people. This is who you're going to be. And I'm going to fix what was wrong with the first one by giving you my presence, not externally, but internally, so that real change can take place. The same power, the cloud and a pillar of fire that held back the Egyptian army and opened the Red Sea, that's the same spirit, the special presence of God that is given to us at baptism.

We just don't know it enough to live it enough, because it's there.

It's there.

Ephesians 2. Is there a Christendom today? Yes, but its ruler is still in heaven. Its citizens are here today, and that's why we don't have any real power. You know, we can't set up nations and take down nations. That's why we don't form a voting bloc that tries to put people and power in our country, a democracy, because we are living under a theocracy. Our king just happens to live where you can't see him, but we know him, and we know our Father. Why? Because they're in here. The presence of God is in us. That's what the Holy Spirit is. It's the very special presence of God. It's in us.

And so, Christendom does exist, but not in a way anybody has tried to force it to happen on earth. There's going to be a new attempt to create Christendom in the future. It happens on a regular basis. Part of what the Beast Power is going to do is a new attempt to create a new kind of Christendom, and it will fail. Ephesians 2, verse 19. I did that series, 12-part series on Ephesians. Now I'm getting into Romans to go through some of this very important, deep information that Paul wrote about in trying to explain to people, Jews and Gentiles, you don't understand. You are now the nation of God. Peter would try to teach them. Peter would say, you're a nation that really shouldn't even be a nation. A nation that wasn't a nation, but you are. You're a people that shouldn't be a people, but you are. Why? Because Christ already sits on a throne, by the way. Now we get these examples of viewing Christ in heaven, and the Father sitting on a throne, and He's sitting at His right hand on what? A throne. The kingdom of God is there, and He's sowing the seeds to bring it here, which we will celebrate on the Feast of Trumpets. So, we are the nation of God. Not a powerful nation, are we? We don't have a lot of economic power. We don't have any political power, but that's who we are. That's who we are. That's who we're supposed to be. Ephesians 2, verse 19. Ephesians 2, 19. Now, therefore, this is interesting, because when I went through this Bible sentence, I showed you how this whole Ephesians 1 and 2 is about predestination. And what Calvin and most Augustine taught about predestination is wrong. When you look at what Paul talks about predestination, it has to do when God calls somebody. And through the Ephesians, he writes, don't you understand? It doesn't matter that you're not Israelites. You're called. You were predestined to be called down. It's the next step in what God is doing.

He calls all kinds of people into the people of God, the nation of God, the people who are learning to be citizens of the kingdom of God. We're called citizens, by Paul. Citizens of the kingdom. It's just we're not, it's not here yet, except in the work that God is doing. And he tells them in these first two chapters what it means now to be part of the church. So we can apply this to what are our background? Israelite, non-Israelite, Jew, you know, Greek. Not too many Greeks, because Greek-beck, in the Bible when they say Greek they just mean citizens of the Roman Empire. You know, they're all Greek citizens of the Roman Empire because they had a Greek culture. This is everybody. He says, verse 19, now therefore you are no longer strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens. All the kingdom must exist in heaven or we can't be citizens. Fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, having been built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ Himself being the chief cornerstone, we're back to who is the temple.

And Paul actually says, well, actually you are. The special presence of God is in the temple, and you're the temple. He doesn't need a temple. They're going to build a temple over in Jerusalem. Don't be deceived by that. That somehow that's where God's going to be working, because it's not. God works in His temple now, which is the church, because that's where the very special presence of God is. So don't be deceived by this temple over there. We know it's going to happen, but it won't be where God's doing great things.

And I fear sometimes we're going to have people get so caught up in that they're going to support it. He says, "...in whom the whole building, being fit together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord." So we know there's a temple, and the special presence of God filled the temple, and that means the special presence of God fills us. "...in whom you also are being built together..." For what? "...a dwelling place of God in the Spirit." They called the temple in the Old Testament the house of God. The church is called the house of God. It's where He lives. Oh, that's a big one. We'll talk about that on Pentecost. It's where He lives.

Jerusalem is going to be the capital of that kingdom. As we know in Revelation, it says that's where Christ comes to set up the kingdom and His government. We'll talk about that on Trumpets. Because it all fits what he's doing. But understand, between now and Pentecost, we have the Passover, the new step in how God is creating His kingdom. Now, by the way, that doesn't mean God threw away all the Jews and Israelites. They're all gathered together. The physical Israelites are still gathered together when Christ comes back to serve Him. That's prophesied. So He didn't throw them all away. That's not the issue. The issue, what is the church now? It's peoples from all over the place. To be the holy temple of God, where Christ rules us, God's Spirit is in us, and God is our Father. And we live by the rules, the laws, the values, the standards of that kingdom.

We can't let the rules and laws and standards of this world take us away from what we are. We are the house of God. That's why, as we mentioned in the sermonette, it's not just taking out the leavening. We did that. Why do we eat unleavened bread? Because it pictures Christ coming into us. What happens when Christ comes into us? The special presence of God comes into us, and we become the temple. We are now the nation, the kingdom on earth that represents Jesus, that represents our Father, the kingdom of God. It's not here, except in a very limited way, just like it was with ancient Israel. But don't let the world and the troubles of the world, or just the issues of life, take us away from this foundational understanding that we are taking in Christ every day, because in doing so, we are the temple of God. All I've done is taken Passover and Days of Unleavened Bread and Pentecost and put them together. That's all I've done. And then pictured us towards the fall holy days. Since the first humans were thrown out of Eden, God has allowed Satan to be the God of this age. But there's always a place where he's ruling on this earth. There's always somebody somewhere that God is ruling in, that God says, this, this person is a citizen of my kingdom. He's on this earth, but he doesn't belong here. She doesn't belong here. They're citizens of my kingdom. And you and I have been called to be that now. We've thrown the leaven out. Let's live like unleavened people. We've thrown it out. Let's live like unleavened people.

We've accepted the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. We're free from that penalty of sin unless we go back and become reprobates. We're free from that, even though we still sin and we still struggle. So let's live like people who aren't going back to Egypt, which is really what the days of the Olive and Bread are all about. Living like people that aren't going back because they kept trying to go back. But you're the kingdom of God on earth. You represent me. Oh, it was much better. The food was better. The food was better there.

We can't go back. We move forward.

We've looked at these three examples. Israel had failed because the presence of God was exterior. The Christendom of the Middle Ages that had failed because it wasn't Christendom at all. It was a fake, fake Christendom. And the church where God says, you are now my nation. You are now my people. And that's who we are. And that is incredible. And if we can truly understand that, truly understand that, between now and the next Passover, our lives will continue to go through dramatic, positive changes. Because the very presence of God is in us.