The Temple of God

Good to be with you today. You get another errand today. Errand Creech is up in Reno. I called him a couple weeks ago and told him I wanted to come out and see my grandkids and my daughter and son-in-law, so he decided to go up and spend the day in Reno and let me handle things here. For those of you who are new in the church, I spent my whole life in the church from the time I was my granddaughter's age now. And all my schooling was in Imperial schools and Ambassador College, all the church schools, and then I worked with Mr. Armstrong the last 12 years of his life as his assistant and did all the set-up for all the international things. Went to the Ambassador College, ended up teaching at Ambassador College until it closed, and then when it closed, I went into private business for a few years and then got asked by Danny Luger to come up and be with the United, be treasurer for United. So I did that and then ended up being international rep because they had some problems overseas that Vic Cubic wanted me to solve for him. And having known all the people overseas and also knowing a lot of the heads of state, it's a lot easier to work overseas when you know people at the top offices. There's a lot less bribery if you know people. So I started doing that and it was interesting to watch the church grow, to watch the split-offs to see what happened after Mr. Armstrong died, and to watch the various people that started different churches and you know, you look at that and wonder why God did what he did. But today I want to talk a little bit about something that I like using my glasses to see people out there, but I'm getting farsighted so I can see things close now easier. In 1984, a group of Orthodox Jews came to Pasadena. There were three of them and they ended up at his house. I don't know who sent him there or how they figured out where he lived. But I was up there with him. It was a Sunday morning and they were knocking on the door. I entered the door and these three Orthodox Jews were their curls and their black hair and their formal garb and everything were outside there and they asked if they could speak to Mr. Armstrong. I said, well, let me check and see. So I went back and told Mr. Armstrong that these people were out there and did he want to see them? I said, what do they want? I said, I'm not really sure, but they're definitely Jewish people that know about you or they wouldn't be asking for you. And so he said, okay, so they came into the house, sat in the living room and were talking and they wanted to discuss building the temple in Jerusalem.

Because you see, the Messiah has to come to a temple. And if there is no temple, how's the Messiah going to come? And of course, being Jewish, they don't believe Christ's first coming was the Messiah. And so they're trying to put a temple together to make way for the Messiah to return. It's really important to them to have the Messiah. Then they knew Mr. Armstrong had helped in Israel. We had a number of projects there. We helped with the Cultural Center for Youth. We helped with the dig and the excavation of the City of David and a number of other projects there.

And so they thought Mr. Armstrong would, you know, being a minister and teaching about Christ would want to help.

And Mr. Armstrong, he didn't choose to help them with this. This wasn't something the church would be involved with in that sense. But they told him they had the red heifer already. They had already bred that. They had the gold instruments. They had the silver instruments. They had all the accoutrements to be able to offer the sacrifices and be ready for Christ the Messiah to come.

And so they're ready for it. There's always been a fascination in Jerusalem for the temple.

And why do they need that? Turn to Isaiah 56 verse 7. If you want to fill in your notes for Mr. Tuck, it was 1 Corinthians 1, 26. You can put that in your notes there. All of us miss him once in a while. It's always fun. His wife's not here to tell him today, I guess, unless she's hiding somewhere else. Her wife always tells you all the things you do wrong. So, but a good scripture. And in there's so many scriptures, so many prophecies about the temple and about the becoming of the Messiah, etc. Isaiah 56 verse 7, he says, even then I will bring to my holy mountain. And make them joyful in my house of prayer. Their burnt offerings and their sacrifices shall be accepted upon mine altar, for my house shall be called a house of prayer for all people.

So the Jews read all these scriptures in the Old Testament, and they said, well, there has to be a temple and altar. It has to be there for him to come. Turning over a few pages to chapter 60 of Isaiah, verse 7, he says, all the flocks of Kedar shall be gathered together unto the rams of Nibla, shall be ministered unto you. They shall come up with acceptance on mine altar, and I will glorify the house of my glory. In verse 20, they shall bring all your brethren for an offering to the Lord for all the nations upon horses and in chariots and in litters upon mules upon swift beast to my holy mountain Jerusalem, says the Lord of the children of Israel, bringing an offering into clean vessels into the house of the Eternal.

Verse 21, and I will also take for them for priests and for Levites, says the Lord, for us the new heavens and the new earth which I will make shall remain for me, says the Lord, and you shall seed and your name shall remain. They read these scriptures and others, and they said, well, there's got to be a temple for Christ to come back to. And these three men that came, they had traced their Levitical ancestry back to the priesthood. They were actually people that could be priests in the temple, and they wanted to build it.

There have been a lot of grand and glorious buildings built throughout history, but I don't think there were any as great as Solomon's Temple. Even Christ referred to Solomon and his glory in the temple and the various things. Of course, it was totally destroyed, so we don't really know. It would probably remain as one of the wonders of the world had it been able to continue and not be destroyed. And yet it was. I'm going to take a look at the temple. Turn to 1 Chronicles 22, if you would. From the time of Israel's departure in Egypt, they had carried the Ark of the Covenant and things in a tent, and they'd pitched the tent, and they'd move when the cloud moved. But there's never a place that they could actually plant it and keep it in one spot until the time of David and Solomon. And David was a man who had zeal for God and wanted to build the temple. And in 1 Chronicles 22, David, of course, wanted to build the thing. He prepared lots of things for the temple. But in verse 5, David said, Solomon, my son is young and tender, and the house to be built for the Lord is to be highly magnificent. For a name and for the beauty to all the lands, I will now prepare for it. And he prepared abundantly for it. And he called Solomon his son in and told him to build the house for the Lord.

He said in verse 7, David said to Solomon, my son, for me it was in my mind to build a house to the name of the Lord my God. But the word of the Lord came to me, saying, You have shed much blood, and have made great wars. You shall not build a house to my name, because you have shed so much blood on the earth and my sight. Now, again, God used him to enlarge the borders and to keep a lot of the promises and things that he had made to Abraham, etc. So God had him do these things. He was a man after God's own heart. But in verse 9, God had told him, Behold, his son shall be born to you, who shall be a man of rest. And I will give him rest from all his enemies all around, for his name shall be Solomon. And I will give peace and quietness to Israel in his days. And he shall build a house for my name, and he shall be my son. And I will be his father, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom of Israel forever. You need rest. You need peace.

If you look at the nations of the world, every time there's a war, things get destroyed, you start over and start over. You need rest and peace to be able to build something that's lasting. And unfortunately, in this world, we've had very little rest and peace in the 6,000 years that mankind has been in here.

But David, he wants Solomon to follow God. In verse 12, he says, only may the Lord give you wisdom and understanding and direct you concerning Israel, so that you may keep the law of the Lord your God. To keep that law. Then you shall prosper if you heed to fulfill the statutes and judgments which the Lord God charged Moses. They had set up the government with the laws of God. You cannot peace without the same set of laws.

Laws are important. I gave a sermon on laws once because you can't have two different laws side by side. You know, if you decide, well, I don't obey the law, I'm going to go the opposite way on the freeway, you have chaos. You can't have Islamic law, which says you can kill people next to a law that says you can't kill people. You can't have laws that disagree and have peace. And so he wants him to keep the law of Moses and the law that God gave. And he says he prepared for the temple. He wasn't allowed to build it, but he loved God so much. He says in verse 14, In my trouble I have prepared for the house of the Lord a hundred thousand talents of gold. Now talent is 300 shekels, which is about six to seven pounds of gold. And so really what he put together was about 350 tons of gold. That's a lot of gold. You're talking about 16 to 20 billion dollars worth of gold in today's value. And a million talents of silver, about 33,500 tons of silver, and bronze and iron without weight in abundance. And prepared timber and stone. And Solomon, you're going to add to them. This will be a trillion dollar building today.

And he made many workmen and cutters and workers and stones for the timber, skilled men for every kind of work. Cedars 11 and all the things. And he describes the temple. It's an incredible description. I'm not going to read it all. And Queen of Sheba visited, and she gave Solomon about six and a half tons of gold for the temple. There was so many things in preparation for it. David, chapter 23, was old. And made Solomon king. He died. And he numbers the Levites and talks about in chapter 23, verses 1 and 2 and 3. So verse 2, he gathered the rulers of Israel, the priests of Levites, and they numbered them. 38,000. Verse 4, 24,000, set to work on the house of the Lord. 6,000 officers and judges. 4,000 were gatekeepers. 4,000 praised the Lord with instruments and made for singing. A choir of 4,000 to sing while this is being built. That's how it was put together, a major thing.

We know when it was built. In 1 Kings, if you go to 1 Kings, chapter 6, we'll skip over to there, from Chronicles, a parallel account of what happened. In 1 Kings 6, verse 1, it happened, the 480th year after Israel came out of the land of Egypt. In the fourth year of Solomon's reign, which the second month, he began to build the house of the Eternal. So we know exactly when he began to build it, 480 years after the Exodus. In 1 Kings, chapter 6, he talks about the height and the porch and the temple, things like that. It says, the lowest story was five cubics broad, the middle was six cubics broad, the third was seven cubics broad. For around the house, outside of the house, he made narrow ledges for the house all around, so as not to lay hold on the walls of the house. It's the holy of holies he was building, and they put a ledge there so you couldn't touch it. Remember the sons of Aaron that did things wrong and were killed? It was a holy place, and he wanted to make sure there was room for people to walk around it so they wouldn't touch it. Verse 7 is one of the most critical verses, I think, in the Bible when he was talking about the temple. In 1 Kings 6 verse 7 it says, when the temple was being built, the house was built of stone made ready beforehand, and there was not heard in the house a hammer or an axe or any iron tool while it was being built. No noise in the house as it was being built, built off site. God says to Solomon in verse 11, it says, the word of the Lord came to Solomon. Verse 12, to this house which you are building, if you will walk in my statutes and do my judgments and keep all my commandments to walk in them, I will perform my work with you, which I spoke to David your father, and I will live among the sons of Israel, and for not forsake my people Israel. God has always wanted a relationship with his people. He wanted to be with Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. He wanted a relationship with them, but sin cuts us off from God. With Adam and Eve's sin, they were cut off, and God wanted to be with Israel. Verse 14, Solomon built the house and finished it. It talks about the house that describes it in the next 30 verses or so, how high it was, how big it was. It talks about him carving out of olive wood, the immense things that he did with it. And he overlaid everything he built with gold.

Verse 22, it's the overlay of the whole house with gold until he had finished it. All of the altars belonged to the holy of holies he overlaid with gold. The carobs of olive wood, which were 10 cubits high. You're talking about 15 to 20 feet high, overlaid with gold, carved out of olive wood. Have you ever tried to carve olive wood? It's one of the hardest woods on earth. It's amazing and hard to carve. But the ornateness of that, and God guided the people doing those things. The carobs were overlaid with gold. The walls were overlaid with gold. The floor of the house, verse 30, was overlaid with gold. So you didn't see any stone. It was all overlaid with wood and then overlaid with gold. The doors were of olive wood, carved with carobs and palm trees. Again, overlay with gold, verse 32. And it tells us in verse 38, in the 11th year, in the month of Boa, which is the eighth month, the house was finished, as to all its parts and all its plans, seven years in the building, with thousands of people working on it, off-site, carrying them in, and putting it together, all delicately crafted and fitted, put together. Fabulous! It was so fabulous that the kings of the earth and the queens wanted to come see it, and to hear of Solomon's wisdom, and to see the magnificence of the city he built at a time of peace.

2 Chronicles 9 talks about the queen of Sheba saying that it was more exceedingly better than anything she was told. And she didn't believe what she was told because it sounded like exaggerations, so much so that she left jewels and gold and things for Solomon and the temple. But, as always, Israel rebelled. They didn't keep the law of God. The if, one of the biggest words in the Bible, they didn't do. So the temple was destroyed. It was ransacked several times. They used the gold in it to pay off different tribute holders. Egypt came up with free of all and took the gold out, and others. The Assyrians came and ransacked most of Israel and Judah at a time. But finally, the Babylonians, between 604 and 585 BC, finally destroyed the temple, Jerusalem, and burned it to the ground. There's nothing there that had to hurt the priests and Levites who knew that there had to be a temple for the Messiah to come. They knew the prophecies of the Messiah. But there was a prophecy that said that Cyrus would be born. It was prophesied in Isaiah 44, verse 28. I'll read that to you. You can write down the reference and look it up if you want. But relating the prophecies about the future, God says, and Isaiah wrote 150 years after Israel was captive and during Judah's reign. So we still have the Babylonian empire to come before Cyrus and the Persians would come. But it says, he says of Cyrus, he is my shepherd, he shall perform my pleasure, even to Jerusalem you shall be built, and to the temple your foundation shall be laid. This would be like me saying, well 200 years from now this building over here that was destroyed. Another country is going to come. I mean the prophecy is amazing that God laid out. In Ezra chapter 6 it talks about Cyrus. This came to pass. Ezra written a couple hundred years after Isaiah. Darius derised made a decree in verse 1 and verse 3 of chapter 6 of Ezra. It says, in the first year of Cyrus the king, the same Cyrus the king made a decree concerning the house of God at Jerusalem. Let the house be built, the place where they offered sacrifices. Let the foundations be strongly laid, the height thereof of three-square cubits, the breadth of three-square cubits, and they knew the size. Verse 5 also let the golden vessels and silver of the house of God, which Nebuchadnezzar took out of the temple, be brought to Babylon, restored, brought again to the temple at Jerusalem, everyone to its place, to place them in the house of God. Wow! It was great! They're gonna have a temple again. The Messiah could come. But Haggai chapter 2 tells us about that temple. Remember we had 350 tons from David and tons of gold from Solomon and the queen of Sheber. They didn't have that kind of money and wealth to build it in the time of Haggai. Haggai 2. I'll read a bit in verse 3. It says, Who has left among you that saw this house in her first glory?

How do you see it now? Is it not in your eyes? It's a comparison. It's nothing.

It wasn't near as pretty.

Be now strong, Zerobel, says the Lord. Be strong, Joshua, son of Joseph, the high priest, and be strong, all you people, says the Lord. For I am with you. It may not look as pretty. It may not have the wealth. But I'm here. I'm building it.

I got 2 verse 7. I will shake the nations. The desire of all nations shall come, and I will fill this house with glory, says the Lord of hosts. And they're looking at what they don't have. The silver is mine. The gold is mine, says the Lord of hosts. The glory of this latter house shall be greater than that of the former, says the Lord of hosts. And in this place will I give peace, says the Lord of hosts.

It's interesting that the men returning to build the temple, what Isaiah had prophesied, would come, but it was not quite what they expected, not in the way that they expected it. And why would all the nations come and see this temple that's not as nice as the first one? And yet all the nations are going to come to it, and it's going to be a house of glory.

They didn't necessarily understand those scriptures in Isaiah, but that wasn't what the fulfillment was about. In this second temple itself, spelling disrepair from the time it was rebuilt until the time of Herod, Josephus quotes several historians about that. He talks of Antiochus Epiphanes, who described the temple that was desecrated with swine offered in the altar. And the Jews had to witness that. The Maccabees came at this time, and they had some success in restoring the temple. Again, we have to have a temple. The Messiah has got to come. And they knew the prophecies—70 weeks' prophecy and others—they knew roughly the time that Christ was going to come.

They didn't know that He was coming twice. They thought He was coming to raise the Israelites and to rule the world. But that wasn't what they understood. But they didn't know they needed a temple. And so it seemed there could be no hope for a Messiah if they didn't have a temple. So they were constantly trying to keep up the temple. The general consul of Rome, Pompeii, in 63 BC, fought the Jews and took down the wall of the temple.

He inspected the gold and silver at that time, but he didn't take it. The Jews had to think, wow, this is a miracle. They came and didn't steal all the gold and stuff. But General Krauss's, to fight the Parthians a few years later, he stripped the temple to pay for his war. The high priest negotiated a beam from the temple that was of gold to be worth tens of thousands of shekels.

He said, we'll give you that if you just leave the rest. And he said, thank you, and took it, and then took the rest as well. So the temple stripped, and it was in distress prayer. It was poor, with little and no treasury, and how can the Messiah come to something so poor? Now it came time for the Messiah to come, for the Son of Man. The temple He would come to would be known as Herod's temple. And Herod's temple was special. Herod wanted to win the people over. He was a terrible, evil man. He killed his own relatives that he thought might try to take over from him. He did lots of cruel things.

But he said that he wanted to build a temple to win the people over and restore the temple. Josephus actually writes and says that Herod was going to tear down the temple. And the Jews were very upset because, wait a minute, what little temple we have left, you're going to tear it down, and you're so cruel that you're probably not going to rebuild it.

You're probably just going to tear it down. They were so afraid of that. But in his best interest, because he wanted to calm these people, he did begin building a temple, restoring it in 20 BC.

He hired 10,000 skilled workmen, 1,000 priestess masons, and 1,000 wagons and oxen to haul stones. Josephus says all these things. Josephus talks about some of the stones. He says the stones, some of them, he says the size of them, 40 cubits long, 6 cubits high, which would be about 20 meters by 3 meters, or 60 feet by 9 feet by 12 feet. That's a big stone. 60 feet, you're probably from the length of here back to there, go up 12 feet and 9 feet wide.

That's a big stone, cut out of calcium. Not every stone was the same size. The largest complete stone they found in the wreckage from Herod's thing is 12 meters by 3 meters by 4 meters, or 36 by 9 by 12. It's the largest they've found, and it weighed 400 tons, and it was cut off site and hauled into the temple.

These blocks that he put the temple together with, they didn't use mortar to put it together. They were three stones deep. Josephus says you couldn't slide a sheet of paper between the stones. They were cut so smoothly. It's amazing. Again, the outer wall was three blocks thick. Each block bore heritage trademarks and etching around the stone about four inches wide. I dug in Jerusalem and found some of those stones there. The city of Jerash in Jordan is built up of stones hauled from Jerusalem. They had to cut them up. They were so big to build Jerash.

The foundation was 20 meters or 60 feet wide below ground. Josephus says the highest point of the wall was 450 feet tall, and iron clamps were put inside to hold it together. So they built a foundation and retaining wall to be able to hold back the dirt to build on top of it. Temple had four courts, each ascending up to the Holy of Holies, where only the high priests could go.

And then they had the court where the Israelites could go, the Jews, and the courts where the Gentiles would be outside. Temple was proper. The temper itself was completed in one and a half years. Josephus said during the time they were completing the actual temple, after they had finished the walls and the outside, he says it did not rain during the day but only at night. So the work could be completed. Again, this had to be a miracle for the Jews to think, wow, it's not raining in the daytime, only at night we can finish the temple, the Messiah can come. It had to give hope to them. How many times do we see miracles that give us hope and God? The Roman Tacitus describes the temple as possessing enormous riches. Once they rebuilt it, it was so beautiful. And, of course, the Jews only had one God, so you could concentrate the wealth. All the other people had so many gods, it kind of got spread pretty thin.

How did Jesus look at the temple? He looked at it with respect and with zeal. It represented God. It represented His Father's house. As a boy, when Jesus got separated from His family, where was He? At the temple. As a young boy.

Satan, when he tempted Jesus, took him up to the pinnacle of the temple, so he could look over the temple in Jerusalem itself. He told him, if you be the Son of God, cash yourself down, because the angels will give charge concerning you.

And Christ answered back and said, you shall not tempt the Lord your God.

All the Gospels record the money changers in the temple, how Christ went in there with zeal and tore down the money tables, turned over the temples. They were selling things and making merchandise to the temple. They'd tell people that their offering wasn't good enough. You need to buy one of my sheep and doing all sorts of wrong things. And He told His disciples there, they remember reading the Scripture, the zeal of your house has eaten me up. And it was. He had zeal for the house.

Christ also told them my house should be a house of prayer when people were doing the merchandise.

And He taught daily in the temple when He was there. God's Word, expounding it to Him.

It was a place of learning, a place of worship.

When He taught there, they didn't like what He said, but they didn't take Him because it wasn't His time yet. In Luke 21, verse 5, He made some statements about the temple, which are remarkable, statements that His disciples didn't understand.

This is after the story of the widow giving her might in the treasury. He's talking to His disciples in Luke 21, verse 5. He says, As some spoke of the temple, how was adorned with goodly stones and gifts, He said. Verse 6, As for these things which you behold, the day will come, in the which there shall not be one stone left upon another, that shall not be thrown down.

Now, you're a disciple. I just described the stone from this wall to that wall, from the edge of the door to there, weighing, you know, 400 tons. And they're three deep, and Christ is saying, not one stone is going to be left on another.

You'd have to be thinking, you've got to be kidding. You know, people siege a city, they break down a section of the wall, and they go in and loot it and stuff. They don't tear all the walls down and carry everything away. How could this be? How could they possibly believe what He was saying? And what did it mean? To be torn down.

And Jesus wept for the temple, and what it represented was God's house. The disciples' view of the temple was very similar. After Jesus' death in Luke 24, verse 51, it says, it came to pass. He blessed them. He parted from them and carried up into heaven. And they continued in the temple, praising and blessing God. So they were at the temple. That's where God's house was. Acts 2, Peter's sermon, says they were continuing daily in the temple, preaching. And they remembered what Christ said about the temple. In John 2, verse 19-22, Jesus talks about what would happen to the temple. And I don't think they believed Him, because it didn't seem possible. It didn't make any sense to them. John 2, verse 19, Jesus answered and said to them, destroy this temple and in three days I'll raise it up.

Then the Jews said, 46 years this was in the making, and you'll build it in three days? These massive stones, all these walls, the gold, everything, that can't be.

But He spoke of the temple of His body. Verse 22, when therefore He was risen from the dead, the disciples remembered that He had said this to them, and they believed the Scriptures.

After He was resurrected, they believed it. They didn't believe it at the time. They didn't understand. They didn't have God's Holy Spirit. They didn't understand all the things He was saying. But after the fact, we were given God's Spirit so we can understand that. Christ's body was the temple He spoke of. That was where God's Spirit was. In Him as the Son of God. Jesus Christ never sinned. There was no noise in His temple. When we sin, we put noise in the temple. God doesn't want noise in the temple. Christ had no noise in His temple.

We are also the temple of God when we have the Holy Spirit in us. Turn to John 4, if you would, verse 23. God's Spirit is in us. We are that temple. A physical temple is not where you have to worship. In the book of Acts, persecution came. They were staying there in the temple. Actually, the persecution is what drove them to Anak and drove them to other parts of the world because God was showing you didn't have to be in the physical temple to worship. In John 4, verse 23. This is after the woman in the well. When she said, give me the water, he said, you'll never thirst or drink this water. Verse 23, it says, but the hour comes, and now is, when true worshipers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth, for the Father seeks such to worship Him. God is a spirit, and they that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth. You see, was God really concerned about the gold and the silver that David and Solomon amassed to build the temple? In the ornate artwork and the carvings, was that really what it was? Certainly it was respect. Certainly God knew that, and that they kept His law. It would have stood. But God was more concerned with the character and obedience, the repentance that David had in his heart and mind when he sinned, with worshiping in spirit and truth, instead of the physical characteristics of the temple. You see, the temple is about God and about Jesus Christ and His family.

Turn to 1 Corinthians 3, verse 16, if you would. Because it's about what He's building in you and in me. It's not about the physical buildings and the decaying. They were always being decayed and being rebuilt, being destroyed. We often fall into the mindset of the physical things. We had a beautiful campus in Pasadena, in Texas, in Brookerwood. We had three college campuses. They're all gone. They've all been sold. What are they now? God's not there. When God leaves the temple, He's not there. The building isn't God's at that point. 1 Corinthians 3, 16, know you not that you are the temple of God, that the Spirit of God dwells in you. And you had hands laid on you after baptism. God's Spirit entered you after your repentance. There's no promise in the Bible of anyone getting God's Spirit without repentance. A lot of people have been baptized over the decades. They really didn't repent and never had God's Spirit. Simon Magus was one of them in the book of Acts. There have been a lot of people baptized. But if you have God's Spirit in you, you are the temple of God. Verse 17, if any man defile the temple of God, him shall God destroy. For the temple of God is holy. Which temple you are. You're housing the truth and you're worshiping in Spirit and truth.

While we collectively make up a temple, we individually have a responsibility. Responsibility for ourselves. 1 Corinthians 6, a few pages over where you are.

He talks about that temple a little bit more. 1 Corinthians 6, 19, what? Know you not that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit which is in you, which you have of God, and you are not your own. You're God's special property once you make that covenant with Him. You belong to Him. And unleavened bread, we're putting sin out of our lives because sin is noise. And God doesn't want noise in the temple. For 2,000 years in the church there's been way too much noise in the temple. Way too many splits. Way too many people seeking their own. Many of whom probably never had the Spirit of God. They crept in unawares for whatever reason. Like Simon wanted power. Wanted to be able to lay hands on people and do the miracles. Why? To impress people? To get a following? You're God's property. Verse 20, for you're bought with a price, therefore glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God's. Every part of the temple was special to God, an ornately decorated and covered in gold. Each of you is special to God. Something God saw in you. It's called the week of the world, but there's something in you that He can carve and make beautiful if you worship Him in spirit and truth. If you put the sin out of your life. Turn to 2 Corinthians 6, if you would. A few pages beyond that. Are you seeking the purity in your life, in your action, in your character to be part of the temple? That's why Christ died while we have this Feast of My Lord Bread that's coming up. So there won't be noise in the temple. 2 Corinthians 6, verse 16. What agreement has the temple of God with idols? For you are the temple of the living God. As God has said, I will dwell in them, I will walk in them, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. We're a family. We come from different backgrounds, different places. Verse 17, wherefore come out from among them and be separate, says the Lord, touch not the unclean thing, and I will receive you.

We can't leave this earth, but we can lead the destruction of the mind that it tries to put in our minds all the time. Verse 18, and I'll be a father to you, and you shall be my sons and daughters, says the Lord Almighty. Do we respect each other as sons and daughters, as brothers and sisters? How do we treat our temple, our own body, individually and collectively? Do we show the love and the honor and the humility as Christ did? His temple was destroyed. Satan is trying to destroy our temples, but he was resurrected, and our hope lies in the resurrection. Our sins are forgiven through Christ's blood, but our hope is in the resurrection. We're saved because he was resurrected. We can be resurrected. We can be part of that with him. Remember, there was no noise in Solomon's temple. Is there hammering and chiseling in God's temple? We've had times when there was noise. Is there peace? Are we in a place of learning and teaching?

I've found that those who make destructive noise hinder the teaching, hinder the respect that we have for each other. And it's usually for personal agenda or personal gain. God doesn't want that.

Will you be a noisy stone that God can't use and be rejected, or you'd be part of the household of God? You know, in Ephesians 6, it says, the buildings fitly framed together to be a holy temple to the Lord. He's putting us to pieces together. Parts of Solomon's temple were built off site. That's where those were Herod's. If you look at the church today and the church throughout history, the church is also built off site. We've been hovered and carved off site.

Off site is to location. Off site is to time frame. Part of the temple are the apostles and the prophets. Part of them are the church of God through the centuries, the last 2,000 years. Abraham, Isaac, they're all part of the temple built in a different location at a different time. Built off site to be put together when Christ returns. We rise to meet Him.

We're built on a spiritual house. 1 Peter 2, verse 5. If you turn there, if we don't perfectly fit together, we won't be there. It will be the stones that are rejected. 1 Peter 2, verse 5.

You also, as lively stones, are built upon a spiritual house, a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God by Jesus Christ. We're not acceptable without Jesus Christ. Sin cuts us off from God.

But we can go to Christ, who paid for our sins, and through Him God hears our pleas and our cries. Verse 6. Wherefore also it is contained in the Scripture, I laid Zion, a chief cornerstone, elect, precious, and he that believes on Him shall not be confounded. Unto you therefore which believe He is precious. That's us. We believe He's precious.

We're an example to the rest of the world. We live a life that's different.

They saw Christ in verse 8 as a stone of stumbling, a rock of offense, because they didn't understand His purpose in coming.

Verse 9. It says, You are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a peculiar people, that you should show forth the praise of Him who has called you out of darkness into this marvelous light.

We are being put together off-site to be part of that temple.

We are different. We were not brothers and sisters until we saw that God called us and we accepted Jesus Christ our Savior. We made a commitment to Him and we became a family, building off-site to be a temple put together by God.

And through Unleavened Bread, this next week, asking God to forgive us our sins, to purify our mind, to give us more of His Spirit, to become more pure. Christ had a full measure of Spirit. He was living a perfect life. We don't. We won't have that until we become Spirit beings. But we have to be trying, we have to be working. Revelation 3 says, to Him that overcomes, I'll make a pillar in the temple of my God.

We have all different positions that God has for us. We talk of pillars in the church, those who reflect Jesus Christ in their lives, helping others, trying to show and have the same holy, righteous character that God has to be part of the temple.

If we help other people, Jesus Christ tells us that if we help others, we help a sinner change from the air of His ways, that God forgives and covers a multitude of our sins.

We'd have to help each other. God helps us.

God's way is you climb a step on the ladder and try to bring everybody with you. You take another step and you try to bring everybody with you. Satan's way is you're on the ladder. If I can just push everybody down, I look taller. If I can push them down farther, I'll keep them taller still. Christ came as a lowly human after being God and is trying to bring all of us up, part of the temple. God respected the temple. You see, God's focus is on a temple that can't be destroyed. It's not made with hands. Physical temples were all destroyed. And yes, there's parallels. There may be another temple erected. You know, the sacrifice will cease according to prophecies, but whether it's just an altar or a temple, whether it's just an altar or a temple, we don't really know.

God respected the temple as God's house. Christ respected it. But the physical temple had boundaries. Only the right people could go in to the Holy Holy. Only the right people could go into the court of Israel. Only the right people, then the Gentiles, could go into certain courts if they were circumcised. All these things they had to do. All too often we think of those things, and certainly nothing unclean could come into the temple. But God wants us to be clean by getting rid of sin. All the sins, all too many of our divisions over the millennia, have been over rank and power and position and money and things, wanted to be seen by men.

United doesn't have a single appointed leader because God hasn't raised some up to that. And I think He did that on purpose because so many other groups do have a single man. God put me here. I know those men. I serve with them on the Council of Elders of Mr. Armstrong in the 80s. I was on the board of directors at age 27. Worked with those men. Watched them. And I saw their strengths and their weaknesses. So many of them wanted to position. And when Mr. Armstrong died and the apostasy took place, they saw opportunity to, in their minds, hold fast, which they did, basically, to the doctors for the most part. But it wasn't God putting them there. They say it was. I've heard the different twists and turns that they say that God put them there to do it. But there's nothing in their lives that show me that God actually placed them there. But I've told them, you proved to me God put you there. I'll follow. But I'm not going to follow a man. I'm following Jesus Christ, which is where we all should be, to be part of Christ's temple. True Christ-like men and women show respect and humility, as we heard in the sermonette, not greed and selfish gain. It's about service.

God told the disciples, the Gentiles seek rule over you in ranks and things. You're to be a servant, a whole different position. You're to be happy, fitting where God wants you to fit, wherever that is. I've never asked for a position in the church. I've held a whole number of them, and I've usually tried to give it away. I told Mr. Armstrong I didn't want to be his aid. I didn't ask to fly. I didn't ask to do any... I didn't ask to be treasurer. And I didn't ask to be over the international. And I'm also Dean of Students, so I get to be Dean-Dean. So I'm like, I stutter. But I'm trying to train other people. I've always tried to train other people in my position, as many people as possible, because that's what it's about, is helping other people. When we sin, there's noise in the temple of God, and there's confusion. God is not the author of confusion. 1 Corinthians 14, 33. There's confusion and pain. There's no peace. And you need peace to build a temple. You need the peace of Solomon. He had 40 years of it to be able to build the temple of God. The Scriptures and Isaiah and the prophets were not really about a physical temple. Those three men who came, who wanted to build a temple so the Messiah was come, didn't understand what temple he was truly coming to. God and Christ and His church.

The body. That's where the temple is. It's not wrong to build something physical for God, as David then did. It was a matter of respect, and it was fine. Mr. Armstrong built the auditorium out of respect for God. A beautiful building. Fabulous. Onyx walls. I know you've seen it, I'm sure. It's about one of the only buildings left standing on the campus, there other than some of the historical buildings. And it's beautiful. Onyx, gold underneath and things. Fabulous building. The people that performed there said it was the greatest auditorium in the world acoustically. Pavarotti performed there for us. He was getting a million dollars in concert. He did it for Mr. Armstrong for $30,000. He loved to sing there. And didn't have enough seats to make it worthwhile for anybody. The price tag he offered for other places. It was beautiful, but where is it now? Along with someone else? It's dedicated to the glory of God, but the people there don't believe in the same God that you and I do. When we look at the physical temple and we see the preparation and care, how much more care is God taking in building His spiritual temple?

We look at ourselves and we're just people. Why did He call me? I ask that a lot. Why did He? I mean, what do I have to offer? But there's something, maybe I'm part of the door, the threshold maybe. Hey, that's fine. People step on me going across. If I'm there, I'm fine. Some people are special. There are some people that truly are pillars in the church, and they're able to hold up the standards and do that. Other people are so pleasant in personality. Maybe they're part of the ornate gold and the carvings that when people come and see you, they just are filled with joy. People that have voices the same. People that have something to offer. All of you have something to offer. We don't necessarily know exactly what God saw, but we know that God the Father called us I wish to fit in God's temple. I don't want to annoy the other stones, the other people around me. I don't want to have spot and noise. I don't want to damage any little ones that come to us.

I want God to find peace and quiet in His temple. My wife and I, traveling years ago, we set up meetings with world leaders. We met a lot of kings and queens and princesses and princes and presidents and prime ministers. And we met a lot of poppers and beggars and the poor. And we tried to help them. But we didn't look at people because of their position and their rank. We looked at people as their future. They're all destined to be part of God's family if they choose to live God's way of life. Whether rich or whether poor, it's irrelevant.

We were taught not to look at nationalities and position and races and things, but to look at people as royalty. Mr. Armstrong, when I first asked me to fly on his plane, on graduation day, on Monday I left, and he told me, he said, treat everybody that gets on this plane like a king or a queen because they are future kings and priests. And everybody that got on that plane, we treated that way. And all the people we worked with, whether high or low, we treated that way. Tried to help them in whatever way we could.

Again, I see people as the raw gold, the raw silver, the bronze, the iron, the cedars of Lebanon, the uncut cedars standing in the wings waiting to be part of God's house.

People who don't even know their potential to be part of the family of God. But that's who they are.

The temple was meticulously built, our side. Are you the gold leaf? Are you the hinges? Are you the cedars? Again, are you part of the foundation or part of the ornamentation? Some of you are tough.

You've gone through the wars. Maybe you're part of the foundation. It takes tough people to be the foundation. Again, some of you have personality so caring that you're the ornamentation. And you're overlaid with gold. Spiritual gold, of course. God knows exactly where you fit. And Jesus Christ is working on you. Where you live, here in Sacramento or San Francisco or Milford, Ohio or Asia, Africa, Europe, the body is scattered around the temple of God. And we're all keeping this feast to keep the noise out of the temple. And the more we can repent and the closer we can come to God, the less noise will be in God's temple. How do we make it? Now, Hebrews 5.9 says that being made perfect, he became the author of eternal salvation to all those who obey him. In Hebrews 12.2, the scripture you would be good to memorize and probably do know. Looking to Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith. Who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross that we just celebrated his death and he shed blood last night. Despising the shame and has set down at the right hand of the throne of God, he's there in the temple, waiting for the rest of the building to come to him, the resurrection, and at the end of the millennium. We fit because God, through Jesus Christ, is building inward character and purity in us. Not the outward physical appearance of the temple, but the inner beauty, worshiping him in spirit and in truth. The mystery is that we can't build it, but we have to try. We have to work as hard as if we're building it ourselves, knowing that only God, through his spirit, through Christ's sacrifice, that we reach God, that we can make it. I would ask you today, as we enter into the peace, don't love him bread, the night too much reserved tonight, that you make your temple beautiful, remove the sin out of your life, adorn it with the fruits of the spirit, love, joy, peace, long suffering, gentleness, goodness, meekness, temperance, and such. There's no law. And that we have a quiet and a peaceful church ready for Christ to return. Mr. Armstrong's last thing to me, he grabs my hand, he pulled it to me, he said, Aaron, help prepare the bride. That's what's next. Frankly, the last 35 years since his death, we've been offered apostasy. Oh, it's okay. You don't have to keep Sabbath. You don't have to keep the Holy Days. It's okay. You can get in the kingdom fine. No, you can't.

We don't earn salvation. It's a gift from God. But we prove our love to God by our obedience, by putting sin out. We've been offered pick your own leader, people offering those things. But I have a King. My King is Jesus Christ. My God is God the Father. And I will follow, if God puts someone there, and I'll be obedient as much as I can be, as long as they don't ask me to sin. I can do things. But he wants us to be quiet and peaceful, and he wants us, and he wants us most of all, to be ready to assemble so that our block can slide together like the blocks of the temple without noise and perfectly fit so a piece of paper couldn't come between us in the way of sin, where God sees fit in making the most beautiful temple that ever will be, the temple of God.