For whatever was written in earlier times was written for our instruction, so that through perseverance and the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope. Romans 15:4 NAS 

We need to ask, “Father, what are you saying to us through this spectacle from II Chronicles? How could this blood bath set to music possibly be intended for our instruction?

For a start, it’s helpful to see the contrast between the old and the new covenants. It doesn’t take much math to calculate that our new covenant is vastly superior to the old. And, even though ours is better, it is important to note that, with God, things still center around the place of sacrifice–that place God has chosen for his house. In this grand moment in Jewish history, the place of God’s choosing was the newly built temple, which Solomon had just dedicated, saying: “I have built You a lofty house, and a place for Your dwelling forever.” After these words

The Lord appeared to Solomon at night and said to him, “I have heard your prayer and have chosen this place for Myself as a house of sacrifice…For now I have chosen and consecrated this house that My name may be there forever, and My eyes and My heart will be there perpetually. (from 2 Chronicles 7:12-22 NAS)

Let’s allow the apostle Paul to speak to us regarding the contrast in covenants. He believed that the new covenant revelation that should grip our hearts with awe and wonder was under-appreciated by the Corinthian church as well, so he asks,

Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and that you are not your own?  I Corinthians 6:19 NAS

Has it really dawned on us yet what we have become—what we have been caught up into—the vast superiority of our circumstance in Christ? How are our heart’s effected, knowing that the high and holy God, who once accepted freight train loads of animal sacrifice, now dwells in our hearts? Instead of attending a worship service where the fire of God consumes the animals offered up by priests, we host in our hearts the very presence of God. We have become the house of God! But, if our hearts are now the house of his choosing and the place of sacrifice, what is the sacrifice? Hold that question in mind.

Jesus is our great high priest, who offered himself as an unblemished sacrifice, accomplishing what the blood of bulls could never do. The Lamb who was slain has become the resurrected King of Life, who, astonishingly and scandalously, lives in our hearts!

Scandal— (noun) a circumstance or action that offends propriety or established moral            conceptions or disgraces those associated with it: a person whose conduct offends propriety or morality.

Perhaps this is why Solomon instructed us in Proverbs to watch over our hearts with all diligence. Perhaps he knew that we, being entrusted with our own powers of choice, would inherit co-priesthood responsibility with God, tending the altar of our hearts, that place where both our deepest desires and motives (some still very earthly) exist alongside God, most high and most holy. It is our holy God’s choice to dwell in flawed beings as opposed to some lofty house, to intimately relate to such radically broken beings. That’s the scandal. This also reveals God’s great wager: that the Spirit (in cooperation with human will) will one day prevail over the flesh (and its cohorts, the world and the devil).

Most, if not all, of the fire in our temples, comes (always graciously, but not without pain) to confront and to consume our idols. A heart that does not live out of the awareness that it is no longer its own must experience fire to ultimately live. God is not cruel; He just doesn’t want us to invest in and hold onto things that we cannot ultimately keep, things that will hurt us along the way and ultimately break our hearts.

Back to the missing sacrifice I referred to earlier. It turns out that the missing sacrifice is our flesh. While it is true that it was crucified and buried with Christ, the death of our flesh (which is an established reality in Christ) plays out through our lives. The Spirit dwells in our hearts, intertwined with us, with his eyes and heart perpetually searching for the things that are secretly crouching at the door, preparing to ambush and waylay us. There, too, Christ invites us to lay down all of ourselves. When we do, we can experience more of the “all” of Jesus. (If I have theologically misspoke; my intention here is to simply say that – in my perception and experience – the reality of being dead-in-Christ is worked out in the actuality of my life.)

It is here, in our daily walk around lives, that Jesus Christ becomes Lord in truth – in actual practice. In the depths of our hearts, his story is being etched as we take up our cross daily and follow him. It is from a well of new life within that we draw from, giving account of the hope that is within us. If we can grasp this, new chapters of Jesus’ conquest of this earth (through us) will be published in increasing volumes such that one day His word in and through us shall cover the earth as the oceans.

Being the temples of God must be what prompted John to say:

 My dear children, you come from God and belong to God. You have already won a big victory over those false teachers, for the Spirit in you is far stronger than anything in the world. 1 John 4:4 MSG

We know it was never the blood of animals that God was after. He was always in the process of restoring things to his original design which was mankind relating freely to him and reigning over creation out of a fountain of life from within. It is through the ever-expanding kingdom of God this will happen. When we finally grasp our responsibilities and opportunities within Jesus’ eternal kingdom, the tide of battle will undergo a radical shift.

The people of God will see themselves in an entirely different light. Our identities will not just be that of sinners saved by grace (with our vision consisting of little more than the hope of not being left behind). Instead of having a tread-water-till-Jesus-comes destiny, we will rise up and intentionally receive the kingdom that Christ has been offering us since He was last seen on earth. With an indignant militancy, we will, out of our rest in Christ, wage a violent war against the powers of darkness, reclaiming all that was stolen during our season of mistaken identity. We will live with a new confidence in the reality that all things really are possible with God, and that as children of light we are vastly superior to our enemies. Truth will topple the strongholds in and around us, and the rule of Jesus will expand one heart at a time until indeed His kingdom comes on earth as it is in heaven.

So be it, Lord.

 

 

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