Let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith. Believers are temples of the Holy Spirit. In fact, God is within each Christian to guide, empower, and comfort. Our hearts are the cores of these temples God inhabits, and it's vital that we make those hearts clean, free of sin, and impure motivations. Stay with us as we learn about giving Christ a clean home.
From the Moody Church in Chicago, this is Running to Win with Dr. Erwin Lutzer, whose clear teaching helps us make it across the finish line. Pastor Lutzer, in today's message you tell of a young king Josiah who cleaned out Israel's temple in his day. How does that help us understand giving Christ a clean home? Yeah.
Dave, what you have just described is perfect for what is on my heart right now. When you mentioned Josiah the king finding the Bible in the Temple of the Lord. What an apt description of the situation that existed in Israel. And of course reading the Bible did bring about a revival. And when it comes to our prayer life what we need really is a revival.
At the end of this message, I'm going to be giving you some contact info for a book that I know is going to transform your prayer life. How do I know? because this method of praying transformed my prayer life twenty or twenty five years ago. It has to do with praying scripture.
So you're not praying the same thing over and over again every day. Asking God to simply bless your children or to take care of this or take care of that. Every day. A brand new prayer. every day a scriptural prayer.
Are you looking for a method, perhaps, of praying that is really transformational?
Well at the end of this message, as I've already emphasized, I have some very good news for you.
Sometimes we use expressions without giving a great deal of thought to what they might mean. For example, we talk about the presence of God. What do we mean when we talk about the presence of God? We can mean one of two things. We can say that God is everywhere, therefore His presence fills the earth.
And that's true. There may be places here in Chicago, as I'm sure there are, where there is prostitution and drugs and every conceivable form of iniquity. And God is there. God is there. because of his presence, the presence of God.
The omnipotence. and omnipresence of God. There's another way that we can look at the expression presence of God. It refers to the fact that God is sometimes localized in a particular place. That means that God's manifestation of Himself in that place.
is more pronounced and becomes apparent to people.
So, that you've been in situations where, when you have left, you have said, When I was in that place or when I was in that person's presence, I felt as if I was in the presence of God. We become more aware of God's presence.
Now, ever since the beginning of history, God has existed everywhere, but He has also always wanted to be localized on the earth.
So that men and women could say that the heavens and the heaven of heavens cannot contain God because He's everywhere, but yet God dwells here. God dwells here. In the Garden of Eden, God walked with Adam and Eve in the presence of the garden. Later on, when sin entered, there was a tabernacle built which was like a tent, a temporary place for the dwelling of God. And the cloud came to that tabernacle to symbolize the presence of God.
After the tabernacle, you have the temple being built under Solomon in about the year 900 BC. Tremendous complex. And when it was built, Solomon prayed a prayer which happens to be the longest chapter in all the Bible.
Sometimes people criticize me, they say your pastoral prayers are too long.
Well, take a page or two, take several pages from Solomon's book. He prayed a mighty long prayer. But it says that when he was finished, the glory of the Lord came and rested there. The glory of the Lord rested upon that first temple that was built. Later on, the Babylonians came and because of Israel's disobedience, they destroyed that temple.
And then there was another temporary structure built under Zerubbabel, and then you have the Temple of Herod being built. The Temple of Herod is known as the Second Temple. Really, it's the third, but because of its continuity with the second, it is called the Second. And so that's where Jesus was. And that's where Jesus would walk.
When he was on the earth 2,000 years ago. And then that temple was also destroyed. You say, well, where does God dwell? God dwelt in the first temple, God dwelt in the second temple, but the temples are destroyed. Do you know where God dwells today?
I want you to look at a couple of passages of Scripture, and the first one is 1 Corinthians chapter 6. The Apostle Paul is telling the people that they ought to keep themselves from sexual immorality. Corinth was known for its male prostitutes. It was known for its great licentiousness. And Paul is writing to a church that exists in conditions that are much like ours today.
And this is what he says in 1 Corinthians 6. Yeah. Flee immorality. Every other sin that a man commits is outside his body, but the immoral man sins against his own body. Or do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and that you don't belong to yourself?
You're not your own. You've been bought with a price, therefore, glorify God in your body. There are two Greek words that are used for the word temple. One is the general structure of the temple, the whole landscape of the temple. Then there's another Greek word that is used for the inner shrine, it is used for the Holy of Holies.
Paul uses that word here. What he is saying is, is that your body now no longer belongs to you if you are a Christian, because you are the temple of God. God, the Holy of Holies, now has come to reside within you. And his argument is this. Would you commit immorality in the Holy of Holies where God struck people dead if they did one thing wrong?
Would you commit immorality there? Paul says, if you wouldn't commit immorality in the Holy of Holies, don't you ever dare do it with your body because when you do, think of what you are putting God through because he is holy and he is pure and he is righteous and he has to endure the experience of impurity. Because everything that you do is done in the Holy of Holies because your body is the temple of the living God.
Now, there's another verse in 2 Corinthians. Write this down if you're in the habit of taking notes. We will not take time to turn to it, but you can sometime. He said in 2 Corinthians 6, verse 16. He says again, do you not know that your body is the temple of the living God?
And now, notice this: as God has said, I will dwell in them and walk in them, and I shall be their God, and they shall be my people. God says when a Christian walks down Madison Avenue in Chicago The Lord says, I am walking in him. I dwell in him and I walk in him, God says. And I look down from heaven and I say, that person is mine. My man, my woman, my teenager, my child, and I'm walking in them.
Now, what I'd like to do today is to ask you to turn to the Old Testament to a passage of scripture that has to do with the first temple. And the first temple is found. The passage I want you to turn to is 2 Kings. And it's chapter 22 and 23. I know that those of us who are in the program of following Christ.
We were to talk about the cleansing of the temple in Christ's day. But what I'd like to do is talk about the cleansing of this temple, and this is what we're going to do. We are going to talk about the cleansing Of this ancient temple and draw parallels between it. and the temple of your body. Do you know that Paul says in Ephesians chapter 3, He says, I pray that Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith.
I used to read that passage as a little boy and wonder what in the world Paul meant. I said, Doesn't Christ live in every single Christian? And yet, Paul says that Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith. The answer is yes, Christ lives in every single Christian. The Greek construction there is a word with a prefix added, which can be translated this way.
Paul says, I pray that Christ may feel at home. in your heart by faith. May Christ be content and glad because you have a clean temple. to present to him. That's the idea.
And what we're going to do is to talk about the temple of our hearts using the illustration of the Old Testament Temple. Your body is the temple. of the living God. Did you hear about the cartoon with a woman standing on a bathroom scale and looking at the weight? And she said, I am not a temple.
She said, My body is not a temple, my body is a garage.
Now, do you know what a garage is like? If you don't know, you ought to come and see mine. It's got all kinds of stuff in it that's going to have to be dragged out, and it always accumulates. Today, we are looking at your temple and making it absolutely clean so that Christ can feel at home. You know, the Bible says, do not quench the Holy Spirit.
The Spirit is quenched when you have spiritual gifts that you are not using for His glory, and the Spirit is grieved when there is sin in your life, and Christ is there, but He does not feel at home. Statistics indicate that people today want to feel God. It's a great idea. It's a great idea. But you'll never feel God until Christ.
Feels at home. And if your temple is a garage with all kinds of junk, He does not feel comfortable. And he withdraws not his presence, but he withdraws the sense of his presence until you don't even know that God is dwelling in you.
Now 2 Kings chapter 21. Here's what is happening. Manasseh was a king of Israel, the most wicked king that ever lived, and he reigned for more than 40 years in Jerusalem. Manasseh was so wicked that he took all of the idols of the heathen, the Canaanites and the Baals. And he actually dragged them into the very temple of God, and Israel began to worship.
Heathen gods. After Manasseh died, he had a son that reigned, and this son was really no better than he. And following that, he had a grandson by the name of Josiah. And it says in 2 Kings 22, verse 1: Josiah was 8 years old when he became king, and he reigned 31 years in Jerusalem. and Josiah of all things.
was a righteous, godly young man.
Some of you teenagers that are here today, you may say to yourselves, you know, my parents are not Christians, or I wasn't brought up in a good home. I want you to know that Josiah was brought up in a home where there was the worship of all of the gods of the Canaanites. And Josiah at the age of eight. Already knew the living and the true God, and Josiah began. A reign of righteousness.
Don't you ever think that because you did not have good, godly parents, that you cannot be godly? Josiah proves that you can be.
So Josiah raises some money and says, We're going to clean up the temple. The thing's falling down.
So they begin repair. And the workmen are repairing, and we don't know where they found it, but they found a scroll. And the scroll was the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Bible, the very Word of God was found. And that's in the next verses. Do you realize that things had gotten so bad that they didn't know where the Word of God was in the temple?
And when it was found, Josiah says, I want the law of God read in the presence of all the people, and we're going to make a covenant to obey it. And that's what the rest of chapter 22 is all about, and chapter 23. And all the people make a covenant.
Now, Josiah then says, now what I'd like to do is I have to clean out the temple with all of these idols in it. He says, we're going to clean the thing out to make the temple worthy of the living and the true God who hates idolatry. And so the workmen begin to drag out all the junk that accumulated. I want you to notice very briefly three different kinds of idols, three different kinds of idols that Josiah had his workmen drag out of the temple. Yeah.
The first is the idols that claim to give superior knowledge. They claim to give superior knowledge. It says in verse 4 of chapter 23 now. Unfortunately, we have to skip some of these excellent verses, but you can read them on your own. The king commanded Hilkiah the high priest.
And the priests of the second order and the doorkeepers to bring out of the temple of the Lord all the vessels that were made for Baal and for Ashtrah. Asherah rather, and for all the hosts of heaven, and he burned them on the outskirts of Jerusalem. Notice the middle of verse 5, after he gets rid of some of these false priests, he says, and he burns these and destroys the idols of those who burned incense to Baal, to the sun, and to the moon, and to the constellations, and to all the hosts of heaven. All of these idols purported to give people what people have always wanted, namely, secret inner knowledge. In history, it is called esotericism.
It is part of the New Age movement today where people are into horoscopes, they are into such things as astrology, they are seeking experiences that will give them inner light, inner knowledge, apart. from the living God. And I want you to know that if you're involved in any of those things today, though this isn't the strength or the emphasis of my message, I want you to get out as quickly and as permanently as possible. I was speaking somewhere this past week and a girl told me that her brother was involved with a Ouija board and because of what happened, a demonic spirit would appear repeatedly in his room until it was rebuked. God says, if there is anything that I hate, it is people who think that they can have knowledge independently of what I have said and independently of what I have done.
And if you are involved in any of those things, you are rebelling against God with a high, rebellious hand. But you know, there's another way that we can have idolatry because idolatry isn't the idols. We are not going to begin to worship the things that were dragged into the temple. Idolatry is whenever I say I have superior knowledge than God. I know better than God.
Let me give you an illustration. Here's a young person, for example, who may plan to marry.
Someone who is unsaved. She may be a Christian, he may not be. And they say to themselves, well, you know, the Bible clearly says, do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers. And what yoke could be more close and more permanent than the yoke of marriage? But after all, I know better.
This is what God says, but this is what I think. And so they go ahead in deliberate disobedience. That, my friend, is the idolatry of the mind to think that you know something better than God and that God is wrong and you are right. That is idolatry. There may be somebody here today who says, Pastor Lutzer, you know, you folks at Moody Church are rather narrow-minded, and you may be from another religious tradition that says there are many different ways to God.
Many years ago, I was on Milton Rosenberg's program, Extension 700. With two liberal theologians. It was a bad night for me because I was far too polite. I listened to the tapes later and I said, You know, you can't be on these talk shows unless you're impolite, or else you can't get a word in edgewise. But I did say something that just irritated these men.
You should have heard them during the commercials. They were saying all kinds of uncomplimentary things about me. The first question Rosenberg asked was, who or what is God? And he asked me, and I said, Well, we know many things about God. Jesus said, God is spirit, and I began to tick off.
And these men interrupted me and they say, You can't use the authority of Christ. Jesus actually was wrong in these areas, and this and this and this is God.
So I made the remark, I said, just think of the arrogance of those who think they know better than Christ. as to what God is like. Wow, if there had been a cross, I would have been on it that afternoon. You know, my friend, that is idolatry. That is nothing but sheer idolatry.
I know better than Jesus Christ as to what God is like. Oh really? Where did you get all this knowledge? And I want to say to you today that if you are not bowing to the total authority of Scripture in every area in which God has spoken, there may be some areas in which we have a disagreement as to what the text says. But once we have agreed that God has said this and you are not bowing under that authority, you are raising your mind above the word of God and that is idolatry and Jesus does not feel at home.
in a heart like that. I remember so clearly the event that I just described. I was on the radio actually with a very wide audience. And of course, as I indicated, I wanted to push back. over what was being said, and get back to the authority of Jesus.
Now just between us, how is your prayer life? About twenty or twenty five years ago I was at a meeting where Don Whitney spoke. I never had a chance to meet him. He spoke and then left immediately afterwards. but he spoke on how to use the Bible and to take the Bible and to pray it.
so that every day you have something different to pray about, Every day you have the opportunity to take a passage of Scripture so that you're not praying the same old thing in the same old way. and I've been using that method throughout the years. For a gift of any amount, we're making available for you a book written by Don Whitney. entitled Praying the Bible. If you were to pray the Bible, and of course this book outlines how we can do that, it's actually taking Scripture and praying it back to God.
If you learn how to do that, you will look forward to your time of prayer. Here's what you do. Very quickly, I'm giving you this info. I hope that you have a pen or pencil handy. Because I feel a great urgency For you to have this resource.
Here's what you do: you go to rtwoffer.com. Did I say that too quickly? rtwoffer.com of course rtw offers all one word or pick up the phone and call us at 1-888-218. ninety three thirty seven. Remember the title of the book, Praying the Bible.
Once again, Go to rtwoffer.com or call us at 1-888-218-1. ninety three thirty seven Please take advantage of this offer. I believe it will change your prayer life. It's time again for you to ask Pastor Lutzer a question about the Bible or the Christian life. Janice emailed us a question that has to do with prayer.
Good morning, Pastor, she says. Why are we told to pray without ceasing? Does that scripture verse relate only to asking the Lord for us to accept His perfect will? If this is true, then my prayer life has been in vain, as I should only ask the Lord for His will in everything and not ask for anything. Many thanks for taking your time in reading and responding to this email.
Well, Janice, first of all, let me say how pleased I am that you listened to Running to Win, and God bless you. In answer to your question about praying without ceasing, a couple of comments. First of all, I believe that we can do that. doesn't mean that we're always stopping to pray. But I need to tell you that even as I was listening to your question, I was praying in my heart that God would give me wisdom to know how to answer.
To pray without ceasing is to have an attitude of prayer, to commit everything to the Lord. as it comes into our lives, in that sense we pray without ceasing. Yeah. But the rest of your question is a little bit puzzling. You think that if you uh obey that command that you should pray only for God's perfect will.
Well, most assuredly, we should always pray for God's perfect will. But the prayer isn't limited to that. You can pray for wisdom, you can pray for guidance, you can pray for healing. and then recognize that it may or may not be God's perfect will to heal. But all of the kinds of prayers that are on our hearts.
can be given over to God, with an attitude Of dependence. I don't think that the prayers that you have prayed until now are in vain. God understands. God knows. But to pray without ceasing is to say, Lord, Today is my day.
I depend on you. You are my wisdom, my strength, my sanctification, all that I need. and then to add to that the desires of our hearts. God bless you. and have a good day.
Some wise counsel, as always, from doctor Erwin Lutzer. Thank you, Pastor Lutzer. If you'd like to hear your question answered, go to our website at rtwoffer.com and click on Ask Pastor Lutzer, or call us at 1-888-218-9337. That's 1-888-218-9337. You can write to us at Running2Win 1635 North LaSalle Boulevard, Chicago, Illinois, 60614.
And so we've learned about idols that claim to give superior knowledge, also the idol of sensuality.
Next time on Running to Win, we conclude this study with a look at the idol of violence. All these idols must be removed from our hearts to give Christ a clean home. Thanks for listening. For Pastor Erwin Lutzer, this is Dave McAllister. Running to Win is sponsored by the Moody Church.
