Temples built by hands

Acts 17:24 “The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by hands.”

Temples built by hands.

We all have been a part of building temples. Whether it manifests in a physical building, an organizational design, or a ministry strategy, we spend our energy creating something we think will help to make way for God’s presence or that will reflect His life.

It’s not a bad thing to want to be involved in efforts that are done in partnership with the Lord. But our efforts don’t produce God’s results. We bring ourselves to Him because He invites us to do so, and He loves us. When we build a temple, it’s because we are “doing it the exact way” He showed us, but even then we must remember that God doesn’t live in the temples we build. The temple was always supposed to be a dim reflection of the reality of what’s in heaven; not a place to find God but a place to worship HIm. And our temples (whether physical or organizational) are at best simply reflections of God’s intentions in our world.

But we hold onto our temples with all our might. We get upset when someone dismantles an organizational design we created or changes a beloved strategy. We can’t imagine not “having church” in a building that our predecessors put blood, sweat and tears into.

But what happens when we hang Live Sex on too tight is that our organizations or buildings become monuments to our own gods; not to the one true God. Paul preached the message about temples in the shadow of one of the most well known Greek Temples of the ancient world.  Maybe the Greek gods were served by human built temples, but the One true God’s temple in Jerusalem wasn’t where God was confined but only a type of the real and a shadow of things to come (read Hebrews).

Do we see our “temples” as the real thing, or simply as a shadow of what is to come? Many of our churches spend 110% plus on maintaining a monument that has become a mausoleum, instead of pouring money into mission and ministry. The church is not brick and mortar, but community, ministry, mission, momentum, and a message. Buildings, flow-charts and strategies can be nice tools to serve ministry, but our mission and ministry must never be servant to the property, the processes or the plans. Those are all simply temples made by human hands, and they can serve their purpose for a while, but if we hold on too tightly, we will not ready for the curtain to be torn and for a new order of things to take place.

Then we’re just religious bureaucrats.

Then we’re simply the party of the pharisees.

Then we’ve deified the temples that our hands have built and will never be ready for the outpouring of the Spirit of God.