Growing up in church, one of the first stories in the Bible you hear about is in Genesis 22 where God asks Abraham to sacrifice his only son. God led him to a mountain where he was to build an altar and perform the sacrifice, but when it came down to it, God intervened and provided the sacrifice. Years later, in 2 Samuel 24, David had sinned against the Lord by taking a census. God’s punishment was to send a plague throughout Israel killing 70,000 people. When the angel stretched out his hand toward Jerusalem, God stopped him and opened David’s eyes to see. He was told to go to the threshing floor of Araunah and offer a sacrifice to God. David purchased the land, built an altar and made the sacrifice.
A closer study of the Bible shows how these two events appear to have taken place on the same mountain now known as Mount Zion. It is also known as the Temple Mount because Solomon built the Temple on the land that David had purchased from Araunah. Zion can be translated to mean “marked”. The Temple Mount can also be translated from its original to “mountain of the house of God”. It also happens to be where Jesus was tried and beaten to become the sacrifice for our sins, and where the veil in the Temple was torn in two when He died. It was then that God decided to make His home in us instead a building built by man.
1 Corinthians 3:16 says, “Surely you know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit lives in you!” (GNT) You are now marked by God and are the host of His presence as believers. 1 Corinthians 6:20 says, “Don’t you know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, who lives in you and who was given to you by God? You do not belong to yourselves but to God; he bought you for a price. So use your bodies for God’s glory.” Because we are His temple that hosts His presence, we are to live as such. Our lives should reflect His glory instead of our own. They should be lived for His purpose and plan as His temple.
Photo by Joshua Earle on Unsplash
Devotions by Chris Hendrix 