Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] There's no temple anymore. There's no Garden of Eden on Earth that you can go to anymore. There's no tabernacle in the desert.
[00:00:07] There's no temple in Jerusalem where we can go find God. If you want to find God on planet Earth, you got to go to one of his people because that's where his spirit resides.
[00:00:20] Run your home and your dough like a biblical boss.
[00:00:25] Hey everybody, it's just Stephen today and I'm going to do something that is pretty unusual, which is I'm just going to riff a little bit. I usually have an outline and try to walk you through a pretty planned out line of thinking to address a topic.
[00:00:45] But what I want to talk about today is quite unwieldy. It's not quite cemented in my mind. It all feels very fresh to me and I thought I could sit down and trim out all the excess stuff and get all of the rabbit trails out of the way, et cetera. But I'd rather talk to you like a friend. So before I do, before I get into the topic, I want to say a couple of things. One is that we have officially announced that our retreat is planned and open for registration right now. It's going to be the weekend of August 21st to 23rd.
[00:01:31] It's going to be outside of Cincinnati. It's actually in Indiana, but if you're flying in, you would fly into Cincinnati. I guess you could fly into Indianapolis. It's kind of in between those two cities a little bit to the Cincinnati side. But if you could get a flying deal into Indy, I guess that'd be a not dumb idea.
[00:01:52] Here's what we're going to do with that weekend.
[00:01:54] We're going to refer to it as Boot camp.
[00:01:57] And if you feel the following itches, then this weekend is for you. If you feel like one man, I could use a shot in the arm and be with some Abrahamic dads who are trying to walk the same road as I am.
[00:02:13] Then as you've heard us say recently in our retreat review episode, boy oh boy, do dads get a lot of encouragement from just being around other guys from around the country who are trying to walk the same path.
[00:02:31] If that's you, come.
[00:02:33] If you've been to our retreats before, you're like, boy, I love those guys. And I want to keep mixing it up around these topics. I would just love a dedicated weekend where I kind of like got to jump inside the Abraham's Wallet space and talk real time about finances and being the spiritual leader of my home, etc. Come. You should come.
[00:02:55] If you are a vet and you say, I've been working through these. I think I figured a couple of things out.
[00:03:03] I'd like to have a skull session with other guys who have tried a little bit, but I've learned a couple of things. I want to just say, we need you to come. We want you to come and we're going to actually use you. We need vet presences because we're going to do a lot of small group breakouts over the boot camp retreat because you're going to help tease out some of the ideas if you've been around a while. Because the main person that we want to target at the boot camp that would kind of clue you in on it is the guy who's kind of been lurking on the edges. This sounds all kind of good.
[00:03:44] How do I formally go from being a church guy who feels like I might should be doing more, but maybe I'm.
[00:03:54] I'm just kind of a passive Christian guy who kind of hopes that the pastor does a good job leading my family, but by golly, I kind of want to be done with that.
[00:04:07] I want to move into being a. What you guys call an Abrahamic family leader. And I'm not sure how to make that transition.
[00:04:16] That's what the weekend is. So what we're going to do is we're going to cast vision again for us about here's what God's called us to.
[00:04:24] We're going to have a moment of decision or a moment of refreshed decision to go by God. I'm going to stand in this place in my home, and I'm going to be God's man in my home. And then we're going to actually give you some very, very, very practical tools.
[00:04:42] So if you've never experienced a Sabbath in someone's home, you should come, because we're actually going to do a Sabbath together and we're going to have someone father us and lead us through a Sabbath. And we're going to talk very practically, how would you lead through a Sabbath? We're going to do a men's midrash together. If you've never, if you've heard us talk about that and go, how is that different from any other kind of Bible study? Well, you'll see. And I think we're going to come away from this weekend more equipped and more inspired to be God's men in our home, which is the whole point of the Abe's Wallet podcast. Which brings me to my next Point.
[00:05:20] If you go to abrahamswallet.com support and you say, I'm going to support what happens at Abraham's Wallet. I get the emails when people send that. So every day I see people who are donating $10 to hundreds of dollars a month to help us go. And I want to say a couple. I just want to say a couple things to you people. One, we need that. We actually need that money and we really appreciate that donation. And I appreciate everybody that's listening. The fact that people are listening is why we're doing this. And people who think, man, I believe in this and I want it propagated. So. So please keep going.
[00:06:07] I just want you people to know what I'm going to share today.
[00:06:10] I was trying to think maybe represents, say about seven hours of study for me to just try to chase down these messages in God's Word. That takes time, right?
[00:06:24] So I'm recording this at 4:13pm on a Thursday afternoon. When do I have the time to do this Bible study and record this stuff and then pay for it to be edited and get it published, et cetera. All of that takes money. And I just want to say officially to all of our support team, I don't say it enough.
[00:06:48] We need you and really appreciate you. So that's on my mind. Like when I'm studying and I'm thinking, boy, this applies to the Abraham's Wallet people.
[00:06:58] And I'll be thinking, there's only one reason I'm able to take this time in the middle of the day and study this, and that's because we're supported by people. So thank you so much. It matters.
[00:07:09] Let me just tell this story of kind of how it happened in real time. I showed up cold at the church house on this past Sunday morning.
[00:07:19] And our teacher, he says he always introduces himself as, I'm one of the elders at this church. I'm a teaching pastor. His name's Jamie. And Jamie launched into. We started in 1 Kings chapter 6, the construction, really the dedication of the temple.
[00:07:39] I don't know if you fully appreciate this. I didn't know it until I looked all this up, but God took 15 chapters. I believe it is Exodus 25:40, where God gave detailed instructions through 15 chapters of your Bible to describe how he wanted the temple put together.
[00:08:01] And here's how it's all going to work. And he laid it all out.
[00:08:06] Then the temple is built and God's presence fills the temple.
[00:08:12] Now, what Jamie told us was, whoa, you should be alerted, flags should go off Your mind go, hold on a second, this reminds me of something.
[00:08:25] And so he went back to Genesis 1 and he said, if you were a reader or I suppose a listener, when the Torah was, I guess, more oral, you would have recognized the pattern that was being set up right at the beginning of the Bible that God is going to take six days to build something. He's going to build something and then he's going to.
[00:08:51] I'm going to use the verb recline, where we use the word that he rested on the seventh day. And he said in the ancient near east you would understand that a king spends seven days setting up his new kingdom, he's bringing in a new administration, he spends seven days doing that. And then on the seventh day he reclines into his third throne and his reign begins.
[00:09:19] So it was always confusing to me as an 8, 10, 12 year old to imagine that on the seventh day God rested from all his labors or all his works. And how could you not think that he was taking a nap and he's going, well, I'm so tired.
[00:09:38] Because it's not a helpful translation of what's happening. God is. What he's actually doing in that six days is he is creating a sanctuary, a habitation for his presence in those six days. And the way that he does it is he separates intentional creation from chaos.
[00:10:03] So he separates the darkness.
[00:10:05] Remember, he's brooding over this weird mixed up, broods over the deep, the deep darkness. And he starts separating things. I'm going to start separating light from dark. I'm going to separate the lights of the day from the lights of the night.
[00:10:21] I'm separating earth and water.
[00:10:24] And he does all of his creation.
[00:10:27] Then he sits at the temple.
[00:10:29] Well, I don't know if you know how long it took to create the temple, Solomon's temple.
[00:10:38] The Bible tells us, guess what? It wasn't days, but it was seven years. It was seven years and now this temple is made and then this temple, God. Then when the presence of God fills the temple and it says the priests weren't able to do their work because this was the Lord inhabiting this temple and reclining to his rest.
[00:11:04] Now a couple of really important things. I just made a parallel from Eden to the temple that Solomon built. There are more parallels that I think are fascinating. If you recall when evil entered God's Edenic temple, the Temple of Eden, when evil entered via Eve's and then Adam's sin, they were expelled from the garden. And what did he put, what did God station to make sure that they did not re. Enter and defile his sanctuary. Anyone? Anyone?
[00:11:45] Correct. He put cherubs. Cherubim.
[00:11:50] These are.
[00:11:51] You might have heard, it was angels.
[00:11:54] It was not actually angels. They're a different kind of being. He puts these cherubim.
[00:12:00] And a lot of times when we think of angels as having wings, it's because we know, for instance, that cherubim do have wings. They're not angels again, but they're this kind of creature that has wings. And God put them with flashing swords at the entrance to Eden so that it couldn't be defiled again.
[00:12:23] Now, when God was making the Holy of Holies and he's describing how he wants this temple built, he did a couple of very interesting things.
[00:12:34] If you remember when the Ark of the Covenant, which was a kind of portable presence, holder of God, what did he command be put on the top of that Correct. Cherubim.
[00:12:54] And it says that they're kind of bent over. The one thing I've never seen.
[00:13:01] There's always a picture of them kind of doing this with their wings and them touching in the middle. But the scripture that I read says that their wings are upturned. So there was something like this.
[00:13:13] And then they would meet in the middle. The hands would meet in the middle. And then I think the presence of the Lord was kind of in between those cherubim.
[00:13:25] Okay, back to Holy of Holies. God is in the Tabernacle, which was kind of a temporary temple, a portable temple that you could collapse, put it in a new place.
[00:13:39] God said, when you're building the curtains around the Holy of Holies, which was going to hold his presence, I want you to embroider.
[00:13:50] Guess Cherubim. I want you to embroider Cherubim and flowers.
[00:13:57] There was kind of a garden motif. Even though they were wandering around the desert, there was a garden motif reoccurring in the design of the Tabernacle.
[00:14:07] So it was supposed to remind them of the Eden Sanctuary, which had been forfeit and we assume, destroyed by the Flood. In the Flood.
[00:14:21] Okay, now we go to the Temple, Solomon's Temple. This is a permanent building in Jerusalem.
[00:14:30] And God wants cherubim. Cherubim.
[00:14:35] He wants statues built of them, 15ft high in the Holy of Holies.
[00:14:41] The ark is there.
[00:14:46] And the embroidery.
[00:14:48] So repeatedly, we've got this thing which is. And you might know about the Holy of Holies, that you could come into the outer temple courts, you come into the inner temple courts, you better have things straight. You know, you want to be confessed and cleansed.
[00:15:07] Now you come into the inner temple and the holy of holies, bro.
[00:15:13] That's so holy that only the high Priest could do it. And only once a year on the day of atonement. So precious, so holy.
[00:15:24] Well, I know I'm giving you a lot of background here.
[00:15:28] Then a very interesting thing happened in human history, which is Ezekiel tells us that the glory departed from the temple, that God's presence actually left the temple because of the sin of Israel. He said in a couple of places. For instance, in First Kings, I believe it is the first few verses of chapter seven, God gives some if thens to Solomon regarding his family line.
[00:15:56] And he says, if you'll follow me, if you'll obey my commands, if you would never serve any other gods, trust me, bro, me and you are going to ride. I'm going to ride with your whole family line.
[00:16:09] Well, Solomon did not.
[00:16:13] He did not follow the if then statements.
[00:16:17] God made all of these if then statements via his commands about the Mosaic covenant. I'm going to stay with you guys. Just follow these commands. They did not follow the commands. And Ezekiel tells us that the presence of the Lord left. However, there was always a prophecy. There were several prophecies. I'll cut to the chase here. That my. My presence is going to return.
[00:16:46] I'm going to return to my temple.
[00:16:49] And everybody's minds would have thought Solomon's Temple, but they didn't really consider. They wouldn't have maybe considered. Well, his temple was the Garden of Eden before, and there wasn't. There wasn't a building that we know of, wasn't described to us, but the Eden itself was a temple.
[00:17:07] And I presume that just because of where the Lord located the cherubim, I presume that the whole garden acted as a holy of holies so that you could walk anywhere in the garden and his presence would be there. We know that.
[00:17:22] So he wasn't confined to one tiny spot, the whole garden with the cherubim at the periphery. So the whole garden, however big it was, it was on a mountain. We know that the whole thing was the holy of holies or had his presence, you know.
[00:17:42] Okay, so when he says, I'm going to come back to the temple, the ancient Israeli mind would be going, huh, well, what would that be like?
[00:17:52] Well, hundreds and hundreds of years later, a baby is born in Bethlehem and this baby grows up to be Jesus, who says, you might remember this verse from John, chapter one, that he tabernacled among us.
[00:18:11] Oh, that's interesting.
[00:18:13] Tabernacle. I mean, tabernacle is what we celebrate at Sukkot, this tabernacle, that we are riding through life like a tabernacle, and we're remembering when God tabernacled with his people through the desert. And Jesus. And John chapter one says that Jesus came and tabernacled with us. Well, that sounds. That sounds like the presence of God.
[00:18:38] That. The presence of God, tabernacle with the people in the wilderness.
[00:18:42] Well, then Jesus says later in his life, tear down this temple, and in three days I will raise it up again.
[00:18:52] And he was questioned saying, who?
[00:18:55] What do you think you are you thinking to rebuild the temple?
[00:18:59] And that's. This is one of the Jesus, like, uncloaking moments where he throws the cloak back and you see the big superman on his chest.
[00:19:09] He says, no, no, no, no. I am the temple.
[00:19:15] Whoa, whoa, whoa. I get goosebumps saying that line.
[00:19:18] When Jesus says, I am the temple, he's saying, I am the presence of God. And they said, of course. Otherwise. He said, if you've seen me, you've seen the Father. When you're talking to me, you're in the holy of holies dealing with God.
[00:19:34] That would have made me a little concerned to talk with him, considering my own sin.
[00:19:39] But here's one of the miracles of Jesus's life is that we also know this verse. The law came through Moses, grace and peace came through Jesus Christ. So Jesus was seeing people in a way that the law never could. So, okay, well, how's that going to work? Well, I'm going to fast forward to Hebrews chapter 8 and 9. And they say that when Jesus died.
[00:20:05] Okay, I'm kind of giving away the ending here.
[00:20:11] The Bible tells us. Hebrews tells us that there is an eternal temple of God which resides in heaven. I say I'm acting like a heaven is up here.
[00:20:21] I don't know. I don't know where it is. But the throne room of God, which exists forever, has in it the temple.
[00:20:33] So when God told the Israelites to build the tabernacle and to build the temple, he used the language, I want you to build it based on the pattern.
[00:20:45] He uses this word pattern.
[00:20:48] And they had to be thinking, what do you mean, pattern?
[00:20:51] There isn't one. We're making the first one that has ever existed.
[00:20:55] And God, I don't know if he ever explained this, but God is going, no, there is one. It's in heaven. It's a real temple. It really exists. And you're going to make a copy of it on earth so that you can start to understand how important stewarding my presence is. That's. By the way, that's the theme.
[00:21:16] You're probably wondering, why are you giving us all this backstory? That's the theme of. What I want to talk to you about is stewarding his presence. And I think all of this is salient. It certainly interests me.
[00:21:27] I think we're supposed to know this stuff because the Bible talks about it in detail.
[00:21:31] There is in heaven, this temple.
[00:21:34] Hebrews tells us that, okay, the high priest goes in once a year and he does this day of atonement thing.
[00:21:43] The day of atonement is to serve a few purposes.
[00:21:49] One is the day of atonement is when the sins of the priests are dealt with, those who are constantly serving the Lord in his temple.
[00:21:58] And God says, I gotta have purity inside my temple. I have to.
[00:22:04] Because of the holiness of God, no sin can endure in his presence. Maybe you've heard that before.
[00:22:13] So in God's presence, there must be no sin.
[00:22:17] So over time, flesh is going to. It just collects sin. Like walking through the weeds in Texas and you look down and there's what we call chiggers all over your jeans and socks and shoelaces. Well, how'd those get on there? That's what happens if you're flesh. Sin just starts collecting on you. And over time, humans, his priests, get sin on them. That's gotta be dealt with.
[00:22:44] There's going to be always encroaching weeds and sin getting into God's temple on earth.
[00:22:53] So the Levites got to deal with that. And they have to keep this place clean, keep themselves clean. And, oh, God, would you forgive the sin of this nation who follows you falteringly at best.
[00:23:07] So that happens once a year. Again, back to Hebrews 8, 9. It tells us that Jesus actually performed this service in the heavenly temple. He performed the day of atonement sacrifice, but he did it with his own blood.
[00:23:26] He did it with his own blood on the day that he died.
[00:23:33] This is just my theology. Maybe it's mistaken in its timing. But my understanding is that the second that Jesus died, we know that the Lord placed the sins of all humanity on him when he died. I believe the second that he died, he was in the temple in heaven and he was performing this sacrifice because he, the sacrifice, his own flesh had been torn. Here's the blood. And Hebrews 9 refers to this as the once and forever sacrifice. And it says, there now remains no sacrifice left for sins.
[00:24:07] Hallelujah. I get goosebumps saying this. It's the gospel that Means my sins are paid for. There's no sacrifice left. I just got to put my faith in the once and forever sacrifice. And that moment when Jesus performed that sacrifice, went into the holy of holies in heaven's temple and gave his own blood as the sacrifice. At that point, the justice of God was forever satisfied. And with it being forever satisfied, this supernatural event happens. And the veil is torn in the Jerusalem Temple from top to bottom in the holy of holies.
[00:24:53] Now, Ezekiel told us that the presence of God had lifted off of the temple, that he wasn't there anymore. But that symbol proclaimed to Israel and yea, verily to all the world, even us Gentile outsiders, that God's presence will not be confined to the old temple system any longer.
[00:25:17] Nobody should even kid themselves about that. It's over. And he has. He. He has emanated outward.
[00:25:27] And so now we're in this really weird moment in history where, okay, Jesus has died.
[00:25:37] He was kind of the new temple. He was ushering in the new covenant.
[00:25:43] The new covenant is in place. Does anybody know about it?
[00:25:47] Does anybody know about. I guess the thief on the cross knew about it.
[00:25:50] His disciples didn't.
[00:25:53] Jesus comes back and he appears in the upper room. Holy cow.
[00:26:01] This is about to be new. Remember, In Acts chapter 2, the believers were gathered together.
[00:26:09] A cleansing thing happens, which is this rushing wind happens.
[00:26:14] And they all received.
[00:26:16] What did they all receive in the upper room in Acts 2? Everyone.
[00:26:20] They received the Holy Spirit. Now, let's not think of the Holy Spirit as the third Person in the Trinity, which we often think of God and Jesus and the Holy Spirit. We know their different roles and sometimes we think of them in different locations. I want you to understand that the presence of God is. Is what entered people in the upper room, and that the symbols of wind and fire were present in that room and entered the presence of God which had been in Eden.
[00:27:01] It had resided on the mercy seat, the Ark.
[00:27:06] It was in the holy of Holies, in the Tabernacle, and it was in the holy of Holies in Solomon's Temple. It resided in Jesus himself.
[00:27:16] His own spirit resided in Him. That makes a lot of sense to me.
[00:27:22] And then it came in Acts 2 and. Whoa, whoa, big news, everybody.
[00:27:28] This holy presence of God, which would kill you if you just strolled into the holy of Holies, is now living in every believer. His presence. His presence. Now, I'm not talking about this. I'm not talking about. I'm not going to start talking about tongues and prophecy and all of that stuff right now. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about his abiding presence. The presence of God is now in believers.
[00:27:57] Almighty God in me, in me, his presence that I don't have the right into his presence. And he says, not only does Jesus afford you the right, I'm going to actually come abide inside you in Jesus name.
[00:28:22] So one of the wonderful miracles about this is that when Jesus looks at me right now as I'm sitting here talking to you, he's not thinking.
[00:28:32] Stephen is. Well, I've got some problems with Stephen, but he means well. He's more or less trying to be good. He's. His Bible is open.
[00:28:43] Actually, I don't know where my Bible is, and I don't know if it's open. But he doesn't know where his Bible is. But he's got a Bible.
[00:28:51] He's got some memory verses, and more or less, I think I could bring my spirit into Stephen. That is not what's happening. When the Lord looks at me, I know this for sure. It's in the Scriptures. It's in Ephesians 1.
[00:29:08] Maybe it's Ephesians 2, but one of the resounding themes is in Christ. In Christ, In Christ. And Paul tells us in Ephesians, put on Christ. I need to see myself that way because it's how the Lord looks at me. He would never enter physically into this body, except that this body is property of Jesus and owned by Jesus.
[00:29:31] So he, he goes, well, there's, that's a habitation for me. Feel real comfortable there.
[00:29:36] And it's a, it's, it's crazy. Okay, all right. I, I, I, I didn't mean to preach the gospel to you. I'm trying to, I'm trying to go somewhere with this.
[00:29:47] The, There's a, Wait till I say this sentence. It's going to be amazing. In First Corinthians 6, Paul says that you collectively are the temple of God. And we know elsewhere, I believe it's 1 Peter, or maybe it's Ephesians 2.
[00:30:09] I think it's both of those places. 1st Peter 2, Ephesians 2. We're being built up as living stones into a habitation of God. There's something that happens collectively that we can collectively steward his presence. But I know for sure it's in 1st Corinthians 3 that I am the temple of the living God, me, and that he lives in me now.
[00:30:37] Okay, that's all very interesting. It's all, I guess, fascinating backstory.
[00:30:44] What I found When I kept pursuing this thread was that in so many of these instances, there's a cleansing that happens. I mentioned the cleansing that happens from separating chaos with the Eden account, with the Israelites in the tabernacle. In the temple, there was an anointing to cleanse the thing before the presence came in. We've got to dedicate this to the Lord.
[00:31:13] That's exactly what happens in water baptism is there is a cleansing that happens to say that this place is the Lord's property. When somebody gets baptized in water, they're saying, I am washing, I'm being washed like the Levitical sacrifice, because I'm about to be offered to God. I am now God's alone. That's what holiness means, by the way. Simply set apart for his purposes.
[00:31:40] That's what baptisms are. Whether you're being baptized into the body of Christ, baptized into water, baptism into the Holy Spirit, all three of those are. You are being set aside for God's purposes. So there's a cleansing that happens.
[00:31:55] There's a cleansing that happens with us personally and with the people of God. Let me go back to Ephesians. I think this is super interesting. Okay. I said Ephesians 2 talks about our being the temple of God.
[00:32:09] I'll just jump ahead to Ephesians 6, which many of you know this is kind of ground zero for talking about spiritual warfare and casting out demons and we warring against powers and principalities and presences in this dark age. Okay, so if I tell you that's kind of the theme of the book of Ephesians is understanding who we are in God. We're the temple of God. Ephesians 6 going to talk to us about cleansing it out, cleaning it out. It would make sense that Ephesians 5 is where Paul is going to review the structure of the family.
[00:32:48] Why? Why? Because you've heard me say before, I don't like talk of the local church. There's a local little brick church house, little Baptist brick church house less than a mile from where I'm sitting right now.
[00:33:03] That building is not the sanctuary of God. And I have always chafed against, even when I was on church staffs for 20 years, Chafe against the big room where we all meet on Sunday mornings, calling that the sanctuary.
[00:33:21] That's illegitimate. Biblically.
[00:33:25] You're looking at the sanctuary, everybody. I know I don't do a great job sometimes of displaying it, but here's the sanctuary, and we together are being formed into this collective sanctuary.
[00:33:37] There ain't no room on earth that is his Sanctuary anymore.
[00:33:43] There's not an auditorium with 300 or 500 or 3,000 seats. Oh, this is the sanctuary. No, no.
[00:33:53] If there's a location that's been given over to God, that's wonderful. We should be doing that right and left. So I hope that your local church house has been anointed and dedicated to God. It probably has.
[00:34:06] And this is the property of God. Jesus alone will reign here. That's great. You should do that with all your family property. We've had episodes on that before. You should do that with your businesses, anoint them. Say, this place belongs to God. That being the case, I'm now going to connect something that you've heard me say many times before.
[00:34:25] I believe that the family is ground zero for the culture of the kingdom of God.
[00:34:32] I don't believe that it is the local church.
[00:34:35] The local church, if it stewards the presence of God. And I hope that it does. It does that because godly families come together and make it so and long for it to be an undefiled gathering where we can sort of practice this being built together as living stones, as a habitation for his presence.
[00:34:57] But your family and your home for sure, is supposed to be a habitation for his presence. That means two things, definitely.
[00:35:08] It definitely means that there should be times where you, individually, I'm talking to you, dad, and I cannot help my family. I don't think if I don't start with this guy.
[00:35:24] So I'm talking to you. So, number one, you must steward and invite and pay attention to and give time to the stewarding of the presence of God. Think of these cherubim with their wings upturned.
[00:35:44] They're not exactly holding the presence of God, but they're making a space for it.
[00:35:49] That's what you have to do in your home.
[00:35:52] You have to make a space for the presence, the holy presence of God.
[00:35:59] So this is the chair where I usually spend time with God. It's right there.
[00:36:05] And I have to do that for myself. I have to make space where I am abiding in him, focusing on him and giving him priority, giving him place and just going like, oh, your presence, God.
[00:36:22] We also have to do that corporately. You, dad, if mom helps in this, God bless her. But you, dad, have to be the driver.
[00:36:30] And there have to be times like that in our home as well for stewarding his presence.
[00:36:37] Sitting the family together and go, you know, our family is the habitation of God.
[00:36:44] Why don't we just sit around? Why don't we just sit for Five minutes, and we'll just meditate on the power and presence of God. I'll read a little passage that'll help us to do that. Why don't we put on a little song, a worship song that will help us do that. But after the song's over, we're not going to go to the next song. We're just going to sit together in worshipful awe of the presence of God in our home.
[00:37:10] So, you know, we would call this like family worship and things like Joel Beeke's book, family worship.
[00:37:22] Those kinds of things, they're irreplaceable.
[00:37:27] Helps to you being the priestly. That's the correct word historically. You being the priestly steward of, of the presence of God in your home. And the second thing that it for sure says is that as the priests of your home, and by the way, if you're the husband and father, you don't get to opt into or out of this job.
[00:37:52] It was assigned to you. I performed a wedding not long ago and stood up there and just said, the guy, you're the priest of your home. I don't care if you feel good at it.
[00:38:02] I don't care if you've never done it before.
[00:38:05] I don't care if you're dealing with guilt and shame, although we should get those off of you. Ephesians 6, so that you can do your job freely.
[00:38:16] It doesn't matter if you think, well, my wife's more skilled at prayer than I am. Nobody cares. Irrelevant.
[00:38:23] You have the job. You're the priest of the home.
[00:38:28] So, one, you've got to do this abiding thing for yourself and for your family. And the second thing here, I'm going to get to it. I'm going to get to it. The second thing is you've got to get the weeds out, so to speak. They're always going to be encroaching. Always. The world is always going to get tendrils. And have you ever found that once you weed eat the edges of your driveway, you're done forever because they'll never come back and you've set the boundaries?
[00:39:01] Of course not. Just give it a little time. They'll just come back.
[00:39:06] And there's all. There's always an encroachment?
[00:39:10] The phrase that Paul uses about sin is that it's always encroaching, it's always leaning, it's always pushing.
[00:39:19] Remember what God said to Cain.
[00:39:21] Sin is crouching at your door. It desires to have you, but you must master it. And that's not One time.
[00:39:28] That's over and over. Why do you think the Lord makes the priests perform these duties over and over? Because on the day of atonement. Hey, whoa. We're clean. I think we're good here. You are good for the day of atonement. And probably by the time that the. The night falls on the day of atonement, you need cleansing again. Because guess what? Encroaching. Encroaching. That happens in your home. Dads, the world is encroaching on your children.
[00:39:59] I promise you, the world is encroaching on your wife.
[00:40:02] You know the best thing to do for that? I'm going to quote Ephesians 5. Wash her. I'm getting out a ladle right here. It's the water label.
[00:40:10] Wash her with the washing of the water of the Word. You just pour the word over sweet wifey's head. That's the best way that you can wash her. If she wants to confess sin, you can be a priest. Maybe you don't know how to do that. You should come to our retreat. We're going to talk about being a shepherd and a priest in your home, but for yourself.
[00:40:35] We've got to confess sin.
[00:40:37] We've got to practice repentance, get on our hands and knees before God. God, cleanse me. I am noticing. You might say I am noticing.
[00:40:48] There is more time that I am spending just scrolling on my phone and I can feel your spirit tell me that you're not comfortable with the amount of time that I'm spending scrolling.
[00:41:00] And I'm doing it anyways. Lord, I just got to confess it to you. Well, we could talk about what to do about it and how to head off those things at the pass, but the confession is super important and just be in a state of repentance. Because why? Because we have to keep this temple and I mean this physical space of this home.
[00:41:26] I want this to be the habitation of God in my home.
[00:41:34] And there's no temple anymore.
[00:41:36] There's no Garden of Eden on Earth that you can go to anymore where his habitation is. There's no tabernacle in the desert.
[00:41:45] We kind of play act tabernacle at Sukkot if you build a little tabernacle. Yeah, we're kind of playing tabernacle.
[00:41:52] It's not the tabernacle where his presence is. There's no temple in Jerusalem where we can go find God.
[00:41:58] If you want to find God on planet Earth, you got to go to one of his people because that's where his spirit resides.
[00:42:06] And as a priest of his, we're the leaders of homes that want to steward the saving, powerful presence of God.
[00:42:15] I have always said, not always said. Once I got it, I started saying this. If somebody wants to get saved and you hear about them, don't take them to church with you. Take. Take them to your living room and share the gospel with them in the middle of your house. If somebody needs healing, physical healing, if somebody needs a demon cast out of their life, I mean, I guess you could take them to the church if you don't know how to do it. But I would say learn how to do it, develop these skills, then bring them in your home because your home is ground zero.
[00:42:50] There won't be a family gathering with a father having dinner at our local church house tonight in a couple of hours. That won't happen because there's not. The life.
[00:43:02] The ongoing life of a family is not happening in that church house. It's happening downstairs here. However, right over there, there'll be the ongoing life of a family.
[00:43:13] And hopefully, well, it will be. I'll say it by faith. There will be the stewarding of God's presence happening at my dinner table here in about an hour and a half. It's going to happen.
[00:43:24] Stewarding his presence in your home is more important than you think it is.
[00:43:29] Being a righteous example to your children of confession and the forgiveness of God and how we don't walk in shame, that's more important than you think it is. Raising your children to be free of the world and to have a mindset that's based on the kingdom of God that you got to raise kind of in freedom, in the pure petri dish of your home. That is more important than you could possibly imagine. It's of eternal significance.
[00:44:01] I think we can project this into the lessons that we learn about how to steward resources. That money gives us this ability to steward resources so that we learn these lessons so that we can steward more important things like God's word and the souls of men.
[00:44:16] These things are more important than we can conceive that they are even praying for my children.
[00:44:22] Those prayers matter more than we could possibly imagine. Everything that you do in your home matters. That's the thrust of what I wanted to say to you guys is it's dawned on me in a new way in the past week that our homes are the temple of the living God.
[00:44:39] Stewarding his presence is so profoundly and eternally important.
[00:44:45] Even me talking to you, I get a sense of. I make it sound trite.
[00:44:50] I can't communicate this with enough gravity and depth that it would match the austerity of the eternal holiness of these things. So this is the message I want to put out to you. If you were just my bro and we were sitting down for coffee, I'd say. And you'd say, what do you got for me today, Steve? And I would say, it all matters more than you think it does.
[00:45:09] Do not give up. This is why. This is why Paul said, do not weary in doing good, Dad. I mean, I. I come back to this so many times, but, dad, do not weary. I. My friend Paul was telling me about reading the Bible to his little kids. He's got like 5, 3, 2 year olds at dinner, and he's trying to read a couple of Bible verses. You know, he's trying to share.
[00:45:36] One of my old faves is job 33. 4. The spirit of God has made me, and the breath of the Almighty has given me life. Kids, that means that God made you. Who made you? God.
[00:45:51] Two of them answer God, and two of them are smearing Mac and cheese in their hair.
[00:45:56] Okay, it says, the spirit of God made me. Who made you. One says the spirit of God. The other two are following the dog across, you know, across the house.
[00:46:08] And I'm just telling you, dads, don't give up and don't be weary in doing good.
[00:46:14] Your plan A. And there's no other plan for God's spirit resting in your family and in your home. Don't give up or get weary of setting the alarm earlier so that you can pursue the king of creation and steward his presence on your quiet chair in the morning.
[00:46:37] Oh, it's, you know, it's early. Does anybody even care that I'm doing this? Yes.
[00:46:42] Yes, there's someone who cares profoundly that you're doing this. It's the God of heaven.
[00:46:49] It profoundly matters that you would seek him. It profoundly matters that you would repeat his word in your home. It profoundly matters that you would steward his presence by praying for your child that's had a bad dream, by speaking his blessings over your children that get insecure about their identity. And you got to say to him, you know, honey, when you dance your ballet, you're glorifying God because you're using your body to create beauty in this world. And the Lord loves it. He loves you. He's so proud of you. And I feel that pride because I'm your dad.
[00:47:25] There's no replacing those things. I'll just tell you that at the end of the story in the new creation, we're going back to Eden. And God's presence will be everywhere, all the time. Until he becomes. I'm quoting scripture here. Until he becomes the all in all.
[00:47:43] And we're not dealing with the flesh, we're not dealing with sin anymore. He is in all and is everywhere. And these precious, precious days. God make us faithful as dads because it matters more than we ever could think that it does.
[00:47:57] Amen. Bless you guys.
[00:47:59] Leave your home and run your dough like a biblical boss. I'll see you next week.
