Do This Instead

Ezekiel 47, Acts 2:1-4

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Stop going to church. Stop going to church. I mean it. I know that’s a weird sounding thing for a pastor to say. And you might wonder, wait, am I actually watching this morning’s Peace Devotion? Because he just told me to stop going to church. But, but hear me out.

Stop going to church. Instead, gather as the church. Come together with your brothers and sisters in Christ. Come and worship. Come and hear the word. Come and celebrate baptisms, and take the Lord’s Supper as the church.

There’s this incredible privilege we have as Christians, as New Testament believers in the Messiah that sometimes I think we overlook. In the Old Testament, the place where God’s holiness was, really seen, was really location focused. You think about amongst God’s people in the nation of Israel, there was the Tabernacle first and then the temple. And within those holy places was the most holy place, and only a few people, and only in certain ways, and at certain times of the year, could even really come very close to God’s presence there.

But there were limitations to that temple. The temple was a great blessing because it assured the people that God was with them, and the sacrifices took place there that pointed ahead to the Savior. But there were limitations because it showed them that God was with them, but they were still limited access to God. And the people of Israel often they might have people going through the practices of the temple or of the tabernacle, but they were living in a way that was very different. It wasn’t fulfilling really what it was meant to do. And ultimately, all the sacrifices and things that happened there couldn’t really set people right with God.

But then Jesus comes on the scene in the New Testament and Jesus reshapes the temple not around a building, but he says that his body is the temple. And then when he dies on the cross, there on that cross, he pays for your sin and mine absorbs it. When he dies, the temple curtain is torn in two from top to bottom. Which assures us we have access to God, but it also does something else. There are these pictures in the Old Testament about God’s holiness coming out of the temple.

For instance, in Ezekiel 47, the prophet Ezekiel has this vision of water flowing out of the temple and bringing that which was dead, bringing it alive. Or you have Zechariah 12 that talks about all these normal things in our lives becoming holy now. There’s this idea that God’s presence now can break out into God’s creation and bring holiness out. And that’s what we see in the New Testament. You get to Pentecost. You have this moment where these people have these tongues of fire come above their heads, and fire signifies the presence of God. Now, instead of God’s holiness being a place or something we want to go to, God’s holiness comes to us and fills us. We become the church. The New Testament describes us as God’s temple.

So when you come to church, go to church, you’re not so much going to church, but gathering as the church, you’re coming together as people who are the temple of God hearing God’s Word and being built up in him. You come together as people who are baptized into Christ. So when God sees you and everyone around you, he sees people who look like Jesus, who are connected to his death and his resurrection. When you take the bread and the wine, the body and blood, you are connecting not just with God, but your fellow brothers and sisters in Christ. You gather as the church and then you can go as the church.

Stop going to church, gather as the church, go as the church.