Passage: 1 Corinthians 3:16-17

The Big Idea

God is intense. He doesn’t just let things go, and there’s no darkness mixed with His light. That’s great news if we want to enjoy His presence, and sobering news if we want to hide our sin or live however we choose. You are God’s temple, holy because His Spirit lives in you. The Old Testament temple shows us how seriously God takes His dwelling place, and why a healthy “fear of the Lord” is part of real, loving relationship with Him.

Not for Wimps

God is intense. This study might scare you. I actually hope it does. Our God is light, and in Him there is no darkness at all (1 John 1:5).

Why does He take things so seriously? Because He cares deeply. He doesn’t just let things slide. Everything is accounted for and perfect with God.

There’s no “good enough.”
There’s no “almost there.”
There’s no darkness mixed in with the light.

That’s great news for us. It means we can enjoy His presence and love with total assurance and peace.

But it’s not good news if we want to hide our sin, or worse, claim we deserve to live however we want with no regard for His will and holiness.

That grieves the Holy Spirit (Ephesians 4:30).
It isn’t about breaking rules. It’s about breaking hearts.

God wants purity in our inner lives, because He wants to dwell with us and in us. He is pure, so we have to be pure. And we are pure in Christ. But sometimes we don’t act like what we are.

The Text (1 Corinthians 3:16-17)

Don’t you know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit lives in you? If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy him. For God’s temple is holy, and you are that temple.

“Don’t you know?” We must know we’re the temple. It’s vital to understanding what real life is all about.
Defiles… destroy… holy. We’re going deep today. Get out your scuba gear.

Back to the Old Testament Temple

Important: everything written in the Old Testament was written to help us understand our present reality with Jesus (Romans 15:4; 1 Corinthians 10:11). And we can only understand it rightly by laying the gospel of grace over it and looking through grace glasses.

God’s warning to Solomon (1 Kings 9:1-9)

After Solomon finished building the temple and his palace, the Lord appeared to him a second time. God said He had heard Solomon’s prayer and had set apart this house to put His name there forever; His eyes and heart would always be there. If Solomon walked before Him with integrity like David, God would establish his throne forever. But if Solomon or his sons turned away to serve other gods, God would cut Israel off from the land and reject the temple. It would become a ruin, and people passing by would ask why, and the answer would be: because they abandoned the Lord their God and embraced other gods.

The design was for good. But the better something is, the more severe the consequences of wrecking it.

You don’t hand a Lamborghini to a brand-new driver with a learner’s permit who can’t even go the right way in Mario Kart.
You don’t let people mess around with priceless works of art.

A while back, a tourist in an Italian art museum was caught on camera sitting on a fragile chair covered in hundreds of sparkling crystals, a one-of-a-kind sculpture, and crushing it. The museum called it every museum’s nightmare. The visitor apparently waited until security stepped away, sat down for a photo, and the whole thing collapsed.

A relationship with God is more valuable than anything in this world. When we understand that, it’s called having the fear of the Lord.

What happened to Solomon? (1 Kings 11:1-13)

Did Solomon have the fear of the Lord? Sadly, no. King Solomon loved many foreign women from the very nations God had warned Israel not to intermarry with, because they would turn Israel’s hearts to their gods. He had seven hundred wives and three hundred concubines, and they turned his heart away. When he was old, his heart wasn’t fully devoted to the Lord as David’s had been. He followed foreign gods and even built shrines for them on the hill east of Jerusalem. So the Lord was angry with Solomon and told him the kingdom would be torn away from his family, though for David’s sake, not in Solomon’s lifetime, and not completely.

Solomon’s downfall came because he loved other things more than God.
We can’t live that way. We weren’t designed to.
We think it’s the path to life, but in the end it only leads to death.
Again and again God told His people to follow His way, but we think we know better.
When we love other things more than God, that’s called idolatry. And look how it ends every time.

God’s patience, and the temple’s destruction (2 Chronicles 36:15-21)

You might think that’s the end of the story. But God was far more patient, and full of second chances for the people He loved.

The Lord kept sending His messengers again and again, because He had compassion on His people and His dwelling place. But they mocked His messengers, despised His words and scoffed at His prophets, until His wrath rose against them and there was no remedy. So He brought the Babylonians against them. Jerusalem fell, the temple was looted and burned, the walls were torn down, and the survivors were carried into exile for seventy years.

Here we see the destruction of the temple.
It happened because they lacked the fear of the Lord.
And who do people blame when this happens? God. Every time.

“Just let me live my life!” But you were bought with a price. You aren’t your own (1 Corinthians 6:19-20). You’re the temple, dedicated to God and His service.

We’re not talking about unbelievers here. Of course they don’t follow the Lord. But we should.

The Church Is God’s Temple

Look how the New Testament describes the church.

You’re no longer strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens with the saints and members of God’s household. You’re built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus Himself as the cornerstone. In Him the whole building is fitted together and grows into a holy temple in the Lord, a dwelling place for God by the Spirit (Ephesians 2:19-22).

That’s our identity:

citizens,
saints,
family,
built on Jesus,
fitted together perfectly and growing into His temple.

Why? So the Spirit has a place to live.

How do we live this out?

Peter says that as we come to Jesus, the living Stone rejected by people but chosen and precious to God, we too are like living stones being built into a spiritual house, a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ (1 Peter 2:4-5).

We’re built up and grow as His temple as we come to Him.
That’s active. How do we come to Him? Faith and humility.
We’re His temple so we can serve God and love Him, because He’s worthy of our love and service.

When We Don’t Believe We’re the Temple

In the early church, believers were united in heart and soul. No one claimed their possessions as their own, and great grace was on them all. People who owned land or houses sold them and brought the money to the apostles to meet the needs of others. Barnabas, a Levite from Cyprus, sold a field and laid the money at the apostles’ feet (Acts 4:32-37).

But a man named Ananias, with his wife Sapphira, sold some property, kept back part of the money for themselves, and brought the rest to the apostles as if it were the whole amount. Peter confronted him: Why has Satan filled your heart to lie to the Holy Spirit? The land was yours, and the money was yours to use. You haven’t lied to people, but to God. Ananias fell down and died. Three hours later Sapphira came in, repeated the same lie, and also died. And great fear came on the whole church (Acts 5:1-11).

Ananias and Sapphira didn’t have the fear of the Lord.
They thought the temple of God was about getting credit and earning points with people.
But it isn’t. It’s about holiness: truth and righteousness in the heart. Complete surrender, not to earn points, but because of love.

Look Again at the Text