There seems to be a great confusion today amongst believers about this subject of the “house of God”. Believers and unbelievers alike treat the building where we meet on Sunday morning as the ‘church’ or the ‘house of the Lord’. Even believers who know that the building is not the house of the Lord, they behave as if it is God’s dwelling place.
In the Old Testament, when God commanded the Tabernacle to be built, it was a place for God to dwell with the people (Exodus 25:8). This shows God’s desire for a relationship with us. He had always wanted to be very close to us. The people did not meet inside the Tabernacle. Only the priests entered the Tabernacle. The people met together and worshiped God outside the Tabernacle, under the open sky. They never entered the Tabernacle or the Temple later on built by Solomon and the one rebuilt by Zerubbabel (Ezra 3:8).
The word “sanctuary” in Exodus 25:8 means “a consecrated place”. The Lord can’t dwell among us unless there is a consecrated place for Him. In the Old Testament, this was a tabernacle and later the temple. In the New Covenant, the consecrated place for God is our hearts (Ephesians 3:17). But in Old Testament times, man’s heart could not be God’s home because man was separated from God because of his sinful nature. After the liberation from Egypt, God gave Moses instructions to build an earthly tabernacle or sanctuary where the people could go and worship God.
When God gave Moses instructions regarding the offerings for the Tabernacle, He told Moses he will meet him at the Holy of Holies and his presence will be between the cherubim (Exodus 25:22). There are a number of other scriptures that tells us God’s presence was in the tabernacle and later on, in the temple between the cherubim. (1 Samuel 4:4; 2 Samuel 6:2; 2 Kings 19:15; Psalms 80:1, 99:1; and Isaiah 37:16)
So God’s presence was between the Cherubim. Only the High Priest could enter the place where God’s presence was; not the priests neither the rest of the Israelites. And the High Priest had to perform a cleansing ceremony for his own sins before he could enter or else he would die in God’s presence. The day the high priest entered the holy of holies was called the Day of Atonement or Yom Kippur in Hebrew. It was once a year, on the 10th day of the 7th month of the Jewish calendar (Leviticus 16:29). It was the day the Israelites sins were atoned for or covered up because the blood of animals cannot remove sin. Animal blood could only symbolize atonement; it could never accomplish atonement (Hebrews 10:4). But Jesus’ blood was the perfect sacrifice that forever removed the barrier between sinful man and Holy God (Hebrews 9:12).
During the lifetime of Jesus, the holy temple in Jerusalem was the centre of Jewish religious life. The temple was the place where animal sacrifices were carried out and worship according to the Law of Moses was followed faithfully. Hebrews 9:1-9 tells us that in the temple a veil separated the Holy of Holies—the earthly dwelling place of God’s presence—from the rest of the temple where men dwelt. This signified that man was separated from God because of sin (Isaiah 59:1-2).
Solomon’s temple was 30 cubits high (1 Kings 6:2), but Herod had increased the height to 40 cubits, according to the writings of Josephus, a first century Jewish historian. It is not sure what the exact measurement of a cubit is, but it is safe to assume that this veil was somewhere near 60 feet high. An early Jewish tradition says that the veil was about four inches thick, but the Bible does not confirm that measurement. The book of Exodus teaches that this thick veil was fashioned from blue, purple and scarlet material and fine twisted linen. The size and thickness of the veil makes the events occurring at the moment of Jesus’ death on the cross so much more extraordinary.
“And when Jesus had cried out again in a loud voice, he gave up his spirit. At that moment the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom” (Matthew 27:50-51).
What significance does this torn veil have for us today? Above all, the tearing of the veil at the moment of Jesus’ death dramatically symbolised that His sacrifice, the shedding of His own blood, was a sufficient atonement for sins. It means that now the way into the Holy of Holies was open for all people, for all time, both Jew and Gentile. When Jesus died, the veil was torn, and God moved out of that place never again to dwell in a temple made with hands again (Acts 17:24). God was through with that temple and its religious system, and the temple and Jerusalem were left “desolate, abandoned” (then destroyed by the Romans in A.D. 70), just as Jesus prophesied in Luke 13:35.
As long as the temple stood, it signified the continuation of the Old Covenant. Hebrews 9:8-9 refers to the age that was passing away as the new covenant was being established (Hebrews 8:13). The old way of “going to the house of God” has been made obsolete by God himself. Today we do not need to go anywhere to worship God because He is inside of us. We worship Him in this temple which is our body. Our body is the new temple of God (1 Cor 6:19) and that is where we worship God in spirit and in truth. (John 4:24).
This is not to say that we don’t need others believers. Hebrews 10:25 tells us never to neglect meetings with other believers. But the meeting of the believers is not just Sundays in church buildings but whenever and wherever two or three are gathered together in the Lord, there He is in the midst of them (Matthew 18:20). He is the Head and we are His body, the body of Christ which is the church!! Not the physical building, but the people themselves (1 Corinthians 12:27, Romans 1:5). And the church is made up of every single born again believer today wherever we are on the planet. We have many congregations scattered all over the world but we all form ONE body, ONE church.
Make every effort to keep yourselves united in the Spirit, binding yourselves together with peace. For there is one body and one Spirit, just as you have been called to one glorious hope for the future. There is one Lord, one faith, one baptism, and one God and Father, who is over all and in all and living through all. Ephesians 4:3-6 (NLT)
