Are You Looking For More This Season? This Is Where You’ll Find It

He stumbled down the frozen road; grey blanket, grey pants, and a sweater matching underneath.

The road he shuffled on wasn’t seen by most. Little traffic, overlooking a valley, and open space in the distance.

• What was he doing there?
• Where his feet frozen, his exposed hands in below freezing weather starting to feel numb?
• What makes a man walk on a long country road with nothing but a blanket covering him?

Yesterday, I sit inside my own home, covered by my own blanket, watching the lights from the warmth I have been given.

Safe, from the ice all around me…

And I open scripture…Because where else in a day of chaos, business, in a season where we talk about peace, but few actually experience it…

Can we trust our hope is found?

The Old Testament Temple

I see it in the side notes of my Bible. A photo of the temple court with walls and partitions…Almost like the kind I used to built with linking logs, or my children built with legos.

The temple’s lines interrupt my mind from the homeless man stumbling along outside us…Where a world failed to see him, his works were not good enough redeem Him.

The temple mount’s walls and divisions went like this:

• Outermost area of the temple: Gentiles could enter. For the sick and hungry, a place where the needy would seek help.
• The “Soreg”: A fence separating the outermost court where the Gentiles could reside from the rest of the temple mount.
• Outer court: This was the place Israelite women used to enter through the Gate called Beautiful to worship. They were not allowed further. They were kept in this outer court, and yet, this is the place where money changers came, people bought doves and other vows and peace offerings were made and purchased. This is the place Jesus over turned the tables, and insisted, “My house is a place of worship and yet, you have made it a den of thieves…or where robbers hide.” (Matt 21:12-17)
• Inner Court: This is where the Israelite men remained while their sacrifices were being burned. Animals would be hung their so their blood could be collected.
• Holies of Holies: Originally constructed by King Solomon, contained the Ark of the Covenant, where God’s presence remained. This was the most sacred of places. The place where glory shone and the fullness of God was revealed.

This temple’s inner court was for the clean, Jewish men. The Gentiles could never enter in, neither could the women, the sick, the outcasts, or the poor and the needy.

The temple compound was considered holy. However, the further you went in, the more holy it was considered.

Today’s Temple Model?

Can you imagine today a church where walls, bricks, dividers were placed between people according to spiritual rank, worthiness or physiological appearances?

Hierarchies, rules, rituals, rights of passage, and people’s own cleanliness giving them access to enter behind the walls, deeper into the temple….

Get them closer to where our Father dwells?

When truth is…

• Jesus came to abolish barriers.
• Jesus died so that all could have access to His glory.
• Jesus rose to shatter the lies that His glory is hidden and only a few, perfect men have access to it.

Where would that homeless man be with that temple model of walls hiding His glory? Where would I be as a woman? Where would most of us be, as Gentiles?

Stuck on the outer court…

Never gaining access to the place where Holies of Holies dwells.

Yet, can’t there be shadows of the Old Testament temple, with it’s walls and exclusions, found in the modern church today? 

Churches that teach, we don’t gain access by grace, but because of some works we have done?

And I can just imagine….The Holies of Holies was a place many could only dream about, yet very few could enter.

Yet, didn’t Christ come to shatter these divisions, offer His life so everyone could enter His presence? Didn’t He shed His blood so that each of us could come boldly to His throne-room of grace?

And, I can’t get out of my mind that homeless man I saw yesterday.

Why was he risking death to walk free and open? Was He rejecting or had he already looked for help in our modern day temples? Did he question whether he would be good enough, clean enough….to find a God that loved Him?

And shouldn’t the house of God…the home of our hearts…the place we live…be magnets for the broken?

And didn’t Christ run to the hurting, die because he said, “It is the sick that need a physician”? (Mark 2:27)

Or could it be that we don’t think we are sick? We have played our church game and think we feel pretty sufficient in and apart from Him?

Have done good works, jumped through hoops, and then somehow concluded…God is confined to some building, and we alone have access to that place where His glory dwells….

Scriptural, New Testament Truth

Doesn’t the New Testament tell us…“The Most High does not live in houses made by human hands.” (Acts 7:48)

Doesn’t scripture confess, “Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence?” (Psalms 139:7)

And why do we act like God can’t see us, can’t find us? Why do we put up walls and think a religion of works will ever bring us closer to Him?

“‘Not by might nor by power, but by my Spirit,’ says the LORD Almighty.” (Zechariah 4:6)

Isn’t it, “Apart from the vine, we can do nothing”? (John 15:5)

Was that homeless man walking along that wide open road running away from something, or toward someone?

This season, I am reminded…

• God didn’t place himself locked inside some walled building, restrict Himself from us seeing Him.
• He didn’t set up some maze, and ask us, like mice, to navigate some religious system to find Him.
• He has found us. He is always near us. He has never left us. And He is only a heart-cry away from being near…

Regardless of where you are on your road of wandering today…All it takes is to call out on the name of the Lord, and you will be saved. (Romans 10:13)

The blood He shed is our access into the inner chambers of His heart.

No walls, no building, no religious hoops we must leap through can keep our hearts separate from Him. It’s all because of His works, His blood, His grace…

Welcome to the inner court.