If you're visiting, God bless you. We know there's a thousand other churches you could be in today and in this area and you've, maybe by providence of God or by choice, you are here and we thank you for entrusting the next hour or so or the last 30 minutes and the next 30 minutes or so of your time to us and we hope that God uses it profitably in your life. We're in a number five this morning of a brand new series that we called brand new and not because it is brand new but because it is what Christ did whenever he came into this life to this earth. He started something brand new and to date we have established that Jesus built a brand new church. It wasn't a building. It was an ecclesia, is the Hebrew or the Greek, and that simply means he started a new church that was not a building. It was a gathering of people. We today are still an extension of that church. We are an extension of what Christ started. He did away with the old temple model, which was a sacred place made up of sacred men with a sacred text and sincere followers. But when Christ started it, He labeled that you are sacred. You are the sacred one that he came to die for. And we have also discussed that nothing matters. Nothing else matters according to the scripture except. Faith, faith in Christ, expressing itself through love to others. And that's what Jesus said that was brand new. Faith, faith, expressing itself through love to others. And our conscience is fine-tuned. It's very fine-tuned and determines our religious beliefs. It determines our religious beliefs and our feelings whether they are spiritual truth or not. We allow our conscience to do that. We read last week where Paul told us that the whole law, all 613 of the whole law plus the Ten Commandments, he said he replaced all of that with one commandment and it was, you're keeping the law, you're keeping the Ten Commandments. if you love your neighbor as yourself and make that the guidebook for your life because everything else pretty much comes in place whenever you live your life that way. Here is something that we all know about religion and that is that religion is a very powerful thing. It's a very powerful thing. And because religion is so powerful, it can also be very, very dangerous. It can be very, very dangerous. And it has been through the years. People have been murdered and martyred because of religious beliefs and because of religious convictions and I could take you back through history through a two-hour long history education as to what happened because of religion not just by the Roman Catholic Church but by Jewish leaders and And you can go through and look at the pygmies in Africa that have a religious belief. They have their own witch doctor. But what has happened as a result of their beliefs and their convictions? And you can go through the mud huts and just, wow, you can talk about the danger of conviction and religious beliefs. And another thing that we've come to realize in the past few weeks is that it usually ends up in the hands of a few men and since it is connected to our conscience and not always truth, it can be connected to error. It cannot be truth. It can be error. And something that I have learned is that many religions, in fact, most religions do not understand the absolute truth is found only in one place. It's found only in one place. And the fact is, you know, people say, well, is the Declaration of Independence? No. The Constitution? No. The Koran? No. The absolute truth is found only within the book that I hold in my hand or the phone that you hold in your hand. It's where you can read God's Word and that Bible. That's the only place that you can find it. And just this week, Kelly alluded to, you know, something there, but we had a gentleman that was, you know, he was our fishing guide and he was a very nice guy. He was a very moral individual. And yet, he had attended, he was a Catholic, you Catholic friends that are in the room, please don't leave, don't get mad at me, but he had attended a Catholic church, and he had attended a Catholic school, and yet, he did not realize that the Bible was absolute truth. And in fact, we were discussing terrain and the geography of Canada and how the lakes were made, and he immediately alluded to or discussed them in the context of millions of years. And that's not the truth of this book. It's not the truth. And, you know, truth is that his conscience and our conscience that is in us shaped by a combination of what Jesus taught and what temple model is, is what we have come to believe. We take a little bit of both and blend it together. And wow, essentially we feel that I guess the way we do toward God or we feel the way we feel or do toward sin or the way that we do towards the church or the way that we feel toward others simply because of what we have been taught or even worse, the way we've been treated is the way that we feel. is what is right when it comes to church, religion, sin, others. It's the way I was taught or the way I've been treated and a lot of times it's not absolute truth. It's not what the Bible teaches. And before you're too hard on Mark, which in his case, and you and I and everyone else in the room, we have some screwed up ideas of what truth is. We do. And they're based simply on what you were taught and how you've been treated. It's almost like if it feels good, then do it. If it feels good, do it. And it's that kind of situation. But the truth of the matter is whoever controls your conscience ultimately controls your beliefs and your behaviors. Parents, that's an awesome responsibility to teach absolute truth. instead of your grandma, grandpa and your own ideas. So you say, preacher, what are you trying to do with this series? I'm trying to expose to you today and in the last few weeks and in the maybe some few weeks to come, the movement that Jesus taught versus versus how much more our beliefs are more about temple model than what we realize. They're more about what our conscience, what our feelings, our religion is based on what we've been taught and the way we've been treated versus what is absolute truth. We have to understand some of this is the reason that people abandon religion. Some of this is the reason that people abandon the church. Some of this is the reason that they have walked away. And consequently, they see through what we teach and what we say. And they want nothing to do with God. They want nothing to do with Jesus. They want nothing to do with His church. But the fact is, the hope for those of us that felt that way, that had walked away, had abandoned the church, and myself included, said, I'm sick of the hypocritical, Pharisaical, legalistic attitudes that is in church. There is hope, and the hope is that Jesus launched something brand new. And it's not temple model thinking. And it wasn't temple 201. It wasn't addition 2. It wasn't something that was blended with what we think. It wasn't Judaism 301 or some kind of knockoff of a Jewish religion. The reality is It wasn't what we, whether Catholic, Baptist, Presbyterian, Methodist, have experienced or made it out to be. And it is not to be a bunch of sacred men in a sacred place, interpreting a sacred text, and holding on to the keys of heaven and hell, and dishing it out a little bit at a time, however they see fit. You, yourself, are supposed to be a portable temple. Let's look at the Scripture. Do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit? Who is in you? If you are a Christian this morning, if you are a follower, if you are saved as so may be your verbiage, or you have trusted Christ as your Savior, the Holy Spirit who is in you. I don't understand. I don't either. He's in you. and whom you have from God. He was placed there, the Holy Spirit of God was placed in you at the moment that you believed and trusted in Jesus Christ. It is a baptism of the Spirit, but it is instantaneous at the time you trust Christ as your Savior. It's not something that you're going to get more of or you're going to have less of. He's there once you trust Christ. He's living in you. And you are not your own. Wow. You are bought with a price. What's that price? The blood of Christ who you were bought with a price. Therefore, glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are. You're not your own anymore. Your body, your spirit, that which you are, which your soul, which makes you up, you are gods. Now those of you that are not followers, this doesn't apply to you. But to everyone that names the name of Christ in this room this morning, you are gods. Glorify God in your body, in your spirit, and in your soul. You want to know where grace comes in? to where that believe and trust is simplified. Well, you give them everybody for the last six weeks a license to sin and go do it. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. The Spirit of God lives in you. Glorify God in your body and in your spirit. Oh, that's big. The Spirit of God no longer dwells in the Holy of Holies as it did in the days before Christ. The Spirit of God no longer dwells just in the temple behind a curtain to where folks could, only one person got to go in. The Spirit of God no longer is just for the Levites and for one individual, for one priest. The Spirit of God dwells in You, the Spirit of God as in that day, has no more significance now. Christ said this is brand new. The same Holy Spirit that was in the temple, the same Holy Spirit that only the priest got to go in and visit where He was, lives in you. Brand new theology, brand new teaching, brand new thinking. A brand new way of life and a brand new religion. It wasn't what they were used to. In 70 AD, the ancient Jewish temple was destroyed. And in fact, ancient Judaism came to an end. It was done at that point in time. And the fact of the matter is, it was almost as if God Himself punctuated the fact that the temple model had come to an end by allowing it to be torn down. Its purpose had been served because Christ the Messiah had come. And Jesus Himself stated, I came not to abolish the law, but to fulfill the law. The Messiah had come. He had arrived and now the entire law, Jesus said, can be fulfilled by these two rules. Love God and love others as yourself. You think you got a problem with that? How do you think those Jewish people felt about that? And folks who had nothing in common, folks who did not even realize. I mean, here's all these other races and creeds of people all over the Mediterranean and around the Mediterranean. They now had something in common. They had Christ in common. If they believe and trusted in him. Yet they were being taught by Jewish people, you've got to be circumcised, you've got to keep this part up. No, no, no. They had one thing in common, and that one thing in common was Christ died, was buried, and rose again. And if you'll believe and trust in that, then you too have this same God that is our God, Yahweh. Now He's in your court. He lives in you. And these two little verses that we just read, if you ever grasp this, if you ever get it, as we say, if you ever get this fact, if you ever understand that your body is the temple of the living God, If you ever grasp and you get the fact that the God that was in the burning bush lives in you. If you ever get the fact that the God that was the parter of the Red Sea lives in you. If you ever get the fact that the God that took care of Elijah and Moses and all those people of the past in their deepest and dark times. If you ever get He lives in you and you grasp that. will change your life. You're not your own, you're bought with a price and He lives in you. And that was a brand new way of thinking. And it's brand new today. And it's still convoluted with temple model thinking. And people try to tell you, you have all this stuff you have to do. When in fact, if you just realize that He lives in you and you will glorify God with your body and your spirit and your soul, it will change your life. It doesn't take a list. It doesn't take a list. Jesus never intended. But the problem with temple model is somewhere down through the years that we as individuals have moved from Christ and brand new, and we had moved from Paul's temple in you and somewhere, and it can be tracked if you want to go back and look at it and find it, but what has happened is what you believe is trumped by how you behave. That's what's happened. What you believe has been trumped by how you behave. And if you ever get the magnitude, what Paul was saying that was brand new, you will change your life. You will treat others differently. It will change the way that you live. You will live differently. It will change the things that you say. Your verbiage will be different. Your language will be different. If you ever get it, the things that you want and do will change. When you realize that He lives in you and you are to glorify God with your body, it won't take some list of do's and don'ts. It won't take some Protestant preacher beating you over the head. It'll change you when you grasp that. He lives in you. He lives in you. And what has happened instead of a loving relationship with God and a loving relationship with other followers, and what has happened is we read and our devotions get equated to some list and to some to-dos and our understanding of absolute truth and loving others is convoluted away from Jesus' brand new to instill back in it temple model thinking. And what has happened instead of that is Protestants have been beating people over the head with this Bible ever since. And the tragedy in all of that is the one thing that Christ said. Love is lost. Bill threw me a curve a little bit ago. I'd forgot all about it. That I was having a memorial service for Carol Fetter immediately following this service this morning. And the one person in all of Big Branch that taught me how to love, sorry, but it was none of you. It was one guy with a mohawk and tattoos on every place on his body and a ponytail in his back. He taught me what love was when I came back to this church. You want to know why? Because I seen God accept him through the eyes of grace. And when Fred knelt at that altar and someone said to him, and I remember it just like it was yesterday, It's not all you got to do is straighten up and fly right. And I had to say, whoa, no, no. You just need to trust Christ as your personal savior. And that family and Carol and Grady and that group of people taught me what it was to embrace grace because they needed it. They needed it. Love is lost in temple model thinking. How can something so clear? Love God, love others. Love your neighbor as yourself. How can something so pure and so simple and so sweet and so easy become so complicated and so convoluted? So temple model. Because there is a simple. Part of us that we all have some temple model thinking. We all have in our conscience have been shaped by it. What you fear. What you think is sin, what you have been taught and what's been taught to us, we continue to hold on to. What holds us back? Let me illustrate. Have you ever wondered how close you can get to sin without sinning? Temple model. Because you treat God like He's stupid. He lives in you. He's going to tell you what's sin in your life. In fact, He's done told you what sin is if you'll dust it off and read it. And He'll speak to you about it in your life. You can even get your phone out and read it and He'll speak to you. You can get two or three other different kinds of versions and He'll speak to you because He's bigger than the version that you believe is only the one about absolute truth. Have you ever wondered how close you can get to sin without sinning? Have you ever felt more guilty about missing church than the way you treated someone at work or at home? Temple model thinking. Do those things that you hold as deep convictions hold precedent over the way you treat others? You're living in a temple model world. Have you ever felt fear? over the internal destiny of your child or about the internal destiny of your child because of a baptism or a sprinkling or a dedication. Temple model thinking. Someone has convinced you that putting a little bit of water on the head of your baby or someone or maybe myself saying some nice words controls their internal destiny. That's temple model thinking. Christ said, bring them unto me and then go live like them. What was he saying? Faith and trust. Just like a child. Do you believe there is some ritual that makes you right with God? And that restitution or resolve to someone else is non-essential? Temple model thinking. Have you ever failed morally? I can raise both hands to this one. Have you ever failed morally? Had a divorce? Cussed and swore? Stole? Had an affair? Whatever you define moral value, whatever you define as a moral failure in your life, have you ever had that? And were you more concerned with what God would do to you? than the hurt that it caused someone else or others. Temple model thinking. Why? Because temple model is always more concerned about self than love others. Temple model is always selfish, jealous, and unrighteous or self-righteous. Do people's sins cause feelings of superiority in you? When someone else sins, do you feel superior? Do you have feelings of moral superiority? Do you feel more superior because of someone that is involved in something that you label as sin? model thinking. Why? Because their sins should break your heart and you should have a heart of compassion with outstretched wings singing, oh Jerusalem, Jerusalem, how often would I have gathered you. You ought to realize the love that that person needs for the hurt that they have inside that's causing Their self-medication of what they're doing. Do your beliefs. Your theology, your views, your politics, your thoughts of race. Get in the way of love. Temple. model thinking, for God so loved the world that he gave. See, the truth is there is temple model in all of us, and we could go on and expose that. That's not the point. The point is to make you realize and can you imagine if it weren't there? If we were free from it. As Paul said. Could you imagine? What if every follower knew that every morning when he got out of bed saying, God is fine with me and I must figure out how I can be fine with others so that they can be fine with my Heavenly Father. Could you imagine what the church could accomplish? If that was our ideology, if that's the way we thought, Love God, love others. Help others to find my heavenly father's grace. I think what fuels our temple model thinking. Is our failure. To embrace. The gospel of grace. Jesus died for you. Grace has no measures. There is no limits on how much God loves you. And when we get to the place that we can embrace that and it settles into our hearts and it becomes the filter that we live by. It becomes the filter of what we do and what we say and what we read and what we read in this book. And we put it all through a filter of grace. And the truth that God loves me and that I love God and that I'm going to love others, then and only then, if that is what guides us and not our conscience, not our temple model thinking, then and only then will we have an impact and make a difference. I don't know about you, but I get sick of having to make points. I want to make a difference. I want folks to know that they are loved. I want the Fred Draughtys of the world to be able to put their arms around me while sitting on a commode in his front yard that was his outside seat. And pick me up and bear hug me and say, Preacher, I love you and I know you love me. I want to make that difference. And not just to everyone in this room, but to everyone I come in contact with. Not for the well-to-do or not for those that feel they're the elitist. Not just to the addict or to the druggie. Everyone is our neighbor. What if, what if that brand new philosophy that Christ brought to us, that Paul in fact added, that Peter himself stressed, the Jew of all Jews, those two. that knew what temple model was better than anybody, what if they could change their way of thinking? What if that same way of thinking that those two Jewish boys and that Christ Himself said, this is all brand new, love God, love others, treat your neighbor like yourself. What if we all started to live by that creed? Father God, I love it when you show grace in action. I love it when we see the transformation of what grace does in people's lives. I love it. Whenever I can look over this crowd and see those individuals that not one church, not one religion, not one theology could change except they have come to realize the grace of God that has changed them. And it will behold and change their behavior. It'll change who they are and the way they think and the things that they do. It has more power in their life than anything that I can do or say. Because they realized that their body is a temple of a God that loves them. and instructs them, and cares for them, and provides for them, and leads and guides them, and forgives them when they fail, and picks them up while they're down, and does away with their guilt and shame. Oh God, may we as followers excrete that grace that flows in our veins to where that we look and smell of a Christ-like grace alone. Just an aroma that is Jesus that fills the room where we are.