Psalms 74:8 “They said in their hearts, Let us destroy them together: they have burned up all the synagogues of God in the land.”
It has always been the desire of Satan to lay waste to the Places where God meets with His people. If the Devil cannot destroy the House of God he entices those that attend into defiling themselves or the membership so that God cannot meet with them as He wishes to.
We can look to Akin and how his forbidden treasures caused all the Israelites to suffer. We can look at any number of wicked Hebrew kings that set up false idols in the Temple of God. Each time Israel was taken into captivity, the Temple was razed and pillaged. Even when the Romans permitted the Jews to keep their religious customs, Satan encouraged the hearts of the leadership to wax cold; which in turn led to their hypocrisy and stiff-necked arrogance.
The spiritual warfare we fight requires that God and His people meet with one another. It is not a question of whether God’s people desire to meet with Him, the psalmist is writing a prayer in which he pleads with God to restore their worship and the Temple.
Our need to ensure that we can meet with God should be the priority in our spiritual life. That desire is fulfilled in two ways: Safeguarding the House of God; and, keeping ourselves Consecrated.
The reason that the Temple was burned was because of inadequate defenses. Either the children of God were lax in setting up measures to keep the House of God pure, or they neglected to utilize the measures that could have prevented it. Long before the flames of destruction came to the temple, the people neglected their duty to keep the House of God as the Lord had instructed. This fact alone is why we cannot slack on responsibility, personal accountability, loosen our standards, or adopt a hands-off approach to what happens in the Church. This is why doctrine, pastoral authority, followship and being of one mind and in accord are so vital.
But the second temple that must need protecting is that of the individual believer. We all are indwelled by the Spirit of God and have become a tabernacle of God. If we become inwardly scorched by hellfire then we have already forsaken the largest portion of the time we could have had fellowship with God. We are instructed in the Word to not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of our mind. We must ever be cognoscente of our need to remain consecrated to the Lord (or reserved solely for God’s use). When we no longer desire to live for Christ it is because our inward temple has been burnt. When we long for worldly treasures and desire to take part in the indulgences of the carnal man we it is because we neglected our duty to preserve our consecration for God.
By failing to keep the House of God rid of the world we give God no choice but to leave the temple: Once the Lord has departed from the temple no man can force Him to return and there is no man strong enough to keep Satan’s fires from consuming that which once was holy.
When we are obedient to follow the instruction of God to keep those things which God has presented to us for His glory, then God will continue to preserve His House. When we demonstrate of nonchalantness toward God’s wishes, by slacking on our duty to continually strive for the temple’s purity, God no longer will keep the hedge in place that provides us the freedom and opportunity to meet with Him in His house.
Your fellowservant in Christ,
-Bro. Jordan Foster
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