THE RICHES OF THE BELIEVER

1 CORINTHIANS 3:16-23

Many years ago there was a television show called "The Millionaire." It was about an eccentric rich man who had willed a million dollars to a number of unsuspecting people. This was filmed in a day when a million dollars was a lot more money than it is today and each show of the series would focus upon a different person’s reaction to suddenly finding himself a millionaire.

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to be rich? How would your attitudes change toward the importance of your job, your church or your leisure activities?

The Bible tells us that we have riches beyond measure. We have been blessed with every spiritual blessing in Christ. Our problem is that we all too often ignore our wealth.

On the street where my wife grew up there lived an old woman in a little, shabby, run-down house. The woman dressed in discarded clothes and made a living for herself by begging for food. On day she died. When the city officials entered her house, they found every room to be full of bundles of newspaper from floor to ceiling. Wedged between the pages of all of these newspapers were hundreds and thousands of dollars. This woman was rich, yet she chose to live the life of a pauper.

The Corinthians were guilty of doing the same thing. They were rich in spiritual blessings, but they were living like spiritual paupers. And so, Paul sets out to show them their great wealth. He lists four distinct areas in which they possess the wealth of God.

The implication is that, with all of this great abundance of spiritual wealth, the ought to have a lifestyle to match, especially with regard to division in the church.

The first thing that we see about God’s people is that they are the "temple of God." This is a reference to the church, the entire body of Christ.

We often refer to the church as the body of Christ and as Christians, but we rarely refer to it as the temple of God.

When we talk about the temple of God, we usually think of Solomon’s temple in the city of Jerusalem. The temple in Jerusalem was the place where God made His presence known. It signified the presence of God upon earth. Within the innermost part of the temple was the sanctuary in which was once found the ark of the covenant. This was a wooden chest overlaid with gold. Inside were kept the pieces of the ten commandments. On the top of the ark was a golden cover known as the Mercy Seat. This Mercy Seat was the royal throne of God. It was the most holy place on earth. No one was ever permitted to enter into the room in which it stood. Only the high priest was even permitted to enter the room and then only once a year in order to offer the sacrifice of atonement.

There were two different words that could be used to describe the temple.

The temple in Jerusalem was destroyed by the Roman general Titus in A.D. 70. It was never rebuilt. But today there is another temple of God. It is the church. It is the body of believers. This is the most holy place of God on earth today. The Spirit of God dwells inside the heart of each and every believers. And when believers come together to worship, that gathering becomes the holy place of God.

While the physical temple was destroyed on several occasions, God gives a sober warning against any who might seek to destroy His spiritual temple.

God takes very special care of His holy place. He says that if any man destroys that holy place, then God will destroy him.

It is interesting that the word translated "destroy" has a wide range of meanings. It can mean "to destroy" or it can mean "bring to ruin." Its most common idea is to "desecrate" or "to defile" or "to corrupt."

There was a rottenness and a corruption at work within the Corinthian church. It was not an attack from without at the hands of Roman or Jewish persecutions. This was an attack from within.

To be fair, there had been external attacks against the church. The Jewish community had, on one occasion, brought a civil lawsuit against the church and had dragged Paul before the Roman Proconsul Gallio. The charge had been dropped and those who were instrumental in bringing the false charges were themselves attacked.

But there were also those within the Corinthian church who were trying to destroy the church. They did this by bringing in division. This strife was a much greater danger to the church. Paul warns those who bring such division, "Don’t mess with God’s temple! He destroys those who destroy His temple."

Paul has already spent a considerable amount of time in the first two chapters of Corinthians in showing the superiority of the wisdom of God over the wisdom of the world. Now he issues an exhortation to any who might think of himself to be wise in the world’s wisdom. It is an exhortation to abandon the wisdom of the world -- to become foolish in the world’s eyes -- in order to grasp the wisdom of God.

Much division within the church would cease if believers understood the uselessness of the wisdom of the world. Instead, the world’s way of thinking too often infiltrates the church. This affects the church’s view of...

Paul is going to deal with each of these issues as he writes to the Corinthians. But at the heart of each of these issues is the simple question -- to whom should we turn for our answers? Who is our authority? Is it the world or is it the Lord?

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