I Am The Lord Your God (Part 7)

God is in complete and utter control. He has chosen Jerusalem as His central Holy point. Jeremiah 3:17 says “At that time they shall call Jerusalem the throne of the LORD; and all the nations shall be gathered unto it, to the name of the LORD, to Jerusalem; neither shall they walk any more after the imagination of their evil heart.” And further in Jeremiah 4:2, “And thou shall swear, ‘The LORD liveth, in truth, in judgment, and in righteousness’; and all nations shall bless themselves in Him and in Him shall they glory.” The LORD GOD is in control. It is to Him that all nations shall come, it is His Name they will long for. This is evidenced in Jeremiah 16:19-21 and Jeremiah 31:7-34. He decides who can come, and it is His desire that all come (John 3:16), but they have to do so via Jerusalem. Does this mean the biblical Jerusalem? Maybe a remnant of that, the law, the holiness, the purity relating to the attitude of the biblical Jerusalem. Certainly not the corruption that was that led to its destruction. When Christ came to tear the temple veil, it was the separation of man from God, nothing more, nothing mystical, but representing the commingling of blood and spirit, of purity and fleshliness that is this human race, of heart, soul, body, and mind that God wants all of. It represented the commingling of the perfect (God) with that which would never be perfect (man) until death was overcome and man crossed through the portal to God. So is it the physical place? I don’t think so. I think like so much of God’s word it is figurative, a representation of things yet to come, the representation of a place that God has built for me and you and you and you and all those who believe. Jerusalem is the Kingdom of God, in which He makes the rules and He calls whoever He wants to citizens. Jerusalem is the Kingdom that Daniel described in Daniel 2:35-45. And He will provide for His. A perfect example of this is given in Amos 9:11,12 with the destruction of Jerusalem and rebuilding of Jerusalem. Doesn't this give the same attitude of the old covenant being nailed to the cross with Jesus and the new covenant was used to rebuild the temple of God within each of us. For that is where the new covenant is. And once again I am fooled because I fully believe that Amos is speaking of a physical temporal experience and he in fact is not. Amos is in fact telling me that within my very soul God will rip the veil separating me from Him. His Son’s death and resurrection will accomplish this. And my participation in the act of repentance, faith, and baptism will be to raise the temple within me to the former glory, that is the former reverence of God. I will be come as a priest in the temple. God doesn’t make me as a leader in the sense of coming in on a white horse and slashing everything in its pathway. God makes me a free thinker, one who can stand on my own two feet and a peacemaker. That is God’s strength.