The Master's Teaching Seminar

 Were about to begin the next chapter in our study. Here's a brief overview.

Your Master's Plan: Check Out His Teaching Seminar

All through Scripture God's glory is displayed through the lives of real people. We'll begin this chapter by visiting the shepherds returning from their field trip to the manger, the forgiven paralytic, the widow's son restored to life, and John and Peter's encounter with the paralytic at the temple gate. The impact of their encounters with God provided an outpouring of His glory to the world around them. God met them where they were and prepared them to be used mightily in His plan. Their stories were recorded in the first century after Christ's birth. God is still using their God-color testimonies for His plans and to bring Him glory today in the year 2011. That is another rather mind-boggling revelation of the BIGNESS of our God!

Christ's power to make a difference in our world lives right inside our temples. . . our lives. . . our bodies. Unfortunately, we often put our focus on other stuff. It becomes all too convenient to set His place in our life apart for another "more attractive" alternative of the moment. Isaiah discovered that truth in His life. God provided for Isaiah's restoration. He does the same for us. When we run smack dab into our need for remodeling in our temples because of the sin/idols we allow to take His place on the thrones of our temples, God has already made all the provisions for restoration.

We'll also be looking at the provisions David had prepared for his son, Solomon, to build the temple of God in Jerusalem. We'll be drawing some parallels to the provisions God makes for our temple life through the blueprints Jesus laid out in His Sermon on the Mount. Pay close attention during His terrific teaching seminar.

Topics we'll cover in this chapter:

• God shows up in the midst of the situations of life.
• We are heirs, seated with Him at the right hand of the power of God.
• Will you be a willing participant?
• David's provisions for Solomon to build the Temple of God.
• God's provisions for His Temple in us.

Copyright Lynn U. Watson, 2004, 2011

Rocks & Obedience

1 Kings 6:7 tells us that the stones and timbers were prepared away from the site and then moved to the location of the temple. Now consider the location of the temple on Mount Moriah (2 Chronicles 3:1). These rocks were not only moved to the location, but they were moved up a mountain to be able to be used in the building of the temple. This mountain, we learn, was the threshing floor that Solomon's father, David, had purchased Araunah to build an altar of sacrifice to God against whom he had mightily sinned. David was offering this sacrifice on behalf of himself and the people.

A threshing floor is usually a rock outcropping where the whole wheat is beat, and then thrown into the air for the wind to blow away the chaff and for the choice kernels of grain to fall and be harvested. This same Mount Moriah was earlier the place of Abraham's sacrifice, when God provided the ram in the thicket as a substitutionary sacrifice as God tested Abraham's obedience in the sacrifice of his son, Isaac.

Let's also look at a promise made by God to David and to Solomon 1 Kings 6:12 (NASB): "Concerning this house which you are building, if you will walk in My statutes and execute my ordinances and keep all My commandments by walking in them, then I will carry out My word with you which I spoke to David your father. And I will dwell among the sons of Israel, and will not forsake my people Israel."

Rocks and obedience seem to be pretty important to God in the building of the temple to house His presence and place of personal sacrifice. In the past several posts you have been asked to look at Jesus' sermon on the mount where He spoke specifically about His expectations for a believer's life. He let the listeners (and us) know that if we heard all these things and didn't take them to heart and apply them in our lives our foundations were built on some very sandy soil, and they would fail. He urged them and us to build our foundations on rock! We learned that Jesus Christ is our chief cornerstone. We also are "living stones being built up as a spiritual house for a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ." 1 Peter 2:5 (NASB). We must be prepared before we are useful.

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All other material, Copyright Lynn U. Watson 2004, 2011

Rock Solid Foundation!!!

"Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine, and acts upon them, may be compared to a wise man, who built his house upon the rock." Matthew 7:24 (NASB)

The verses we have read so far from Matthew 5 about being salt and light in the world come from Jesus' Sermon on the Mount. Read Matthew 7:28-29. What was the result of Jesus' teachings in this sermon?
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Look over the whole sermon Jesus just taught (Matthew, chapters 5-7). From the Beatitudes (the "Blessed are the... verses) to His exhortation for His followers to be the salt and light of the world right through to the parable of the two builders, Jesus has laid out the guidelines for a life tht reflects the God-colors of the universe. He asks for our obedience, and makes us this promise: "Therefore everyone who hears these words of Mine, and acts upon them, may be compared to a wise man, who built his house upon the rock. And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and burst against that house; and yet it did not fall, for it had been founded upon the rock." Matthew 7:24-25 (NASB). The crowd heard Him as One who spoke what He lived and lived what He spoke. They stood in total awe of His authority.

1 Peter 2:6 tells us that Jesus Christ is the very cornerstone of our foundation. The One we need supporting His temple. A couple of posts from now we will spend time discovering more about foundations and preparations for building Solomon's temple -- the site of Isaiah's spectacular vision. As we move through the study we will apply those lessons to prepare ourselves to be the sanctuaries we were meant to be -- temples fully reflecting the God-colors of His glory. For today, know that Jesus is the cornerstone and foundation for all of our life. When we hang unto His promise to us to forgive and cleanse us of all unrighteousness if we walk in His light, our foundation rock is SOLID!

Copyright Lynn U. Watson, 2004, 2011

What's In Your Temple?

Do you not know that you yourselves are God's temple and that God's Spirit lives in you? 1 Corinthians 3:16 (NIV)

In the last post we pondered and imagined what the train of His robe might have looked like. Today's focus will shift from the train to the temple that it fills. In the introductory material we discussed the size of the temple and how much fabric it would have taken to fill the temple in Jerusalem. We considered that it would take us a life time and then some to truly examine every inch of that garment.

We are ready to consider another temple and what fills it. Read 1 Corinthians 3:16 and 1 Corinthians 6:19. How is the temple identified in these Scriptures, and how is it filled?
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Now read Isaiah 6:1-4. What else do these verses say about the temple?
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Did you catch that?! Our bodies are the temple! OKAY! So, with that in mind, and looking back at Isaiah 6:1-4 , if each of our bodies is a temple and the Spirit of God occupies it, then are flaming creatures with six wings flying over us? Do we fill the earth with His glory? Does the shouting of the angels shake our foundation? Does smoke (burning incense  = prayers of the saints -- Revelation 5:8) fill us up? Does the train of His robe fill our bodies?


That is all pretty mind boggling, don't you think? :o) Do we allow enough of Jesus in our lives for us to reflect that kind of glory to the world around us? What does the world see when it observes our lives? Does it catch little glimpses of that glory? Or does it see a jewel encrusted train filling our lives? Do you see His glory when you look in the mirror? I desire to see His glory in my life, and I desperately desire for others to see Him in me. Do you desire the same?


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All other content Copyright Lynn U Watson, 2004, 2011


(For answering questions such as those in this post, to make notes and add your own thoughts, and to be able to look back later, you might consider writing them out in a journal, keeping a Word file or a notepad on your desktop computer, or making notes about the material right on your Kindle.)

How Large Is Your God?

Humor me today please. I'm taking this whole "the train of His robe filled the temple" image just one step further. Remember I mentioned the seamstress in me, and I'll be taking this opportunity to expand on the a bit further. :o)

When our children were growing up, to supplement our family income, I spent many hours at the sewing machine creating custom garments for the public. Rachel, our first born, did not entertain herself well for very long. (How many of you have had one of those children?) This meant often times holding her in my lap while I sewed, or snatching moments to sew late at night or during her very short naps -- she didn't like those either. When she was old enough to sit up and get into things, her curiosity and investigative skills happened onto a new "toy" --  grocery sacks full of fabric scraps! Rachel would sit on the floor where I was working and carefully dump those sacks. She would slowly inspect every single piece of fabric in those sacks as though she were looking for a rare treasure. When she finished with those two sacks, I could fill them up and she would repeat the entire search all over again. She was thrilled with this little game, and it won me 45 minutes every afternoon of uninterrupted sewing time.

You guessed it! I decided to estimate just how many grocery sacks of fabric it would have taken to fill the temple . . . . my calculation: 151,875 or so . . . That's a whole lot of grocery sacks. Now Rachel had two sacks, and she went through each of them twice in 45 minutes. So, if she had 151,875 sacks, and was willing to go through each of them twice for 45 minutes, she would spend 56,953 hours or 2,373 days, or 339 weeks or 6.5 years of her life 24/7 at this. I'm sure she would discover some pretty cool things about the fabrics a she examined their intricate patterns and textures. If you will further consider that she could go through the same two sacks of scraps for a month or more before we changed out the mix -- well you get the picture -- this could be a life long, 24-hour-a-day activity and the discoveries would not be made this side of eternity.

In future posts we will learn about our bodies being the very temple of the Holy Spirit, and Jesus lives within each believer's heart. Like He did with Isaiah, God wants us to see our own personal sin/idol (that which puts distance between us and God), so that He can come in with His powerful cleansing and help us to rebuild those places in our temples so that we will reflect His gory in a powerful and colorful way to the world around us.

As I prepared to share all of this with you, God grew mighty large in my eyes!!! As you visualized the pictures I was expressing, did your understanding of His proportions take on a new meaning?

Like Rachel with the sacks of fabric, we could spend a life time examining the wonders of our God, and continuously be amazed at what we see revealed. If you can look at your life in light of the goodness and majesty of a magnificent God, then you can see the imprint of His faithfulness on every minute of it -- 24/7/365. Do you think this ENORMOUS GOD has some big plans for your life and mine? Are you ready to allow Him to prepare you to be used for His purposes?

Look at Isaiah 6:8 (NASB) again:
Then I heard the voice of the LORD saying, "Whom shall I send, and who will go for Us?" Then I said, "Here am I. Send me!"
Do you desire to be better prepared to boldly answer when the Lord calls on you? Preparation, restoration, and renovation of our temples as God's throne is the journey we are on -- a journey that I pray will increase your heart to serve Him only and to do it with certainty and joy!

Copyright, Lynn U. Watson, 2004, 2011

In the next post I'll be sharing the "chapters" that lie ahead so you will have a bit of a map. I will be spreading these over the months ahead. Remember that the entire blog is always here. You may come on board anytime. There's no time table except as you and God choose.

The Train of His Robe Filled the Temple

Read Isaiah 6:1-8 again, either from your own Bible or you will find it in the very first post in this blog. In the next two posts (and before we go on) I would like to focus on God's enormous proportions -- the picture that Isaiah is poetically creating for us here.

The Scripture says God was seated on a throne above the temple -- high and exalted. It then tells us that just the train of His robe -- just the train -- filled the entire temple. That amount of fabric totally mesmerized me. The seamstress (one of several hats I wear from time to time) in me felt compelled to figure this out.

A little research uncovered this fact: Queen Elizabeth II of England donned a train made of purple velvet for her coronation. The train measured 6.5 meters (about 21 feet) from her shoulder to the tip of the train. The train had been constructed from 22 meters (about 24.5 yards) of fabric. Supposing that they used three lengths of 60 inch wide fabric -- that would come out just about right -- the train would have been 15 feet wide and 21 feet long. That's 315 square feet. How does that compare with the amount of fabric needed for the train of God's robe to fill the entire temple? Before we even start doing the math, let me add that most velvet fabrics are loomed much narrower than 60 inches, which may make the figures we will be using on the conservative side.

Looking at Solomon's blueprints (see 2 Chronicles 3) for the temple, the measurements show that the inside of the temple was 90 feet long by 30 feet wide by 45 feet high. Multiplying that out, just the square feet of fabric to cover the floor would have had to be 2700 square feet. There are 15 square feet in each yard of 60 inch wide fabric. That's 180 yards of fabric to cover the floor. Now the temple is 45 feet high, and the train of His robe filled  the temple.

Must next calculation was how many layers of fabric it would take to get a stack 45 feet high. Velvet is pretty thick, and not accounting for the weight of it mashing the layers dow, I conservatively estimated six layers per inch. Forty-five feet equals 540 inches. Five hundred forty inches times six layrs to the inch is 3,240 layers of fabric.

Since each layer is 180 yards of fabric, we now need 583,200 yards of fabric to fill the temple. One mile is 1,760 yards long. That means we are talking about 331 miles of fabric. Consider, too, that He is seated high above the temple -- the train had to reach the temple before it could fill it up. We can only imagine how much more fabric that would require.

There is no conclusive evidence of what fabric this train would have been constructed, but hair of goats, sheep and camels as well as linen, flax, hem and silk were the common fibers of the day. Since Jesus is the King, and He is also the Lamb of God, I chose to learn a little about wool production. Soft fleece from the smaller sheep is produced at a rate of 2-6 pounds per sheep per year. There are two shearings each year. Since the average amount here is 4 pounds per sheep per year, if follows that for one shearing the average is 2 pounds. Are you still with me here?

Now I don't presume to know if 2 pounds of wool makes 2 pounds of yarn or not -- I'd guess it takes more ounces of the wool make the same measure of yarn, but for our purposes today, we're just going to say that the two measurements are equal. Just using an afghan pattern and dimensions and yarn weight to get an idea of how much wool it would take to create 583,200 yards of fabric, my calculations indicate that 4,665,600 sheep would need to be sheared. I can't even begin to imagine how many angels would have been employed to do the shearing, much less spin that wool and weave it! Again, this is all hypothetical, but allow it to paint you a picture of just how incredible Isaiah's vision really was, and why he saw his own shortcomings so intensely magnified.

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All other content, Copyright Lynn U. Watson, 2004, 2011