And that is what some of you were. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.(1Cor 6:11 NIV)
You were slanderers, homosexuals, sexually immoral, all kinds of stuff. BUT YOU WERE WASHED! you are now clean and separate from that old death.
I am reading “Portraits of Christ in the Tabernacle” by Theodore Epp, and he talks about the Tabernacle being out in the desert, and when someone came up to it, it would not look like a real big deal. Lots of people had big tents. Nomads have had elaborate tents for thousands of years. (I’ve heard in recent years some have pewter floors that fold out and DVD players hooked to big screen TVs. They aren’t poor, they are just nomadic.) From the outside the tabernacle looked like a big white tent with no roof. You might be able to see a little bit of the roof of the inner part if you would back up enough.
Like the tabernacle, when you look around, Christians look just like all the other people. (with the exception of some groups like my Mennonite Homies)
Some of us were pretty wicked people, but we’ve been washed and set apart for God. Now we might look a little different, like the tabernacle was all white on the outside, but still not too different.
The only difference is noticed when people come in. As we invite people into our lives, just as foreigners and aliens were invited into the Tabernacle, they can see that what is in this tent is different than any other tent they’ve seen before.
Inside this tent is one of the places where God comes down to earth.
Inside this tent is one of the places where the One seated in Heaven gets His feet dirty in our world.
Inside this tent is where God lives with Men.
For we are the temple of the living God. As God has said: ‘I will live with them and walk among them, and I will be their God, and they will be my people.’(2Cor 6:16 NIV)
Invite someone into your life that might not know about the God who lives with men. Your body is the tent He is camping out in. He is not on holiday, He is here on business.