Mon Mar 24

Listen up, little ones

Especially for the littles in your household.

Listen for the words home and temple.

Reading

John 14:18–26, 1 Corinthians 3:9–17—The House for God’s Name is Jesus’s Church.

Optional Reading

1 Kings 8:12-21

Keys for kids

Also for the littles. Young households might choose, after Keys for Kids, to go directly to praise and prayer.

Our three-in-one God makes his home with his people.
This home is Jesus’s church and God’s temple.
God protects Jesus’s church.

Questions

(Some read the ?s before the notes/ ask them after.)

With whom does God make his home?
Is God’s home Jesus or the church? Explain.
Who makes up God’s temple?

Notes

In 1 Kings 8, we saw Solomon dedicate to God the temple that he had built for God’s name. We see that temple pointing forward to Christ and also to Christ’s house, the church. Remember that in Christ, the particular location of the house for God’s name is his church. Both of our readings today draw out that point.

Jesus promises that he and his father will come and make their home with those who love him (a permanent home like the temple, not just a temporary tent like the tabernacle). They will dwell with Jesus’s people through the promised Holy Spirit. The CSB notes this promise recalls God’s dwelling among his people in the tabernacle and the temple, and points forward to the time when the Spirit would come at Pentecost.

But this promise is not merely to individual Christians. No, the church is Jesus’s temple—God’s temple, as Paul explains. The “you” in “you are God’s temple” is plural. All of you. And in you, Jesus’s Church, God dwells in the person of God the Holy Spirit.

God cares for and protects his holy temple—Jesus’s church. We can rejoice and take comfort in that.

Jesus is the eternal king!

Swedish Method questions

See the Sunday reading for meaning of the symbols.

Praise

Psalm 48c, 133a

Prayer

Rejoice that you are in God’s temple, Jesus’s church.
Pray for a specific application from yesterday's sermons.
Pray for a member of our church, for your family, and for a non-Christian friend/family member.

Notes this week are drawn in part from commentaries by John Calvin, William Hendriksen, Kent Hughes, Roger Ellsworth, Gary Inrig, Christopher Ash, Trent Casto, the Theological Dictionary of the Old and New Testaments (TDOT, TDNT) and notes from the CSB Study Bible, and the Reformation Study Bible (RSB).