ABOVE: Is "The Bride" making herself ready?
Most churches have spring cleaning days in which they tidy up the flower beds and give a good and deep cleaning to the sanctuary.
Temples in the past were given fastidious attention as they were regarded as sacred dwelling places for God.
It’s only right to care for the physical property that God has given us.
But what of the corporate temple of the people of God? Individual churches and the greater Body of Christ go through all sorts of seasons.
Spring cleaning can come to any church at any time. It’s a matter of recognizing that cleansing is necessary.
The Apostle John wrote about spring cleaning to the seven churches in the Book of Revelation. In the Old Testament account of King Hezekiah, it is revealed that it was during his first year of his reign that he opened the doors of the temple and repaired them. That’s just the doors. He ordered them to carry out the rubbish from the holy place.
It was a tangible, physical metaphor. Just as the people had let the actual temple go to pot, the spiritual temples of each person can have a lot of “rubbish.”
Josiah was a Hebrew king who ordered that the temple be repaired. While the work was going on, the Book of the Law was found. When the king read it, he tore his robe because the book’s laws and admonitions had been ignored.
The churches of the world and its leaders, and particularly those of the western world, sometimes find themselves paying more attention and money to their physical buildings than they do the spiritual conditions of the “church” (Body of Christ).
It’s easier to identify the tending that flower beds, church grounds and sanctuaries need than the soul of the church. Blessed are the churches that foster the spring cleaning of souls.
PORTAL TO HEAVEN: Churches and individuals that concentrate on the outside of the corporate and individual “temple” will find themselves in a double-bind of paying for the temporal and being in debt to the eternal.
In the first year of his reign, in the first month, he opened the doors of the house of the Lord and repaired them…carry out the rubbish from the holy place. For our fathers have trespassed and done evil in the eyes of the Lord our God; they have forsaken Him, have turned their faces away from the dwelling place of the Lord, and turned their backs on Him.…Go up to Hilkiah the high priest and have him get ready the money that has been brought into the temple of the Lord, which the doorkeepers have collected from the people. Have them entrust it to the men appointed to supervise the work on the temple…When the king heard the words of the Book of the Law, he tore his robes…Because your heart was responsive and you humbled yourself before the Lord when you heard what I have spoken against this place and its people—that they would become a curse and be laid waste—and because you tore your robes and wept in my presence, I also have heard you, declares the Lord…As Jesus was leaving the Temple grounds, his disciples pointed out to him the various Temple buildings. But he responded, ‘Do you see all these buildings? I tell you the truth, they will be completely demolished. Not one stone will be left on top of another!’
2 Chronicles 29:3,5,6 NKJV, 2 Kings 22:4,5,11,19 NIV, Matthew 24:1,2 NLT