A Temple God Has Not Built (2025)
By: Deji Yesufu
“Yet the Most High does not dwell in houses made by hands…” – Acts 7:48
Tai Solarin, the late prominent Nigerian humanist, authored an article many years ago titled “May Your Road Be Rough”. He published that article at the beginning of a New Year like this one. In the article, Solarin argued that the best thing that could happen to a man within a year is adversity. He couldn’t understand why people would begin a year wishing one another blessings; he explained that anything good that happens to any person is borne on the wings of adversity. So, while many religious houses wished their adherent “Happy New Year”, Tai, a prominent atheist of his time, prayed that things would be difficult for his readers because amid deep adversity comes the greatest wisdom, most well-forged visions, and the most enduring prosperity. This is also a New Year (2025), but I do not dare to pray that the road would be rough for my readers. While I appreciate Solarin’s point and agree with him on some of his conclusions, I will take a more nuanced position from him in this article. I want to share with my readers an insight God gave to me from Acts 7:48 and I hope that it will help you and I to form a worldview that will help us through the days ahead. I want to talk to us about temples God is not building and encourage us to find temples God is building, invest in them, and look to eternity for our rewards.
Acts 7:48 were the words of Stephen, the first Christian martyr, as he faced his executors. He had taken the time to recount God’s dealing with Israel and he was heading towards the reason God eventually sent his Son in the Person of Jesus Christ. Along the way, he mentions Solomon’s building of a temple and quotes the great king who had said then that although he had built a magnificent temple for God, he was sure a physical temple was not on God’s high priority list. He explained that no one could talk about God dwelling in a physical temple since the very heavens could not contain him (1 King 8:27). As I meditated on this scripture, it dawned on me that while God will not dwell in a magnificent temple Solomon had made, he has chosen to dwell in human bodies – born again Christians (1 Corinthians 3:16). It occurred to me that the reason why God did this is because God made our bodies. God will not dwell in physical temples because, in a sense, he did not build them. But God will dwell in our bodies because he built them. These thoughts have revolutionized the way I see the world. I can now understand the commandment “…thou shall not kill…”: you and I cannot destroy what God himself made. I can understand why soldiers suffer from PTSD: post-traumatic stress disorder – a psychological challenge many soldiers suffer from after witnessing the horrors of war. Many soldiers who commit suicide do so because they never really get over the guilt of killing innocent people at war. Obafemi Awolowo explains that killing another human being does violence to one’s soul. The only solution to the unlawful taking of another person’s life is your death – and if it means that you use your own hands to do it, so be it. This is what it means for God to make human beings and the reason why none of us dare take the life of another. In this essay, I want to reflect on the temples God is building and the ones he is not, through three sub-headings: providence, money, and prayer.
Providence
The name of the local church I pastor is Providence Reformed Baptist Church Ibadan. When I started this mission in 2013, I was not keen on giving the gathering a name. I understood that with time the people who come to associate with the vision will find a name for their assembly. But in early 2023, Pastor Aniekan Ekpo visited Ibadan to see the work, and he advised we find a name for it. He explained that a name will give the work identity and help propel the vision forward. I then sat with the young man who was assisting me at the time, and we arrived at “Providence”. We added “Reformed Baptist Church” because, unlike many churches in our times that choose to be interdenominational, we are very denominational. We are Reformed Baptists, and after the Bible, the second London Baptist Confessions of 1689 is our confessional statement. We have since added “Ibadan” to the name to show the world that our missions have a primary locality within the nation of Nigeria. But what influenced the name of our local assembly was premised more on seeing God do marvellous things in our gathering. We now almost take God’s providences for granted. So that we are very content with what God has given to us, and we have a strong abhorrence towards things God has not given us. At Providence Church, we are learning to jettison marketing ideas to grow our church, and we are essentially committing ourselves to building up our most holy faith; trusting that the Lord will add to his church at his own time. We have enjoyed numerous surprises from God, and some things we hope to have and have not gotten, we leave to God’s good time to provide them. We understand that Providence is one of the key ways God builds his church, and we are very careful not to employ the arm of the flesh in doing this. If God builds this local church, we are confident, God will dwell in it.
Money
One of the greatest studies one can do on the life of Jesus Christ in the New Testament is a study of our Lord’s attitude to money. Two incidents will do for this article. In Matthew 6:24, Jesus explains that no one can serve two masters – you cannot serve God and mammon at the same time. In John 12, the Bible records that Judas, who betrayed Jesus, was in charge of the group’s money. These two scriptures show us the very little regard Christ had for money. Our Lord’s disdain for money was so profound, that he made a thief his treasurer. I have never seen a Christian organization or church make a thief their treasurer. Yet, that is what Jesus did. Now, while this is not a prescription for us to follow, it is worth examining. Why would Jesus make a thief his treasurer? Because he understood God. Jesus understands that God will make provision for whatever he wishes to do. That God is more intent on fulfilling his purposes on earth than any of us are. Therefore, if a thief takes what belongs to God, God will still ensure that resources are made available for his purposes. This also means that lack of money may be the greatest blessing that anyone can have in life. Each of us know that feeling of having “an easy life”: where the account is brimming; health is bubbling; food is abundant in the house; and everything is fine and in order. When you have money, you think less thoroughly over issues. You resort to money to fix a problem rather than trusting God to deal with the matter.
When there is no money, we look to God to build. This is why the scripture says that God has made the poor to be rich in faith. The West has become wholly atheistic because they have so much money. Churches pray a lot less now because they have all the money they need to fix the problems they have. Money, not the Holy Spirit, dictates the conferences we hold; the ministries we build; the associations we have; and the friends we keep. We now have money, and so we now have classes in the society we belong to. If God will dwell in any institution, God, not money, must build that institution. God must provide the resources to build the institution. Or else, whatever we build will only become a lifeless monument with time. God will not dwell in it. These thoughts have instilled a certain fear of God in my heart. I do not have much money, and at the same time, I have so many things to use money for. I realize now that if I spend money on what God is doing, my investment (so to speak) will yield lasting results. I understand now that the moment I see myself as a conduit for money, rather than a storage, God will begin to put more and more resources in my hands. It means that rather than doing everything to get money, God would prefer I have his mindset. If I could think like Christ, I would never lack resources for anything. I will put money into what God would prefer to put money into, and heaven will see me as a worthy conduit for its purposes in this life. God will no longer take up flesh in our world. God’s only means to reach the nations is you and I. If we will purpose to have his worldview, God will fulfil his purposes in us. He will build his temple through us, and he will dwell in it. Amen.
Prayer
This brings us to the subject of prayer. Why do we pray? We pray because we are fleshly and we are sinners. Prayer helps us to repent of our sins and avails us of the opportunity to be washed by the blood of the Lamb each day. Rather than go to a reverend father, you can approach the throne of grace yourself. God made you – he lives in you, he will hear you. As the Holy Spirit rids us of sin, our minds begin to approximate to something of the mind of Christ. As we read the holy scriptures, God begins to renew our thinking and help us to think his thoughts. As we think God’s thoughts, we do the will of God with ease. As we do the will of God, his purposes come to fruition in our hands, and we will never lack resources.
Something else prayer does is that it helps us to see God. When you kneel before God, you acknowledge his Lordship over you. When you close your eyes, you leave the realm of the physical and you enter into the realm of the soul or spirit. While Christians cannot embark on astral travels, prayer brings us closest to the throne of God. By faith, we see ourselves enter into the very presence of God, and we talk with our Father. And we hear God speak back to us, as he brings the words of Christ dwelling in our hearts to mind. We have clarity of mind to deal with life issues, and we make the right decisions continually. The chief challenge of men without Christ is that their lives are filled with errors. They continually make wrong decisions, and most of them come to the end of their lives with deep regrets. This is not so with Christians; we come to the end of our lives with deep gratitude. Why? Jesus Christ dwells in us, the temple he has made, and through the years he helps us to make right decisions. Prayer enhances our thought life; it strengthens us to hear God clearly; and it helps us to make decisions to build temples in which God will dwell.
Conclusion
When the Holy Spirit births light on scripture, there is no end to what you can learn from it. Our fathers used to say that theology is the mother of all sciences. Where there is godliness and a rich biblical Christian tradition, there is likely to be peace, development, and growth. The challenge of our age is that God is not involved in many things people do. Perhaps the biggest trouble with many institutionalized churches is that Christ is no longer among them. He has long removed his candle stick from them. The people there have replaced God with mammon. We should be afraid of this. If it happened to churches in the first century, it could very well happen to us today. Study shows that all churches will become apostate with time. The best we can do is to delay the process, and we have learnt that confessional churches usually delay this process. Confessional churches also become apostates, but at least only after a few generations have passed.
My concern in this essay is about the temples God is building and the ones he has no business with. If you are a person or an institution that trusts more in the resources you have or the money you can get, to build whatever vision you are pursuing, God is not creating that vision with you. If you are an institution that trust more in your intellect, and less in prayers, God is not involved with what you are doing. If you are an individual who is unable to discern Christ in providences around you, you are not likely to build an institution God wishes to dwell in. The time is short; there is no time to waste on buildings God will not dwell in. My hope and prayer are that my writing will outlive me; that my visions will be built upon by others; and that God will use the little efforts I am putting at moving his word forward to change the lives of many, both in my time and after I am long gone. I am confident that the only way this will happen is if God authors the things I do – and then he will dwell in it.
This year, 2025, may the Lord grant that we find visions that His Spirit is building; that we separate from buildings that His Spirit does not dwell in because of sin; and that we build temples, visions, that God will dwell in. Amen.
Deji Yesufu is the pastor of Providence Reformed Baptist Church Ibadan. He is the author of HUMANITY.
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