If You Value Your Life Like God Value's His Church...

Then you won't try to defile it!  This is a re-write of a bumper sticker that my pastor saw.  The original bumper sticker said something like, if you value your life like I value my truck you won't touch my truck.  But this statement totally ties in with what our evening sermon was about this Sunday.  We studied about 1 Cor. 3:16-17 which says

¹⁶Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you?
¹⁷If any man defile the temple of God, him shall God destroy; for the temple of God is holy, which temple ye are.

There are a few key points in this passage.  Here are the questions that my pastor posed to us:

1. Who are the ye in the sixteenth verse?
2. What does it mean by the word defile?
3. Who are the defilers?
4. How does someone defile the temple?
5. And what does it mean by "him shall God destroy"

A lot of questions for such a small passage of scripture huh?  But questions that we might not take the time to consider with just a regular skimming of the Bible.  So here are the answers that Bro. Dan gave us.

• The ye is plural, it would be the church as a whole and as individual churches also. 
• Defile means neglecting of duties by the guardians and leading away of the church from a state of holiness in which the church ought to be.
• The defilers are believers, Christians.  The greatest threat to t the  church is from the inside.
• We defile the church by letting divisions to occur within the church, by allowing bad theology to permeate our churches and by bad methodology or bad conduct. 
• By destroy, well, we really don't know what God intends to do.  The Bible doesn't say for sure, we can only take references from other areas of the bible (see 1 Cor. 11:30)

Which brings me to the beginning, the title of this post.  As humorous as the bumper sticker would be, valuing your life doesn't mean God will strike you with a bolt of lightening.  During this part of the sermon, I felt a sense that perhaps this would mean the quality of your life (although I am not trying to limit God by saying that punishment by death wouldn't happen).  This sermon has a very important message in it.  When God gives you a command, you should want to keep it because you love Him.  Doing the opposite shows defiance, not love.