Sanctuary

Not so much a structure or a place, but one of position. So often we think of church and service in terms of a building, a place, a time. We go to “church”, to have “service” in “the sanctuary”. Rather, it should be that we live in service as the church, the Body of Christ, safely in sanctuary. The protected of God, not because of our guiltlessness, but in fact because of our guilt and our running to God with it. We often ask the question, “What have we overlooked?” I think we have overlooked the idea that sanctuary is the place where the guilty are saved from the sentence……as long as they stay there. Have we stayed there? Or have we inadvertently leaned to our own understanding to build something that is not truly sanctuary, the invisible safety, but is rather a physical thing we can point to and call it sanctuary when in fact, it is just a room. Subject to failure and disaster of all kinds. Let the lights go out and darkness prevail to make it a dangerous place. But The Light of sanctuary never dims or goes out.

Revelation 21:22-27 (KJV) 22 And I saw no temple therein: for the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are the temple of it. 23 And the city had no need of the sun, neither of the moon, to shine in it: for the glory of God did lighten it, and the Lamb [is] the light thereof. 24 And the nations of them which are saved shall walk in the light of it: and the kings of the earth do bring their glory and honour into it. 25 And the gates of it shall not be shut at all by day: for there shall be no night there. 26 And they shall bring the glory and honour of the nations into it. 27 And there shall in no wise enter into it any thing that defileth, neither [whatsoever] worketh abomination, or [maketh] a lie: but they which are written in the Lamb's book of life.

Do we enter into sanctuary? Are we truly there? Or are we relegated to go in and out of it at preordained times and places? Are we in sanctuary or do we just have one?