The Temple at Jerusalem was extremely dear to ancient Israel, first built during the reign of Solomon in the 10th Century. Even though the highest heavens cannot contain God, God had promised that the Temple would be the particular place on earth where his people could go to meet with him and call on him for help and forgiveness.
The Temple was a majestic structure that dominated the landscape. It took 46 years to build and was one of the biggest and most spectacular constructions of all time. The towering buildings were incredibly impressive, built with massive stones, some measuring 11 x 5½ x 3½ metres. Some were white marble; others were covered with gold, reflecting the sunlight in dazzling splendour. The Temple featured marble columns that were over 12 metres high and was adorned with rich tapestries, golden and bronze doors and a golden vine at the entrance.
The people attached to the Temple a sense of immovability and permanence. Because they believed the Temple would endure forever, it became a symbol of national strength and security. As long as Israel had the Temple, they had God and his favour. So it was simply unthinkable that the Temple would ever one day be toppled.
So it is a shocking thing when Jesus says to his disciples: “the time will come when not one stone will be left on another; every one of them will be thrown down.” What Jesus says about the Temple toppling shakes their whole worldview, emotions, understandings, desires and hopes to the ground. And so they respond: “Teacher, when will these things happen? And what will be the sign that they are about to take place?” I wonder what the reason is for their question. Will knowing the timeframe help them implement a strategy to protect the Temple and prevent it’s downfall?
Some of Jesus’ disciples had remarked about the Temple’s beautiful stones and adornments. In Mark’s Gospel we hear how one of the disciples said to Jesus: “Look, Teacher! What massive stones! What magnificent buildings!” (Mark 13:1).
“Look, Teacher! What massive stones! What magnificent buildings!”
That sounds like a fairly harmless comment. It’s natural to express appreciation for spectacular things. But why did Jesus so abruptly discontinue this line of conversation—”As for what you see here, the time will come when not one stone will be left on another; every one of them will be thrown down”?
I think it was to redirect their focus—and the focus of God’s people of old, who had come to gather at this place of beauty. Their gaze was fixed on the beauty of the exterior; on the material things…and they had forgotten about the beauty of what was inside. What was within was far more wonderful—the presence of the God of heaven and earth; the God with whom people could come and meet and hear his word from heaven. Here was the place of the beauty and riches of his counsel and blessing, even as the Psalmist had said: “How precious to me are your thoughts, God! How vast is the sum of them!” (Psalm 139:17); “The decrees of the Lord are firm, and all of them are righteous. They are more precious than gold, than much pure gold” (Psalm 19:10); “The law from your mouth is more precious to me than thousands of pieces of silver and gold” (Psalm 119:72).
Yet throughout their history God’s people had always turned to the idols of their neighbours because the surrounding nations looked to be faring so much better and more prosperous and successful than their own. They had always looked to the things that outwardly appeared successful and pretty and nice. So they revered the Temple, but not the God within. They cherished the Temple but not his word—especially the parts that challenged them. They stoned the prophets to silence them. They plotted how to silence Jesus, and so wanted to kill him too. They were descendants of Abraham. They had received their land from God. They had their Temple and what they thought it guaranteed. Their focus and trust was firmly fixed on these things instead of God, the Giver of them. God was nowhere in their sights, nowhere in their heart. God said of them: “These people come near to me with their mouth and honour me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me” (Isaiah 29:13).
When the Temple was destroyed via a ferocious attack from the Roman Empire in 70AD, the people couldn’t fathom why God would allow this to happen. But God brought about an end to what they trusted in…the imposing stones and precious adornments. God was calling them to turn back to him and look to his ways. He was doing something bigger. When God brings an end to a thing, from it he brings about a new beginning. He would make his gracious presence available not only to Israel but now the world in a new way: a temple to whom people from every nation could come. It was not a mighty, magnificent structure, with dazzling, beautiful adornments. It was a temple that appeared weak and insignificant by comparison:
“He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him,
nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.
He was despised and rejected by mankind,
a man of suffering, and familiar with pain.
Like one from whom people hide their faces
he was despised, and we held him in low esteem.” (Isaiah 53:2b-3).
God’s new Temple is the flesh and bones and blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. With the birth of Christ the fullness of God had come down from heaven to dwell on earth. He came to be found in our earthy ordinariness—making his home in a manger surrounded by animals and their waste. God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in Christ, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the Cross.” (Colossians 1:19-20).
When the religious leaders challenged Jesus to prove himself to them—to prove by what authority he was saying the things he was saying and doing the things he was doing—he answered: “Destroy this temple, and I will raise it again in three days.”
They replied, “It has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and you are going to raise it in three days?” But the temple he had spoken of was his body.” After he was raised from the dead, Jesus’ disciples recalled what he had said. Then they believed the scripture and the words that Jesus had spoken.” (John 2:19-22).
Just like a ferocious force toppled the Temple at Jerusalem, it was a mighty attack that brought the new temple low, when Jesus was crucified, dead and buried. To ordinary human observation, that looks like a complete failure.
But God did something bigger than the human eye could see or the human mind anticipate.
Although he was toppled, Jesus is the new Temple that would never be destroyed. On the third day he rose from the dead, and lives and rules eternally. Jesus is the new temple where people from every tribe and tongue can go to meet with God and call on him for help and forgiveness. Jesus is where people can come and meet with God and hear his divine word. Jesus is the Temple where the precious thoughts of God are revealed. Jesus is the place where the beauty and riches of divine counsel and blessing are received. Jesus is the Temple where we meet with God and hear the decrees of God that are more precious than gold.
Jesus never answered his disciples about when the Temple at Jerusalem would be brought low. Instead, he teaches them what they are to focus on as they live in a tumultuous world. There will be wars and revolutions, earthquakes, disease, famine and many fearful events, and many cults and false prophets claiming these are the end and they are the saviour. In the midst of this tumult, the disciples are to stand firm on the words Jesus has taught them. They are to resist the temptation to return to the default human way of trusting in visible, material things, world leaders, and people and armies for their safety and security. Jesus was teaching them not to rely on human means, strategies and strongholds. The hope for the disciples will not be who will humanly support them or speak for them. They must fix their eyes on Jesus and put their trust in him alone—even when they receive trouble at the hands of men because they bear his name.
At that time, Jesus will himself give them the words to speak. And so God uses even the evil of men for his own purposes. He uses persecution to be an opportunity to proclaim his truth. The Scottish theologian MacLaren once said: “Persecution has been powerless to destroy the church of Christ. The Christian church is an anvil that has been beaten on by many heavy hammers, and it has worn them all out.”.
If the disciples stand firm on Jesus’ word; if they trust him to their end, their end will not be their end. He will make a new way for them, even as he brought his people of old to the edge of the Red Sea as the Egyptian military pursued them, before miraculously leading them to safety. Why does God do things such as these? To show us mere humans the end in our own capacity and resources. To show us that whoever follows God will have a way made possible where it is otherwise impossible. And so because of Jesus, even death is not the end. Death just means a new beginning. In their death they will not die but because Jesus lives they also will live.
Everything Jesus speaks of we have seen in our time as the world continues to tear itself apart. We see frightening violence everywhere. Ideologies turning God’s good order upside down. All of creation groaning in bondage to decay. There is trouble everywhere, trouble in the world, trouble in our neighbourhoods, our church, our lives. And in all this, the natural human tendency is to return to our strength, our efforts, our understandings, our coping strategies. We turn to the big and beautiful temples of the things of this world with which to fashion our security and refuge for our lives. So, todays text leaves us to ponder: who, or what is the Lord of our life? Whose wisdom do we treasure? Where do we seek refuge? What needs toppling in our heart that Jesus and his means of grace might have free course within our lives?
One day the windows and spires, carpets and pews of the grandest cathedrals will be brought low like the Temple at Jerusalem. So too will all church buildings whether sooner or later, even the one in which we are in today. But Christ and his church, the Communion of saints, will go on for ever. In today’s text Jesus promises that his faithful people have all of God and he has all of you. Not a single hair of those who stand firm on his word to the end will be lost.
Let us not miss what is of true beauty before us. For Christ, the new Temple is here, to share the fullness of divine grace from heaven with us here on earth. We can’t see him. But we can see him with eyes of faith. We see him with our ears as we hear him forgive our sins in this sanctuary on earth. We see him with our ears as we listen to him speak to us through his word, as he preaches to us, as he sets his holy meal before us and invites us to feast at his table. We see him with our ears as he blesses us.
Rather than conform God to the picture and plans of our life, God calls us to conform to his plans and purposes for our life. He wants us to have true refuge and shelter. He wants us to see clearly in all the chaos raging around us, and the things that beset us, so that we might have certainty and assurance to follow him as we walk the narrow way to our true home in heaven.
May we not hope in our great country, beautiful churches, or military might, or that which appears precious and beautiful on the outside. May we always hope in the crucified and risen one, our ever-present Lord, Jesus Christ, who says: “In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world” (John 16:33). Amen!
