Transcript & Slides: The Living Temple

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The Living Temple
By David Feddes

This saying of Jesus, "Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it again," was something that his disciples remembered later and realized how important it was. But Jesus' enemies seized on that saying right away, and they brought it up again and again. They brought it up at his trial. “And some stood up and bore false witness against him, saying, ‘We heard him say, “I will destroy this temple that is made with hands, and in three days I will build another, not made with hands.”’” (Mark 14:57-58) You say, well, why were those false witnesses? He said something about destroying a temple and then building it again. Yes, but he never said he would destroy the temple made with hands and build another not made with hands. They're adding to what Jesus said and they're changing their story on it. But they remembered he'd said something about a temple going down and rising again.

When Jesus was on the cross, that was one of the things they mocked him with. “Those who passed by derided him, wagging their heads and saying, ‘Aha! You who would destroy the temple and rebuild it in three days, save yourself, and come down from the cross!’” (Mark 15:29-30) You can't really build many temples when you're hanging there dying, can you? That was the reasoning they had.

But notice that this saying about destroying the temple and raising it up again was something that echoed in the minds of his enemies and then later also was very important in the minds of his friends. So I want to focus on this destroying of the temple and rebuilding of it, and Jesus' actions when he entered into the temple and threw out the money changers and the people who were selling animals.

What is the temple, and what was the temple all about?

The temple was the center of the earth. The temple in Jerusalem was the very center of the earth where God and humanity connected, where heaven and earth intersected and overlapped. It was the place where God comes close. In one sense, the glory of the Lord fills the whole earth. But in another sense, for every Jewish person who truly loved God, they would echo David in Psalm 27. He said, "One thing I ask of the Lord, this is what I seek: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord and to seek him in his temple" (Psalm 27:4).

Oh, it was their desire to meet with God, and people who loved God knew that the temple was supremely the place for doing that. Whether it was the tent of the tabernacle earlier or the more solid and permanent temple that was built, it was the place where heaven and earth connected, where God comes near, where God reveals his glory, and people go to gaze upon his beauty. It was the place where sinners could come and find that God accepted them, where sacrifices were offered and God would promise his forgiveness of the people's sins.

The temple was a place where God's reign is celebrated. The temple and tabernacle were very closely connected with the rule that God exercised over Israel and with the kings whom God appointed over Israel. The temple was meant to be a magnet for the nation, a display of God's glory at the center of Israel so that other nations would be drawn.

And there were these prophecies throughout the Scriptures. Isaiah says, "In the last days the mountain of the Lord’s temple will be established as chief among the mountains" (Isaiah 2:2), and nations will come to it and say, "Let us listen to the God of Jacob; we will walk in his ways." And there were many such prophecies.

Another prophecy from Isaiah is, "On this mountain the Lord will destroy the shroud that enfolds all peoples, the sheet that covers all nations; he will swallow up death forever. The Sovereign Lord will wipe away the tears from all faces" (Isaiah 25:7–8). And that was the mountain of the Lord's temple where God is going to do this.

So if you were a follower of God, a lover of God—whether you were a Jewish person or one of those people from the nations who had come to believe the God of Israel—this temple was a tremendous place, filled with a long history and great memory, as well as with expectations and hopes. The temple was a huge deal.

And one of the things that we remember about the temple and the tabernacle that came before it was when it was dedicated. The glory—the shekinah, the shining brightness of God's glory—and the flame came down. The cloud covered the tent of meeting, and the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle.

After the temple, where David had collected the materials and then Solomon and the people working with him had built the temple, what happened? A cloud filled the house of the Lord. The glory of the Lord filled the house of the Lord. And so there was this brightness, this cloud of glory that would come upon this place and show that God was truly there in a special way.

And this is what you need to keep in mind when you read about a strange event in the life of Jesus. Sometimes when you read in the life of Jesus and read about what's called the Transfiguration, you think, well, that's kind of odd that he just kind of lit up like a light bulb. It's kind of interesting. But it's more than just for a brief moment he kind of lit up. The glory is coming down on the true temple of God. That's what's going on.

Just as the shekinah and the glory and the brightness descended on the tabernacle in the time of Moses and descended on the temple in the time of Solomon, so when the living temple comes, the brightness descends upon him.

Jesus was transfigured before them, and his face shone like the sun, and his clothes became white as light. Behold, a bright cloud overshadowed them, and a voice from the cloud said, "This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased; listen to him" (Matthew 17:2,5). The cloud of the glory comes now not on a tabernacle, a tent—not on a building—but on a man. And he is the one where heaven and earth meet. He is the one where sacrifices are made. He is the one who brings the reign of God's kingship into the world. He's the one who is the living temple.

"The Word became flesh and tabernacled among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth" (John 1:14).

So when Jesus says, "Destroy this temple," the temple he is talking about now is the temple of his own body, of the Word of the living God made flesh. He is the ultimate tabernacle, the ultimate temple. And so that is all wrapped up in that statement—that he's talking about his own body when he calls it the temple.

You remember his conversation with the Samaritan woman at a well. “Believe me, woman, a time is coming when you're going to worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. A time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and in truth” (John 4:21–24).

So he is the temple at which people worship in spirit and in truth—not at a temple in Samaria, certainly, and not even at the temple in Jerusalem—but they meet in Jesus Christ.

New Testament scholar N. T. Wright observes that when Jesus claims to forgive sins, he's actually kind of talking like a temple. When Jesus declared that someone's sins are forgiven, there were mutterings about his doing so. They’d say, “Well, who but God can forgive sins?” So they understood that he's speaking kind of like he's God. But they also knew that when God does forgive sin, and when he pronounces forgiveness and says, “Your sins are forgiven,” it is done by priests in the temple after certain sacrifices have been made. You can't just go around telling anybody anywhere their sins are forgiven. That is temple business.

How does God normally forgive sins within Israel? Why, through the temple and the sacrifices that take place there. Jesus seems to be claiming that God is doing up close and personal through him something you'd normally expect to happen at the temple. So Jesus is walking around and talking like he's a temple. He's the one where the sacrifices are made and the forgiveness is announced.

And so Jesus just shuts down the temple. He goes in there and he shuts down business. They can't offer sacrifices because he's tossing the animals. They can't do business as usual in the temple. What's going on?

One is simply this: he is what all the temple and tabernacle were pointing to. And now that he's here, it's not needed anymore. The temple pointed forward to the ultimate reality of God with us in his glory and with his sacrifice. And when the Word became flesh and tabernacled among us, well, the temple was no longer needed. The sign was replaced by the reality. And once you have the reality, you don't need the sign anymore.

It was the same principle when we looked at the fulfillment of time and of the Sabbath. The Sabbath was pointing forward to Jesus Christ, and so when it's fulfilled, its meaning changes and is wrapped up in him. So part of shutting down the temple is simply saying, “Okay, the reality is here. The sign isn't needed anymore.”

But there's also something more to it than that, because it's not just that this great sign was doing very well and now the fullness of God had come, the living temple was among us and we didn't need that excellent sign anymore. Another factor in this shutting down of the temple that Jesus does as a prophetic action is not just announcing fulfillment but judgment. The temple was no longer doing its job anyway.

The temple was in the wrong hands, and it stood for the wrong things. Jesus said in this passage, “You don’t make my Father’s house a house of trade.” In another description of the cleansing of the temple, he says, “You've made it a den of robbers,” a robbers’ roost.

Here’s just a little bit of background of what’s going on in the temple at the time. Annas, the old godfather of the religion business in Israel, is running the show. He was high priest. Then five of his sons were high priests, taking turns. And then his son-in-law Caiaphas is high priest. And behind it all is shadowy old Annas, pulling all the strings, and his family is calling all the shots.

You've got the Annas Marketing and Banking Corporation. They're marketing all kinds of stuff right in the temple and raking in the profits. They're running a banking and currency exchange right there in the temple. It would be unholy if you did not offer the proper kind of animal—so “we will sell you the proper kind of animal.” And it would be unholy to come into the temple area and try to purchase things with anything but a good Israeli shekel—so “we’ll take the money that you brought and we’ll change it into shekels, and yeah, we will take a little profit out of the deal too.” So they have an excellent business going there.

Another thing that happens in the temple is that it has become the Department of Debt. It is the place where they store all the records of who owes something. So if you're poor and up to your eyeballs in debt, the temple is where they track it. That's where the hard drive is. That is where everybody knows what the debt is.

By the way, forty years after Jesus, when there was a huge rebellion and the people took over the temple, what was the first thing they did? They burned all the records of the debts. So that gives you a notion of how those people—a lot of them—felt about the temple at the time. It was where they were storing the records of what all the poor people owed to all the rich people, and of all the foreclosures and who was claiming property and so on. So it was kind of the central institution for injustice and ripping people off.

It was also the Regional Office for Cooperation with Rome. The Roman rulers worked with the high priests of Israel to manage things and run the show in Jerusalem. It was in some ways a little bit like the government, let's say, in Iraq or Afghanistan during the time when the United States was occupying it. Now people were not fond of the U.S. occupying those countries, but they're not always that fond of the puppet rulers either. And the puppet rulers always have to say, “Well, we're not really in league with them. We're really one of you.” And so they’d say, “Well, I know we have to work with the Romans, but we're really Jewish people.” And so they try to play it both ways. And they did so quite successfully, actually.

It's quite a trick when you're one of those chief priests and you're running the office for cooperation with Rome and at the same time you're running the Members-Only Club for Jewish Segregation and Superiority. They played both sides of the street. So they would work with the Romans and get a lot of money from them, and they were always backed by Roman power. And at the same time, they'd say, “We don't let Romans in our temple.”

You remember even at the trial of Jesus, they wouldn't go into Pilate’s palace. He had to come out, because they might be defiled by going into his palace. So yeah, they can run a nighttime trial and railroad Jesus to crucifixion, but it would make them unholy if they went into a Gentile dwelling.

And so the temple comes to stand for exclusiveness—Jewish exclusiveness. It's supposed to be a house of prayer for all nations, where many peoples will come and say, “Come, let's go to the house of the Lord, the house of the God of Jacob. He'll teach us his ways that we may walk in his paths” (Isaiah 2:3). And instead, they fill up the court of the nations—the court of the Gentiles—with all of their marketing concerns.

Some of you may think I'm a bad speller when I mention the Non-Prophet Fund for Priestly Prosperity. But I don’t mean non-profit; I mean it was non-prophet—they did not listen to the prophets of God at all. And that's related to the last item.

This was the Sadducee Theological Seminary for Denial of Angels and Resurrection. The Sadducees—the group of people who ran the high priestly class, and all the high priests belonged to it—did not believe in resurrection. They did not believe in angels.

They also did not believe that the prophets were Scripture at all. They said the only Scriptures are the books of Moses. According to the Sadducees, what the Jews called the Former Prophets—the history of the kings and all of that—was not actually the Word of God. And the Prophets, whether from Isaiah or Amos or Micah, any of those prophets, that wasn't really the Word of God either. You could see why they didn’t want to accept those prophets, who often spoke against ripping people off and about phony baloney religion. At any rate, they were the Non-Prophet Fund for Priestly Prosperity.

There were still some people coming to the temple who loved the Lord. You would have a widow going there and putting her last penny into the treasury. And then you would have the Sadducees come along, scoop out the treasury, and build a fancier mansion. Jesus said, “You've made my Father's house into a house of trade.” You've made it into a robber’s roost, a place where the prophets are rejected, where liars are in power, where they deny all that God has revealed. And so it's got to be shut down—not just because what it was pointing to has now been fulfilled by the reality, but also because this is a mess.

And so, as he came out of the temple, one of his disciples said to him, “Look, Teacher! What wonderful stones and what wonderful buildings!” And Jesus said to him, “Do you see these great buildings? There will not be left here one stone upon another that will not be thrown down.”

At the time of Jesus’ death, you remember how the curtain in the temple was torn from top to bottom. At one level, that symbolized full access into the Holy of Holies in the house of God. But at another level, it also just symbolized, hey, the whole sacrificial system is over. Everything that was left to the priests to go in there and make you right with God—that’s over now. And within a generation, the temple had been destroyed by Rome. Jesus announced the doom of the temple, and it was indeed destroyed. He shut it down for one day as a prophetic sign to the people that he was closing it down. And then eventually the temple was destroyed.

Now, important thing to realize in Jesus replacing that temple—again, just to remind ourselves of the connection between king and temple. We've looked at Jesus as King of the Jews and of some previous rulers of the Jews. David and Solomon built God's temple. David collected a lot of the wealth, and Solomon actually supervised the project. And whenever you read about some of the very best kings of Judah after that, they’re involved in setting things right with the temple again. Hezekiah, that great man of God, that godly king, helped restore and cleanse and put the temple right again. Josiah, another godly king, did the same thing later on.

After that temple was destroyed, then God restored his people from Israel, brought people back. And the ruler at that time was a descendant of David named Zerubbabel, and he helped to supervise the rebuilding of the temple. So there's this connection between a king and the temple.

At the time of Judah the Hammer—164 years before Christ—once again, he leads this campaign against occupying invaders, Antiochus Epiphanes, who had claimed to be God. And then what did he do once he had won his three-year campaign? He cleansed the temple with the shouting of hosannas and the waving of palm branches. And that's still celebrated by the Jewish people. So you have this connection between kings who help set things right in the temple and the status of the temple.

Then, of course, there’s another guy who helped build the temple during that 46-year period of rebuilding the temple. He repulsed Parthian invaders, and then he made the temple bigger and fancier and more expensive and splendid than ever. But he himself, as we know from history, was a very murderous and horrible ruler. But hey, he got the temple looking good. And that's the temple that is standing at the time Jesus comes in and shuts down business as usual.

But Jesus isn't like those other kings. Remember how they would build or cleanse or renew or fix up or replenish the temple? Well, Jesus didn’t do that. He did not just renew the temple. He didn’t rebuild the temple. He replaced the temple. He declared it doomed. He shut it down. And he made himself the temple. That’s what he's talking about when he says that his own body now is the temple.

So he’s the living temple. He’s the one where heaven and earth connect, where God comes close to us, where God’s glory is revealed in that shining of the brightness of the shekinah glory. His body, of course, is what God prepared for him as the sacrifice for our sins—to do what those animal sacrifices never really could do anyway. They could only point. His sacrifice was the place where God’s reign is celebrated.

Christ’s coming near is the kingdom of God coming near. When Jesus is doing his thing—announcing his gospel, healing people—he is bringing the kingdom of God, the reign of God, near. He is the one who invites all nations and sends his people out to all nations to make disciples for him. He is the one, and his body is the one, in whom death is destroyed.

That prophecy of Isaiah: “On this mountain the Lord will destroy the shroud that enfolds all peoples, the sheet that covers all nations. He will swallow up death forever and wipe away the tears” (Isaiah 25:7–8). On that Mount Zion, that great mountain of Jerusalem, is where Jesus was condemned and where he was crucified and where he rose again.

And so today, when you think of the living temple, first of all and above all we focus on Jesus Christ as the one who means all that the temple ever meant to Israel—and far more. And when Jesus said, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I’ll raise it up again,” he was speaking about the temple of his body. And his resurrection fulfilled that great prophecy of his.

There’s another thing to keep in mind now too. The Scriptures reveal that Jesus is the living temple. But just as “Body of Christ” can mean Jesus’ physical body and himself replacing the temple, we know from the Scriptures that “Body of Christ” also refers to the people of God. And the Body of Christ—the people of God—is also the temple of God.

“Don’t you know that you yourselves are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit lives in you? If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy him. For God’s temple is sacred, and you are that temple” (1 Corinthians 3:16–17).

Here it’s speaking of “you yourselves” or “y’all,” you know, in the plural. God’s people together are his temple. That’s what 1 Corinthians 3:16 and 17 is saying.

Then it also speaks to individual believers in its call to handle your bodies in a pure and godly way: “Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore, honor God with your body” (1 Corinthians 6:19–20).

Jesus’ body is the living temple, but your own body is intended now to also be a living temple of God's Holy Spirit. And the church together—you are God’s temple: “You are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, in whom the whole structure, being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord. In him you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by his Spirit” (Ephesians 2:19–22).

If the temple was the center of the earth where the glory of God dwelt, just think of what it means: God's people are the center of the earth—the place where the action is, the place where heaven and earth connect, where the kingdom of God advances, the place where God is at home.

“As you come to him, the living Stone—rejected by men but chosen by God and precious to him—you also, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house, a temple, to be a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ” (1 Peter 2:4–5). You are a place that is a spiritual house. You are to be offering sacrifices too—not the same sacrifice to pay for sins that Jesus did—but you’re a living sacrifice, and you’re offering spiritual sacrifices of the love of your heart and the obedience of your life to God.

And “if you're insulted for the name of Christ, you're blessed, because the Spirit of glory and of God rests upon you” (1 Peter 4:14). The shekinah—the glory that comes upon tabernacle or temple, the glory that came upon Jesus in his transfiguration—when you face opposition, when you go through hard times for Christ, you may say, “What’s so glorious about that?” The Scripture says, “The Spirit of glory and of God rests upon you.”

There’s even a story about that in the New Testament. Remember the story of Stephen? He’s attacked for proclaiming the gospel, and he's surrounded by a hostile mob. And it says as he begins to speak, those who saw him could see that his face was like the face of an angel. And after he told them about Christ, he said, “I see heaven opened and Jesus Christ sitting at the right hand of the throne in heaven.” So the glory of God opened to him, and the splendor of God's glory was shining even from his face.

Remember previous to that, on Pentecost, the people are praying in an upper room, and the glory comes upon them. The flame of God comes down as a tongue of fire on the head of each one. Again, it's a sign of the same glory that came on the tabernacle and temple, that lit up Jesus—coming upon his followers.

And “we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another” (2 Corinthians 3:18). Jesus, in replacing the temple with his own body, did not intend just to make himself the only temple. In one sense, he is. He is that supreme connection between heaven and earth, between God and man. But he wants the glory that comes from him to shine from us too.

And then, of course, this fact: his temple was destroyed and rose again. And what does he say? “We know that if the tent that is our earthly home is destroyed”—a tent is like a tabernacle; once upon a time, a tabernacle was replaced with a temple—“if this tent of our body is destroyed, we have a building from God, an everlasting body, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens” (2 Corinthians 5:1). The one who destroyed the temple and raised it up again in three days is going to take our tent when it’s destroyed and raise it up as an eternal house in the heavens.

And so we praise God for what he has done in Jesus Christ, but also for what he is doing in us. Jesus Christ is the living temple who replaced all other temples, and he is the one who makes us the living temple of the Holy Spirit.

Brothers and sisters, I hope you can understand at least some of this. And the understanding comes not just from saying, “Let’s see now, Herod did something once way back when… check. Judah the Hammer… yeah, wasn’t he some guy who lived back then? And weren’t there some kings and so on? And a building… and yeah, I think I kind of got that.” Well, no. That’s not what you need to get. Those are important things to understand what’s going on in the Scriptures. But to really understand is to know the glory—the glory of God, the reality of God in the person of Jesus Christ—and the glory that comes upon his people and that dwells in them: the kingship of God, the reign of Jesus Christ, the sense that Christ is taking charge right now in you and in all that you touch, and the sense that the shekinah and the tongues of fire are still with us today, and that the shining of God’s face can shine from us too. Then you begin to understand what it is to know the living temple and to be a living temple.

Prayer

Dear Lord, we love you and we seek your face. And we pray, Father, that you will truly help us to know Christ as our temple—the meeting place between heaven and earth, the place where we’re made right with you and where we find your glory. And dear Lord, we pray that again, as we recall that sacrifice, you will wash away all our sins and help us to receive your pardon. That you will close the sense of distance between us and you, that we may be united to you. That you will shine upon us the brightness of your face, that we may rejoice in your glory, and that we may reflect that glory in our own faces, in our own lives. That we may be the people you call us to be. For Jesus’ sake, Amen.

 

The Living Temple
By David Feddes
Slide Contents

¹³ The Passover of the Jews was at hand, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. ¹⁴ In the temple he found those who were selling oxen and sheep and pigeons, and the money-changers sitting there. ¹⁵ And making a whip of cords, he drove them all out of the temple, with the sheep and oxen. And he poured out the coins of the money-changers and overturned their tables. ¹⁶ And he told those who sold the pigeons, “Take these things away; do not make my Father's house a house of trade.” ¹⁷ His disciples remembered that it was written, “Zeal for your house will consume me.”

¹⁸ So the Jews said to him, “What sign do you show us for doing these things?” ¹⁹ Jesus answered them, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” ²⁰ The Jews then said, “It has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and will you raise it up in three days?” ²¹ But he was speaking about the temple of his body. ²² When therefore he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this, and they believed the Scripture and the word that Jesus had spoken.

Words recalled but twisted

And some stood up and bore false witness against him, saying, “We heard him say, ‘I will destroy this temple that is made with hands, and in three days I will build another, not made with hands.’” (Mark 14:57-58)

Those who passed by derided him, wagging their heads and saying, “Aha! You who would destroy the temple and rebuild it in three days, save yourself, and come down from the cross!” (Mark 15:29-30)

Temple is where:

• Heaven and earth connect.

• God comes near.

• God’s glory is revealed.

• Sacrifice deals with sins.

• God’s reign is celebrated.

• All nations seek God.

• Death will be destroyed.

Glory in a cloud

Then the cloud covered the tent of meeting, and the glory of the LORD filled the
tabernacle. (Exodus 40:34)

A cloud filled the house of the Lord… the glory of the Lord filled the house of the Lord. (1 Kings 8:10-11)

Jesus was transfigured before them, and his face shone like the sun, and his clothes became white as light… behold, a bright cloud overshadowed them, and a voice from the cloud said, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased; listen to him.” (Matthew 17:2,5)

Ultimate tabernacle/temple

The Word became flesh and tabernacled among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth (John 1:14).

“Destroy this temple, and I will raise it again in three days.” … The temple he had spoken of was his body (John 2:19, 21).

A new kind of temple

“Believe me, woman, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem… a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks.” (John 4:21-23).

Talking like a temple

When Jesus declares that someone’s sins are forgiven, there are mutterings about his doing so… How does God normally forgive sins within Israel? Why, through the Temple and the sacrifices that take place there. Jesus seems to be claiming that God is doing, up close and personal through him, something that you’d normally expect to happen at the Temple. (N. T. Wright)

Shutting Down the temple

• Fulfillment: The temple pointed forward to the ultimate reality of God with us in glory and sacrifice. When the Word became flesh and tabernacled among us, the temple was no longer needed. The sign was replaced by the reality.
• Judgment: The temple was in the wrong hands and stood for the wrong things.

House of trade, robber's roost

• Annas Marketing and Banking Corporation

• Department of Debt: records & foreclosures

• Regional Office for Cooperation with Rome

• Members-Only Club for Jewish Segregation and Superiority

• Non-Prophet Fund for Priestly Prosperity

• Sadducee Theological Seminary for Denial of Angels and Resurrection


Doomed Temple

And as he came out of the temple, one of his disciples said to him, “Look, Teacher, what wonderful stones and what wonderful buildings!” And Jesus said to him, “Do you see these great buildings? There will not be left here one stone upon another that will not be thrown down.” (Mark 13:1-2)

The curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom. (Matt 27:51)

Rome destroyed the temple in 70 A.D.


King and temple

• David and Solomon built God’s temple

• Good rulers renewed or rebuilt temple:

• Hezekiah
• Josiah
• Zerubbabel

Judah the Hammer 

• Led three-year campaign against foreign occupation

• Cleansed temple in 164 B.C. amid waving branches

• Still celebrated at Hanukkah

Herod the Great 

• Declared King of Judea in 40 B.C.

• Led three year campaign against Parthian invaders

• Rebuilt the temple and dedicated it

King of the Jews

Jesus didn’t renew or rebuild the temple; he replaced it. He declared it doomed, shut it down, and made himself the temple.

The living temple: Jesus Christ

• Heaven and earth connect.

• God comes near.

• God’s glory is revealed.

• Sacrifice deals with sins.

• God’s reign is celebrated.

• All nations seek God.

• Death is destroyed.

“Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.”… he was speaking about the temple of his body. When therefore he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this, and they believed the Scripture and the word that Jesus had spoken.

You are God’s temple

Don’t you know that you yourselves are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit lives in you? If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy him; for God’s temple is sacred, and you are that temple. (1 Cor 3:16-17)

Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your body. (1 Cor 6:19-20)

You are God’s temple

You are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, in whom the whole structure, being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord. In him you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit. (Ephesians 2:19-22)

House, sacrifice, glory

As you come to him, the living Stone—rejected by men but chosen by God and precious to him—you also, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ… If you are insulted for the name of Christ, you are blessed, because the Spirit of glory and of God rests upon you. (1 Peter 4:14)

Shining with glory; destroyed and rebuilt

We all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. (2 Cor. 3:18)

For we know that if the tent that is our earthly home is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. (2 Cor. 5:1)