Day 10: Jesus Is the Temple

Day 10: Jesus is the Temple of God

Prayer:

Father in heaven, make Your Presence known to us. Teach us the truth about Your temple. Reveal Christ to us—the wonder of who He is and what He came to do. Amen.

Primary Scripture:

John 2:19-22: Jesus answered and said to them, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” Then the Jews said, “It has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and will You raise it up in three days?” But He was speaking of the temple of His body. Therefore, when He had risen from the dead, His disciples remembered that He had said this to them and they believed the Scripture and the word which Jesus had said.

The history of the temple is interesting to trace. For an entire year after the people of Israel came out of the land of Egypt, they waited for God's next directive to take them into the Promised Land. That year was not without clear purpose. God was shaping them into a nation with a unifying identity centered on Himself. Besides giving the people His Law, God also gave to Moses an architectural blueprint with clear instructions for the building of a tabernacle. Every part was carefully, deliberately, intentionally designed. In fact, this made-in-the-wilderness tabernacle was a copy of the original in heaven (Hebrews 8:1-5; 9:23-24). Every detail of the physical tabernacle was symbolic of spiritual realities in heaven.

When we realize that through the tabernacle God was giving us a window into heaven, what at first seems to us to be dry, boring details repeated in full twice over in the book of Exodus suddenly becomes a study of intense interest. When the writer of Hebrews says in Hebrews 9:5, "Of these things we cannot now speak in detail," we want to cry, "Wait! We want to know; write more! Please, tell us the details!" But he doesn't give us the details. We are left to study and ponder ourselves. However, we are not left without help, for Jesus said He would send the Holy Spirit who would teach us, guiding us into all truth (John 16:13).

The tabernacle was a representation of our relationship with God. It revealed the truths about who He is and the basis upon which we can draw near to Him. In order to approach God, a sacrifice was needed to cover the sins of the people, for the nature of sin carries with it the outcome of death. An unblemished, innocent lamb was killed as a substitute for the people. Its blood was brought into the tabernacle by a specially chosen high priest. Inside the tabernacle were two rooms. The first room was called the Holy Place, and the room beyond was called the Most Holy Place or the Holy of Holies. Both rooms were overlaid in pure gold. A thick curtain, called a veil, made of white linen interwoven with blue, purple, and scarlet threads in artistic designs of angels, hung between the two rooms (Exodus 26:31-35). Only the high priest could enter the Most Holy Place, and that only once a year.

In order to enter the Most Holy Place, the high priest had to pass through the Holy Place. In that first room were three articles of furniture: a table with 12 pieces of bread on them, one for each of the tribes of Israel; a lampstand with seven lamps fueled with pure olive oil; and an altar for burning incense. God was showing us the way into His most holy Presence. Later in the book of John, Jesus identifies Himself as the Bread of Life, or “the Living Bread which came down from heaven.” He went on to say, “If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever; and the bread that I shall give is My flesh, which I shall give for the life of the world” (John 6:51).

In John chapters 8, 9, and 12, Jesus identifies Himself as the Light of the World, saying, “He who follows Me shall not walk in darkness, but have the light of life” (John 8:12). He calls us to “believe in the light, that you may become sons of light” (John 12:36). The oil that fueled the lamps was symbolic of the Holy Spirit, who is identified in Revelation as the seven-fold Spirit who is before God’s throne (Revelation 1:4, 5:6). When Jesus was explaining to Nicodemus, one of Israel’s religious leaders, how to enter the Kingdom of God, He told him he had to be born of the Spirit (John 3:3-8).

The incense on the altar of incense, we are told in the book of Revelation, arises with the prayers of the saints (Revelation 8:3-4); and Romans tells us that Jesus and the Holy Spirit are constantly interceding for us in heaven (Romans 8:26-27, 34). Hebrews also says that Jesus is “able to save to the uttermost those who come to God through Him, since He always lives to make intercession for [us]” (Hebrews 7:25).  John calls Jesus our Advocate who ever presents His blood before the Father against all the accusations of Satan as proof that our sin debt has been paid (I John 2:1, Revelation 12:10).

These three symbolic representations show us the way to God. We have to come through Jesus, through faith in Him. His light must come to dwell within us. We must feed on Him, partake of Him, so that He becomes integrated into every part of who we are. And we come through prayer, acknowledging our need and trusting His intercession for us, knowing that He sits at the right hand of the Father, evidence that God is just in justifying us (Romans 3:26). The Holy Place leads us through Jesus to the Presence of God. Jesus is the Way, the only Way to the Father (John 14:6).

Then the high priest would pass through the embroidered curtain, or “the veil.” Hebrews tells us that the veil was symbolic of the body of Christ (Hebrews 10:19-20 and 6:19-20), another picture that we can only enter the Presence of God through Christ. On the cross that veil, His body, was torn for us. It was the only way our sins could be fully atoned for. God of very God had to step into history as created Man to be the unblemished, innocent sacrifice. As He breathed His last, the hand of God reached down to earth and physically tore that curtain in two from top to bottom, opening the way for all to come into His Presence. We are now invited to “come boldly to the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need” (Hebrews 4:16).  

As we enter inside that holiest room, we find a chest overlaid with gold that held the tablets of the Law written by the hand of God and given to Moses. The Law revealed the truth about how God had designed mankind to live, proclaiming God's holy ways and requirements. Living within the parameters of that Law would bring blessing to our lives; living outside of those parameters would bring destruction. This high and holy standard of God was so lofty, it could only reveal our sin and the great gulf between us and God.

A lid of pure gold, called "the mercy seat," covered the chest. On top of the lid were fashioned two cherubim facing each other, one on each end, spreading their angelic wings over the mercy seat and looking down upon it (Exodus 37:7-9). This was the place where God and man were to meet. Once a year the high priest would bring the blood of the sacrificed lamb into the Most Holy Place and sprinkle the blood on the mercy seat and on the floor at his feet. Only the blood of the lamb gave access and right standing before God. Only the blood of the lamb allowed the mercy of God to be unleashed from the Law that justly condemned us. These were pictures pointing to Christ. He alone fulfilled the whole Law for us, and He alone could atone for the sins we committed. 

As the gold-molded form of cherubim hovered over the ark, so Peter tells us that even the angels long to look into the wonder of Christ's sufferings and the glories that would follow (I Peter 1:11-12). This is the wonder of mercy, mercy so great that it compelled God the Father to send His own Son to die in our place, mercy great enough to cover all our sins, and even the sins of the whole world (I John 2:2). Who can fathom such mercy?

The tabernacle was erected in the very center of the camp of the nation of Israel. It was to be the central focus of their lives, the thing around which all other activities revolved. Upon its completion, we are told that "the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle” (Exodus 40:34-38). The Presence of God was so palpable, so all-encompassing, that not even Moses could enter it at that time.

At the outset of the era of the kings in Israel's national history, King David had a desire to build a more permanent temple for the worship of God. Though he was unable to build it, he designed it and began to gather the materials for it. At his death he commissioned his son Solomon to build the temple. This building project took seven years. It was magnificent! All the holy furnishings from the original tabernacle were brought into this temple. There was much fanfare at the dedication of Solomon's temple. After the priests had installed the ark in the Most Holy Place, while the choir raised its unified voice in praise of the goodness and mercy of God, accompanied by an array of musical instruments, the Presence of God once again filled the temple with such glory and intensity that the priests could not continue their work of ministry (I Chronicles 5).

Solomon blessed the people and then blessed the Lord God of Israel. We can sense the awe in his voice as Solomon acknowledges that even the heaven of heavens cannot contain the great, almighty God, how much less this small temple, magnificent as it was; yet God had come to this temple to dwell among men. This physical structure was the place of God's manifest Presence on earth.

Because of Israel's disobedience and downward slide into idolatry, their worship of God at Solomon's Temple became a sham. God wanted no more of their hypocritical worship, and in 586 B.C. He allowed the Babylonians to plunder and destroy this beautiful building. For seventy years there was no temple, no manifest place of God's Presence. Then a decree went out from Cyrus, king of Persia, which allowed the Jews to return to their homeland. Cyrus also made provision for the rebuilding of the temple. Although the foundation of the temple was laid and celebrated appropriately, the older generation who had seen the far superior temple which Solomon had built wept at the diminutive size of this new temple, even while the younger generation rejoiced (Ezra 3:12).

The rebuilding process under Zerubbabel was met with much opposition. Discouraged, the people set aside the project, turning to their own pursuits. They lost their central focus and the priority of God in their lives. The prophets Haggai and Zechariah were used of God to stir the people to complete the building. There is no mention that God filled this temple at its dedication, but He did promise through the prophet Haggai that a day would come when He would fill this temple with glory surpassing that of Solomon's temple (Haggai 2:7-9).

That day came more than 500 years later. During that long period of time, the story of the temple continued. Zerubbabel's temple had been overrun and desecrated by the Seleucid ruler Antiochus Epiphanes in 169-167 B.C., as predicted 400 years earlier by Daniel the prophet (Daniel 8:9-14). It was liberated, reclaimed, and cleansed by the Jewish people under Judas Maccabeus in 167 B.C. A miracle occurred at the restoring of the temple: The pure oil for the lampstand required eight days to refine. The lamps were to be kept burning perpetually, and the oil they had was only sufficient for one day. But God kept the lamps burning for the full 8 days. The commemoration of this miracle established the celebration of Hanukkah.

The temple was renovated and expanded by King Herod, about ten years prior to the birth of Jesus. King Herod was an evil king and not even of Jewish descent. Herod's father was an Edomite whose ancestors had been compelled to convert to Judaism under threat of being forced out of their land as refugees under Hyrcanus in 140 B.C. Herod's refurbished temple was not built out of any spiritual inclination toward God, but rather out of political expediency and self-aggrandizement. No glorious Presence of God graced this temple . . .

. . . until the Desire of All Nations (Haggai 2:7) was brought there for his baby dedication. Of this One, John writes, "And the Word (which was God and had been with God in the very beginning) became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory" (John 1:1-2, 14). The Glory of God that surpassed the glory of Solomon's Temple came into this inglorious temple. Simeon, an old man who had waited long for the coming of the Messiah, the Consolation of Israel, took this month-old infant into his arms and blessed the God of heaven. With his own eyes he now saw and in his arms he held the salvation God had prepared for all people, "a light to bring revelation to the Gentiles, and the glory of Your people Israel" (Luke 2:25-32). Here was the salvation from sin and death promised way back in the Garden of Eden after the first sin. Here was the sacrifice promised through Isaiah the prophet who would enable all people for all time to approach the holy God of heaven. Here was the Glory of God, incarnate in human flesh.

Thirty years later this babe-now-grown man would again enter Herod's temple—this time with a whip. He drove out the mercenaries and all the hucksters who made it difficult and expensive for common man to approach God. When the hubbub and din of the hawkers and the cacophony of the sacrificial animals had died away, this Man made an astounding statement: "Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up." It became the primary accusation used against Him to demand His crucifixion. They didn't understand. They thought He was talking about Herod's temple. But John tells us He was speaking of His own body (John 2:13-22).

"Destroy this temple . . ." What was He saying? An amazing transition had taken place: The temple of God, in which the Presence of God dwelt, was no longer a building made with human hands. It was a Person. The God-Man Christ Jesus. He was the heavenly reality come to earth of which the tabernacle and all the other temples were but dim replicas. He was the Presence of God on the earth. The brilliant glory of God abided in Him (Hebrews 1:3). He was the fullness of God (Colossians 2:9), the exact representation of the person of God (Hebrews 1:3). We come now, not to a building, but to a Person, Jesus Christ, the promised Son of God. As God stooped down to fill the temple Solomon had built, so Christ humbled Himself, stooping to earth to become a man (Philippians 2:7-8) and to die a sacrificial death. They would kill, but He would rise again in three days just as He predicted.

However, this was not the end of the temple transitions. He ascended back into heaven, and we are told that He entered the temple not made with hands, the one in the heavens that was the pattern for all the others (Hebrews 9:24). He then took His seat in highest heaven on the throne beside His Father (Philippians 2:9; Hebrews 1:3, 10:12, 12:2) for this purpose: that He might pour out upon us His Holy Spirit (John 16:7). The apostle Paul tells us that we who believe in Jesus are now the temple of God (I Corinthians 6:19, II Corinthians 6:16, Ephesians 2:21). Astounding. Heart-arresting. Me? Us? Yes. The glorious Presence of the Living God on earth now resides in us: God With Us (Matthew 1:23); Christ in us, the Hope of Glory (Colossians 1:27). God willed to make known the riches of His glory among us and within us.

Through the historic chronicle of the temple, God was demonstrating that His plan all along was driven by His desire to make His home among us, with us. But it really is more than that. He desires a closeness that is nearer than a building we can go to on occasion. He wants an all-the-time, round-the-clock relationship with no interruptions, no breaks in communication, no distance. Jesus said, “If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word; and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our home with him” (John 14:23). Before He ascended, Jesus told His disciples to wait for the Promise of the Father (Acts 1:4). This Promise was the Holy Spirit, the same Spirit who indwelt Jesus. Jesus said, “I will pray the Father, and He will give you another Helper, that He may abide with you forever—the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees Him nor knows Him; but you know Him for He dwells with you and will be in you” (John 14:16-17). Jesus was sent so that God could live in us. It doesn't get closer than that. "We give thanks to You, O God, we give thanks! For Your wondrous works declare that Your name is Near" (Psalm 75:1).

Have you come to God through Jesus? He has opened the way for us into the Presence of the Mighty God and Father. Simply come to Him in prayer and receive forgiveness, mercy, and His indwelling Spirit. For those who have received Jesus as their Lord and Savior, the Spirit of Jesus lives within you. You are the manifest Presence of God on the earth. Let the wonder of that sink in. And worship Jesus for all He’s done.

Family Worship:

Light a candle, turn on the Christmas lights (if you have them) and take communion together as a family. For those who have received Jesus Christ as their Savior and Lord, remind yourself of this truth: Christ lives in me. After communion, take a moment or two of silence for each one to reflect on the inner spiritual truth that Christ has come to make His home within us, that we are the temple of God.

Conclude your family time with prayer, asking God to cleanse your temple, to fill you with His Holy Spirit, and to make you a fit representation of Christ to one another and to the world around you.

Jesus Christ: the Temple of God, the manifest Presence of God; the One who ascended to heaven to pour out His Spirit into our hearts that He might be with us and in us forever and make us His manifest Presence on the earth!

Other Related Scriptures:

Matthew 1:22-23: So all this was done that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the Lord through the prophet, saying: "Behold, the virgin shall be with child, and bear a Son, and they shall call His name Immanuel," which is translated, "God with us."

I Corinthians 6:19-20: Or do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and you are not your own? For you were bought at a price; therefore glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God's.

II Corinthians 6:16-7:1: And what agreement has the temple of God with idols? For you are the temple of the living God. As God has said: "I will dwell in them and walk among them. I will be their God, and they shall be My people." Therefore "'Come out from among them and be separate,' says the Lord. 'Do not touch what is unclean, and I will receive you. I will be a Father to you, and you shall be My sons and daughters,' says the Lord Almighty." Therefore, having these promises, beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God.

Colossians 1:26-27: . . . the mystery which has been hidden from ages and from generations, but now has been revealed to His saints. To them God willed to make known what are the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles: which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.

Hebrews 9:23-26: Therefore it was necessary that the copies of the things in the heavens should be purified with these, but the heavenly things themselves with better sacrifices than these. For Christ has not entered the holy places made with hands, which are copies of the true, but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God for us; not that He should offer Himself often, as the high priest enters the Most Holy Place every year with blood of another—He then would have had to suffer often since the foundation of the world; but now, once at the end of the ages, He has appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself.

Revelation 21:22-23: But I saw no temple in it, for the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are its temple. The city had no need of the sun or of the moon to shine in it, for the glory of God illuminated it. The Lamb is its light.