DESTROY THIS TEMPLE
It was supposed
to be a House of Prayer for All Nations.
But something went wrong. Money had
taken over in a big way.
But who is this
madman driving out the animals with a whip, and toppling the tables of the
money changers? Where did he come
from? Where are the Temple Police? Why does no one stop him?
The Jewish leaders then said to him,
"What sign have you to show us for doing this?"
Jesus answered them, "Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise
it up."
The Jewish leaders then said, "It has taken forty-six years to build this
temple, and will you raise it up in three days?"
John
2
This event marked the beginning of the end
for the Temple at Jerusalem.
It foreshadowed the day when a new Temple
would spread like a cloud of glory over the face of the earth.
“Destroy this Temple,
and in three days I will raise it up.”
The Temple
is the place where God makes his presence known. You’re looking for God? Go to the Temple and seek.
God fills Infinity. God is Eternity itself. But God’s voice is to be heard most clearly
in his Temple. And the Temple
through which God had now begun to speak was this man from Nazareth.
Never since the Garden of Eden had the voice of God been heard so
clearly.
Then one day they destroyed this Temple. They nailed him to a cross and watched him
die. What they did not know was that
this Temple could
not be contained in a tomb. On the third
day he stepped out of that tomb as God’s Final Temple
on this earth.
The Final Temple
began to expand. It gathered in living
souls like Peter and John and Mary Magdalene. All who died to themselves and rose with
Jesus to new life became part of God’s Final Temple.
A man named Saul was a rising star in the old
Temple. He thought he was doing the will of God as he
dragged followers of Jesus off to prison, beatings and death. Saul was unaware that he was messing with God’s
Final Temple until, out of a blinding flash, he
heard a voice.
“Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?”
“Who are you, Lord?”
“I am Jesus whom you are persecuting.”
Saul had been persecuting Jesus’ Body, this
mysterious gathering of souls who live by the power of his resurrection. The Body of Christ is God’s Final Temple.
But what is the Body of Christ?
The Body of Christ is
not an institution.
The Body of Christ is
not a hierarchy.
The Body of Christ has
no clergy class.
The Body of Christ has
only one head: Jesus himself.
The Body of Christ exists within, beyond, and
in spite of all our institutional churches.
Only the Lord knows who is part of his Body and who is not.
There is one body and
one Spirit, just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call,
one Lord, one faith, one baptism,
one God and Father of us all, who is above all and through all and in all.
Ephesians 4
The Body of Christ covers the earth like a
cloud. It spreads through our churches,
convicting, unsettling, calling to repentance and giving hope, in the same way
that Jesus once taught in the synagogues and the Temple of old.
Jesus, the head of the Body, continues to
call us to deny ourselves, take up our cross daily and follow him. Jesus constantly reminds us that not everyone
who says, “Lord, Lord” shall enter the Kingdom of Heaven,
but only those who do the Father’s will.
As the End draws near, the Spirit is preparing
us for the hour when the Body of Christ will emerge from the confusion of
Christendom as his true Bride. The refining fires have already begun to burn
among us. It is time for us to be
cleansed of all corruption, hypocrisy and deceit.
That he might sanctify
her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, that he might
present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such
thing, that she might be holy and without blemish.
Ephesians 5
The same Jesus who cleansed the Temple in Jerusalem is now
moving through the Final
Temple with refining
fire. Judgment has begun at the
household of God.
The Lord Jesus himself is doing it. We are unable to cleanse the Body of
Christ. We are forbidden to try to
separate the wheat from the tares. We
have neither the wisdom nor the power to prepare the Bride for the Marriage
Supper of the Lamb.
The Lamb alone prepares his Bride. As Jesus sends refining fire through his Body,
our job is to wake up and repent before it’s too late.
The Bride makes herself ready by laying aside
her vanity garments and putting on the white garments of simple obedience to
the Father’s will.
Then I heard what seemed to be the voice of a great multitude, like the sound
of many waters and like the sound of mighty thunderpeals, crying,
"Hallelujah! For the Lord our God the Almighty reigns.
Let us rejoice and exult and give him the glory,
for the marriage of the Lamb has come,
and his Bride has made herself ready;
it was granted her to be clothed with
fine linen, bright and
pure" --
for the fine linen is the righteous deeds of the saints.
Revelation 19