“Destroy
this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.”
Why this cryptic response from Jesus to
the Jewish leaders? They want validation from Jesus in the form of a sign; He
responds with a statement sure to confuse them. Jesus doesn’t sit them down and
explain who He is, He doesn’t start with Genesis and work through the Law,
Prophets, and Writings with them, teaching them about the Messiah, teaching
them about the true Lamb and that Lamb’s relation to Passover.
It was, after all, Passover; why not
teach about Moses and the Exodus and the first Passover – that is a natural;
why respond with, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up”?
The response of the Jewish leaders was reasonable enough, “It has taken
forty-six years to build this temple, and will you raise it up in three days?”
From John’s account it doesn’t appear that Jesus answered this question.
From verse 23 we see that during this
Passover Jesus did do signs to the point where “many believed in His name”, but
this belief was not the belief of John 1:12 or 3:16; we’ll explore this in a
forthcoming post.
We’re not told that Jesus faced
resistance when He threw the religious business people out of the temple; one
would think that these people wouldn’t have left without some protest and
resistance – after all, Jesus was threatening their livelihood. There must have
been a look from Jesus, a Presence; there must have been something about this
Man with His whip of cords that sent a message to those business people that
they were in the wrong place for making money.
Well, okay, what’s done is done; let’s
go ask Him what authority He has for shutting down the temple business
enterprise. “Show us a sign that you have authority to do this.”
The fact that Jesus did what He did is
sign enough. He claimed the temple as His Father’s House – there is sign enough
for those who have ears to hear.
But wait, Jesus will not only threaten
their livelihood by tossing out the merchandisers of God, He will raise the
specter of the temple building being destroyed. The temple is the economic
center of the religious leaders, it is a symbol for political leaders, it is at
the heart of national and ethnic consciousness and identity – and Jesus raises
the image of its destruction. The temple, restored by Herod the Great, traces
its history back to the Tabernacle of Moses, through the Temple
of Solomon, then to the restored Temple under Zerubbabel,
Ezra, and Nehemiah.
Yes, as John points out, Jesus is
talking about the temple of His body, about His crucifixion and resurrection,
and in doing so is not only prefiguring Good Friday and Easter Sunday but is
proclaiming that He is God Almighty, the Giver and Taker and Giver again of
life. Jesus Christ will lay His life down and Jesus Christ will take His life
up again, for He is God of very God. What sign will He give? He will give the
sign that only God can give - the sign of the Giver and Taker and Giver again
of life.
The ultimate destruction of the temple
by the Romans will have it roots in the death of resurrection of Jesus Christ
and of Pentecost, for now that the true temple has come the type and shadow
must pass away. According to the Jewish commander and historian Josephus,
during the siege of Jerusalem
in 70 A.D. Jewish factions in the city fought each other in the temple – thus
the temple was desecrated before the Romans breached the city walls and
destroyed the temple.
When Jesus raises His temple in three
days He raises a Temple
greater than the one that went into the tomb, for He raises His many-membered
Body, He raises the New Jerusalem. The New Jerusalem comes up from the grave,
it is empowered at Pentecost, and mystery of mysteries it descends from heaven.
“Truly, truly I say to you, unless a
grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies,
it bears much fruit,” John 12:24.
“Now Hagar is Mount Sinai in Arabia;
she corresponds to the present Jerusalem,
for she is in slavery with her children. But the Jerusalem above is free, and she is our
mother,” Galatians 4:25 – 26.
“…in Whom [Jesus Christ] 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 2:21 – 22.
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