30th January 2026

30th January 2026


Pray (ACts)


Read (John 2:12-25 focus v18-25)


Message (Alan Burke)


I’ve read a lot about the temple in Jerusalem over the past few days just to get my head around what was happening in this passage. The origins of the temple are found in Exodus. God had redeemed his people from their slavery in Egypt, and then he dwelt among them in the Tabernacle. It was where he dwelt among his people (see Ex 25-31 for the details of the temple). Later, when David was on the throne, he wanted to build a temple where God dwelt among his people. Long story short, David didn’t build it; the LORD wouldn’t allow it (1 Chr 17). The reason was, in part, because David was a man of war (1 Chr 22:8, 28:3). Instead, his son Solomon would (1 Ki 6-7). Often referred to as Solomon’s Temple because Solomon did build it, the temple was destroyed after some 400 years at the hands of the Babylonians, and the ark of the covenant would never return (2 Ki 25:8-9). After the return from exile in Babylon, the people under the leadership of Zerubbabel the Second Temple was completed about 60 years after the first was destroyed (see Ezra and Nehemiah, completed 515 BC). The Second Temple, the Temple Mount, was enlarged, and the temple rebuilt under King Herod (38BC) only to be subsequently destroyed in AD 70 by the Romans along with Jerusalem by Titus’ army. 


Ok that is it in broad brush strokes. Here, as Jesus is confronted by the Jews, they question him and want to know what authority he has to have done these things. They have no concern for the reason. They want a sign to satisfy them. The cleansing of the temple was already a sign, but they did not have the eyes to see. In response, Jesus says he would destroy this temple and raise it again in three days. From a human perspective, Jesus is off his rocker, but while the Jews who confronted Jesus did not know, which is explained to us here, is that what Jesus is saying is not about the temple building but the temple of his body. Even if Jesus was being literal rather than figurative, they were hardly likely to do it so he could prove what he had said. In what he was saying, Jesus was figuratively and prophetically speaking of what was going to take place. That he would die and three days later rise. Jesus was the temple; he was the manifestation of God to man. It was the dwelling of God among them, the fulfilment of what the temple was pointing to, for all the sacrifices that were performed at the temple were pointing into the ultimate sacrifice that would take place, that Jesus would hang on that cross or he would die, be buried, and the true temple with three days later rise from the dead.


The Jews here respond to what he has said with mockery. 46 years it has taken to build this temple. The temple building would later be destroyed in AD70 by the Romans, but when Jesus died on the cross with the curtain torn in two, no longer did the temple in Jerusalem have a function; that temple had been replaced by another where God would dwell amongst his people, permanently. After the coming of the Holy Spirit, it is the church itself who has become the dwelling of God, the new temple here on Earth. The Church is now the temple. Not the building that we meet but the church, the people of God (1 Cor 3:16-17). In 1 Corinthians, we are told: “Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you?” (1 Co 3:16). And God cares what goes on in his temple. We are the body of Christ; now the Lord dwells in us by the Holy Spirit. He dwells within us, and we are the temple of God on this Earth. We represent Christ in this world. We are a city on a hill, a light to the nations. We manifest the invisible reality (see Mat 5:14, Acts 13:47). There needs to be no ‘Third Temple’ built because the church is the temple of God. 


Pray (acTS)


Sing


WSC
Q85 What doth God require of us, that we may escape his wrath and curse, due to us for sin?
A. To escape the wrath and curse of God, due to us for sin, God requireth of us faith in Jesus Christ, repentance unto life, with the diligent use of all the outward means whereby Christ communicateth to us the benefits of redemption.
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