Jesus and the Temple
The Temple, the Ka'aba, and the Christ
Chapters
Shortly after Jesus was born he was brought to the Temple by his mother Mary and her husband Joseph to be dedicated in accordance with the law of the Lord (Luke 2:22). Every year thereafter his family visited the Temple in Jerusalem to observe the annual Passover festival (Luke 2:41). Nothing unusual happened at these feasts until Jesus was twelve years old. On this occasion ho stayed behind in Jerusalem when the feast was ended. It was customary for all the children to mix freely in the company of those who wont up to the feast and it was only after a day's journey that Joseph and Mary discovered ho was missing. They returned to Jerusalem and after three days they found him in discussion with the Jewish teachers and scribes in the Temple. Those men marcelled at his knowledge of the law of God for it was not to be expected that a young boy would have such an intimate knowledge of the law.
His mother, however, was distraught after searching for him for three days and she said to him:
"Son, why have you treated us so? Behold, your father and I have been looking for you anxiously". Luke 2:48.
Joseph, however, was not really the father of Jesus and his mother Mary knew only too well that she had conceived her son while she was still a virgin. Accordingly Jesus met this ill-considered reproof of his action with those words:
"How is it that you sought me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father's house?" Luke 2:49
He expressed his wonder that Joseph and Mary had not sought for him right from the start in the Temple of God for it was, in his own words, "my Father's house". Mary should have remembered what the angel said to her when she first conceived him, namely:
"He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High ... therefore the child to be born will be called holy, the Son of God". Luke 1. 32,35.
Two things, however, must be noticed in this incident. Firstly, Jesus identified himself with the Temple at a very young ago and identified it as the "House of God". Secondly, he described it as "my Father's house" - something he was to do again twenty years later (John 2:16). By this we must of necessity conclude that God was, in a very real and eternal sense, the true Father of Jesus Christ.
The next connection that Jesus had with the Temple was during the forty days that he fasted in the wilderness of Judea after he was baptised. At the end of this period Satan tempted him no less than three times to turn away from the path God has chosen for him. One of those three temptations related directly to the Temple in Jerusalem:
Then the devil took him to the holy city, and sot him on the pinnacle of the Temple, and said to him, "If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down; for it is written, 'He will give his angels charge of you' and 'On their hands they will bear you up, lest you strike your foot against a stone'." Jesus said to him, "Again it is written, 'You shall not tempt the Lord your God'." Matthew 4:5-7.
Satan knew who Jesus was. Having heard Jesus describe the Temple as "my Father's house" and having also heard God describe him as "my beloved Son" at his recent baptism (Matthew 3:17), ho now tempted him to prove to all the Jews gathered at the Temple that God was indeed his Father. Satan tried to persuade him to stand on the Holy of Holies and jump down in the sight of all Israel; for surely, if God was his Father, he would send his angels to save him lest he injured himself in the fall. If this were to happen, surely all the Jews would fall at his feet and acknowledge, in the very precincts of the Temple of God, that he was indeed the Son of God.
Jesus resisted the temptation and refused to yield to Satan's suggestion. This incident tells us much about the condition of the Temple at the time of Jesus. There must have been something radically wrong with the worship around it for the devil to incite Jesus to obtain by spectacular means the honour and obeisance of the Jews who were gathered there in that worship.
If the people had been drawn to the Temple through a deep spiritual desire to worship God in spirit and in truth and to have fellowship with one another in the knowledge of God, the last thing Satan would have wanted was the discovery by the Jews that Jesus was indeed the Messiah they had long awaited. On the contrary we must presume, from the fact that Satan did everything in his power to persuade Jesus to reveal himself publicly as the Messiah in the Temple precincts, that the religion of Judaism had largely become false and that their worship at the Temple no longer focused spiritually on God but in fact had become contrary to the purpose of God which was to draw all men in true worship to himself. Quite obviously the Jews had turned away from him even though they outwardly still conformed to the prescribed pattern of the Temple worship.
That this was indeed the case is clear from an event that took place on the very next occasion that the Passover feast took place in Jerusalem. Jesus went up to the feast and immediately reacted to the rituals and practices taking place in the Temple:
In the temple he found those who were selling oxen and sheep and pigeons and the money-changers at their business. And making a whip of cords, he drove them all, with the sheep and the oxen, out of the temple; and he poured out the coins of the money-changers and overturned their tables. And ho told those who sold the pigeons, "Take these things away; you shall not make my Father's house a house of trade". John 2:14-16.
Far from approving of the worship at the Temple, ho displayed his utter opposition to what was taking place. God's house was meant to be a house of worship but they had made it a market for secular trading. The chief priests had transformed the Temple into a place of mercantile objectives. They sought only to obtain wealth at the expense of the many pilgrims who came regularly to Jerusalem to worship and observe the feasts.
Jesus cleansed the Temple as a sign that the true worship of God in future was to be revealed in his ministry. We can see now why he resisted Satan's temptation. When he finally came to the Temple, far from seeking to draw the honour and praises of the Jews to himself, he in fact opposed them to their faces and, by his actions, showed that he disapproved entirely of what was passing for the worship of God in its precincts.
Once again he described the Temple as "my Father's house". While he reverenced it as such, he displayed an open abhorrence of the affairs of the Temple which were supposedly being conducted in the name of God. A few years later, when he repeated this action, ho accused the Jews of making the Temple "a den of robbers" (Matthew 21:13).
As was to be expected the Jews took strong exception to this action. On the first occasion they asked him what sign ho had to show them that ho acted on authority from God in entering the Temple and behaving as if he were the Lord of it. Jesus answered then:
"Destroy this Temple and in three days I will raise it up". John 2:19
The Jews marcelled at this statement. They declared that it had taken forty-six years to build the Temple and were amazed at his suggestion that ho could rebuild it within three days. But Jesus had not spoken of the Temple building. One of his disciples, who records this incident, tells us:
He spoke of the temple of his body. John 2:21
Yet, by describing it as "this temple" immediately after ho had driven the money-changers out of the Temple building, it is no wonder that the Jews took his statement to refer to the building itself. This identification of his body with the Temple building was not coincidental, however, but was deliberately implied in his reply to the Jews. Henceforth the true Temple of God was no longer to be the building in Jerusalem but the person of Christ himself. From this moment onwards Jesus drew a clear distinction between himself and the Temple and many incidents in his life show that Jesus himself had become the new focus of true worship and had replaced the Temple as the meeting-place of God with men.
When Jesus left Judea to return to Galilee he passed by Jacob's well in Samaria which was not far from a town called Sychar (in what is known as the "west bank" of the Jordan river today). In this province lived a people who had a mixed ancestry, part of which was Jewish. They held that as the prophet Jacob had worshipped on Mount Gerizim, and not at the site of the Temple in Jerusalem, so they should do likewise. When a Samaritan woman asked Jesus which of the two was indeed the true place of worship, he replied:
"Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. But the hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for such the Father seeks to worship him. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth". John 4. 21-24.
Be plainly told her that the hour had now come when the Temple in Jerusalem would no longer be the focus of worship. In his answer ho clearly implied that no place on earth would fulfil this function. Now that Jesus had come, the situation was to be changed. His advent at this time heralded the new age when worship was to be directed not towards a place on earth (for example, Gerizim, Jerusalem or Mecca) but spiritually towards God in heaven.
On another occasion, when Jesus was reproved by the Jewish leaders for allowing his disciples to pluck heads of grain in his presence on the Sabbath, he replied:
"Have you not read in the law how on the sabbath the priests in the temple profane the sabbath, and are guiltless? I tell you, something greater than the temple is hero". Matthew 12:5-6.
If God allowed the priests to perform functions on the sabbath which appeared to profane the day, and were not censured by God even when this was done right in his presence in the Temple, so likewise the disciples were free from blame before God when they plucked these heads of grain on the sabbath in the presence of Jesus and were not reproved by him. Clearly Jesus was portraying himself as the replacement of the Temple and as the centre of the abiding presence of God among men. Something greater than the Temple was now here in the person of Jesus and we shall shortly see why this was indeed the case and how it came to pass.
A climax was reached when Jesus took his three closest disciples up a high mountain and was transfigured before them. His garments became white as light and his face shone like the sun. A bright cloud overshadowed him and a voice from heaven said:
"This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased; listen to him". Matthew 17:5
Centuries earlier this bright cloud of glory had settled in the Holy of Holies in the tabernacle (Quran 2.57) and then in the same chamber in the Temple as a sign of God's real presence in the shrine. Now it settled above the person of Jesus as a manifestation of God's presence in him and as a proof of the fact that from henceforth God's presence and favour were only to be found in Jesus. All prayers and worship were from this time forth to be offered in his name and he had therefore become the "qiblah" rather than the Temple.
As he stood in the Temple for the last time at the end of his ministry, Jesus was deeply moved in spirit and foresaw the demise of this great building as the place where God was to be identified with his people on earth. Jesus declared to the multitude:
"O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, killing the prophets and stoning those who are sent to you! How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you would not! Behold, your house is forsaken and desolate. For I tell you, you will not see me again, until you say, 'Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord'." Matthew 23:37-39.
Immediately afterwards, as he withdrew from the Temple for the last time, he said to his disciples of the buildings in the Temple:
"Truly I say to you, there will not be left here one stone upon another". Matthew 24:2
With these words Jesus pronounced God's judgement on the Temple. It was forsaken and desolate. For centuries the Jews had opposed the prophets God had sent to them and had practised a false worship around the Temple. Forty years later the Temple was duly destroyed by the Roman armies under Titus and so it no longer represented the presence of God among men.