The Temple's Doom
Notes
Transcript
Intro
Has anyone here watched the movie Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom? Well tonight’s passage has nothing to do with that movie, but it does have to do with a Temple, and with it’s own doom. Stand with me as we read from Luke 21:5-6.
This is God’s Word, and if you let it, it will change your life.
5 And while some were speaking of the temple, how it was adorned with noble stones and offerings, he said,
6 “As for these things that you see, the days will come when there will not be left here one stone upon another that will not be thrown down.”
Pray
Last week, we studied the passage about the Widow’s offering, and we saw a widow giving her last two small coins into the offering box. There is something about that passage that I didn’t talk about last week, that really comes to bear tonight.
The Temple is representative of religious practice among the Israelites. For a long time, there was no Temple. The tabernacle remained the “house of God” for many centuries through the wilderness wanderings, period of the Judges, and even the reign of Kings Saul and David. God’s house was a tent, made for easy transport through the desert.
Eventually, God got a more permanent house in the reign of Solomon. The magnificence of the Temple was, no doubt, a tribute to God’s faithfulness and prosperity toward his people. But as the kings turned away from God, sin prospered and the people went further away from God.
Sometimes a prophet would call out the sins of the people. In a couple of cases, the king would lead Judah to repentance. But the problems escalated through the years. Even after seventy years of exile in Babylon, the Jews never quite learned their lesson.
In Jesus’ day, the problem had not gone away. Like a tumor that is left untreated, sin had metastasized into a full-fledged case of cancer. It was so bad that now even the religious leaders - priests, scribes, teachers, and other leaders were the worst offenders.
That’s why Jesus speaks directly to their sins. As leaders, they ought to have been bringing people to God, not distracting them with careless theology and oppressing them with dutiful tyranny. The story of the widow’s offering demonstrates this. Read Luke 20:45-21:4 again, but this time without pausing between the chapter break:
45 And in the hearing of all the people he said to his disciples,
46 “Beware of the scribes, who like to walk around in long robes, and love greetings in the marketplaces and the best seats in the synagogues and the places of honor at feasts,
47 who devour widows’ houses and for a pretense make long prayers. They will receive the greater condemnation.”
1 Jesus looked up and saw the rich putting their gifts into the offering box,
2 and he saw a poor widow put in two small copper coins.
3 And he said, “Truly, I tell you, this poor widow has put in more than all of them.
4 For they all contributed out of their abundance, but she out of her poverty put in all she had to live on.”
Do you see the problem? The scribes were the type that “devour widows’ houses,” and in the very next narrative a widow’s house actually gets devoured! She has given her last coins as an offering, and the system that was supposed to care for her instead uses her for every little bit she has.
God had commanded his people to care for the widow to make sure she was taken care of:
22 You shall not mistreat any widow or fatherless child.
17 “You shall not pervert the justice due to the sojourner or to the fatherless, or take a widow’s garment in pledge,
9 “Thus says the Lord of hosts, Render true judgments, show kindness and mercy to one another,
10 do not oppress the widow, the fatherless, the sojourner, or the poor, and let none of you devise evil against another in your heart.”
3 Thus says the Lord: Do justice and righteousness, and deliver from the hand of the oppressor him who has been robbed. And do no wrong or violence to the resident alien, the fatherless, and the widow, nor shed innocent blood in this place.
The Israelites were not to glean the edges of their fields, or to go back and reap a second time - what was left from the first was specifically for widows, orphans, and sojourners - the most vulnerable classes of people. Not only does God command them to care for the widow, but God himself will care for them:
18 He executes justice for the fatherless and the widow, and loves the sojourner, giving him food and clothing.
9 The Lord watches over the sojourners; he upholds the widow and the fatherless, but the way of the wicked he brings to ruin.
25 The Lord tears down the house of the proud but maintains the widow’s boundaries.
God’s heart to care for those who need help the most shines through the OT. But in Jesus’ day, many of the religious leaders had no interest in caring for the widow. Instead, the widow was someone else to exploit for personal gain. This was the same basic reason a German monk named Luther wrote the 95 Theses, a collection of disputations with the Catholic practice of selling indulgences for profit. Even in our day, there are false prophets who claim to preach the gospel but only seem to care about their own bank accounts and lavish lifestyles.
By the time of Jesus, the whole religious structure in Jerusalem was corrupted. Instead of honoring God and calling the nations to righteousness through the God-given Law, Israel was defaming God’s name and driving the nations to contempt for God.
When a tooth is decayed, there are several options for a dentist. A cavity works for small amounts of decay. A root canal is needed when the decay gets to the nerve. A crown might be needed when the decay is extensive. But sometimes, there is just too much decay. The only option is to get rid of the tooth.
That’s the level of decay for the Jewish religion in Jesus’ day. It is rotten to the core - too decayed to save anything. It must be torn down and completely leveled. And the centerpiece of that religious system, the Temple, becomes ground zero for God’s judgment.
The odd thing is, the Temple itself looked nice.
5 And while some were speaking of the temple, how it was adorned with noble stones and offerings, he said,
Everything looks good on the outside. Religious decay isn’t like tooth decay - there is often no gaping hole in the church building that makes the problem obvious. No church puts on their sign, “We’re hypocrites! Come join us!” Churches don’t put in their statement of faith “We refuse to follow God’s clear commands.”
But the decay is there. It’s in how the church treats the widow and orphan, how the church looks out for itself rather than the needs of others, how the church is more concerned with having beautiful decor than having meaningful ministry.
I’ve seen churches that could stop taking an offering for over a year and still have money in the bank to function. That’s not good stewardship, that’s stinginess! It looks good on paper, looks good from the road, and looks good to the in-crowd of members, but that kind of decay must be rooted out before it completely destroys the local body of Christ! Jesus’ response to that kind of decay is in verse 6:
6 “As for these things that you see, the days will come when there will not be left here one stone upon another that will not be thrown down.”
The only way to root out the spiritual decay at this level is complete destruction. The demolition of the physical building represents the annihilation of the rotten religious system for which it was employed. It wasn’t the Temple itself that was bad - it was the system that men had devised which counterfeited true religion for a self-serving religiosity.
This should lead us to question ourselves. Are we exercising genuine religion, or are we decaying true faith with our unrighteousness? Christ will not allow his church to remain decayed. It’s time for us to repent of our wrongs and allow Christ to remove the decay from our hearts.