Wednesday: Jesus at the Temple
Daily Lesson for Wednesday 7th of May 2025
There is tension throughout the entire story of salvation. God wishes to restore the communion that we once enjoyed with Him and longs to draw close to us. But bringing sinners into His presence would destroy them. “For You are not a God who takes pleasure in wickedness,” David writes, “nor shall evil dwell with You” (Psalms 5:4, NKJV). At the same time, David also writes, “But as for me, I will come into Your house in the multitude of Your mercy; in fear of You I will worship toward Your holy temple” (Psalms 5:7, NKJV).
Read Haggai 2:7-9. As the second temple was being constructed, the prophet Haggai made an astonishing promise: the new temple would be more glorious than the previous one. What was meant by that prophecy?
Image © Deb Minnard at Goodsalt.com
When the first temple was dedicated by Solomon, the Shekinah glory—the presence of God that had accompanied the children of Israel en route to Canaan—filled the temple, and so the priests could not remain to complete their work of ministry (1 Kings 8:10-11). When the second temple was dedicated, the ark of the covenant, representing God’s throne, was missing because some faithful men, upset at the nation’s sins, had hidden it. The literal presence of God did not fill the temple this time. It was heartbreaking. How could Haggai’s promise possibly come true?
It was in the second temple that Jesus, the incarnation of God, appeared in Person, in flesh and blood. God Himself had stepped out from behind the veil to become one of us and to join us in this broken world. Because the Son of God was now the Son of man, we could see His face, hear His voice, and witness, for example, when He touched an unclean leper and made him whole (Matthew 8:3). Instead of bringing us closer in His direction, God brought us closer to Him by moving in _our _direction. He came down, personally, to us. No wonder the Bible said about Jesus: “ ‘Behold, the virgin shall be with child, and bear a Son, and they shall call His name Immanuel,’ which is translated, ‘God with us’ ” (Matthew 1:23, NKJV). Think about what this means: the Creator of the cosmos condescended not only to live among us but to die for us.
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The Cross is by far the greatest manifestation of God’s love. What are other ways we can see and experience the reality of God’s love? |
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The Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church believes it has the Ark of the Covenant. It is regarded as a very sacred object and only one person is allowed to see it. A priest is allocated as its guardian, which is his lifelong work. This Ark is housed in a special chapel in Axum, Ethiopia. Other churches in this church have copies of this Ark called "tabot". They are considered sacred objects in their own right and are brought out and paraded at religious festivals such as Easter and Epiphany when the worshipers can venerate them.
In many ways, the worship of the Hebrews was very similar to the traditions of the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church. Worship had become a series of rituals centred on the temple and its sacred objects. Even after the destruction of Solomon's Temple and the loss of the Ark of the Covenant, the rebuilt Temple became the centre of ritual.
Just before Christ's ministry, Herod the Great rebuilt the Second Temple of a grand scale. It was quite a grand building and was the centre of some national pride. Despite no longer having the Ark of the Covenant, the Jewish religion centred on the location and the objects within the Temple precincts.
It was in this environment that Jesus ministered, demonstrating the importance of a personal relationship with God, rather than the observance of rituals and the veneration of objects. He also lived the importance of serving others.
James summarises this so well:
If we want to summarise Jesus' ministry; he took religion out of the box and lived it where others could see the Glory of God.
And the message for us in the 21st Century is that we too need to take our religion out of the box and share it by serving others.
Religious practices must reveal what the love of God is and how we must express our religious practices and beliefs to others in the way that they can see Christ in our lives.
The real evidence of living a Christlike life is answered by Jesus in John, 13:34 and 35
“A new understanding of Moses’ command I give you: Love one another as I have loved you—freely, not from a sense of obligation, but from a renewed heart of true regard and concern for one another, genuinely loving others more than yourself. 35 By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, because you will practice my methods and principles of selfless love for one another.” (John 13:34, 35 The Remedy)
The answer is, and was always love one another, true unselfish other centered love…Royce
There is a fight within us. We fight goodness because our genes degenerated. But God has shown us the way to inner peace, to have Jesus. Being Jesus' friend is the best way to overcome our human tendencies.
We aren't to worship things or places, but the One who made all things and places. He has done everything to save everyone. The only reason that anyone will be lost is because of unbelief.
True miracles of God never go out of date, they are timeless. The challenge is to know which are genuine miracles and which are alleged. Signs and wonders aren't for true believers but for the skeptic and cynics. The problem with putting too much faith in signs and wonders is that the devil uses lying signs and wonders to deceive. Any and all claims should be prefaced with an "alleged" tag until veracity can be verified. These days you can't trust anything except the Word of God and His servants the prophets.
God has often fulfilled 1 Cor. 1:27 We don't need a PhD, or ThD to be used by God to reveal His Glory and Majesty. All we need is availability, and God provides the ability. Academicians have often discredited non-academicians, often looking down their noses at them as "unqualified." It's not like God needs a person to have some type of degree before He can use them. God often chooses "nobodies" to reveal His power and majesty to the world. Think of all the unqualified people that God has used throughout history. "God doesn't call the qualified; He qualifies the called."
So many Christians sit on their hands instead of sharing Christ with others because they don’t feel "qualified" to share Christ. If God only used "qualified" people the temptation for them is to take the credit for the results. Everyone is capable of using "Christ's method of evangelism." When we link up with God's power, He gets the Glory, but He shares with us the joy of co-laboring with Him. If God could speak through a donkey, he can certainly speak through us donkies. 🤔😉😊
I have used this short video in sermons and Sabbath School, to tell a powerful story. The March of the Unqualified
Yes, Jesus ascended to heaven to present His blood, but, it's not like He took an I.V. bag of it with him. He presented the merits of his shed blood on behalf of mankind.
It is perfectly conceivable in my "pea brain", that Jesus as our High Priest, and Lamb of God, could have arranged that His shed blood would fall upon the Mercy Seat of the Ark of the Covenant. Type could have met anti-type in more ways than one at Calvary. Remember that the earthly Sanctuary was patterned after the heavenly one. Not that sacrifices were being offered up in heaven, but that the earthly sacrificial system prefigured what the blood shed by Jesus would actually accomplish. Only the blood of the "Lamb of God," could take away our sins. The blood shed in the sacrificial system merely was an object lesson of that fact. There's still "wonder working power in the precious blood of the Lamb."