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Building up the temple



Remember that song? It was a Sunday school favourite of mine. Building up the Temple of the Lord… The girls had to shout “Boys come and help us!” after which the boys shouted, “Girls come and help us!” and we all sang together, “Building up the temple of the Lord.” It was a bit of fun, and the leader would make it a competition to see which group shouted the loudest.



But what did it really mean to us? We had no idea. We just liked the excuse to shout in church as loud as we could.



Messing up the temple



On Palm Sunday, after Jesus rode into Jerusalem on a donkey, after all the people had cried ‘Hosanna,’ Jesus went into the temple and had a look around at everything that was going on. But because it was late, he went to Bethany where he was staying.



When they arrived back in Jerusalem, Jesus entered the temple and began to drive out the people buying and selling animals for sacrifices. He knocked over the tables of the money changers and stopped everyone from using the temple as a marketplace. He said that the temple was meant to be a house of prayer for all nations, but instead it had been turned into a den of thieves. Strong words! (Mark 11)



So this temple was important to Jesus. It was a place where people’s focus was meant to be entirely on God. They came to God for forgiveness, via the altar, and sought his presence. To turn it into a den of thieves was an outrage to Jesus.



Perhaps Jesus saw that the temple symbolism was important for more than just Jewish culture and traditional worship.



He clearly wanted to do more than just mess up the temple. He wanted to mess with the Jewish attitude towards the temple. On another occasion his disciples were marvelling at its beauty. Jesus told them, ‘Destroy this temple and I will rebuild it in three days.’ But he was referring to his body, which the disciples later understood (Mark 13, John 2).



So Jesus was the first in the New Testament to think of the body as a temple, starting with himself. This is taken further by other New Testament writers.



The New Testament Temple



In the book of Acts, Steven refers to the first Old Testament temple, built by Solomon



46 “David found favour with God and asked for the privilege of building a permanent Temple for the God of Jacob. 47 But it was Solomon who actually built it. 48 However, the Most High doesn’t live in temples made by human hands. As the prophet says,



49‘Heaven is my throne, and the earth is my footstool. Could you build me a temple as good as that?’ asks the LORD. ‘Could you build me such a resting place?



50 Didn’t my hands make both heaven and earth?’



(Acts 7:46-50)



It’s clear to us that God doesn’t dwell in temples made by human hands because he still existed and ruled and reigned as God of the universe after the temple was ransacked! It was God who brought the Jews back from captivity to a destroyed Jerusalem.



So the first thing we read about the temple in the New Testament is that God does not need it!



This is repeated 10 chapters later in Acts 17 when Paul tells his listeners…



He is the God who made the world and everything in it. Since he is Lord of heaven and earth, he doesn’t live in man-made temples.



(Acts 17:24)



God doesn’t live in temples. So where does he live? (is that a trick question? Isn’t he omnipresent?!)



Answer: He still lives in temples!! Just not man-made ones.



We are that temple and we are those temples.



The whole body of Christ is God’s temple



Don’t you know that you yourselves are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in your midst?



(1 Corinthians 3:16)



This is a reference collectively to the church body as God’s temple. You yourselves (plural) are God’s temple (singular).



We are individual temples



And later in the same book Paul uses the same analogy to show that each of us is individually a temple of God:



18 Flee from sexual immorality.

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