Views from an Evangelist

In Mark Chapter 13 you read of the interchange between Jesus and one of His disciples about the Temple.

Verse 1: As Jesus was leaving the temple, one of his disciples said to him, “Look, Teacher! What massive stones! What magnificent buildings!”

You know the Temple as a physically beautiful buidlng to see and a symbol of Jewish pride. Like the Capital of any Nation.

But Jesus responds verse 2: “Do you see all these great buildings?” replied Jesus. “Not one stone here will be left on another; every one will be thrown down.”

Huh. Why would the Temple be brought down? Why would the symbol of Jewish life be removed?

One reason: because the enemy of faith has always been man’s works. The Temple represented man’s works not Jewish faith.

You see God’s Word has always brought eternal life and thereby fellowship with God. Back in the Garden of Eden in Genesis 1 – 2 did God establish the principle of faith in His Word as the means of being in alive unto Him and thereby in fellowship with Him.

It was Genesis 3:6 where Eve and then Adam turned from faith in God’s Word and followed the word of the serpent to eat from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, prohibited by God in Genesis 2:16-17, to cast the world into sin.

Once sin entered the world mankind began to declare they were god per the serpent’s temptation in Genesis 3:5 thereby creating the ongoing conflict between God and man. The single issue between God man is man believing God’s Word.

Israel’s ongoing problem was not believing God’s Word. Though God gave them His Law which was a righteous Law and would raise them above all nations they didn’t keep His Law. God as a result would sumarily disperse His people into the nations as a punishment. Since by not keeping His Law they were not in fellowship with Him He treated them as such and drove them from His presence.

This process of driving them from Him began in the Garden. (Genesis 3:23-24). Even the disciple Stephen in Acts 7:53 after Jesus had been raised from the dead rebukes the Jewish leaders for failing to keep His Law. Such was their anger at being confronted and reminded of this reality that they stoned him.

Back to Jesus and His disciples at the Temple. Ironically that even though the Jewish Leaders did not believe God’s Word they would still wear the official religious clothing, teach the people and even operate the Temple.

Thus the battle was set one before they crucified Jesus in their anger towards the Word of God incarnate. So Jesus tells His disciples that again and for all time the Temple which had become a symbol of the Jewish failure to keep His Word would be destroyed (which happened in 70 A.D.).

What He was saying was that there would be a final battle between the Word of God and the Temple representing the lawlessness of the Jews. He says basically that the Word, Himself (John 1:1), would prevail and the Temple would be destroyed signifying once and for all that the Word of God brings life.

The point: the Word of God has always and will always brought eternal life (John 17:3) to those who believe it and thereby fellowship with God. The works of man, though they may be beautiful as the Temple must surely have been in Jesus’ day, only bring death and thereby not fellowship with God.

Jesus in His earthly ministry teaches this lesson consummated by His resurrection from the dead. So read and believe God’s Word to receive eternal life through the gift of God’s Spirit to enter into and remain in fellowship with God.