Psalm 20, 21; 2 Kings 25:8-26; 1 Cor. 15:12-29; Matt. 11:7-15
What a sad time. The people are forced from Jerusalem and worst of all, the Babylonians take all the accoutrements of the temple and reduce it to its market value and remove it to Babylon. The value of all that was in the temple was not in its worth on the market or in some other form, its worth was derived from its being sacred, set apart for the service of the Lord, and these pagans treated it as though it were nothing and the Lord allowed it because of the sin of the nation who had rejected Him. How terrible it must have been to see them in the temple ruining everything, defiling the holy place and then the holy of holies and nothing happened. Surely they wondered whether all they had believed was no more than mere superstition as these soldiers wandered about willy-nilly in the place the high priest had trembled to enter even after all his preparations in accord with the law of God. Then, the priests and other leaders were summarily executed by the king and his man installed as leader. Some men chose to rebel and kill this man and then everyone left fled to Egypt.
“From the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven has suffered violence, and the violent take it by force.” John the Baptist was the last of the prophets, the herald of the new covenant, announcing the Messiah’s coming. After his death Jesus here addresses His own disciples and you can hear in His words the pain and anger He must have felt both because He loved John and He also knew that the future would mean His own violent death. We see the Chaldeans, men of extraordinary violence, doing violence to the temple and the city of God and we see in our own day a violent religious people who control the temple mount and deny access to the people of God. It is painful to us when we realize that all this violence is simply a result of sin and that until the Lord returns to establish His kingdom we will see this as a way of life.
Apparently there are some in Corinth who are saying that there is no resurrection of the dead. That is our hope, that we will share in eternal life based on the merits of Jesus, His atoning sacrifice on our behalf and the Father raising Him from the dead as the firstfruits of the resurrection of all. If that is not the case then we need a more worldly philosophy to teach us how to live well in this life because that is all we have. We would need a different ethics and a different morality to deal with those who hate us and those who wrong us than the ethic of love, that simply won’t work if it is every one for themselves. Indeed, greed would be good. Violence would be the only real answer in order to get what we want and what we need. Thankfully, the Lord has indeed shown us another way, first in the law given to Moses and then in Jesus, His teachings, His life, His death and His resurrection. We long for the day when His kingdom is established based on the contours He laid out in this life.
To Christ, who won for sinners grace
By bitter grief and anguish sore,
Be praise from all the ransomed race
Forever and forevermore.
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