The words, “This is the temple of the Lord”, were deceptive
because they promoted an idea that so long as the temple was there, all was
right with God. A false sense of
security is a dangerous thing. We could,
perhaps, substitute the words, “You have been baptized” to get the same
idea. The existence of the temple wasn’t
intended to only give comfort, it was also a witness against sin. What is called for in the prophecy here is
amendment of life, truly executing justice among one another, no oppression of
the sojourner (foreigner) among them, orphans and widows, and not going after
other gods, then the temple would be again the temple of the living God who
would live among them. If not, the
implication was clear, He would not be there and the temple would mean nothing
at all, simply a building. In order that
they believe Him on these matters, the Lord points to the former place of
worship, Shiloh, and says they should go there and see what has become of it,
if they can find anything at all. No Jew
could imagine the desecration of the temple, Gentiles going into the holy of
holies, but if the Lord is not there it is not holy at all, just another
interior room in a building.
The man everyone had been looking for and wondering about
early in the feast now appears in the middle of it, teaching in the temple, for
all to see and hear. God was, in the
form of Jesus, teaching His people in His temple and some question where He got
such learning seeing that He never studied.
A rabbi pointed to his teacher, his rabbi, for his authority and here
Jesus points to the Father as His rabbi and says, the measure is not where I
studied but truth. He is a challenge to
the authorities who rule the temple. His words are enigmatic. They believe they know where He is from,
Nazareth, the son of Mary and Joseph, so He cannot be Messiah and Jesus makes
no effort to make clear that they have it wrong, speaking instead of having
been sent, but they must decide who it was that sent Him. It is all very confusing that he will only be
with them a little while and then return to the one who sent Him but they can’t
go there. They focus on the wrong
question though. If they answer the question of “who?” they will then begin to
sort out the rest.
Justification is an important issue. We are justified, accounted righteous, by
faith. That is the end of the story as
far as justification is concerned. Our
faith is in the atoning sacrifice of Jesus Christ the righteous One, and in
that faith His righteousness is credited to our account for life. Works do not justify us. We cannot stand before the judgment seat and
plead our works because there are other works, works of sin, that plead an
alternate case. Paul says that
circumcision is a work, it is a work of obedience to the command. Abraham was counted as righteous before the
command, so it is faith which justifies.
That being said, faith is shown in works. Abraham is the father of those “who also walk
in the footsteps of the faith that our father Abraham had before he was
circumcised.” In Jeremiah’s day, faith
was in the temple in their midst and for this faith they were condemned, for it
was faith without works.
No comments:
Post a Comment