GodReflection: God Breaks In Monday

The Temple was doing just fine—so the people assumed.

Rules were in place. Commerce thrived in the temple courts. Money exchanged hands. Lambs bleated amid doves cooing.

Across the courts at random times was the sound of money tossed into the box of the temple treasury as coins clanged in unison from the bags of the proud and demonstrative rich.

The Temple courtyard was not fine. God was about to break into the temple and let grace flow onto the Temple grounds, beyond its gates and into the world.

In contrast to religion on the Temple grounds behind the “GREAT GATE,” resided the Holy God served by His priests. At the Altar priest served as mediators between God and man.

Behind the Altar hung a curtain that separated the presence of God from the people. Only the High Priest could enter into the presence of God.

Life was about to change.

Drama was in motion as God moved toward the climax of all history.

God through His son Jesus entered the Temple.

Joseph and Mary brought their baby Jesus to the Temple to offer him to God as the gift—the gift of their first-born. This baby was God’s baby.

While in the Temple courts they encountered the old man Simeon and the Prophetess Anna. Both recognized the baby as Messiah.

This baby would hang from a cross as God’s last and sufficient sacrifice for all times to cover the sin of humankind from Adam to the beginning of eternity. God orchestrated the sacrificial death of Messiah Jesus on a hill away from the temple.

That act made available God’s Temple presence to all humanity.

Each year Joseph and Mary took the boy Messiah to the Temple. Somehow, at the age of twelve he missed the family caravan for the return to Nazareth.

Scripture shares his whereabouts.

After three days, they found him in the temple courts, sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions.  Everyone who heard him was amazed at his understanding and his answers. When his parents saw him, they were astonished.

Jesus responds from his sincerity as the God-child.  

“Why were you searching for me?” he asked. “Didn’t you know I had to be in my Father’s house?”

When the God-man Jesus reached adulthood and began his teaching ministry, Scriptures tells us he spent most of his daytime hours teaching at the temple courts.

He introduced God to the temple grounds. God was to be Holy everywhere. The entire temple grounds belonged to God.

Twice he cleansed the temple courts of sellers and buyers of livestock and birds as he overturn tables and benches of the merchants who were using God for monetary profit.

On another occasion, Jewish religious leaders picked up stones to kill him on the temple grounds as the God-man messed with their religion.

At the temple, he taught his disciples how God honored the sacrificial coin of a widow above those who gave without sacrifice.

For three years, God through His son was a frequent visitor at the temple. Visit after visit leading toward the time when God would break into the temple with a powerful message for the entire world.

It happened at the exact instant His only son—who he loved deeply—died  upon a Roman Cross—killed by the very people he came to save.

With a loud cry, Jesus breathed his last.

God entered the Temple at that precise time and ripped the curtain wide open.

At that moment, the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom.

The earth shook, the rocks split . . . the sun stopped shining . . . tombs broke open. The bodies of many holy people who had died were raised to life. They came out of the tombs after Jesus’ resurrection, went into the holy city, and appeared to many people. When the centurion and those with him who were guarding Jesus saw the earthquake and all that had happened, they were terrified, and exclaimed, “Surely he was the Son of God!”

The Letter to the Hebrew Christians put it this way:

We have this hope as an anchor for the soul, firm and secure. It enters the inner sanctuary behind the curtain . . . Behind the second curtain was a room called the Most Holy Place . . . by a new and living way opened for us through the curtain . . . . 

God broke into His Holy Temple and torn the curtain from top to bottom.

That entrance means I can now enter into the Most Holy Place of God’s presence and experience an open walk and conversation with Creator God. 

It’s rather awesome to reflect on God breaking into His Temple and ripping apart the curtain so I can live in His presence—don’t you think?

Stay tuned.

Dr. Gary J. Sorrells – A GodReflection On God Breaks Into The Temple.

Gary@Godreflection.org     www.MakeYourVisionGoViral.com