Noble Stones and Offerings

I read a chapter of the Old Testament every morning and a chapter of the New, and I’ve commented more than once on the weird “coincidences” that occasionally result when two chapters paired entirely at random wind up speaking to precisely the same subject.

I say “random”, because there are 929 chapters in the OT and 260 in the NT, two numbers that, if you know your math, have no common denominator greater than 1. In short, the chances of any two chapters I read pairing up more than once in a single human lifetime does not exist. Thus, on any given day, each propitious thematic pairing is its own unique and delightful surprise. I documented a couple of these “happy accidents” in 2021, and they continue to crop up now and again. I’m not a superstitious guy, as I have often been at pains to note, but the frequency with which I experience biblical déjà vu makes me wonder what gives.

The connection between is morning’s pair of lengthy readings was unusually glaring.

Bookending the Temple

My OT reading was 1 Kings 8, where Solomon dedicates the long-awaited temple of the Lord in Jerusalem, which he has been seven years in building, before his entire nation. My NT reading was Matthew 24, in which Jesus foretells the destruction of the temple of his own day, which took place just as he predicted only a few years after his return to the Father’s right hand. These two passages begin and end the history of the temple in Jerusalem to date. In between these two events separated by over a millennium, the Babylonians and their allies leveled Solomon’s temple, only to watch it rise again seventy years later, after Judah had served its time in the spiritual ‘penalty box’.

So then, the glorious structure about which the Lord’s disciples rhapsodized in Matthew was manifestly not the same building described in detail in 1 Kings, nor was it the arguably inferior replacement constructed by Zerubbabel after Judah’s return from exile. This was a third temple, constructed by Herod beginning in about 20 BC with the intention of making it one of the wonders of the world. Herod did not live to see its completion, which took place in AD63 or thereabouts, just in time for the Romans to invade Jerusalem in AD70 and tear it down to the ground in fulfillment of the Lord’s prophetic word in Matthew 24.

A Calculated Political Maneuver

Unlike the first two famous structures on the temple mount, the crowning achievement of Herod’s reign was neither divinely permitted as a concession to human initiative (as in the case of Solomon’s temple), nor was it directly commanded by God (as in the case of Zerubbabel’s). This temple was constructed without heavenly direction or assent of any sort, a calculated political maneuver by an Idumean (Edomite) king seeking to please the Jews and establish his own legacy.

There is also some debate about whether we ought to consider Herod’s edifice a new temple in its own right, or whether it was technically just an elaborate and expensive expansion of Zerubbabel’s. You will find it called the “second temple” for this reason. Scripture provides no details about the history and scope of Herod’s spectacular undertaking; we get what we have from the historian Flavius Josephus. Nevertheless, the disciples praised its beauty, and the Lord himself referred to it as “my Father’s house”, thereby validating the worship taking place within its precincts, while shortly thereafter confirming its imminent demise.

Just as no historical New Testament book touches on the circumstances under which Herod rebuilt the temple, so no historical NT book documents its destruction. Again, secular historians fill the gaps in our knowledge base. This means the Lord’s prophecy of the destruction of Herod’s temple variously reported in the synoptic gospels is the final biblical word about it. 1 Kings 8 and Matthew 24 are bookends to a subject essentially done and dusted for almost two millennia.

Men in Buildings

All this reminds me that while much of the Lord’s work has historically been accomplished within structures made by men — sacrifices, praise, prayers, singing and worship ascending to heaven from the devout over thousands of years — our God’s emotional investment in buildings, landmarks, legacies and wonders of the world is trivial to the point of nonexistence. When the Lord Jesus, jealous for the honor of his Father, drove the moneychangers from Herod’s building project, it wasn’t the desecration of wood, precious stones and gold spilling over from the excess tax revenues of a foreign king that provoked his spirit. No, it was substitution of robbery for prayer and commercial interests over the consciousness of God’s presence with his people. For the Lord Jesus, physical buildings, no matter how spectacular, were a concession to human institutions, not a spiritual priority. When the woman of Samaria inquired about the appropriate place to worship, his reply was “neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem” but “in spirit and truth”.

Solomon grasped this important reality even as he dedicated the first temple in prayer: “I have indeed built you an exalted house, a place for you to dwell in forever,” he begins. Nevertheless, he cannot help but wonder, “Will God indeed dwell on the earth? Behold, heaven and the highest heaven cannot contain you; how much less this house that I have built!” The most spectacular wonder of bricks and mortar ever constructed cannot do our God justice. The house he seeks to raise for himself is of another sort entirely. As Paul puts it, “God’s temple is holy, and you are that temple.”

What Leaves an Impression

The disciples were impressed with “noble stones and offerings”. Today, far too many Christians are impressed by empire-building evangelists with congregations of 40,000 or more in shiny glass-and-concrete monstrosities. “Surely there must be something to that man’s ministry,” they persuade themselves. After all, like Herod’s temple, it’s big and visible. Even the world takes note of it.

But how much greater wonder ought to grip us when we gather in the name of the Lord Jesus today to worship the Father and to see what he has accomplished in the hearts and lives of our fellow believers? That’s what matters in the end. The noble stones and offerings will shortly vanish for all eternity, but our brothers and sisters who love the Lord Jesus will “shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father”.

As the Lord Jesus put it, “He who has ears, let him hear.”