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Hello and thanks for listening today to Trinity Sermons.

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Here at Trinity Church, Streetsville, we want to share encouraging sermons rooted in biblical

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truth that guide us in our faith journey as we seek to gather to love Jesus, live like

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Jesus and lead others to Jesus.

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This is our fourth sermon from the series titled Playing with Fire and Reverend Rob

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Hirkmans will be preaching about how Jesus challenged the way people of his day thought

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of and used the temple and pointed them towards himself instead.

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Now before we begin, don't forget to follow our podcast to stay up to date on all our

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future sermons.

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And to learn more about who we are, please feel free to check us out on social media

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or visit our website at trinitiestreetsville.org.

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Thanks for listening and God bless.

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Good morning.

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This is a reading from John chapter two, verses 13 to 22.

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When it was almost time for the Jewish Passover, Jesus went up to Jerusalem.

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In the temple courts, he found people selling cattle, sheep and doves and others sitting

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at tables exchanging money.

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So he made a whip out of cords and drove all from the temple courts, both sheep and cattle.

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He scattered the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables.

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To those who sold doves, he said, get these out of here.

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Stop turning my father's house into a market.

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His disciples remembered that it is written, zeal for your house will consume me.

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The Jews then responded to him.

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What sign can you show us to prove your authority to do this?

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Jesus answered them, destroy this temple and I will raise it again in three days.

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They replied, it has taken 46 years to build this temple and you are going to raise it

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in three days.

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But the temple he had spoken of was his body.

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After he was raised from the dead, his disciples recalled what he had said.

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Then they believed the scripture and the words that Jesus had spoken.

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The word of the Lord.

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You know those people, you know the people I'm talking about.

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They're kind of offensive.

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They're always opinionated.

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They have their agendas, right?

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And whenever you get into a conversation with these people, they're like, they're going

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on and on and on about their own agendas.

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They have all these ideas.

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Their ideas are really controversial.

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It's almost like they like to offend people.

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It's almost like they want to pick a fight.

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They want to get into a fight.

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You know what these kind of people I'm talking about?

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Does this remind you of anyone you know?

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Anyone you know?

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No.

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Well, I'll tell you by now, it should be reminding all of us of Jesus.

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That's right.

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Because for four weeks now, we have been seeing how Jesus disturbed and offended again and

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again and again his own Jewish contemporaries by challenging some of the things that they

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held most near and dear to them.

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And by doing this, we have been saying that Jesus was playing with fire.

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And I need to say that Jesus didn't just do this kind of stuff like 2,000 years ago.

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Jesus is still pushing people's buttons.

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He is still prodding and poking us.

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When you hear Jesus speak, all of us should have a little part of us that gets a bit nervous

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today.

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Because it has been said, yes, Jesus came to comfort the afflicted.

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But Jesus also came to afflict the comfortable.

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So let me catch you up where we've been, and I'll explain what I'm talking about.

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Four weeks ago, three weeks ago, we started with this topic, how Jesus set fire to one

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of the most sacred symbols in all of Judaism, which was the idea of the Holy Land itself.

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I mean, talk about playing with fire.

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This is a hot topic even today, the Holy Land.

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But Jesus audaciously claimed that the true definition of home for God's people is not

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some piece of real estate located in the Middle East.

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It's not this little piece of geography.

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No, home is truly found in a person.

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And that person, according to Jesus, was him.

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And so Jesus was actually constantly challenging people to release their hold on their possessions,

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especially their most valued possession, which of course would have been the land, the land.

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And say to people, he would say, find your most treasured possession in me.

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Find your true home, your true land, the true place where you can live in me.

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That was a hot, hot, spicy meatball.

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Jesus threw at them.

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That's hot stuff.

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Secondly, though, he challenged people on another national symbol that people held near

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and dear to them, and that was the Jewish scriptures, the Torah.

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Right?

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Jesus took the prophets, and he took the law, and he took the commandments, and he took

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all of that.

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And he didn't say, this isn't important.

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He actually said he was more important than the law and the prophets and the commandments

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of God.

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He put himself above Moses.

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He put himself above the prophets.

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He put himself above the law itself.

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That is pretty, pretty explosive stuff.

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We didn't get to this then, but Jesus actually at one point says, hey, you know those scriptures

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that you're reading?

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And you're reading them so carefully because you think they lead you to eternal life.

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He says, these are the very scriptures that testify about me.

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They're pointing to me, and yet you refuse to come to me to have life.

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So Jesus wasn't done, because last week when Simon was here, he talked about how Jesus

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messed around with a very sacred symbol in Israel, which was the symbol of family.

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It seemed like Jesus was disregarding the importance of blood relations.

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I bet some of you would get your own blood boiling if you heard Jesus say stuff like

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this.

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Who is my mother and who are my brothers?

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Well, whoever does the will of my father in heaven is my brother and my sister and my

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mother.

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And he said that in a culture that said, you don't mess with family.

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But guess what?

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Jesus went and he messed with family.

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He says, I'm going to redefine what family is, and I'm going to put myself right at the

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middle of the new family that God is creating.

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So you see, whether Jesus is relocating the Holy Land and saying, it's here, it's with

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me, or whether he is reinterpreting the Torah and saying, I'm the one who understands this,

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it's all about me, or whether he's redefining the family and he's saying family is found

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around me, Jesus was just dishonoring and disrespecting these cherished symbols of Israel's

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identity.

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You might say, well, this is horrible.

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I didn't come to church this morning to be confronted.

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I didn't come to be disturbed.

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I came to be consoled.

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I came to be comforted.

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I don't know.

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I'm not sure I want to be part of a church that's always confronting people or challenging

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people.

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I want to be part of a more moderate church.

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You might say, but I would say to you, actually, you don't want a more moderate church.

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You want a more moderate Jesus because Jesus played with fire and there's no way around

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it.

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But here's the thing, Jesus knew that he was incendiary.

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Jesus knew the things he was saying, we're going to ruffle people's feathers.

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And so he says, I know, I know I'm rattling your cage.

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I know I'm getting under your skin, but just hang in there, Jesus would say.

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Hang in there.

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Stay with me.

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Wait and see where this is all going because blessed is the one who does not take offense

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at me.

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And I hope this morning you're not taking offense at Jesus for some of the stuff he

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is saying because it is vitally important that we listen to it and accept the challenge.

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Now as if that wasn't enough meddling for one person in one lifetime, Jesus is now going

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to light another fire today.

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And he's going to, we're going to look at, I would say even maybe one of the most provocative

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and dangerous things he ever did.

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And I hope you're ready for this.

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This is time he's not messing with land.

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He's not messing with scripture.

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He's not messing with family.

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This time Jesus is going to light a fire under Israel's most sacred symbol, which was the

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temple itself, the temple, the temple.

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You know, there is such a long history and a long story about God's people and their

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temple.

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We can't get into it this morning, but it is safe just to say that the temple occupied

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and occupies a very central place in the faith of Judaism.

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And if we were to turn back the clocks, we would see that the very first temple was built

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under the reign of King Solomon.

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Sometimes historians call the Solomon's temple or the first temple.

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And we can read in the book of Kings that in the 480th year after the Israelites had

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come out of Egypt, in the fourth year of Solomon's reign over Israel, he began to build the temple

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of the Lord.

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And even though this temple Solomon was building was relatively speaking smaller than the one

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that would eventually take its place, it was still ornate.

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It was still amazing.

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It was made of expensive woods and cedar and everything was overlaid with gold.

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It was about the year 1000 BC when Solomon built this temple.

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But then 500 years later, the Babylonians came in and destroyed it.

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It was needless to say, utterly devastating.

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Jesus however, lived in a different period of time.

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Jesus lived in what we would call the second temple period because Israel, yes, made a

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few attempts between the years 500 BC and Jesus's day to rebuild that temple.

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But it really wasn't until King Herod came along.

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And I've told you before, King Herod had this thing about building projects and he rebuilt

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the temple into what we would now call the second temple, the second temple period of

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time.

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And this temple, I mean, it was glorious.

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I don't know if it was Herod's ego that made him do it or if it was his desire to kind

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of appease the Jewish people who he was ruling over and curry favor with them.

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But this temple would have been one of the great wonders of the world in Jesus's day.

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The construction began 20 years before Jesus was born and it took a total of 84 years before

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the temple was fully complete.

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So during Jesus's day, the temple was not even complete yet, although it already looked

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just so magnificent.

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For Jews, what was the temple about?

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First of all, it was a place of pride.

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This was where the kings of old were connected.

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This is where Israel's history was found.

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This was their identity.

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This temple had been burned down and rebuilt and reclaimed and fought for.

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It was a symbol of national pride.

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Israel and the temple, they just went together.

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Hard to imagine one without the other.

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But not only was it a place of pride, it was a place of pilgrimage.

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Every family in Israel, it was hoped in their lifetime would make a trip to the temple.

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Some went many times to the temple for special events and for special celebrations.

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And it wasn't just Jewish people who journeyed to the temple.

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The temple was supposed to be a house of prayer for all people, for all nations, and all the

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nations would stream to visit the temple.

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It was a place of pilgrimage.

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It was a place of pride, but it was also a place of pardon.

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It was at the temple where sins were forgiven.

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It was a place where you would go and you would purchase a goat or a bull or a lamb

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or it didn't say cat here.

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But I wonder, I wonder.

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And anyways, you would take those things to the temple and you give it to the priest and

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the priest would sacrifice it right in front of you.

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Sounds horrible, sounds gory, but the blood of the sacrifice would flow over the altar.

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It would pool around you and through that spilling of blood, you experience the forgiveness

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of your sins again and again and again.

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But most importantly, the temple was a place of God's presence.

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The temple really was seen as God's earthly home.

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It was where his glory, what the Old Testament calls the shekinah, the presence of God would

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dwell in the temple.

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The temple was thick with God.

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Sometimes we call churches the house of God.

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Hey, everybody, welcome to the house of the Lord.

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But no, no, no, the temple was in like a whole nother category altogether.

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In fact, we're told that when the first temple was constructed at one point, fire descended

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from heaven and the glory of the Lord filled the temple.

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And the priest couldn't even go in the temple because God's glory was just so explosive

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and radiant in there.

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It was truly understood as God's dwelling place on earth, his special home.

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It was where you went to meet with God.

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And even today, millions of people flock to Jerusalem on trips and tours to see this place,

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including many Christians, right?

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Because they see the temple as a place of pride, as a place of pilgrimage, of pardon,

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and yes, even God's presence.

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So some people believe that the temple is the real home of God.

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They do.

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Some people still believe that one day God's people are going to take back control of the

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temple mount.

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Some people still believe that God will once again take up residence in the temple at the

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end of time.

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And some people believe that rebuilding the temple, therefore, is one of the things that

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we look for as a sign of the end times being upon us.

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And some people, therefore, still believe that the temple occupies a critical place

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in God's plan for the world.

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Some people believe all of this, but I have to tell you, Jesus was not one of them.

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Jesus was a critic of the temple.

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And he believed that Israel's fixation with the temple was not going to lead to their

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salvation.

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It was ultimately going to lead to their destruction.

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And anyone, you can imagine, who takes a position like that at a time like that was taking their

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own lives in their hand.

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They were playing with fire.

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It all comes down to that story we were reading this morning.

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It's a story that actually appears in every one of the gospels, so we know it's pretty

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important for understanding what Jesus was up to.

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Jesus goes down to Jerusalem, and when he gets there, he looks around, and he goes into

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the temple, looks around, and he's not happy with what he sees.

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He makes a whip out of cords.

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He begins tossing tables this way and that, throwing chairs over, knocking over the money

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changers, and he's causing a real, real ruckus.

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He's driving people out of there.

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He's letting the animals go.

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Now it was almost like he was trashing the place.

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You might say, Rob, watch your language.

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Surely Jesus was not trashing the temple.

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In fact, in my Bible, yes, in my Bible, it says Jesus cleansed the temple.

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He was cleansing the temple.

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Now this is important for every one of us who reads our Bible to figure out what Jesus

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was doing in that moment.

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Was he cleansing the temple?

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Was he cleansing?

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If you think he was cleansing the temple, then maybe your view of Jesus is like he is

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mystically, right?

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He's a nice guy who loved the temple and just wanted to clean it up.

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He wanted to get the temple back to its former glory.

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Let's get this commercialism out of here.

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Get these guys out of here.

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Let's get this temple back to the way that it should be.

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Is that what he was doing?

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Was he cleansing the temple, a symbolic cleansing?

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If you think so, I want to challenge you to think again, because that is not what a lot

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of scholars think Jesus was up to that day, saying, oh, guys, let's get out of here.

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Let's clean this place up.

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Jesus, rather than enacting the cleanup of the temple, many people think Jesus was enacting

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the destruction of the temple.

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In which case, Jesus is more like Conan the Destroyer than Mr. Clean, right?

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When he turned over the tables and chairs, when he smashed the jars of money, when he

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let the animals all go through the temple and he was throwing things around and chasing

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people around, Jesus was not pretending to clean up the temple.

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Jesus was pretending to knock down the temple.

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It was a demonstration, all right, saying that people listen to me.

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One day, all of this is going to come crashing down.

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Now, I'm sure you can imagine a demonstration like that would get you in a lot of hot water.

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He's playing with fire.

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You don't get to say stuff like that about the temple and live to tell about it.

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Let me prove my point, though.

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Another day, when Jesus was leaving the temple, one of his disciples said to him, oh, look,

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Jesus, look, teacher, what wonderful stones.

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Look how big they are.

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And look at what beautiful, magnificent buildings.

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And Jesus, in reply, did he say, oh, yes, praise God, may the temple once again be filled

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with God's glory?

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No.

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Instead, Jesus says, do you see these great buildings?

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Not one stone here is going to be left on another.

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Everyone will be thrown down.

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And Jesus said stuff like this throughout all the gospels.

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It was like he had this sense that the temple was coming to an end, like it was going to

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be destroyed.

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He could picture the future.

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It was going to be knocked off the map somehow.

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In fact, Jesus would even go so far as to say things like, listen, I'm warning you, the

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days are coming.

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When enemies, yes, enemies will encircle this city and they will destroy this temple, not

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one stone is going to be left on another.

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He even went so far as to give people some real kind of personal warnings.

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He'd be like, hey, when you see the soldiers arrive and they start camping outside the

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city, when that day comes, it's about to be devastated.

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The whole thing is going to be razed to the ground.

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And if you're living in Judea at that time, here's my advice to you, run to the hills.

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And if you happen to be in the city when that happens, just get out quickly and it's all

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coming down.

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It's all coming down.

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Now, it was so interesting because at a time when everyone thought the temple had never

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looked so good, Jesus says it's all going to burn, baby, burn.

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Right?

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He's playing with fire.

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And he goes even further because you know what Jesus does when he challenges these symbols?

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He always puts himself in place of the old symbol.

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So for example, Jesus says, I'm the new land.

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Jesus says, I'm the new Moses.

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I'm the new interpreter of the law or I'm the new head of the family.

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And that's exactly what Jesus does here with the temple too.

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He says, I'm the new temple.

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I'm the new temple, which explains what Jesus meant when he said this, destroy this temple

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and I will raise it up again in three days.

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What are you talking about?

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Jesus took 46 years to build the temple and it's still not done.

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And you're going to raise it in three days.

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But the temple he was talking about was his body.

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Jesus knew one temple was going down and another temple was coming on up and he was going to

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be that new temple himself.

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If you go to Jerusalem today, you will see these massive stones that make up the Western

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wall of the temple.

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They've been precisely cut and positioned.

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They're magnificent, creating tremendous strong, strong walls.

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With that in mind, it changes how you hear things like this when Jesus said, hey, have

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you never read the scripture that the stone the builders rejected is going to become the

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cornerstone?

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You might not get it because we're living 2000 years later on the other side of the

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world.

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But in Jesus day, when someone came along and talked about a cornerstone, what he's

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saying is I am the rejected stone, but I will become the new foundation for a new temple

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that God is building.

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Again, you got to hear these things the way they would have originally been heard.

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I'll give you another example.

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You go to the Western wall again.

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There is one stone in the Western wall called the Western stone, and it is one of the largest

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building blocks ever in the world.

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It's somewhere between 300 and 500 tons heavy, they estimate.

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With that in mind, listen to what Jesus says in Matthew 7.

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You've all heard the parable of the wise and foolish builders.

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One builds his house on the sand.

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Another builds his house on the rock.

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Well, Jesus says everyone who hears these words of mine and acts on them will be like

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a wise man who built his house on a rock.

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That is code.

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It's not even code.

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Anyone listening in Jesus' day would have known that there's a house on a rock.

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He's talking about the temple.

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I guarantee you that's what they thought.

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So Jesus says this temple is going to come down.

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It's going to crash and burn, but if you build your life on me, on my rock, the temple I

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am building, that one will not fall.

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This temple's days are numbered, but my temple will have no end.

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Let's just keep going a little bit further here.

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Remember the last supper.

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Jesus gathers around the table with his disciples.

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He takes the cup and he says, this is my blood of the new covenant which is poured out for

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many for the forgiveness of sins.

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Wait a second, Jesus, blood?

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Forgiveness of sins?

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Wait, wait, wait.

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That's the job of the temple, but Jesus says, no, no, not anymore.

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You don't need to slaughter any bulls or you don't need to slaughter any goats or any sheep

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or doves anymore, right?

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I'm the new temple.

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My body, my blood is the real sacrifice.

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I am the real source of forgiveness.

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I am the real temple.

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Folks, this was real controversial.

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He's essentially saying the temple is obsolete compared to his forgiving work.

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Here's a bonus, a bonus for you.

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Do you guys remember when Jesus was dying on the cross?

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He's hanging, breathing his last breaths.

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And as he dies, we are told that at the moment he died, the curtain in the temple ripped

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from top to bottom.

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Why are we told that?

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Because what we're learning is that when Jesus died, the final sacrifice had now been made.

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The old temple was done.

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The new temple was here.

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Jesus took his life in his hands.

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I mean, he just came out and said it.

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Nothing greater than the temple is here.

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He's talking about himself.

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So no, Jesus was not just cleaning up the temple that day in hopes that one day its

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former glory would return.

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He was showing people that one day it was all going to come crashing down and he was

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going to take its place.

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That my friends is what you call playing with fire.

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But you know what?

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He was right.

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He was right.

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In the year AD 70, after another failed revolution by the Jewish people, Rome fought back.

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Just as Jesus predicted, they encircled the city.

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And just as he predicted, they starved them out.

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They broke through the walls.

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Thousands upon thousands of Jewish people died in those days and weeks.

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They broke through the temple mount and they destroyed it.

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And that great wonder of the world, that great place of pride and pilgrimage of pardon and

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God's presence was burned to the ground.

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And all the treasures were carted off and taken back to Rome.

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It all came down.

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Jesus was right.

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When you visit Jerusalem today, there's actually not much to see left of the original temple

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except that Western wall, which is now called the Wailing Wall, where Jewish people still

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go to this day and they pray and they remember the temple.

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And some Jews, I read, even believe God's presence is somehow still residing in that

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one remaining wall.

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But the temple is gone.

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It's a good reminder for us as a church not to put too much stock in earthly structures.

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Many churches like Trinity have beautiful buildings, amazing locations that can become

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a real source of pride for us too.

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People still call their churches sometimes the house of the Lord, God's house, as if

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God lived within four walls like these.

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Guys given all that Jesus just taught us, this is a huge, huge mistake.

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And actually nobody knows this story better than Trinity itself.

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25 years ago, parishioners of this church sat out there on Queen Street and watched

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this church burn to the ground.

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Our temple, if you will, was destroyed.

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Was that the end of Trinity?

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No it was not because for Trinity, Jesus was the temple.

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For Trinity, Jesus is the temple.

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The presence of God did not live in those four walls.

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God's presence lived in the hearts of the people of Trinity.

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All that the temple was now finds its fulfillment in Jesus.

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Jesus is our pride and joy.

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Jesus is our pilgrimage.

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He's the one we journey with through life.

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Jesus is our source of pardon.

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He's the one who forgives us once and for all through his own blood.

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And Jesus is the dwelling place of God.

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That means that God is with us today, not because the spirit of God happens to live

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in this location on Queen Street, but because God's temple is comprised of God's people

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and where we are gathered, God is in our midst.

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The temples of old were just mere pointers.

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They were pointing toward a greater temple that was yet to come.

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And now that Jesus has come, those temples are gone forever.

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And I say forever because if you turn to the last book of the Bible, to one of the last

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pages of the Bible, you will see this beautiful vision of a new creation, a new heaven and

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a new earth.

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And yet there's one thing that is lacking in that vision of the future, and that is

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there is no temple.

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There's no temple.

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And why is that?

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Because the Lord Almighty and the lamb are the temple.

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The temple is gone.

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It's never coming back.

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So if you're here today, you're looking for forgiveness.

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I've got good news for you.

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You don't need to go anywhere.

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You don't need to go to any temple in any city anywhere.

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And if you're here today and you're looking to find the presence of God, you do not need

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to take a pilgrimage to Jerusalem or any other place.

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The only journey any of us needs to take is the journey of faith toward Jesus.

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And the only pilgrimage any of us needs to make is the movement of our heart toward God.

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That is how you go to the temple.

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You move toward God and you journey with Jesus.

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Thanks be to God.

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Amen.

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Thanks so much for listening today.

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It is our hope that you enjoyed this message and were inspired by Rob's sermon.

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00:28:06,520 --> 00:28:10,360
And if you enjoyed the sermon, please take some time to rate our podcast so that we can

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00:28:10,360 --> 00:28:13,240
continue to better share the good news with others.

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And don't forget to come back next week for our final sermon in this series.

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Today's sermon was taken from the January 28th, 2024 service at Trinity Church, Streetsville

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in Mississauga, Ontario.