SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 11/24/2023 10:36 AM
My Worship Time Focus:
“Near the Temple”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Matthew
24:1-2
Message of the verses: “1 And Jesus
came out from the temple and was going away when His disciples came up to point
out the temple buildings to Him. 2 And He answered and said to them, "Do
you not see all these things? Truly I say to you, not one stone here shall be left
upon another, which will not be torn down.’”
The first thing that I want to say is that I am
happy that the introduction to chapter 24:1-3 is done, but I am also happy to
have a much better understanding of what went on and why the disciples asked
Jesus these questions. I have a pretty
good understanding of what the rest of the chapter says, along with chapter 25,
but could not understand why the disciples were asking Jesus the questions that
they ask before looking at MacArthur’s introduction.
We
have been looking at Jesus’ last week of teaching and preaching and also
cleansing the temple for some time now, and now that ended up at the end of the
23rd chapter. It took a
pretty long time in going over the time when Jesus rode into Jerusalem on the
colt to ending His last public teaching, but now that that is finished we get
the privilege of looking at chapters 24-25 before looking at the last hours of
our Lord’s life and then the resurrection.
I suppose that this will take perhaps another year of studying, but it
will be well worth it.
After
Jesus was done with His last public teaching we see that He went away to the Mount
of Olives to be alone with His disciples.
Jesus’ teaching His disciples is coming to an end, but what He has to
say to them is very important, especially from chapters 24-25, as they are even
important in the time that we live in, for after May 5th 1948 when
Israel became a nation again things have begun to happen that could never have
happened before that time of them becoming a nation because as we look at the
end time prophecies Israel is in their land.
Now
as they were leaving Jerusalem, the disciples come up to point out the temple
buildings to Jesus. Now as we look at
the other two synoptic gospels they report that the disciples were looking at the
temple in admiration, saying, “Teacher, behold what wonderful stones and what
wonderful buildings” (Mark 13:1; cf. Luke 21:5).
One
can look on their computer to see where the temple mount is today as the Dome
of the Rock is pretty much on that site where the Temple was. MacArthur writes “A massive retaining wall on
the south and west sides helped support the mount itself as well as the
Temple. The Temple was awe-in-spiring by
any standards, but to a group of common men from rural Galilee it must have
been a breathtaking marvel. They could
not conceive how such an enormous structure could have been built or decorated
so magnificently. The Roman historian
Tacitus reported that it was a place of immense wealth, and the Babylonian Talmud
said, ‘He that never saw the temple of Herod never saw a fine building.’ Some of the stones measured 40 feet by 12 and
weighed up to a hundred tons, quarried as a single piece and transported many
miles to the building site.” Now
remember as you think about the sight that this temple was build, along with
the first one we see the sight first in the book of Genesis where Abraham went
to offer Isaac as a sacrifice, but the Lord stopped him. Next we see it when David sinned against the
Lord in numbering the people and the Lord has mercy on Israel and stopped the
slaying of the people of Israel at this point where David bought the site and
offered a sacrifice at that very point.
This was the very sight where Solomon built the first Temple.
MacArthur
goes on “The disciples were perhaps wondering how such an amazing edifice,
especially one dedicated to the glory of God, could be left desolate, as Jesus
had just predicted. They should have
remembered Ezekiel’s vision of God’s glory departing from the Temple and going ‘up
from the midst of the city’ (Ezek. 11:23).
The holy sanctuary that had once been God’s house was His no
longer. It is now ‘your house’ Jesus had
said to the unbelieving Jews before He left the temple, and it ‘is being left
to you desolate’ (Matt. 23:38), because the glory of the Lord would soon depart
from it. The beautiful buildings that
had been devoted to God’s glory and that should have honored Jesus would
henceforth be devoted to desolation and destruction.”
The
following is how Jesus responded to His disciples: “"Do you not see all these things? Truly
I say to you, not one stone here shall be left upon another, which will not be
torn down.’” It would perhaps been nice
to have a camera to take a picture of the disciples as their mouths probably
were wide open in surprise to what Jesus had just said. The undoubtedly could not believe that God
would have this beautiful temple destroyed.
We
know the story as the Roman General Titus came into Jerusalem in 70 A. D. and
destroyed the city and the temple and not one stone was left upon another, and
it is still that way today as the stones sit at the bottom of the hill where
the temple once was. I may have
mentioned earlier that I learned that Titus did not want to destroy the temple,
but from what I read earlier there was gold between the stones and he wanted
the gold.
Perhaps
the disciples would have thought that this would be a part of the Messiah’s
expected purification of Jerusalem, which would occur immediately after He
destroyed the nations. This was looked
at in the previous introductions to these verses.
11/24/2023 11:14 AM
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