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Jesus Builds the Church

Tan Yee Kiat shows that Jesus is a masterful temple-builder, and reminds us that Jesus is expecting today’s church to bear fruit for Him.

I recently chanced upon a question asked in the online Q&A forum, Quora, which aroused some interest. The question posed was, “Why didn't Jews accept Jesus Christ as their Messiah?” There were a lot of interesting responses and honest answers from Jewish respondents. Two in particular stood out because of their similarity. Detailing a list of criteria, they both gave an explanation that they expect the Messiah to rebuild the temple. The passages cited to support this position were Ezekiel 37:26-28 and Jeremiah 33:18:

“I will make a covenant of peace with them. It shall be an everlasting covenant with them. And I will set them in their land and multiply them, and will set my sanctuary in their midst forevermore. My dwelling place shall be with them, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. Then the nations will know that I am the Lord who sanctifies Israel, when my sanctuary is in their midst forevermore.” (Ezekiel 37:26-28) (ESV)

“… and the Levitical priests shall never lack a man in my presence to offer burnt offerings, to burn grain offerings, and to make sacrifices forever.” (Jeremiah 33:18) (ESV)

According to Jewish thought, since Jesus did not build a temple, He therefore cannot be the Messiah.

It is important then for us to realise that Jesus is in fact very much a temple-builder. And a masterful one. The whole of Mark 11-12:12 details Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem and His cleansing of the temple, and ends with Him teaching the parable of the tenants. This passage gives extreme insight into what Jesus hopes to achieve with His temple.

He cleanses the temple from a hub of financial exploitation with the aim of restoring what the temple was always meant to be – that is ‘a house of prayer for all nations’.

The scathing remark at the end of the parable in Mark 12:9 is a direct condemnation of what the Jews were doing with the temple. Instead of bearing fruit, they were concerned with financial gain and exploitation: “What will the owner of vineyard do? He will come and destroy the tenants and give the vineyard to others.”

Paul sums up how he sees Jesus’ teachings in the Epistle to the Ephesians. He latches on to the idea that there is now no Jew and no Gentile and sums up our unity with “… built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, in whom the whole structure, being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord. In him you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit.” (Ephesians 2:20-22) (ESV)

The sum of all this is that Jesus is building something wonderful with the church. The church is the new temple – a visible sign of Jesus’ ongoing work. But these passages should be taken as both comfort and warning. Comfort, for our inclusion in this ‘temple project’ is glorious, the end of which we will see at the New Creation. Warning, because the parable teaches us that Jesus came to the Jews ‘looking for fruit’ but found none. The church today will do well not to make the same mistake.