[Sermon Archive] - [Weekly Devotional Guide]

This Week's Sermon THE THIRD SUNDAY IN LENT 15 March 2009 "Jesus' Body Is the Real Temple" John 2:13-22 LSB Series B Pastor Philip G. Meyer Soli Deo Gloria!

In the Apocalypse the Apostle John wrote:

"And I saw no temple in the city, for its temple is the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb." (Revelation 21:22, ESV)

"Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up." (John 2:19, ESV)

The tabernacle was the place that God met with his people, the place where he ordained the sacrifices they were to offer for their sins. Everything had been spelled out through Moses in the Levitical law, something which our adult Bible class is studying right now. In this study we are discovering the difference between what was clean and unclean, ritually speaking. We hear of that which is holy and that which is profane, or common. We are learning how God set boundaries between himself and his people and how they could approach him only through elaborate ritual designed to remind the people of their need for forgiveness of sins.

What happened in Herod's temple was that the people charged with the logistics of the sacrifices had found a way to gain financially over and above that which God had ordained. They were extorting money from the people by overcharging them for the required sacrifices which needed to be made in order to celebrate Passover. To put it simply, they were "selling religion," offering it for a price. One person has estimated that in terms of today's dollars, Annas, the high priest, had an annual income of about $170 million! That puts him in the same category with the biggest cheaters in our day, those who have stolen not merely millions, but billions.

Down through the years this has happened many times. It was not just the Medieval Church that was guilty, but also in our day where indulgences have been reintroduced by the Roman Church. Beyond this crass practice, anything unrelated to the preaching and distribution of forgiveness of sins must be included. When the Church is mixed with inferior substances, adulterated, for political purposes, then we must say that man has profaned the holy things of God. So often what passes for religion has nothing whatsoever to do with forgiveness. This profanes the name of God among us. People may engage in so-called religious activities and yet remain unclean, impure. The Church becomes a prostitute by selling herself for the fleeting popularity of man. She loses her God-given role to distribute the merits of Christ. She becomes unclean.

You must be clean to stand in the presence of God. You cannot receive the gifts of God unless God has first cleansed you, washed away your sins. This happens only through the death of Christ. Therefore, any preaching which does not have the death of Christ as its focus is false preaching because it has nothing to do with the forgiveness of sins.

The temple in Jerusalem was about to pass out of existence forever. Jesus clearly said this as he warned of the end of the Old Testament sacrificial system. In the year 70 a.D. the Romans leveled the temple. It has never been rebuilt and no sacrifices have been offered since. It was all part of God's plan. When the fulfillment of all that God had established in the Old Testament ritual took place in Christ, then the temple was no longer needed.

The prophets foretold that God himself would come to his temple in the flesh. Isaiah wrote that this would be Immanuel, God with us in the flesh. The Word of God would not be spoken through prophets but through the mouth of God himself. God would dwell bodily, personally, with his people. The Apostle Paul wrote to the Colossians of Christ:

"For in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily." (Colossians 2:9, ESV)

God was no longer going to deal with man by means of the physical temple. He was going to deal with man through his Son, our Lord Jesus Christ. When challenged by the religious leaders Jesus professed that he is true God and true man. He spoke of the temple of his body. Luther said:

For it is a divine work to raise from the dead and restore life. No one but God has the power to do this. The devil, to be sure, can murder; so can man-but man cannot resurrect and quicken. This is the work of no one but God. He raises the dead, gives life to the dead, and calls into existence the things that do not exist (Rom. 4:17). The devil can destroy what has been made, but he cannot rebuild it. He can also consume a house with fire, but he cannot make it rise anew from the ashes. Therefore when Christ says: "In three days I will raise it up," he proclaims that the death of His body lies within His own power, that He can lay down His life and take it again at will (John 10:18). Therefore He cannot be only man but must also be God. The fact that He is to be destroyed and die is proof of His humanity. But that He will rise again, that He will raise Himself from death, bears witness to His divinity and to His divine power to quicken the dead; for this is not the work of a human being.¹

Jesus pointed to his death and resurrection here. When he died he purified the world by his innocent death. The writer of Hebrews writes of the fulfillment of all the temple sacrifices ever offered on Jewish altars. He says:

"But when Christ appeared as a high priest of the good things that have come, then through the greater and more perfect tent (not made with hands, that is, not of this creation) he entered once for all into the holy places, not by means of the blood of goats and calves but by means of his own blood, thus securing an eternal redemption." (Hebrews 9:11-12, ESV)

"For Christ has entered, not into holy places made with hands, which are copies of the true things, but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God on our behalf. Nor was it to offer himself repeatedly, as the high priest enters the holy places every year with blood not his own, for then he would have had to suffer repeatedly since the foundation of the world. But as it is, he has appeared once for all at the end of the ages to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself." (Hebrews 9:24-26, ESV)

God no longer dwells in earthly temples as he did at Jerusalem, so where does he dwell? He does not live in temples made with human hands. The Apostle Paul tells us:

"For we are the temple of the living God;" (2 Corinthians 6:16b, ESV)

"Do you not know that you are God's temple and that God's Spirit dwells in you?" (1 Corinthians 3:16, ESV)

"As you come to him, a living stone rejected by men but in the sight of God chosen and precious, you yourselves like living stones are being built up as a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ." (1 Peter 2:4-5, ESV)

Perhaps the hymnwriter summed it up best in the hymn, Built on the Rock [LSB 645.2, 3]:

Surely in temples made with hands
God, the Most High, is not dwelling;
High above earth His temple stands,
All earthly temples excelling.
Yet He who dwells in heav'n above
Chooses to live with us in love,
Making our bodies His temple.

We are God's house of living stones. . . .

You were joined to-built into-Christ through Holy Baptism. In Holy Baptism he washed you clean with his blood. He made you fit to be one of these living stones of his temple. In Jesus' death is the real cleansing for sin. No more models! No more types! He is the real temple and he is the real sacrifice! In him all the fullness of God lives! And the wonder is that he then chooses to live in you.

"But," you say, "I'm not pure. I'm still unclean because I sin every day in thought, word, and deed." Indeed, you confessed exactly that in the Confession and Absolution which began this Divine Service. You do it at every Divine Service. You do it every time you pray the Our Father. How is it that Christ will still consent to dwell in you? His death, because it is an eternally effective payment for your sin, cleanses you forever. He gives you his righteousness over and over again. He does this in the Sacrament where he cleanses you of your sin. As you receive the true body and blood of Christ into yours, you are purified. I like the way that the hymnwriter, Chad Bird, says it in his wonderful sacramental hymn:

624 The Infant Priest Was Holy Born

5 The veil is torn, our Priest we see,
As at the rail on bended knee
Our hungry mouths from Him receive
The bread of immortality.

6 The body of God's Lamb we eat,
A priestly food and priestly meat;
On sin-parched lips the chalice pours
His quenching blood that life restores.

Text: © 1997, 2003 Chad L. Bird Used by permission: LSB Hymn License .NET, number 100010193.
Created by Lutheran Service Builder © 2006 Concordia Publishing House.

God does not meet with you in that earthly temple in Jerusalem. It is gone forever. Instead God meets with you in the flesh of his Son, our Lord Jesus Christ because he is the real temple of God, the place where all the fullness of the deity dwells bodily. And here in this space, this holy place, Christ comes to you in Word and Sacrament so that he can dwell bodily in you and bring you to the fullness of his glory in eternity.

¹Martin Luther, vol. 22, Luther's Works, Vol. 22 : Sermons on the Gospel of St. John: Chapters 1-4, ed. Jaroslav Jan Pelikan, Hilton C. Oswald and Helmut T. Lehmann, Luther's Works, 22:247 (Saint Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1999, c1957).