And he sat down opposite the treasury and watched the people putting money into the offering box. Many rich people put in large sums. And a poor widow came and put in two small copper coins, which make a penny. And he called his disciples to him and said to them, “Truly, I say to you, this poor widow has put in more than all those who are contributing to the offering box. For they all contributed out of their abundance, but she out of her poverty has put in everything she had, all she had to live on.” (Mark 12:41-44)
It is one of the worst things ever when God leaves people who don’t want him. They become quite boisterous in their celebration that they have conquered him when the fact is that he just left. He’s not even in the room.
Today was another “big picture” day as I saw the scene that was Jesus’ last expression of public ministry. The concluding display of his teaching work was to shame all the religious elite who tried to expose him as a false Messiah. Instead, he exposed them as false teachers and hypocritical leaders.
The whole experience concludes with, “And as he came out of the temple…” (Mark 13:1) leading to Jesus pronouncing judgment on Jerusalem and its temple worship.
One thing that stood out as I travelled through this account was Jesus’ words to the Samaritan woman sometime earlier, “But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him” (John 4:23). Jesus exposing the religious elite and then commending the poor widow certainly showed his knowledge of who was worshiping from hypocrisy, and who was worshiping from the heart.
In what appears to be a Western mindset about sharing the gospel, the focus tends to be isolated to the individual. What is usually shared goes no further than enticing a lost person to see the personal relationship they could have with God through faith in Jesus Christ.
However, what is so often missing is telling people that when we receive Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, we become one of his people. God has “delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins” (Colossians 1:13-14). This is possible because Jesus experienced the cross shortly after his last visit to the temple.
But what so many church folk don’t seem to realize is that the church is now God’s temple. Some are familiar with “Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body” (I Corinthians 6:19-20), but don’t realize that there is another temple reality that applies to us corporately, or together with the rest of Jesus’ brothers. Paul explains it like this,
So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, 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 2:19-22)
Jesus walked out of the temple in Jerusalem one day and has never been back. Instead, he has made us who have received him “INTO a holy temple” in himself. And from there, he still knows who are the true worshipers who are worshiping God in spirit and in truth.
© 2024 Monte Vigh ~ Box 517, Merritt, BC, V1K 1B8
Email: in2freedom@gmail.com
Unless otherwise noted, Scriptures are from the English Standard Version (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Text Edition: 2016. Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.)
#JesusChrist #God #Bible #homechurch #temple #Jerusalem #hypocrites #Passover #Israel
No comments:
Post a Comment