Destroy this temple

John chapter 1 verse number 14, And the word was made, or the word became flesh, and dwelt, or tabernacled among us. And we beheld his glory, the glories of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. Chapter 2, verse 13, And the Jews' Passover was at hand, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem, and found in the temple those that sold oxen and sheep and doves, and the changers of money sitting.

And when he had made a scourge of small cords, he drove them all out of the temple, and the sheep and the oxen, and poured out the changers' money and over through the tables, and said unto them that sold doves, Take these things hence. Make not my father's house a house of merchandise. And his disciples remembered that it was written, The zeal of thine house hath eaten me up.

Then answered the Jews and said unto him, What sign showest thou unto us, seeing that thou doest these things? Jesus answered and said unto them, Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up. Then said the Jews, Forty and six years was this temple in building, and wilt thou rear it up in three days? But he spake of the temple of his body. When therefore he was risen from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this unto them, and they believed the scripture and the word which Jesus had said.

Remember, the temple was to be a place where God would dwell and meet with his people. And in the temple, they would approach God on the basis of a sacrifice, and they would worship God. We do the same.

We worship God and we approach him on the basis of a sacrifice, the sacrifice of the Lord Jesus. But the worship in this temple in Jerusalem in John chapter 2 had failed because the people were distracted and they were consumed by greed and business. But in John chapter 2, there is a temple that comes within the temple.

And like the first temple, in this second temple, there would be sacrifice, the ultimate sacrifice. And in this second temple that arrived on this day, God would dwell with man, and within this temple, God would receive perfect worship that was never distracted, never hindered, never compromised by greed or covetousness or any sin. It's the temple of the Lord's body, verse 21.

Remember, the Lord Jesus was not a priest in the line of Levi. Hebrews says that he is a priest in the order of Melchizedek. That's a wonderful study.

But the Lord Jesus was not a priest in the order of Aaron, not a son of Levi. So it's kind of an amazing thing to consider. Even though the Lord Jesus is himself God, all the glory of God, when he came into the temple, the Lord Jesus would not be allowed to go into the holy place.

If he had tried to go in there, I don't doubt that people would have stepped in front of him and tried to stop him. That was reserved for the priests in the line of Levi. So there's actually two words used for temple in this passage.

Verse number 14 is the word for the outer temple courts. The Lord Jesus came into the outer temple. Then he uses a different word and he speaks of the temple of his body, the inner sanctuary.

Then the people pick up that word as well. But he wasn't allowed to move into the place where God was supposed to dwell. That's remarkable.

He is God. But he wasn't allowed to move into the place where God was supposed to be dwelling, in a sanctuary. Yet he himself is a sanctuary.

In him dwelt the fullness of the Godhead bodily. So we're going to think of the Lord's body as a temple. And his body was a temple because within that body dwelt the God of eternity.

Remember the main thing with the temple? It's a dwelling place of God. That's why David wanted to build it. He wanted there to be a house for the ark, the presence of God to dwell.

We dwell in our bodies. I dwell in my body. You dwell in your body.

We're clothed with flesh and blood. Remember the words of 2 Corinthians 5? I turned to it. You don't have to.

It says, We know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. But this is another house that we have. We dwell in our bodies.

And the body of the Lord Jesus was a house, it was a sanctuary, it was a temple because the person that dwelt in that body is the son of God who is himself God with all the glory and deity and fullness of God. And there he's dwelling in a human body. Colossians 2 and 9 is a massive theological statement.

Tremendous importance. In him dwelt the fullness of the Godhead bodily. And so a real man walked on this same earth that we are walking on.

He had a real body. It was a body that looked like your body. But the person that moved in that body, walking around in that body is God.

So we confess 1 Timothy 3.16, we confess great is the mystery of godliness. God was manifest in the flesh. He spoke of the temple of his body.

Now yesterday we considered in the morning how the body of believers are also said to be temples. It's a little bit different with the body of the Lord Jesus. Our bodies, the moment that we are saved, our bodies became the temples of the Holy Spirit.

So that happened not from the beginning of our existence, but at the moment of our conversion. And the Holy Spirit as an external foreign being came to live inside of us. It was something new to us.

It wasn't like that with the Lord Jesus. From the time that that body began to exist, dwelling within that body is the person of God. Nothing foreign, nothing odd about it.

It was perfectly fitting and comfortable. It was natural to him. The fullness of the Godhead dwelling bodily.

There was a uniqueness to his body. Hebrews chapter 10 says that a body hast thou prepared me, a specially prepared body. And we know it was a sinless body.

We can only wonder what that would be like. Romans 8 uses that remarkable expression that he came in the likeness of sinful flesh. It's a statement that we would never dare to utter if it wasn't written on the Bible, but there it is.

In the likeness of sinful flesh. It looked like our body, but he's different. No sin.

This is the wonder of the incarnation. The word incarnation, our English word incarnation comes from two words. In carnation.

The word in comes from a word that means in. And the word carnation, I don't think it really has any connection to the flower, but it comes from a word that conveys flesh. Or meat.

So when you eat a dish of chili con carne, you are eating chili with meat, or if it sounds more appetizing to you, you are eating chili with flesh. And the incarnation means the infleshing. So when we speak of the incarnation of God, it's the infleshing of God.

He takes on human flesh. And to some in other religions, they find that repugnant, the idea of God taking on humanity. Oh, it's awful, they say.

But to us, it's precious. I think Islam believes, they say, in the virgin birth of Jesus, the great prophet. They believe that he was born of a virgin.

But they deny the incarnation. They deny that he is God in the flesh. Of course, the reason that he came born of a virgin, the reason that he came in a way that nobody else had ever come, is that God was coming in a sense in which he had never come before.

In the Old Testament, there are theophanies, appearances of God. But in the Lord Jesus, God is not just making a temporary appearance. God becomes a partaker of flesh and blood.

The wonder of the incarnation. And it's good to wonder at the truth of God. It's part of our worship.

Remember that. I say that especially to my younger friends that learn, and if you've already learned, God bless you, and may you never forget that we got to keep wondering at God. That's why they tell us, when we cease to wonder, we cease to worship.

There are aspects about God that are too much for us to fully comprehend or understand, but that's what makes him God. That's why we worship him. And we accept that the Lord Jesus is God in the flesh, though there's parts of it that are difficult to put together.

Matthew chapter 11 and 27 says, no man knows the son but the father. We know the Lord, don't we? But he says no man knows the son but the father, because there are aspects of him that are infathomable, incomprehensible to our ever so enlightened minds. He's too much for us, too great for us.

So without glorying in ignorance, we admit that he is too great for us, and we worship him. He is fully man and fully God. Some of the attempts to describe the incarnation and God in a human body, sometimes they get a little bit strange, don't they? Sometimes people speak of him being 50% God and 50% man.

Not so. He is 100% God and 100% man. And if that doesn't work in our mathematical calculations, that's too bad.

That's God. Or sometimes also people might say, and I don't think it's right, they might say, well he slept as a man and he healed them as God. But he is just one person.

And a man who is God slept. And a man who is God hungered. And a man who is God healed and blessed the people and spoke with authority that no one else spoke with.

100% man and 100% God. One person. Now there are other descriptions of the Lord Jesus that are more than strange.

Blasphemous. John encounters some of those in his first epistle. People that said, yes, the Christ is divine, but did he have a real body? Maybe it only appeared to be a body.

Maybe it was a body of some sort of heavenly texture. John is very blunt and he says, every spirit that confesses not that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is the spirit of Antichrist. And another idea seemed to be, well maybe, maybe that man Jesus of Nazareth was only possessed of deity for a certain period of time.

Perhaps when John saw the spirit descend maybe he was God at that point. But before he hung on the cross deity left him. So he was only God in that three and a half years of public ministry.

John says this is he that came by water and by blood, even Jesus Christ. Not by water only, but by water and by blood. Islam says it's impossible for a divine person to hang on a cross.

Not even a prophet would God allow to hang on the cross. It must have been somebody different. The Bible says Christ was manifested and seen not by water only, but by water and blood.

Destroy this temple, the Lord said. And they beat him and they scourged him and they crucified him and they speared him. God dwelt in a real body and in that body he shed real blood.

And a man who is the immortal God hung on a cross and said it is finished and he bowed his head and he dismissed his spirit and entered death. God took on humanity at the moment of conception in the womb of Mary and he never lost it. The wonder of the incarnation.

It also invokes within us the wonder of the Trinity. God has always existed eternally in three persons. So when it says in John chapter 1 in the beginning was the word.

I take that to be the same beginning that we read of in Genesis 1 but it's looked at in a slightly different way. Genesis 1 says in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth and it starts us at that moment of time and it carries us forward. John chapter 1 says in the beginning but it is establishing that at that moment of beginning the word was already there.

He was on the other side of that line because he possesses the same attributes of the Father. He is equal with God. He's the eternal God.

The word became flesh but he's eternal. No need for any haunting frightening thought of a lonely God in distant eternity past. There was always an eternal enjoyable fellowship in the Godhead.

But now in John chapter 2 that fellowship is realized with the man, the Lord Jesus. Here's a man that's bringing perfect delight to his Father because the man is himself God. So God is finding a sanctuary in a man in the person of his son.

Since God became a man the body of that man is a temple. You know when we came into this room this morning the bread and the cup were on the table and before any prayer is uttered or any praise is expressed or any song is sung before a word escapes our mouths there is already an announcement a declaration from this table that a death has taken place. Because you've got that cup that represents the blood and it is separated from the loaf that represents the body.

The blood separated from the body that is a declaration that a man has died. Before we have said anything we have already declared it. Fulness divine in thee I see wonderful man of Calvary.

Think about Calvary for a moment. The destruction of this temple. The Lord's foretelling his own death destroyed this temple.

He's about 30 years of age approximately and he starts speaking of his own death. It's not the first temple to be destroyed. Solomon's temple was destroyed.

And the reason Solomon's temple was destroyed is because of sin. The sin of the people and their rejection of God and their turning to idolatry and God in judgment has that temple destroyed. This temple of the body of the Lord Jesus is also destroyed because of sin.

Not his own sin but our sin. And he endures the agony of death. The destruction of that Old Testament temple involved sorrow and shame and agony.

You read the words of Jeremiah in the book of Lamentations as he laments over what happens to the city and to the temple. But the grief and the shame and the agony that our Lord Jesus experienced was far deeper. It's a violent scene.

I find the words so blunt. Is it Mark's Gospel or is it Luke's Gospel where the Lord Jesus says, the son of man will be delivered into the hands of men and they will kill him. It's very blunt.

It's violent. But his death was violent. And he's forsaken.

And a man who knows perfect fellowship with God cries my God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? We can't enter into what that would have meant to him. We don't understand the fellowship that he had been enjoying with the Father. Now he's abandoned and forsaken.

And the Lord experiences intense agony as it is fulfilled that prediction to destroy this temple. But there is a key difference between the destruction of Solomon's temple and this destruction of this temple, of the Lord's body. Because before Solomon's temple was destroyed, the presence of God had left that temple.

Remember Ezekiel describes that scene. And Ezekiel says the house is left desolate. He saw the glory of God arise and leave.

And because of the rejection of God and their idolatry, the glory, the presence of God had left that temple. God was no longer dwelling in the temple. But this temple of the body of the Lord remained the sanctuary of God the entire time, even through those six hours of agony.

Indeed God took on the body for this very purpose. To lay down that body, that life as a sacrifice. Destroy this temple.

And in three days I will raise it up. Please correct me if I am wrong afterwards, but I don't think the Lord ever spoke about his death without speaking about his resurrection as he communicated with his disciples or those around him. When he prophesied his death, he prophesied his resurrection.

And the temple of this body of the Lord Jesus still exists though it is different. Hebrews 2 speaks of his time in being a little while lower than the angels and taking on humanity and it says that he became a partaker of flesh and blood. Then when the Lord is raised from the dead and he's trying to confirm to his disciples that he is a real person, he says, look, look at me, a spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see I have.

Not flesh and blood now, he speaks of flesh and bones. In some measure it's a changed body, a resurrected body, but it's still a real body. And in the incarnation he did not cease to be what he always was, but he became something that he never was before.

And he never lost his manhood. So there is a man that has gone with a real body into the glory. 1 Corinthians 15 speaks of him as the last Adam and the second man.

And he says, as the first man was from the earth, earthy, a man of dust. That's Adam. The first man was a man of dust from the earth.

But the second man is from heaven. And just as we bear the image of the man of dust today. God says there will be a day when we will bear the image of the man from heaven.

And the bodies of our humiliation will be changed and made like the body of his glory. So rejoice in the incarnation. Be thankful that God has taken on a body and that the body of the Lord Jesus is the temple of God.

There is one God and one mediator between God and men. The man Christ Jesus who gave himself a ransom for all.