Matthew 12 is a dicy chapter where Jesus is under constant pressure to perform according to what the Pharisees think that he should be doing. He comes at them with strong words. The first quote in verse six is interesting in an escatological perspective.
6 I tell you that something greater than the temple is here.
This is an amazing statement. You’ve probably read it many times and not given it a second thought. I don’t mean to short change your spirituality or Bible knowledge but in an action packed chapter like Matthew 12 it would be easy to breeze by this comment without much thought.
Just after being scolded by the religious leaders because they saw his men picking grain in a field during the Sabbath, thus showing how they were really scrutinizing his every move, Jesus gives the illustration of what David did when he and his men were hungry and the more intimate illustration of the priests who desecrate the temple on the Sabbath during their duties but are innocent. Then comes the stinging and revealing statement, “I tell you that something greater than the temple is here.“
For Jesus to say this was as good as swearing. Because the Temple was THE Place where God dwelt. The Temple was the focus of the Jewish worship system. Even though the religious leaders had turned it into a den of robbers, it was not because the Temple was less sacred to the population. Since the time of Moses and the Tabernacle, there had always been a place where God was living among the people. Though the Glory of God left the original temple in Ezekiel’s vision in Ezk 10 and that temple had eventually been destroyed by the Babyalonians in 587 BC. In Jesus’ day it was Herod’s Temple that had become the most beautiful and sacred of religious places.
Jesus would later say, Destroy this Temple and I will raise it up in three days (John 2:19)! He was stating a truth about his own body that comes into play at the resurrection. However, the body / temple theme is carried on in Paul’s writing where he tells the believers at Corinth that their bodies were the temple of the Holy Spirit.
Here is where the escatological thought comes into the thought. Some believe that a temple will have to be rebuilt during a time of great Tribulation. Others believe that the Temple of God is already here in every individual believer that makes up the individual living stones of God's Temple.
Peter also makes mention in 1Peter 2:5-9 of a heavenly structure of which each believer is a part. With Jesus being the chief corner stone.
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