Sometimes You Need a Wrecking Ball
Yesterday, we began our study of the New Testament book of Galatians. I’ve entitled this study “Confronting Cultural Christianity.” Galatians is one of those Bible books forged in the fires of an emerging world religion. While Christianity finds its roots in Judaism, our faith is not defined by Judaism.
Jesus Messiah (Christ) was and is the fulfillment of all God’s promises to the Jews. If you listened to yesterday’s podcast, you will recall what I said about Jesus and the temple. Nothing spoke of the manifest presence of God among His people more than the temple.
The origins of the temple are found in the tent of meeting or tabernacle for which God gave the blueprint to Moses, and that followed Israel in their trek through the desert to the Promised Land.
Moses would meet with God in the tabernacle, and the cloud of God’s presence would descend. I love Paul’s retelling of this story in 2 Corinthians, chapter three. He tells us, “the Israelites could not look steadily at the face of Moses.” He goes on to tell us that Moses “put a veil over his face to prevent the Israelites from seeing the end of what was passing away.” (See 2 Corinthians 3:7,13)
What did Paul mean by “what was passing away”? He was talking about the Old Covenant established with his people, Israel, at Mount Sinai. And, as we’ve noted, that covenant was bound together with the temple, the sign of God’s presence with His people.
One of the best ways to understand what was going on in Galatia is to look at other passages in the New Testament that describe how the Old Covenant, reflected most clearly in Israel’s temple, was fulfilled in Jesus. Let me remind you of a couple of passages I referred to in yesterday’s podcast and add a couple of others.
In John 2, we read about Jesus’s aggressive clearing of the temple in Jerusalem, violently turning over the tables of the money-changers and sellers of overpriced sacrificial doves, scattering their greedy profits. “My house will be called a house of prayer for all nations,” are the words of our Lord recorded by Mark in his gospel. (See Mark 11:17)
After this episode, Jesus is confronted by the leaders of, let’s just call it, institutional Judaism. “What sign can you show us to prove your authority to do all this,” they asked? Jesus answered ,“Destroy this temple and I will raise it again in three days.”
Then John says this: “They replied, ‘It has taken forty-six years to build this temple and you are going to raise it in three days?’ But the temple he had spoken of was his body.”
This incident, which again is described in John 2, follows shortly after these words recorded in John 1:14 - “The Word because flesh and made his dwelling among us.” Young’s literal translation captures the picture John is painting when it renders this verse - “And the Word became flesh, and did tabernacle among us.”
The Greek word John uses literally means “to live in a tent,” and it is a reference to the tabernacle (temple) of God.
Just a few chapters later, we read of Jesus’s conversation with the Samaritan woman by the well. Knowing that the Samaritans looked to their temple on Mount Gerizim as the place where God’s presence was found, this woman said to Jesus, “Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain, but you Jews claim that the place where we must worship is in Jerusalem.” Jesus responded and said, “a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in the Spirit and in truth.”
After Jesus openly tells this woman that he is the Messiah, we read that she returns to the town, shares her story, and the townspeople urge the Lord to remain with them for two days, after which they say to the woman, “We no longer believe just because of what you said; now we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this man really is the Savior of the world.” (See John 4)
What a powerful passage that points to the reality that Jesus is now the focal point of worship and the presence of God. And did you notice the phrase “Savior of the world”? In the opening chapters of his gospel, John makes it clear that the old forms and structures of Judaism are done away with in Christ Jesus.
There’s so much more I could say, but I do try and keep these posts relatively short. Here’s my point -
The old forms and structure of Judaism could not accommodate or even exist together, side by side, with the Good News of God’s Kingdom inaugurated by the death and resurrection of Jesus Messiah.
This is what Paul means in Galatians 2:18: “If I rebuild what I destroyed, then I really would be a lawbreaker.”
This is the reason Galatians was so important in Paul’s day and in ours as well. Christianity as we know it would be very different if the Jewish Christian teachers in Galatia had had their way. Thank God the apostle Paul was willing to go toe to toe with these men.
But that’s far from the end of the story because the truth is that there are some old forms and structures in the church today that need to be torn down - Not remodeled, torn down. Sometimes you need a wrecking ball.
I’ll have more to say about this in my personal reflections, which begin tomorrow and will continue on Thursdays throughout 2022.
In Christ,
Dan
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