Articles
Speak Against The Temple - Acts 7
Speak Against The Temple Acts 7
It was 'just' a building, a magnificent building, but in the end, just a building. To say that it would be destroyed is to acknowledge that it is like all other temporal things in our world.
When Jesus foretold the destruction of that temple, the apostles' responded by asking 'when would these things be and the end of the age'. The temple was connected to the whole of the Old Testament system of religion. The priesthood, the sacrifices, and the temple all went together. They were 'the way' unto God.
Something more than just the destruction of the physical building was understood in these statements about the destruction of the temple. The temple had been destroyed and desecrated AND rebuilt before. The tabernacle gave way to the temple of Solomon. That temple was destroyed by the Babylonians and then rebuilt. That temple was desecrated by the Syrians and then cleansed and rededicated. When Herod began his 'remodeling' project, it entailed such a disassembly of the old in order to build the 'new'.
Here we have something different. It was not just the end of the physical building, but the very end of the whole of the sacrificial system. It involved the inauguration of a new way unto God. It was the end of the first covenant and the entering into a new covenant with God.
When Jesus forgave people, he did so apart from the priests, temple, and Mosaic sacrifices. His claim to be 'the way' unto the Father, (see John 14:6), involved something different from the provisions of the covenant of Moses. When they heard Stephen speaking of these things it would bring up the same angst in the hearers. If Jesus is THE WAY unto God, and He can forgive apart from the temple, priesthood, and animal sacrifices, what purpose is there for them remaining?
This is argued to its completed logical end in the book of Hebrews. Jesus is the better priesthood, Jesus' sacrifice of himself is better than all of the animal sacrifices, and Jesus entered into the very presence of God and not into an earthly temple which symbolized the presence of God among the people. The real end of the old system took place years before the actual destruction of the temple by the Romans.
Stephen did not refute their charge, but rather affirmed what the first covenant itself had said about God and earthly temples like the one in Jerusalem. "Yet the Most High does not dwell in houses made by hands, as the prophet says, “ ‘Heaven is my throne, and the earth is my footstool. What kind of house will you build for me, says the Lord, or what is the place of my rest? Did not my hand make all these things?’ " (Acts 7:48-50, quoting from Isa. 66:1-2, which point Solomon himself made in 1 Kings 8:27).
Greater than Solomon is here. We have Jesus, the Son of God, the Messiah, the great high priest that offered his own body in the very presence of God. By His blood and priesthood we can now approach God with a clear conscience having been forgiven of all of our sins and iniquities. We have an altar of which those who worshipped in accord with the first covenant have no right to eat.
Through our relationship with Jesus we are being built together as a holy temple, a dwelling place for God (Eph. 2:19-22). We are now a kingdom of priests (Rev. 1:6, 9) and a holy priesthood (1Pet. 2:5, 9) who are consecrated to offer up spiritual sacrifices through Jesus. "Through him then let us continually offer up a sacrifice of praise to God, that is, the fruit of lips that acknowledge his name" (Heb. 13:15). Hugh DeLong
