Insightful Musings on the Scriptures

by

Raymond P. Sparre
Northwest University class of '67

Greetings, dear ones.

It’s now evening. This day took off and got away from me before I sent this. It’s another case of reaching evening with the confidence I had followed through with it when I hadn’t. I definitely had a challenge in the course of the day. And it involved doing something I’d never really done before…doing a cider press operation…with a bunch of people coming to join in. I first set up a shelter as we knew rain was coming. Then I had to unload that heavy press from the truck, figure it out, set it up, and give it a test run. We have a bumper crop of beautiful apples. In the course of the day, we filled over 20 gallon jugs. It’s quite nice.

Please have a good night.

Love, Dad/Ray.

Jesus had gone to Jerusalem to attend the traditional Jewish Passover and was very irritated with the state of affairs in and around the Temple. He was certainly not acting in a role of the soft, gentle-mannered, and wimpy Jesus that so many like to portray. He stomps right into the middle of the place and turns it into chaos. He showed such a level of physical strength and authority that apparently no one dared to oppose Him at the time. I doubt very much that His voice was kept soft and low. Only later was He confronted. “Then the Jews demanded of him, ‘What miraculous sign can you show us to prove your authority to do all this?’ Jesus answered them, ‘Destroy this temple, and I will raise it again in three days.’ The Jews 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” (John 2:18-21).

I just looked up the word “temple” in the dictionary. It confirmed that a temple is “a house built for the worship of a god or gods.” It’s easy to see how this definition applies to both uses of the word in the Bible—even in this passage before us. Without them recognizing it, Jesus flips from one to the other in His response to the angry Jewish leaders. The Biblical record reveals that God often chooses to use double-meaning cryptic language to disguise truth from those who prefer darkness over light—while making brilliant light and meaning available to sincere seekers. Even Jesus’ own disciples didn’t catch the switch at the time—till after He had died and was resurrected (v. 22). What are the two ways the word “temple” is used? (1) A physical building made by man for the worship of God (Old Testament). (2) A physical human body made by God for the worship of God (New Testament).