This is what the Sovereign LORD says: I will desecrate my Temple, the source of your security and pride. - Ezekiel 24:21

After being in Jerusalem 9 days, I’ve heard a lot about the temples of Solomon and Jesus’ day. The temple was here, the temple was there, the temple was this big, this grand, at this place, and people from all around came to it - did I mention that it was great? How about that we will build it again, someday!

Night and day there are Jews, standing outside the Western Wall, the only remaining wall of the temple mount structure, praying and mourning (thus the term, “wailing wall”) over the fallen nature of the temple.

Now, don’t get me wrong, it was a great thing that the temple was built, the first because David committed himself to “receive no rest for my eyes until God has a dwelling place” and Solomon built it in great splendor, and the second after the Babylonian Exile when the Jews were allowed back and Ezra and Nehemiah helped the people rebuild it because King Nebby destroyed it.

However, Ezekiel tells us why the Lord allowed it to be destroyed, because it was the source of Israel’s security and pride. They had turned their trust and confidence from the God of Abraham, who led them out of Egypt through mighty miracles and rained down bread from heaven in the wilderness, unto a temple made by human hands. Classic case of going from worshiping the Creator to the created thing.

Because of the Lord’s great love and compassion, there is a strong presence of the Lord at the Western Wall, I believe because the Lord is drawing those people to Himself, but also because there is a deeper revelation about what that Temple represents.

The New Testament says that the Body of Messiah is to be a living temple, a dwelling place for God in the Spirit (1 Peter 2:5). The very glory that manifest in the Tabernacle in Moses day and the Temple in Solomon’s is to dwell in the hearts and lives of God’s people today - those who are born from above. One day, by God’s grace, Israel as a nation will come into this calling as well, and I believe the Lord is showing His people even today that the temple represents yet another outward symbol of the inward reality He desires in the heart.

As we walked underneath the wall in a guided tour of some ruins, they showed us a rock that was at the base of the temple mount structure that was surely the largest rock ever used in construction in the world at that time. The rock, cut out of one solid piece of bedrock, was about as long as a bus and as tall as my shoulders. In fact, I believe it was one of the cornerstones of the temple.

They spent much time marveling over the grandeur of this rock, how big and incredibly durable it was - but they miss the point altogether, at least some of them do.

The stone rejected by the builders
has now become the cornerstone. (Psalm 118:22)

Jesus is the cornerstone of the spiritual temple, and though He is did not come big and flashy and grand and able to be bragged about in worldly measure, He is God’s chosen stone for the Temple of God. He came lowly, riding on a donkey, submitting His every power and authority to the very laws He by His very words created - and that is why He is the cornerstone, and no work of earthly man.

Come to Christ, who is the living cornerstone of God’s temple. He was rejected by the people, but He is precious to God who chose Him.  (1 Peter 2:4)

There is much speculation as to whether the Jews will build a Third Temple, there are even shops you can go into that have models of what it would look like, based upon Ezekiel 40-45. I’d like to get into some of that issue later - but for now, let us consider this - in the New Jerusalem, the bride of Christ -

“No temple could be seen in the city, for the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are its’ temple.” - Revelation 21:22

Let us ask God for the revelation of true meaning of “the temple” in our hearts, and pray earnestly that the Jews would grab hold of that as well, forsaking a human structure as their security and pride, and finding it in their conquering King, Yeshua Ha Maschiach.