Rebuilding

Tuesday, March 15, 2011

Devotions: Ps 45, 47, 48; Deut 9:13-21; Heb 3:1-11; Jn 2:13-22

My heart overflows with love for the King of kings: You are the fairest of men, gracious of speech, mighty in battle, victorious over evil and eath. Your throne endures forever and God has anointed You with the oil of gladness beyond any other man. Let the bride take joy in the coming consummation of God's love. Your home will be glorious for ever! May all peoples shout to God with joy, for He is a great and terrible Sovereign over all the earth. Let all sing His praises. YHWH is great and greatly to be praised. We have meditated about Your steadfast love, O God; You are mighty, and our God and Guide forever!

Moses reviewed Israel's history for the people: YHWH told me, "I have seen this stubborn people; let me alone, that I may destroy them and blot out their memory; and I will make from you a nation mightier and greater than they." So I came down the fiery mountain, carrying the two stone tablets of the covenant. I saw that you had sinned against YHWH your God, by making a molten calf; you quickly turned aside from the way the Lord had commanded. I threw down the two stone tablets and smashed them before you. And I lay prostrate before YHWH as before, forty days and nights without bread or water, because of the monstrous sins you had committed, doing evil in YHWH's sight, provoking His wrath. I was afraid of YHWH's anger toward you, since He was ready to destroy you. But YHWH hearkened to me that time, too! He was that angry with Aaron, too, ready to destroy him; and I prayed for Aaron at the same time. Then I took the abomination, the calf you had made; I burned it with fire and crushed it, grinding it to dust, and threw the dust into the brook that flowed down from Sinai.

Holy brothers and sisters, sharers in God's call, consider Jesus, the Apostle and High Priest of our confession. He was faithful to God Who appointed Him, as Moses also was faithful in God's house. Yet Jesus is counted worthy of as much more glory than Moses as the builder of a house has more honor than the house itself. Every house has a builder; but God is the Builder of all things. Moses was faithful as a servant in all of God's house, to testify to the things that would be spoken later; but the Messiah was faithful over God's house, as a Son. And we are His house, if we hold fast our confidence and pride in our hope. So consider what the Holy Spirit says: 'Today, when you hear His voice, do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion, on the day of testing in the wilderness, where your ancestors put Me to the test and saw My works for forty years. For that I was provoked with that generation, and said, "They always go astray in their hearts; they have not known My ways." As I swore in my wrath, "They shall never enter My rest."'

The Passover of the Jews was at hand, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. In the temple, He found those who were selling oxen and sheep and pigeons, and the money-changers at their business. Making a whip of cords, Jesus drove them all, with the sheep and oxen, out of the temple; He poured out the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables. He told those selling pigeons, 'Take these things away; you shall not make My Father's house a house of trade!' And His disciples remembered the scripture: 'Zeal for Your house will consume me.' The Jews said to Jesus, 'What sign have you to show us for doing this?' And Jesus answered them, 'Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.' The Jews then said, 'It has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and will you raise it up in three days?' But Jesus was talking about His own body. Therefore, when He was raised form the dead, His disciples remembered the scripture and the word which Jesus had spoken.