BibleProject | Holy Week & EasterSample

Labor Pains Before a Different Kind of Birth

In a world expecting God’s messiah to protect Jerusalem’s temple, Jesus does the opposite. He confronts its corruption and says the temple will crumble because the time has come for humanity to be reborn as God’s living temple.

In Jesus’ day, the largest space on Jerusalem’s temple mount, the Court of the Gentiles, had been dedicated as sacred space for non-Jewish people to meet with God. This is in part because God called Abraham’s family, Israel, to bless all nations (Gen. 12:1-3). But traditions meant to help worshippers, such as selling sacrificial animals and exchanging currency for the temple tax, had crowded the court and pushed non-Jews out. So Jesus acts.

He drives away the merchants and livestock, overturns tables, and quotes Israel’s prophets. The temple is supposed to be a “house of prayer for all peoples” (Isa. 56:7), but they’ve turned it into “a den of robbers” (Jer. 7:11). Jesus speaks with divine authority and exposes the temple leaders’ refusal to include the so-called “others.”

The next scene reveals even more. Still in the temple, Jesus heals people who cannot see or walk, signaling the start of God’s restoration work that prophets like Isaiah predicted (Matt. 21:12-14; see Isa. 35:5-6). He doesn’t merely cleanse the temple; he mercifully restores people to full life.

Later, Jesus’ disciples panic when he says the temple will soon be destroyed (Luke 21:5-6; Matt. 24:2-3). Terrifying headlines and fake saviors will urge you to trust them and turn away from me, Jesus says (Matt. 24:5), but do not fear. The collapse of unjust systems through war and natural catastrophe is necessary, like labor pains before humanity and all creation are made new (Mark 13:7-8).

Jerusalem’s stone temple will collapse (Matt. 24:2), but Jesus is the new temple, along with everyone who loves and blesses others like he did. They become “living stones,” being fitted together as God’s “spiritual house [or temple]” (1 Pet. 2:4-5).

Corruption never gets the last word; Jesus does. And while the labor pains hurt, do not fear because they’re leading to a newborn humanity and world. The once-sacred space of Jerusalem’s temple has moved and now resides within us, as we become God’s new sacred “spaces,” intended to bless the entire world.

Reflection Question

• How do you think differently about yourself and others when you see how God moved his temple into human beings? How do people meet with God through you, and how do you meet God through them?