TEXT: John 2:19-21

SUBJECT: Passion of Christ #26: The Place We Meet God

For the last six months (or so), we’ve been working our way through John Piper’s book, The Passion of Jesus Christ. In fifty short chapters, it explains why God willed the death of His Son.

I chose the word, ‘willed’ with some care, for the cross did not surprise God and He did much more than ‘allow it to happen’. Before He made the world, God planned the crucifixion of His Son, and when the time was right, He brought it to pass. We tend to ignore God’s role in the death of our Lord—or explain it away. The Early Church didn’t. Instead, they celebrated it, Acts 4:27-28,

God willed His Son to die on the cross. Why did He do that? He had many reasons, of course, some of which are well known. But the one we’ll look at presently is not so well known. But it’s very important, and understanding it will improve your reading of the Old Testament and increase your love for the Lord Jesus Christ. Why did our Lord go to the cross? Piper says,

The wording could be improved on, but not the content. By ‘becoming for us the place where we meet God’, Piper means our Lord was about to become The Temple. In other words, what the Temple was to the Jews back then, He Himself would become to the world. Only better.

What was the Temple? It was the House of God. Without diminishing His omnipresence, He lived in the Temple above the mercy seat and between the cherubim. No one ever saw the Lord there, but they often saw His glory.

Every year, the high priest went into the holy of holies, and saw a Light that was neither natural nor man made. It wasn’t a sunbeam and it came from no candle or lamp. The Light was self-generating, it was the brightness of [God’s] glory. But only the high priest saw that, and only once a year.

The Lord wanted His people to know He was in the Temple, and if they couldn’t come in to see Him, He would give them a flash of His glory on the outside—only a flash, not because He didn’t love them, but because He did!

When the Tabernacle was set up in the wilderness,

Many years later, the Tabernacle was replaced by the Temple. At the dedication service, Solomon offered a magnificent prayer, at the end of which

What was the Temple? In the first place, it was the House of God, the site in which God set His glory as in no other place.

If the Temple was God’s House, that’s not all it was: It was also Man’s house! At the end of Exodus, it was called the tabernacle of meeting. The Lord didn’t meet Himself there, He met men in the Tabernacle—mostly Jewish men, but not only Jews. Many years later, our Lord called the Temple, The House of Prayer to all nations! Everyone was welcome.

What was the Temple? It was the House of God and the place where men could meet with Him.

If the Temple was the House of God and the place where He met men, it was one more thing: It was a prophecy. The Jews thought the Temple would stand forever and hated the Lord for saying it wouldn’t.

But the Temple would not stand forever. Because it didn’t need to. Piper says,

Two things need underlining. First, the human body of Christ (which He still has) is the Temple because God dwells in that body! Colossians 2:9 says,

During the years of His humiliation, our Lord looked like any other man—He has no form or comeliness and when we saw Him there was no beauty in Him that we should desire Him.

But for a few minutes one day the glory slipped out! On the Mount of Transfiguration, His face shone as the sun and His garments were white as the light.

And so, Christ is the Temple of God because the fullness of God is in Him. He is the brightness of His glory and the express image of His person. Or to put it more briefly, Whoever has seen Me has seen the Father.

In the second place, Christ is the Temple because it is in Him that we meet God.

Our Lord reveals God to us and He reveals us to God. Without Him, we could not know God and without Him, God could not accept us!

Jesus Christ, therefore, has become the Temple.

The old Temple passed away—not because it was bad—but because it the New Temple was better. Eighteen years ago, my wife and I moved out of a small and damp apartment, for a much bigger and better place, the house we now live in. Would I trade my present home for the old place? Of course I wouldn’t. But still, there’s a thing or two I miss about the apartment. In most ways, the new place is better, but in one or two, I liked the old one better.

The New Temple however, is not just better than the old one, but it’s better in every way. Speaking of Himself, our Lord once said,

In what way is Christ greater than the Temple? In every way. Piper names three:

Glory. Remember, the glory of the Lord filled the Temple back in the days of Solomon, but the glory was somewhat shaded and, in time, it faded away.

We know it was shaded because people could see it and live. But no one can see the full glory of God and survive the sight of it! We know it faded away because the priests went back in it, apparently the next day.

But the glory of God is not shaded in Christ. It is on full display in heaven. That’s why flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of heaven. Because if we saw the Lord with the eyes we now have, they’d burn out and we’d drop dead! We need new eyes to see Him, Resurrection Eyes!

And the glory that shines in Christ is an unfading glory. It hasn’t gotten dim with time and it will not!

Mediator. The old temple was served by imperfect mediators. You don’t have to read very far in the Bible to find the priests were a sorry lot. They were sinful men offering sacrifices and prayers for sinful men. This is why—try as they may—their sacrifices had to be offered over and over again, twice a day, every day.

But the New Temple is served by a Perfect Mediator, the Lord Jesus Christ. His sacrifice was so full that He offered it one time only, and that was plenty! This is why His death did for us what the blood of bulls and goats and sheep could not do for Israel. Because it was a perfect sacrifice offered by a perfect mediator.

Universal. Best of all, the New Temple is better than the old one because it’s for everybody. But didn’t I say that before? Wasn’t everyone welcome at the Temple? Yes, everyone was welcome there. But the Temple was in Jerusalem, and only a tiny number of people ever got there or could get there. The rest of the world was stuck!

But, speaking to the Samaritan woman, our Lord said the hour is coming and now is that they will not worship God in Jerusalem, but in spirit and in truth.

This means you and I can draw near to God where we are because Christ is where we are. Piper says,

Why did Christ suffer and die? He suffered and died to become for us the place where we meet God. He came to replace the Temple so that you could come to God without going to Jerusalem, without becoming a Jew, without taking a ritual bath. You can come to God—as you are—but only through Christ.

Back in the old days people tried coming to God in High Places and Sacred Groves. But they didn’t find Him there, because He set His name in Jerusalem—and nowhere else.

In the same way, people are now trying to come to God ‘their own way’. Some of these ways are commendable (in one sense). Think of all the good works people do, all they give to charity, all the religion they practice and the sincerity they feel. But you don’t come to God ‘your own way’. You come to Him ‘His way’. And His way is Christ.

So, why don’t you come to God through Christ? If there is no other way, He is the way!

And why don’t you come back to God through Christ? A woman once told her pastor, ‘I wish I was unsaved, because if I was, I could come freely to God through Christ’. What? Is Christ only the Savior of the unsaved? Or is He also the Savior of the saved? Of course He is the Savior of the saved. So, if you’ve let Him down, fallen into old and bad habits, gone months without reading the Bible and hardly prayed in a year, come back to God the way you first got to Him: through Christ.