The Tabernacle, a Shadow of Christ

This passage deals with the historical background of Herod the Great ignoring God's specifications and expanding the temple to win the acceptance of the Jews. Herod, a lonely man of Edomite origin, dressed up his political ambition in the outward grandeur of temple building, handling the temple according to human greed rather than God's will. The cruelty of the Herod family and its habit of using God appear again and again, in the reigns of his sons Archelaus and Antipas and in the killing of John the Baptist at Salome's request.

Through the account of Jesus healing a sick man at the pool of Bethesda and the scene of the apostle Paul being dragged into the temple, the sermon points out the attitude of faith believers should have. Unlike the sick man who depended on the water of the pool of Bethesda, it points out how people today cling only to the world's solutions even when they meet Jesus, who is life. And in Paul being beaten after he was wrongly accused of bringing a Gentile into the temple, it shows the foolishness of the Jews, who were caught up in the forms of the Law and their sense of being the chosen people and rejected the true gospel.

Reminding us of the truth that we, who were a tabernacle, have become God's temple in Jesus Christ, the sermon asks how we could live without fearing God, even amid the turmoil of the world's history.