As a preview of chapters 11 and 12, where Yeshua/Jesus condemns and increasingly replaces the Temple as the overlap between Heaven and Earth, we’ll be reviewing some of the “greater than” claims about Yeshua in the Bible and talking about the implications of Malachi, Isaiah and 4QFlor, which discusses the important concept of mikdash adam, the living Temple of the Qumran community.
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This is going to be really different because this teaching is a pre-emptive overview of Mark chapters 11-12, and to a certain extent, all the way through to chapter 16. The story Mark is telling is the title of this teaching—namely, that Yeshua/Jesus is “Greater than the Temple” and He will, in fact, increasingly judge and functionally replace it over the course of these chapters. This is not to say that the Temple was not used, and even used by the disciples after His resurrection but when we look at the functional purpose and meaning of the Temple, Yeshua is going to really put things into perspective for us. I know this may come as a shock to some people but I hope you will hear me out. I have been studying the Temple for years and it is incredibly fascinating and a very difficult area of study, but Mark’s meaning is also very clear. And so, we’re going to explore it and this will even help us understand why, in Revelation, there is no Temple per se—in fact, the entire city is set up as though it is one big communal Temple. We’ll also be better able to understand why a certain group within Judaism increasingly saw itself as the functional Temple—the mikdash adam–in face of the corruptness of the Jerusalem establishment beginning before the Maccabean revolt and re-emerging in the late Hasmonean era. The destruction of the Temple, in 70 CE, was not a fluke or something that happened outside of God’s will—nor was the destruction God’s angry response to animal sacrifice after Yeshua’s crucifixion. The destruction of the Second Temple, the reason for it, is the same as it was the first time around—rejection of Yahweh, idolatry (or a different sort), the establishment being in bed with the nations, corruption, and oppression. As we go through this over the course of the next eight weeks, it is really going to help if we understand the metanarrative, so we can be looking for it and recognize it when we see it. People think Mark is so bare bones and so simple but it really isn’t. It is the most neglected Gospel, which is why I am focusing on it.
Hi, I am Tyler Dawn Rosenquist and welcome to Character in Context, where I teach the historical and ancient sociological context of Scripture with an eye to developing the character of the Messiah. If you prefer written material, I have five years’ worth of blog at theancientbridge.com as well as my six books available on amazon—including a four-volume curriculum series dedicated to teaching Scriptural context in a way that even kids can understand it, called Context for Kids—and I have two video channels on YouTube with free Bible teachings for both adults and kids. You can find the link for those on my website. Past broadcasts of this program can be found at characterincontext.podbean.com and transcripts can be had for most broadcasts at theancientbridge.com. If you have kids, I also have a weekly broadcast where I teach them Bible context in a way that shows them why they can trust God and how He wants to have a relationship with them through the Messiah.
All Scripture this week comes courtesy of the ESV, the English Standard Version but you can follow along with whatever Bible you want. A list of my resources can be found attached to the transcript for Part two of this series at theancientbridge.com.
First, I want to take a look at all of the “greater than” statements by Yeshua in the Gospels:
Matthew 12:6 “I tell you, something greater than the temple is here.”
Matthew 12:41 “The men of Nineveh will rise up at the judgment with this generation and condemn it, for they repented at the preaching of Jonah, and behold, something greater than Jonah is here.”
Matthew 12:42 “The queen of the South will rise up at the judgment with this generation and condemn it, for she came from the ends of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon, and behold, something greater than Solomon is here.”
John 4:12 “Are you greater than our father Jacob? He gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did his sons and his livestock.” To which Yeshua replies, in verse 26, that He is in fact the Messiah, so yeah, greater than Jacob.
John 5:36 “But the testimony that I have is greater than that of John. For the works that the Father has given me to accomplish, the very works that I am doing, bear witness about me that the Father has sent me.”
John 8:53 “Are you greater than our father Abraham, who died? And the prophets died! Who do you make yourself out to be?” and in verse 58, He counters with, “Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am.”
Hebrews 3: 3 For Jesus has been counted worthy of more glory than Moses—as much more glory as the builder of a house has more honor than the house itself.
There may be more but right now those are the ones that I can think of and I didn’t include the same statement from other Gospels. And the funny thing is that Yeshua never makes the “greater than” statements in Mark’s Gospel but then, he doesn’t have to because from beginning to end, Mark is portraying Yeshua as the prophesied Yahweh Warrior of Isaiah doing battle with Israel’s demonic enemies, as well as sin and death. He shows Yeshua doing things that the Torah can’t do, that the Temple can’t do, showing a lot more discernment than Jacob, far more trust than Abraham, having superior wisdom to Solomon (who had zero when it came to foreign women, seriously), a greater lawgiver than Moses, and being way, way more obedient than Jonah. Yeshua wasn’t just another prophet or some sort of new patriarch. As we will see, He is the new capstone to the eschatological Temple—eschatological meaning anything that deals with the end times and the whole final dispensation of humanity. No, I am not a dispensationalist—it’s just a useful word. The builders rejected a stone, Yeshua, and Yahweh has made it the pinnacle of the Temple made of living stones, all of us. As He is the capstone, it means that He is the greatest, period. But in chapters 11 and 12 of the Gospel of Mark, we specifically see Him confronting not only Jerusalem but specifically the Temple operations and the establishment in charge. We will see every leadership group, both formal and self-appointed, challenging His authority for questioning and judging the Temple operations. In chapter 13, it will culminate in the prophesied destruction of the Temple—which happened at the end of that forty-year generation when the Romans sacked Jerusalem and leveled the Temple, even going so far as to throw the huge stones down from atop the Temple Mount. If you have never seen the trumpeting stone and where they found it, that’s a good thing to look at and I will link some information in the transcript.
That the Temple had become every bit as corrupt as Solomon’s Temple was no secret. It isn’t something we only find in the Gospels. It was written about in the Dead Sea Scrolls and many pseudepigraphic and apocryphal accounts. Temple corruption preceded the Maccabean revolt and, after the initial cleansing and rededication by the Hasmonean brothers, it was back to being corrupt again under the grandchildren and great grandchildren of Simon Thassi. When the Romans installed Herod the Great as king of Judea (and not only the Judea of NT times but also Galilee and Transjordan and Samaria and Perea), Herod sought to marry himself into the high priestly family and to appoint relatives to the position. By the time that Yeshua’s ministry started, the High priestly family of Annas (father in law of Caiaphus) had been buying the privilege and renting the High Priest’s garments from Rome for decades. This put them in a powerful position and, like other Roman collaborators like tax collectors, they found a myriad of ways to fill their own pockets with gold. Looking forward to the judgments of Mark 11 and 12, they were huge absentee landlords, taking advantage of the poor who were being forced to sell their lands under the burden of Roman taxes on top of the tithes that were owed. They often ended up as tenants working the lands formerly their own and that will be important to understanding the parable of the Tenants and the Vineyard.
Yeshua will clear out the vendors and money-changers from the Court of the Gentiles, and they will demand to know what right He has to do it. Ironically, He declared His authority during the “untriumphal” entry into Jerusalem where the people recognized Him as at least a prophet on a mission but no one in any sort of leadership position welcomed Him, as would have been appropriate. The people saw and recognized His authority but like in Isaiah 6:9-10, the leadership is blind and deaf and will not see. In the cursing of the fig tree and in referring to His authority to have the entire Mt Zion (metaphorically the Temple and the Temple hierarchy) removed and cast into the Sea, He openly declared to His disciples His right to judge and not only to judge, but to condemn the entire operation.
Yeshua will declare that the proof of His authority is proved by John the Baptist’s authority, which all the people recognized but the leadership refused. I already mentioned the Vineyard and the Tenants but what about the four other controversies? Each group of leaders approaches Him on the Temple Mount for the purposes of tripping Him up so that they can discredit and reject Him publicly. First, it is the chief priests, scribes and elders—followed up by the Parable of the Vineyard and the Tenants. Next, He is confronted by the Pharisees and Herodians (who had perhaps been planning this since 3:6) who try to force Him into becoming an enemy of either the people or of Rome. Then the Sadducees try to get clever with Him, but instead end up inadvertently proving that eternal life is a real thing. Oops. Then, we have one scribe who is impressed and asks a legitimate question, proving that they aren’t all out for His blood. Yeshua closes it out by pointing out that the Messiah is “greater than David” and of course, David was the one who received the blueprints for the First Temple from the Spirit (I Chron 28:19) and gathered all of the building materials so that Solomon could put it together. Finally, Yeshua is going to blast what I can best describe as the “glory of the Temple.” The Freewill offering of the widow, although praised, also presents a problem.
I want to take a few minutes and explain what a Temple is, to the ancient mind. It wasn’t a place to “go to church” and hold worship services. A Temple was built on a place where heaven and earth overlap. That’s why Ziggurats had stairs up and down the sides so that the gods could descend to earth and climb back up into the heavens again—just like the badly named “Jacob’s ladder.” So, you couldn’t just build one anywhere and this is actually why Muslims build their mosques atop the sites of the religious sites they conquer—it isn’t just about honor and shame, it is about recognizing the power of sacred spots. Now Allah has taken over the overlap between Heaven and Earth, in the minds of the conquerors. Make sense? So, as far as the Jerusalem Temple goes, we know from extra-biblical documents that it was set up as a cosmic entrance point to the Heavenly realm and, in fact, the outer curtain was woven with patterns of the cosmos. So, when we look at the idea of Yeshua replacing the Temple, we are talking about Him becoming the overlap between Heaven and Earth, and when we join with Him, we become micro-temples all over the world, places where God can be worshipped without a middleman. Where forgiveness for sin can be had without sacrifices. Where prayers can be offered and heard without hindrance. Where we can approach God while ritually unclean (and good thing too because we have no red heifer ashes). Yeshua fulfills that Temple function for us—that’s why the veil will rip, not so that we can dance into the Holy of Holies but so that we can access the heavenly realm directly through Yeshua as that mediator, as that final Temple. That’s all very important to understand. Let’s get back to the Second Temple, the temple that stood in the time of Yeshua and fell in 70 CE.
The Jerusalem Temple was the wonder of the ancient world. But it was built with the Roman-levied same taxes that were breaking people. The Temple tax, on the other hand, paid for the daily Tamid offerings, so that all were included. That’s why foreign Jews would contribute even if they would never be able to make the pilgrimage. But these offerings where the wealthy were putting in large amounts were for Temple improvements. Yahweh wasn’t happy with the whole scenario and especially now that His King has been rejected. The people have come to a place where they are worshiping the Temple and rejecting God. Serving the Temple and mistaking it for serving God. So, in a way, it is the 6th century BCE all over again. Instead of defacing the Temple with idols and alternate altars and carvings of every sort of crawling thing etched into the walls, they are beautifying it while losing their way in a bunch of man-made loopholes and oppressive activities. Instead of doing righteousness and justice, they are committing the same types of transgressions as their ancestors who killed the prophets. And, of course, they are about to do it again and for the exact same reason. People in authority do not like to have it challenged.
I want to read from Malachi 3 really quick here to show you how serious this was—and to show you that 400 years before Yeshua was born, the priesthood and Temple establishment were already corrupt again. And considering the fact that the new Temple was less than a hundred years old at that point, that’s pretty damning right there. Evidently, there is something systematically wrong where the Temple has lost its meaning as a place to honor God and has become an industry. All of the priests come under condemnation throughout Malachi, who rebukes them for divorce, which we’ve covered—still a problem in the first century, and living wickedly in general while going through the motions. Truly, it is as though Malachi wrote it during the first century. It goes on to talk about how they are disrespecting Yahweh with offerings that aren’t even fit for the governor’s table. And Malachi tells them that if they do not repent, Yahweh will be coming in person to deal with them in the person of His Messenger, the Messiah, their Lord, Adon, will come to judge them (the Temple establishment).
3 “Behold, I send my messenger, and he will prepare the way before me. And the Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple; and the messenger of the covenant in whom you delight, behold, he is coming, says the Lord of hosts. 2 But who can endure the day of his coming, and who can stand when he appears? For he is like a refiner’s fire and like fullers’ soap. 3 He will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver, and he will purify the sons of Levi and refine them like gold and silver, and they will bring offerings in righteousness to the Lord. 4 Then the offering of Judah and Jerusalem will be pleasing to the Lord as in the days of old and as in former years. 5 “Then I will draw near to you for judgment. I will be a swift witness against the sorcerers, against the adulterers, against those who swear falsely, against those who oppress the hired worker in his wages, the widow and the fatherless, against those who thrust aside the sojourner, and do not fear me, says the Lord of hosts.
45 “Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the great and awesome day of the Lord comes. 6 And he will turn the hearts of fathers to their children and the hearts of children to their fathers, lest I come and strike the land with a decree of utter destruction.”
So, we’ve got this double whammy here in these chapters because they are committing the sins here in Malachi and they are also committing the sins of the time of the Judges in demanding a new king—because they are rejecting Yahweh when they reject John the Baptist and, by extension Yeshua. Remember that John was the one who announced Yeshua as the one who would baptize with the Spirit and with fire, the one greater than he was. When Yeshua rode into town, only the leadership refused to recognize Him and they will spend the rest of Mark either trying or succeeding in killing Him. The Scriptural idea, of course, was for Israel to receive her King and to restore Him to the throne of David in a renewed Zion/Jerusalem. A goal, of course, that will not be realized until the events we see at the end of Revelation unfold because He is rejected by those who have the earthly authority to recognize Him and install Him as King. The New Exodus will take place as Isaiah prophesied but not as they expected. There is a new Lamb in town.
Let’s look at the timeline/outline for the rest of Mark. In chapter eleven, we have the entry into Jerusalem and the initial showdown in the Temple. Continuing in eleven and through the end of twelve, we have a series of controversy dialogues where all the leadership is represented as attacking and rejecting Him (save one lone scribe)—four to six controversies depending on how you end up counting them. Chapter thirteen is Yeshua’s pronouncement of the future destruction of the Temple. In fourteen, we have the Passover/last supper and He speaks about the new Covenant and we see His arrest, and trial before the Sanhedrin—which constituted the formal legal denial of Yeshua. In Chapter fifteen, they deliver Him to Pilate, and so the nations reject Him too. In chapter sixteen, of course, we have the resurrection and glorification of Yeshua as the new eschatological Temple. The Jerusalem Temple establishment and the Jerusalem leadership in general have thrown in their lot with a building and with Rome and have formally rejected Yahweh. Yahweh rejects the Temple, the Temple establishment and the Jerusalem leadership and the days of the Temple and their power are numbered.
I want to look at the verses that would have been very important to the leadership—what they were looking forward to but failed to see because they didn’t understand what God wants, salvation and reconcilliation for the Jews and the Nations, and who He is, merciful even to His enemies and self-sacrificing. Of course, many would turn to Yeshua later. It is believed that, at one point, 20% of first century Jews were living in allegiance to Yahweh through acceptance of Yeshua as Messiah.
Is 52:7 How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him who brings good news, who publishes peace, who brings good news of happiness, who publishes salvation, who says to Zion, “Your God reigns.” 8 The voice of your watchmen—they lift up their voice; together they sing for joy; for eye to eye they see the return of the Lord to Zion.
Is 43: 15 “I am the Lord, your Holy One, the Creator of Israel, your King.” Of course, shortly after this, He cryptically declares, 18 “Remember not the former things, nor consider the things of old. 19 Behold, I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.”
Combined with Malachi, they were clearly expecting Yahweh to act personally and decisively to fulfill both His promises and His warnings. Throughout the Scriptures we see the theme “Your/Our God reigns.” Even though Yahweh gave them over in judgment to human kings when they rejected Him in the time of the last judge, Samuel, He never stopped being their true King. Human kings were not much different than priests in that they were both mediators. The priests facilitated worship and the kings were supposed to facilitate the workings of justice and righteousness toward the vulnerable. Torah was intended to give them the capacity to render wise and just judgments but humans will always fail—which is why the idea of a solely human Davidic King would never provide the perfection that Yahweh demands in His earthly representative. And it is the same reason that the priesthood failed time and again. Power corrupts. It made David feel as though He could have whatever and whoever he wanted in the form of raping another man’s wife, and that he could order a murder by proxy to cover it up, and just go on with his life. It made Solomon feel as though he deserved hundreds of wives and even more concubines, and that he was justified in raising taxes on the poor in order to pay for them all. It just happens. We want kings and we want priests but, in the end, they are human beings. Yahweh had to put an end to it with Yeshua and program a restart through Him as well. He is the priest and king who can never be corrupted, the perfect mediator and Messiah.
So, what’s this thing with Temple replacement—the Temple being replaced with the people of God. Although it might appear as though Paul made it up, He certainly didn’t. Laura Navajas Espinal wrote a really interesting article back in 2015 named From the Qumran Miqdash ‘Adam to the Ismali Temple of Light (Haykal Nurani). I will link it in the transcript if you are interested in reading it or any of her other articles. This is actually the fourth chapter from her PhD thesis in 2015 and she is currently doing her post doc research in Hebrew and Aramaic Studies at the University of Madrid. So, she’s just “kinda” smart. Smarter than me, for sure. Now, a lot of it isn’t relevant because she is making connections with a branch of Islam, but it is a good starting place for branching out into other Second Temple era temple-related documents like The Temple Scroll, The War Scroll, 4QFlorigelium, and others.
It’s in 4QFlorigelium or 4Q174 that we find the document I want to talk about—although we are going to talk about the Temple Scroll 11Q19-20, as well. Of course, and I have explained this before, the first number is in reference to the cave number where the scroll or fragment was found 1-12, the Q stands for Qumran (where the caves are located), and the final number denotes the manuscript number. Sometimes it will also include letters—like Isa for the Great Isaiah Scroll or M, which is the designation for the War Scroll, or Flor, for Florigelium. meaning a collection of literary extracts.
4QFlor is a sectarian commentary on certain verses, put together in such a way as to provide revelation to the Qumran community for the Last Days. It’s famous for three reasons (1) it calls for the rise of “the Interpreter of the Law” aka another Moses figure, (2) a Davidic Messiah, and (3) the Mikdash Adam, or the “Temple of Humanity.” Obviously, this is of great interest to Christians because we see Yeshua as the Greater Moses and Greater David—but, this Temple of Humanity is very interesting as well. Of course, they saw themselves, their Yachad, or community, as serving this purpose. Some brouhaha had occurred at some point and their Teacher was rejected by the establishment and they retreated into the Judean wilderness in order to live lives of holiness and separateness. They saw only themselves as true Israel and everyone else as pretty much damned and boy did they love writing about how damned they thought everyone else was. These folks preached love but it only applied to one another, and even then it only went so far. You did not want to break their rules.
But they speak of three Temples—the first is Yahweh’s eschatological Temple, which we see in other writings resembles a city, the second is the corrupt Jerusalem Temple, and the third is the Temple of Humanity. Now, I am going to be honest—the wording can go either way and scholars debate as to whether this is another temple made by men or a temple made out of men. I lean toward the latter but some scholars I really respect go the other way, which is fine. Even without this Mikdash Adam, in other writings they speak of their community in ways that really make it sound like an idealized earthly temple, the only true priesthood and the place where Yahweh dwells among them and will accordingly protect and vindicate them when He destroys the Pharisees and Sadducees and the Herodians and their little dog too. And they can do this conceptually because of what the Temple meant to ancient people—that overlap of Heaven and Earth. It’s been seen in Eden (which was not Mt Moriah, geographically speaking), Bethel, and Sinai. It can move to wherever Yahweh wants it to move. It moved with the Tabernacle, for that matter. In their minds, when they moved to the wilderness, the overlap moved with them. They became the community that embodied the worship of Yahweh and He dwelt among them, because they remained in a state of ritual purity and lived such strict lives that how could He possibly not want to live there too?
And they were right about (1) the Temple being corrupt because (2) the Temple establishment was corrupt and (3) they saw that the Pharisees were doing some wicked things like “any cause” divorce, and practicing polygamy as a way to punish unpleasing wives they could not afford to divorce and (4) they were marrying their nieces, which is super gross. Beyond gross. Uncle Jimmy, Uncle Bud, I love you but, just, no. And they saw the Hellenization and the collaboration with the Romans and they were furious about the Hasmoneans and the High Priestly family. They saw every form of Judaism but their own as being hopelessly wicked. I am glad that no one these days thinks the same thing about their narrow range of beliefs…
The Qumran covenanters weren’t imagining things. They were responding to a crisis of faith, but they weren’t going about it in a particularly good way. And yet, they had their own problems, as we can see in the Temple Scroll. The Temple Scroll is very revealing, as are all their writings. In the Temple Scroll, we see a rewriting of Deuteronomy without mentioning Moses, and the elimination of some laws and the addition of others. Whoever wrote is seems to have considered themselves the Deut “Prophet like Moses”—a second Moses who could give a second law code for the coming eschatological times. What did he take away? Oh, all the mentions of Moses (meaning he was plagiarizing), as well as all mentions of the foreigners and sojourners. That’s right, all those laws about how you were to treat non-Jews were out the window because there wouldn’t be any and if there were they wouldn’t be allowed in the Land or anywhere near Jerusalem and the ginormous new Temple that was the size of Jerusalem back in that day and would have required the filling in of the Valleys of Jerusalem (there are three). The community was incredibly xenophobic. He also removed all Scriptural references to divorce and polygamy (definitely a backlash against the hated Pharisees). New laws were added strictly regulating divorce and marriage to nieces (again, smacking down the Pharisees). New festivals, new sacrifices, and new festival rituals were also added to the law.
Their new Temple was like them and conformed to how they had engineered their own lives. Glad we never do anything like that, you know, imagine that Yahweh is going to run things our way in the world to come or even now. *ahem* But we can see that although Yeshua would undoubtedly not be troubled by some of their regulations, when it comes to the unforgiving nature and the exclusion of not only other Jews but also Gentiles—yeah, that’s not gonna fly. Yeshua didn’t come to reconstitute Israel around a group like the Qumran community Yachad, He came to reconstitute Israel around Himself. Period. And that’s always difficult for us to come to terms with. There will be people in the world to come whom we don’t want to see there and think shouldn’t be there and with whom we wildly disagree on some issues but because He is not creating Israel in our image but in His own, tough cookies for us.
So all these Temples and Temple ideas had to be replaced because they were incompatible with what a Temple should be and especially what the eschatological Temple will be—which, according to Isaiah, would always involve a worldwide community of worshipers. The fact that there had been two Temples and humans botched it up both times, for pretty much the same reasons/sickness even if the symptoms looked a bit different, shows us that humans can’t handle something like that—any more than they can handle human kingship without it becoming corrupted. Heck, any more than we can handle the Torah itself without doing messed up things to it and in the name of it. There just had to be changes, radical changes. You can’t patch an old cloak with new cloth or put new wine in old wineskins and expect things to work out. In the end, you will just be experiencing the same failures over and over again. Power corrupts. Look at how many ministers have fallen into sexual and financial scandals? Ravi Zacharias is just the latest in a long line of men who became unaccountable and unstoppable and before anyone accuses me of giving women a pass, let me remind everyone that it is a far easier thing for a man in his seventies to sexually assault a woman than it is for a woman in her seventies to sexually assault a man, okay? Women have their own issues. We can be really creative with the nonsense we pull, and women can also commit financial crimes but the truth is that we don’t get nearly as much opportunity, so I am picking on men today. Centralized power revolving around a building or a mere human is generally going to go wrong—they will act wrong and so will we with respect to them. It’s the human condition. We see it in politics all the time where we might admit, in private, that our side behaves abominably but we pretend otherwise when talking publicly because we want to bolster our cause even if we have to be flexible with the truth (aka lying and whitewashing). Or we make excuses for it. Or we turn a blind eye.
What we need is a perfect King for whom no excuses are needed, who doesn’t demand of anyone anything He wouldn’t do Himself and more, who tirelessly cares for the vulnerable and never abuses them, who doesn’t sin, who is not ambitious, who is a Lamb and will never be a Dragon. We can’t have that with humans. Not with any human. David started out well, so did Solomon—but boy howdy. The good kings of Judah still did some appallingly terrible things. And we need a Temple not made with human hands. We can come to worship and take pride in a building and put our faith in it. We can put our faith in a sacrificial system and then go running to commit sin knowing that we can sacrifice and be okay again—or at least we think we can. We can use a building as a power base, a smokescreen, a dazzling illusion of honoring Yahweh, and be as far from Him as east is from west. But a Temple not made by human hands—that’s something we can’t add beauty to. It’s something unchangeable and uncorruptible. That’s something we cannot mess up. It is, however, something we can personally be a part of and participate in and live as through we are not separable from it.
And so, this is really the story of the rest of Mark. Yeshua becomes the eschatological Temple and the eschatological King because we see that both, when earth-based, become hopelessly corrupt. And that’s one of the interesting themes of the Bible—these institutions that are useful but show us that no one and nothing except God is perfect and trustworthy and incorruptible. In the beginning, Yahweh was our King, co-existent with Yeshua, His Creative Word through which everything was created. We rebelled, things got worse and worse. Yahweh proved through the flood that you cannot eliminate sin by killing almost everyone, that the seed of rebellion exists in everyone. Even righteous Noah, his descendants did terrible things. Same with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Samuel’s kids were a mess just like Eli’s before him. Good kings led to bad kings. The examples are too many to mention. Good priests would pass and priests going through the motions would replace them. Exile didn’t help either, they’d just come back and do it all again—maybe a bit differently but still they’d repeat the sin.
When Yeshua says that He is the way, the truth, and the life and that no one comes to the Father except through Him, He is telling us that there is no human or architectural substitute. Our interpretations of His commandments aren’t enough. Sacrifice isn’t enough. Everything we touch and try to control and try to regulate, we do it imperfectly and in our flesh—sometimes we do it most when we feel the most righteous. And I am not saying not to keep the commandments, I am not saying not to try. If you guys have read my books you know I wouldn’t go there, but we do have a proven track record of missing the point, gumming up the works, majoring in the minors and putting our faith in the wrong people and the wrong things. Yeshua is the eschatological Temple and we are called to join to Him as living stones. He is the head and we are called to join to Him as members of the Body. He is our King to whom we are called to give our absolute allegiance. What does that look like? It looks like obedience, yes, but it goes so much deeper because anyone can obey on the outside. To have someone truly be your King, you must change on the inside to become a person who is so devoted and so in love that their desire becomes your desire and their will becomes your will and who they are is who you must become. Anything less is just incomplete devotion, partial worship.
