Mark 13:1-2 - Homiletics

The downfall of the temple.

Our Lord's ministry in the temple was now over. Within those precincts he had taught the teachable, he had rebuked the selfish and profane, he had received the homage of the children, he had healed the afflicted, and he had denounced and warned the unfaithful and the hypocritical. How strange the contrast between the early days, when Jesus had taken his place in the midst of the rabbis, "both hearing them, and asking them questions," and these later days, when the same edifice witnessed his keen and truceless conflicts with the leaders of the nation, whose errors he exposed and whose vengeance he incurred! It was as Jesus left the gorgeous and consecrated building that his disciples, with national pride and affection, pointed out to his eyes the magnificence of the temple, the stupendous stones of which it was composed, and the costly gifts with which it was adorned. Upon this suggestion, Jesus uttered the prediction, which he could not have uttered without emotions of disappointment and distress, "Seest thou these great buildings? there shall not be left here one stone upon another, which shall not be thrown down."

I. NOTHING EARTHLY AND HUMAN , HOWEVER STATELY AND SACRED , IS IMPERISHABLE . It was, no doubt, a splendid spectacle to which his disciples directed the gaze of Jesus. "They stopped to cast upon it one last lingering gaze, and one of them was eager to call his attention to its goodly stones and splendid offerings—those nine gates overlaid with gold and silver, and the one of solid Corinthian brass yet more precious; those graceful and towering porches; those bevelled blocks of marble, forty cubits long and ten cubits high, testifying to the toil and munificence of so many generations; those double cloisters and stately pillars; that lavish adornment of sculpture and arabesque; those alternate blocks of red and white marble, recalling the crest and hollow of the sea-waves; those vast clusters of golden grapes, each cluster as large as a man, which twined their splendid luxuriance over the golden doors. They would have him gaze with them on the rising terraces of courts—the court of the Gentiles, with its monolithic columns and rich mosaic; above this, the flight of fourteen steps which led to the court of the women; then the flight of fifteen steps which led up to the court of the priests; then, once more, the twelve steps which led to the final platform, crowned by the actual holy, and holy of holies, which the rabbis fondly compared for its shape to a couchant hen, and which, with its marble whiteness and gilded roofs, looked like a glorious mountain whose snowy summit was gilded by the sun" (Farrar). Majestic, however, as was the edifice, sacred as were its purposes, ennobling as were its associations, the temple at Jerusalem was not indestructible. All things finding their foundation upon this changing earth, all things reared and fashioned by human hands, are transitory and perishing. Nothing continueth in one stay. "The solemn temples," like "the great globe itself," are destined to decay and destruction. The material perishes, and that which is spiritual alone abides.

II. AN UNFAITHFUL NATION 'S GLORY IS , IN THE PROVIDENCE OF GOD , MADE THE SYMBOL OF ITS SHAME . There was nothing which the Jews so valued and reverenced as their temple and all the paraphernalia of the temple-worship. The national life seemed to flow from that sacred spot as from a beating heart. Not only was it, in its situation, its structure, its services, priesthoods, and sacrifices, itself most majestic and imposing; but to the Hebrew mind it was the expression of the peculiar interest and favor of the Supreme. How could the Israelite think, without a shudder of horror and dismay, of the time when the noble building should be laid in the dust; when the chants should be silenced, the altars be overturned, the priests be slain, and the services and offerings be no more? Yet this was the doom which the last and greatest Prophet now foretold—a doom which they might have averted by timely repentance and by cordial faith, but which their rejection of the Christ of God made certain and irrevocable. Thus was Israel smitten in the most vulnerable, the most sensitive point; thus was the rule of the righteous Lord awfully and sublimely vindicated; thus was a lesson of Divine government and human subjection thereto published for the benefit of all generations to come.

III. ALL THAT IS MATERIAL IN RELIGION IS DESTINED TO VANISH AND DISAPPEAR . The temple at Jerusalem was the temple of the Lord; yet it served a temporary purpose, and when this purpose was accomplished it was superseded by the temple of the Lord's Body, and by the imperishable temple constituted by consecrated spiritual natures, and inhabited by the Holy Spirit of God. Human nature is such that men are prone to lay stress upon the outward, the visible, the tangible, the material. Even the truly religious are in danger of regarding the vestment of religion rather than the form it clothes, of hallowing places, observances, offices, and institutions. But Christ's whole teaching is a protest against this natural error and folly. The temple of Jerusalem disappeared; but its disappearance, so far from ruining the prospects and crippling the power of religion, was, in reality, the occasion of placing religion upon a sounder basis, and giving to religion a world-wide and an everlasting sway. Let not men cling too closely to the form; it is the spirit which quickeneth; it is the spirit which endures.

IV. SPIRITUAL TEMPLES ALONE ENDURE FOR EVER . Even the destruction of Jerusalem and its sacred buildings did not involve a universal ruin. What was good in Judaism, what was vital and hopeful in Israel, still survived. There were truths which outlasted the forms in which they had been embodied. There were pure and faithful souls which outlived the institutions amidst which and by means of which they had been called to virtue, to piety, to God. A new Israel arose, as it were, out of the ashes of the old. A temple statelier and sublimer, based upon a more enduring foundation, and rising to loftier spiritual heights, sprang into glorious being, as the armies of Titus levelled the glory of Moriah with the ground. The living stones of which this heaven-born fabric is composed can never crumble, and the services of this sanctuary shall never cease. Time and space are spurned; earthly forces are powerless; this temple groweth "an holy temple unto the Lord." It is imperishable, because it is spiritual; it is eternal, because it is Divine.