The Excitory Rebuilding of the Temple

When you become sealed you become like Jesus. His Body was a Temple of the Holy Spirit. It was destroyed and yet in just three days it was completely rebuilt with the excitory reviving.

It all started when Jesus "cleansed" the temple. It was a crazy thing to do! Nobody could alter the traditions of the temple. And for good reason. That was how people were reconciled with God.

Jesus came to change all that. He became the better way to be reconciled with God. But when He cleansed the temple nobody knew about His sacrifice yet. They did not understand.

They did not understand how He would die for their sins and become a much better sacrifice that would please God. And yet everyone knew the religious authorities wanted to see Him dead.

At the temple people sold oxen and sheep and doves. A person came in regularly to sacrifice for sin or just as a gift to God. If that person owned no livestock or did not want to sacrifice any of his or her own, that person would buy from the sellers there at the temple.

And Jesus did not like it. He hated it. They were turning the temple of God into a common marketplace. Nobody went to the temple to seek God. They went to partake in another enterprise created and sustained by people.

It had become an industry. It was the livelihood of many people. They provided the necessary sacrifices so the guilty could get right with God. They were selling salvation.

Jesus was infuriated. He said the temple should have been a house of prayer. That was written by the Prophets. They had made it a house of merchandise. So Jesus took action.

He made a whip and went down to the temple. He came to the courts where all the sales people were set up. He lifted His arm, and...SNAP! His arm shot forward. The whip found its mark. The table of a sales person.

The sales person was first afraid. Then he ran for dear life. Jesus was snapping the whip all over the place. He was knocking over chairs and tables and the money was pouring out onto the ground.

He drove out all the sales people and the animals for sacrifice. And He was satisfied. It was done. But the Jewish people were not happy. Now the authorities were enraged.

"What sign do you show us," they asked Him, "that you cause such a commotion?"

Jesus had not only removed the sales people from their mammon. He had prevented all the guilty from coming back to God. He had better show them something great in place of the sacrifices everyone made.

"Destroy this Temple," Jesus said, "and in three days I will raise it."

As if the insanity had not yet happened. What was He talking about? It took 46 years to build the temple! He was surely insane now. He had lost touch. They did not know what to do with Him.

But Jesus meant the temple of His Body. He knew He would come to life again after three days in the grave. And He knew His Body was the Temple that would save many people from their sins forever.

And it happened just like Jesus predicted. When you are sealed you too will live a new Life raised from the dead. The Seal will brand you as living when like Jesus you experience that excitory revival.