Adorned with goodly stones and gifts
On the object and use of the sanctuary
I. THE CIRCUMSTANCES UNDER WHICH CHRIST UTTERED THESE WORDS. Every attentive reader of Holy Scripture must have remarked this fact, in the history of the Bible, viz., that whenever and wheresoever God revealed His choice of a spot among the sons of men, to “place His Name there”--where He might be especially present with them, to receive their worship, and to bestow on them His blessing--that spot was always directed and made to be as great a contrast, and as much superior as possible to all other places in which men ordinarily abode. But all this, as the same attentive reading of Holy Scripture must also convince us, was immediately directed to its own great and specific objects. It was designed by God to lead their thoughts upward to Himself. The temple had been a great probationary blessing to the Jews; it had been ordained of old by God, for the advancement of their essential and everlasting good; and it was now foredoomed to such ruin and desolation, that “there should not be left in it one stone upon another, which should not be thrown down,” only because of the way in which they had abused their privileges, trampled on their mercies, and forgotten the covenant while they walked in the very presence of their God.
II. APPLICATION:
1. These words of our Lord give no sort of encouragement to the notion which has often prevailed, and has been much repeated in our days, of its being utterly immaterial what kind of fabric we dedicate to the Most High; that all must be alike to Him, and the meanest sufficiently acceptable in His sight; inasmuch as “He dwelleth not in temples made with hands,” and can be as well honoured within walls of clay, as beneath the stateliest roof that ever was raised by man. When men live, according to their respective degrees, in a state which God has prospered--dwelling, if not, like David, in “houses of cedar,” at least in those of competence and comfort--it is not for them to suffer the “Ark of God to remain within curtains”; and though to the wanderer in the desert, or the colonist in his new settlement, the best tent or cot he could procure might be meet for the service of his God, yet it is not so for a society of Englishmen, dwelling in the very bosom of their highly favoured country and Church. How far are we using our Redeemer’s sanctuary upon earth, in such a manner as that, when this fails, we may be received into “a building of God; a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens” We must not forget the possibility there is that we might be walking in the judicial blindness of Israel, whilst we are possessed of all the light, and all the means of grace, with which the Christian Church is entrusted. (J. Puckle.)
Admiration for the outward form rather than for the spiritual meaning
Is there any one Christian, however austere, who, on entering the body of our cathedral not for the first time but the twentieth, and allowing his eye to wander along its avenue of columns, or into the depth at once so mysterious and so impressive, of the distant choir; or towards those arches, at once light and bold, which, like a vigorous vegetation on each pilaster, throw out and intertwine their stems at the centre--is there any one who has not said to himself, How beautiful this is! what harmony! what unison among all these stones! what music in this architecture! what poetry in this edifice! Those who reared it are dead, but though dead they still speak to us; and their conception, full of adoration, their conception, a species of prayer, is so united to their work, that we think we feel it and breathe it as we advance within these walls which carry us over a vista of ages. Such is our feeling; and if we are not alone, we can scarcely help giving it utterance. Thus, doing: what the disciples did when they exclaimed, What stones! what buildings! might we not hater ourselves addressed by our Lord in words of reproof, “Is it this you are looking at?” And why should we not be reproved if our soul goes no farther than our eye, if it stops where our eye is obliged to stop; if symbols, appearances, visible things, hold it captive; ii the splendours of art chain down our heart to the earth instead of raising it to heaven? This is the censure which Jesus Christ passes on His disciples. He had looked into their souls, and there detected that lust of the flesh, that lust of the eye, and that pride of life, which are the three connecting chains by which the enemy of God links us closely to outer darkness. The man and the Jew were equally revealed in that involuntary exclamation; man, dazzled by whatever is seen, and filled with contempt for what is not seen; the Jew, proud of the exterior pomp of a worship, the deep meaning and internal idea of which had long escaped him, and attaching himself obstinately to the law--in other words, a shadow, at the very moment when this law was more than ever a shadow.
Is it this you are looking at? What! these few grains of dust, which are large only because you are little? What! these gifts extorted by fear, vanity, and custom, from individuals who refused to begin by giving themselves to God? What! the gorgeous falsehood of these marbles and gildings, of all those ornaments, the pious import of which has long since been forgotten? Is it this you are looking at? (A. Vinet, D. D.)
Looking at the true grandeur of Christianity
Christianity has taken a form in the world; it has become visible. Travelling over ages, and propagating itself in the world, it has assumed a place among the things to which the world pays regard; and besides this grandeur of space and duration which procures it a species of respect on the part of the most indifferent, it has, by its intellectual grandeur (I mean by the grandeur of the ideas which it expresses, and those which it suggests), captivated the regard and admiration of thinkers. Thus is it great after the fashion of the world. Beware of admiring it most of all for that grandeur. Let us fear lest its true grandeur escape our notice. Let us not allow our eye to be misled, and oblige Jesus Christ to say to us again, “Is it this you are looking at?” How great our misfortune if we should have entered the empire of the invisible only to link ourselves more securely to the visible, and if in the kingdom of spirit we should have been able only to find the world! How miserable, if trusting to those vain and hollow words, “The temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord,” we should neglect, as the prophet says in the same place, thoroughly to amend our ways and our doings (Jeremiah 7:4-5). To look only to this twofold greatness of Christianity, the material and intellectual, is truly to do like the first companions of Jesus Christ, to fix our look upon stones. “fast thoughts, secular traditions, splendid recollections, all these are stones; cold materials, hard and dead. There are other stones, living stones, which form together a spiritual building, a holy priesthood (1 Peter 2:5). (A. Vinet, D. D.)
Warnings
1. That sin has laid the foundation of ruin in the most flourishing cities and kingdoms; Jerusalem, the glory of the world, is here by sin threatened to be made a desolation.
2. “That the threatenings of God are to be feared, and shalt be fulfilled, whatever appearing improbabilities there may be to the contrary. It is neither the temple’s strength, nor beauty, that can oppose or withstand God’s power. (W. Burkitt.)
The destruction of the temple foretold
With this scene before them they must have found it harder still to acquiesce in the thought of the destruction of the city and temple. But the prediction of their overthrow contained an important lesson for the disciples and for us. It is this--
I. INSTITUTIONS AND SYSTEMS OF RELIGION OPPOSED TO CHRIST, HOWEVER STRONG AND SPLENDID THEY MAY APPEAR, ARE DOOMED TO DESTRUCTION. They have no guarantee for their continuance and perpetuity in the splendour and massive strength of their temples, Error is weak and on the road to downfall, no matter how strong it looks, and truth is strong and on the way to victory, no matter how weak and insignificant it appears. Other religions besides Judaism have illustrated these truths. It was thus with the ancient Greek and Roman religions. When Paul went to Ephesus, where the goddess Diana was worshipped, her temple so magnificent and stately was regarded as one of the seven wonders of the world. What was thus witnessed in the ancient world, wherever and whenever its religions came in contact and conflict with Christianity, is repeated in every age. It is being witnessed to-day in Japan and in India where long-established systems of religion, with imposing rites and magnificent temples, are gradually being undermined by the influence of the gospel. The splendid and massive structures in which those religions have been enshrined have no power to preserve them. They are crumbling before the preaching of the Cross. They belong to those transitory “human things,” whose fate a brilliant English historian compares to that of icebergs drifting southward out of the frozen seas. So long as the equilibrium is sustained you would think they were stable as the rocks. But the sea-water is warmer than the air. Hundreds of fathoms down the tepid current washes the base of the berg. Silently in those far deeps the centre of gravity is changed, and then, in a moment, with one vast roll, the enormous mass heaves over, and the crystal peaks which had been glancing so proudly in the sunlight are buried in the ocean for ever.”
II. THE DISCIPLES OF CHRIST ARE TO EXPECT AND BE ON THEIR GUARD AGAINST IMPOSTORS AND FALSE CHRISTS. “Many shall come in My name, saying, I am Christ, and shall deceive many.” The liability to be deceived by such impostors exists in all men. For in the souls of all there is an expectation of, or longing for, a mighty deliverer like the Messiah of the prophets. If Jesus is rejected, or not confidently believed in as the true Christ, some false Christ is likely to win their faith and lead astray.
III. JESUS TEACHES HIS DISCIPLES THAT BEFORE HIS RELIGION FINALLY TRIUMPHS THEY MUST HEAR AND SUFFER AND WITNESS MANY DREADFUL AND DISTRESSING THINGS AS INCIDENTS IN ITS CONQUEST OF THE WORLD. “Ye shall hear,” he said, “of wars and rumours of wars … Nation shall rise against nation and kingdom against kingdom; there shall be earthquakes in divers places; there shall be famines … They shall deliver you up to councils; and in synagogues ye shall be beaten; and before governors and kings shall ye stand for My sake for a testimony unto them.” But the fearful prophecy was mingled with words that spanned the dark cloud with a rainbow of hope. “Be not troubled,” He said; “these things must needs come to pass … these things are the beginning of travail.” “They must needs come to pass,” because they were the inevitable consequences of sin--the retribution long delayed but steadily accumulating, for the sins ofthe nation in the past.
IV. IN THIS CONFLICT WITH SIN AND FALSE RELIGION THEY SHOULD RELY FOR DEFENCE AND FOR VICTORY UPON THE DIVINE HELP.