With Jesus In The City Of Jerusalem
Public interest in biblical archaeology is at an all-time high. The most important archaeological site in the world is the city of Jerusalem. It is the home of monotheism, foundational to the three Abrahamic faiths, Judaism, Islam and Christianity. All three religions hold Jerusalem in special regard.
Important discoveries with relevance to the Bible are made virtually every year—during 2007 and 2008 alone researchers announced at least seven major discoveries in Israel, five of them in or near Jerusalem. Early pioneer archaeologists, such as Sir William Flinders Petrie and William Foxwell Albright were explorers in search of objects and sites that would “prove” the Bible. Other well-known biblical archaeologists, including Kathleen Kenyon and Yigael Yadin, have expanded our knowledge of biblical archaeology in relationship to Middle Eastern history.
Key to the significance of Jerusalem, then and now, is the Temple Mount, one of the world’s most sacred sites, to Jews, Christians and Arabs. This is the site of a Temple where animals were sacrificed on an altar.
The Temple Mount in the Old City of Jerusalem measures today approximately 45 acres in extent. It is surrounded by a trapezoidal wall: the south wall measures about 910 feet, the north wall about 1025 feet, the east wall about 1520 feet and the west wall about 1580 feet in length. The average height above sea level on the platform is about 2,400 feet. Most of the buildings and surface features are Islamic – no visible traces of the First or Second Temples can be found on the platform today.
The area is park-like in its settings with plants, trees and shrubs and many ancient buildings and monuments added over the past 1300 years of Moslem stewardship of the site.
The present-day platform area of the Temple Mount lies topographically just below the peak of a Jerusalem ridge system known as Mount Moriah. This is the site David purchased from a Jebusite named Ornan late in his reign.
King David prepared the area in order build a permanent House of God to replace the Tabernacle of Moses, which accompanied the Jews after their Exodus from Egypt to the Promised Land. David had the plans drawn up for a building whose dimensions were twice those of the Tabernacle, and he amassed great quantities of building materials: stone, cedar, and much gold and silver. However, it was his son Solomon who actually built the First Jewish temple (1 Chronicles 22:14-15, 28:11-20).
The ridge system where the Temple Mount is now located is believed by many reputable sources to be the site where Abraham was told to sacrifice Isaac (Genesis 22:1-2). Muslims hold this site sacred for the order to sacrifice Ishmael, not Isaac. While Solomon built the First Temple about 3000 years ago, Abraham’s visit to Mt. Moriah was about a thousand years earlier.
The blood of those animals was offered for the forgiveness of sins. Just outside those temple walls, 2000 years ago, another sacrifice was made that affects your future.
The man who tried to kill Jesus shortly after his birth in Bethlehem Herod the Great was the great architect of the Jerusalem that Jesus came to know. The Temple had been rebuilt by Herod over a period of 60 years, from 19 B.C., using 10,000 labourers and 1000 priests trained as stone masons. It was totally destroyed forty years after the death of Jesus, just 7 years after its completion. All that remains is the Temple Platform on which the Temple was built. Today it is Israel’s most sacred place.
It was built on the highest point of Jerusalem, Mt Moriah, the spot where Abraham went to sacrifice Isaac. Because Islam believes it was Abraham’s first son, Ishmael, not the second son Isaac, Arabs have claimed it and built their Temple there on the sacred site.
When Jesus ordered the money changers and stall holders from the precincts of the Temple, the Jewish authorities asked: “What miracle can you perform to show us you have the right to do this?” Jesus replied: “Tear down this Temple and in three days I will rebuild it again.” “Are you going to rebuild it in three days? It has taken forty six years to build this Temple.” But the Temple Jesus was speaking about was His body. So when He was raised from the dead, His disciples remembered that He had said this, and they believed the scriptures and what He had said.” (John 2:18 21)
The Temple dominated the city, and was the centre of Jewish religious and cultural life since the time of Solomon who built the first Temple. The Temple was surrounded by a series of courtyards. In the outer wall with its colonnades, thirteen gates lead upwards to a terrace known as the Court of Gentiles. Anyone could enter here.
From there three gates entered into a higher courtyard called the Court of Women.
From there only Jews could enter and if non Jews, or women entered, it was a crime punishable by death. Paul was beaten because it was wrongly thought his Gentile friend had entered here. Two marble warning signs have been found by archaeologists.
From there three double gates, including the Gate Beautiful, named after the donor of the gates, Nicanor, were approached by long wide steps leading up into the Court of the Israelites.
Further up some steps was the Court of the Priests, which only Priests could enter, where the altar stood for sacrifices. Within this was the Holy Place, entered only once in a year by a priest to burn incense.
Divided from it by a huge curtain the most sacred place of all: the Holy of Holies. This was entered only once a year on the Day of Atonement by the High Priest who prayed before the Mercy Seat over the Ark of the Covenant, a box containing the Tablets of Moses with the 10 Commandments and some other important relics from Israel’s history. This was the centrepoint of Israel.
The Temple features in the beginning of the Luke’s Gospel. Zechariah, an old Priest, had his turn to enter the Holy Place. He lost his voice during a vision inside that prophesied the birth of a son, John the Baptist, who would prepare the way for the Messiah.
The life of Jesus illustrates the centrality of the Temple. As a baby, Jesus was brought to the Temple for purification rites. As a boy, Jesus came to the Temple asking questions of the priests. As a man, Jesus was taken to the Temple pinnacle to be tempted. As a teacher, Jesus was there when a widow made her mite offering. Jesus defied the temple tax system, driving out the money-changers. Jesus entered the temple on Palm Sunday ready to be a sacrifice. His death upon the Cross was the sacrifice of the Lamb of God who “takes away the sin of the world.” His blood was to cleanse sinners, the central objective of the Temple’s sacrifices.
The Sacrificial System
The concept of offering sacrifices is foreign to our understanding, but to Israel it was central to her worship. Israel had an agreement with God called a Covenant. God would be their God and bless them as a nation if they obeyed his laws. Their failure to be obedient meant they had to offer gifts of produce from the farms and vineyards, and the sacrifice of animals.
The Patriarchs Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, all built altars and made sacrifices. The Temples of Solomon and Herod had huge altars where animal sacrifices were made for the sins of the people. The more evil the sin, the more expensive the sacrifice.
The wealthier the person, the more expensive the sacrifice. The Priest who sinned, or the wealthy man, had to sacrifice a bull, a chief had to sacrifice a he goat, an ordinary citizen a female lamb, a very poor person a dove, such as Mary and Joseph gave after the birth of Jesus. Part of the slain animal was placed on the altar and burnt; the smoke being a message to God of the person’s heartfelt repentance of sin. A fine could also be imposed.
The person who had sinned deserved to die, but a sacrifice was made instead the blood of the animal being given in place of the blood of the person who deserved to die. The guilty sinner deserved to die but the animal’s life was the sinner’s substitute.
Jesus was seen as the Lamb of God, sacrificed for the sin of the world. Paul said: “Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed” (1 Cor 5:7). “God offered Him, so that by His death, He should become the means by which people’s sins are forgiven through their faith in Him.” (Rom. 3:25). Christ’s death became an atoning sacrifice to enable the forgiving of our sins through His blood.
Jesus Came Into The City To Be A Sacrifice
Jesus emphasised that we have a responsibility when we have wronged another to be reconciled with that person. His emphasis was upon loving God and our neighbour and doing what was right, not in continuing to make sacrifices. He was to make a sacrifice on our behalf, once and for all. The author of the letter to the Hebrews explains it: Hebrews 8:1,3,7,13, 9:1 7;12 14;24 26; 10:5 10.
1. The Blood Brings Life
We have seen traffic accident victims, pale and unconscious through loss of blood. But as the nurse inserted a blood transfusion needle into the patient’s arm, a fresh supply of blood came down the thin plastic tube, through the needle and into the vein of the patient. Almost immediately colour flowed into the cheeks, the pulse strengthened and consciousness returned. The patient spoke. Life had come back through the blood.
In the history of Israel, the blood of a lamb, smeared on the doorposts of believing families, saved the Jews from death in Egypt. Death passed over them, and every year since, to this day, Jews have celebrated Passover, remembering the blood saved them.
Life was in the blood. That is why Jews do not eat meat unless it is kosher killed drained totally of blood. (Levit 17:10 12)
Every time Christians drink from the communion cup they remember the words: “This is my Blood which seals God’s Covenant, my blood poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.” (Matt 26:28)
To Jewish ears, this was the most shocking statement. They had grown up knowing they must never eat blood, but Jesus says: “Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life.” (John 6:54) The blood of Jesus brings us life.
“Would you be free from your burden of sin?
There’s power in the Blood, power in the blood!
There is power, wonder working power, in the precious blood of the Lamb.”
2. The Blood Brings Cleansing
Blood is messy, mysterious, to be immediately wiped away. But inside us it is the river of life. Every one of our hundred trillion cells receives a continuous supply of oxygen, nitrogen, sodium, potassium, calcium, sugars and hormones through that river of blood. Then, in return, the blood removes all wastes, particles of refuse, and inert chemicals.
Our blood vessels, end to end, can stretch for 60,000 miles, and each drop of blood on the way back to the heart and kidneys is purifying us, inwardly cleansing us.
I have sat in hospital beside a person without kidneys, who is connected to a dialysis machine. I have watched their blood being washed and purified in the machine that performs as their kidneys. Ninety-nine percent of the blood is returned into the body, but 1% is expelled by the kidneys as urine. Millions of red and white cells and platelets feeding, purifying, cleansing, and plugging up leaks.
An experiment described by Dr Paul Brand illustrates it: tie a tourniquet round your arm until the flow of blood is stopped. Then start exercising your fingers. Within a minute weakness will occur, then a sharp pain as your muscles cramp.
Pain overwhelms and you will be forced to release the tourniquet. Then fresh blood moves in bringing relief, movement and freedom from soreness. By exercising your muscles without the removal of waste products from the oxygen used, you caused waste metabolites to collect in your muscles and toxin poisoning began. Then came the rush of cleansing blood! Your muscles had just been washed in cleansing blood.
We think of blood as something to be scrubbed off, not used to clean. But in the Bible a leper was washed with blood to clean their leprosy. So the sins of people could be cleansed by being “washed in the blood of the Lamb”.
“What can wash away my sin? Nothing but the blood of Jesus;
What can make me whole again? Nothing but the blood of Jesus!”
“There is a fountain filled with blood, drawn from Emmanuel’s veins
And sinners plunged beneath that flood lose all their guilty stains.”
3. The Blood Brings Immunity
In spite of man’s scientific capacity to create weapons of great power and mass destruction which have the potential of blasting the earth to pieces, more people have died from microscopic bacteria than from all armaments put together.
Mankind’s greatest killer has been microbes. World War I was the world’s bloodiest war killing 8 million people. But just after the armistice, the 1919 influenza epidemic spread throughout the world killing 24 million people, three times the number killed in the war. The great plague, smallpox, measles, all have wiped out generations.
What keeps us safe from the ravages of disease is our blood. When bacteria infect us, the blood rallies and the dormant white cells multiply and rage against the infection. Their numbers increase tenfold and defeat the disease, ensuring health.
We can help the blood cells by giving them more time to fight disease through immunisation. A serum or vaccine made from the blood of someone who has overcome the disease is injected into the patient, causing a rapid increase of blood cells that are able to overcome the disease. By having the blood cells of the one who has overcome, we too overcome. So victorious blood gives us immunity.
“Bearing shame and scoffing rude, in my place condemned He stood; Sealed my pardon with His blood: Hallelujah! What a Saviour!”So Jesus Christ has faced sin, and under His blood we are protected. “The Blood of Jesus purifies us from all sin.”
Jesus’ blood has given us immunity, given us cleansing from sin, and given us life that is life abundant.
The Government is spending millions of dollars warning people about a disease that breaks down the blood’s immune system, AIDS. We need such warning about sin, which breaks down our immune system and brings us death. Only the blood of Christ enables us to overcome.
In every city there are streams of living blood that bring life to people facing death. Spiritually it is the same. To live successfully we need to avail ourselves of the blood that bring life, and lead other people to enjoy the benefits of such a life-giving transfusion.
That is why we tell the message of the blood of Christ, shed as a sacrifice for us His sacrificed blood enables us to live.
“I will sing of my Redeemer and His wondrous love for me;
On the cruel cross he suffered from the curse to set me free.
Sing, O sing of my Redeemer, with His blood He purchased me,
Rev the Hon Dr Gordon Moyes AC MLC
