Lastly, we have here a foreshadowing of our Lord's world-wide work as the Restorer of man's destructions.
Man's folly, godlessness, worldliness, lust, sin, are ever working to the destruction of all that is sacred in humanity and in life, and to the desecrating of every shrine. We ourselves, in regard to our own hearts, which are made to be the temples of the living God,' are ever, by our sins, shortcomings, and selfishness, bringing pollution into the holiest of all; breaking down the carved work thereof with axes and hammers,' and setting up the abomination of desolation in the holy places of our hearts. We pollute them all--con-science, imagination, memory, will, intellect. How many a man listening to me now has his nature like the facade of some of our cathedrals, with the empty niches and broken statues proclaiming that wanton desecration and destruction have been busy there?
My brother! what have you done with your heart? Destroy this temple.' Christ spoke to men who did not know what they were doing; and He speaks to you. It is the inmost meaning of the life of many of you. Hour by hour, day by day, action by action, you are devastating and profaning the sanctities of your nature, and the sacred places there where God ought to live.
Listen to His confident promise. He knows that in me He is able to restore to more than pristine beauty all which I, by my sin, have destroyed; to reconsecrate all which I, by my profanity, have polluted; to cast out the evil deities chat desecrate and deform the shrine; and to make my poor heart, if only I will let Him come in to the ruined chamber, a fairer temple and dwelling-place of God.
In three days,' does He do it? In one sense--Yes! Thank God! the power that hallows and restores the desecrated and cast-down temple in a man's heart, was lodged in the world in those three days of death and resurrection. The fact that He died for our sins,' the fact that He was raised again for our justification,' are the plastic and architectonic powers which will build up any character into a temple of God.
And yet more than forty and six years' will that temple have to be in building.' It is a lifelong task till the top-stone be brought forth. Only let us remember this: Christ, who is Architect and Builder, Foundation and Top-stone; ay! and Deity indwelling in the temple, and building it by His indwelling--this Christ is not one of those who begin to build and are not able to finish.' He realises all His plans. There are no ruined edifices in the City'; nor any half-finished fanes of worship within the wails of that great Jerusalem whose builder and maker is Christ.
If you will put yourselves in His hands, and trust yourselves to Him, He will take away all your incompleteness, and will make you body, soul, and spirit, temples of the Lord God; as far above the loftiest beauty and whitest sanctity of any Christian character here on earth as is the building of God, the house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens,' above the earthly house of this tabernacle.'
He will perfect this restoring work at the last, when His Word to His servant Death, as He points him to us, shall be Destroy this temple, and I will raise it up.'
