08/10/2026
Jesus, throughout his earthly ministry, constantly pointed out how the spiritual leaders of the Jews had turned the temple, something that was supposed to represent the very presence of God with his people, into an idol. At the very beginning of the Olivet Discourse, Jesus' single most prophetic predictive passage in Mark (chapter 13), Jesus predicts that the temple that the disciples are admiring would be dismantled stone by stone within the generation of his contemporaries as means of judgment upon those who had rejected their Messiah. The problem of turning a good gift from God into something very bad for our souls is something sinful humanity continues to struggle with today. The words of the old hymn ring ever true, "prone to wander, Lord I feel it, prone to leave the God I love; here's my heart; O take and seal it; seal it for thy courts above." (Come, Thy Fount of Every Blessing)