Mount Moriah

Something was pointed out to me this week-end that I had never seen before.

In Genesis 22, very early on in the forming of the foundation of the Judeo-Christian faith, God told Abraham to take his son Isaac to Mount Moriah, and offer him up as a sacrifice to God. Now, of course, after Abraham went through all the motions, up to trussing Isaac up and placing him on the altar, and raising the knife to end Isaac’s life, then God told him, essentially, never mind, you have proven your faith, that’s all that was necessary.

Now, in First Chronicles 21, David sent Joab out to number Israel. Joab tried to talk David out of it, but David insisted, and he was the king, so all the men of Israel were numbered (except Benjamin and Levi, because Joab saw the folly in actually numbering Israel). God decided to punish Israel for David’s sin, but David saw an angel (the death angel?) by the threshingfloor of Ornan the Jebusite. David, and the elders that were with him, cried out to God for mercy, and God stayed the angel. God then commanded David to build an altar at the threshingfloor of Ornan. For some reason, 1 chronicles doesn’t really tell us where Ornan’s threshingfloor was, but, in Second Chronicles 3, we are told that Solomon began to build the temple at the site where his father had seen the angel. In other words, the temple was built on the same mountain where Abraham built the altar for Isaac. So Abraham built an altar there, David built as altar there, and Solomon built an altar there. That’s not a coincidence.

By the way, the term Moriah means, chosen by God. Apparently, this was the spot chosen by God for building altars. In Genesis 22, there is a messianic prophecy, as Abraham and Isaac are headed to the mountain, Isaac asks his father why they didn’t bring anything to sacrifice, and Abraham tells him that God would provide Himself a lamb. Of course, in the New Testament, when the Lamb of God is sacrificed for our sins, the veil of the temple (used to separate the common people from the Holiest of Holies) was torn in half. It is through that sacrifice that we have access to God Himself.

Jesus was Tempted in the Wilderness

Before Jesus really started His ministry, the Bible tells us that He went out into the wilderness for forty days, and at the end of those days, He was tempted by Satan. Now he had been fasting all that time in the wilderness, so, physically, He was probably weaker than at any other time in His life (by the way, I don't recommend fasting for forty days. Surviving such a fast is a miracle in and of itself). Spiritually, though, He was very strong, because of the fast. The devil tempted Him with food first. Well, really not so much food, but the idea that, You don't need to fast, You're hungry, You could use your divine power to turn these stones into bread... Satan would have been happy just to get Jesus to do anything selfish. Obviously, in the flesh, Jesus would have liked to have had something to eat. It wouldn't make sense to tempt Him with something He didn't want...
Satan also tempted Him with Scripture, he took Him to the pinnacle of the temple, and tried to talk Jesus into throwing Himself down. Scripture says that His angels will protect you. Jesus' response was that one should not tempt God. I've noticed some people seem to think that Jesus was telling Satan to leave Him alone. Jesus always had the power to tell Satan to bug off, but if that had been the intent of His statement, the conversation would have been over. All Jesus was saying was that He wasn't going to do something stupid, just for the sake of proving that God would protect Him. God has promised to protect us from all kinds of outside forces. This doesn’t mean that once one becomes a Christian, then they will never suffer a physical injury. Flesh is just temporal; it is your immortal soul that God will not allow to come to harm, as long as you remain committed to God. To intentionally place yourself in mortal danger to try to prove God (unless you have been specifically led by God), is tempting God to just write you off as an idiot ("I thought that one would do great things, but apparently they're just stupid. No great loss." Okay, granted, I don't really think God takes that simplistic of an approach to things, but sometimes He must be, well, tempted to...).
Finally Satan took Jesus to a high mountain, and showed Him all the kingdoms of the world, and said that he would give Him all of it, if Jesus would just bow down to Satan. There are several points of interest here. First off, some have made the criticism that there is no mountain anywhere on earth high enough that one can see the whole world. That is absolutely true; it is humanly impossible for a person to stand on a mountain and see the whole world. Of course, we are not talking about ordinary human beings, here, are we? Let's face it, Satan could have taken Him to the bottom of the Marianas Trench and showed Him the whole world. Neither one of them would have had a problem with that. Second, Satan didn't really have possession of the world, and Jesus knew that, and Satan knew that He knew, so why would he try to tempt Jesus with something that they both knew he couldn't deliver? I think he must have been offering something that he could deliver, and that he knew Jesus would want. John 3:16 says, "For God so loved the world..." That's not talking about this ball of rock that we live on. God could destroy it in an instant, and make another one just like it, and it wouldn't even hurt His feelings. The world that John is referring to is the people in the world; most of which, Satan had absolute power over. It seems to me that Satan is offering to stop trying to be god to these people, if Jesus will only allow Satan to be His god. Basically, he was offering to take away our options, so that we would have no choice to serve God (but, since God would then be serving Satan, we would, ultimately be under his control, anyway). Jesus also didn't want us to serve God only by default; He wants us to have choices. Jesus, of course, knew better than negotiate with a terrorist, even one holding millions of hostages. Thirdly, this is the point where Jesus finally told Satan that He was through talking to him (or he was through talking to Him--either way). This is what so many people think that He was saying after the second temptation.
In summary, a temptation will always be something you want. Granted, sometimes the devil will try to convince you that you want something that you don't really want, but desire is always going to be part of the temptation equation. It might be food, it might be to seek reassurance that God loves you (if that's the case, just consider what He did for you, take John 3:16 personally, that promise is to each of us, individually--repeat after me, "For God so loved me, that He gave His only begotten Son, that I could believe in Him, and I should not perish, but have everlasting life."), or it might even be something that seems like an awesome opportunity to win souls to Christ (of course, if that's being offered by Satan, figure the odds of it affecting anyone's salvation other than your own). Whatever it is, though, what you gain from it will never be worth what you gave up to get it. What shall if profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? (Mark 8:36) Satan plays for keeps.

The Temple of the Holy Ghost

In First Corinthians 6:19, Paul makes an interesting statement: He tells us that our bodies are each, individually, temples of the Holy Ghost. When I was young in the faith, I had someone try to misread this scripture to me. He was trying to make the point that our souls are spiritual bodies. Not bodies in the sense of flesh and blood, but bodies in the sense that they are self-contained, distinct entities. I couldn't grasp that concept at the time, and some of the things that people said to try to explain it to me really didn't help. Anyway, he said that Paul wasn't talking about our physical bodies, he was talking about our spiritual bodies; he said you could tell, because it says, "...your body, which is in you..." except it doesn't. It says, "..the Holy Ghost, which is in you..." So, even though his point was correct, and my thinking was wrong, the fact that he misused that scripture just further convinced me that I was right, and deepened my confusion.

There are other, similar references: First Corinthians 3:16, 2 Corinthians 6:16... Peter refers to the body as a tabernacle in First Peter chapter 1. Personally, I find it interesting that in First Corinthians, Paul tells us in chapter 3 that our bodies are the temples of God, but in chapter 6, the temples of the Holy Ghost. Jesus also prophesied His resurrection, referring to His own body as a temple in John 2:21. I think that it's important to note that we, as fleshly beings, have a hard time (at best) discerning spiritual things. So the people that walked with Jesus saw His physical body (His temple), but couldn't perceive His Spirit. In John 10:38, Jesus said that the Father was in Him. In Colossians 2:9, we are told that in Christ dwelt all the fullness of the Godhead, bodily. Jesus knew our limitations, and understood, that we, as humans, saw Him as human, with a flesh and blood body much as our own, but we should not worship that flesh, in any form (not the babe in the manger at Christmas, or the thirty-three year old man on the cross at Easter...); we should worship the Spirit of God.

By the way, a little side note, here, I know that a lot of people have taken John 2:21 as a prophesy that must be fulfilled before the Lord returns. Books have been written about how Solomon's temple must be rebuilt before the rapture of the church. Read John chapter 2. It specifically says that it isn't talking about Solomon's temple, it's talking about Jesus' resurrection. "Oh, but I think there are some Old Testament prophesies about the temple being rebuilt, too." Yes, there are, but where was Jesus when He was talking about His temple being rebuilt? Look back up to verse 14: He was in the temple. Actually, the temple has been rebuilt, more than once. Look, I'm not saying that the temple won't be rebuilt (again) before Jesus comes again; what I'm saying is that if you get caught up looking for signs, you may find out that the things that you were looking for have already happened and you haven't noticed them (possibly before you were born, and the people that should have noticed them then, were asleep at the switch). Even if they haven't happened yet, who's to say that you will live until Jesus comes again, anyway? You have no promise of tomorrow, so do your best to be ready today.