God says to David, through Nathan:
“‘I declare to you that the LORD will build a house for you: When your days are over and you go to be with your ancestors, I will raise up your offspring to succeed you, one of your own sons, and I will establish his kingdom. He is the one who will build a house for me, and I will establish his throne forever. I will be his father, and he will be my son. I will never take my love away from him, as I took it away from your predecessor. I will set him over my house and my kingdom forever; his throne will be established forever.’”
Who is this passage speaking about? Jesus. It is even quoted in the Gospels, in the NT. Luke 1:32, this is the very passage to which the angle Gabriel refers when he tells Mary that she is going to have the baby Jesus! (As a side note - this is interesting I think anyway - when David says he wants to build a house/palace for God, the Bible uses the exact same word when God declines and says that He will build a house/dynasty for David, which of course He does through Jesus)
Some questions for you about the temple in Jerusalem: There were many temples: who ordered the first temple built on that spot? King Solomon. Do we know what famous building is on that same spot today? The Dome on the Rock. Do we know how many temples have actually been built on that same spot? 3 or 4 depending on how you count them. After Solomon's Temple was destroyed, Zerubbabel, the governor, had the second temple built in 516 BCE, and then years after it was destroyed, King Herod, who we know from the Christmas story, built the a temple that was destroyed in 70 CE, not that long after Jesus' death. And apparently too there was even another temple that was built in Samaria but the Jews destroyed that one themselves in 128 BCE before Herod ever built his temple and, like we said, the mosque, the Dome on the Rock, sits on that spot today. There have been a lot of temples there built by people who don't seem to understand what the Gospel writers and the early church understood - that God's temple isn't a building. And the descendant of David who is actually going to build it is Jesus because the passage says that the one who builds it will be God's Son and his throne will last forever (Cf. Luke 1:32, Galatians 3:16).
This is important. After he establishes his throne by seeing his brothers killed and before he builds this massive palace for himself, King Solomon builds a temple in Jerusalem. There is then this big ceremony where it is dedicated and God Himself, in a cloud, enters the temple (2 Chronicles 5:14). From this point on many people make the mistake of thinking that God is actually contained in the temple.
This reminds me of a story I read somewhere:
There were some people in the US a while back who thought that they had discovered the oldest place in the universe. They then figured that if it is the oldest place in the universe then that must be where God lives – as it was the first place to exist. They then spend over $20 000.00 to build the necessary equipment to transmit electronic impulses or radio waves or something like that into space; they build a website and offer people the opportunity to talk to God on-line. To this day, apparently many people have sent messages into deep space thinking that that is where God is and that that is the only or best way He will hear them. God is not confined to a star in deep space or to a temple in Jerusalem. God is omnipresent and God loves us.
Emmanuel: God is with us.
Emmanuel: God is with us.
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