Temple Costs (3) Widows Offering

Mark records a warning that Jesus gave against the teachers of the law.

Watch out for the teachers of the law… They devour widows’ houses and for a show make lengthy prayers. These men will be punished most severely (Mark 38,40).

According to the Law of Moses, the widows should be supported by their families and the tithes of their neighbours. This was not happening in Israel during Jesus' time. Instead, wealth was flowing away from the widows and other poor people towards the religious leaders.

We often miss the connection, but the next incident explains how widow's houses were being devoured. Jesus sat down in the temple, and watched the people putting money into the temple treasury.

Sitting across from the temple treasury, he watched how the crowd dropped money into the treasury. Many rich people threw in large sums. Then a poor widow came and dropped in two tiny coins worth very little (Mark 12:41-42).

The people were giving money to pay for the cost of building Herod’s temple. They had been taught that God would bless them, if they contributed to the temple. Jesus compared the people giving.

They all gave out of their wealth; but she, out of her poverty, put in everything—all she had to live on (Mark 12:44).

We assume that Jesus was honouring the widow’s generosity, but Jesus does not actually say that. Rather he points out that she gave all that she had to live on.

Is this what God wanted? Did he need the widow’s coins that would have kept her from starving? Did she need to starve, so that God could have a physical house to dwell in?

When God wanted a tabernacle, he enabled the plunder of the Egyptians, so the people could give the wealth needed to build it. The people did not have to starve to provide a dwelling place for God, because he paid for it himself.

God did not want the widow's two coins. She needed them to live on, and God wanted her to have enough to eat. She gave them to the temple, because she was under moral pressure from the false teaching of the teachers of the law. They were teaching that donations to the temple were a requirement of the law of Moses. That was not correct. The Law required that money should be given to widows by their families and their neighbours.

God would have been happier if some of the wealth being put into the temple treasury had been given to the support of the widows and the poor as the Law required. He was not that interested in funding another tourist attraction for the Roman Empire.

The widow got into poverty to pay for a temple that God no longer needed (because Jesus had come to earth and he would send the Holy Spirit to live in his followers). This was an example of the religious leaders devouring widow’s houses.

Temple Costs (2) Jesus and Peter

When put under pressure, Peter said that Jesus paid the temple tax, without checking with Jesus first (Matt 17:24-27).

Jesus asked who the kings of the world collected taxes from to pay for their palaces and armies. They don’t collect taxes from their sons, but get wealth from others.

When God wanted a tabernacle, he allowed the Israelites to plunder the Egyptians of their gold and jewellery (Ex 12:35-36). This meant that when the Israelites needed to give an offering to build it, God had already provided them with gifts to give. The wealth needed to build the tabernacle was indirectly provided by the Egyptians who had enslaved the Israelites.

This is how Herod’s temple in Jerusalem should have been paid for. If God had wanted a temple there, he would have provided the wealth from the nations. He did not expect the poor people of Israel to pay for it.

A temple tax was not specified by the law of Moses. It was a tax imposed on ordinary people by the religious leaders of Israel. In the law of Moses, all payments were voluntary. Tithing was voluntary giving to support the priests, Levites and the poor. It was not a tax.

The temple tax was an immoral imposition on the ordinary people of Israel, who could not afford it. It was not a requirement of the law.

Although it was not a requirement of the law, Jesus paid the tax to avoid creating unnecessary offence. If he made a big issue of refusing to pay, he would get distracted from proclaiming the gospel of the Kingdom of God.

However, to demonstrate that God would have paid for the temple if he wanted it to be built, Jesus allowed God to provide the money for his donation. Peter caught a fish in the lake, which contained a coin that would cover both his and Peter’s tax. This proved that God could provide the wealth needed to build the temple. This action exposed the lack of the faith of the religious leaders who had resorted to a compulsory tax pay for the temple.

Taxes are the world’s way. The religious leaders were using the ways of the world to pay for God’s house. That is illogical. Jesus challenged their lack of faith by showing that God could provide what he needed for his house.

Temple Costs (1) Den of Thieves

When Jesus cleansed the temple, he accused the temple leaders of turning it from a House of Prayer into a Den of Thieves (Matt 21:12-14).

My house shall be called a house of prayer, but you have made it a den of thieves.

We should think about what Jesus meant when he said that the temple had become a Den of Thieves. We usually assume that the people selling stuff and changing money were charging exorbitant prices, but that was not the problem. They were charging stiff prices, but they could only charge what the market would bear. No one was forced to buy from them. People chose to buy in the temple for their own convenience. They could have purchased their offering before they arrived at the temple, or changed their money with other merchants. So, the people that Jesus threw out were technically not thieves.

The problem was that the temple system was shifting income and wealth away from the ordinary people. They were under pressure to pay for building the temple that Herod had built by making offerings that they could not afford. The temple was a great tourist attraction, so merchants and innkeepers prospered, but the poor people were being pressured into paying for it.

This was not how the law was meant to work. Under the law, money and wealth should have been flowing to the poor from the rich.

The temple itself had become a den of thieves because it was depriving the ordinary people of income and pushing them into poverty. This was the opposite of what the law required.

Solomon and the Temple (2)

Nathan the prophet told David not to build a temple (2 Sam 7:4). Then reason given was that David had blood on his hands.

You have shed much blood and have fought many wars. You are not to build a house for my Name, because you have shed much blood on the earth in my sight (1 Chron 22:8).

David assumed that this meant that the son who succeeded him would build the temple, so he set about getting the materials ready. He gathered up gold and silver, and cedars from Lebanon. This was a bit presumptuous, because had not given him a blueprint, so he did not know that God wanted cedars.

Most Christians agree that God wanted Solomon to build the temple, but that assumption is not correct. There is no record in the scriptures of God telling Solomon to build a temple. The reason is that he was not qualified to do it either. Solomon had blood on his hands like his Father. He had killed his brother to secure his throne (1 Kings 2:25), and organised for his some of David’s loyal soldiers to be slaughtered (1 Kings 2:31,46).

We need to look more closely at what God said to David.

When your days are over and you rest with your ancestors, I will raise up your offspring to succeed you, your own flesh and blood, and I will establish his kingdom. He is the one who will build a house for my Name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever (2 Sam 7:12-13).

God said that a descendant of David would build a house of him and that the throne of kingdom would be established forever. This cannot be a reference to Solomon, because his dynasty did not last forever. His son Rehoboam lost half the kingdom, and the rest disappeared with the Babylonian exile. This prophecy rules out Solomon as the one who was to build the temple.

Jesus was the descendant of David who established a Kingdom that will last forever. This means that he is the one whom God intended to build a temple. God fulfilled this promise through Jesus. He said,

Destroy this temple, and I will raise it again in three days… But the temple he had spoken of was his body (John 2 20-21).

The body of Christ is the temple of the Holy Spirit that Jesus built for God to dwell on earth.

Jesus blood from his hands and side, not on his hands, made it possible for the Holy Spirit to live in human hearts. This was the temple that God really wanted. Until Jesus came, God would have been quite happy living in a tent. A temple of gold and stone was not much use to him, because he really wanted to tabernacle in human hearts.

Solomon and the Temple (1)

God did not want a temple. He was quite happy in a tent.

God explicitly told Moses to build a tabernacle (Ex 25:8-9). He gave very precise instructions about the materials it was to be built from. He specified its exact dimensions. Moses built it exactly as it was revealed to him on the mountain. When it was complete, God filled it with his presence. In Exodus 40:1, God told Moses to set it up. The remainder of the chapter says “as the Lord commanded” seven times.

People assume that once Israel was in the Land, and not travelling around, God wanted a permanent temple to replace the tabernacle, but there is no record of him saying this. God told Nathan the opposite.

I have not dwelt in a house from the day I brought the Israelites up out of Egypt to this day. I have been moving from place to place with a tent as my dwelling. 7 Wherever I have moved with all the Israelites, did I ever say to any of their rulers whom I commanded to shepherd my people Israel, “Why have you not built me a house of cedar (2 Sam 7:6-7)?

A stone temple was just another idea copied from the surrounding nations.

David wanted to build a temple. He seemed to be motivated by embarrassment that he had a better dwelling than the Lord.

Here I am, living in a house of cedar, while the ark of God remains in a tent (2 Sam 7:2).

That was not a very good motivation. God had not told him to build a temple. No prophet commanded him to do it. It was just a good idea.