Open up your Bibles to 2 Chronicles 36. 2 Chronicles chapter number 36. We've been studying the temple. And of course, the temple is the most important structure that has ever been built on the face of the planet. And it will be rebuilt again one day, and we know that the Antichrist will declare himself to be God inside of that temple in the Great Tribulation. But we know that Jesus Christ will come, he will destroy the Antichrist, and he will rebuild the temple, as you read in Ezekiel's prophecy, and the throne of the Lord will be inside of that temple. Jesus Christ will reign forever and ever, or at least it'll begin there in the millennial kingdom. But what we want to understand is that God in the Old Testament had that place set up where his presence and his name dwelt, and it was there under the Jewish people, and of course, They went away from God and God judged them and he judged Jerusalem. So let's look at the destruction here. This is where we left off last time and then we're gonna get into the temple being rebuilt. But notice 2 Chronicles chapter number 36, Zedekiah was the king there. You see it in verse number 11. He didn't listen to Jeremiah preaching and so forth. You'll notice verse number 13, he also rebelled. 2 Chronicles 36, 13. He also rebelled against King Nebuchadnezzar, who had made him swear by God, but he stiffened his neck and hardened his heart from turning unto the Lord God of Israel. Moreover, all the chief of the priests and the people transgressed very much after all the abominations of the heathen and polluted the house of the Lord, which he had hallowed in Jerusalem. And the Lord God of their fathers sent to them by his messengers, rising up betimes and sending, because he had compassion on his people and on his dwelling place. Verse 16, But they mocked the messengers of God, and despised His words, and misused His prophets, until the wrath of the Lord arose against His people, till there was no remedy. Therefore He brought upon them the king of the Chaldees, who slew their young men with the sword in the house of their sanctuary, and had no compassion among young men or maiden, old men or him that stooped for age. he gave them all into his hand. And all the vessels of the house of God, great and small, and the treasures of the house of the Lord, and the treasures of the king, and of his princes, all these he brought to Babylon. And they burnt the house of God, and break down the wall of Jerusalem, and burnt all the palaces thereof with fire, and destroyed all the goodly vessels thereof. And them that had escaped from the sword carried he away to Babylon, where they were servants to him and his sons, and to the reigns of the kingdom of Persia. to fulfill the word of the Lord by the mouth of Jeremiah until the land had enjoyed her Sabbaths. For as long as she lay desolate, she kept Sabbath to fulfill three score and 10 years. So the temple's destroyed, and there's 70 years. Three score is 60, and 10 makes 70. There are 70 years of Babylonian captivity, and the temple's been decimated. Now this is the period when Daniel is doing what he does in the book of Daniel. Y'all remember how he'd go in every day, and he'd open up his window toward Jerusalem, and he'd pray three times? Come over to the book of Daniel, go to Daniel chapter six, get two places, get 1 Kings 8 and Daniel 6. Daniel chapter number 6 is the story but 1 Kings chapter number 8 gives us the instruction. 1 Kings 8 is when Solomon dedicates the temple and when Solomon dedicates the temple he prays and asks for God's blessing and he makes some stipulations there about serving God. 1 Kings 8 And he makes mention of this commandment that Daniel follows through with. 1 Kings chapter number 8, then we'll look in Daniel 6. Come down, if you will, in 1 Kings chapter number 8. This is Solomon's prayer. You'll notice in verse 22, he stood before the altar of the Lord and the presence of all the congregation of Israel and spread forth his hands toward heaven. And he said, Lord God of Israel, so on and so forth. And he prays, and come down, if you will, to verse number 28. Yet have thou respect unto the prayer of thy servant and to his supplication, O Lord my God, to hearken unto the cry and to the prayer which thy servant prayeth before thee today, that thine eyes may be opened toward this house, night and day, even toward the place of which thou hast said, my name shall be there. that thou mayest hearken unto the prayer which thy servant shall make toward this place. And hearken thou to the supplication of thy servant and of thy people Israel, when they shall pray toward this place, and hear thou in heaven thy dwelling place, and when thou hearest, forgive. Come on down to verse 37, if there be in the land famine, pestilence, so on and so forth. Verse 38, what prayer and supplication so ever be made by any man or by all thy people Israel, which shall know every man the plague of his own heart and spread forth his hands toward this house, then hear thou in heaven thy dwelling place and forgive and do and give to every man according to his ways. So this is the command, look down in verse 44, or the request for God to answer someone praying. Verse 44, if thy people go out to battle against their enemy, with us wherever thou shalt send them, and shall pray unto the Lord toward the city which thou hast chosen, and toward the house that I have built for thy name, then hear thou in heaven their prayer, and maintain their calls. 48, we'll actually back up to verse 47. If they shall bethink themselves in the land whither they were carried captives." That's Daniel. They've been carried captive to Babylon. If they shall bethink themselves in the land whither they were carried captives, and repent, and make supplication unto thee in the land of them that carried them captive, saying, We have sinned, and have done perversely, we have committed wickedness. And so return unto thee with all their heart, and with all their soul, in the land of their enemies, which led them away captive. And pray unto thee toward their land, which thou gavest unto their fathers, the city which thou hast chosen, and the house." It's the land, it's the city, it's the house. which I have built for thy name, then hear thou their prayer and their supplication in heaven, thy dwelling place, and maintain their cause and forgive thy people, so on and so forth. All right, come over to Daniel 6 and let's see it in action. Daniel chapter 6. You know the story how that Daniel's colleagues, if you call them that, politician colleagues. They got together because they can't find any dirt on Daniel. Can you imagine a politician you can't find dirt on? But here's Daniel, you know, and he's in that position and they can't find dirt on him. So they say the only way we're going to get Daniel is if we trip him up in his religion. And so they convinced Darius, the king of Persia, to get this writing signed where nobody can even make any type of prayer unless they send that petition through the main office. And it's got to be approved and everything's got to go through the king. Basically praying to the king instead of praying to their own God. And they know that Daniel loves the Lord. They know that every day Daniel does this habitual thing. Kind of goes back to that message I preached on meeting Jesus in your designated place. Habits are good things. And they knew Daniel had a habit of doing what Solomon had said years and years ago. and they're gonna get him on this. So they go in, they get the writing signed, come down to verse number 10. Now, when Daniel knew that the writing was signed, he went into his house and his windows being opened in his chamber toward Jerusalem, he kneeled down upon his knees three times a day and prayed and gave thanks before his God as he did aforetime. So he had always been doing that. So the temple's been destroyed, the Jews are captive, 70 years goes by, Daniel's in their prayer, and of course, we've got Darius here, we've got these Persians, and Daniel's in the court, not just when the Babylonians are in, but extends past the time of the Babylonian Empire into the time of the Persians, and the Medes, and the Persian Empire. And so Daniel is, in my opinion, probably influential in the decree that we're gonna see here. Go back to 2 Chronicles. Have you ever heard of a preacher preaching out of Chronicles as much as I do? Man, I gotta be crazy or something. But go back to Chronicles. I'm just being funny. But notice in 2 Chronicles, you see it also in Ezra as well. The end of 2 Chronicles, the first of Ezra. And by the way, 2 Chronicles is the last book in the Hebrew Bible. The Hebrew Bible ends with 2 Chronicles, and it's interesting when you think of it prophetically, because the last admonition in a Hebrew Bible is for the Jews to go back to their land. And prophetically, man, that thing speaks volumes, because what we've seen in recent times, the last 50 to 70 years, is a continual exodus back out of the lands of the Gentiles, back to the lands of the Jews. Look in 2 Chronicles 36, verse 22. Now, in the first year of Cyrus, king of Persia, that the word of the Lord spoken by the mouth of Jeremiah might be accomplished, the Lord stirred up the spirit of Cyrus, king of Persia, that he made a proclamation throughout all his kingdom, and put it also in writing, saying, thus saith Cyrus, king of Persia, all the kingdoms of the earth that the Lord God of heaven given me, and he hath charged me to build him a house in Jerusalem, which is in Judah. Who is there among you of all his people? The Lord his God be with him, and let him go up. That's the same thing you read in Ezra chapter 1 verses 1, 2, and 3. The same edict. So there's a call to go back. It's an edict from Cyrus. Like I said, probably at the prompting of Daniel himself. And we have the first return, chapter number 2. Look in Ezra chapter number 2. Ezra 2 verse 1, So Zerubbabel is a very influential figure. You might not hear much about him, but you read about him in Ezra and Nehemiah. You read about him in Haggai and Zechariah and those minor prophets that prophesied during this time. And he is a leader of the line of David. lineage goes. Came in with Zerubbabel, Jeshua, Nehemiah, Saraiah, Reheliah, Mordecai, Bishlan, Mizpah, Bigvi, Re'em, Baana, the number of the men of the people of Israel, the children of Parish, and it goes through this whole list all the way down through the chapter. So we have a first return with Zerubbabel, this is around 536 B.C., and then you have a second return, look over in chapter 7, A second return of a group of people coming back to the land to build the temple under Ezra. Ezra chapter seven. You always want to think about Ezra and Nehemiah this way. Ezra comes first to set up the temple. Nehemiah comes later to establish the perimeters around the city for protection. Nehemiah's the wall builder. He's the governor. He's not a priest. Ezra's a priest. Nehemiah's a wall builder. He's a governor and ruler. And he builds that wall around the city and repairs it and sets it up in 52 days. And so you want to kind of keep those separate. And that's a lot of years have gone by between Ezra and Nehemiah. But here we have about a second return about 70 years later, 467 BC under Ezra. Look in chapter seven, verse number 11. Now this is a copy of the letter that the King Artaxerxes gave unto Ezra the priest, the scribe, so on and so forth. So here's the return under Ezra. So you have several stages of people coming and there's a good contingency of Jews that get back into the land as we see eventually in the time of Christ. But go back to chapter two and let's look at this real quick. If you're kinda looking at an outline, we have a call to go back to the land, but we have a cost to go back. I mean, the land has been decimated, and if they're gonna go back and build a temple, we know it's not gonna be at the level of Solomon's temple, but there's gonna be some cost involved. Look in chapter number two toward the end of the chapter. It gives you the list and totals of the people coming back, verses 64 and 65, 40 and 2,000, 360 there. 66, notice he starts listing all these things. The horses, the camels. Some of the chief fathers, verse number 68, they begin to offer freely for the house of God. Verse 69, they gave after their ability unto the treasure of the work, three score and 1,000 drams of gold and 5,000 pound of silver and 100 priest garments. The priests, the Levites, some of the people, the singers, the porters, and the Nethanyims dwelt in their cities and all Israel in their cities. So there's a cost in going back. I look over in chapter number three and let's look at the conflict. There's a conflict because they begin to lay the foundation and things don't go too well, especially for the old timers. I look in Ezra chapter number three, verse number eight. In the second year of their coming unto the house of God at Jerusalem in the second month begins Rebobal, the son of Shilatel, and Joshua, the son of Josedat, and the remnant of their brethren, the priests, the Levites, and all that would come up out of the captivity of Jerusalem. and appointed the Levites from 20 years old and upward to set forward the work of the house of the Lord. So they began to build the workmen and their building things. Verse number 10, the builders laid the foundation of the temple at the Lord. They set the priests and their apparel with trumpets and the Levites, the son of Asaph with cymbals to praise the Lord after the ordinance of David, king of Israel. And they sang together by chorus and praising and giving thanks unto the Lord because he is good. For his mercy endureth forever toward Israel. And all the people shouted with a great shout when they praised the Lord because the foundation of the house of the Lord was laid. That was a big deal. They came back after 70 years and they go to this place. God said, that's where my name's going to be. That's where my presence is going to be. Most important structure that's ever existed on the face of the planet. And they lay this foundation. They got people standing by. They're playing these trumpets and they're beginning to sing. And it is a big deal. They lay that last block, however they do the thing. and it's a momentous occasion. But notice the problem. There's first of all, inner conflict. Look in verse 11. I mean, I'm sorry, verse 12. But many of the priests and Levites and chief of the fathers who were ancient men that had seen the first house when the foundation of this house was laid before their eyes, wept with a loud voice and many shouted aloud for joy so that the people could not discern the noise of the shout of joy from the noise of the weeping of the people. For the people shouted with a loud shout, and the noise was heard afar off. You got some folks up in their 80s and 90s that are sitting there thinking, this ain't nothing. They saw one of the wonders of the ancient world. Remember when I gave you those billions, whatever the numbers were, the billions of numbers, of dollars amount of that temple? The Bible calls it exceeding magnifical. And they said, this ain't nothing. It's nothing like it used to be. I remember back in the day we had revival for two weeks. Church sure ain't nothing what it used to be. We'd have the sawdust trail and people would get saved. God sure was doing something. Man, that preacher knew how to preach back then. People knew how to pray back then. There's some inner conflict. There's a sob of regret. There's two perspectives. Now, both of these perspectives are good. I'm glad we've got some older folks here, and I'm glad we've got some younger folks. You need both. You need the perspective of both. You have the sob of regret, but you also have the shout of rejoicing. You see that here. The woes of weeping and the shouting of surety. The old, they're looking back. And you need that perspective. Those who won't learn from the past are destined to repeat the mistakes of the past. And you've got to have some type of touch with the past. I love to read history and things like that. It just kind of, I don't know, it's just nostalgic about, sometimes it gets a little weird. You know, it just kind of freaks you out after a while, it's like you're transported back in that stuff, so you have to watch that. However, you want to learn from those things, and you want to learn from the past. The old, they're looking back, and the young people, they're looking ahead. And there's two perspectives, they're very needed. But notice, some people didn't see the present. They didn't see what was in front of them. 70 years of captivity, now they're able to lay the temple. God is doing something. And they can't see what's in front of them, and they can't see the future. They can't see what's way out in front of them. And it may be because they've lived their life, and they're like, what's the big deal? And you can't blame people for having that perspective. However, how are you helping the ones coming up behind you? Moses, in the last part of his life, he sung the sweetest songs, he climbed the highest mountain, and he trained the greatest generals after him. I got a message I preach on Moses there. He finally goes up, he dies on top of Mount Pisgah, he gets to see everything. He doesn't get to go into the land, the Lord says, I'm gonna show it to you. And then he gets up there, and the guy who couldn't even talk, remember when God called him, he says, Lord, I can't speak. He had a stammer, he had a problem with speech. He writes Psalm 32, the song of Moses. Sweetest song he ever wrote. My speech shall distill as the dew, he says. As the fresh water on the mown grass. He goes through that whole thing in Deuteronomy 32. And then he trains Joshua the general and Caleb the conqueror. The law can't get you in the land. Moses can't get you in the land. It takes Joshua. The same word for Jesus, the Hebrew word for Jesus. And so just because you're at the end of the line doesn't mean you gotta just always look back and say, it was better back then. Have you read the book of Ecclesiastes? It says you do not inquire wisely when you say that. I don't have the verse right on the tip of my tongue, but he basically says, you know, don't declare that the former days were better than these. You know, you're falling into a trap. And I can fall into that trap sometimes. And I'm not near the age of some of you. Some of you are about double than I am, just about. Man, I got to start retracting on that. I'm getting over the overheel. Maybe some of you ain't double my age yet. But you begin to look at this thing, you've got to be careful of falling into that trap to realize and to think that there's nothing to live for because you don't have anything to look forward to. So there's a danger in that. So there's an internal problem. And then there's a, you've got a perverted perspective, now a disordered discernment. They're looking at the wrong things. They're locked in the past, they're lost in the past. And there's a lack of discernment, a loss of direction. You can't build up if you're always tearing things down. You can't go forward if you're always looking back. You know, the kids, they put them in the car seat. to a certain age. Do they still do that where they make you put on? I know they make you do it, but do they make you put them in the back seat? Is that how it works? You've got to put them in the back seat. So they're always looking at where they came from. And finally, they get old enough, they get a perspective where they can start looking where they're going. That's profound when you get to think about it. The Lord wants you to look at where you came from, but not always. Eventually, you need to turn around and look at where you're going. So you can do something for the Lord in the future. Those old folks, man, they couldn't get past that thing. Here's the verse I actually had in my notes, Ecclesiastes 7.10. So you lose hope, excitement, and anticipation. So you want to make sure you get that. So there was some conflict going on. There's inner conflict here. God's mercy is the thread that joins the past and the future. We've got to have the past, we've got to learn from the old paths, but we've got to look to the future. So there's a great balance here in this passage. Notice also chapter number 4, there's an outer conflict. There's a weakening of the hands. Verse number 4, the people of the land weakened the hands of the people. The enemies of God begin to try to frustrate the work. They're trying to build the temple and the world doesn't want them to build the temple. There's a failing. There's frustration, verse number five. There's counselors that are hired to do that. Blatant opposition to the truth. There's a mixing of the world and the God's people here. And that's a great lesson for us to learn from. Go over to chapter number five. We have conflict when you try to go back. We also have consolation when you have conflict. Look in chapter 5, verses 1 and 2. Then the prophets Haggai, the prophet, and Zechariah, the son of Edu, prophesied unto the Jews that were in Judah and Jerusalem in the name of the Lord God of Israel, even unto them, Then rose up Zerubbabel the son of Shillatil, and Jeshua the son of Josedach, and began to build the house of God which is at Jerusalem. And with them were the prophets of God helping them." So all the people on the outside, they put pressure on them to stop, and they stopped temporarily. Then the prophets Haggai and Zechariah said, hey, what are you doing? You need to do what God told you to do. And they encouraged them. And you can read those prophets there. And you'll see some of that come through. So there's consolation about doing this and they receive comfort, they receive encouragement. And then notice in chapter six, there's finally the completion of the temple. Look in chapter six, verse 15. This house was finished on the third day of the month Adar which is the sixth year of the reign of Darius the King. The children of Israel, the priests and the Levites and the rest of the children of the captivity kept the dedication of this house of God with joy and offered at the dedication of this house of God 100 bullocks, 200 rams, 400 lambs and for a sin offering for all Israel Twelve he goats according to the number of the tribes of Israel and they set the priests and their divisions and the Levites and their courses For the service of God, which is at Jerusalem as it is written in the book of Moses. This is about five fifty five sixteen BC approximately and Ezra brought the religious rule and then Nehemiah brings the civic or civil rule when he restores order So things go along pretty good, although when you read the book of Nehemiah, you get to the end of Nehemiah, you realize there's so much corruption. They had, obviously, a lot of corruption from the world. You'll read about the Jews, they were so perverted and twisted because of all this captivity. And I guess you could really go through and preach a whole series of messages comparing the church to Israel in the sense of being captive to the world. If you want to take it in types, you think about the moon in the scriptures. The sun's a type of Christ. The moon's a type of the church. The moon reflects the light of the sun. Everything revolves around the sun, not the other way around. So the sun is Jesus Christ, Psalm 19. The moon is the church, Song of Solomon, I think chapter number five. And about 1969, the world steps on the moon. So if you go back and you look in the 60s and the 70s and the 80s, you know what's been happening in the church? The church has been completely infiltrated by the world, overall speaking. And so that has had an effect on the church. And in the book of Nehemiah, toward the end of it, you had Jews, the kids, they were speaking, they weren't even speaking pure biblical Hebrew. They're speaking the language of the Gentiles. And Nehemiah gets on to them, and there's intermarrying going on between the Jews and the Gentiles, which were strictly forbidden in the Old Testament for those Jews. And so you could take that and type and definitely get some devotional application for now. There's so much intermarry and Christians are so carnal and so full of the world that you get to the end of the book of Nehemiah and you realize it's gonna be a rough, there's gonna be a rough time here. And of course, as you study Jewish history, and you get up toward the end of the time of Malachi, the last book in our Bible is the book of Malachi and it ends with a judgment. Last word in the Old Testament is curse. says he's going to come and smite the earth with a curse. And they're done. There's a 400 year period of silence and God shuts off the prophets and things go from bad to worse and eventually the Persian Empire gives way to the Greek Empire. Of course we have Alexander and that's why we have the uh... platonic philosophy and all those kind of things come into you know greek philosophy and that kind of stuff and that new testament is written in greek as a result of that influence of the the greeks the great thinkers bunch of them were queers and uh... that's what they were and uh... you begin to see that influence come in with the greek empire and then the roman empire takes over but around one sixty eight bc anniacus epiphanes he was a uh... syrian ruler he invaded Jerusalem and he desecrated the altar actually on December the 25th which is the day they worship the sun god if you don't know that from history Constantine he married that to Christianity in three the edict of Milan 315 or whatever it is but in December 25th 168 BC Antiochus he comes in he desecrates the altar and he offers a pig on the Jewish altar and of course he you know, does this revolt to the Jewish people, and there's a war that breaks out, and a fellow named Matthias, he's a, Matthias, he's a priest, his sons get a group together to fight against these people, and there's a three-year war that takes place, and a name is given that means hammer, named Maccabeus, and you've heard of the Maccabees, the period of the Maccabees, and actually the apocryphal writings that were in a lot of the old Bibles, like the Geneva Bible and the old King James Bibles. They used to have the Apocrypha in between the Testaments. It has the Book of the Maccabees in it, and it tells some of those histories of what took place with the Maccabean Revolt and things like that. But anyway, three years go by to the date, and they finally defeat the evil forces of the Syrians there, and they set up a festival there around December 25th, that time of the year, the Festival of Lights. And that's what the Jews celebrate today is Hanukkah. You've heard of that around Christmastime. The Jews have Hanukkah. Everybody else has Santa Claus and Christmas, Santa Claus and Easter eggs. I mean, Santa Claus and Christmas presents. So that's the time of the restoration there that takes place during the period of the Maccabees. Like I said, that's about 168. When the Romans take over, Herod begins to placate the Jews and things like that. So he restores the temple that's there. The temple's not burned to the ground again or anything. Herod comes in and he begins to make these restorations and remodels the temple about 20 BC. Turn over to John chapter two, New Testament, notice a mention of this. John chapter number two. This is the same Herod that had all the babies killed when Christ was young. There's different Herods. The name Herod is like a title. But notice in John chapter number 2 you have this mention. Depending on the chronologer, it's around 16 BC or 20 BC that Herod began to build his version. He brought all kind of dirt in. He backfilled. He added all kind of area called the court of the Gentiles and all these things to the temple area. Great courtyard that he built and so forth. Took all these, a lot of years. Look in John chapter two, verse number 19. Jesus answered, Senator, then destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up. Then said the Jews, 40 and six years was this temple in building and wilt thou rear it up in three days? But he spanked the temple of his body. So Herod's temple was built, and I forget, I had, I guess I lost the, when it was actually finally completed. It wasn't even complete during Christ's day. Remember in Matthew 24 when the disciples said, look at the buildings of the temples, and then he says, there's not gonna be a stone left here. We'll look at some of those references. But I want you to see this real quick. I mentioned it last time. You're already in John chapter number two. Back up, if you will, to verse 16. And by the way, the temple's mentioned quite often in the New Testament. Jesus goes into the temple, remember, when he's 12 years of age. He's left behind after the feast day, and Mary and Joseph come back, and they find him in the temple. Of course, when they say in the temple, they don't always mean in the actual temple structure. That could include the whole huge court that was around it. Oftentimes, when it says Jesus taught in the temple, that's what they're talking about, because they had a court set outside of it, a place that the Gentiles could go. They actually had a sign that no Gentile could cross a certain point. If he did, there was a law that he could be killed. And so they had a court of the Gentiles, and then they had a court the Jews could go, and they could be taught, and they had all kind of things set up there, and that's where oftentimes Jesus would be teaching. But notice back here in John chapter two, I mentioned this last week. Verse 16, this is when Jesus, the first part of his ministry, where he cast out the money changers. And he said unto them that sold the doves, take these things hence, make not my father's house and house of merchandise. That's what he calls it, my father's house. All right, come over to Matthew real quick. Go to Matthew chapter number 12. And then we'll look in chapter, we'll stay in Matthew for a couple of verses. Matthew chapter 12. This is when they got on to Christ, they're upset because the disciples were eating, plucking ears of corn on the Sabbath day. And he says, don't you remember what David did when he was hungry and he ate the showbread, so on and so forth? Look down in verse number 20, I'm sorry, verse number five, Matthew chapter 12, verse number five. For have you not read in the law how that on the Sabbath days the priests in the temple profane the Sabbath and are blameless? But I'm saying to you that in this place is one greater than the temple. He's talking about himself. So now think about this, all those old people that are watching the foundations of the temple be laid and they're weeping because they're like, man, you just don't know what it was when Solomon was here, when Solomon built it and we had God's presence in the temple and it was magnificent and it had all the gold and all this kind of stuff. They don't even know what they're saying because one day that very temple that Zerubbabel helped build and Ezra and all those people, Joshua the high priest, That's gonna be the place Jesus is gonna go. And he says, there's one greater than the temple. All right, I'll stay in Matthew. So he, first of all, he called it my father's house. Go to chapter 21 of Matthew. Matthew chapter number 21. And notice, if you will, in verse number 12, he goes to the temple and he cast out again. This is the second purification. One's at the beginning of his ministry. We saw that in John 2. This is the end of his ministry where he cast them out that are selling these things in the temple. Notice this time what he calls it, verse 13. And said unto them, it is written, my house shall be called a house of prayer. He doesn't say my father's house. He says my house. All right, come over to chapter 23. Matthew chapter 23, the classic sermon of Christ preaching to the religious rulers of the day, Matthew chapter 23. He preaches to them. He actually mentions the whole inclusion of the Old Testament from verse number 35, from Genesis to 2 Chronicles. That's the blood of Abel to the blood of Zacharias, the son of Barakias, that's recorded in 2 Chronicles. That's the Old Testament for the Jew. He says, all this shall come upon this generation, verse 36, verse 37, O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets, and stonest them which are sent unto thee, how often will I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not. Behold, your house is left unto you desolate. For I say unto you, you shall not see me henceforth until you shall say, blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord. So he calls it your house. Then also notice in chapter 24 when he gives the Olivet Discourse, look what he says in verses one and two. Jesus went out and departed from the temple and his disciples came to him for to show him the buildings of the temple. Jesus said unto them, see ye not all these things? Verily I say unto you, there shall not be left here one stone upon another that shall not be thrown down." That's a prophecy and you can also jot down Luke 19, 44 and Luke 21, 5 and 6 because those are prophecies about the coming destruction of the temple. And those things actually come to pass. In A.D. 70, Titus the Roman Emperor comes in and he lays a siege against Jerusalem. He sets up a perimeter, a wall around the whole city and he won't suffer any Jews to come out, and he begins to starve them out, basically. And something like 500 Jews, the road that goes down into the city of Jerusalem, he puts them on crosses, 500 Jews. That's the same people that said when Jesus is on the cross, his blood, or before he went to the cross, the Pilate, his blood be on us and on our children. Boy, those children sure got it. and 500 of them crucified outside the city. They lay siege on Jerusalem and they decimate the temple. Supposedly, and I didn't have time to double check all these sources on this, those soldiers were ordered not to destroy the 500 year old temple, but because they were thinking there's some Solomon's gold in that temple, maybe underneath that temple. They leveled it and turned every single stone upside down, just like Christ had said. That thing was destroyed. And it's been destroyed ever since. 1967, the Seven Days War, they go in and the Jews actually capture that area. And there's a rabbi there that says that when there's some Jews up there on that temple mount, come off of that area because you're unclean. And they won't let them go to that area. And in a political expediency move, determined to try to make peace with the Muslims and they give up that Temple Mount region. I think that was just God not letting them have it until he's ready for them to have it. And so that's Ezra's temple or Zerubbabel's temple. That's the rebuilt temple, the same temple Herod takes and transforms into. They say Herod's temple, when he got done with it, you couldn't hardly look at it. It was so bright. the way they had it garnished and so forth. Kind of like maybe the pyramid was years ago, the Giza pyramid, they say, whatever the outside covering, reflective. But Herod's Temple was a great wonder and of course it was destroyed. And now if you go to Jerusalem in that same area, you're gonna see that Muslim mosque over there. All right, we'll stop there for tonight and next week we'll talk some about the tribulation and maybe even the Temple in Millennium. Lord, thank you for the scriptures tonight. Thank you for some of the devotional application we can take away from having a perspective of the past and of the future. Lord, I pray that you'd help us to have a balance of that. Not just the sob of regret, Lord, but the shout of rejoicing. Lord, help us to keep the right perspective. There's something to live for. We know that The Holy Spirit's still alive and well. We know that you still save souls, but we also know where we are in the latency in church period. We're optimistic in you, but we're pessimistic toward this world. Help us to keep the right balance. Lord, help us to look for you. And even so, come, Lord Jesus, is our prayer. Thank you for these lessons. I pray that you'd help us to apply them to our lives. In Jesus' name we pray, amen.