Hey Bible readers, I'm Tara Lee Cobble, and I'm your host for the Bible Recap.

Today's reading has a lot in common with tomorrow's reading, so today we'll zoom in on the first half, and tomorrow we'll recap the last half.

One of the things that helps me through these passages is to look at the context. First, who is this message for? Some of that

is up for debate. Second, what in this text is information and what in this text is instruction.

As we read through Matthew's account of this tomorrow, aim to use those lenses for the context. You can

ask yourself things like, is Jesus telling me something God is going to do, or something the disciples were supposed to do, or something I am supposed to do? If he's telling us what God is going to do, it's information. If he's telling us what the disciples were supposed to do, it's still just information, as far as we're concerned. But if he's telling us something we're supposed to do, it's instruction. Let's jump in. Jesus has been teaching in the temple, and as they're on their way out the door, one of his disciples is like, isn't this place the best? And Jesus just reigns all over his parade by saying, yeah, these buildings are awesome. Enjoy them all you can because they're about to be rubble. This is the temple. It's a huge complex built with massive stones, the largest of which weighs

570 tons. That's more than one million pounds for just this one stone. We see this stone

when we do the Western Wall Tunnel in Jerusalem, and it's enormous.

If you were with us in the Old Testament, you probably remember what a challenge it was to get this temple rebuilt. But how God provided the funds for supplies and protection for the workers,

he made it all happen. And now, Jesus says, God's going to make it unhappen. Jesus says

the temple will be destroyed.

Less than 40 years after he prophesies this, Rome fulfills that prophecy.

The Jews will mount an ongoing revolt, and Rome will retaliate by raising the temple, just

like Jesus said.

We also read about this in Luke 19, where Jesus wept over Jerusalem.

In that passage, we saw that the temple's destruction is judgment

on Israel for rejecting Jesus. So which is it? Why is the temple destroyed? Is it the revolt of the Jews?

Or is it Israel's rejection of Jesus? Yes. God uses Rome as a tool in his hand to bring judgment

on Israel. We saw God do this lots of times in the Old Testament,

but it's one of the first times we see this idea in the Gospels. By the way, we read a similar

sounding prophecy earlier in John 219, where Jesus compared his body to the temple. In that passage,

he said, destroy this temple and I will raise it again in three days. That prophecy refers to his

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