Welcome to 10 minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life and the time it takes to get to work.

I'm Patrick Miller. And I'm Keith Simon. Right now we're

learning what it looks like to follow Jesus by working our way through the

Gospel of Luke. In college a few of my buddies and I decided to spend spring break doing a

backpacking trip one of my favorite things to do and we went up to a little known

National Park, Voyager's National Park in Minnesota but on the way up the

car we're driving in, it starts malfunctioning, and then it just stops.

I mean, it just turns off smack in the middle of Nowhere, Iowa.

So we end up getting a tow to the nearest Ford dealership, which is in Mason City, Iowa, and the mechanic tells us that our transmission went out.

He says, it's going to be a whole day, we're going to have to stay there overnight, because it's going to take a whole day before you can replace it.

We're like, wait a second, replace the transmission? Can't you just repair it?

And he says, no, it's beyond repair. You're going to have to replace this.

And isn't that always the way it goes with things that

malfunction, right? You've only got two options, repair it or replace it. Those are

the two choices and if you have to replace it you have to replace it.

The city of Jerusalem and the temple found at its heart were kind of like the engine

that was propelling God's mission to the world, God's mission through Israel.

What was that mission? Well starting all the way

back with Abraham, the mission was to bless the nations by drawing them back into relationship

with God. Israel's civic life, their life together, their worship.

It was supposed to be taking place at the heart of Jerusalem inside of the temple,

and that was supposed to be a display case that was showing God's character to the world,

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