In Rio there is a massive Jesus statue called Cristo Redentor (Christ the Redeemer). It towers over the city and is a major tourist attraction. There are plans to build a even larger statue of Christ in Brazil. All of this masonry i doesn’t think impresses our Messiah. In Rio during the 2016 Olympics, the Olympians were accosted and threatened with molestation and rape, oh but its ok there is a giant statue of Jesus to make up for it (sarcasm).
It doesn’t matter how many statues you build if your actions ate sinful. King David after having adultery with Bathsheba and murdering Uriah became obsessed with building a temple of stone for God. The Lord told David via the prophet Nathan that he has no desire of a earthen temple, “When King David was settled in his palace and the Lord had given him rest from all the surrounding enemies, the king summoned Nathan the prophet. “Look,” David said, “I am living in a beautiful cedar palace,[a] but the Ark of God is out there in a tent!”
Nathan replied to the king, “Go ahead and do whatever you have in mind, for the Lord is with you.”
But that same night the Lord said to Nathan,
“Go and tell my servant David, ‘This is what the Lord has declared: Are you the one to build a house for me to live in? I have never lived in a house, from the day I brought the Israelites out of Egypt until this very day. I have always moved from one place to another with a tent and a Tabernacle as my dwelling. Yet no matter where I have gone with the Israelites, I have never once complained to Israel’s tribal leaders, the shepherds of my people Israel. I have never asked them, “Why haven’t you built me a beautiful cedar house?” (2 Samuel 7:1-7, cross ref 1 Chronicles 17:1-6). And yet David persisted, grooming his son Solomon to be the one to build the First Temple God never wanted. Solomon’s story is no better, he builds a temple to the Lord God who forbids other gods (Exodus 20:3-5), then marries one thousand pagan wives and embraces their other gods.
In Church times the same happened. Constantine constructed the first part of St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome and then the Hagia Sophia (Church of Holy Wisdom) in Turkey. He did all this when Christ lives in us not stones, “The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples made by human hands,” (Acts 17:24), “However, the Most High does not dwell in houses made by human hands. As the prophet says,
Heaven is my throne,
and the earth is my footstool.
What kind of house will you build for me, says the Lord,
or what is the place of my rest?
Did not my hand make all these things?’” (Acts 7:46-50), and we Christians are the temples of God, “Do you not know that you are God's temple and that God's Spirit dwells in you? If anyone destroys God's temple, God will destroy him. For God's temple is holy, and you are that temple.” (1 Corinthians 3:16-17).
And yet the masonry continues. People build statues of Christ, crosses, and other heroes when they fail to do the weightier matters, “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, pretenders (hypocrites)! For you give a tenth of your mint and dill and cummin, and have neglected and omitted the weightier (more important) matters of the Law—right and justice and mercy and fidelity. These you ought [particularly] to have done, without neglecting the others,” (Matthew 23:23), “Pure and genuine religion in the sight of God the Father means caring for orphans and widows in their distress and refusing to let the world corrupt you,” (James 1:27), and “If a brother or sister is poorly clothed and lacking in daily food, and one of you says to them, “Go in peace, be warmed and filled,” without giving them the things needed for the body, what good is that? So also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead.” (James 2:15-17). People would rather erect white washed tombs and statues than actually serve like Jesus did. This is because of vanity. They want to be remembered as the ones who donated, built, designed, and created the marble ‘sacrifice’ to God. It acts as a legacy and penance for the person who seeks the large statue or structure on a hill, and all the while they neglect the weightier matters, and try to cloak their sins in images of Christ they’ve commissioned. I do not think our Lord is impressed by these stone and wood deflections that serve to replace what He asks of us. They all will melt when Christ returns to burn this world with fire, “But the Day of the Lord will come like a thief. The heavens will disappear with a roar, the elements will be destroyed by fire, and the earth and its works will be laid bare.” (2 Peter 3:10). Only us who trust in Jesus will survive the flames. All these stone sacrifices will fall like the Temple did to Titus and his Roman armies. Amen.
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