Tisha B'Av
Tiffany Ann Lewis 

Destruction and renewal

isha B’Av has been called the "saddest day in Jewish history".  It marks the day the Temple was destroyed by fire, three weeks after the walls were breached.  It is a day of stringent fasting that closes three full weeks of mourning over the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem.  It falls between July 20^th to August 9-10^th. 

The Temple represented God dwelling with man.  It served as the point of contact between heaven and earth, therefore its destruction is regarded as the greatest tragedy of Jewish history bringing with it physical exile and spiritual displacement. 

Why then would God allow this amazing structure to be destroyed?  I believe it was to make room for the new one, the habitation whose foundation, builder, and maker, is God and God alone. 

King David wanted to build a house for God but the Lord had other plans.  He wanted to make David into a house and sent the prophet Nathan to him saying, “He will make you a house.”  (2 Samuel 7:11)  The Lord never desired to dwell in a building; He desires to dwell in us.  

Beloved, we are living in the days that Jesus spoke of in Matthew 9:15; "Can the friends of the bridegroom mourn as long as the bridegroom is with them? But the days will come when the bridegroom will be taken away from them, and then they will fast.”    

The fast has begun and in a spiritual sense, so has the rebuilding of the Third Temple for we are living stones being built into a dwelling place for the Lord.  However, there are many obstacles to overcome, for the enemy hinders the construction with his greatest weapon, the pride of life. 

Stone and dirt are the lowest of all matter of the earth.  Yet in the beginning of time, the Lord took of the dust of the earth and formed man and breathed His Breath into him.  God takes from the lowest level of matter and says it is “good”.  Unfortunately, the enemy deceives us into needing to be better. 

The wisdom of man despises this lowly material, this stone of humility, but the Lord loves it.  He loves the natural and raw state and it is from this stone that He will build His bride, the New Jerusalem.

James 4:10 says, “Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord, and He will lift you up.”

I have to admit, I hear the words humility and brokenness and I shutter.  What does that look like?  What am I going to have to do?  How low is low? 

Jesus gives us a clue in Luke 14:8-10 saying, “When you are invited by anyone to a wedding feast, do not sit down in the best place, lest one more honorable than you be invited by him; and he who invited you and him come and say to you, ‘Give place to this man,’ and then you begin with shame to take the lowest place.  But when you are invited, go and sit down in the lowest place, so that when he who invited you comes he may say to you, ‘Friend, go up higher.’” 

Through these two scriptures we see that the only way we can go higher is if we go lower.  However, choosing the lowest seat in hopes of getting moved up is not humility because the motive is to get higher. 

The definition of humble is to bow down.  The definition of worship also means to bow down.  As we can see from the previous scripture, humility doesn’t have an action, humility has a fragrance. 

When Jesus was in Bethany, a woman came in having an alabaster flask of very costly oil and she broke the flask and poured it on His head.  There were some who were indignant saying, “Why was this fragrant oil wasted?”  (Mark 14:4)

Beloved, the builders will reject this stone of brokenness, the foundation of our faith, every time. 

There is a law of the altar that says, “In every place where I record My name I will come to you, and I will bless you.  And if you make Me an altar of stone, you shall not build it of hewn stone, for if you use your tool on it, you have profaned it.” (Exodus 20:24-25)

An un-hewn stone is a stone in its original condition.  It cannot be altered or beautified in anyway if it is to be used to make an altar for the Lord.  It simply is what God created it to be. 

When God reveals His Name as Savior, it is a natural response to want to make an altar and lay down our lives upon it as a living sacrifice for Him.  That is a good and an acceptable action. However, if it is done to gain acceptance and approval with God, we have missed the whole point of the Cross and defiled the very Name He revealed – Jesus, which means “Jehovah is Salvation.”  (Strong's #2424)

If we look back to the Temple, which represented God dwelling with man, we must also note that it was the place where animal sacrifices were made for the forgiveness of sins.  Leviticus 17:11 states; “for it is the blood that makes atonement for the soul.”  So you can understand the full impact of the loss of the Temple to the Jewish people.  Without the Temple, there is no place to offer animal sacrifices and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins.

That brings us right back to the only name that can save us from our sins, Jesus – Jehovah is Salvation. 

I want to offer a visual representation of this from the Hebrew alphabet.  The most important of God's Names is the four-letter Name Yahovah or as some might say, Jehovah.  This name is too sacred to be uttered, abbreviated, or written so the word LORD is used instead, written in all capital letters to distinguish it.  The four Hebrew letters that make up the name Jehovah are, yud, hay, vav, hay, which are written below from right to left.  
         
In Hebrew, every letter is represented by a pictogram.  The yud is a hand and the vav is a nail.  Beloved, within the unspeakable name of God, we find a nail-pierced hand.  God Himself has provided, once and for all, a sacrifice for the sins of mankind and His name is Jesus.  There is nothing for us to earn, it is a free gift of grace that was provided by the Name of the LORD.

The devil has blinded many to this truth, and for countless others, he entices them to walk the path of performance in order to be acceptable to God.  The hand of God has already done it.  Hanging from the cross, nails piercing His hands and feet Jesus said, “It is finished!” (John 19:30)  There is nothing else we need to do to be accepted.  In fact, in light of the law of the altar, anything else that we would try to do to make ourselves worthy of such a tremendous sacrifice profanes His work. 

Even as I write there is a struggle within my heart.  Law and temple ritual beckon me to go back to the old way of seeking to earn God’s acceptance through what I can do for God versus resting in what He has done for me.    Because He loved us, He died for us paying the price for our sin so that we wouldn’t have to.  What more can our hands possibly add to what the nail-pierced hand of God has already done?  Forgive us LORD.

It’s so simple yet we make it so hard.  We are free.  Let’s shake the devil off our back and accept the love and forgiveness that God offers us through His Son Jesus – Jehovah is Salvation.  Let’s respond to this gift with a humble heart of worship becoming the house not made with human hands, the dwelling place of God.  Amen and amen.