Tabernacle for the Nations
If we continue
in Acts to Chapter 15, we find something even more interesting.
“And certain
men came down form Judea and taught the brethren, unless you are circumcised
according to the custom of Moses, you cannot be saved.” (Acts 15:1)
Men were coming
to the newly believing Gentiles and telling them they basically needed to
convert to Judaism to be saved. The apostles decided to meet to discuss the
matter. When they had assembled, Peter got up to testify, marveling at how God
had brought the Gentiles into the covenant with Israel, giving them the Holy
Spirit in the same way He had the Jewish believers. James, Jesus’ brother, then
got up to speak:
“Men and
brethren, listen to me: Simon has declared how God at the first visited the
Gentiles to take out of them a people for His name. And with this the words of
the prophets agree, just as it is written: ‘After this I will return and will
rebuild the Tabernacle of David, which has fallen down; and I will rebuild
its ruins, and I will set it up; so that the rest of mankind may seek the Lord,
even the Gentiles who are called by My name . . .”
Acts 15:13-17
Here in this
quote, James is showing us something extraordinary. He is quoting this verse
about the rebuilding of David’s Tabernacle in direct parallel to the discussion
about God’s plan for Gentiles coming to believe in Jesus.
This seems to
indicate that the disciples had no problem with a physical Temple still standing
in Jerusalem after the giving of the Holy Spirit. In fact, they seemed to see
the Temple as a place that would unite the believing Gentiles with the Jews.
Could this be
why their Lord and Messiah stood in the Temple courts and declared that His Father’s
House would be a house of prayer for all nations? (Benjamin Hilton, Jesus
and the Temple: Re-examining the Scriptural Idea of a Temple in Jerusalem from
a Christian Perspective [2020], 93-94, emphasis in original)