Matins Devotion: August 17, 2026

2 Samuel 7:1-17

When our Lord is put on trial, the final nail put in His coffin, so to speak, is that Jesus claimed He could destroy the temple and rebuild it in three days. This is not, of course, what Jesus said nor what He meant when He uttered the words, “destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up.” Jesus spoke of His own body as the greater temple. But despite their misunderstanding, the men who sentence Him to death still understand the greater point that Jesus is making. He has claimed to be greater than the physical temple. And that’s the claim they’ll use as proof that He needs to die.

But in all of this, these men who are supposed to know the Scriptures better than anyone reveal their pathetic ignorance of them. As we heard in our reading from 2 Samuel this morning, David tells Nathan the prophet that he wants to make the tabernacle permanent. He wants to build an immovable structure for the Lord. He wants to build God a temple. But God responds by promising David that He will be the one to build David a temple. He will build him a house, not a house of cedar or stone that can be torn down, as the temple of Solomon would be, but a house crafted from the very flesh of David himself. And that house would be established forever when David’s offspring was disciplined with the rod and stripes of men, when David’s Son died and rose again.

This wasn’t an obscure verse of an obscure book, buried under layers of complicated nuance. This was a direct prophecy spoken in the middle of a very foundational story that all these men certainly knew. But this is the danger of pride. It doesn’t just obscure the edges of the faith. It blots out the very center of it.

So turn from your pride. Don’t boast of what you have to offer God. Don’t trust in all the good you can do for Him. Before you promise to build Him a house, look at the house of salvation He built for you. See how the Son of God, the Son of David, revealed Himself as the true temple by suffering death at the hands of those who condemned Him by twisting His words about the earthly temple. There, at the cross, when He received the rod and the stripes of men, Jesus Christ built the true temple with the bricks of His flesh and the mortar of His blood. There He destroyed your sins and erased your transgressions for existence. And with His resurrection, He gave you the right to enter the very house of God and live with Him in His kingdom forever.