Comments on: Worthy of weepingâ€¦

By: Rick Frueh

Rick Frueh — Tue, 18 Sep 2007 23:27:22 +0000

Yea, Chris, that’s also legit. Something was going on since the old guys wept and the young guys rejoiced.

By: Chris P.

Chris P. — Tue, 18 Sep 2007 23:23:03 +0000

What if they wept because they never thought that they would see the foundation of the temple laid again in their lifetimes?
That is the way I always teach this passage.

By: jazzact13

jazzact13 — Tue, 18 Sep 2007 16:41:31 +0000

I’ve heard the claim made which goes some like that, ‘the people involved in the way God worked years ago will cry the loudest against those involved in the way God works today’. I’m not sure I buy that, as those who say that are usually the ones claiming to be involved in some ‘today’ work, and it bypasses the question of whether what they are doing is really of God or not.

After all, the church has been hurt plenty by people claiming to be doing God’s work, but aren’t really.

Assuming that people of years ago made mistake, and it’s a safe assumption, and assuming the people today are making mistakes, and again that’s safe, is it still really a good excuse to say that “Believers today go too far one way because people years ago went too far the other way”? Isn’t that kind of like falling off of a horse on one side, then falling again on the other because one was trying to hard not to fall of on the same side?

If we need a correction today, do we need an overcorrection? Is the emphasis more on doing right then one trying to separate oneself from what was?

By: Rick Frueh

Rick Frueh — Tue, 18 Sep 2007 15:54:39 +0000

This is a great question. I used to believe the old men were weeping because they had seen the glory of the former temple and did not like this new one. But if we read the context we see that God promised that the glory of this latter temple would exceed the first.

The temple in question would see Jesus circumcised and teaching the doctors of the law. It would eventually witness the Lord’s judgment and eventual crucifixion. This new temple was to be used greatly of God in the midst of much compromise, hence the cleansing of the temple.

I agree with Todd, the old men wept they didn’t spit.

By: Phil Miller

Phil Miller — Tue, 18 Sep 2007 15:50:42 +0000

This is a great insight. Movements such as PDL or the Emerging Church do not happen in a vacuum. They are in large part responses or corrections to past issues.

I see a correlation to a phenomemon that I see a lot in campus ministry. Every now and then, a parent (or grandparent) will corner me or my wife and complain to us about their son or daughter not being involved in our ministry. They ask us to invite them to events or Bible Studies, etc.Â (which most of the time has already been done). Nine out of ten times, though, the kid will never show up. A minority of them get involved with other Christian groups, which is awesome, but most of them want to get as far away from the Church as possible. Then parents come and blame ministry leaders for their children not being involved. These kids did not grow up in the wild (although, with some that’s questionable); they lived in their parents house for 18 years or so. Yet, the parents many times want no responsibility.

Now, I realize that even the best parents can have rebellious kids, but in many cases parents are just reaping what they’ve sown. The same can be said for churches.