Lesson 6: A Humanitarian at the Temple

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Study Guide Pages 42-51

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Lesson Key Points

The Old Testament temple was a magnificent and marvelous building.
However, most people weren’t even allowed to enter the actual temple.
The structure of the temple taught God’s people about the severe nature of sin.
The sacrifices of the temple taught God’s people about the need for a perfect substitute.
Countless animals were sacrificed daily, but ultimately none of them could take away sin.
Instead, the sacrifices served to point to a greater sacrifice, Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God.
The sacrifice Jesus made paid for all sins’ debt, for all time, all people, and all places.
When he tore the temple curtain from top to bottom, God announced, “Payment made in full.”
Jesus’ payment made you worthy to enter and remain in God’s presence for all eternity.
Jesus met all the restrictions and fulfilled all of God’s requirements for us.

More Key Bible Verses

Read Hebrews 9:1-10:23.

The writer of Hebrews describes the once for all sacrifice that Jesus made for all humanity.

Read and study the following quotes from “A Humanitarian at the Temple” chapter 6 of God—The Ultimate Humanitarian.

Because God created us, he knows that we are “visual learners.” In vivid ways, God showed us how he dealt with sin and reconciled man to himself.

That Jesus’ death paid for all sin is something God gave dramatic proof of. At the moment of Jesus’ death “the curtain of the temple was torn in two” (Luke 23:44). This curtain or veil had closed off the Holy of Holies for centuries. It had vividly symbolized that sin separates humanity from God. God now suddenly rips it wide open. He destroyed it because Jesus, by paying for the world’s sin with his death, had reconciled God and mankind. “God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them” (2 Corinthians 5:19).
God—The Ultimate Humanitarian, 42

The temple, with its structures and sacrifices, not only emphasized what man could not do to make himself right with God, but it also highlighted what God DID FOR US to make us right with him.

God designed the temple as his great classroom. Its structure stressed that sin separates mankind from God. Its sacrifices portrayed the principle of substitutionary sacrifice and pointed to Jesus who sacrificed himself for the world. The temple was not about people working for God. It was all about showing what God, the ultimate humanitarian, would do for humanity in Jesus Christ.
God—The Ultimate Humanitarian, 43

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Lesson 6: A Humanitarian at the Temple

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Study Guide Pages 42-51

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