Tisha B'Av

Today is Tisha b’Av. This is the 9th of Av in the Jewish calendar. This is a grave day for the Jewish people. This is the day that both temples were destroyed some 600 years apart. It is also the day that the 12 men that Moses sent out came back, Joshua and Caleb being the only two that could see God’s vision. This day is said to be the first day that the trains deporting the Jewish people were sent out of the Warsaw ghetto to Treblinka. You can feel the sadness of this day through these historical events. It is tradition to read Lamentations and Job and to fast. I am doing all of these things. As I sit out here on my patio I feel so gracious to be so close to the temple. Just a few hundred kilometers south stands Jerusalem where just a few days ago I walked the temple mount and cried at the Western Wall praying for these people and this country.

In reading Lamentations I know how hopeless it all may seem. Jerusalem has been crushed. Lamentations 2:16 says, All your enemies open their mouths wide against you; they scoff and gnash their teeth and say, “We have swallowed her up. This is the day we have waited for; we have lived to see it.” How heartbreaking. The enemy has done just this. Many anti-semites have come so close to accomplishing their goal of annihilating this group of people. I find no rest in knowing there are still large groups of people who subscribe to this ignorance. I believe it all stems from a deep seeded jealousy.

In Lamentations 2:13, just a few verses before it reads: “What can I say for you? With what can I compare you, O Daughter of Jerusalem? To what can I liken you, that I may comfort you, O Virgin Daughter of Zion? Your wound is as deep as the sea. Who can heal you?” Amazing! This is the beauty in Tisha B’Av! The temple is already here! The Temple came down 2000 years ago and walked this earth. The Temple 50 days later at Shavuot or Pentecost sent the Holy Spirit to dwell among us. The Temple lives within you and me! This saddens me in the same respect it saddened me to pray at the wall. These people are anticipating and anxiously awaiting the Messiah and the Temple. I know both. God bridged the gap to Him 2000 years ago when my Saviour came to this earth as a little baby boy and grew up into a sinless man. Who then later paid the highest cost for me and you.

When we were at the Temple Mount they said that in the year 30AD the Western candle that is in the middle of the Temple Menorah began to go out. This candle was pointed towards the room that housed the Ark of The Covenant. In Leviticus God commanded that this candle would never go out. In 30 AD the candle went out and would not stay lit. On Yom Kippur (The Day of Atonement) they would make a sacrifice of a scapegoat. This scapegoat was tied up and led outside of the camp when the goat was pushed over the cliff the cord that was tied around the door to the Holy of Holies would turn from crimson to white. In 30 AD the Babylonian Talmud records show that the cord stopped turning white. There were also large doors that closed off the entrance to the Holy of Holies. It took many men to open these doors. In 30 AD they would not stay shut. The Talmud quotes all of these occurrences. I believe they point straight to Yeshua. Some people say that Yeshua began his mission in the year 30AD and some say that He died in the year 30AD. Neither of these dates point me away from this. When Yeshua began His mission he began bridging the gap between us and God. There was no longer a need for a scapegoat for Christ took that position. Nor was there a need to close off the room that God dwelled in.



So tonight as I fast, I fast not for the rebuilding of the Temple or the expectation of the first coming of the Messiah. I fast for the Jewish people, for the nation of Israel, for the knowledge that their eyes will be opened and God will reveal himself to them through the love of His son, Yeshua. I fast for these chosen people. I fast because I know the Saviour. I cannot begin to understand the depth and breadth of His love and I long to share that.