Holy Wednesday, March 27: “Trust in the True Sanctuary”

Lamentations 2: 7: “The Lord has rejected His altar, He has abandoned His sanctuary; He has delivered into the hand of the enemy the walls of her palaces. They have made a noise in the house of the Lord as in the day of an appointed feast.”

In a single verse Jeremiah recounts how God had abandoned His dwelling place at Shiloh (Psalm 78: 60), let His temple be destroyed by Babylon (2 Kings 25: 8, 9), and desolated by the Greeks in their Abomination of Desolation (Daniel 9: 27), which sounded like a celebration of praise, but was mere noise. However, all these were but a preliminary foreshadowing to the destruction of the true Altar, the true Temple, the true Sanctuary, which, when destroyed by the Jews, was raised up in three days. This was Jesus Christ, Who entered the true Holy Place at the price of His own blood, and obtained eternal redemption for us. True Altar, true Sanctuary, indeed!