Teaching in the temple
While Jesus was in Jerusalem, he went to the temple every day and preached using stories called parables. This made the Jewish leaders angry because they knew he was talking about them.
People came early in the morning to hear Jesus preach.
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The temple at the time of Jesus was the second temple to be built in Jerusalem and was built by Herod the Great, who died shortly after Jesus was born. During festivals like the Passover there could have been up to 1 million people in the city instead of the usual 200,000.
Herod built a great plaza around the temple and this was about the size of six football fields. This plaza is the Temple Mount of today where the Dome of the Rock and the El Aqsa mosque stand. Herod’s temple was destroyed by the Romans in AD 70.
Parables
A parable is a short story which Jesus used to teach the point he was making.
One of the parables Jesus taught was about a landowner who rented his vineyard to some farmers. At harvest time he sent his servants to collect his fruit. The servants were beaten, driven away and some were killed. Finally the owner sent his son and they killed him too.
Jesus was talking about the religious leaders who had rejected the prophets and would soon reject and kill God’s Son. He was predicting his own death.
The Pharisees were a prominent sect of the Jews. They prided themselves on keeping the law.
Jesus called the Pharisees ‘hypocrites’ because they loved to make a show of their good works but inside their hearts were cold. They didn’t like the parables Jesus spoke because they criticised them. Nor did they like that Jesus said people must believe in him if they wanted eternal life.
The Bible says
Luke 21:37,38
Each day Jesus was teaching at the temple, and each evening he went out to spend the night on the hill called the Mount of Olives, and all the people came early in the morning to hear him at the temple.
Matthew 21:45,46
When the chief priests and the Pharisees heard Jesus’ parables, they knew he was talking about them. They looked for a way to arrest him, but they were afraid of the crowd because the people held that he was a prophet.
Matthew 22:15,35-40
Then the Pharisees went out and laid plans to trap him in his words.
One of them, an expert in the law, tested him with this question:
“Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?”
Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbour as yourself’. All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”