The True Temple | Sermon 10/16/2022

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Please turn with me in your Bibles to the Gospel according to John, chapter 2.

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We're going to be in verses 12 through 25 of the Gospel according to John, chapter 2.

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And the title of this sermon today, church, is The True Temple. The True Temple.

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So starting in verse 12 of chapter 2, hear now the inerrant and infallible words of the living and true

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God. After this, he went down to Capernaum, he and his mother and his brothers and his disciples, and they stayed there a few days.

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The Passover of the Jews was near, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem, and he found in the temple those who were selling oxen and sheep and doves and the money changers seated at their tables.

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And he made a scourge of cords and drove them all out of the temple with the sheep and the oxen, and he poured out the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables.

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And to those who were selling doves, he said, take these things away, stop making my father's house a place of business.

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His disciples remembered that it was written, zeal for your house will consume me. The Jews then said to him, what sign do you show us as your authority for doing these things?

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Jesus answered them, destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.

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The Jews then said, it took 46 years to build this temple, and you will raise it up in three days?

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But he was speaking of the temple of his body. So when he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he said this, and they believed the scripture and the word which

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Jesus had spoken. Now when he was in Jerusalem at the Passover during the feast, many believed in his name, observing his signs which he was doing, but Jesus on his part was not entrusting himself to them, for he knew all men.

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And because he did not need anyone to testify concerning man, for he himself knew what was in man.

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Thus ending the reading of God's holy and inspired word, let's pray one more time quickly, church.

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Lord, would you please speak through me today? Would you help us, Lord, to not just gain head knowledge today,

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Lord, but to walk away applying these things to our lives, to increase in our adoration of you,

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Jesus Christ. Lord, help us to know what the temple is really for and what

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Jesus came to do with it. And God, would you please use me today, speak through me, help me to speak in a way that is clear and helpful, and let it always be true.

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In Jesus' name I pray, amen. So there are many different takes on who

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Jesus is and what he stands for. Not too long ago

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I actually spoke to you about how the world has depicted Jesus, our culture.

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Television shows and cartoons have made him into some sort of passive type, allowing for sin.

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Some have made Jesus into some sort of hippie that we would have seen in Woodstock or something like that.

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While others have depicted him in icons and images that would show him approving of vile things.

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You do a quick Google search, please don't, it's pretty awful what you would see if you search even

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Jesus' name and look at the images. Now, that's just outside the church.

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What about inside the church? How about the people who have professed faith in Christ?

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How have we portrayed our Lord? One thing that comes to my mind is

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Christmas. And don't get me wrong, I love celebrating

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Christmas, the birth of Christ. I myself find it a liberty as a

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Christian that I can enjoy and exercise with biblical care. With that said,

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I think during this seasonal time of celebrating the Incarnation, we often overemphasize the infant nature of Jesus.

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It's all about baby Jesus, baby Jesus. And there's definitely an aspect to that.

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You read it, Luke chapter 1, 2, and 3, Matthew, of course, the Gospels.

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But there are these sermons that abound during this time of Jesus, the teeny tiny baby, and how he needed his mother,

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Mary, to care for him and he was so very helpless. And yes, there's truth to all that, but I think it can be carried too far.

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Another example is when we consider Jesus when he said, I am meek and lowly of heart.

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And he says, the Son of Man didn't come to be served, but to serve.

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So all of that is true. Jesus is undoubtedly the most humble man to have walked this earth.

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But again, I think we can overemphasize his meekness, this gentle meekness.

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People will say, God is love.

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And they'll want to throw out all the attributes of God that they don't agree with. Jesus then becomes sometimes, especially in art, this anglicized, white, blonde hair, blue eyes,

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Jesus wearing a long, white tunic, petting lambs and children in this artwork.

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And we mustn't insert into the text or into the nature or character of Jesus what we think he is.

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It must be what Jesus says about himself, what the Scriptures say about him.

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They must inform us. And although he is most definitely full of love and grace and humility, it is because he is those things that he also hates evil.

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It is because God is love that he hates evil. Because Jesus loves, he hates murder.

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Because Jesus is righteous, he will judge those who reject him, the

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Bible says. And Scripture shows this balance, especially when it says that the wrath of the

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Lamb is coming for those who don't believe. They say, let the rocks and the mountains fall on us, for the wrath of the

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Lamb is coming. Don't you see in that very phrase, the wrath of the Lamb? A lamb is always gentle, and yet it says wrath.

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So Jesus is both of those things. And so to give you an idea of what

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Scripture can also say about Jesus besides the incarnation and him being meek and lowly, it says in Revelation 19,

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And I saw heaven open, and behold a white horse, and he who sat on it is called

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Faithful and True, and in righteousness he judges and wages war. His eyes are a flame of fire, and on his head are many crowns, and he has a name written on him which no one knows except himself.

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He is clothed with a robe dipped in blood, and his name is called the Word of God. And the armies which are in heaven, clothed in fine linen, white and clean, were following him on white horses, for from his mouth comes a sharp sword, so that he may strike down the nations, and he will rule them with a rod of iron, and he treads the winepress of the fierce wrath of God the

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Almighty. And on his robe and on his thigh he has a name written, King of Kings and Lord of Lords.

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Now that is also Jesus. That is Jesus Christ our King as well. You can definitely see some allusions from Psalm chapter 2, the

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Righteous King. And so today in our text we are going to see that Jesus is both gentle and humble, and yet he is also righteously indignant.

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He has righteous anger sometimes, and we are going to see a promise again of something new.

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Something better has come, and it will come only by way of our Righteous King.

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So let's take a look. Go to verses 12 -13. They are up there for you. After he went down to Capernaum, he and his mother and his brothers and his disciples, they stayed there a few days.

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The Passover of the Jews was near, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. Now the

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Apostle John has been pretty meticulous in his details, and he gives us a little introduction of those details and how they start, so I will too all add to this a little bit.

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We know from last week the wedding at Cana had occurred. Jesus turned the water into wine.

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He turned purification pots into celebratory messianic wine. And we don't know how much time has now lapsed, but since the wedding in Cana, he, his disciples, likely the five, the five that we learned of in the first follower's sermon at the end of chapter 1, and his mother and his brothers, they went down to Capernaum from Cana.

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And it literally says in the Greek, they remained there not many days. They just weren't there in Capernaum long.

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And I'll also let you know that according to Matthew 4 -14, Luke 4 -31,

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Capernaum became a temporary residential place for Jesus.

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It became headquarters for him for a time during his public ministry, according to those verses.

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And Capernaum was just on the north side of the Sea of Galilee. But we're faced with a new event coming upon him.

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It says that the Passover of the Jews was near. And we learned in Luke 2 -41, it said,

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Now his parents went to Jerusalem every year at the Feast of Passover.

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This was a common occurrence for Jesus, going to the

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Passover year after year. And now Jerusalem was roughly 80 miles from Capernaum, 80 miles.

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That would probably be now today less than a two -hour drive, Capernaum to Jerusalem.

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But by walking, it would have been several days. And I mentioned this actually,

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I don't know if the last time or the time before, but when it says that Jesus went up to Jerusalem, even though that Jerusalem is south of Capernaum in the

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Sea of Galilee, it says he went up because Jerusalem is at 2 ,500 feet in elevation, 2 ,500 feet, whereas the cities surrounding the

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Sea of Galilee would have been around 1 ,000 feet in elevation. So people would have had to climb from the north in the

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Sea of Galilee area, Nazareth, Cana, Capernaum. They would have had to go down to Jerusalem, but they would have been going uphill and gaining 1 ,500 feet in elevation.

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So the Passover was an important celebration that came yearly. It was celebrated on the 14th day of Abib, which after the

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Babylonian captivity was then called Nisan, or Nissan, kind of spelled even like the car company in a way.

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It would have been the full moon at the end of March or at the beginning of April. That's when the

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Passover would start. Deuteronomy 16 details what they should do when they observe the

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Passover. And, of course, in the Exodus, which is something that we went over, the original Passover of the

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Lamb, that was a sacrifice and the blood was placed on their doorposts, and the angel of death, the destroyer, passed over those who had the blood on their doorposts.

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He did not pass over those who didn't have it. In fact, their firstborn children were killed.

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But we saw that with more detail in the Lamb of God sermon in Exodus. The Passover is immediately followed by a seven -day

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Feast of Unleavened Bread. So it's Passover, seven days of the

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Feast of Unleavened Bread. And this would be the first of three Passover visits in the

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Gospel according to John. We at least see three. There's possibility that there's a fourth one.

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It's not as detailed as these, but there's absolutely three Jerusalem Passover visits, and that would definitely show the scope of Jesus' ministry.

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It would be at least three years according to that. So we think that this is, scholars,

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I should say, think that this is possibly at the time of 28 AD. 28 AD.

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And this sets the stage for the coming scene. That's the background. Go to verses 14 through 16.

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Here's the scenario. So you've got to think, Jesus is coming down from Nazareth.

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He's been walking uphill with a caravan of people, his disciples, his mother and his brothers.

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Probably others are making pilgrimage from up north. And so there's crowds of people walking with packs on their back, donkeys that they're dragging behind them, and they're walking uphill to Jerusalem.

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And as Jesus walks, he sees Jerusalem in his sights. He and all those who are with him get closer to the city walls of Jerusalem, surrounding the great city that is on a hill, and they can even hear it.

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They can hear it now. It's buzzing, it's bustling, it's more lively than ever during this time of year.

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Diaspora, which means dispersed ones, the dispersed Jews are visiting from all over the

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Mediterranean. Jews that have been dispersed have now come back during this time.

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Gentile God -fearers are in town. Pagans are even visiting to pay homage to this

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God. And there by the gates, Jesus walks up, and there's people everywhere.

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There's people crowding the way to get into the city. Jesus heads then to the temple through crowded streets, and he finds what he considers to be a terrible sight.

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He walks into the court of the temple, and it says, he found the temple.

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Those who were selling oxen and sheep and doves and the money changers seated at their tables.

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And he made a scourge of whips and drove them all out of the temple with the sheep and the oxen, and he poured out the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables into those who were selling the doves.

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He said, take these things away. Stop making my father's house a place of business.

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And that's probably all happening all at once. It's an incredible scene that has occurred.

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He's probably yelling that at them as well. Now remember, John the

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Apostle thus far has purposefully and carefully selected the events of Jesus' ministry that he wants to highlight.

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Do you remember at the end of John, I kind of brought it up, in John 20 and John 21, he says, if I were to write down all the things that Jesus did, all the books in the world couldn't contain them.

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So John wrote in such a way where he says, I'm writing these things that you would know that Jesus is the

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Christ, the Son of God, and that you would have life in His name. So he's purposeful.

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People often, you know, they critique the gospel writers.

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Well, they had an agenda. They're not just giving plain fact.

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Well, they're giving fact and narrative and history, and they have an agenda. Yes, they want you to read it and know that Jesus is the

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Christ. That is absolutely true. John says it. But again, John has chosen this scene to go into his fourth gospel account, into the fourth gospel account.

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But for many, this passage causes quite the problem. This is considered a problem passage between the synoptic gospels, that is

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Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, I'm sorry, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, compared to John. Because why?

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Why is there an issue? Aren't they just harmonized? No. The problem is, according to scholars, this temple cleansing that we see here in John is at the very beginning of Jesus' ministry, but in the synoptic gospels,

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Matthew, Mark, and Luke, the temple cleansing that they give witness to is at the end of Jesus' ministry, right before His crucifixion.

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So people say there's a problem here. Let me provide an explanation for this that I think is most biblical and faithful to the text.

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Now, some have argued that John did not care about chronology, but he moved up the temple cleansing by several years and placed it at the beginning of his gospel account.

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But like I just said, I think if we've learned anything about John, he's been very meticulous in his details.

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He's been very serious to make sure the details of the prologue, how Jesus got His first followers, the timelines, the days, this many days later, he has been trying to do that correctly.

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And so I don't think that that's the case. Although there are similarities between the first temple cleansing and the second.

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You'll read them, go ahead, you can read them later on. Read the temple cleansing in Matthew, Mark and Luke, and read this one.

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There are definitely similarities. But one major thing that we don't see this first time is that the

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Jews didn't conspire together to kill Jesus. That happened in the second temple cleansing.

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It's possible even an amount of people sided with Him on this. This could have been one of the things that Nicodemus saw and intrigued him to investigate

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Jesus, which we'll see next week in John 3. You see, we have no reason to believe

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John took the late ministry temple cleansing and placed it here out of order in Jesus' early public ministry.

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In fact, what occurs in John 1, 2, 3 and 4, largely,

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John 1 through 4, you don't see those items in the Synoptic Gospels.

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The woman at the well, Nicodemus, the passages, the born -again passages, the water into wine, the prologue, those first four chapters in John, you don't see them in the

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Synoptic Gospels. So I think this is something different. Another reason that these are two different temple cleansings is because of shame.

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In a shame and honor culture, the shame the

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Jews tried to put on Jesus in the first temple cleansing wasn't enough.

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Because we will see they're going to shame Him. In the second temple cleansing, in the

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Synoptic Gospels, it was obvious then to the Jews, to the Pharisees, to the

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Sanhedrin, that it wasn't enough shame that they put on Him, but now it was time to stop

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Him for good. Jesus keeps making a scene after scene after scene in our city and in our synagogues and in our temple, and we have to deal with Him now.

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That's why it was right before His crucifixion, the second one. Lastly, why

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I think this is the first temple cleansing and the Synoptics have a second one, that these are two different accounts, is because of this.

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It draws a connection to the law of God. How? Leviticus chapter 14 details this.

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Let me read you some of the verses. Try to listen to the symbols here.

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It says, "...the Lord God told Moses and Aaron, when you go into the land and you find a mark on a house..."

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Now, what does Jesus keep calling the temple? He keeps calling it My Father's house.

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Keep that in mind. "...when you find a mark on a house, then the one who owns the house shall come and tell the priest, saying, something like a mark has become visible to me in the house.

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The priest then shall command that they empty the house.

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He will drive them out, and before the priest goes in to look at the mark so that everything in the house need not become unclean, and afterward, the priest shall then go into the house.

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So he shall look at the mark, and if the mark on the walls of the house has a greenish or reddish depressions and appears deeper than the surface, then the priest shall come out of the house to the doorway and quarantine the house for seven days."

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So you have a priest who has recognized some uncleanness has occurred in a house.

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He inspects it. He empties the house, has everyone leave, and then he leaves the house for a time, for a duration.

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And then he's going to come back. That's the key. It says, "...the priest then shall return after that time, and he shall come in and make another inspection.

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If the priest sees that the mark has indeed spread in the house, it is a malignant mark in the house.

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It is unclean. He shall therefore tear the house down, its stones and its timbers and all the plaster of the house, and he shall take them outside of the city to an unclean place."

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So, we learned in the Solus Christus series, the sermon specifically on how

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Jesus is the eternal High Priest, we learned that He has the priesthood, the eternal priesthood.

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He's the only one with the priesthood of the eternal order of Melchizedek. No one else has it.

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Only Christ possesses that priesthood. And so Jesus is a

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High Priest and He comes into the house of God in our scene, and He finds it unclean.

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It's marked with uncleanness. And again, did you catch that? That once He's inspected it and left and quarantined it for a time,

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He comes back and He returns to it, and if He finds it unclean still, it is to be destroyed.

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So you have the first temple cleansing here in John. He inspects it. He drives everyone out.

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He leaves for a time, and He comes back, and that would be in the Synoptic Gospels, and He sees that the uncleanness is still there.

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He has to deal with it, and He has to tear everything down.

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What did Jesus say would happen to the temple in Matthew 24? What did

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Jesus say? He said He pointed to this temple, this one that He just cleansed, and He said not one brick will be left upon another that will not be thrown down.

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Jesus said that the temple would be destroyed. What happened, of course, in 70

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AD, it is reported by Josephus and other Jewish historians that this unclean house of God, the temple, the second temple, was destroyed by Roman armies, and Jesus prophesied as so, and it happened according as such.

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Jesus had it destroyed. He found it unclean. And I think for all these reasons stated that I just gave, we can say that there are two temple cleansings performed by Jesus.

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One at the beginning here in John, and one later in the Synoptic Gospels. So, let's get back to our account.

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There are animals. There are merchants in this temple court.

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By the way, this court would have likely been the court of the Gentiles. It was the initial court.

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And so the furthest a

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God -fearing Gentile could go into the Jewish temple was here in this court. They couldn't go any further.

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They were segregated from the rest of the temple. They could only go into this court. And so, their worship is being impeded.

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It's being infringed upon. All these people are in the court of the Gentiles, and the Gentiles can't worship the one true and living

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God. Christ would soon change that for everyone. Then you have the selling of animals.

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Now, the selling of animals was a convenience for those traveling from far away. They wouldn't have to carry and bring so far their own sacrifice animal.

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There needed to be a perfect spotless lamb, either a goat or a bull. It tells us oxen, doves.

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You know, there would be drink offerings, meal offerings, things like that. And so that these people wouldn't have to lug these and caravan these animals all the way from where they lived.

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These animals were sold as a convenience. Now, one commentator says that for years, merchants would set up tents along the

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Kidron Valley, which would be on the slopes of the Mount of Olives. Okay?

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They had all these tents up there selling their animals, doing the money changing there.

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But little by little, degradation and the lack of the fear of God would take place, and they got closer and closer and closer, and now these merchants and money changers are in the very temple itself.

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They're in the court of the Gentiles. They would buy a sacrifice. This is almost thinking as if you can just pay a penance to make amends for sin.

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Just pay this fee. Get this animal, and you will be clean. Do it again after you've sinned some more.

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Just buy another animal, sacrifice another animal, and you will be clean. The temple tax was also taken at this time, so the money changers were there for business.

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The money changers would collect the temple tax, but also people from different nations surrounding would bring their own currency, and they'd have to trade it out for the currency there.

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But it was time to pay tithe. It was time to pay tithe. It'd be similar to us having an

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ATM in the lobby right out in front of the sanctuary. A lobby or a card machine.

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Hey, by the way, if you're new here, make sure you pay your tithes and offerings, and there's a card machine and cash that you can use in the

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ATM right there outside the church door. It would be insane. That would be ridiculous to us.

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There's someone going to watch this later, and they're like, my church has that. I'm just kidding. What we read is at some point after Jesus discovers what they're doing and before He drives them out,

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He takes a moment to carefully make a whip of cords. A whip of cords.

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And He didn't just find one that was already used for animals. Jesus took the time to make a scourge of cords.

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A whip. And He exabalin.

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In the Greek, which means expelled them out of there. The same used as His word for casting out demons.

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He cast them out. He drove them out. The way the original language is presented here is that He likely used the whip on both humans and animals, believe it or not.

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Probably not very hard, but enough to just kind of get them out of there. Right?

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If you're going into the temple of God and you're going to sell animals, you're going to create an animal auction.

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I'm going to treat you like animals. Jesus is saying. He drove them out.

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He poured out their coins. He overturned the tables. He proclaimed a rebuke on them.

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You can even see some symbolism here. I think John is maybe even showing us in the future,

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He drives out our sin. He pours out His valuable blood on us. He causes us to overturn back from our ways to Him.

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And then He proclaims not a rebuke upon us, but that we are to be the temple, the body of Christ, the habitation of the

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Holy Spirit. Now He said to those selling animals, not just the doves.

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It says those who sold doves, but again, this would have all been happening all at once. He's got this whip, and He's probably striking these beasts, and they're running out.

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And of course, those who are taking care of their livestock, they're like, that's my profit.

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That's my product. That's my money. And they're running after their animals, and He's just driving them out of there.

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And He's kind of even slapping so -and -so on the way out. And then He's just yelling, take these things away.

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Stop making My Father's house a place of business. So it's all this incredible scene.

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Actually, stop making My Father's house a house of emporium, which is actually where we get the word emporium.

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You don't really see that so much anymore these days. Emporium would be a place of trade, a place of retail and business.

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He'll later tell them in the second cleansing of the temple that they've made it into a den of thieves.

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Now you can imagine, as Jesus has been coming to the temple to the Passover celebration, year after year after year since childhood,

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He had a love of being there. When His parents lost

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Him when He was 12 years old, do you remember where they found Him? Where did they find

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Jesus when He was 12 years old and He was lost? The temple. The temple, exactly right.

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Jesus says to them as a young man, He says, why is it that you were looking for Me? Did you not know that I had to be in My Father's house?

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He has gotten to see the degradation of this take place. This wasn't something that is simply in the heat of the moment where Jesus was just aroused by passion and anger to do these things.

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This is something that took years of righteous indignation building. But listen, look what the

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Pharisees and the Jews had made the observance of the law. They made it a transaction.

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They made it a heartless deal. You see, you can't buy salvation with animals and money.

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But His Father's house is to be a place where genuine worship takes place. Now the question for us is, this is not the temple.

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We're not in it in Jerusalem. However, do you ever treat coming to Sunday service like a transaction?

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Do you come in here and do you pay with your time and some attention and focus and you leave here thinking that you've been given something in return like eternal life?

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Some people will go to church and they literally think they're paying for their salvation. That it's a deed and a work they have to do to earn salvation.

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No, it's a fruit of salvation. We are to come here to worship.

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The fact is if we are coming here and buying some sort of faux assurance with the payment of attendance and meager devotion, then we shouldn't come at all.

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Don't come if that's the case for you. Repent from that of course, but don't just come here with a transaction.

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Now Jesus wasn't upset that they were doing corrupt business practices. We have no reason to believe here that shady business was taking place at this time.

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Jesus' point in doing this is this, that they don't belong in the temple courts at all.

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They don't belong in the temple at all. Not that it was corrupt business taking place.

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They don't belong in there. There is no longer any quiet worship and contemplation of God.

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There is no prayer happening in silence. There are now noisy sounds of animals and peoples and sails taking place.

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Where are the people of contrite dedication to the Lord God? Where are those who fear entering the house of the

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Lord? As Brother Andrew read Psalm 27 verse 4, it says,

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How is that possible now? How could one meditate in the house of the

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Lord now? We need to, he is saying, get back to a place of reverence and holy fear.

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What Jesus did was like the prophets of old in a way. God would not receive their impure worship.

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Zechariah chapter 14 even predicts this concerning Christ. It says this in Zechariah, And there will no longer be a merchant in the house of God, in the house of the

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Lord on that day. No longer be a merchant in the house of the Lord on that day. That's Zechariah 14.

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Malachi 3 chapter 3 verse 1 speaks to this exact moment as well.

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It predicts it. Malachi 3 says, We learn that was

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John the Baptist. And then it says this, Whom you seek will suddenly come into his temple.

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Do you get that? That is actually Lord. That is Yahweh. The Lord whom you seek will suddenly come into his temple.

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And the messenger of the covenant, of this new covenant, in whom you delight, behold, he is coming, says the

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Lord of hosts. But who can endure the day of his coming? And who can stand when he appears? For he is like a refiner's fire and like a fuller's soap.

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That is Jesus. And so Old Testament prophecy, by the way, a little nugget there, shows that Jesus is

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God. He is Lord. And I also want to mention the fact that when he drove out the men and the animals, that points to the fact that he is the proper replacement.

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These animals and these people will not do. I am the proper replacement.

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He is the Lamb of God. The Lord won't accept any sacrifices from them any longer.

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None of their blood that is there will do. Only Jesus' blood will do now.

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So everything's out. Cast it out. Go to verse 17. His disciples remembered that it was written, zeal for your house will consume me.

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Now this took righteous anger. This took holy zeal. We talked about zealous in James.

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There is a just zeal. There is a pure jealousy for good things that consumes

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Jesus in this moment. In fact, the word consume literally means eaten up.

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Eaten up. Jesus was being eaten up for righteousness' sake for his

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Father's house. Now his disciples correlate this moment, the exact scene that is happening, they correlate it to Psalm 69.

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In the greater context, read Psalm 69 tonight with your family. Read Psalm 69 and see

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Jesus throughout Psalm 69. We can't look at all of it now, but read Psalm 69.

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Listen to how this describes Jesus. Verses 7 -9 of Psalm 69. Because for your sake, this is

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Jesus speaking in this way, prophetically. Because for your sake I have borne reproach.

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Dishonor has covered my face. I have become estranged from my brothers and an alien to my mother's sons.

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Which is true. It says in other parts of the Gospels that his brothers didn't believe in him.

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Then it says this, for zeal for your house has consumed me. And here we go, the reproaches of those who reproach you have fallen on me.

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They've fallen on him. You could say in an ultimate sense that pure worship and right relationship with God is what

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Jesus is most zealous for. And the cross will be the very thing that demonstrates the lengths in which

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Jesus is willing to go to be consumed in righteousness for your namesake. For you.

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Now some have thought, is this really right for Jesus to act like this?

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Is it really good for Jesus to do these things and to whip the animals and drive them all out?

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I would say absolutely yes. Of course it is. The Bible demonstrates

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God has righteous anger. These are kind of hard things to listen to, but just consider a few.

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I don't want to take away from the grace of God, but I want to show you who our God is. Because you're going to read these sometimes and you're going to be maybe a little confused.

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Psalm 7 says God is a righteous judge and a God who has indignation every day. As I said, because God is love, according to 1

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John, he must hate, he must be angry. It says that he hates the hands that shed innocent blood.

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Okay? And the way I heard Paul Washer say this is we must hate what

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God hates. And he talks about the fact that if you truly love the Jewish people, you hate what happened to them during the

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Holocaust. If you love African Americans, you then hate the slavery, the unjust slavery that took place of them.

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You must hate those things to properly love. And I think that's a good way to articulate it. It says that Jesus healed the man with the withered hand in the synagogue and asked everyone if it was lawful to do good on the

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Sabbath, to save a life on the Sabbath, and they were all silent. And it says that Jesus looked around at all of them, and it says

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He looked at them with anger. Jesus was angry with them. And this all comes from the holiness and purity of our

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God. You see, His grace and love are so powerful, and they're made so much sweeter because of these things.

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The call is to be angry and not sin, and that is very hard for you and I. It is very hard for you and I to be angry and not sin, but we are to hate the things that God hates.

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We are to hate child murder. We are to hate sex trafficking. We are to hate pornography.

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We are to hate these many evils in our world. Murder. Slavery. We are to hate them.

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Of course, the proclamation of the Gospel should be coupled with that. Because the

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Gospel is the only thing that's going to change those things ultimately. And Jesus won't leave things like this.

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The story isn't ended after He's shown His righteous indignation in John 2.

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The story is just beginning. He'll do this, but then

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He'll heal people as well. He'll heal people who don't deserve it. He'll save people who don't deserve it. He'll die ultimately for people who don't deserve it.

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It's not an either -or thing. It's both. It's both.

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Be gracious, but have righteous indignation. Again, Jesus does that perfectly.

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Verses 18 -22. Big section here. Let's move through it quickly. The Jews then said to Him, what sign do

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You show us as Your authority for doing these things? Jesus answered them, destroy this temple, and in three days

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I will raise it up. The Jews then said, it took 46 years to build this temple, and You will raise it up in three days.

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But He was speaking of the temple of His body, so when He was raised from the dead, His disciples remembered that He had said this, and they believed the

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Scripture and the word which Jesus had spoken. Now, no doubt, many people saw this event, and if they didn't, if they didn't see

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Him drive out all the money changers and animals and merchants, they were sure to hear about it.

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Absolutely. It was going throughout the whole city. That phrase, the

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Jews, who I said previously, according to John 1, the

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Jews were behind the delegation sent to John the Baptist, and in the Gospel according to John, that phrase, the

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Jews, are typically seen as those who oppose Jesus. Now, I'm not saying that...

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The fact is He came and He saved Jews, but that phrase in particular, when John uses it, he puts a differentiation between themselves, those who believe in them, and so that would probably include the

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Sanhedrin, the Pharisees, and all those behind those who oppose Jesus.

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In fact, again, if you read Psalm 69, I believe that those who came to question

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Jesus are part of the revilers in Psalm 69. The revilers of Psalm 69.

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So they were temple authorities possibly. They were representatives of the Sanhedrin, the high council of the temple.

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Now, they questioned Him. But what we don't see in this question is any hint of self -examination or reflection on if what was taking place was wrong and what

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Jesus did was right. We don't see that at all. They're just like, what are you doing? Why did you do this? And by what authority did you do this?

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They are not concerned with pure worship. It's possible, we don't know, but it's possible some of them were taking a cut from the merchant's profit.

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That they had a fee or a tax to operate on temple grounds. That they were getting some money from this too.

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We don't know for sure. So that what Jesus did hurts business and business is supposed to be really good this time of year.

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They also didn't think that Jesus was some sort of crazy man. Why? I think they assume

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Him to be some sort of prophet or rabbi of God. Because they want to see a sign.

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They want to see a miraculous sign. But that's not how we are to operate.

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We don't test the Lord our God. They should know that. Oh, if you're from God, do a sign.

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They're testing the Lord their God. God doesn't need or desire to answer to the demands of His creatures so as to gain their devotion or love towards Him.

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It's like when we've witnessed to people before and they said, if God is real,

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He'll do this right now. Lightning will come out of the sky. They can't do that.

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They have no right to do that. They can't test the Lord their God. He doesn't have to do those things.

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Often, sometimes when we pray, He will show us things and it's out of great love for us.

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But if they understood the Scriptures, the prophecies of the Messiah coming all over the

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Scriptures, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Zechariah, Malachi, they would have realized and repented at the cleansing of the temple.

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They ask Him, what sign do You show us? Again, the first thing is

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He doesn't need to show them a sign because He is God and this temple belongs to Him.

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And the second thing is He doesn't need to show them a sign because if they knew the true

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God and His desires for worship, they would have never permitted this to happen in the temple in the first place.

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Lastly, we already learned that there are those who will seek after signs, but they don't see the glory behind the signs.

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They don't see the One behind the sign. They don't want to believe it. They don't want to see it. They want their sin.

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So Jesus doesn't in the moment produce for them what they want. They want to see a sign.

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He won't appease them. But what He tells them is what they will see in the near future.

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The sign will be a destroyed temple and in three days He will raise it up. Where else does this show up?

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This shows up in Matthew 26 when He is being on trial in front of the

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Sanhedrin. And it even says in the Gospels that they found all these false accusers and some guy comes up and he says, yeah, this guy said that he was going to destroy our temple and raise it up in three days.

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That's where you see this again. Matthew 26 verse 61. False accusers.

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But they lied. And they declared that He meant by these words that He would destroy this man -made temple.

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However, destroy here. Lusate is in the second person plural.

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Look at that. See this? That's in verse 19.

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Jesus answered and said to them, destroy this temple. What you need to understand about that word destroy in the

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Greek is it's in the second person plural. Why? Because the first person is

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I, we, but in the second person plural, He's saying you.

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You destroy this temple and in three days I will raise this temple up.

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You destroy this temple. He's speaking to them. You plural. You people.

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You people destroy this temple and I will raise it up in three days. That's the key.

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By the way, another really cool thing with the Greek is regarding the word temple.

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Veios is used here instead of hieron. Hieron is translated temple as well as veios, but hieron is typically used more in context to the building and its physical attributes.

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It was actually used at the beginning of our passage, hieron. But Jesus uses here veios for temple.

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And veios is always used more in a sense of where God dwells.

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It's used in a more personal way. He is pointing to the fact that He is

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God. He is the temple, He is saying. And we can see here that destruction and rebuilding are together the one sign.

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Death and resurrection are one unit. With just the death and no resurrection, then we have no hope to rise again and our faith is in vain.

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Paul says that in 1 Corinthians 15. And without death, there is no debt payment and sacrifice given.

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So it's both. It's death and resurrection. That will be the sign. It will be the cross and the empty tomb that go hand in hand.

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The ultimate temple cleansing will take place through that. The Jews, however, believe

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He is speaking about the very temple that He just cleansed. It took 46 years to build this temple and you will raise it up in three days?

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They're a bit incredulous. They want a supernatural sign, but they themselves are focused on the natural.

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The temple right behind them. Now, church, this is the second temple.

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The first one was built by Solomon. The second one was built through Zerubbabel.

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You see that in the books of Ezra and Nehemiah. The second temple is being built during the

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Babylonian exile. If you remember, first Cyrus gave them permission to go back to Jerusalem and rebuild.

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And then Cyrus dies, and so Darius continues on. Artaxerxes continues on.

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Each king graciously lets the Jews go back to a destroyed

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Jerusalem. Read this in Ezra and Nehemiah. And they are able to rebuild the temple.

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So this is the second temple. But that's not what they're referring to in 46 years, that term.

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What they're referring to is what Josephus records in the 18th year of King Herod, which would have been like 20 or 19

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B .C. So not very long ago, 20 or 19 B .C.,

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Herod performed a temple renovation and expansion of Zerubbabel's second temple.

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So it's still just the second temple, but Herod beautified it.

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He expanded upon it. He made it better, because that second temple was not nearly as beautiful as Solomon's.

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The second temple lacked even some measurements that God had given, supposedly.

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And so Herod, King Herod, from the years 20, 19, all the way to then, if you add 46 years to 20 or 19

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B .C., that would have been, it was finished in A .D. 27 or 28. That's when it was finished.

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So if you remember back to when I started this sermon, I said this was possibly at the time of 28

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A .D. So what does that mean? This could have been some sort of grand reopening of the expanded temple.

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This could have been the biggest Passover celebration in years, because it was just finished.

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We don't know that for sure, but it's possible. Now with that reality so fresh in the

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Jews' mind, if this was really the year that it reopened, and it's all fresh and shiny and new, and these

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Jews are standing there like, King Herod just worked on this for 46 years, and you, one man, think you're going to tear this thing down?

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And everyone would have been looking and scoffing and laughing. They would have laughed at that question when they asked it to Jesus.

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They couldn't have known He was talking about His body. They just didn't see it. But verse 21, to the rest of our passage, it breaks out of narrative, and for the rest of the passage is the

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Apostle John speaking. Okay? In the prologue,

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John 1 .14, it says that the Word became flesh and tabernacled among us. This is the connection point.

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Something greater than the physical temple is here. The better temple is Christ and His body.

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That's the point. He is God with us. And if they destroy

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His temple, He will raise it up in three days. Then He will give the people of God the ability to become the temple of God.

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Everything is changing, and it's reaching its high fulfillment in Jesus Christ.

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In this temple He is speaking of, His body, His temple, it is so pure, there is no blemish, there is no sin, nor any fallenness of Adam has reached this temple of His body being born of the

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Virgin Mary. This offering will make all other offerings pale in comparison.

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Jesus' offering of His body, it is pure and it is holy unlike everything else.

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It won't simply propitiate for one day or for one year, the offering of His body will propitiate for God's people for all time and for all eternity.

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That's how powerful and potent Jesus' sacrifice is.

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This also shows that God won't accept worship in a temple anymore. We're going to see that even more later on in chapter 4.

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God will not accept worship through a temple anymore after Christ has been risen and it was destroyed.

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He will only accept worship through His Son and by way of the

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Holy Spirit. We don't need temples anymore, brothers and sisters. We don't need temples.

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Christ's body is the temple, then He calls us a temple and body of Christ. That is in Scripture.

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Now after these questions from the Jews and their cutting remarks, Jesus likely didn't respond.

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He bore the shame of those watching. And those who would hear about their questioning, they would think

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He was a fool. But if you remember, His hour is not yet.

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He did not need to respond. And we know He took the shame because John felt the need to give a narrative defense outside of the conflict.

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This was His body, he says. But all of this was purposeful. Verse 22 says, after Jesus was raised, the disciples remembered these things.

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This verse shows us in John 1 when Jesus appointed His first disciples. Remember, they would make these glorious statements,

01:00:00

Philip and Nathanael, and they would say, Jesus, You're the King of Israel. You're the Lord God.

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You're the Son of God. They would make these awesome claims about Jesus, but they likely still didn't know what to expect about Jesus.

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Neither did they fully understand His mission. They do two things of what we are always to do.

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That's what we see in verse 22. We are to look back at the life and work of Jesus Christ constantly as well as the

01:00:32

Holy Scriptures. In fact, John makes it clear that the words and actions of Jesus and Scripture are one and the same.

01:00:41

They are the same thing by the way this is given. Now you can imagine, after the cross, burial, resurrection, and ascension, they were starting to remember these things in the

01:00:53

Old Testament, these connections. After Jesus ascended, every synagogue meeting, then to every

01:01:01

Lord's Day meeting, the Old Testament writings were read, the sacred writings as Paul calls them.

01:01:07

And of course, they're like, oh, that's about Jesus too. That's about Jesus too. Yep, and they would write those things down.

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They remembered them. The Holy Spirit, the

01:01:21

Helper, was given to them and brought to their remembrance the words of Jesus. Things like even

01:01:27

Psalm 69. We see it here. All of them saw and understood He was indeed who

01:01:33

He said He was. He showed us. And the application for us church is that we often forget we will live our lives in a way as if we have forgotten these things.

01:01:48

We too are to remember and believe the words of Jesus and the rest of Scripture.

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And some of us here, yes, even possibly you, you have gone into a season of despair.

01:02:02

And you have forgotten the words of Jesus and the Scriptures. You are to remember these things and not just in your head.

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You are to remember these things in your very soul. So wrestle with it until you see victory.

01:02:22

Wrestle with the fact that you have forgotten the promises of God. Wrestle with it until you feel it in your very soul.

01:02:31

Not just refresh the page of your brain. At this point in the text is where He started to take on shame.

01:02:43

And if you look at the Gospels, Jesus will do it over and over again. He'll take shame for you.

01:02:50

They hated Him. They wanted to kill Him. He would have to somehow do these ninja moves and sneak out of their grasp in these big crowds of people.

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He would evade them. They wanted to kill Him. They spoke fiercely ill of Jesus.

01:03:07

And they didn't just take a leather -corded whip. They took a cat of nine tails.

01:03:15

A whip with nine hard leather strands with metal shards that are tied to the ends of it.

01:03:23

They took a cat of nine tails. They didn't take a whip like Jesus. They took a cat of nine tails and they whipped and scourged

01:03:29

His back. So He would go through that for us. They didn't drive

01:03:35

Him away. He was able to drive them away. They didn't drive Him away. He stayed the course.

01:03:42

He bore the shame. He took the cross. He carried it through the city. He walked all the way to Golgotha.

01:03:49

He was nailed to that cross. And He died. He endured for you and me.

01:03:58

So that the temple, which is ultimately you and I, He says, would experience full cleansing.

01:04:05

Because the Passover lamb has finally come. But they didn't realize it.

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They should be celebrating Him that week. Think about that. Jesus coming in this moment, the

01:04:18

Passover feast, and then the seven days of the Feast of Unleavened Bread.

01:04:23

Jesus is the very fulfillment of those festivals and holidays.

01:04:30

They should be celebrating Him. Finally, our last verses.

01:04:36

And I'll go through these quickly. I know we've gone for a while. Verses 23 -25,

01:04:43

Now when He was in Jerusalem at the Passover, during the feast, many believed in His name, observing

01:04:50

His signs, which He was doing, but Jesus on His part was not entrusting Himself to them, for He knew all men, and because He did not need anyone to testify concerning man, for He Himself knew what was in man.

01:05:05

John gives us a brief summary of what occurs over the next seven days. So Jesus cleanses the temple, and He gives us a snapshot of the next seven days at the

01:05:15

Feast of Unleavened Bread. Jesus did many things. He did signs and miracles this whole week.

01:05:21

It says that they believed even in His name at the observation of His signs.

01:05:31

And think about all these Jews there at that feast after the

01:05:36

Passover hoping to gain some sort of religious or spiritual experience. Jesus comes along and He does these miraculous things.

01:05:45

Their excitement, though, was shallow. It was shallow. They believed in His name possibly, but did they believe and understand that He is the true

01:05:57

Passover Lamb? That He is the temple, the one and only God that is in their midst?

01:06:04

You see, true belief, true faith rests not on the basis of signs and wonders, but true belief, true faith rests on the basis of the person and work of Jesus Christ.

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It's on Jesus. Now, we meet people all the time who say,

01:06:29

I've believed on Jesus because of some miracle in my life. I had $20 in my wallet, and somehow that's all

01:06:40

I had, and I put $20 in the plate at the sacrament meeting, and somehow the next day the $20 was still there.

01:06:48

Then I took it out for something else and helped someone else, and the $20 was still there. We hear these stories often, and they say, that is why

01:06:57

I believe in Jesus. Well, the signs and experiences we have ought not to be the basis of our faith, but Christ ought to be the basis, and that,

01:07:07

I think, is the biggest application here. It says

01:07:14

He was not a pistouin, which comes from the root word pistouo, which is believe.

01:07:21

It's literally saying He was not thoroughly believing Himself to them. In other words, it would say

01:07:27

Jesus did not believe their believing. That's what entrusting Himself to them meant.

01:07:33

Jesus did not believe their believing. He did not give

01:07:40

Himself over to them in their counterfeit belief. He knew all men. That's the point.

01:07:46

He knew all men. He knew the condition of man. He knew the inward thoughts and intentions of man.

01:07:52

He didn't just know some. It says He knew pantas. All. All men and women

01:07:58

He knows. He knew their condition. We see that many times throughout the

01:08:05

Gospels. It says things like Jesus knowing their thoughts, and so on.

01:08:11

It will say things like Jesus knowing what was in their heart, and so on. He knew.

01:08:19

Jesus cannot let Himself over to them in their fantastical faith.

01:08:26

It must be in Him and in Him alone. The light comes into the world, but as light pierces the darkness, it exposes the most hidden things.

01:08:38

And that's how we will conclude this today. Jesus needs no one to testify about man.

01:08:44

Jesus knew what was in man. He created man. He was there when the fall of man occurred.

01:08:53

He would say things like, there are some among you who don't believe. In John 6.

01:08:59

He knew the very one who would betray Him, Judas. It says that He knew

01:09:04

Simon Peter. He knew Nathanael before He even came up to Him. And that goes for us.

01:09:12

Jesus knows you. And Jesus knows your position before Him.

01:09:20

He knows your thoughts. He knows what's in your mind. And that should cause us to pause.

01:09:28

So that if you don't know Jesus as your Lord and Savior, you need to today. Believe on what

01:09:36

He did. Believe on Him. Have faith in Him for salvation.

01:09:42

Repent from your sins. And you will be saved. That's the call of the Gospel. And for those of us who believe this already, this should cause us to consider once again quorum

01:09:57

Deo. That is Latin. That means in the face of God. In the face and gaze of our

01:10:04

God are all our deeds, words, and thoughts. The question is, what does your

01:10:10

Lord see? And I pray that that spurs us on to purity and personal holiness truly.

01:10:18

But what is one of the biggest lessons we should take away from this temple cleansing?

01:10:24

First, Jesus didn't get the honor for the wine. Then He got the shame for the righteous act at the temple.

01:10:35

And although all of that is wrong, all of the ways He was treated were wrong, that's also the heart of the

01:10:44

Gospel, that He was treated wrongly. Why? Jesus lost so we could win.

01:10:55

He was shamed so that we would be exalted. He was rendered unclean so that you would be considered clean.

01:11:03

He died so that we may live. He was raised so that we would be raised to eternal life.

01:11:09

He is the true temple so that you would be made a temple of the living God. And that's grace.

01:11:16

That's love. That's zeal that consumes

01:11:21

Him in righteous indignation. That righteous indignation is the same zeal that brings

01:11:28

Him to the cross in love for us. He took our shame, but the glory our

01:11:35

King will get is unimaginable. So let's praise King Jesus today, church.

01:11:42

Let's pray now. Father, please bless the message that went out for the glory of Your namesake.

01:11:52

Lord, I pray, God, that these truths wouldn't just simply be things that we hear on Sunday and let just go in our mind and wander out throughout the week.

01:12:08

God, I pray that those of us who are wrestling with these things would remember the Scriptures. Remember what

01:12:14

Jesus has done. Remember the cleansing that He gave us. Lord, so many of us are walking in despair.

01:12:22

So many of us are walking in defeat. But we don't have to. Help Your people.

01:12:28

Help me to do that. Lord, we thank You that You came and You did this very act and You showed us

01:12:36

Your love for us and that You brought something new. You are the better temple, and You made us into a temple.