The Cleansing of the Temple

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And as we return to the Gospel of John, I want to remind you of something that I've pointed out in every message so far, that John has continued to point to the divinity of Christ, that Jesus Christ is not just a mere man who walked on the earth.
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He's not simply a good man or a prophet, but he is truly God.
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The entirety of John's gospel is going to continue to point to that in various ways.
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We remember back in the beginning that he pointed to the eternality of Jesus Christ, the fact that he was from the beginning and before the beginning, he pointed to his union with God, that he was in an abiding relationship with God the Father, but that he was a separate and distinct person.
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He also pointed to the role of Jesus Christ in creation.
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And then as he continued, he pointed to the role of Jesus Christ in salvation.
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And as we move forward, the last message we talked about Jesus turning the water into wine and doing what only God could do.
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And so constantly John is pointing out the divinity of Jesus Christ, that he is God.
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And if you recall from the last message, we talked about the water into wine.
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There was some pretty striking symbolism in that story.
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It wasn't simply just a story about God providing.
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There were symbols, the stone pots that represented the empty Jewish religion of the day and the wine that represented joy as Christ would come and make a way for salvation.
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And so it's important for us to note that in John's gospel, as we see the miracles, he uses a different word than all the other gospels used for miracle.
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And he's pointing out that there are signs.
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They're not just a miracle for display of God's power.
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There are signs that point to something else.
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And you'll remember that we've talked about what it says in chapter 20 of John's gospel, he says, there's a purpose for everything he writes in this book.
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And what is it? I've written these things that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ and that by believing that you'll have life in his name.
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So he's pointing to a purpose for his gospel.
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It's not just telling you about an interesting man or some neat stories.
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It's telling us about the very God incarnate himself and that we might believe in Jesus Christ and have eternal life through him.
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And so with that in mind, we come to a passage today in John, chapter two, where we see Jesus cleansing the temple.
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And I think for a lot of people who read this passage and see this here frequently, we wonder, how does this fit? Why is this here? It almost seems incongruent with what's going on.
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We saw Jesus in a very private setting at the wedding at Cana doing a miracle, a sign where he he provided abundantly.
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And now we're going to see an entirely different side of Jesus, really, that that we're kind of unfamiliar with to this point.
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But know this, John is still on track.
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He hasn't taken an aside to add this into the text.
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He's still pointing to the divinity of Christ, that Jesus Christ is truly God.
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And he's still lifting him up so that those who read will see and believe in Jesus Christ.
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And so with that in our minds, let's look at the text in John, chapter two.
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We're going to begin in verse 13.
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And we'll read through verse 22 in verse 13, it says, The Passover of the Jews was at hand and Jesus went up to Jerusalem in the temple, he found those who were selling oxen and sheep and pigeons and the money changers sitting there and making a whip of cords.
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He drove 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 he told those who sold the pigeons, take these things away.
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Do not make my father's house a house of trade.
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His disciples remembered that it was written zeal for your house will consume me.
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So the Jews said to him, What sign do you show us for doing these things? Jesus answered them, Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up.
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The Jews then said, It has taken 46 years to build this temple and will you raise it up in three days? But he was speaking about the temple of his body.
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When, therefore, he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this and they believe the scripture and the word that Jesus had spoken.
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So in this text tonight, we begin to see a more complete picture of Jesus unfold than was previously revealed.
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We see that Jesus, as the full revelation of God, also displays the divine attributes of God.
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And what that means is we don't just see a mushy, loving, weak willed God that so many people have conceived in their minds and worship as an idol today.
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Instead of that, we see a God who is just, who is authoritative and who is holy.
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And specifically, we'll see Jesus portrayed in this passage in two ways.
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First, we're going to see a Jesus who is passionate for worship.
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And then secondly, we're going to see a Jesus who is powerful over death.
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But before we dive into the main points tonight, I want to try and help set the scene for you a little bit.
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I want to give you some background information so we can really understand what's going on in this story.
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I'm sure many, if not most or all of you are familiar with some of the customs of the Jewish Passover.
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Our church every year holds a Seder supper.
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And so we kind of are familiar with some of the things they would do, maybe more so than most churches.
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We have some idea of what the Passover was about, but I think being 2,000 years removed from the time when Jesus walked on earth, there becomes a distance and we can easily miss all of the nuances of what happened here, just how big of a deal this was.
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So every year at the time of the Passover, it was expected and commanded that every Jewish family would come to Jerusalem to celebrate the Passover.
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And then following the Passover, there was the festival of unleavened bread that lasted for a week.
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So this was a big deal in the life of a Jewish person and Jewish family.
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Once a year, this time was coming and they were expected to make this trip.
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And you recall that the Passover was done to remember the work the Lord had done in bringing the Israelites out of Egypt, where he slew the firstborn of everyone who did not observe the Passover as commanded.
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And so during this time of Passover, all the Jewish families would load up and make this journey to Jerusalem.
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And at this time, there was they were spread out geographically over quite a large area.
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So for many of the Jewish families at the time, this would have been a big trip.
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We're not talking about, you know, they went from Uli to Ocean Way.
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They covered some significant distance and at a time when there were no planes, trains and automobiles.
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And so many would have to board a boat and travel to the port at Jaffa and then even from there make a journey that was much longer just to get into Jerusalem.
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Get this idea in your head, we don't know the exact number of how many people were there, but there's varying, varying models on this.
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But at least around a million people would have made the trip into Jerusalem for the Passover in this time.
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So I even read somebody say as much as two point seven million.
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Nevertheless, a very large crowd of people came to Jerusalem and Jerusalem was a city that had less than one hundred thousand inhabitants at the time.
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So you can imagine the massive influx of people coming into this.
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And that kind of gives us the scale of how big this Passover celebration was.
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There would have been people crowded into every street, every every in every room that was available.
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There have been people staying with friends and family.
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I mean, it just would have been a huge influx of people into this small town.
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And so ultimately, the people were to go to the temple and the temple, although it was very large and spectacular at the time, obviously wasn't nearly of the size you would expect to hold that many people at one time.
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The outer court of the temple was called the Court of the Gentiles, and it was approximately 14 acres in size.
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So a large space, if we're not talking about a million people, a large space maybe for a few thousand people together at any one time at the temple, there could have been three hundred or four hundred thousand people or maybe even more gathered at the temple.
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And so have that picture in your mind that the tons of people, the hustle and the bustle, the crowds in the streets, just everything that was going on as they were coming for what should have been a solemn religious ceremony and a time of thankfulness and worship and praise to God for what he had done for their people.
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Let me give you a little perspective on on crowds.
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Everybody knows of a place nearby here that gets pretty crowded.
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There's a home to a rat a few hours south of here, Walt Disney World.
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In 2009, the average daily attendance at Walt Disney World was about forty seven thousand people.
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Now, if you've ever been to Walt Disney World in one of those hot summer days, it feels like there's about forty seven million people there.
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But forty seven thousand people gather at the Magic Kingdom on average every day in 2009.
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And to put that in perspective with what we're talking about, the park is about one hundred and seven acres.
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So think about the crowd at Disney World of forty seven thousand people spread out over one hundred and seven acres and then put into perspective the three hundred or four hundred thousand people who would have been at the temple in approximately a fourteen acre space.
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It was just it almost been mayhem.
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There were people everywhere.
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It was a crowd.
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It just had to have been an overwhelming scene to see.
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And so with that in mind, having that kind of context in our head, let's look at the text and see what happens.
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The text tells us that Jesus is headed up to Jerusalem to celebrate the Passover.
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And of course, we would assume that of Jesus because he kept the law perfectly.
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And this was expected of every Jewish person.
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Certainly, this wasn't his first time going to the Passover.
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He was at this point about 30 years old, but it was the first time since his public ministry had begun.
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And so as he goes up to the temple to worship and to take part in the Passover, I just think about what his attitude might have been, what was going through his mind.
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We would assume that he would be maybe thankful, worshipful, maybe even excited to go.
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And so as he comes up, the temple is kind of up on a hill and raised up area.
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And as he comes up and I'm sure he's he's worshipful, as we should all come to worship.
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And he comes up and he is greeted by a scene that is almost unimaginable.
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He arrives at the temple and he doesn't see prayerful worshippers or solemn saints reflecting.
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Instead, he comes into a bazaar.
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It's a marketplace.
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There are sheep and oxen, birds, people everywhere.
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I mean, it's a it's a cattle market.
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I don't know if you've ever been to a cattle auction and seen what a scene of chaos it is.
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But you can imagine imagine if you walked into church one Sunday morning, you expect to see people in here praying and preparing for worship.
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And instead, there were a few dozen cattle roaming through the halls out there.
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Be quite a shock and what an affront this must have been to Jesus, who was the son of God, but also God himself.
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He was the very one they should have been worshiping.
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Don't forget that just because he's man, he's also fully God.
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He is God who brought them out of exile and he comes up to the place where they're supposed to keep this solemn remembrance every year.
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And he sees this scene of chaos.
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These people have infiltrated the temple.
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To sell things, to have a marketplace.
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Now, there was a very practical reason that these people would have been there to sell animals and changing money.
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Many people traveled, as I told you, a journey of several days, and it would have been quite an inconvenience for them to have to bring an animal or multiple animals, maybe from wherever they lived all the way into Jerusalem.
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And so for that reason, there were people there who were more than willing to take advantage of that need.
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I don't mean take advantage in a bad way, but to provide a service, a convenience and sell the animals there so that they could still do what they were supposed to do, make their offerings and observe the Passover.
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And originally, these people set up over in the valley of Kidron on the Mount of Olives, kind of down and across the valley, away from where the temple was, it was in the area, but not in the temple itself.
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But over time, you can imagine how these things tend to go for convenience sake.
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They move closer and closer and closer to the temple and the transactions got closer and closer.
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And at some point they moved right into the outer court of the temple itself.
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And I'm sure they rationalize their decision saying, well, this is the place where the animals have to go.
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So this makes perfect sense.
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We'll just be right here.
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We'll set up how convenient it will be for people.
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Now, stop and think about the parallels to our modern church today.
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How often have manmade inventions made their way into the church for the sake of convenience? Sometimes very practical needs arise.
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And unfortunately, we don't think about how they affect our worship.
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Or if they should even be a part of our worship.
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And so we've seen so many so many new things, ungodly things creep into the church.
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And defile the worship of the church.
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How many people have perverted the message of the gospel for the sake of making money? I mean, you just turn on the television and they're everywhere and we don't have to go through a list of them because I think you all know their names.
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But for everyone you see on TV and you know, there's a thousand more in every city and town around this country hawking something as the gospel that is a perversion and is defiled.
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Now, the money changer served a similar purpose.
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Every Jewish male who was age 20 or older had to pay a tax at the temple every year.
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And it had to be paid in the Syrian or the Jewish currency of the day because it was very pure and also because the other money had emblems of the leaders of the day.
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And so that currency wasn't widely held outside of Jerusalem, so it would be convenient for them again to be able to come and exchange their currency that they use in their everyday life to the currency that they needed to pay the tax.
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Seems fair enough.
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But instead of just exchanging the coins one for one, the money changer saw a nice lucrative business opportunity and began to charge exorbitant fees and exchange rates and cut a little bit off the top.
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Now, think about what these people were doing.
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People with the intention of coming to worship and do what they were supposed to do were being built by those who saw an opportunity.
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I just have to imagine as Jesus came up and was confronted with the audacity of what was going on here.
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I can't even begin to get into his head and imagine the range of emotions and what it must have felt like.
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He should have come up upon people who were in quiet reflection and said, look, I'm in prayer for worship.
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And instead he heard this ruckus.
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There were birds and cattle and and and people changing coins.
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And I mean, we can just imagine the scene must have been one people just utter chaos.
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And Jesus Christ was moved to act.
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Why? Because God will not suffer vain, deceitful, halfhearted worship.
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He wouldn't do it then and he won't do it now.
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And this is a call for all of us to examine ourselves and examine our individual lives and also the practices of our churches to see if our worship is pure and if it is true.
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Look at what Jesus did in verse 15.
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It says that he made a whip of cords and we would assume these cords would have been lying around everywhere.
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They were to use the cords to lead the animals in, to bind them up, to have the cages of the birds tied.
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So Jesus picks them up, we would assume, just off the ground and fashions a whip.
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And some people said he did this and I've seen illustrations of this where Jesus is whipping people.
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And I don't think that's the case.
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The text doesn't give us any indication of that.
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But he did what anybody would do who wanted to drive cattle out.
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He used a whip, a very common tool.
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And he drove out all the cattle and all the people out of the temple.
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And he when he flipped over the table of the money changer.
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So you just imagine the scene when you flip a table full of money over what it must look like.
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And remember, keep in your mind how many people are there.
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See, sometimes I think we think about this story, we read it and we think there were like 20 or 30 people and Jesus ran them out.
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There have been thousands of people.
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And this one person is just causing the scene.
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And he tells the people with the pigeons to take them away and he says to them, do not make my father's house a house of trade because the house of God and the worship of God is not to be reduced to earthly things.
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How silly is it to take true worship of God Almighty and to make it so simple and so destitute that it's about money, it's about things that will fade away.
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But how common is that for that to happen? And this is the side of Jesus Christ that most people today don't want to hear about.
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Many churches you go, you don't hear a message like this because they don't want to point out that Jesus got angry.
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Right, God is love and only love to the detriment of all his other attributes is the common gospel we hear today.
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I can't imagine God would do something like that.
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That's not the God I know.
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That's not the God I believe in.
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Well, if that's not the God you believe in, then you don't believe in the God you believe in an idol.
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And don't miss the magnitude of what happened here.
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We talked about the massive amount of people that were in the temple and in the size of that space.
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And so this was no mere act of a human person.
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In fact, I listened to John MacArthur preach on this passage and he points to it as a miracle, as miraculous.
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And why is that? Because Jesus ran off a few hundred thousand people and their cattle and their pigeons.
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And from the indications of the story, he did it without harming anyone or inciting any kind of riot.
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There was actually a Roman temple that or a Roman, not a temple, but a Roman fortress that overlooked part of the temple and there would have been soldiers and especially during the times of the Jewish celebrations, when there were a lot of people coming to town, the soldiers would have overlooked so that if any kind of uprising or anything happened and got out of control, they could come in and quell the uprising.
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But we don't read about any of that happening.
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And so it really is quite a miracle if Jesus Christ, who at the time was virtually unknown, he had just begun his public ministry, is clearing out the temple of these thousands of people and he has nothing but a whip in his hands.
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Imagine if somebody came into a large religious assembly today.
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Maybe the pope was speaking somewhere and one person comes in the middle, starts to dispel the crowd.
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What do you think would happen? I'd imagine a few hundred guards would probably jump on that person and that'd be the end of that.
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But Jesus Christ was attacked and overcome by no one.
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He has power over the hearts of men, and so there was no resistance.
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These people left.
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And the only proper response to seeing this happen should have been what these people should have said, this man is truly God.
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He must be God who could come and dispel a crowd like that, who would have that passion for righteous worship.
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Several of the commentators make note of the care with which Jesus performed this action.
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He drove out the sheep in the oxen, it tells us.
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He flipped over the tables and poured out the money, but he didn't release the pigeons, right? He told them, take them away.
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He didn't do any physical or financial harm to these people.
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The cattle that they drove out could easily be gathered up.
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That's pretty common with cattle.
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The pigeons were still in cages.
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He had them take them away.
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The money even that was flipped over could have been picked up and recovered at some point.
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So even in his anger, in his righteous indignation, Jesus Christ is an example to us.
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How right was he to be angry? I mean, he had all the right in the world to do everything he did and more, but he showed an example of restraint.
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And I want to ask you this question, do we show that same kind of care and restraint when we become angry? A lot of times when we get angry, we don't even have a right to be angry.
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We just get angry because somebody has said something we don't want to hear.
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But even if we do, do we show that kind of care? Do we take great pains to make sure that we don't cause people physical harm or financial loss? I'm afraid that unfortunately we are an extremely rash and irrational people sometimes.
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And unlike Jesus, we struggle to be angry and sin not.
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I know I do.
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And so as these events are unfolding, we see that there are two very different responses.
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First, we hear the response of the disciples in the text.
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They recall a portion that's actually from Psalm 69.
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And they say zeal for your house will consume me.
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They remember that of that passage.
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Psalm 69 is the psalm of David in which David is woefully crying out to God because he's suffering greatly.
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He's under great persecution.
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And David says in the psalm that he's suffering because many hate him without cause and people attack him with lies.
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But then he comes to the point in verse 70, he says, for it is for your sake that I have borne reproach, that dishonor has covered my face.
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I have become a stranger to my brothers and alien to my mother's sons.
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For zeal for your house has consumed me and the reproaches of those who reproach you have fallen on me.
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And so the disciples recall this text.
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And I think they're beginning to get a bigger picture of who this person really is.
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Jesus Christ, the son of God, they still don't fully understand it.
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And the text will go on to talk about after his resurrection.
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But think about what David was saying in that psalm.
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He wasn't saying that he was suffering for things he had done.
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He was suffering because he was passionate for God's honor and because those who reproach God reproached him and Christ does the same thing.
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He comes into the temple and he is passionate for worship and the honor of Almighty God.
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And he does something about it.
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And the question is, do we share that passion? Are we really concerned that God is worshiped properly? Do we really suffer reproach when people reproach our savior? I hear things all the time.
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I hear people say things that are so offensive and hateful towards God.
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Does that really affect us? You know, in one sense, I think we've become used to it.
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We're so used to hearing people talk ill of God.
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But if he's our savior and we truly love him, that should affect us.
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And I'm not saying you have to pick a fight with every person who says something bad about God.
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But surely we should have this passion for worship of God and for his honor.
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And certainly we shouldn't be the ones dishonoring him in our worship.
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So the disciples' response is that they begin to connect Jesus with the scriptures of the Old Testament.
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You'll remember now these disciples were were Old Testament believers.
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They would have been familiar with the scriptures.
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And they're gradually starting to realize at every turn that that Jesus Christ is the Messiah that was promised.
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But not all responded this way.
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And we'll look at the contrast between their response and the response of the Jews that were present there.
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And what do they say? What sign do you show us for doing these things? What a ridiculously brazen response of unbelief that is.
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Didn't he just show a sign to them? Didn't he just drive out the people from the temple? Didn't he just say that it was his father's house? He was very clearly claiming to be God and referring to his father.
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And shouldn't that have been sign enough for anyone who was really looking for the Messiah? Certainly it should have been.
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But unfortunately, as is always the case with those who are heart of heart, they're looking for another sign.
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They want something else.
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Show us more.
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And Jesus never capitulated to this demand for him to do a sign to prove himself in his ministry.
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But in his response, we see Jesus in another light.
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We see Jesus Christ who is powerful over death.
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So these Pharisees who frequently ask Jesus to do this prove himself with a sign.
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Jesus tells them instead.
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What? Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up again, because he knew that no amount of signs, however many he did, would not be enough to bring these people to faith.
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They weren't going to turn because he did something miraculous.
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And that should be a lesson for us today also, because so many people today are the very same.
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They're looking for a sign.
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They want some experience or some emotional feeling or connection to confirm what they think about God or what they might want to think about God.
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They need some proof.
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The reality, though, is that faith is built on those things, on signs, on miracles.
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It's not really faith in God at all.
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It's faith in something else.
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If your faith is an emotional feeling that you get when you come to worship, then what are you going to do when that feeling goes away? While the worship of God certainly involves emotion, it is not built upon emotion.
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It's built upon truth.
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And so this needs to inform us in our evangelism.
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We need to go preach the gospel that Jesus Christ was crucified and raised again for the salvation of sinners.
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But by all means, we don't need to go out and sell Jesus as something he's not.
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He's not the answer to every temporal or fleshly concern.
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He's not he's not the solution to your unbalanced checkbook.
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He's not the cure.
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Although he has power over every disease and sickness, he's not the cure for every sickness.
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You may not be healed of your sickness in this life.
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That's not the gospel.
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But he is the cure for the only sickness that modern medicine will never be able to treat.
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The fact that we are desperately wicked in our hearts and we are sinful and we're dead without him.
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We don't need a doctor, we need a miracle worker, we need someone who can breathe life into us.
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He's the redeemer of the world, he's the one who paid the price for sin so that all who come to him in faith and repentance will be saved.
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And that's the gospel that we have to take to the world outside of here.
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If we go tell them it's going to make their life better or more comfortable and then their life doesn't get better or more comfortable, what are they going to do? They're going to hate the God that you told them about because that's not the God of Scripture.
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And so Jesus tells them something that I can only imagine would have confounded them at the time.
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It would have been so confusing if we put ourselves in their shoes.
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He says, destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up.
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And standing here now, two thousand years later with the entire Bible in front of us, we can go, oh, yeah, well, that makes sense.
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I don't know why they didn't get it.
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But think about at the time they didn't know what was coming next.
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They hadn't read the rest of the gospel of John like we have.
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They're standing in the courts of a temple that had been under construction for 46 years and parts of it were still being constructed.
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Have you ever been part of a 46 year building project? Anybody ever done a 46 year home renovation? You imagine you nail in the last nail after 46 years and the guy walks up and goes, well, that's pretty good, but I could have done that in three days.
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Probably won't slap that guy, right? And so what Jesus said to them blew their mind or totally went over the top of their heads, they didn't get it.
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But obviously, we know that Christ wasn't referring to the physical temple and it's obvious by their response, they say the same thing we probably would have said if we'd been there.
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Took us 46 years to get this far.
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How are you going to do it in three days? You know, this at this point, they're probably thinking this guy really is crazy.
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He's lost it.
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And even the disciples who were starting to put the picture together.
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Remember, they thought of the Old Testament passage.
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They thought, OK, this is starting to make sense.
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This guy's the Messiah.
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But even they weren't prepared to understand what Jesus said at this point.
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And so John points out that it wasn't until after the resurrection that they actually put all this in perspective and figured out what he was saying, undoubtedly at that time with the aid of the Holy Spirit.
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But Jesus Christ was pointing to them to something to come.
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He was pointing them to his hour.
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You remember, he referred to his hour in the in the last passage.
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He was pointing them to the very hour that he said had not come yet.
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And this was the time when the religious leaders of the day would destroy the true temple, not the building, but the very body of Christ that was to be broken and buried and raised again.
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And he was telling them in veiled terms, I am I am God.
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And though their simpleness would lead them to crucify him and that though they had already defiled the temple that they were standing in and the physical temple and they had a vain religion that meant nothing to them, Jesus Christ knew that he was pointing them to a time when he would die and raise again and be the true temple where God and man could come together, where redemption would truly be offered through his body and his blood.
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And so that's the point of John's gospel.
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That's why this fits here, because he's still pointing them to the time when he would be glorified on the cross by his death and his resurrection.
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And that they could look and see that Jesus Christ was the very son of God and believe in him and have eternal life.
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God demands worship, his very nature demands worship and worship that's true and undefiled.
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And he's made a way for that through his son, Jesus Christ, at his resurrection, his disciples remembered what he had said here and they believed.
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And they were finally able to kind of put this all together and to us today, who can look back upon this whole story in scripture and see the remainder of the gospel and that Jesus Christ died and rose again, there's really only one proper response.
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We must repent and believe in him and trust in him for salvation.
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For those of us who've received salvation already and who are living as believers and trying to honor God with our lives, we need to remember the passion that Christ showed for the house of God and for true worship.
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That is our example.
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And that's what we should strive after.
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We should search ourselves to know that when we come to worship, when we come to honor God, whether it be individually, all week long or corporately together, that we're not making it anything less than it is or different than it is, that it's not about this world, that it's not about emotion or pure emotion, but it's about honoring God because he is worthy of all the honor and praise we can give him and If there's anything in your heart that pollutes your worship, you need to repent of that and worship and thank the God who's so loving and so forgiving and long suffering with us that he continues to make a way.
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Let's pray.