Zealously Consumed - [John 2:12-17]

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Well, let me ask you a question. Are you a fanatic? Are you a fanatic?
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Are you super charged up about something? You might say, well, not me. I'm not a fanatic after all.
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It's terrorists, people who do horrible things. Those are fanatics. It's crazy people that are fanatics.
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I'm not a fanatic. But if I ask you, you know, are you a New England Patriots fan? Are you a
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Boston Celtics fan? Are you a Boston Red Sox fan? At least on the latter, I would agree with you that all of the elect are
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Boston Red Sox fans. There are two connotations the word fanatic, right?
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One is someone who's an extremist. The other one is someone who's just very enthusiastic about a particular activity or a hobby, a pastime.
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And I've said this and I believe this. I like to ask men what their hobbies are. I don't care what they are, but they must have some kind of hobby.
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Maybe they like to fish. Maybe they like to read about history or theology. But show me someone who isn't passionate about something and I'll show you somebody who's really boring.
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I'm passionate about watching Flintstone reruns. You know, I mean, you have to be passionate about something.
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And when I grew up, I was a super passionate sports fan. The apocryphal story around my house, my mom will tell you, is that I grew up reading the
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Los Angeles Sports Page, Los Angeles Times Sports Page. That was the first thing I ever read. There might be some truth to that.
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I don't really believe that. But I do know that I used to lay in bed with the radio.
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You know, I had one of those old kind of dial radio things and I had an earphone. Just kids, just think of it as half of an earbud set.
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And I'd plug that thing into my ear and I would listen to sports events long after I was supposed to be asleep.
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And my mom never knew. You know, I would cheer when the home team was doing well and I would be, like, devastated.
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I was, if they weren't doing well. At school, you know, they had these scholastic flyers that would go around.
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You could buy this book, that book, you know, Encyclopedia Brown, a lot of stuff. Well, that was all fine. But I wanted the sports books.
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I wanted to read about Jerry West and Ted Williams and Jerry Kramer and Bart Starr and just everybody who was involved in sports.
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That's just all I was about. And, you know, pretty much the apex of my young life was when my grandmother gave me a copy of John Wooden's autobiography.
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That was just off the charts. Well, what moves you?
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Everybody has something that they're passionate about. What moves you? What makes you so passionate that you just can't sit still?
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What would make you so angry that you could not be restrained?
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I would invite you now to open your Bibles to the second chapter of the Gospel of John.
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And we're going to see our Lord zealous. We're going to see our Lord angry, but not in a sinful way, angry for a good cause.
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So we've been working our way through the Gospel of John, written by what experts like to call the fourth evangelist.
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I mean, if you have Matthew, Mark, Luke, they're all evangelists. And John is an evangelist.
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His goal is to convince people that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, the Messiah, and to let you know that by believing in Him, you can have eternal life.
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He wrote this Gospel decades after the other
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Gospels had already been completed. Why? Because he wanted to focus on particular events, situations that really highlighted
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Jesus' role as the Messiah. And that's what we're going to see this morning, one of those instances. The last time we looked at the wedding at Cana, specifically the first time that John described a work of our
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Lord as a sign, as a miracle. Jesus turned water into wine. And John used the word to describe the
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Lord's supernatural work, His mastery over His creation, in changing water into wine.
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No mere man could do this, but the eternal Son of God, the second person of the Trinity, the
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God -Man, not only could do this, but He did. And so we come to John chapter 2, verses 12 to 17.
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After this, in other words, after the wedding at Cana, He, Jesus, went down to Capernaum with His mother and His brothers and His disciples, and they stayed there for a few days.
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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.
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And making a whip of cords, He drove them all out of the temple with the sheep and oxen.
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And He poured out the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables. 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. His disciples remembered that it was written, zeal for your house will consume me.
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Now this morning, I want you to answer four questions drawn from the text so that you will become a fanatic, something worthy of fanaticism, namely, the glory of God.
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I'm using a bit of an iconoclastic example outline, and I just like to use big words sometimes. This is a 25 cent word, iconoclast.
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What does that mean? An iconoclast is someone who smashes idols.
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And I think we have an idol in today's church, and it's a little saying, what would
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Jesus do? So my outline is an iconoclastic one. It kind of uses that what would
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Jesus do mantra, and I sort of tweak it to ask questions.
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And of course, my answer to the question, what would Jesus do is, everything perfectly all the time.
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Next question. Sometimes that doesn't always help us.
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You know, if I ask myself, what would Jesus do in this particular instance, it might not help me get there.
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That's not always the right question to ask, but these questions will help us think through this text. But I have to do this first.
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In verse 12, I have what I call an important, an important aside. My first thought when
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I looked at verse 12 is, you know, I kind of skipped it last week, and I wanted to skip it this week too, just kind of briefly mention it and move on.
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But there are a couple of inferences here that I don't think we can miss. And I'll tell you one of the reasons why we may not, or we should not pass over it, even though at first glance, it kind of seems like almost a throwaway verse.
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I mean, I could tell you that, for example, after this, he went down to Capernaum. Well, from Cana, where they were at the wedding, down to Capernaum and the
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Sea of Galilee actually is down in terms of elevation. And then I could close in prayer and that won't warm your soul.
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But as I studied this passage, I realized there are a few important things that we can even draw from verse 12.
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For instance, those of you who were in the first service, no answers. And by the way, what's up with this anyway?
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I think we need to import some Presbyterians because we need people to sit up in the front rows. What percentage of people in Massachusetts are
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Roman Catholic? 10 %?
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20 %? Do I hear 30? Going once, going twice. As of 2009, the last survey
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I was able to find, 46 % of your friends and neighbors here in Massachusetts are at least nominally
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Roman Catholic. You know, we know they're closing churches all over the place, which means that people aren't going there.
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But about 46 % of Massachusetts residents are Roman Catholic. And you say, so what?
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Well, let's look back at verse 12. And they went down to Capernaum with his mother and his brothers.
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There's this Roman Catholic doctrine called the perpetual virginity of Mary where she miraculously was able to conceive
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Jesus and then what? She never had any more children. And yet we look at the text here and it says, his mother and his brothers.
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Well, maybe there's an explanation. So I went to a Roman Catholic source, Catholic Answers, their website.
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Here's what they say, the Catholic position. Does not hold that when the Bible refers to the brethren of Christ, the brothers of Christ, that they are his cousins.
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That's not necessarily the official position. But listen, the church holds only that Mary did not have any other children besides Christ.
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Who the brothers were is debatable. They might have been his cousins. This is the most common view today.
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They might have been stepbrothers via Joseph. This was the common view before Jerome.
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Or they might have been adoptive children, which apparently is not the common view ever. That's the official stance.
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Now, there are words for cousins. For relatives, for distant.
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That's not the word here. It's brothers. That's why every single translation, even the Catholic translations, use the word brothers because that's clearly the word in Greek here.
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If they were his stepbrothers, if Jesus was the youngest child, that's the idea here, that Joseph had other children and then he was widowed or became a widower,
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I guess. And he remarried Mary later on in life. If that was the case, they would not be described as his brothers.
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They would be called sons of Joseph. The idea that they were adoptive is completely speculative.
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There's no basis for that. They're just straining for any kind of explanation. Why? Why is this so important?
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Well, again, the perpetual virginity of Mary. Here's what they say about this.
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They say it's to support it. They have an important historical document which supports the teaching of Mary's perpetual virginity is the
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Proto -Evangelium, that is the proto -gospel of James, which was written probably less than 60 years after the conclusion of Mary's earthly life, around A .D.
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120, they say, when memories of her life were still vivid in the minds of many. First of all, a couple of problems here with the
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Proto -Evangelium of James. One, it wouldn't be written by James because James was long dead. So their idea is, and what they purport is, that people who were often very aware of the writing and thought of people who followed
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Jesus would then write these documents up sometime later and put these people's names on them so they're like, well, you know,
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James really taught this. So what they're offering is second, third, fourth -hand information and they're saying, well, this supports the idea.
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Well, how about Scripture? Scripture never teaches this and they have to ignore the clear teaching of Scripture in order to get there.
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Well, why is it that Rome has to turn itself into a pretzel to preserve something that the Bible itself never teaches?
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I think it's because, well, first of all, we have to acknowledge that in Luke 1, Mary does say that she needs a
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Savior. She talks about God her Savior. But it's so important to the Roman Catholic Church that Mary be thought of as a perpetual virgin.
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And I think it really comes down to this. If you look at how they view the priesthood, how they view things in general, living a life free of even marital sex is, you know, living at a higher spiritual plane than the rest of us.
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I'm not going to belabor the point. I will just say this, though, that if the perpetual virginity of Mary was a biblical doctrine, there'd be some issues with some of what
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Paul wrote about husbands and wives. It's clearly not just an unbiblical position that the
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Roman Catholic Church has here. It is an anti -biblical position. And it is fascinating. I would just like to ask a
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Roman Catholic on the street what they make of that word and watch them dance because it's crazy. You just can't get there from here.
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Second point of application, this one little verse here. You know, people ask from time to time or they'll just even say, you know, it's really hard to get along with my unbelieving family.
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I really struggle to get along with the unbelievers in my family. I think we have to look back at this verse here.
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After this, he went down to Capernaum with his mother and his brothers and his disciples and stayed there for a few days.
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For a few days, his brothers, we have no indication at this point, none, that any of his brothers were saved.
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If they were, we think, I mean, wouldn't it make sense that they would kind of be on his inner circle, that they would be included in his disciples?
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They don't get saved until much later. How did Jesus do it?
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Why didn't he just beat them severely about the head and shoulders until they believed? Why didn't he correct all their doctrinally wrong thinking?
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I don't know. But if the perfect son of God could get along with his unsaved family,
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I think maybe we could make more of an effort to do that. Is it important to witness to them?
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Absolutely. But we don't get to determine when they get saved, only God does that.
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They were able to travel together as adults, to be together, spend time together. Now, on to our iconoclastic questions.
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Iconoclastic question, and that's easy for me to say. Number one, what made
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Jesus angry? Also, WMJA, for those of you taking notes. WMJA, put that on your wristband.
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What made Jesus angry? To understand what set him off, we need to understand the setting, what was going on, and then what was supposed to be going on.
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First, the setting. Again, look at verse 13. The Passover of the Jews was at hand. Now, isn't that kind of quirky?
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What if it just said Passover was at hand? You wouldn't think anything about it. So, why Passover of the
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Jews? There are a lot of thoughts about this. I think the one that's probably the best is it just lets us know that it's not just Passover, a single day.
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This is the entire celebration, the week -long feasting, and all the accoutrement that would go on with it.
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So, this is a much more comprehensive term than simply Passover.
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Some of you may not even know what Passover is. What is it? Well, it is the remembrance, the celebration of what
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Yahweh did in passing over the houses of Israel, of the Jews, while they're in captivity in Egypt, when he brought judgment on the houses of Egypt.
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In fact, let me just read after all the forewarning and foreshadowing that was given to Pharaoh, all the signs that have been presented to him before that.
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In Exodus 12, you don't have to turn there because it's going to be brief. Exodus 12, verses 29 to 32, we read this.
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At midnight, the Lord, Yahweh, covenant four -letter name,
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L -O -R -D, all in capital letters, Yod -Heh -Vav -Heh, Yahweh, struck down all of the firstborn in the land of Egypt, from the firstborn of Pharaoh who sat on his throne to the firstborn of the captive who was in the dungeon.
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In other words, from the highest levels of society to the lowest levels of society.
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And listen, and all the firstborn of the livestock, there was no doubt going to be left in Pharaoh's mind that God was in this.
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Verse 30, and Pharaoh rose up in the night, he and all his servants and all the Egyptians. And there was a great cry in Egypt, for there was not a house where someone was not dead.
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Then he summoned Moses and Aaron by night and said, up, go out from among my people, both you and the people of Israel and go serve the
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Lord as you have said. Take your flocks and your herds as you have said and be gone and bless me also.
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Just get out of here, enough, we've suffered enough. Of course, then he has a change of heart.
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God hardens his heart and he goes and chases after them. But that's what they are celebrating at Passover, that by putting the blood of a lamb over their doorpost, their firstborn were spared and the lives of the
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Egyptians were not. So what did they need to do to celebrate Passover? Well, every
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Jewish male who was at least 12 years old, I mean, it's hard for us to think, you know, of 12 -year -olds being able to do anything other than maybe play
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X -Box and, you know, do dopey things like that. I mean, maybe they can run a calculator, but I don't think most of them could do the math tables.
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But I digress. Every 12 -year -old male was required to go to Jerusalem for Passover.
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Jesus was no exception, so our text tells us that he went up to Jerusalem. Now, again,
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I can warm your heart by telling you that to go from Capernaum near the Sea of Galilee to Jerusalem is an increase in elevation, so you go up to Jerusalem.
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But I think it's pretty consistent throughout Scripture. When you go to Jerusalem, you go up. Why? Because you are going to the place of worship.
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You are going to the heart of the religion. You are going to the place where symbolically God's presence is most heavily felt.
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So Jesus goes there. So that's kind of the scene, the setting.
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Now, let's look at what was happening. What was happening when Jesus gets there? What he saw had to be a little bit shocking even if he'd seen it before.
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We don't know that, but even if he'd seen it before, this would have to be shocking. Look at verse 14. In the temple he found those who were selling oxen and sheep and pigeons and the moneychangers sitting there.
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One commentator says, Jesus entering Jerusalem's temple notices that the court of the
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Gentiles had been changed into what must have resembled a stockyard.
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There was a stench and filth, the bleeding and the lowing of animals destined for sacrifice.
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You walk into the court of the Gentiles and this is what you see and you say, well, what's the court of the Gentiles?
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Well, that was the outermost part. This was as far as the Gentiles could go, but there was all these different areas and they were sectioned off.
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You know, if you were a woman you could only go so far and then if you were a man you could only go so far and if you were a priest you could go further.
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Listen to how one dictionary describes it. They say the temple consisted of a series of courts. As one entered the temple precincts and proceeded toward the interior, each court was higher than the previous one and there were higher qualifications to go in there.
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The court of the Gentiles was called this because it was as far as a non -Jew could go.
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In fact, there was a sign posted on a partition that said Gentiles can go no further than this.
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That's how serious they were about it. So each male is required to go and keep in mind that they might be in the far -flung reaches of the
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Roman Empire because the Jews had been dispersed around the empire. But every single adult male or 12 and up had to come in to make these sacrifices to the temple.
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So you might just think to yourself, well, why not bring a lamb, a bull, some pigeons or whatever is required from home?
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Well, again, not so easy. They could be traveling hundreds of miles. And there was another problem.
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There was really kind of a legalized monopoly going on in the temple because you couldn't just sacrifice any animal.
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They had to be approved animals. And who got to approve them? The high priest, the religious leaders of the temple.
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So eventually somebody thought, you know what? We've got these vendors over here in the
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Kidron Valley over by the Mount of Olives. What if we bring them into the court of the
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Gentiles? We have them set up shop in there. Then what can we do? Well, we can actually charge them a fee.
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This will be like a little mall of America, only it's the mall of Israel. And we'll charge rent to these vendors and then only the approved animals that they sell can be sacrificed in the temple.
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It'll be a win -win. Vendors win, we win. Oh, and the poor suckers who come from all across the empire, they lose, but that's okay.
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We're making our money. So that's what was going on. Think of it this way.
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Well, I'll just tell you this. One writer said, to put it in today's terms, said for two doves, that might cost you five cents outside the temple grounds.
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If you went into the court of the Gentiles, it might cost you $4. And the first thing that popped into my mind is, you know, popcorn at the movies.
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What does it cost to pop popcorn at home? It's pretty cheap, right? You go to the movies and something that might cost you a nickel, all of a sudden it's four, five, six bucks.
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Who knows? I mean, I'm just kind of like, really? This? Really? Give me extra butter.
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Extra, extra. Well, my money's worth. They'd have to pretty much, you know, dump the whole container of butter on there to get your money's worth.
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But the point is that they were extorting money from people. They were just ripping them off.
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And it's really hard for us to understand today because we don't have to come in and sacrifice animals. We're not under that system anymore because Jesus is our sacrifice, thankfully.
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So we can't even imagine what it would be like to have to buy animals before we came in here.
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But this is what's going on. What about the money changers? Why were they there? Well, again, it was to exploit faithful Jews.
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There was a half of a shekel temple tax that every adult male who was 20 years old had to pay.
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But it could only be paid in certain coins, Jewish coins. The problem with pagan coins is what would they put on them?
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I mean, if I'm the Caesar, I want to have, you know, my little Caesar picture on the coin, right? Caesar Steve.
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There's a scary thought. And so those kind of coins were not acceptable, not only because they represented either pagan gods or pagan thoughts or what have you, but also because they didn't have the right amount or the right percentage of silver.
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So there were only certain coins that were allowed. So you're sitting there. You're a money changer.
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And they come in and they say, you know, I need the half shekel to pay the temple tax. And so, you know, it's like you give them 50 cents and they give you 50 cents back.
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Oh, no. Oh, no. They're like, oh, you want 50 cents? Okay. It's going to cost you three dollars.
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That's the kind of thing that was going on here. They were just out to make a buck. In fact, for the rest of the year, these money changers weren't even in the temple.
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They were only present the only time it was necessary, which was at this time of the year when you had to pay the temple tax.
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So this is what Jesus is walking in to see. The place is just an absolute zoo.
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Now, again, for us, it's kind of maybe hard to visualize what that would look like. And, you know, I can only just say if you want to see what this would look like in modern terms, turn on the
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TV and watch what's going on. If we could see the lives of some of these
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TV preachers, we'd be scandalized. I looked at one, you know, she's got a $2 million home that her ministry paid for, a $10 million private jet that her ministry paid for.
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Her kids have million -dollar homes that the ministry paid for. How about other churches?
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I mentioned last week, you know, video illustrations. Well, there are churches where you can go and you can see, you know, everything from skits to dancing girls, rock bands, you know, where the guy does do the whole, you know, diving down on the stage and then playing the guitar behind his back and the drummer's flipping sticks and throwing them out of the crowd.
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I mean, it is a big show. They do everything they can to, you know, one -up the show.
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If the band is awesome, then the dancing girls come out and they do something else. You know, they throw one of them up into the crowd.
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I don't know what they do. Crazy things. Why? Because it's about the performance. It's about exciting people so they can go home and go, wasn't the worship great?
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It's about everything but the Bible, about Christ, about His perfect life,
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His death on our place, His resurrection on the third day. Now, these things, if you're visiting another church and you see these things,
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I think you ought to be offended. It ought to be the kind of thing where, you know, Mike's told us many times about the older woman who sits through the entire service and she comes up to the pastor afterwards and she just says, what?
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Sir, we would see Christ. That's why we're here.
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It's not to be entertained, not to go home and just to think, wow, I can hardly wait to see what they do next week.
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And that's the scene that he comes into is a literal zoo with the help of the large helping of money changing cacophony just kind of thrown on top.
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Now, what was supposed to be happening in the temple? Why would this bother him? This was the authorized business.
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It's like a visit to the mall, right? No, it's not. What's a temple to be? It's to be a temple or a place of prayer, a place where the outside world is closed off, where you could think, where you could pray, where you could sense
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God's presence in the synoptic gospels, that being
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Matthew, Mark, Luke, the three gospels. Why are they called the synoptic gospels? Not because they have bad eyesight, but because synoptic.
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Okay. Because they're synopses of the same events, slightly different viewpoints but basically a lot of the same events.
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And that's why John's gospel is different because it's not all the same events.
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But in the synoptic gospels, he quotes Isaiah 56 saying that the temple is to be a house of prayer.
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It's to be a place filled with prayer. Now, if you've been to Jerusalem, and many of you have, you can see one building from most places in Jerusalem and that building would be the
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Dome of the Rock, which amazingly enough is just a dome built over a rock, but that's another story.
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It's a Muslim monument and it's got a bright, shiny, you know, covering on it and everything and you can see it from most places.
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Well, and here's why I bring it up, because in the day of Jesus, the second temple was there and the temple dwarfs, it would have dwarfed the
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Dome of the Rock and it was visible from virtually every place in the entire valley.
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You could see that and just be reminded of the special presence of God with his people.
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You would be reminded that you had a God who rescued you from the
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Egyptians. You could have hope even in the face of Roman occupation because the God who was faithful then would be faithful again.
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So it was a place where people were constantly reminded of that and yet, in the midst of all that, this was existing and D.
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A. Carson says this, he says, instead of solemn dignity, instead of this awesome place of worship, instead of solemn dignity and the murmur of prayer, there is the bellowing of cattle and the bleeding of sheep.
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Instead of brokenness and contrition, holy adoration and prolonged petition, there is noisy commerce.
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What should have been a place of sanctity, of holiness, had become a kind of a combination of a barnyard and a bank.
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So, so far we've seen this important aside, what made Jesus angry, WMJA. Now we're going to see what did
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Jesus do, WDJD. What did Jesus do? He took action.
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Look at verse 15, and making a whip of cords, he drove them all out of the temple with the sheep and oxen.
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Now you might think, well, what did Jesus surreptitiously just put a whip in his, you know, robe and then kind of take it out and say,
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I'm going to clear this place out. No, it says right there, and making a whip of cords, he just gathered what was there.
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It didn't take much. If you're going to control animals, you've got to have things like that anyway. So he just picked up the things that he needed, and he started taking action.
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Now you might say, well, what did he start doing? He start flogging the money changers and the vendors and all that? No. We have to keep in mind that Jesus, I said he got angry, but what do we know?
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He never sinned. He's perfect in terms of his self -control. He wasn't out to hurt physically anyone.
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One man says, and I think this is a better understanding of it, if we can just get this picture in our mind, it was surely the blazing anger of the selfless
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Christ rather than the weapon which he carried, which really cleared the temple courts of its noisy, motley throng.
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I just like saying that, noisy, motley throng. In other words, many people left just to get out of the way.
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Look at that guy. I'm stepping back. We've all seen people where we just thought, I don't know what that guy's all about, but I'm going to get out of his way.
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And that was their response. They wanted to just get out of the way. It wasn't some bloody spectacle and we know that for at least a couple of reasons that I just came up with.
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One is, right above the temple is a place called Antonius Fortress, which if you think about it this way, it was like the police station.
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The Roman soldiers are housed right above the temple. And it wasn't such a loud tumult that they responded.
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There was nobody calling 911, you know, better send the cops. This guy's out of control. It wasn't that way at all.
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And the second thing I think we can gather from this that show us that Jesus was in control was the
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Jewish authorities, they didn't get so upset by what he did that they started plotting his death.
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That wouldn't happen until the second time he cleanses the temple, which is much later towards the end of his ministry.
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The end of his life, really. So first he moves out the oxen and the vendors who were selling them.
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Then he takes out the bankers, the money changers. Look at verse 15 again, he poured out the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables.
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Again, everybody had to pay this temple tax. That's why they were there. And he was having none of it.
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I mean, it's outrageous. From all over the empire, men would come because they wanted to be obedient and they got ripped off in the temple.
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What an outrage. What an outrage to take advantage of those who were obedient to the
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Lord. That's what Jesus did. Now, what did Jesus say? W .J .S.
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W .D .J .S. Finally, Jesus turns his attention to the vendors who sold the pigeons.
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Look at verse 16. 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. He didn't just start picking up the cages and throwing them around.
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He'd already chased out the vendors and their animals. He'd already turned over the tables of the money changers. And he said to those men who were selling the birds, take them out.
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Get them out. This is a fulfillment of Zechariah 14 .21. Listen.
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And there shall no longer be a trader in the house of the Lord of hosts on that day.
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What day? On this day. On the day when Jesus really went. He publicly announced his ministry in some ways, but this was the first act of ministry in the city of Jerusalem, in the capital.
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His outrage, his zeal, was not that they were selling things for a profit.
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This isn't some kind of blast against capitalism. But this was so inappropriate.
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You know, what's the thing my mom used to say to me all the time? Time and place. Time and place.
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There's a time and a place for everything. This is not the time and the place to be saying that. And this was not the time nor the place to be doing these things.
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Totally inappropriate. What could be less appropriate than to set up shop in the house of the
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Lord? A place to be devoted to praying and to then rip off people who wanted to do the right thing.
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So what ought to have been a high point, I mean, I'm sure as the disciples were going into Jerusalem, they were looking forward to what?
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A time of celebration, of enjoying the Passover, a time of reflecting and praying in the temple, a time of learning new things from the
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Lord Jesus. And instead, this had become a time of confrontation.
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So our fourth iconoclastic question, what did Jesus' disciples learn? W -D -J -D -L.
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What did, again, put that on a wristband. Verse 17, His disciples remembered that it was written, zeal for your house will consume me.
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Now how do you suppose, just think for a minute, how do you suppose we know what was in the disciples' heads?
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In other words, it doesn't say, and the disciples said that it was written. They remembered it was written.
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How do we know what's in their heads? Because we have an eyewitness,
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John, who was there. If you go throughout the entire Gospel, he never says, I, John, did thus and such.
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It's always what? The disciple whom Jesus loved. That's how he describes himself, removing himself here.
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So I think it's fair to say we can infer from this that his disciples included John the
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Apostle. Now put yourself, again, in the place of the disciples.
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Some of them had been, now we're talking maybe 10 days or so, you know, they'd been with Jesus.
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Some of them had been with John the Baptist before that, but none of them had been a disciple of the Lord's for long.
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And they come into Jerusalem, as I said before, anticipating a time of celebration, of feasting, of rejoicing, of getting to go to the temple, of sitting at the feet of their new master and learning their new rabbi, learning new things.
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What does he do? The first thing is he goes in and he just throws everything, he throws everybody out of the temple, makes a big stir there.
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Can you imagine just being tag along with Jesus and you're just like, what do we do now?
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But this is their response. His disciples remembered that it was written, zeal for your house will consume me.
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Why? In part I think it was because we have to understand the first century Jewish mindset. They were anticipating a
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Messiah and one who would set things right. Well, one of the things that they were expecting was that he would be one who would cleanse and restore the house of the
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Lord, the temple. So they'd see this and go, well, he's doing the right things.
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This is right. This is what a Messiah should do. He should be consumed by zeal for the house of the
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Lord. Now, when you see that phrase, it was written, and then quotation marks, that should be a big clue that we're talking about something in the
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Old Testament. This would be Psalm 69, don't turn there because I'm only going to read a few verses, written by David.
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It's called the Messianic Psalm because a lot of it has carryover effect.
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These are things that David actually experienced, and then Jesus experienced in a fuller way, in a fulfilling way.
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Psalm 69 is also one of the Psalms most quoted in the New Testament, but let me just read verses 7 to 9 of Psalm 69.
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For it is for your sake, he's talking to, this is David talking to the Lord here. 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, an alien to my mother's sons. For zeal for your house has consumed me, and the reproaches of those who reproach you have fallen on me.
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Now, David had borne the brunt of dishonor and shame. We don't even know all the details here. We do know that David had a difficult life in many ways, part of that brought on by himself.
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But the point is, they see what happens to, in the temple there, and they reflect on this
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Psalm, which they must have understood in a Messianic way, in a fulfilling way, when
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Jesus did this. Now zeal, a dictionary would tell us is, a
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Greek dictionary would tell us, is intense positive interest in something ardor, marked by a sense of dedication.
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When we think about what Jesus was doing here, we see dedication. He is devoted. He is dedicated to something.
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But it's interesting to note that in Psalm 69, David wrote that zeal has consumed me, as if it's something that's already taken place.
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And if we look back at our text, what does it say? It says, will consume. Why? Because John is writing this from a historical perspective.
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He's writing maybe close to sixty years after the crucifixion.
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He's looking back on it, he's remembering these things, and he's,
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I remember, I remember thinking, zeal will consume him.
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Why? Because it did. His whole life was marked, Jesus' entire life was marked by this zeal to glorify
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God in all that he did. To honor the Lord in all that he did. He was honoring the Lord even in cleansing the temple that day.
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And while it may ostensibly have been about the temple, it is really what motivated
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Jesus was the glory of God. Think about what he saw, what should have been taking place, and then he's thinking to himself, this is all wrong.
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This is not what's supposed to be going on in the house of the Lord. And he took action.
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This crass commercialization of a really a sacred event, one of the highlights of the
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Jewish year, was not what was supposed to be happening. He wasn't going to stand by and watch it happen. So let me ask you again, are you a fanatic?
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Are you zealous? What moves you? What motivates you?
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When you think about something that violates the glory of God, does that bother you?
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Or is the glory of God boring? When you think about the word of God, is it boring? Our Savior was motivated to take action when he saw his house, his father's house, being treated like it was some kind of bargain basement bazaar, like it was one of those brides days at Macy's or whatever the department store where they open it up and everybody runs forth.
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It was a mess. It wasn't right. In our everyday lives, we're surrounded by people who take the
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Lord's name in vain, right? Ways that they wouldn't even use their own dog's name, and yet they throw the
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Lord's name around like that. The creator of the universe, the one who bore our sins. Does this not move you?
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Does this not offend you? Have you just become so hardened to it that it just kind of rolls off your back? You know, when it became known, this is funny how people react, because when it became known that when
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I was working in the jail that I was going to seminary, people started changing their behavior. The nature of their jokes changed and all kinds of things changed.
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And then when they actually swore, when they used the Lord's name as a curse word, they'd look at me and they'd say,
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I'm sorry. You ever had that happen to you? What do you do when they do?
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I'll tell you what I did, and I wish what I had done. I'll tell you both. I would always say something in effect of, it's not me you need to be worried about, or it's not me that you've offended.
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Right? That's true, right? On judgment day, I'm not going to get to say, you took the
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Lord's name in vain. Better.
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How about this? It's not me that you have offended, but I can introduce you to Him.
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And I know that He's a God who forgives, and you need forgiveness. Now, am
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I saying that we need to run around and correct everyone who does this? No. But I'm saying we need to not tune these things out.
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We need to be sensitive to them. Why? Because for starters, if you love the
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Lord, you care about His name, because it embodies His entire character. And like I said, this can be a great opening for the gospel.
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Are you zealous to present the gospel? Is this something you just want to do?
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Now, let's zoom in just a little bit more. Jesus was zealous for the glory of God in His role as Messiah.
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Right? This is what the whole book's about, His role as Messiah, that He's the Christ, the Chosen One. Let me ask you, in your chosen role, in what
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God has given you, are you zealous for the glory of God? Are you zealous for the glory of God in your role as a father, mother, sister, brother, husband, wife, employer, employee, job seeker?
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You think, well, how can I glorify God in job seeking? By working hard at it. By letting it be known that you want a job.
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Why? Because it's the right thing to do. You give God glory in working.
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Some of you kids might be saying here, well, how can I glorify God in being a child? How about by obeying your mother and father?
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How do I glorify the Lord as a mechanic? By being the best mechanic you can be.
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Zeal for the house of God and for His glory. That purpose consumed the
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Lord Jesus Christ. We need to be consumed in our zeal for the glory of God.
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Let's pray. Our Father in Heaven, Lord, we come before you this morning just reminded again of the awesome work that you have done on our behalf through your
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Son, Jesus Christ. Father, we cannot do things perfectly. We cannot even pretend to do things perfectly and that is why you sent your
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Son. But Father, let us not pretend that we do not have an obligation to stand up for you, to be zealous for your glory, to consider you more important than us.
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Father, let us turn even slights against you into opportunities to present
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Christ, into opportunities to glorify you.
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Father, I pray that you would make us a people that are zealous for your glory in all that we do, even when we're away from BBC, when we're away from home, if we're visiting some other church.
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Father, I pray that you would cause us to be vexed by things that aren't right that go on in other churches, even things that don't go right here.
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We're not perfect and Father, I just pray that you would so work in us as a body that we would glorify you more and more each time that we meet.
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Lord, for those who don't know you and for those in our extended family that don't know you.
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Lord, I pray that you would open their eyes, that they might see Christ, that they might flee to the cross, the only source of hope.