John 2:13-25 Jesus, the Temple, and Pure Worship

You are listening to the podcast of Recast Church in Matawan, Michigan. As we enter into worship,

I'd like us to talk just for a couple minutes about worship. That's really kind of the topic of our message this morning, the passage we're going to explore.

So the worship of God is not limited to what happens in this building on Sunday morning.

The concept of worship is much bigger than that. It involves every aspect of our lives.

But worship is, however, what we do when we sing to God. Worship is the primary reason that we've gathered here together and come together.

So I'd like to explore the concept of worship with you this morning. And to do that, just to introduce the topic,

I'd like you to look at John chapter 4, verse 23. Jesus makes a statement about worship here that we need to think about.

John chapter 4, verse 23. Jesus says this,

But the hour is coming and is now here when the true worshipers will worship the

Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship

Him. To worship God in spirit means that you worship

God with a sincere heart, fully engaged. You are interacting in your spirit with the

Holy Spirit in such a way that your emotions are touched and your thoughts are focused.

You know, you may come to church and sing theologically sound songs, but if your heart is unmoved, then you have not worshipped

God. You may come to church and actually sing very beautifully, but if your heart is untouched, then you haven't worshipped

God. The forms that we use in our worship, I think, are not of primary importance.

You may raise your hands, you may dance around, you may stand there like a rusty suit of armor. That's kind of how

I do it. But if your mind is not engaged, if your thoughts are elsewhere, if your heart is not touched, then you are not offering to God an acceptable act of worship.

Worship that is devoid of sincerity, that is perfunctory, that is distracted, that is passionless, such worship is not performed in spirit, and it's therefore not a worship that God is pleased with.

True worship, though, needs to be performed in spirit, but Jesus also says that it needs to be performed in truth.

So true worship must not only touch the emotions, but it must also engage the mind.

In other words, it must be performed in truth. The things that we sing need to tell the truth about God.

Now, it doesn't mean that you have to have a perfect, exhaustive knowledge of God, if that were the case, then how could any of us ever worship?

But it does mean that when we worship God, we should say true things about God.

Our songs should be theologically sound and properly directed towards God. And I honestly think that this point is lost in our generation sometimes.

When we say, when people say things like, well, you know what, all religions really worship the same God. If people are sincere in their hearts, then, you know,

God will accept your worship regardless of the content of it. You know, I challenge anyone to find me an example of this kind of thinking in the

Bible. I mean, did God ever say to the Israelites, well, you know what, the nations surrounding you worship

Baal and Molech, and, you know, sure, they're misguided a little bit, but they're really just worshiping me with a different name.

No, no, no. Our worship must tell the truth about God if it is to be acceptable to God.

Worship that fails to engage the spirit is lifeless and dead. Worship that fails to tell the truth about God is misdirected, given to extremes, and perhaps even pagan.

Our worship must be performed in spirit and in truth. And as we're going to see this morning from John chapter 2, the triune

God is intimately and passionately involved in our worship. He is passionate about the purity of our worship.

And Jesus expresses his passion for our worship in John chapter 2 verses 13 through 25, our passage this morning.

I would invite you to turn there as we read it, then we're going to pray, and then we'll enter into our time of worship.

So John chapter 2 verses 13 through 25. Jesus cleanses the temple.

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, he drove them all out of the temple with the sheep and the oxen.

And he poured out the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables. And he told those who sold the pigeons, take these things away, 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. 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. The Jews then said, it has taken 46 years to build this temple, and will you raise it up again in three days?

But he was speaking about the temple of his body. When, therefore, he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this, and they believed the scripture and the word that Jesus had spoken.

Now when he was in Jerusalem at the Passover feast, many believed in his name when they saw the signs that he was doing.

But Jesus, on his part, did not entrust himself to them, because he knew all people and needed no one to bear witness about man, for he himself knew what was in man.

Will you pray with me? Heavenly Father, I ask you this morning that you would give us at this time just a clear focus and clear concentration as we worship.

Lord, it is hard for us, it's hard for me sometimes, my mind is here and there, but I ask that you would allow us to really think about the things that we are singing this morning.

And I just ask that gratitude and joy would well up in our hearts as we worship you.

Holy Spirit, would you come? Would you enable our worship? We are weak people, but we want to worship you in spirit and in truth, and in a way that pleases you.

I ask that you would come and fill this place now with your praises, and that you would glorify your name.

And in Jesus' name we pray, amen. Before we get into our text this morning,

I actually have a special word that I would like to share with the children. And I'd like to, kids,

I'd like to fill your parents in briefly. So this last year, the kids in the

Sunday school have been saving money for a project for our campus ministry.

For those of you who don't know, I work with students over at Western Michigan University in campus ministry and outreach, specifically focusing on international students.

And Pam came to me last year and said, we would like a project where we can save our money and help out with your ministry.

And so I thought a great idea for the kids to help out with would be to save money in order to purchase a kind of community bicycle.

A lot of international students, even some American students, would love to ride bicycle around campus.

They would love to take a bicycle trip, and they just, you know, don't have a bike. So the kids, according to Pam, she said that they raised more money this past year than in any previous year.

And this is the bike we bought. So this is our community bicycle. Thank you, kids.

Would you guys like to see it in action? All right. All right, let's play the video.

In our campus ministry, we are thankful. It's a great bike. Well, thank you.

Okay, that was short, but you can see we have a bike. So thank you, kids, for sacrificing to get this bike for our students.

And I'm hoping and I'm quite sure, too, that it's going to get a lot of use. So thank you.

All right, let's get into our text. I would invite you again to turn with me to John chapter 2.

We're going to start with verse 13. And as you are turning to John 2,

I'd just like to talk a little bit about the Jewish temple in Jerusalem during the time of Jesus.

The temple in Jerusalem was of supreme importance to the

Jewish nation. The first temple was built by King Solomon some 900 years before the time of Christ.

That temple was then destroyed in 587 B .C. by the armies of Babylon.

And it was rebuilt some 70 years later in about 520 B .C. by Zerubbabel. Now, the temple was so important that during the intertestamental period, when

Judas Maccabeus decided to fight the occupying Greek forces, the first thing he did to secure the loyalty of the

Jewish people behind his cause, the first thing he did was seize Zerubbabel's temple in Jerusalem.

Now, the temple that Jesus knew was built by Herod the Great. And Herod completely refurbished and enlarged the existing temple that had been built by Zerubbabel.

And Herod's temple had been under construction for 46 years by the time that Jesus arrived on the scene.

And the temple would not be completed until just a few years before it was destroyed in 70

A .D. by the Roman legions headed by General Titus. Now, the temple was the center of Jewish life.

It was the center of culture. It was the center of judicial rulings. It was the center of the government.

And it was a phenomenal structure. It was awe -inspiring even by today's standards.

It was a source of national pride. Now, Jesus enters this magnificent structure, the temple in Jerusalem, Herod's temple, and he drives out the money changers.

And in fact, in the Gospel of Mark, it says that Jesus would not allow anyone to carry anything through the temple.

Jesus claims the authority to regulate temple commerce. Now, even more than simply cleansing the temple,

Jesus boldly stands before the religious authorities and he asserts something that shouldn't get biased.

This is an astounding claim. Jesus stands before the religious authorities and says that his body is a temple.

His body is the temple. When Solomon dedicated the first temple 900 years before Jesus came on the scene, it says the

Shekinah glory of God filled the temple and the priests couldn't even do their duty because the glory of God filled the temple.

2 Chronicles chapter 5. But now Jesus is saying that the glory of God resides in his very person, the temple that is his own body.

It takes us back to John chapter 1 verse 14, a verse that we looked at last year. The word became flesh and made his dwelling among us.

We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son who came from the Father full of grace and truth.

And just as the curtain was torn in two at the moment

Jesus died, so now we approach God not by way of a stone and wooden temple in Jerusalem, but through the curtain that is his flesh, his sacrificed body for us.

Free and confident access to God has been opened up to us through his sacrificial death on the cross.

Hebrews chapter 10 verses 19 and 20 says this, we have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus, by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain, that is through his flesh.

Friends, can I tell you something? The temple in Jerusalem was magnificent, but in the face of Jesus we can say something greater than the temple is here.

If you've not already turned there, please turn with me to John chapter 2 verse 13. We'll go verse by verse through this passage and see what we can draw from it.

Verse 13 and 14. Now, scholars differ as to whether there were two temple cleansings or one.

In other words, did Jesus cast the money changers out of the temple twice or did he do it only once?

Here, in John, the temple cleansing is placed at the beginning of Jesus' ministry.

In Mark and Luke, it occurs during Passion Week, which was the final week of Jesus' life.

Now, those scholars who argue that there was only one event would claim that John organizes his gospel thematically and he moves the temple cleansing to the beginning of Jesus' ministry in order to make a theological point.

There's no doubt that biblical authors sometimes organize their material thematically rather than chronologically.

But I believe, I agree with the second group of scholars who say there are actually two separate occasions in which

Jesus cleansed the temple and in which Jesus drove out the money changers. The first of these two temple cleansings here, the first one recorded in John, occurred in 28

AD. And the second temple cleansing occurred some two years later, immediately prior to Jesus' arrest and crucifixion.

This particular event, the first temple cleansing, occurred early in Jesus' ministry when he was still relatively unknown to the

Jewish leadership in Jerusalem. The reason I believe that there are actually two temple cleansings is, number one,

I think it makes better sense and is more respectful to the text in John. And also, John mentions three different Passovers.

Here, in John 6, verse 4, and again, the final Passover on which Jesus was arrested in John 11, verse 55.

Now, okay, what is it that made Jesus so angry?

Well, the outer courtyard of the temple. The temple consisted of a series of courtyards.

And the outer courtyard of the temple was supposed to be a place for the

Gentiles, in other words, the people from every nation, to come to pray, to worship

God. In that same courtyard, which was a place reserved for prayer and for the worship of the nations, vendors had set up a

Middle Eastern bazaar. Now, ostensibly, these vendors were providing a service for worshipers.

It goes like this, okay, Jewish pilgrims often came to Jerusalem to make sacrifice for various festivals held throughout the year.

This was the Passover festival. And seeing that Jewish pilgrims were coming from all sorts of different countries, hundreds of miles over land, sometimes by sea, you know, it's very difficult to take a lamb or a goat and travel cross -country.

Has anybody tried to take the family dog on a trip across country? It just complicates things.

And so, for this reason, enterprising individuals set up an animal -selling business.

They were selling animals so that pilgrims could buy them on sight and then sacrifice them.

This was done, at least on the surface, for the benefit of the worshiper. Now, in addition to the sale of animals, there was something else going on in the temple.

There was a money -changing business. Now, what's going on with this? Well, every male

Jew was required once a year to pay the temple tax. The temple tax was half a shekel.

Now, the temple tax was to be paid in silver. Now, here's the problem. In the ancient world, there are all kinds of different coins, all of them with different silver content.

And so, the religious authorities wanted to make sure that people were paying the temple tax with pure silver.

Now, in order to ensure that, they agreed that people needed to pay the tax, men needed to pay this temple tax in Tyrian silver, which is from the city of Tyre.

Hence the need for money -changing businesses. People came, brought their silver, it was weighed out, examined, and then they had to exchange it for a small fee to Tyrian silver, and then they were free to pay the temple tax.

Now, there's not necessarily an indication in the text that these vendors and money -changers were cheating the people.

I'm sure they were making a healthy profit. The issue in the text is where they had set up shop. Now, opportunistic individuals, who would use the things of God for their own personal gain, will find reasons, self -justifying reasons, plausible -sounding reasons for their actions.

These vendors, these money -changers, I'm certain, argued, we're just providing a service for the worshipers.

We're doing good, we're actually serving God by helping people more easily worship God. And the money -changers,

I'm sure, had excuses as well. They were probably saying, well, we're just ensuring that quality silver is coming into the temple.

We don't want to cheat the work of God. But you can make whatever defense you wish.

When God forbids something, there is no pretense of good intentions that will serve to justify sinful actions.

The heart is deceitful above all else. And Jesus is able to see the motivations and intentions and affections of the human heart.

These businessmen did not share the heart of God for worship. The heart of God is passionate for our undivided, unpolluted worship.

And God is eager that people from every tribe, and every tongue, and every people, and every nation should have free and unhindered access to worship

God. These money -changers, these lamb and pigeon sellers, in their love for money, they turned what should have been a place of prayer and reverent worship into a

Middle Eastern bazaar. And in doing so, they had crowded out the Gentiles and left them no place to worship and to pray.

More than anything else, this aroused the zealous anger of our

Lord Jesus. Let's continue reading verse 15. Remember that it was written, zeal for your house will consume me.

That quote, zeal for your house will consume me, is a quote from Psalm 69, verse 9, in which

David laments those who insult, mock, and threaten him. In that Psalm, he writes a couple of verses,

For it is for your sake that I have borne reproach, that dishonor has covered my face.

I have become a stranger to my brothers, an alien to my mother's sons. I am the talk of those who sit in the gate, and the drunkards make songs of me.

The entire Psalm echoes the ministry and the sufferings of Jesus.

But that which most closely typifies Jesus is found in the

Psalmist's zeal for the house of God. Can I tell you something?

There were many injustices in the world in the time of Jesus. But we find that which aroused his anger more passionately than anything else was the perversion of the worship of his people.

Jesus is concerned above all else and passionate above all else about the worship of God, that it should be pure, not eclipsed by commercial interests and greed.

That all nations should have access to the

God of Israel instead of being crowded out by commercial vendors. To put the idea in another way, and perhaps a more pointed way, if you want to arouse the displeasure of God, if you want to arouse even the anger of our

Lord, then by all means approach him with mixed motives, selfish ambitions, insincere intentions, irreverent conduct, and make sure that your irreverence hinders the worship of everybody around you.

If you want to arouse the anger of the Lord Jesus, then think much of money, think little of God, and think nothing of the nations.

God will be glorified and Jesus is passionate that we glorify God with pure -hearted, reverent, unhindered worship.

Now if this is the case, and if God is so passionate about our worship, it seems that we need to ask and answer a question.

What is worship? For that, we're going to look at a couple of different verses.

The first is Psalm 29, verse 2. Ascribe to the

Lord the glory due his name. Worship the

Lord in the splendor of holiness. Now what

I see from this verse is that worshiping God involves the verbal declaration of his glory.

In other words, we're using our mouths to announce the perfections of God.

We are valuing God rightly in our hearts, and then we are putting his true worth on display with our lips.

Psalm 29, verse 2. We have another verse, Matthew chapter 4, verse 10.

In this passage, Jesus is being tempted by Satan, and Jesus then rebukes the devil.

This is what Jesus says to him. Then Jesus said to him, Be gone, Satan, for it is written,

You shall worship the Lord your God, and him only shall you serve. Now the obvious observation from this passage is that our worship should be directed only towards God.

But I'd like you to see another thing about this verse. Worship and service run parallel to each other.

You shall worship the Lord your God, and him only shall you serve. You see, worship is not only expressed in words.

Worship is also expressed in the service and the obedience that we offer to God.

They run in parallel. And so one ramification of this truth is that our worship on Sunday must be consistent with the lives that we live on Monday.

It seems nonsensical to me to worship God on Sunday while serving false gods and evil desires on Monday.

Our lifestyle must be consistent on Sunday morning and Saturday night if our worship on Sunday morning is to have any kind of integrity.

We worship with our lips, but we also worship with our lives. And that's why

Paul says, finally, Romans chapter 12, verse 1, I appeal to you, therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.

The yielding of our entire selves to God is an act of worship. In the

Old Testament era, a worshiper would offer a sheep or a goat on the altar. And by offering something costly, they were declaring that God is valuable to them.

They were declaring their devotion to God. So also, we offer that which is costly to God.

We offer our own bodies, in fact, our very lives, as a sacrifice made not at an earthen altar.

We offer our lives to the living God, denying self, taking up our cross and following Jesus.

Worship involves declaring the excellencies of God with our lips and with the entirety of our lives.

So what is worship? True worship is valuing and treasuring

God above all things. It means that you put the supreme worth of God on display with your words and with your life.

You know, if somebody were to listen to your words and observe your lifestyle on Saturday night and Sunday morning, what would that person conclude that you value above all else?

A life of worship means that you declare the excellencies of God with your words and deeds.

Pastor and theologian John Piper expresses it this way. The inner essence of worship is to know

God truly and then respond from the heart to that knowledge by valuing

God, treasuring God, prizing God, enjoying God, being satisfied with God above all earthly things.

And then that deep, restful, joyful satisfaction in God overflows in demonstrable acts of praise from the lips and demonstrable acts of love in serving others for the sake of Christ.

Our God is a jealous God. We sang about that this morning. And He is passionate that we should love, treasure, and pursue

Him above all else. That's what it means to live a life pleasing to God. Jesus was zealous for the purity of the temple in His day.

And if He was zealous for a temple of wood and stone, how much more zealous is

He for His temple today, knowing where does the temple of God reside today? Not in Jerusalem.

It resides here. Jesus says that we are a temple of the living God. Flesh and bone.

Friends, may our hearts be pure. May we drive out those vendors and money changers of selfish ambition and sexual immorality and financial impurity and self -honoring intentions.

May we share the zeal of the Lord for the purity of His temple. Verse 18.

So Jesus had cleared the temple. The Jewish leadership now challenged His authority. 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. The Jews then said, It has taken 46 years to build this temple, and you'll raise it up in three days?

But He was speaking about the temple of His body. When therefore He was raised from the dead,

His disciples remembered that He had said this, and they believed the scripture and the word that Jesus had spoken.

The religious leaders demanded a sign. I find it interesting they didn't just arrest

Jesus. The probable reason that they didn't arrest Jesus is because Jerusalem was bursting at the seams filled with pilgrims come for the

Passover celebration. And the pilgrims that were filling

Jerusalem very likely agreed with Jesus' action and supported Him. That seems to be hinted at in verse 23.

Many in the crowds might have been offended by this pollution of the temple worship.

Jesus' actions brought to mind in the minds of the pilgrims those great temple cleansings of old, of kings

Hezekiah and Josiah. But someone greater than Hezekiah, someone greater than Josiah had come.

Jesus asserts His prophetic authority here to purify the house of God. But what is more remarkable, however, is the sign that Jesus promised.

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

Jesus is prophesying that He will die on the cross and on the third day He will rise again.

And He's staking the truth of His mission on that fact. He's essentially saying, if I do not rise from the dead, you have no obligation to believe me.

But if I do rise from the dead, you are without excuse. The resurrection of Jesus is the sign that was given to the religious authorities and it is the sign that is given to our generation as well.

But Jesus here is declaring that His body is the temple of God. So it's implicit in this passage that Jesus is actually doing something remarkable.

He's redirecting the attention of the religious authority away from the temple in Jerusalem and He's redirecting their attention to His own person.

The very temple of God in Jerusalem finds its typological fulfillment in the person of Jesus.

New Testament scholar Bruce Milne says this, Jesus is claiming nothing less than the reconstituting of the entire worship of God's people around His own person and mission.

The temple will pass into oblivion, not only because it is physically raised, but because it is spiritually obsolete.

Jesus' body, offered in sacrifice and raised up in power, will be the new temple where God and humanity, creator and creature, meet face to face.

The action of Jesus is more than an example of prophetic protest against corrupt religion. It is the sign of the end of all religion.

Do you see what Jesus is doing here? The temple is the meeting place between God and man. But Jesus is saying, in not so many words, that the point of connection between God and man is soon to be found in His own person.

In John 1, verse 51, Jesus is the ladder that Jacob saw spanning the gap between heaven and earth.

In John 14, verse 6, Jesus says, I am the way, I am the truth, I am the life. No one comes to the

Father except through me. In 1 Timothy 2, verse 5, Paul says, There is one meteor between God and man, the man,

Jesus Christ. Now, nobody understood what Jesus was saying at that time. Not His disciples, not the religious leaders, not the crowds.

People, however, remembered that Jesus had spoken these words. Now, here in the book of John, for those of you who are interested in this kind of thing, here in the book of John, we actually have a record of Jesus speaking directly these words.

Destroy this temple, and in three days, I will raise it again. Matthew, Mark, and Luke, the synoptic gospels, do not record

Jesus as actually saying those words. Mark and Luke, however, record something else.

Mark and Luke record that at the trial of Jesus, when false witnesses came forward to accuse

Jesus, that people had remembered these words, and they threw them back in Jesus' face.

So, in John, we have the actual account of Jesus speaking the words, and in Mark and Luke, we have the account of these words being used against Jesus at His trial.

So, what we have is Mark and Luke corroborating John, and John corroborating Mark and Luke.

Now, notice that the disciples remembered the words of Jesus, and believed them after He had risen from the dead.

The religious leaders also remembered the words of Jesus, seeing that they threw those words at Jesus at His trial, but after Jesus had risen from the dead, they did not believe in Him.

And just as we talked last week, so it's worth mentioning again, signs and prophecies and miracles do little to produce faith in those who are predisposed by their own self -righteousness to stubborn unbelief.

And it's perhaps for that very reason that we read the last paragraph here in this chapter.

Now, when He was in Jerusalem at the Passover feast, many believed in His name when they saw the signs that He was doing.

But Jesus, on His part, did not entrust Himself to them, because He knew all people, and needed no one to bear witness about man, for He Himself knew what was in man.

Jesus performed many signs. No signs evidently proved effective in persuading the crowds.

Jesus was quite popular. The faith, however, possessed by the crowds was spurious, superficial, it was contrived.

Jesus did not share His heart, and He did not reveal His identity to the adoring crowds, for the simple reason that He did not trust them.

He knew what was in their hearts. He knew how fickle they were.

Now, there's a lot that could be said about these verses, but I just want to draw out one point.

There is a faith that saves. And there is a faith that does not save.

There is a faith that is genuine. There is a faith that is not genuine.

The disciples of Jesus clung to Jesus, and believed in Him, and trusted

Him through hardship. Theirs was a saving faith, the fickle faith of the crowds. Not so.

So what's the difference? Genuine faith stubbornly clings to the gospel message of Jesus.

The message that God is above all things holy, and He will judge every person for their sinful actions, their sinful words, and their sinful values.

Jesus died a bloody death on a Roman cross, and in doing so, opened a way for people to be reconciled to God.

He rose from the dead, and in doing so, opened a way for people to receive eternal life.

The only way to escape the judgment of God is to repent of your sins, believe upon Jesus, joyfully cling to Him, to Him alone, for mercy and life.

Genuine faith, like the seed that falls on good soil, takes root.

It patiently endures hardship, persecution, and difficulty, and in time, in season, it bears a bountiful harvest.

False faith, however, is driven by emotion, the emotion of the crowds, the emotion of the spectacle rather than truth.

It's whipped up and enamored by spectacle, and by feeling, and by miracle. It walks the aisle, says a prayer, loves the music, feels quite at home at church, but it gives little thought to repentance, little thought to obedience, little thought to perseverance.

False faith is focused on not salvation from sin, but personal well -being, personal happiness, personal fulfillment, not salvation from sin and judgment.

False faith flourishes for a time, but like the seed that falls in rocky soil, it may spring up, it may flourish for a time, but when difficulty and hardship comes, it will wilt and it will die.

So how do you know if you have true faith or false faith? Well, I'll answer that question by asking the question, what are you willing to suffer and sacrifice for?

That which we truly value is revealed in that which we are willing to suffer and sacrifice for.

The true test of faith is found in that. I know of no other way.

At the end of chapter 1, we read that Jesus knew the heart of Nathaniel without even meeting him.

And here at the end of chapter 2, we observe that Jesus sees and understands the human heart with all of its duplicity and all of its dishonesty.

He sees our faith and he knows the quality of our faith.

I'd like to conclude with this one verse, Revelation chapter 2 verse 23. Jesus speaks to the church in Thyatira, and all the churches will know that I am he who searches mind and heart, and I will give to each of you according to your works.

Let's be zealous for the purity of our hearts and the purity of our lives. Let's worship

God in spirit and in truth with trembling and reverence. Let's draw near to a holy

God with confidence through the blood of Jesus, knowing that we are received and welcomed, but also offering a reverent worship with trembling.

Would you pray with me? Lord Jesus, the temple was destroyed and in three days you raised it up again.

You died on that cross to pay for our sins. You rose from the dead to give us eternal life.

There is no word that we can speak, there's nothing that we can say that can thank you enough for what you have done.

But I give you my sincerest and we give you our sincerest praise for your sacrifice for us.

Lord Jesus, I just ask that you would give us pure hearts.

I know that you are so gracious and you are patient with us and our worship in this life will never be perfect, neither will our lives be perfect, but we want to be, with each passing day, more and more pure and holy and pleasing to you.

So Jesus, come by the power of your spirit, do for us what we have such difficulty doing for ourselves, what is even impossible for us to do for ourselves.

Lord Jesus, would you purify our hearts, cleanse us from that which pollutes your temple.

Come, Lord Jesus. We ask that you would be Lord over your people. Amen. Well, each week here at Recast, we conclude our time with an opportunity to partake in the

Lord's Supper. So in the spirit of what we just heard, I just really want to encourage you to have a spirit of introspection, asking good, hard questions about our faith.

Is it real faith? Is it saving faith? Is the faith that we have more fickle and circumstantial?

And so you all know that when the Last Supper was talked about in the

Gospels, not everyone around that table had saving faith. There was not true worship that was taking place.

We have the opportunity now as we take communion to introspect, to look inside, to think, to evaluate.

And I really want to challenge you to do that. Your walk with Christ. What do you think about when you think about the

Lord's Supper? So we want to invite all of you who have saving faith to participate.

If you have questions about your faith, the Scripture is pretty clear. You should hold off on communion.

And the elders and myself, or even the people who invited you, would be happy to talk to you about what saving faith and true worship is really all about.

So I encourage you to get up. We have tables in the back. You can take the Lord's Supper as you pray or however you choose to do that.

I do want to just read from Scripture. This is kind of how it went down in Matthew 26.

Now, as they were eating, Jesus took bread. And after blessing, it broke it and gave it to the disciples and said,

Take, eat, this is my body. And he took a cup, and when he had given thanks, he gave it to them saying,

Drink of it, all of you. For this is my blood of the covenant which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.

Let's pray. So Father, as we come now to communion, what a beautiful opportunity for us to remember what you did for us.

How you set an example with your life, the life of service and sacrifice.

You came to save us. And God, as we partake of communion and remember,

Lord, what you have done, may your Spirit work in us and convict us and encourage us and challenge us to walk with you closely each day.

As we take this time together, we look forward to continuing our worship. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.