Finally Clean

Big Idea

Tension: How did God purify the worship of his people?

Resolution: By sending his Son as the high priest.

Exegetical Idea: God purified the worship of his people by sending his Son as the high priest.

Theological Idea: As High Priest, Christ purifies the worship of God’s people.

Homiletical Idea: By his zeal, Christ purifies us so we can be zealous for God.

Outline

Intro: How can I be truly be clean?

In 1992, Robert Karen said that shame is “the preeminent cause of emotional distress in our time..” We all know what it is to feel shame.

I think every person here has some shame. And, I think that most ofu s know that sense of shame keeps us from worshipping GOd like we could.

I was looking this week at hwo people think we can get healed of shame, and nearly every person said that we can get heald of shame by looking inside ourselves and having compassion on ourselves.

But here’s what I know as a pastor: when we’ve tried that, it actually makes it harder to have compassion on ourselves, because we see the real us. THe us that we’ve been wearing masks to hide and keep others from seeing.

And so like our first parents, we cover it up with fig leaves, and hope nobody notices. But htis passage today is a story about cleansing, about purification, about redemption. It’s one that I hope you and I will take seriously today.

The Story:

Background:

Jewish worshipers would come from all over, ideally 3x a year to sacrifice at Jerusalem. But, by far, the biggest pilgrimage to Jerusalem would take place during the Passover celebration.

It was not economical to bring sacrifices from hundreds and thousnads of miles away, so probably most pilgrims would bring money rather than sacrifices. THey would buy a sacrifice in Jerusalem.

To facilitate this, there was the temple tax which they would pay at the same time. So the upshot of this was that everyone would get a cut of the money being traded. So there was a vested interest by all parties in this system: the ROmans, the priests, the elite in Jerusalem, of course the trade.

These animals would be brought into the massive temple mount complex, and apparently they would set up their market place in the temple itself, in the rooms that were meant for prayer and worship and teaching. The elites of the temple, the priests, the Roman authorities, the Jewish leaders, all had a vested interest in keeping things things from happening.

You can imagine how it was sensory overload: the smell of animals, their bleating and crying, the heavy air, the sound of animals being slaughtered for sacrifices in the inner courts. You can imagine how the whole of hte complex was overtaken by this.

So Jesus comes up to this temple

And it says that he “found” which means that he sought out. Jesus went to the temple to do this.

Jesus chased them out. He made a whip of cords and iused it to drive them out. He overturned the coins, and the tables. He told them to “take these thingds away” and “do not make my Father’s house a house of trade.”

And we see that John’s gospel clearly connects this to Psalm 69:9, which is a Psalm on the lips of a righteous man, who is suffering for the sake of the Lord. And by using this, John is helping us to see that Jesus is himself the greater David.

The Jews respond

Of course, the Jews would want to know on what basis he does this. What is the sign that he has the atuhroity to do this, where does he get the right.

Jesus says, “if you destroy this temple, I will bring it back.” As we see in vs. 21, Jesus was talking about his own body.

Now, we might thinik that the Jews thoguht he didn’t know he was talking about his body. But I find that unlikely. Jesus was not hte only first century Jew to refer to his body as a temple. Take for example, these words from Philo of Alexandria, “...it is not likely that God made this figure in the present form of a man, working with the most sublime care, after he had taken the clay from any chance portion of earth, but that he selected carefully the most excellent clay of all the earth, of the pure material choosing the finest and most carefully sifted portion, such as was especially fit for the formation of the work which he had in hand. For it was an abode or sacred temple for a reasonable soul which was being made, the image of which he was about to carry in his heart, being the most God-like looking of images...”

The reality is, I think, the Jews knew he was talking about his own body. But a more important thing to them was the magnificence of this earthly temple. You see, the temple they had was Herod teh Great’s temple, which was still being constructed after Herod’s death. When it was finished, the temple was six times the size of hte original temple fo Solomon, the whole complex comprising some forty acres. So when Jesus says, “if you destroy this temple, my body, I’ll raise it up again.” And they say, “Well what about this temple, you know this magnificent, giant, huge religious complex?” And they allow themselves to feel superior and self-satisfied. They knew what he was saying, but they were so enamoured with the temple, that they could nto sense the significance of it.

Transition: So what is going on in this temple cleansing? What is the Big Deal? What is the significance of this?

The Cleansing:

Well, I think we have to ask, whose job was it to keep the temple pure? It was the High Priest’s job. By cleansing the temple, Jesus is showing that he is the greater high priest. This is a priestly function. This is exactly what the Levitical sacrifices were supposed to do, once a eyar, on Yom Kippur, the day of atonement in teh Passover season, the temle and the worship of God would have to be purified by teh blood of a sacrifice.

This is precisely what the OT prophecies had hoped for (Zech 14:20-21; Mal 3:1-4) There was a hope that a great High Priest would come and purify the worship of the people of God.

Zechariah 14:20–21 (ESV)

And on that day there shall be inscribed on the bells of the horses, “Holy to the Lord.” And the pots in the house of the Lord shall be as the bowls before the altar. And every pot in Jerusalem and Judah shall be holy to the Lord of hosts, so that all who sacrifice may come and take of them and boil the meat of the sacrifice in them. And there shall no longer be a trader in the house of the Lord of hosts on that day.

Malachi 3:1–4 (ESV)

“Behold, I send my messenger, and he will prepare the way before me. And the Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple; and the messenger of the covenant in whom you delight, behold, he is coming, says the Lord of hosts. But who can endure the day of his coming, and who can stand when he appears? For he is like a refiner’s fire and like fullers’ soap. He will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver, and he will purify the sons of Levi and refine them like gold and silver, and they will bring offerings in righteousness to the Lord. Then the offering of Judah and Jerusalem will be pleasing to the Lord as in the days of old and as in former years.

How would the this High Priest come to purify? It was through his death and resurrection. Jesus clearly signals this in vs. 19.

We talked a bit about this last week, when Jesus turned water into wine using purification jars. There we saw that God intends to give us the blessings of the New Covenant through the purifying death of his Son. And here, and it’s not a mistake these two miracles are next to each other, Jesus says he will purify the worship of GOd’s people through his own death.

But Jesus did not merely come to purify a place, but he came to purify our hearts. And the fact is that this is the ultimate reason that the Old Covenant would nto suffice. Hebrews 9:11-14…

Hebrews 9:11–14 (ESV)

But when Christ appeared as a high priest of the good things that have come, then through the greater and more perfect tent (not made with hands, that is, not of this creation) he entered once for all into the holy places, not by means of the blood of goats and calves but by means of his own blood, thus securing an eternal redemption. For if the blood of goats and bulls, and the sprinkling of defiled persons with the ashes of a heifer, sanctify for the purification of the flesh, how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish to God, purify our conscience from dead works to serve the living God.

You see, Christ’s death purifies us by absorbing the wrath for our sins (1 John 1:7, 9) and by giving us the blessings of the new covenant.

1 John 1:7 (ESV)

But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin.

1 John 1:9 (ESV)

If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

Not only does Jesus purify us from our shame, but he purifies us for service. By his zeal, Jesus purifies us so we too can be zealous for God.

Because of this, Jesus is the new temple. He is God dwelling with us (John 1:14), and those who trust in him will not be put to shame. Only through Jesus can we truly be freed of our shame.

The Response:

The Jewish Elite - They were too enamoured with the magnificence of hte earthly structure, of the earthly worship, of the earthly to see that the true temple, the true high priest, the greater sacrifice was standing in front of them.

The crowds see the signs and believe in Jesus. But Jesus knows that they didn’t really want him, they just wanted the stuff he can give.

In their own ways, they are like the guests at the wedding that we talked about last week. They were so drunk on the old wine, they couldn’t recognize the good wine.

The Jewish, religious elites, were so abosrbed with the trappings of religion, they couldn’t see the better temple was right in front of them. And today, there are soo many older brotehrs who are so drunk and inebriated with self-riughteousness, they can’t taste the goodness of salvation.

On the other hand, the crowds were so intoxicated with the gifts of life, that they can’t recognize the Giver. And today, there are soo many younger brothers who are so intoxicated and drunk and inebriated with earthly pleasure, that they cannot perceive that they’re eating the stuff of swine.

But, the right response is that of the disciples, who remember this, and believe. True belief then is not being overcome by the magnificence of external, self-righteousness, or intoxicated with the trappings of the world, but rather, it is coming to the true temple, finding true cleansing.

Application

Come and Be Cleansed Eustace The Voyage of the Dawn Treader

Naughty boy

Sees treasure, falls asleep on it, becomes a dragon

And he scares all his friends, and he canm’t be freed

And Aslan leads him to a pool and trells him to undress...

<Foul I to the fountain fly, wash me savior or I die>

Keep Being Cleansed: We need to continue to be cleansed; we need to cultivate a lifestyle of confession and repentance. I do think sometimes in the Christian life, we often put on our old dragon skins when Christ has givne us new garments. But the only way, I think we can experience the joy of salvation is if we continue to wash ourselves in teh blood of Christ. And we know that he is indeed faithful to forgive. So is there anything you need to confess?

Christ purifies us so we might be zealosu for the things of God

Every week I try to see how the text I’m preaching on is used in the great confessions of the Reformation. And one thing that I thought was particularly insightful was that the WCF #192 said that we should all pray for this kind of zeal. That Chriust purifies us so we might be zealous for God.

A Fire that lasts

Build the fire carefully -

Enjoy the flare ups, but don’t stop putting logs on the fire

Zeal with control

Many people use this passage and ones like it to justify all kinds of godlessness, a kind of machismo anger. Listen to me, that is not what Christ purifies us for.

Notice how Jesus doesn’t burn the hwole temple down, he doesn’t strike the money changers dead, he doesn’t even shut the impudent Jewish leaders up. It is a zeal with control. It is a purified anger.

God is not glorified by anger out of control. THat’s not what God purifies us. God purifies us so we can be passionate about the things of the Lord: his word, his callings in our lives, his priorities, not ours.

Conclusion: God wants your zeal. He wants your heart. He wants you. Which is why he purified you. Don’t refuse him.