John 2:13-22: The Temple of the Lord

1 Kings 8:56-61 “Blessed be the Lord who has given rest to his people Israel, according to all that he promised. Not one word has failed of all his good promise, which he spoke by Moses his servant. The Lord our God be with us, as he was with our fathers. May he not leave us or forsake us, that he may incline our hearts to him, to walk in all his ways and to keep his commandments, his statutes, and his rules, which he commanded our fathers. Let these words of mine, with which I have pleaded before the Lord, be near to the Lord our God...that all the peoples of the earth may know that the Lord is God; there is no other. Let your heart therefore be wholly true to the Lord our God, walking in his statutes and keeping his commandments, as at this day.”

Intro

Are you zealous for the worship of God?

Does it consume you and touch and affect every area of your life?

The temptation for Christians today is to look at worship as a part of our life and not all of our life.

But our highest calling is worship. And the kind of worship God desires is not perfunctory religion and going through the motions.

He desires a zealous worship.

One that burns with a passion to see Him high and lifted up in the world, and on a more personal level honored in all of our life.

One that lives out with a relentless love: What is the chief end of Man? To glorify God and enjoy Him forever.

What does that look like?

John 2:13-22 tells it looks like a whip of cords and a man on fire.

Usually when we read about Jesus cleansing the temple all we see is flipped over tables and wild animals.

But we miss how it applies to us today.

How God has brought us into the True, once for all Temple Jesus Christ and the zeal that marked the Lord for the worship and glory of God in the Old Covenant Temple should mark us as well in the New.

Jesus cleansing the Temple shows us...

The heart we should have for the glory of God....

And the glory of Christ as the True Temple and how great our salvation is in Him?

Let’s get right into it with the Big Idea from John 2:13-22...

Jesus is the True Temple where all the nations draw near to worship God and have their sins forgiven.

We are going to start with zeal Jesus shows us we should have when it comes to the worship of the One True God.

And then finish with the glory of Christ as the True Temple and how that shows us the fullness of salvation we have in Him.

Point number 1...

I. Jesus is Zealous for the Pure Worship and Glory of God

John 2:13-17 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 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.”

I want to remind you why John is writing this gospel.

That you may believe Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and by believing, have life in His name (John 20:31).

That you would see the glory of God’s goodness towards sinners in Jesus Christ and that you would trust in Him and be saved.

Every story in the Gospel of John is specifically chosen for that singular purpose, and this one is no different.

So that means the question we want to be asking with Jesus cleansing the Temple is what does this story tell us about Christ and His glory?

And what does Jesus cleansing the Temple call us to believe in, trust in, and put our hope in?

That’s what we are going to try and answer today. Is this just a story of Jesus cleansing the Temple in righteous anger or something more?

Two Cleansings

But, first, before we can do that...

Before we can see the glory of Christ in cleansing the Temple, we need to figure out howJesus cleansing the Temple in the Gospel of John fits with Jesus cleansing the Temple in the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke.

Because you’ll see this. People will use this as a way to say the Bible contradicts itself and therefore, shouldn’t be trusted.

In John, Jesus cleanses the Temple early on towards the beginning of His ministry.

This is just after the wedding at Cana where John says that was the first of Jesus’ signs.

But in Matthew, Mark, and Luke, Jesus cleanses the Temple towards the end of His ministry.

Within the last week of life, just before His death.

Now the obvious answer is that Jesus cleansed the Temple twice.

Once at the beginning of His ministry and then again towards the end.

And people question it because they ask, Why would He do that?

Well…turns out, its theologically significant.

In Leviticus 14:33-51 God gives Laws regarding the cleansing and purification of houses.

Basically, if a house had leprosy or mold, something that made the house unclean, the priest would come and inspect it.

And if the house was unclean, the priest would have all the stones affected by the disease replaced and scrape the whole house clean.

If the disease came back, the priest would say it was a persistent leprous disease in the house and the house would be declared unclean (Lev. 14:44).

The whole house would be torn down not one stone left upon another and carried out of the city to an unclean place (Lev. 14:45).

And that’s what Jesus, the Great High Priest, was doing with Israel’s house, the House of God, the Temple of the Lord.

He came and it was unclean. So He cleaned it out. That’s John 2.

When He comes back after 3 plus years of ministry calling Israel to faith and repentance, that’s Matthew, Mark, and Luke, He still found it unclean.

So by the Law it had to be torn down brick by brick.

That’s when Jesus said: Your house is left to you desolate…Truly I say to you, there will not be left here one stone upon another (Mt. 23:38, 24:2).

And that’s just what He did. Through the Roman armies, just as God used Assyria and Babylon to judge His people, Jesus came in judgment on Jerusalem for rejecting Him and destroyed Jerusalem and the Temple in 70 AD.

That’s what Matthew 24 is all about.

Now here’s why that’s theologically significant for us today.

Jesus begins and ends His public ministry with two cleansings of the Temple to say, the Old Covenant is done. Its over. It has no power to save.

It could never make anyone clean because it had no power to change our dead, sinful hearts.

We needed a New Covenant.

One that wouldn’t need the Old Covenant Temple and daily sacrifices because our sin would be forgiven once and for all with the blood of Christ.

And now in the New Covenant, we don’t worship in some physical Temple. We no longer worship on this mountain or that mountain like Jesus told the Samaritan woman.

We draw near to God and have our sins forgiven in the True Temple, Jesus Christ, where we worship the Father in Spirit and Truth from pure hearts.

Jesus cleansed the Temple twice to show us that the Old Covenant is gone. It could never make us clean.

Its been destroyed. It stands no more.

Now the only way to draw near to God and worship Him is through faith in Jesus Christ.

And that’s the main thing John wants us to take away from Jesus cleansing the Temple in John chapter 2.

Back to John

Its the Passover, and during Passover, Jerusalem is the place to be.

People from all over would make pilgrimage to the Temple to celebrate one of the most important days for the Jews.

The day God delivered them from slavery in Egypt.

So Jesus and His disciples went up to Jerusalem, and in the Temple He found people selling oxen, sheep, and pigeons - animals that were available for purchase to offer as sacrifices, and money changers.

Now where this was all happening in the Temple was in the outer courts of the Temple, what was known as the Court of the Gentiles, which we will get to in just a second.

And here is basically what was going on.

Animals

Pilgrims coming to Jerusalem would have had a hard time bringing their livestock and animal sacrifices with them.

And so it would have been much easier for them to just purchase the animals in Jerusalem once they got to the city.

This would have been preferred because not only would it have been difficult to travel with your sacrifices, you’re sacrifices also had to be pure.

In Malachi 1:8-9, God judged his people for offering bind and lame animals, imperfect sacrifices.

So by this time the priesthood had a very strict standard for which animals passed muster and could be offered as a sacrifice.

Well all these animals you could buy would have been pre-approved, and ready for sacrifice.

Now before Jesus’ time, this market place was on the Mount of Olives on other side of a valley across from the Temple.

So to make it more convenient, we would say out of pragmatism, the Priests started allowing merchants to set up shop and sell their animals in the Court of the Gentiles which you can see here on this picture (Herod’s Temple on the Temple Mount from Faithlife Study Bible Infographics).

You couldn’t just go anywhere you wanted in the Temple.

Only the priests were allowed to go into the actual Temple, and only the High Priest into the Holy of Holies on the Day of Atonement.

Every other Jew was able to worship God within the Temple walls.

God-fearers, Gentile worshipers, on the other hand had to stay outside the Temple walls and worship in the Court of the Gentiles.

If they wanted to draw near and worship God, that is the closest they could go.

But now, by Jesus’ day, that space, about 35 acres, or you can see on the picture multiple football fields, was all taken up by this bustling market.

The Gentiles had been pushed out and there was no place for them to worship God.

That’s going to come up in a second.

Money Changers

Well with people coming from all over the Roman Empire you also needed Money Changers.

People who could take your money and in exchange give you the right money for that country.

And you had to deal with Money changes because at this time was when every man over 20 years old would pay the Temple tax as an offering to the Lord (Ex. 30:13-14).

But the Temple would only accept a form of currency called a Tyrian which was basically really pure silver.

So if you wanted to purchase an animal or pay your offering to the Lord, you would have to exchange your money.

And these money changers would basically charge you a service fee and that fee could be as high as 12.5%.

It would basically be like giving a hundred dollars and getting 87 in return.

And then all these profits were shared between the merchants and temple priests where everybody was getting rich off the backs of people coming to worship God.

So what had happened was that the priests, who were supposed to guard and watch over the worship of God, partnered with merchants to turn the Temple into a for profit business that exploited worshipers of God and perverted the worship of God’s Temple.

That’s why Jesus in Matthew 21, the second time He comes to cleanse the Temple calls it a den of robbers (Mt. 21:13).

Court of the Gentiles

And there was no where this was more evident than in how this marketplace displaced, and kept the Gentiles from worshiping God.

When Solomon built the first Temple, he prayed that God would hear the foreigner when they prayed towards the Temple (1 Kings 8:41-43).

Israel was called to be a light to the nations. Their job was to lead the nations to worship the One, True God.

But here they are kicking the nations out.

Instead of prayers and worship, all you would have heard haggling and the lowing of oxen and bleating of sheep.

The one thing the Temple was made for, the reverent worship of God, would have been impossible.

And when Jesus says “Do not make my Father’s house a house of trade,” He’s objecting to the whole thing.

Its not the unjust business dealings He’s mostly concerned with.

It was how the Temple had perverted and disrupted the worship of God.

By kicking the Gentiles out, the Jews were basically saying we don’t really care about the worship of God.

All they cared about was money and going through the motions of religion.

Not heartfelt conviction and repentance of sin.

The whole point of the sacrifices in the first place.

When He comes back the second time Jesus says Is it not written, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations’? (Mark 11:17).

This was where all the nations would come to worship God.

To give God glory. Draw near to Him. Have their sin atoned for.

And here it was, just a business.

So what did Jesus do?

Cleansing

He made a whip of cords and drove them all out of the temple with the sheep and oxen.

He poured out their coins and turned over their tables.

And He told those who sold pigeons, “Pick up those cages and get them out of here.”

The whole scene was probably pandemonium.

Animals running everywhere with people chasing them.

Money changers falling on the ground trying to pick up their coins.

And this is even more amazing when you remember how big the Temple court was.

And Jesus as one man, a man on fire, cleared everybody out.

What got into Jesus?

Verse 17.

John 2:17 His disciples remembered that it was written, “Zeal for your house will consume me.”

The word zeal can be translated as jealousy or fiery passion.

Jesus was Zealous for the worship of God.

This is a quote from Psalm 69, and in this Psalm David is opposed by enemies because of His righteous zeal for the Temple and the pure worship of God.

And Jesus is the greater David opposed by the Jews who eventually put Him to death.

But that’s not where this Psalm ends.

David prays a prayer for deliverance with a firm hope that God will save His people despite any opposition from the enemies. (Ps 69:35-36)

And Jesus fulfills that prayer because though Jesus is put to death, God uses His death saves His people and transform them into true worshipers of God.

And that gives us a clue as to whyJohn highlights Jesus’ first cleansing of the Temple as opposed to the second one like the rest of the gospels, is to show us that from the very outset of His ministry, for the rest of the book…

Jesus is consumed with a passion for God’s glory.

His entire life is driven by one single mission: to save God’s people and remove every sin and obstacle out of the way that keeps them from worshiping God.

Jesus is zealous for the pure worship and glory of God.

Zeal Application

So how do we apply this?

This is probably one of the most important applications we could make our own to have an impact on our own lives and on the world today.

Jesus was zealous for the pure worship of God in the Temple. Zealous for it.

The question is are we?

How we worship ultimately reveals what we really think about God.

Is He Almighty and glorious or is He small and insignificant?

Maybe He’s a chore.

The idea is worship is an overflow of who we believe God is, and this is true both corporately and individually.

Corporate

The Bible says we, as a church are the Temple of God.

1 Peter 2:5 You yourselves like living stones are being built up as a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.

The question is, how do we worship?

Do we approach God with perfunctory religion, just going through the motions with hearts that are far from Him.

Or do we come to worship on Sunday mornings with joy and expectation, knowing that this is our highest calling each and every week.

Celebrating and proclaiming the excellencies of Him who called us out of darkness into His marvelous light.

This also says the way we worship matters.

We worship God according to His Word.

We pray. Sing songs, and hymns, and spiritual songs.

We devote ourselves to the public reading of Scripture.

And we sit under the Word preached to grow in Christ and celebrate God for His glory.

This is what we call the Regulative Principle: we as a church are only permitted to worship God the way He has commanded in His Word.

Why? Because He is holy and our job is to honor Him as holy.

So we as a church, all of us, should be zealous for the pure worship of God as a body.

We should engage ourselves in corporate worship.

Showing up. Guarding ourselves against going through the motions.

And most of all we should come to worship with joyful and expectant hearts intent on first and foremost giving God the glory due to His Name.

Individual

But we are not just God’s Temple corporately…we are God’s Temple individually.

1 Corinthians 6:19-20 Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body.

Here’s the question that’s been convicting me.

Am I as zealous to keep my life and my Temple pure, as Christ was to keep His Father’s house pure in John 2?

Jesus was consumed with zeal. He drove everything out that detracted or took away from the worship of God with righteous anger and a whip of cords.

How I fail to treat my sin the same way...

As God’s Temple, we should be zealous for holiness everywhere in our life.

Leave no stone unturned to put your sin to death.

How content we are to lay back and trifle with our comfortable sins.

Zeal for your house will consume me.

Does that describe your life?

Are you building a whip of cords every time you see sin or temptation creep in?

That lustful thought.

That anger or quick temper.

That bitterness or lack of forgiveness.

That moment of anxiety trusting in ourselves instead of casting our burdens upon the Lord.

That one temptation that seems like its always by your side...

Those are the ones that we, as God’s Temple, should be zealous to put to death.

Sanctification is being conformed to the image of Christ. Of looking more and more like Jesus.

How you worship God is what you think about Him.

Who do we say that He is?

The Lord of all our life?

The One who deserves all glory, majesty, dominion, and authority before all time, now, and forever? (Jude 25).

Then be zealous for His house and strive to bring all of your life in submission to Him, with a whip of cords if you have to.

Whatever it takes to clean the temple of your life and live a holy life.

Jesus is zealous for the pure worship of God’s house and for us today that means being zealous for the worship of our church and keeping ourselves pure as a Temple of the Holy Spirit.

Number 2...

II. Jesus is the True and Only Temple to Worship God the Father

John 2:18-22 So the Jews said to him, “What sign do you show us for doing these things?”

The Jews come to Jesus and ask What gives you the authority to do this? Prove to us why we should listen to you!

Basically Who are you in the sense of Who do you think you are?

For the Jews, signs proved divine authority.

When Moses asked God how the people would believe him, God gave Him the power to work signs (Ex. 4:1ff).

And Paul says in 1 Corinthians Jews seek signs (1 Cor 1:22).

Ok Jesus. You cleansed the Temple. You say we are wrong in how we are worshiping God. What gives you the right?

Jesus answered them, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” The Jews then said, “It has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and will you raise it up in three days?”

The Jews assumed Jesus was talking about the physical temple.

The Temple of Jesus’ day was not the one Solomon built. That one was destroyed by the Babylonians in 586 BC (Ez 5:12).

This was the Second Temple, the one rebuilt after the Babylonian captivity. That’s what Ezra and Nehemiah are all about.

Well, centuries later, Herod the Great started a reconstruction and expansion project on the Temple around 19 or 20 BC to try and gain some favor of the Jews who resented him because he was not a true Jew no matter how much he claimed to be, he was an Idumean, a descendent of Esau...

And they also saw him as a Roman puppet and the manifestation of Roman oppression over them.

So when the Jews say it has taken 46 years to build this Temple, they are talking about this reconstruction project that was still ongoing and would not be completed until AD 63, ironically just 7 years before it would be destroyed.

But Jesus wasn’t talking about the physical Temple. He was talking about Himself.

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.

What Jesus was saying was the He is the True Temple of God.

The True meeting place between God and man where God dwells with His people, His people draw near to worship God, and where all of our sin is atoned for.

This is truly amazing what Jesus is saying here. The Temple, and everything it represented, all pointed to Him.

He is the ultimate fulfillment of everything the Temple promised.

So to see the glory of Christ as the True Temple, let me give you a short theology of the Temple of God.

Temple Theology

What is the baseline promise of all of God’s Covenants?

Here’s what God said in the Old Covenant.

Leviticus 26:11-12 I will make my dwelling among you, and my soul shall not abhor you. And I will walk among you and will be your God, and you shall be my people.

This promise gets repeated again in the New Covenant.

Ezekiel 37:26-27 I will make a covenant of peace with them. It shall be an everlasting covenant with them. And I will set them in their land and multiply them, and will set my sanctuary in their midst forevermore. My dwelling place shall be with them, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.

And one day this promise will come to its full and ultimate fulfillment when Christ returns to wash away every trace and stain of sin and make all things new.

Revelation 21:3 And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God.”

Old Covenant. New Covenant. Eternal State.

God’s goal in salvation is to bring us back to Eden. Back into communion with Him.

To wash away all our sin, be our God, and we His people.

And that’s what the Temple pointed to.

Number 1: The Temple was Where God Dwelled with His People.

1 Kings 8:10-11 - a cloud filled the house of the Lord…[and] the glory of the Lord filled the Temple.

It was where God lived with them and blessed them with all the goodness of His covenant love and faithfulness.

Number 2: The Temple was also where God’s people would draw near to worship Him.

It was where you would go to offer sacrifices. Pray. Worship the Lord.

When Solomon dedicated the Temple he prayed: 1 Kings 8:27-30 Will God indeed dwell on the earth? Behold, heaven and the highest heaven cannot contain you; how much less this house that I have built! Yet have regard to the prayer of your servant and to his plea...listen to the plea of your servant and of your people Israel, when they pray toward this place. And listen in heaven your dwelling place, and when you hear, forgive.

And Number 3: The Temple was where God provided atonement for sin.

All the animal sacrifices and the Day of Atonement was God’s way, under the Old Covenant, of temporarily dealing with sin, making it possible for Him to dwell with His people and for them to draw near to worship Him, until Christ came.

The Temple was God’s way of fulfilling His covenant promises to His people.

It was where God dwelt with His people and where Israel worshiped Him as their God under His covenantal love, but now, Jesus says with His resurrection, He is the True Temple.

The Old Covenant Temple was just a shadow of the greater Temple, Jesus Christ.

Matthew 12:6 I tell you, something greater than the temple is here.

Everything that the Temple pointed to was fulfilled in Him.

John 1:14 And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.

Hebrews 1:3 He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature.

In the incarnation, God came to dwell with us.

When John said the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, that word literally is Tabernacled among us, as in the wilderness tabernacle that eventually became the Temple.

In Christ, God entered into the creation He had made…the creation that rebelled and sinned against Him.

The eternal Son of God lived and walked among us, revealed the glory of the Lord, not in a cloud, but in a living breathing person, who in His life death and resurrection showed us that God truly is Love.

Jesus took to Himself human flesh, to live, suffer, and die as a man, to be made like His brothers in every respect to save us from our sins so that we would dwell with God forever through Him.

In Christ, we draw near to God to worship Him.

John 14:6 I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.

1 Timothy 2:5 For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus.

If you want to worship God the Father, the only way is through Christ.

And He is the perfect sacrifice that provides a once for all atonement for all of our sin.

Hebrews 9:12 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.

This is a reference to the Day of Atonement, the Highest Holy Day of Israel’s year.

On the Day of Atonement the High Priest would take two goats.

One goat he would offer as a sin offering to die in the place of the people for their sin.

He would take the blood of that goat and pass through the veil into the Holy of Holies where he would sprinkle the blood on the mercy seat of the Ark of the Covenant to atone for Israel’s sin.

This was only done once a year. Ordinarily the High Priest would not enter the Holy of Holies.

All of the other sacrifices were offered outside of that sacred space.

And if he did enter it any other time of the year, he would die for His sin because the Holy of Holies was where God’s glory dwelt in the midst of His people.

After this, he would take the scapegoat, place his hands on its head and confess the sins of the people.

And then the goat would be chased off into the wilderness as a symbol for God carrying away His people’s sin.

Well Christ is the one perfect Sacrifice of the Day of Atonement.

He is the sin offering that dies in our place for our sins...

And He is the scapegoat who carries our sins away from us as far as east is from the west (Ps. 103:12).

And when He died on the cross, the veil in the Temple was ripped in two.

Mark 15:37-39 And Jesus uttered a loud cry and breathed his last. And the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom. And when the centurion, who stood facing him, saw that in this way he breathed his last, he said, “Truly this man was the Son of God!”

Jesus died, and when He died He opened the way into the Holy of Holies. Into the presence of God and the mercy seat where God atones for all of our sin not temporarily and continually every year…but once and for all.

And this takes on even greater significance when you remember that veil between the Holy Place and the Holy of Holies was embroidered with cherubim. Angels of the Lord.

Well what did God do when He drove the man out from the Garden of Eden?

Genesis 3:24 He placed the cherubim and a flaming sword that turned every way to guard the way to the tree of life.

Through Jesus’ death God was saying, Come back to the Tree of Life. Come back into the Garden. Come back into life and communion with God.

In other words, Jesus’ death on the cross reversed the curse.

It saves us from the wages of our sin which is death and delivers us from our sin and the wrath of God, so that we might be forgiven and draw near to worship the Lord.

Jesus is the True Temple where we draw near to worship God and have our sins forgiven.

Jesus said Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up (John 2:19).

Jesus was talking about His death and resurrection.

When Jesus rose from the grave, He built the true, once for all temple of God.

The True place where God says: I will make my dwelling among you, and my soul shall not abhor you. And I will walk among you and will be your God, and you shall be my people. (Lev. 26:11-12).

The Jews asked for a sign and Jesus said the sign would be His own resurrection.

The resurrection is where God declared Jesus to be the Son of God in power (Rom 1:4).

It was where God said we are forgiven because Christ’s sacrifice was accepted.

In Romans 4:25 Paul says Jesus was delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification.

In His death, Christ bore the legal penalty for all our guilt.

The Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all (Isaiah 53:5-6).

And when the Father raised Christ from the dead by the power of the Holy Spirit He vindicated Christ.

He declared Him to be perfectly righteous without any sin of His own, unworthy of the sentence of death.

Acts 2:24 God raised him up, loosing the pangs of death, because it was not possible for him to be held by it.

Through His death and resurrection, Christ became the True Temple.

The True place we draw near to God and are forgiven of our sin.

We are justified through faith in Him.

Conclusion/Application

So here’s what that means for you today.

NonChristian

If you are not a Christian, the only way to worship God and be forgiven of your sin is through this Temple. Is by coming to faith in Jesus Christ.

There is no other name under heaven by which we must be saved (Acts 4:12).

There is no other way to have your sin forgiven.

There is no other Temple you can go. No pilgrimage you can make.

No amount of works and religion you can muster up.

There is one altar that can make atonement for your sin and that’s the cross of Christ.

God raised Him from the dead as a promise that everyone who believes in Him will be saved from death.

There is no one he will not save, no sin he won’t forgive.

Jesus told a story of a tax collector, the lowest of the low, scum of the earth, going to the temple and he was so ashamed of His sin that he stood far off not even able to lift his eyes up from the floor.

All he could do was beat his chest and say God, be merciful to me, a sinner!

And Jesus said that man walked away forgiven (Luke 18:9-14).

Why? Because God’s grace doesn’t depend on you or how good you are.

It all depends on Christ and His perfect sacrifice.

If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. (Romans 10:9).

Christian

And for the Christian, something greater than the temple is here (Matthew 12:6).

All the promises of God find their yes and amen in him.

The Old Temple could never forgive our sins, and there was always a veil, a continual reminder of our sin and separation from God.

But in Christ that’s all done away with.

In Christ we have very spiritual blessing. Eternal life and the grace of God.

Our sins are remembered no more.

God dwells with us as our God and makes us his people beloved with unbreakable covenant love because of the unbreakable righteousness of Christ.

In short, Christ being the True Temple means we have the fullness of Salvation…all the blessings and promises of God are ours in Him.

Applying that means believing it. Trusting it. Giving thanks for it. Rejoicing in it!

Preaching the good news to your own soul: Rejoice! You are forgiven! You are beloved! You are secure forever because you are in God’s Holy Temple.

And then, going with what we talked about earlier, worshiping God and living for His glory with the zeal of someone who truly knows what it means to be forgiven of all their sin.