The Temple

Scripture: John 2:13-22

John 2:13–22 NIV

13 When it was almost time for the Jewish Passover, Jesus went up to Jerusalem. 14 In the temple courts he found people selling cattle, sheep and doves, and others sitting at tables exchanging money. 15 So he made a whip out of cords, and drove all from the temple courts, both sheep and cattle; he scattered the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables. 16 To those who sold doves he said, “Get these out of here! Stop turning my Father’s house into a market!” 17 His disciples remembered that it is written: “Zeal for your house will consume me.” 18 The Jews then responded to him, “What sign can you show us to prove your authority to do all this?” 19 Jesus answered them, “Destroy this temple, and I will raise it again in three days.” 20 They replied, “It has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and you are going to raise it in three days?” 21 But the temple he had spoken of was his body. 22 After he was raised from the dead, his disciples recalled what he had said. Then they believed the scripture and the words that Jesus had spoken.

3/3/2024

Order of Service:

Announcements

Opening Worship

Prayer Requests

Prayer Song

Pastoral Prayer

Kid’s Time

Offering (Doxology and Offering Prayer)

Scripture Reading

Sermon

Communion

Closing Song

Benediction

Special Notes:

Week 1: Communion

Dr. Seuss Communion

Opening Prayer:

Holy Lord, You are worthy of our adoring praise. We are here today to give ourselves to You as living sacrifices, gathered together as the Body of Christ. As He gave His life for us, so we bring our lives to You in praise and thanksgiving. Come and fill us as we empty ourselves for You today. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

Children’s Moment:

Zach Veale helping (Jesus overturns the tables in the Temple)

The Temple

Is it Worship?

Our perspective makes an incredible difference in what we experience on our journey with Jesus from the water to the cross.

Would you do me a favor? Hold your right hand up so that it blocks your vision of the right side of the screen. I want you to only look at the left side of the screen.

It is a picture of a crowd of people sitting in rows, hands lifted high, while a gentleman in a nice-looking suit waves his hands and speaks to the crowd excitedly and animatedly. Is that a picture of worship? It may not look like every Sunday morning you’ve experienced, but perhaps it seems like a revival service where everyone is really into it. It reminds me a little bit of Newsong, Crowder, and the other bands we saw in Evansville a couple of weeks ago.

Thank you. Now, you can put your hands down. The right side of the picture gives you the perspective from behind the pulpit. Suddenly, we see that not only are people raising their hands, but they are holding up numbers. The speaker has a gavel he is waving around. We can see the excitement on the faces of the crowd. But this is not a church service. This is an auction. These people are not here to worship. They are here to get a bargain and, in their enthusiasm, outbid everyone around them.

The difference between worship and something entirely different is not always in how you act or what it looks like. Often, it is more about your perspective. As we make our journey with Jesus, we repent and believe, we carry the cross that Jesus gives us, and our scripture today shows us that we are called to worship God with all we have and all we are.

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The Temple

In the time of Jesus, Jews did not consider worship to be something they did every week. True worship to them was a special event that happened a few times yearly. It also was something that could only occur in a specific place. From Moses until Jesus, worship was supposed to happen in the Temple or the Tabernacle before the Temple was built. Songs were sung, and the scripture was read, but the most essential act of worship for God’s people was when they brought their sheep, bulls, doves, and grain to be offered as a sacrifice of repentance and thankfulness to God for forgiving their sins and providing them with the blessings of life. All of their worship centered around these moments at the Temple, and it was busy all day, every day, with special services on major holidays.

The gospels tell us about several times that Jesus was in the Temple. His first time in the Temple was when He was less than a month old. In the tradition of Abraham offering up Isaac as a sacrifice on Mt. Moriah, God commanded every parent to redeem or buy back their firstborn male child because the firstborn or first fruits of all life belong to God. Since God forbade human sacrifices, new parents were supposed to bring a lamb or, if they were too poor, two small birds to sacrifice in place of the child. At that moment, two people, an older man and a widowed woman who lived in the Temple, met Jesus and were given the revelation from God that He was the promised Messiah. This was a moment of holy celebration as Mary and Joseph purchased the life of their firstborn, God’s firstborn, for the price of two turtledoves.

Jesus’ second encounter in the Temple was when He was twelve years old. Mary and Joseph had come to Jerusalem for one of the Temple’s annual worship days. On their way home, they realized that Jesus was not with them. They searched the city fervently and finally found Him back at the Temple. After the worship time had ended, Jesus began teaching the law of Moses to the priests and scribes who were there working. Everyone was astonished at how much this young boy knew. Mary and Joseph were frustrated, but Jesus told them they should have known He would be “in His Father’s house.” As a young boy, Jesus understood that the Temple was home for Him.

Today’s scripture is about the next encounter Jesus had in the Temple. As an adult, on His journey to the cross, Jesus returned to worship and teach again in His Father’s house. When He arrived, He saw how the merchants selling animals for the sacrifice had taken over the place. The outer courts, where people had been gathering for worship, had become a place where those who raised and sold livestock came and made money from the travelers who found it easier to buy a sacrifice there than to travel with their sheep, cow, or birds from home. The Temple had become a profitable industry in Jerusalem, especially since it was the only place to worship God.

Jesus chased out the livestock with a whip and turned over the tables, scattering the money all over the ground. In His anger about the situation and His love for God, He told them that His Father’s House should be a house of prayer where people could be in God’s presence. Instead, they had made it into a “marketplace” where people came and paid for a worship experience.

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The heart of the Temple was a room called the Holy of Holies. This room held the Ark of the Covenant from the time of Moses, and only the high priest was allowed to enter this room, and he could only enter once a year. On that day, the high priest brought a sacrifice to atone for the sins of all of Israel for the past year, including all the sins they didn’t even know they had committed.

The reason this room was so special was because they perceived it as the throne room of God. The Ark guarded the way into God’s presence, like a portal to heaven, peeking into our world. No one was allowed to barge into the personal chambers of earthly kings, let alone the God who created the universe. But once a year, God allowed humanity to come to be in His presence and bring an offering of worship to Him.

In the Temple, God was not on display nor there to grant requests. God was there for the people to come and show their gratitude by offering back the first fruits of what God had provided them. Everything else in the Temple and their worship was there to lead the people to that moment of giving back to God.

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Jesus Breaks In

If anyone else had come into the Temple with a whip and disrupted the merchants in the outer courts, they would have been arrested at once and probably suffered an extreme punishment. It was breaking and entering, and the merchants feared Jesus was robbing them. But when we look at it from behind the pulpit, from the perspective of Jesus and His journey, not just our own, we see He was coming home and cleaning the people out of His house that were using His Father’s house as a place of business. He was only shooing the salesmen off the front porch.

Jesus broke into our world and what we had made worship into and opened up the way for everyone to be in God’s presence. What began that day in the outer courts, clearing out the merchants and making space for the people who were there to pray, grew even more the day Jesus died on the cross. On that day, the curtain that separated the Holy of Holies from being seen by anyone other than the high priest was torn from top to bottom. God’s people were suddenly free to look into the courtroom of our heavenly king.

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One of the Bible’s wildest and most exciting books is the Revelation of Jesus, written by the Apostle John. It is the last book of the Bible, and it gives us a vision of God’s kingdom finally coming in to swallow up our world and remake it all according to God’s will. The book is an account of one Sabbath Day when John suddenly caught a glimpse of God’s throne room in Heaven. It was as if he was looking into the Holy of Holies, yet John was nowhere near the Temple. He was chained up in a cave and exiled to a prison mining camp on a small island in the Mediterranean, far from Jerusalem.

Jesus showed John that it doesn’t matter where we are or how deep we are buried in the world. God’s Kingdom, the Kingdom of Heaven, can break into our lives at any moment and invite us into a time of worship in God’s presence. We are never too far away from God. It is just a matter of perspective.

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Invited to God’s Table

Revelation 3:20 says:

“Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with that person, and they with me.”

If we could go back to the days when the Temple stood in Jerusalem and looked into the Holy of Holies that day the curtain was torn, we would see the Ark of the Covenant, the gateway to God’s throne room in Heaven. The Dining Room of God was just outside the Holy of Holies. It held a candlestand and a table with bread offered for God to enjoy (at least spiritually). It was where the priests of God could attend to Him regularly, and it was there they ate with Him.

Jesus recreated that same dining room of God on the night He gave Himself up for us. He took bread, blessed it, and gave it to His disciples to eat with Him. But instead of this Holy Room being a place where we come and bring our first fruit offerings to God, Jesus brought an offering to us.

This is my body, broken for you.

This is my blood, poured out for you.

Jesus came through the barrier of heaven to earth and brought us all into God’s presence. He opened the way so that we could have access to the presence of God anytime, anywhere. But greater still, when we should have responded to that invitation by coming and offering not only the first fruits of what God gives us but all we have and all we are... He came and offered us all He had and all He was. The King came down from the throne and washed the feet of those who sinned against Him, and then offered them, offered us, His very life.

Brothers and sisters, how do you respond to that? What else can you do but say, Lord, all I have and all I am is Yours. There are so many things I think I need and desire, and I see this cross You have given me that I would love to give back to You. Nevertheless, not my will be done, but Your will be done. You have given us everything. You have opened the doors to the Kingdom of Heaven and given me the keys to Your heart. There is nothing You have held back. Here are the keys to my heart, Lord. All I have and all I am is Yours. That, brothers and sisters, is true worship.

Closing Prayer

Holy Lord,

Before we were born, You knew us and claimed us as Your own. Everything we have — every possession, every talent, every good idea or opportunity that has come our way — is a gift from You. All we have is Yours. All we are is Yours. So we come together today, as a living sacrifice, as one community, one family, bonded by love for one another that we have learned and received from You, and we offer ourselves back to You.

We trust You to have Your way with us, because we know Your love. We know You love us more than we love ourselves. We know there is no flaw or stain that will turn You away, or that You cannot wash clean again. We have been in the world, lived in the mire and mud, fed ourselves from food that did not satisfy our hungers, and we acknowledge today Lord, that our one desire, beyond anything and everything else, is to be with You.

May our offering today be pleasing to You Lord. Take us, and make us Yours again.

In Jesus’ name. Amen.

Communion Liturgy - (Bekah Leading)

May the Lord be with you.

And also with you.

May your hearts be lightened and filled with God’s love!

We lift up our hearts and praise God above.

Let us give thanks to the Lord, God our Father.

We thank God and praise Him – it isn’t a bother!

It is right and good-ful; holy and wonderful; blessed and joyful;

To give thanks to you God, Almighty and faithful.

For it’s you that has given us this worship time,

Filled with laughter, some holy humor and rhyme.

It’s you that has shown us your holy love,

That you have sent from heaven high up above.

And so, with your angels who first sang your song,

We proclaim your goodness by singing along:

Holy, holy, holy Lord, God of power and might,

Heaven is filled with your marvelous glory;

Earth is filled with your light.

Blessed is he who comes in your name -

“Hosanna on high!” we loudly proclaim.

Holy God, it’s your Son we remember today,

Jesus Christ, the anointed, whom we try to obey.

He encouraged the poor and freed the oppressed,

And taught us that you care about the distressed.

Through his suffering, death, and resurrection,

He taught that Your grace beats out our imperfection.

He ascended to Heaven and sits there beside you,

But still remains with us in all that we do.

On the night he was taken, he lifted some bread,

He blessed it, and broke it, and here’s what he said:

“Dear friends, this is my body to you that I give.

Take it; share it: in you I will live.

From now on, whenever, wherever you meet

Remember our time when this bread here you eat.”

When supper was over, he then took the cup,

With praise and thanksgiving he lifted it up:

“For the New Covenant, this is my blood;

A sign of the Lord’s continuing love.

For God has forgiven your every mistake,

So trust in God’s love when this drink you partake.”

May we offer ourselves for God’s greater glory,

And proclaim what we know of this fabulous story:

Christ Jesus: he died, but then rose again!

He’ll return here on earth: Hallelujah! Amen.

Holy Spirit, come down on us gathered here,

With this bread and this fruit of the vine please appear.

Make holy this food, fill us with your grace,

So we proclaim the gospel to the whole human race.

We love you, Lord Jesus, we’ll shout out again

Your glory and honor:

Amen and Amen!

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