Jesus is the true temple

Introduction

When we think about worship in the church today, what do we think of? Most commonly, people think about the Sunday service that we attend once a week. If you’re more familiar with worship that is portrayed in movies, you probably think of beautiful big cathedrals, with nuns and worshippers sitting in the pews, with serene holy music in the background. If you’ve been in more charismatic or Pentecostal churches, you might think of Sunday services with passionate catchy tunes with everyone jumping in front of the stage.

But worship is more than just what we see, here, or do. It’s more than just the things that are external. And it’s more than things that we think, and it’s more than what we feel. Worship is something that involves every fibre of our being, because every part of us, our whole being, was created to worship God. It’s why we were made. When God created Adam and Eve, he created them to be in relationship with them, and the way God made this relationship to work was for Adam and Eve to relate to God in worship, and God was to relate to Adam and Eve with love and blessings. So worship is where with all our heart, soul, and strength, you give God love, honour, praise, thanksgiving, obedience, because we acknowledge who God is in all holiness and power.

That is what worship is. And the passage today tells us more how we are to achieve this worship, the very reason we were created.

Jesus rejects incorrect worship

Firstly, this passage shows us that God completely rejects worship that is done incorrectly. In John 2:16 it says ‘And he told those who sold the pigeons, “Take these things away; do not make my Father’s house a house of trade.”’ Jesus completely rejects what is going on at the temple, the place where people came to worship God. When we read this, we may assume that Jesus was angry because he thought that the traders and the Jewish leaders were corrupt, and exploiting the people attending the temple, trying to extort money from them. But that’s not necessarily true. These tradesmen were a necessary part of the temple worship because many people came to Jerusalem every year to celebrate Passover which required an animal sacrifice. Many people lived very far away and couldn’t bring their animal sacrifices with them so they needed buy an animal to sacrifice when they got to Jerusalem. The money-changers were also necessary, because they needed to pay a temple tax when they attended Passover, and the temple only accepted one form of currency (Tyrian shekels). Many people coming from far away had different currencies, so when they arrived, they needed to go to a money exchange to get the correct currency.

So when Jesus drives out the traders and animals and money-changers, he is not condemining the sales practice itself. If anything the sales of sacrificial animals and exchaning money was necessary and important. What Jesus is condeming is the fact that this market was occurring in the temple court itself. The temple was meant to be a place of serious, heartfelt worship towards God, but it had been replaced with something else - it had become a marketplace. A place of prayer and worship and adoration of God had become a place of trade and exchanging money. Jesus was angry because what was going on was hindering true worship.

Another reason why Jesus was so angry at what was going on was not only because the marketplace was occuring in the temple, but because it was occuring in the Court of Gentiles. The Court of Gentiles was the only place non-Jewish people could enter the temple and worship God. The other areas of the temple were actually barricaded off, and we now have found archaeological signs that said ‘No foreigner is to enter within the forecourt and the balustrade around the sanctuary. Whoever is caught will have himself to blame for his subsequent death.’ The traders and money-exchangers were turning the only place the Gentiles had for true worship into a marketplace, and this goes against God’s intention fr true worship because for God, true worship was not only for the Jews but also the Gentiles. Isaiah 56:7 states ‘these I will bring to my holy mountain, and make them joyful in my house of prayer; their burnt offerings and their sacrifices will be accepted on my altar; for my house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples.’ It talks about all the nations, not just the Jews, coming to the temple and worshipping God. But this marketplace had turned the only place the Gentiles had to worship God into a noisy market.

And look how violently Jesus condemns all this. If we read John 2:15 “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.” He doesn’t just yell at them, but he makes a whip, terrifies the people around him, and physically drives everyone out of the temple. This almost seems a bit out of character for the loving Jesus that we all know. But Jesus is not just a helpless lamb, but Jesus is also a fierce lion. He will not let anything get in the way of true worship, even if he has to use destructive force. This is how much Jesus is concerned with true and correct worship of God.

So worshipping God is not a joke. We are not here to just to casually learn about the bible. We are not here just to have a good time. Worship is not a leisurely time where we just casually walk in, sit back and relax and be entertained by whoever is talking. When we come to worship God on Sunday services, and also in our everyday lives, Jesus is eminently concerned that we give true worship, to the point he makes a whip to physically drive out the moneychangers and traders, to the point he is willing to use physical violence, because true and correct worship is that important to us, His creatures. To give true worship is the very reason why God created. We were created to worship God.

What stops true worship

This passage then also shows us what stops true worship. One of the things that John shows us is that a lack of zeal can be a cause for incorrect and improper worship.

Read John 2:17 ‘His disciples remembered that it was written, “Zeal for your house will consume me.”’ When Jesus overturns the temple courts and drives everyone out, His disciples remember Psalm 69:9, which reads ‘Zeal for your house will consume me.’ Psalm 69 is about the Psalmist having a zeal for God’s house, God’s temple, for the right worship of God. And because of this, he was persecuted and attacked, something that also happens to Jesus because he is continually persecuted by the religious leaders and eventually crucified.

But what is zeal? Zeal can be a bit of a nebulous concept. According to a bible dictionary, zeal is a ‘A single-minded desire, characterised by enthusiasm and devotion.’ In the OT, when God is described as a ‘jealous’ God, it is the same Hebrew word for ‘zealous’. God does not tolerate worship of other things, and He desires and expects exclusive worship to Him and Him only, not of other things. Zeal in the OT, is well characterised by Phineas. In the book of Numbers (Num 25:10-18), the Israelites commit idolatry by marrying people of foreign nations with other gods and the Israelites worship Baal, and as a result God sends a plague which kills 24,000 Israelites. While this is happening, an Israelite named Zimri with his foreign wife blatantly come before Moses. So Phineas gets a spear and pierces it through the both of them and kills them. As a result, the plague stops, and God commends Phineas for his zeal. So zeal is the complete allegiance, loyalty, passion to God and God only. It is the exclusive, singular, devotion of our entire attention, affection, love, towards God, and no-one or nothing else.

So then, what stops or hinders true worship of God is when we lose our zeal. This happens when we let our singular complete devotion and loyalty to God, get distracted, clouded, divided by other things, so that we lose our zeal to protect the true worship of the one and only God. We see that in the passage today with the Jewish religious leaders. They ask in John 2:18 ‘what sign do you show us for doing these things’. What they really should be asking is ‘What are we doing wrong? What should we do to make this temple right again? What should we do to restore proper worship?’. But rather than having the right worship of God as their main concern, their question indicates that what they are truly concerned about is not right worship, but authority. They want Jesus to prove to them why His authority is greater than theirs to determine true worship, because they as the religious leaders had the authority to determine the activities of the temple. The zeal that they should have to protect true temple worship, is distracted by the question of authority. They have lost the true heart of worship, and what is the consequence? They are spiritually blind: they are unable to perceive the true meaning when Jesus says ‘Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up’, and they don’t see Jesus for who he really is, the divine Son of God in the flesh.

For the Pharisees and religious leaders, the thing that divided their attention away, distracted them, and took away their zeal for right and proper worship of God, was authority and power. We also have things that distract us, dilute our zeal. And some of these things that divides our attention and make us lose focus on God, might be things that are important and necessary, just like the animal sacrifices and money exchanging of the Jerusalem temple. But they must not be in the wrong place just like the marketplace in the passage today, they shouldn’t be in the temple to distract and take away from worshipping God. (See also Psalm 69:9 - we see in the broader context, 69:31, they are not the most necessary thing, God is not ultimately interested in the sacrifice itself, he is more interested in the underlying heart).

In our personal lives, the things that distract from proper worship of God and divide our attention away from God may be:

Other interests: sometimes we are just more interested in other things. We would rather be doing something else rather than spending time with God and worshipping God. Friends, gaming, pursuing academic success, pursuing popularity. These often reflect our idols.

Time - the busyness of our lives, we are unable to prioritise what is truly important.

Laziness

In our church life, there may also be things that are important and necessary, but can become things that distract away from proper worship of God if they are not in the proper place.

Focusing on ‘experience’ of worship, rather than the heart of worship itself.

Focusing on activities

Focusing on the finances of the church

Focusing on the building of the church

Focusing on relationships within the church, friends, and family, without God as the centre

True worship is now found in Jesus

So we see that Jesus rejects incorrect worship and also shows us what leads us into it. Then what is true worship? True worship is found in Jesus. Read John 2:19 “Jesus answered them, ‘Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.”’ In this passage, Jesus is saying that the true temple is no longer the physical building in Jerusalem, but now the true temple is in Him. Through this, Jesus is showing us that true worship is (1) a relationship and (2) a place.

So firstly, worship is a relationship. We were created to be in the presence of God worshipping him, but then sin came into the world, and we could no longer be in God’s presence because we would be destroyed by God’s righteousness and holiness, so God made provisions for us so that we could remain in his presence. First, it was the tabernacle, and now the temple. The temple was the place where you made sacrifices for your sins, and after your sins were forgiven, you could now be in the presence of God and worship him. Jesus says He is now the true temple because He is the one who is the true sacrifice that once and for all perfectly takes on our sin. See how all this takes place during the Passover (see John 2:13). This is Jesus saying, ‘I am the true Passover lamb’, and through my sacrifice, I will once and for all deal with your problem of sin, and I now restore your relationship with God so that you can now be in His presence, so that you can fulfill your created purpose, to worship God. It is through the blood of Jesus Christ that we are able to worship God properly, because we can now freely be in his presence, because Jesus Christ took on our sins for us.

Secondly, worship is a place. The temple was the place that signified the very presence of God. Jesus is now saying that God’s presence is no longer limited to a physical location inside the temple, but Jesus is now the true temple, the very presence of God dwells in Jesus Christ. Remember John 1:14 said that Jesus is the Word that became flesh, God dwells in the very person, flesh, of Jesus Christ. No tonly that, John 14:11 says that Jesus is in the Father and the Father is in Jesus. And this has very practical implications for us, because where is the body of Christ found? Where is the body of Jesus in which the very presence of God dwells? The church. The church is the body of Christ (2 Cor 6:16). We are his body. So this is why as Christians, we can’t live individualistic lives. This culture that we live in focuses so much on the individual: how to be your best self, an obsession with my identity, my purpose in life, etc. But this notion of intense individualism, independence, personal freedom is actually antithetical to the Christian life. The Christian life is actually living and participating in the body of Christ, being united as one with other brothers and sisters in Christ, because it is when we join together, love one another, and support one another, that we form the body. This is not just socialising because when we do so, when we become united by the Holy Spirit, it is in this community, in us, that the very presence of God dwells. Christianity is not an individualistic religion, it is not about me, it is not about you; it is about us, and not just us in isolation, but us in inseparable relationship with Christ, with Christ as the head and Christ as the true bridegroom.

Conclusion

So Jesus wants us to worship Him properly. If there is anything in your life that is blocking the way for true and proper worship of God, pray that the Holy Spirit may reveal it to you and break it down for you. Jesus will not tolerate anything that will stop proper worship, and just like how he made a whip and cleansed the temple, he will not shy away from using such force in our lives as well. Sometimes it is easier for us obey God and remove these distractions ourselves before Jesus takes out his rod of discipline. If he does take out his rod, it may be a difficult time when God wrenches things and drives things out of your life so that your focus and attention is turned back towards Him. But even this is an act of grace and something we should be thankful for, even if it is a time of difficulty and suffering, as God is restoring your life, returning you to the very reason why you were created: to worship God. And we can truly worship God when we fall at the feet of Jesus, receive his grace and mercy that He gave on the cross for us, and are restored in relationship with him. When we are in relationship with him, we are in Christ, and Christ is in us, the very presence of the Holy God is in us, and not just us, but also the whole church.

Closing song: Heart of Worship

Sources:

Handbook on the Gospels (Gladd)

Pillar NT commentary

Tyndale NT commentary

Reformed expository commentary

New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology

https://www.cslewisinstitute.org/resources/what-does-it-mean-to-worship-god/#:~:text=Worship%20means%20respectful%20devotion%E2%80%94loving,behave%20reverently%20in%20His%20Presence.