The New Temple

Call to worship

Welcome everyone!

LET US STAND AND WORSHIP!

“What a beautiful Name”

Words and Music by Hillsong

PRAYER OF PRAISE FOR WHO GOD IS

Lord,

“What a beautiful Name”

Words and Music by Hillsong

“What a beautiful Name”

Words and Music by Hillsong

PRAYER OF ILLUMINATION TO OPEN OUR HEARTS

Lord,

SERMON

Introduction

We will finish John chapter 2 today and be looking at the new temple. John writes his gospel like snapshots of Jesus. The first snapshot of His ministry was in the wedding of Cana and the next snapshot is when Jesus enters the temple, cleanses it, and prophetically says that he Himself is the new temple.

The temple is the worship center of the OT. It was not just a building, but the idea was that is where God Himself dwelled among His people. And to worship God one must come to the temple and do it there.

But Jesus changed all of that. He became the new temple where the manifest presence of God dwelled and to know God requires one to know Jesus.

John 2:13

The Misuse and Corruption of the Old Temple

John 2:13–17 NASB95

The Passover of the Jews was near, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. And He found in the temple those who were selling oxen and sheep and doves, and the money changers seated at their tables. And He made a scourge of cords, and 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 to those who were selling the doves He said, “Take these things away; stop making My Father’s house a place of business.” His disciples remembered that it was written, “Zeal for Your house will consume me.”

Explanation

(v 13) “The Passover of the Jews was near, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem”

Once a year all the Jews would make the journey to Jerusalem for Passover. Passover was a celebration that commemorated God’s saving actions in delivering Israel from slavery in Egypt. Par of this celebration was the offering of sacrifices as an act of worship to God.

(v 14) “And He found in the temple those who were selling oxen and sheep and doves, and the money changers seated at their tables”

The Jews had begun the practice of selling animals to be sacrificed. Pilgrims traveled many miles to come to Jerusalem and would have great difficulty bringing an ox or other animals with them. These animals they would sacrifice also had to be without blemish, which could easily happen on a long journey to Jerusalem. So the religious leaders began selling animals at the temple grounds to solve this problem.

Now this was in itself wrong, because Deuteronomy tells us that those who to the place God designates for worship is to bring their own sacrifice from their own herd (Deut 12:5-6). By instituting this standard, the sacrifices were made much more personal and costly. People would have to choose an animal from their herd, the best of the best and then carry it to Jerusalem to kill it and offer it to God.

When Ashley started her chicken hobby she started raising some pretty expensive chickens and had one prize rooster which she loved. She would go out there and feed it from her hand, and talk to it, and he was a big pretty rooster. If these laws applied to us, that is the one she would have had to offer up to God. Her favorite that she cherished so much

Application:

Personal sacrifice is at the core of worship.

From the beginning, it has been this way:

Cain and Able. Able offered the very best of his flock while Cain simply brought God some fruit from his field.

When David sinned against God by taking an unlawful census, he was told to purchase the ground where the future temple would be built and offer a sacrifice there. But the one who owned the ground tried to give it to David and the oxen for the burnt offering. But David said, no I will buy it at full price. For I will not offer burnt offerings to the Lord my God which cost me nothing!”

We must not think that we can worship God and it not cost us something.

It is to give something of our own that costs us something, to sacrifice something that we care about and offer it up to God with a sincere heart to show that we love God more by our actions.

Making worship convenient is to make our worship cheap

That is really what they were doing here. They had made it where all those coming to Jerusalem did not have to worry about leading an oxen or carrying doves many miles on foot. Taking the chance of something happening to them, or them dying. They could simply bring their money to the temple, and then purchase and animal there to offer which would be accepted by the inspectors and have no worries.

But all this convenience made a practice that was designed to honor God another custom, another religious ceremony with much less real meaning.

We cannot make our worship convenient and think it be the same. If we come into a church looking at our watch, counting the minutes until we are released, trying to cram everything into a one hour block because if we go over that then people are going to get upset, we are not really worshiping God, we are checking off a box.

There were also the money changers seated at their tables. Roman coins and other foreign coins had pagan images that could not be used in the temple. They could only bring temple coins into the temple. So there had to be exchange system to provide temple coins.

The problem there was that the money changers charged 6 percent for changing money, and if the coin given to them was of greater value than the half shekel required, they charged an additional 6 percent for giving change. The total charge was about half a day’s wage.

These leaders were cleaning up! With an influx of up to 2 million people coming to the temple once a year, can we imagine how much profit was being made off of these services? How much profit in just exchanging money alone?

The church is not a business. We do not gather to try to see how much money we can collect on a Sunday and put in the back and horde. We do not organize events, accept new church members or families, purchase buildings or property because it will make the church wealthier. The church is a house of worship. And if we truly worship God, God will take care of all the rest.

(v 15) “And He made a scourge of cords, and 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 to those who were selling the doves He said, “Take these things away; stop making My Father’s house a place of business.”

Some people paint this picture of Jesus as some laid back hippy totally passive to all human sin and ungodliness. We live in the era of grace over everything. Jesus is all love and would never be angry at anyone.

Do you know who says that? People who have never read the Bible. If this is not a scene of anger, I do not know what is. But it is not uncontrolled anger, but righteous indignation. Justified anger. He had every right to be angry and was absolutely justified in His actions.

And don’t miss what He says: “stop making my Father’s house a place of business”

They had changed a place of worship into a place of business

And this was not directed to all the people in the temple area, but primarily those at the tables and the religious leaders

And Jesus cleaned house.

Judgement begins in the house of God

This the first place Jesus went on His own accord. He was invited To the wedding In Cana. But then He left and headed to Jerusalem and His first visit was the temple. Now Jesus was not surprised when He walked in. For He knows all things and He knew this had been going on for far too long. But it was time to take care of business and clean house.

Jews were God’s chosen people. They had the law given to them, they had the history of God’s had upon them, and they were accountable to God. Therefore because they knew better, they were the one’s to receive God’s judgement first.

1 Peter 4:17 NASB95

For it is time for judgment to begin with the household of God; and if it begins with us first, what will be the outcome for those who do not obey the gospel of God?

God is a Father To us who are His children. And like a good Father, He does not discipline he children down the road that do not belong to us, but He disciplines His own.

We who believe the gospel and follow the gospel are Subject the chastening and discipline of the Lord. As we sit in a church service and hear truth Knowing it comes from God, Amd then disobey truth, we will be subject to judgment.

God us mot going to OG’s clubhouse over here to clean house, He will not hold those accountable for what they do not follow….but make no mistake, He will hold us accountable, even more so those who are in positions of leadership. Pastors, teachers, deacons…

We must not be fooled thinking that because we see God’s children, that He will let us slide on sin. It’s quite the opposite, we are MORE accountable now that we know better.

Jesus’ promise of a new temple through the death and resurrection of Jesus

John 2:18–22 NASB95

The Jews then said to Him, “What sign do You show us as your authority for doing these things?” Jesus answered them, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” The Jews then said, “It took forty-six years to build this temple, and will You raise it up in three days?” But He was speaking of the temple of His body. So when He was raised from the dead, His disciples remembered that He said this; and they believed the Scripture and the word which Jesus had spoken.

Explanation

The leaders are wanting some kind of authorization for Jesus’ actions. And that is very understandable. This man, Jesus of Nazareth has just walked into their establishment and turned the place upside down. So they are assuming that He must be someone special to do these things.

Jesus gives them the sign they were asking for, but not in the way they were expecting it. “Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up”. Here is your sigh, tear this temple down and I will raise it back up in only 3 days.

Now if you or I were standing there listening to that conversation between Jesus and the Jews on this side of the resurrection, we would have heard the same thing they heard. Jesus could rebuild that temple that took 46 years to build in just three days. And just like the Jews, we would have thought in our minds, “yeah right”.

It’s not that they had a misunderstanding, but that Jesus was speaking to them prophetically about what was to come! This was the first announcement of his death and resurrection to the Jews, and if they had paid close attention and remembered just like the Scripture tells us the disciples did (and possibly some did) they could have looked back at that day and saw the sign that the disciples then saw after the resurrection.

This temple they were looking at physically was built by Zerubbabel around 500 BC and remodeled by Herod the Great. The remodel (which included an expansion) began around 20 BC and was not completely finished until 64 Ad. In 70 AD (just 6 years later) the temple was completely destroyed and has never been rebuilt since. The Temple Mount where the temple was built and then rebuilt is now the location of a Muslim Mosque guarded by armed guards.

What Jesus pronounced here, was that this old sacrificial system of worship would become absolutely obsolete after His death and resurrection. There would no longer be the need for people to bring their animals to the temple ground to slaughter them and offer them up to God. The new temple would be the body of the Lord Jesus Christ, who is the perfect sacrifice that would be offered up as a pleasing aroma before God on the cross of Calvary.

This was a prophecies prediction that had a double meaning. Yes Jesus was speaking about his own body, but it also declared the truth about the fate of the present temple they were standing before. They would both be torn down, but only one would rise again, and that temple of the much greater temple of the two.

Application

(v 22) “So when He was raised from the dead, His disciples remembered that He said this; and they believed the Scripture and the word which Jesus had spoken.”

Notice after Jesus was raised from the dead, they remembered, “that He said this”. John of coarse would have been included in this group who remembered and now as he is writing is looking back over these events and recalling them.

But Henry didn’t just believe this prophetic announcement from Jesus, but it says they also believed the Scripture. Now it does not tell us what Scripture they believed, but it seems best to see this as the whole OT because in other places John references individual verses when they apply.

What was written in the OT about this that made them believe the entire OT?

One possibility is Scriptures like: Psalm 16:10 “For You will not abandon my soul to Sheol; Nor will You allow Your Holy One to undergo decay.”

Another is the entire sacrificial system that God designed which pointed forward to the one perfect sacrifice he would send to the world.

Another was temple itself. The place where God dwelled, the Shekinah glory of God manifest in that building then manifested In Jesus Christ.

In sum, Jesus said Himself that the entire OT was written about Him.

Luke 24:27

Luke 24:27 NASB95

Then beginning with Moses and 1with all the prophets, He explained to them the things concerning Himself in all the Scriptures.

John 5:46 NASB95

“For if you believed Moses, you would believe Me, for he wrote about Me.

PRINCIPLE 1): The foundation of our NT faith rests upon the prophetic witness of the OT

What we believe in the NT today, is the unfolding, the unveiling of the OT. It is the fulfilled prophetic declaration that a Savior would come into the world and die upon the cross that testifies that everything the apostles wrote about is true!

We do not simply take the word of the apostles who wrote and say yeah that is the kind of religion that fits my need, I like that, I’ll go with that. No it is the only religion because it is validated by the manuscripts dated back before Jesus Christ containing prophecies of what would happen in the future and then those prophecies fulfilled in Jesus. Over 6,000 manuscripts that we have today some dating all the way back to 600 BC!

PRINCIPLE 2): The realization of God’s unfolding Truth in this life matures our faith

When John says, “and they believed” I do not think this is referring to an initial kind of faith. Because it is said that at the Miracle of Cana the disciples believed. So what I see here is a deepening of that faith by seeing the fulfillment of Jesus’ Words.

And the same is true for us. When we read the words of Jesus in Scripture, and see the truths of them manifest in our lives or in the world it grows our faith. When we read things that we may not fully understand and then experience them, it grows our understanding.

And this is one way God matures us and deepens our trust in His Word.

The difference between faith that fails and faith that saves

John 2:23–25 NASB95

Now when He was in Jerusalem at the Passover, during the feast, many believed in His name, observing His signs which He was doing. But Jesus, on His part, was not entrusting Himself to them, for He knew all men, and because He did not need anyone to testify concerning man, for He Himself knew what was in man.

Explanation

Passover was a one day event. But the festival celebration was a week long event which is what these verses are referring to.

During this time many believed in Him, because of His signs. Now again we are not told what signs they observed, and that point does not matter. It’s not whether his sings were sufficient, but that they were the basis of their belief.

But then it says that Jesus was not “entrusting” Himself to them

That same word is used in reference to the people “believing inJesus” which is a play on words by John.

In essence this is what it is saying: The people believed in Jesus, but Jesus did not believe in the people’s belief.

In other words the faith of the people was superficial. It was not a faith that could save them. It was not a faith that Jesus trusted, because it was not saving faith like that of his disciples.

Bridge

What was the basis their belief in Jesus? It was the signs that he was doing. They were attracted to Him because they saw something supernatural in Him. Yet Jesus says that was not even trustworthy. It was a superficial faith based upon what Jesus could do for them.

The difference in these two kinds of beliefs is that one never really goes beyond intellectual. That is that we believe that God exists. It’s a kind of faith that knows things. But that is as far as it goes. Here it says they believed in Jesus because of his signs that they saw.

The other kind of belief is a belief is a belief that produces things. It’s a belief with the heart. It’s still believing that God exists, but to a deeper level that truly alters the way that we live. One with this kind of belief does not simply talk about God, or know about God, or even confess to know God, but truly lives out their life in a way that pleases God. A life that is free from sin, a life or true sacrificial worship, a life that looks like the life that Jesus lives.

Application

(v 24) “For He knew all men”……(v 25) “for He Himself knew what was in man”

Twice John essentially says the same thing

God knows what is really inside of us. He knows our thoughts, He knows our fears, He knows our deepest darkest sins, He knows all our secrets, He knows what we do when we are not around anyone, He knows it all.

I think that was the real difference in the disciples and Jesus here. John openly admits that He did not believe these words until after the resurrection. The people claimed however that they believed right then when in fact Jesus knew that they didn’t.

God will do far more through our honesty and humility and weakness than He will those who put up superficial walls and pretend to be something they are not.

Why do we try to hide the real people that we are when God already knows everything there is to know about us?

Why do we think we can fool God and paint some picture about us that really doesn’t exist?

Yet despite all this, Jesus still called you and me to follow Him and know Him.

Despite how sinful, how messed up we were, how rebellious we were, every sin we ever committed, He still wanted us!

And that means to anyone else in here, your secrets do not disqualify you.

The only thing that disqualifies you from this Jesus is whether your faith is real saving faith. Whether or not you have truly trusted Jesus with your whole life, and that is evident by the way you live for Him.

~PRAYER~

RESPONSE

PUBLIC INVITATION

“When its all been said and done”

Words and Music by Robin Mark

COMMUNION

I want us to think about Passover

We do not celebrate Passover today because the last Passover was held in that upper room that night before Jesus was betrayed and when He instituted a new covenant in His blood.

1 Corinthians 11:23–24 (NASB95)

For I received from the Lord that which I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus in the night in which He was betrayed took bread; and when He had given thanks, He broke it…

Invite those to take a piece of bread

Pray

Say ““This is My body, which is for you; do this in remembrance of Me.”

Eat the bread

1 Corinthians 11:25 (NASB95)

In the same way He took the cup also after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in My blood

Invite those to come receive a cup

Pray

Say: “do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of Me.”

Drink the cup

CLOSING PRAYER

Business Meeting

Opening Prayer

Reading of last months minutes

Any Questions?

Vote to approve last months minutes

Treasurers Report

Any Questions?

Vote to approve the treasurers report

Unfinished Business

New Business

Any other new business?

Meeting adjourned