John 2:13-22 (2)

Intro

Train intro.

Let’s not lose focus of what John is trying to communicate. John 20:31 “but these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.” These first 4 chapters of John could be summarized like this.

Proof that Jesus is God

John the apostle John the baptist Jesus disciples The miracles that Jesus did (turning water into wine) only God can actually create The authority that Jesus displays

Jesus tells us how to respond to the fact that He is God

John 3 with Nicodemus

Examples of People who respond correctly

End of John 3 and John 4

Our passage is right at the end of this first portion of John’s gospel. Proof that Jesus is God. We have already seen the testimony of John, John the Baptist, Jesus’s disciples, one of Jesus’s miracles, and now Jesus is going to prove to us that He is God by demonstrating that he has the authority to demand what the worship of God is to be like.

Jesus’s Authority proves that He is God vs 13-17

The Passover of the Jews was at hand, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem.

The Passover

A feast that God commanded Israel to celebrate to remember when he rescued them out of Egypt every year.

Jesus goes to the Passover, and he found those who were selling oxen and sheep and pigeons, and the money-changers sitting there. So he made a whip and forced them all out of the temple. Then he told the people who sold pigeons, “Take these things away; do not make my Father’s house a house of trade.” These people had made the temple a place to trade and make money instead of worshipping God.

One thing to note. Jesus took over the temple. This taking over was not simple. But Jesus took it over. Why? Because He was God and the religious leaders had turned this holiday that was meant to be about worshipping God into something to do and make money at. The reason Jesus was able to take over the temple was because he had authority.

What is authority? You are the author. You write the story and decides how it goes. God wrote the story of how they were to worship God and the religious leaders tried to write the story a different way.

Why did Jesus have authority? Jesus said, “this is my Father’s house” and by saying that, he was saying, I am equal with God because I am God and this is not how you worship me.

So the Jews demand a sign for why Jesus was doing what he did.

Why did they demand a sign? Because they were mad. Because Jesus had just come in and destroyed their money-making schemes to put worship as top priority. Because Jesus just claimed to be God. They want proof that He is God.

So Jesus tells them to destroy the this temple, not the physical temple, but his body and he would raise it in 3 days. Now the Jews probably laughed at him because it took them 46 years to build the temple that they were now in.

But guess what? In 3 years, they did kill Jesus, and he did rise again, and proved perfectly that he was God.

And notice this, his disciples didn’t understand what he was talking about until he was raised from the dead.

What Can you Take Away from this?

Because Jesus is God, because he has authority, he deserves your worship.

Don’t miss this. Jesus wants you to worship him.

Ask Jesus to help you focus when you are spending time with him.

at church

at home

What keeps you from worshipping Jesus? Sin, being distracted, thinking about lunch? Are you ok with having sin in your heart when you come to worship Jesus?

Be encouraged, just because you may not understand things now, ask the Lord for help so that you may understand what he has written.

Isaiah 55:10–11 ““For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven and do not return there but water the earth, making it bring forth and sprout, giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it.”