Christ Passion for our Holiness
Notes
Transcript
Open Your Bibles to John 2.13
Open Your Bibles to John 2.13
1. His Temple ()
1. His Temple ()
2. The Temptation (John 2.14-16)
2. The Temptation ()
3. The Tables ()
3. The Tables ()
4. Our Trust ()
4. Our Trust (John 2.23)
1.
1. His Temple (john 2.14-16)
1. His Temple (john 2.14-16)
The Passover of the Jews was at hand, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem.
john 2.13
Jesus had always gone up to Jerusalem with his family for the passover.
Now his parents went to Jerusalem every year at the Feast of the Passover.
People went up to Jerusalem because it was located at a higher elevation than Galilee and because it was the capital
Passover is one of the most important religious festivals in the Jewish calendar. Jews celebrate the Feast of Passover (Pesach in Hebrew) to commemorate the liberation of the Children of Israel who were led out of Egypt by Moses.
Crossway Bibles. (2008). The ESV Study Bible (p. 2023). Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles.
Passover is one of the most important religious festivals in the Jewish calendar. Jews celebrate the Feast of Passover (Pesach in Hebrew) to commemorate the liberation of the Children of Israel who were led out of Egypt by Moses.
The story of the Passover. The final plague of 10 in Exodus was the death of the first born. God told Moses that the Israelites should mark their doorposts with lamb's blood so that God could 'pass over' their houses and spare them from this plague. ... This is why, during Passover, Jewish people eat unleavened bread called Matzah.
When the Pharaoh freed the Israelites, it is said that they left in such a hurry that they could not wait for bread dough to rise (leaven). In commemoration, for the duration of Passover no leavened bread is eaten, for which reason Passover was called the feast of unleavened bread in the Torah or Old Testament.
The ESV Study Bible Chapter 2
Temple (Gk. hieron) denotes the area surrounding the temple, including the Court of the Gentiles, in distinction from the temple building proper (Gk. naos), from which non-Jews were excluded. By selling oxen, sheep, and pigeons, the merchants, as well as the money-changers, rendered a service to those who had traveled to Jerusalem from afar, enabling them to buy the animals on-site rather than having to carry them for long distances. By conducting their business in the temple complex, however, these individuals disrupted the worship of non-Jewish God-fearers (see note on 12:20) and thus obstructed the very purpose for which the temple existed.
Setting the Stage
Setting the Stage
The outward reason for this set up was probably that the law required sacrifices of oxen and sheep and pigeons, and many worshippers would have come a long way and would not have brought their sacrifice with them. So this made the animals readily available for purchase. You could say it was the loving thing to do. Make the purchase convenient.
Illustration with humor
I can almost hear them like the beer man at a Braves game “Who needs that alcohol?” Cold Beer! They were like who needs a pigeon... who needs a calf?
Jesus’ Response
Jesus’ Response
Now what is Jesus’ response when he saw this? Verses 15–16:
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.”
Jesus obviously did not approve of what he saw. Why not?
What was the problem?
They were making the Temple (The dwelling of a Holy God) a common place. Jesus was saying God will not reside in a temple that is less than Holy.
2. The Temptation ()
Don’t jump too quickly to the other Gospels. For example, when Jesus does something similar in Matthew, he says, “It is written, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer,’ but you make it a den of robbers’” (). John does not report either of those two things as the problem here. He doesn’t say: “It’s a house of prayer.” And he doesn’t say they are “robbers.”
Is John even reporting the same event? In Matthew, Mark, and Luke Jesus drives money-changers out of the temple at the end of his three-year ministry. In John, he is doing it at the beginning of his ministry. It could be that John has moved the event and isn’t claiming to have a chronological order. But there is no compelling reason to think this is not a different event altogether from what happened three years later. Jesus’ response is not the same. And the outcome in Jerusalem is not the same.
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.”
Jesus continues to do this in our lives.
2 things here.
1. Has to do with Holiness “turned my fathers house into marketplace” The temple is to be the place where God’s presence is. Thats why men could not just wander back into the Holy o Holies.
You are making God normal and removing the Awe. To do this is a great strategy of the enemy. There should be in every soul a real AWE and amazement at the God of all creation. Men stare into the universe and are amazed at the mystery and vastness. The Universe in reality cannot compare to the creator of it all.
There should be set aside space in our souls for AWE and WONDER of this magnificient God.
But the enemy called the
devil, the English translation of a Greek word (diabolos) meaning ‘accuser’ or ‘slanderer,’ used in the Septuagint to translate the Hebrew ‘Satan’ and in the nt as a virtual synonym for the same term.
They were also profiting from the use of this space. they had gotten comfortable in the temple of God turning a profit and the disguise of helping people. This was the first time Jesus lays into the Jewish people for their hypocrisy.
Achtemeier, P. J., Harper & Row and Society of Biblical Literature. (1985). In Harper’s Bible dictionary (1st ed., p. 220). San Francisco: Harper & Row.
And the great dragon was thrown down, that ancient serpent, who is called the devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world—he was thrown down to the earth, and his angels were thrown down with him.
rev 12.9
They were also profiting from the use of this space. they had gotten comfortable in the temple of God turning a profit and the disguise of helping people. This was the first time Jesus lays into the Jewish people for their hypocrisy.
Many like Joel Olstein and the “prosperity gospel” do this today. They use religion to get wealthy.
But, there is a temptation for us as well. we go through the motions spiritually. We struggle to treasure Christ as we ought!
We set up our tables metaphorically in life in hopes to find happiness apart from God.
Our tables are
Money, Power, sex, positions, recognition, approval, success, beauty, intelligence, family, security
Enter the Tables and Christ
3. The Tables ()
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.
Why it comes back to us. God is constructing a temple made of living stones. Therefore we are to be Holy. So God still bust in and rages in our lives to make us Holy.
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.
God reveals that in the OT he dwelled among his people as the shacona cloud of glory.
IN the NT He dwelled with His people as Emanuel. God in the flesh as Jesus.
But after Pentecost He would dwell in His people. His spirit would be in them and they would be His temple!
For zeal for your house has consumed me,
and the reproaches of those who reproach you have fallen on me.
Zeal for my fathers house. Passion for the place where God is.
It is easy to see Jesus as a mascot or commodity. He gives us things we want and like. Then the church slowly becomes unholy. The church then becomes just the same as everybody else.
The church is a sign to the world that Jesus indeed is the SON of God.
Jesus will Turn the tables on us to make us Holy that He might dwell with us.
Worship of God can become a tool for you for something other than the worship of God.
Illus. With cussing older lady.
Zeal for my fathers house. He will rip out everything that is not Holy.
I remember working on a puzzle as a kid and i had it sitting on a card table in our house. One of the other kids most likely knocked the table over by accident but they did not confess. I had worked a long time on that puzzle and at the very least I wanted to know who did it. I was hot!!
Finishing that puzzle was something I wanted and I had worked hard to do it! Now someone, Some coward wouln’t even admit they had knocked the table over and with it all my work.
Jesus will do this with us. We will be trying to build a life over here apart from him. Building a Nest egg perhaps for retirement, or raising a family and trying to control everyones lives to come out just perfect, or climbing the ladder at work, and
BAM. He flips the table. Why? we are trying to find life somewhere he knows isn’t going to bring life.
Following Jesus will Kill you!
Confessing Jesus as Lord will not produce a carefree easy life.
If you follow him it will be hard
Look at
Truly, truly, I say to you, when you were young, you used to dress yourself and walk wherever you wanted, but when you are old, you will stretch out your hands, and another will dress you and carry you where you do not want to go.” (This he said to show by what kind of death he was to glorify God.) And after saying this he said to him, “Follow me.”
When we come to Christ we invite Jesus to wreck havoc on our lives like the temple. We are the new temple. He resides in us and therefore demands a Holy place.
We desire to have it together but Jesus will not allow this.
He wants to undue us to help us see HIm.
He wants to flip us over to help us savor Him
He wants to spill us out like the coins on the floor that in our response the lost world can see us treasure Him above all else.
I have said “even if Jesus wasn’t alive and raised from the dead I would still desire to be a christian and live this way because of the truth it brings into my life. However, you wouldn’t say that or I wouldn't say that if I was Sudanese. If i lived in the Sudan and was being turtured and killed for my faith. That is thetruth for so many christians though outhistory.
This is how I will make it through life, then Jesus comes in and starts turning over tables in our lives. Not because he is angry at us or left us. Not a sign God is absent but present.
Confessing Jesus as Lord will not produce a carefree easy life.
If you follow him it will be hard .
This is how I will make it through life, then Jesus comes in and starts turning over tables in our lives.
Not because he is angry at us or left us. Not a sign God is absent but present.
And have you forgotten the exhortation that addresses you as sons?
“My son, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord,
nor be weary when reproved by him.
For the Lord disciplines the one he loves,
and chastises every son whom he receives.”
Heb 12.
We think every other Christian has the peaceful life we long for so God must be with them and not with me.
Satan is happy for you to live a peaceful tranquil life.
Where there are no oxen, the manger is clean,
but abundant crops come by the strength of the ox.
we don’t want the dung the oxen will leave in our lives but God says that is how we produce fruit. How He produces fruit through us.
He must increase, but I must decrease.”
4. Our Trust ()
Now when he was in Jerusalem at the Passover Feast, many believed in his name when they saw the signs that he was doing.
How do we know if we are going through the motions?
How do we know if we are going through the motions?
Prayerlessness is not a sign that we are not disciplined enough but rather we have our confidence in ourselves. We are not desperate for God’s presence because we are at ease.
Jesus saw Pagan God’s and other temples of worship but the only one he bothered to turn tables over was His temple.
Why? Because His people will be Holy.
I had a coach that used to say “ Watson, you start worrying when i stop screaming!”
Jesus is saying. Do you want a comfortable, successful, peaceful life or do you want me? If you want me it will cost you everything.
“He is no fool who gives up what he can not keep to gain what he cannot lose”. Jim Elliot Martyr to the Euca Indians in Eaucador
Will you trust me to carry you where you do not want to go. I promise my plan is better than yours but it will not be the easy road. Oh No, but I will be with You! I will be with YOU! You will not be alone.
Will You trust me? I am the Good Shepherd who lays down His life for the sheep.
I will take you places and show you things you could not have imagined. Trust me, but know that I will discipline you for your good.
Application: