Untitled Sermon

Have you ever misunderstood a someone, a friend, your husband or wife, what about God?

Communication is something we all think that we are good at as we have always done it, in fact, I am so sure that I am good at it I will argue with my wife that I understood something even though it is clear to her that I didn’t, it is so clear to her that I don’t understand yet I am still convinced that I did, it is hard being human as we are so sure of ourselves at times when we shouldn’t be.

Our miss communication can lead to some very funny moment in life yet it can also destroy our relationships with our friends, family and our brothers and sisters in Christ.

More often than not I would suggest that it isn’t just that the other person is communicating poorly to us, rather it is that we’re not listening. To often we are busy thinking about why we don’t agree rather than trying to understand why they hold the view that they hold.

Our brain has an amazing way to deal with new information which can lead to this problem, it weighs everything with what we already know to be true, and if someone says something that contradicts those truths then your brain casts that information aside.

This system is often criticized by people as a flawed system but in reality it is an amazing system that allows the brain to deal with a lot of new information very efficiently, the problem with the system is only when we hold things to be true that are not true, then will reject new information that is true because that information contradicts the untrue information that we already hold to be true.

It is for this reason you may miss out on an opportunity to correct a miss belief and to grow, all because you have decided it is wrong before even fully hearing the person let alone fully considering it.

A good example would be when we hear something about the bible from a non Christadelphian source, we can be quick to dismiss this new information as it has not been validated by our group but we need to understand that something isn’t true based on who says it , it is true based on the evidence for it.

We have all heard the saying that God gave us one mouth and two ears so that we could do twice as much listening as we do talking and maybe that is why we have two eyes, so that we can do twice as much observing than speaking.

Now, I am going to ignore the fact that we have two ears so that our brains can process sounds from two locations to calculate the direction of the sound so that we can avoid danger and I am also going to ignore that fact that we have two eyes so that we can see perspective allowing us to accurately judge distance and have enough peripheral vision to see danger and just pretend that it is for those other reasons why God gave us two eyes and ears and only one mouth.

We are all aware I would think how easy it is to misunderstand each other but do we understand that for similar reasons we can misunderstand Christ and even God?

I can’t speak for anyone else here but I can speak about my experiences.

I wasn’t raised in our community as most know, I didn’t attend Sunday school each week and I didn’t have the pleasure of reading the bible each day with my friends or family.

I am thankful though; I am thankful that I appreciate the gift that I have been given and the rewards that I have received on my journey coming to know our God.

Maybe not growing up with all these great things has allowed me to appreciate them more, after all it is easy to take such great gifts for granted.

Maybe that is what happened with the Jews, maybe they became numb to the power of God, to all that he did for them, the great promises then and in the future, or maybe they became to content with having it all sorted out, no need to keep searching and growing as they were already there, they had finished the journey now all they had to do was keep everything just as it was.

Some seemed to believe that studying the scriptures were an end in themselves not realizing that they were pointing to something bigger.

This was most likely going along well until a young know it all turned up on the scene, with authority doing miracles and talking like no man had spoken before.

Who did this young guy think he was, changing how things were done casting aside the beloved traditions, working on the Sabbath, healing the sick and caring for the poor?

A person like this could lead the people astray, “a little leaven leavens the whole lump” as they say.

Sometimes we make the words of Jesus out to be easy to understand, not really giving them the considerations that they really deserve.

I am not sure about you but I sure know that during my introduction to the bible I was told that it was easy to understand, you just need to read it and believe every word that is written, this would be known as a literalist approach to the bible.

Now that I am about 14 year into my walk form when I started to attend seminars I am not as convinced as I once was that you can just read it word for word, demanding the most literal reading as the right one.

Sometimes the bible is talking about literal things and that is the best way to understand it but other times it is talking about spiritual truths in which case the most literal way isn’t the best way to understand it.

Let me ask you a question “Which is God and Christ more concerned with, our natural growth or spiritual growth?”

I believe they are more concerned with our spiritual growth, and for this reason I think we would do well to consider the spiritual lessons more than the literal lessons.

Turn with me to John 2:12-22

But before we read this, I want to refresh your memories with in important little thing that is happening in the stories that we will be looking at tonight, this is something that I touched on in my last bible class. I would like to read the explanation that is given in, Miss Reading Scripture Through Western Eyes, the authors make the following point.

During his earthly ministry, Jesus worked within the honor/shame system. In the ancient world, there was only so much honor to go around—it was a limited good. Everyone was scrambling for more. Jesus’ opponents understood this well. Public questions were never for information. If one wanted information, you asked privately, as we often see Jesus’ disciples do

Mt 24:3;

3 As he sat on the Mount of Olives, the disciples came to him privately, saying, “Tell us, when will these things be, and what will be the sign of your coming and of the end of the age?”

Mk 9:28; And when he had entered the house, his disciples asked him privately, “Why could we not cast it out?”[1] Likewise, Nicodemus came at night because he didn’t want his question misunderstood. He was looking for answers from Jesus, not honor. But public questions were contests. The winner was determined by the audience, who represented the community. If you silenced your opponent, you gained honor and they lost some. Even though scholars often refer to this as the “honor game,” don’t underestimate its seriousness. As we mentioned above, this is why the Jewish officials killed Jesus. They had been challenging Jesus publicly , for example,

Mt 12:1-7 At that time Jesus went through the grainfields on the Sabbath. His disciples were hungry, and they began to pluck heads of grain and to eat. 2 But when the Pharisees saw it, they said to him, “Look, your disciples are doing what is not lawful to do on the Sabbath.” 3 He said to them, “Have you not read what David did when he was hungry, and those who were with him: 4 how he entered the house of God and ate the bread of the Presence, which it was not lawful for him to eat nor for those who were with him, but only for the priests? 5 Or have you not read in the Law how on the Sabbath the priests in the temple profane the Sabbath and are guiltless? 6 I tell you, something greater than the temple is here. 7 And if you had known what this means, ‘I desire mercy, and not sacrifice,’ you would not have condemned the guiltless. 8 For the Son of Man is lord of the Sabbath.”

and every time they “lost,” they lost honor. They were tired of it, and they wanted their honor back. In one of these “honor games” with Jesus, the Jewish leaders asked him,

Mt 22:17 Tell us, then, what you think. Is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar, or not?”

We often fail to notice the two most important parts of the story, even though Matthew highlighted them. First, Jesus’ conflict with the Jewish leadership begins in the previous chapter:

Mt 21:23 And when he entered the temple, the chief priests and the elders of the people came up to him as he was teaching, and said, “By what authority are you doing these things, and who gave you this authority?”

The questions are posed in the most important public place in all of Israel. There couldn’t be any higher stakes in the honor game. The second point Matthew makes is at the end of the conflict story:

Mt 22:46 And no one was able to answer him a word, nor from that day did anyone dare to ask him any more questions.

Jesus won. The leaders then decide to kill Jesus. Honor is at stake here. They cannot just go down to the assassin’s booth at the market. Sticking a knife in Jesus in some Jerusalem alley would make him a martyr. They need to publicly disgrace Jesus in order to get their honor back. They need him executed as a criminal. This honor stuff is pretty serious. Some Middle Easterners still kill over honor.[

Richards, E. Randolph. Misreading Scripture with Western Eyes (pp. 129-130). InterVarsity Press. Kindle Edition.

So I want you to keep this in mind when are reading the sections that I have selected tonight.

So back to John 2:12-22.

12 After this he went down to Capernaum, with his mother and his brothers and his disciples, and they stayed there for a few days.

Jesus Cleanses the Temple

13 The Passover of the Jews was at hand, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. 14 In the temple he found those who were selling oxen and sheep and pigeons, and the money-changers sitting there. 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. 16 And he told those who sold the pigeons, “Take these things away; do not make my Father’s house a house of trade.” 17 His disciples remembered that it was written, “Zeal for your house will consume me.”

18 So the Jews said to him, “What sign do you show us for doing these things?” 19 Jesus answered them, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” 20 The Jews then said, “It has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and will you raise it up in three days?” 21 But he was speaking about the temple of his body. 22 When therefore he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this, and they believed the Scripture and the word that Jesus had spoken. [2]

The thing that kept hitting me for some time now is how often Christ is misunderstood and how often he doesn’t correct them. He often lets them continue down the wrong direction in their thinking and I was wondering why? One thing to note is that it was very common for teachers of the day to speak in riddles to their audience. The NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible Notes: Wise sages in both Greece and the Middle East sometimes spoke in riddles hard for others to understand. Throughout John’s Gospel, outsiders misunderstand Jesus’ riddles and fail to perceive his plays on words. Ancient writers sometimes highlighted the wisdom of a protagonist by providing foils who misunderstand.

We are going to keep seeing these word plays and how the people misunderstood Jesus’ point. In this case like other cases the point that Jesus’ was making would become apparent to the believe later. If we read the text carefully we will notice that Jesus response to his inquisitors implies that they would destroy the temple of his body, now they being so hard of hearing and seeing missed his point. What do we learn about the way Jesus teaches in Matt 13:10-13?

“Why do you speak to them in parables?” And he answered them, “To you it has been given to know the secrets of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it has not been given. For to the one who has, more will be given, and he will have an abundance, but from the one who has not, even what he has will be taken away. This is why I speak to them in parables, because seeing they do not see, and hearing they do not hear, nor do they understand.

To anyone that is listening to Jesus they need to be listening carefully, the need to be paying attention, they need to seeking to have an honest and true heart. The questioners here did not have an honest and true heart, they were not seeking to understand why Jesus had just did what he did rather they wanted to shame him for his actions. He then tells them that they would kill him and in three days he would be raised up, to the ignorant this would never mean anything but to the spiritually guided it would lead them to understand that Christ was the temple of God and still is through the body of believers. This is an interpretation model of the Genesis 1-2 that views it is a kingdom text, that God is setting in order his kingdom and as a part of that kingdom he creates the holy place where he would dwell with man. Then in Gen 3 man falls, thus becomes defiled and we know that nothing defiled can dwell with God thus he is expelled from dwelling with God. While Gen 3 is about sin entering the world it is also about man wanting to do things his way rather than God’s way, God will well with man but it will be on his terms not man’s terms and this thread of how God would come to dwell with man again then runs though scripture.

Right away in Gen 4 we read at the end of the verse 26…… At that time people began to call upon the name of the Lord. The NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible Notes: 4:26 call on the name of the Lord. Just as there is no implication that only Cain’s line had cities and the arts of civilization, so the text does not imply that only the line of Seth called on the name of the Lord. About a dozen times in the OT people are said to call on the name of the Lord — generally either calling for help in connection with a ritual or invoking God’s presence at a cultic site. Eventually humans sought to procure the presence of God through establishing cultic places and performing rituals there, but here there is no indication of these trappings. Thus it seems that people began to invoke the Lord’s presence (the presence that was lost at the fall). This verse, then, represents the beginning of religion. So we can see that while people had lost the presence of God man still had a desire to have God dwell with them. So powerful was this want for God to dwell with them that they would build the tower of Babel, often we think of the tower as a way that man could accend to heaven but with the understanding that we have of these buildings we have come to believe that it was a Ziggurat which was designed to bring the Gods down to the temple that was built right next to the ziggurat. The interesting thing about the story of the tower of Babel is that God does come down and visit the people but he doesn’t like what is going on. It isn’t until Israel comes out of Egypt that they build the tabernacle as instructed by God so that God can dwells with man again, though this time there is a barrier between them and their God. From there Israel as a nations through Solomon builds the temple as instructed by God so that God can dwell with his people.

Then Christ comes and God is dwelling among his people in Christ. Then the Jews destroy the temple of Christ but as prophesied he is raised in 3 days. Once Christ has ascended to heaven and his followers become the body of Christ spiritually then they or should I say them along with us become the dwelling place of God where he dwells among his people in spirit and truth. This all only pointing to the end of the 1000 years in the kingdom age when God would descend from heaven and dwell with man. Rev 21:3-4 3 And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. 4 He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.” [3] We don’t know if those who asked Christ for a sign that day came to realize what he was talking about after his resurrection or not but what we do know is that these few words that seemed so unimportant would help restore the disciples faith in the scriptures and the words that Christ spoke.

[1] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version. (2016). (Mk 9:28). Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles.

[2] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version. (2016). (Jn 2:12–22). Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles.

[3] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version. (2016). (Re 21:3–4). Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles.