Sermon Tone Analysis

Dealing With Hypocrisy

john 2.12-

Key verses go over each one

john 214

john 2.

john

ALFRED NOBEL, the creator of the Nobel Peace Prize, who made his fortune from the discovery of dynamite.

ALFRED NOBEL, the creator of the Nobel Peace Prize, who made his fortune from the discovery of dynamite.

Joseph Stalin - the workers' champion who murdered 30 million of his fellow workers.

A mom that chastises her children for playing video games all day ; but binges watches a series on NETFLEX

A dad that gets upset for his child caught cheating on an exam all the but fails to report income on his taxes....

It happened among family and friends; it happened in the little town of Cana nine miles out of Nazareth with people they knew and grew up with.

Mary was there and the family of Jesus and the extended family,

This is a miracle in which tens of thousands of people participate, and they’re not watching and they’re not innocent bystanders.

And what causes Jesus to do what He does here is an age-old problem and one that we must address as well.

Hypocrisy - saying or believing something but doing something else …

Christians are all hypocrites – we’ve heard this before.

Cry that thousands of non-Christians flock to to try and poke holes in Christianity.

Christian Hypocrisy – What is it?

Hypocrisy is “claiming to have moral standards or beliefs to which one’s own behavior does not conform; pretense.”1

In fact, the ancient Greek word comes from the word for a stage actor or one who wears a mask.

It is not necessarily the fact that they sin that makes them a hypocrite, it’s the fact that they don’t acknowledge it.

They don’t admit that their lives contradict what they say.

They are inauthentic and imposters.

Perhaps you have personal experience with a Christian hypocrite.

I do.

Perhaps you know someone who says one thing and then does another.

They teach one thing and live the opposite.

In a sense, we are all hypocrites.

The term isn’t reserved for Christians.

Christian Hypocrisy – Jesus’ Reaction

Combatting hypocrisy was a passion for Jesus.

In fact, much of is dedicated to this topic.

Here are some excerpts:

matt 23

“Then Jesus said to the crowds and to his disciples: ‘The teachers of the law and the Pharisees sit in Moses’ seat.

For they do not practice what they preach.

They tie up heavy, cumbersome loads and put them on other people’s shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to lift a finger to move them.

Everything they do is done for people to see...

“‘Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites!

You clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence.

The problem in our text!

They were crowding out the court of the gentiles

They profiting from the sale of doves and sacrifices

Your sacrifice would be rejected as unclean so buy an official one

They money changes has one approved purpose to collect the temple tax and exchange rate for different detonations ...

Not to profit in the exchange rate by charging interest

Ladies and gentlemen they were pretending to be religious while taking advantage of God’s people...

In the name of God they were profiting off the people...

ALFRED NOBEL, the creator of the Nobel Peace Prize, who made his fortune from the discovery of dynamite.

Joseph Stalin - the workers' champion who murdered 30 million of his fellow workers.

A mom that chastises her children for playing video games all day ; but binges watches a series on NETFLEX

A dad that gets upset for his child caught cheating on an exam all the but fails to report income on his taxes....

Dealing With Hypocrisy

I We Recognize it

John 2.

It in your face right out in front....

background:

The Passover of the Jews, that’s an annual feast followed by another feast of seven days of unleavened bread that God mandated.

You remember when Israel was delivered from Egypt—Exodus chapter 12—they were told the last plague is going to be the death of the firstborn.

And so, as He always did, He comes to the Passover.

In fact, His ministry begins at a Passover, and it ends at a Passover.

And at both of those Passovers, the first and the last, He does the same action against the Temple.

At the first Passover, He cleanses the Temple to publicly begin His ministry.

At the last, He cleanses the Temple to publicly end His ministry; then becomes the Passover Lamb.

And in between during His ministry, there will be two other Passovers.

John tells us about one in chapter 6, and another in chapter 11.

He always kept the Passover, always.

This time as He enters into the Temple to begin His ministry, and by the way, He had been there every year of His life.

He goes in.

He found, verse 14, in the Temple those who were selling oxen and sheep and doves, and the moneychangers seated at their tables.

It appears as if the city of Jerusalem could have had a hundred to three hundred thousand inhabitants normally, we don’t know exactly.

Passover that number would be expanded to read a million.

Josephus goes so far as to say 2.7 million, but that’s because he multiplies the number of sacrifices by ten.

I don’t know how legitimate that would be, but let’s say for the sake of being conservative there are a million people—and I think that’s pretty safe—that have literally descended upon the city of Jerusalem for the Passover and the subsequent feast.

That means that every room in every inn and every room that wasn’t a room for occupancy was turned into a room for occupancy.

Every...every extra room in every single home was filled and people were packed into rooms in multiples to get this mass of people in.

The population fourfold what it normally would be, let’s say.

How many animals did they slaughter?

Was Josephus right in saying 250 thousand?

But there was more than that going on.

But there was more than that going on.

Apparently by this time and there’s some historical indications of this, the people who used to buy and sell outside the Temple have now moved inside the Courtyard.

Apparently by this time and there’s some historical indications of this, the people who used to buy and sell outside the Temple have now moved inside the Courtyard.

In the middle of this there are people selling oxen, sheep and doves which means there are oxen, sheep and doves there.

And there are moneychangers seated at their tables.

The reason they were selling sacrifices is because people coming from long distances would find it inconvenient and cumbersome to take animals with them, and so they would purchase an animal when they arrived there.

And experience told them that if they brought an animal, it would probably be rejected by the folks that checked out the suitability of the animal and if the animal was refused, they would have to buy one of the temple animals anyway.

What a joke .....

They were to bring the best of their flock or possession - not to purchase one

maybe all they had was a dove or pigeon but it was a sacrifice

Maybe they brought their own and it was rejected so they could by one....

That’s kind of how they did their business.

They rejected the ones that were brought so they could make money on exorbitant prices on the ones they sold.

Also, by the way, everybody had to pay for the animal and the temple tax in the currency that was accepted in Israel.

And these people would be from other countries, have different currency, would have to be changed.

Some historians say the exchange rate went over ten percent, twelve percent of the coin exchange.

So there was business going on there in the temple.

Extortion, really, , when Jesus does this again, He says, “You’ve turned My Father’s house into a den of thieves, robbers.”

So into this crushing place with tens of thousands of people and animals, buyers and sellers, under the control of about three hundred Temple police, if you add all the folks who were responsible to keep the peace in there and to manage the crowd control and to make sure that they took care of any incidents and disruptions, you’d get about three hundred, maybe a little less, maybe two hundred and seventy