The Signs in Front of Our Face

INTRODUCTION:

Interest:

My wife can tell you…I’m bad at paying attention to traffic signs. I’ll get distracted thinking about something and forget to pay any attention to them at all. More than once I have driven right by the exit I was supposed to use because I didn’t see the signs. I know the signs show me that route I’m supposed to take, but I don’t always pay attention to them the way I need to. The signs can be right in front of my face…big and green hanging across the freeway in front of me as I drive down the road…and I can still fail to look at them.

Involvement:

Today we are going to look at people who didn’t pay attention to signs that were right in front of them either. There was no excuse for it…the signs were there…and yet they didn’t look at them. The problem is that the ramifications of missing these signs are much more significant than just missing an exit. And yet, my concern is that there could be people sitting right here this morning that are still missing the same signs…and the consequences could be eternal.

Context:

Last week we began to look at Jesus’ first encounter as the Messiah with the official worship in His day. In John chapter 2 the apostle recorded Jesus’ first visit to Jerusalem and the temple during the time of the Passover celebration after He had begun to publicly demonstrate that He was the Promised Messiah. To remind us of that first encounter let me read the verses we looked at last week. <read 2:13–17>.

Clearly Jesus did not like what He found going on in the temple area In the place where worship was to be focusing on God, the focus had shifted to what was convenient for the people. The leaders in the temple had forgotten that worship must focus on God…but Jesus had not. His zeal for the worship of God drove Him to take decisive, authoritative action…He cleared all those who were involved in the various business dealings, rather than in worship, from the outer Court of the Gentiles where this market had been set up.

Preview:

This morning we pick up just minutes after the events which we looked at last week had occurred. Immediately following Jesus’ actions we come to His first direct interaction as the Messiah with the Jewish religious leaders of the day. One would expect if anyone were to recognize the Messiah on sight, it would be the religious leaders—after all, they were the experts on the topic of the Messiah. Yet, we will see this first encounter is an Epic Fail.

Yet, I am convinced that in their failure there is a vital lesson for us to learn. It is the lesson that we will see the disciples learn this morning. That lesson is that Jesus has demonstrated that He is the Son of God. Did you get that? Jesus has demonstrated that He is the Son of God.

As we go through this passage today I want you to be asking yourself…honestly…do you resemble the leaders or the disciples. Of course we all want to resemble the disciples…but do we? We will look at the events from the two different perspectives and watch how each group either misses or learns our lesson. As we prepare to do so, let’s read our passage for today. <read 2:18–22>.

Transition from introduction to body:

In these verses we see the responses of both the leaders and the disciples to Jesus’ actions. Let’s look at things first of all from the perspective of the leaders. From them we learn that…

BODY:

I. Jesus will not demonstrate that He is the Son of God based on our demands.

We have to remember, Jesus had just cleared the temple. The disciples in verse 17 had recognized that this was a fulfillment of a Messianic prophecy from Psalm 69:9. But now the religious leaders approached Him and asked “What sign do you show us as Your authority for doing these things?” You see the problem is that the…

A. The Jewish leaders attempted to demand their own demonstration.

The “Jews” in this verse refer to the Jewish leaders. John frequently refers to the leaders simply by the term “Jews,” but the context makes it clear that he is referring to the leaders and not the entire nation, just like he did back in 1:19 when the delegation was sent to investigate John the Baptist.

I do find it interesting that the leaders are the only group to challenge Jesus in this whole affair. I mentioned it last week that Jesus’ moral authority was such that surprisingly the merchants did not challenge Him. The very people who were losing their income and having their livelihood challenged remained silent. If you think about this, it is pretty amazing. If you ever want to get someone’s attention, just mess with their paycheck. And yet the sellers and money changers did not resist Jesus.

Likewise, the crowd did not resist Him. The worshippers in the crowd were the ones having their lives made more inconvenient. If you recall, the market had been placed in the Court of the Gentiles so that it would be more convenient for the Jews who came to worship. They could purchase their sacrifices and exchange their money right at the temple. And yet, they did not resist Jesus when He cleared the temple. Again…I find this surprising because it seems that a simple disruption to that which makes a person’s life convenient will raise a reaction almost as fast as messing with their paycheck. And yet, the crowd was silent before Jesus.

But this was not true of the religious leaders. These were the officials in charge of what went on in the temple area. They were the ones who had given permission for the market to be set up. And they were the ones who immediately saw that, by His actions, Jesus had done two things: First of all He had overridden their authority by taking action against what they had allowed. And secondly, He had implicitly pronounced a judgment that what they had allowed was wrong…that it was displeasing to God.

But notice which of the two aspects of Jesus’ action the leaders focus upon. They do not debate with Him the rightness or wrongness of having the market in the temple area. Jesus said that it was wrong to have the market there, but they don’t challenge Him regarding that issue. That is not the first concern which comes to their mind…In fact, it doesn’t seem to come to their minds at all as it is never addressed.

Rather, their entire concern is over the question of authority. By what right did Jesus do this thing? Who gave Him the authority to take this action? How dare He countermand their authority with His actions! This is their primary concern. As one commentator wrote, “They are therefore less concerned with pure worship and a right approach to God than they are with questions of precedent and authority.”

So…they demand that He give them a divine sign of authority. One has to wonder if they possibly considered, at least intuitively, that Jesus might at least be a real prophet since they didn’t directly accost Him. Rather, they demanded that He give them a divine sign to prove His authority.

The problem…if we think about it for a moment…with this demand is that if Jesus would honor it it would really make Him subservient to the leaders. He had just done what was right…and righteous. He had acted in complete consistency with God’s revealed truth by upholding the sanctity of worship. He had acted as the Messiah…but now these leaders, who were sinful because of who they are and what they have done, were demanding that He provide a sign of their choosing. They would be judge and jury over whether or not the sign was sufficient to authorize His actions. They would determine the rightness of what He had done based on what He could prove…. They would subvert Him to themselves…the Son of God would be answering to the leaders…the Creator to the creatures. Do you see how wrong this would be?

I trust you do…but the problem that I think we need to recognize is that…

B. We often attempt to demand our own demonstration.

We are so much like these Jewish leaders that it should scare us. We suffer from the same problem as we see in the leaders…All too often we want Jesus to meet our demands for proof of His authority…we want Him to prove that He is the Messiah, but we want it proved according to our measurements.

Now…I can almost hear you saying to yourselves already… “Whoa! I don’t do that! I would never demand that Jesus proves Himself to me. I know better than that.”

But isn’t that exactly what we are doing every time we disregard His word? When we refuse to accept His authority to set the direction of our lives? We know that the Bible says we should do such and such…that it is what is pleasing to God…this is what is consistent with Scripture. Maybe we have even had someone show us the principle directly from the Bible. But as we think about it, that really isn’t what we want to do. It doesn’t line up with our plans and desires. So we challenge His authority.

How is it that we go down this path? Usually it is something like this: We decide that if God really wants me to do this then He must show it to me by doing X. We come up with some kind of test which God must pass before we will obey what His word says…because then we will “know” that it applies to our situation! We even will say we are putting out a fleece…but the reality is that we are doing the same thing that the Jewish leaders did with Jesus…we are demanding that He demonstrate His authority according to our conditions.

Illustration

I know I have used this example before, but probably the most common test we place on God is prayer…that makes our actions seem so pious and righteous. We will pray about taking an action that is contrary to God’s word, but we will do it in this manner… “God, if this is what you would have me do, then give me a peace about it.” I have seen people leave the church rather than biblically resolve issues because they have prayed about it. I have seen young people enter into relationships with unbelievers because they prayed about it. I have seen men take jobs that are detrimental to their spiritual and family’s wellbeing because they have prayed about it.

And prayer is only one of the avenues we might use when we are really demanding that Jesus prove to us He has the authority to require us to do something we don’t want to do. The problem keeps coming up over and over again in our Christian lives…we often attempt to demand our own demonstration.

But as sad as it is when I see myself and other believers follow this pattern, it is frightening when I see unbelievers do it. Time and time again I have seen unbelievers reject Jesus because He has not met their standard of what the Messiah should be. They have manufactured a Jesus of their own making…usually one with no demands on them…and rejected the real Jesus of the Bible. They want Jesus to somehow demonstrate according to their standards and timing that He is the One who can save them from their sin…otherwise they reject Him. Unless He proves that He is the Son of God according to their definition He is rejected.

This is a devastating and frightening reality of our post-modern American culture. But it isn’t new with post-modernism. Post-modernism is simply the latest philosophical expression of the sinful human heart. The sinful tendency to demand a demonstration of Jesus according to our own time and schedule is a basic aspect of our sin nature. The creature wants to be independent of the Creator and in so doing…we try to make Jesus…the Son of God…answer to us.

Transition:

Jesus has demonstrated that He is the Son of God. But the first thing we learn today when we look at our passage from the perspective of the leaders is that Jesus will not demonstrate the He is the Son of God based on our demands. Even though the Jewish leaders demanded it and we often demand it, Jesus will not bow to our demands. That is because..

II. Jesus has already demonstrated that He is the Son of God based on His actions.

During the first week of Jesus’ public ministry He was declared to be the Messiah and the Son of God. On the last day of that week He demonstrated His deity by turning the water into wine at Cana.

Now, once again He had demonstrated His divine authority through His actions of clearly the temple and declaring that it should remain a place of worship. Ye the leaders had asked for a sign…so Jesus gave them one…even if it didn’t meet their requirements. In verse 19 He told them, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.”

Thanks to John, we know that this was a veiled reference to His resurrection. Jesus was using a double reference…pointing to the temple but referring to Himself as the real temple. He uses the term for the temple which indicates the temple proper rather than the entire area. It was the term that indicated the focal point of their worship. So what Jesus was indicating with this reference is that while the physical structure symbolized the divine Presence among men, He was the actual divine Presence among men. If understood properly, the temple pointed to Him.

Of course the Jewish leaders did not understand this oblique reference. They simply scoffed at Him, pointing out that to rebuild the temple structure in 3 days would be a physical impossibility. In fact, the way their response is worded in the Greek indicates an amount of both challenge and disrespect. They completely rejected Jesus’ authority in the matter.

But we must contrast the leaders with the disciples….

A. The disciples recognized that Jesus had demonstrated who He is.

The difference between the disciples and the leaders were that they were willing to accept the demonstration of Jesus’ deity according to His terms…not demanding that He meet theirs. Rather than confront, they listened. Rather than challenge, they considered.

Last week, as I’ve already mentioned they immediately saw in Jesus’ display a fulfillment of Psalm 69:9. But we are also told by John in verse 22 that eventually they also came to understand that Jesus was pointing to a greater sign…the greatest sign He would ever give—His resurrection from the dead. While there was no way that they could understand this full meaning of Jesus’ response to the leaders at the time, they obviously did not forget what He said. A few years later, after Jesus died and was raised from the dead in three days, they remembered that Jesus had responded to the leaders with the statement that He could rebuild the temple in three days. At that point the Holy Spirit allowed them to understand that He had been talking about Himself at that time. After the fact, with the help of the Holy Spirit the disciples were able to connect the dots and realized that Jesus was pointing forward to the greatest sign He would ever give mankind confirming His deity—He proved He was the Messiah and earned the right to be the Savior of the world.

But, before we move off this passage, there are a couple of theological points I want to pull out of it this morning. First of all, we should note that this statement makes it clear that from the very beginning of Jesus’ public ministry Jesus had the end in His mind. Because there is a record of Jesus clearing the temple again during His final passion week in Jerusalem in the other three Gospels, some scholars claim that John has taken this event out of its natural sequence in Jesus’ life and placed it here in order to arrange his material by topic. But I completely reject that theory. There is nothing in John’s record to indicate that…the view is entirely based on the fact that these scholars do not believe that Jesus would have to clear the temple again in two or three years…but that view fails to recognize that the leaders never accepted Jesus’ authority to clear it in the first place and never acknowledged that He was right and they were wrong…once Jesus left they allowed business to go back to normal.

But the primary reason I reject that this is the same temple clearing event as the one Jesus does during His final week of life is that that view reduces the power of Jesus’ statement. By Jesus stating this prophecy at the very beginning of Him ministry, we see that He had the end in mind all along. His death and subsequent resurrection were no surprise. His rejection over the coming 18 months by the nation was no surprise. The cross was not a second, fall-back option that He took when the nation rejected Him as their Messiah. No…this statement shows in a powerful way that from the very beginning Jesus knew that He would die and that in three days He would be raised again!

A second theological point that I want to mention in passing is the interaction alluded to between God the Father and God the Son when it comes to Jesus resurrection. In verse 19 we see Jesus state that He has control over His resurrection, but in verse 22 we have “when He was raised from the dead.” This second phrase alludes to God the Father’s involvement in the resurrection of Jesus. In Acts 2:24 and Gal 1:1 we have clear statements that God the Father raised Him from the dead. In fact, if you remember from our study in Ephesians, Paul says in Eph 1:20 that God raising Christ from the dead was His greatest display of power ever. So what do we make from this? I think we see in these two verses the perfect harmony of action between God the Father and God the Son. God the Son laid down His life and took it up again according to the power and plan of God the Father.

So, while the disciples didn’t understand all these things at the time, they did eventually come to a full understanding of Jesus’ meaning. That is why John includes these two verses, 21 and 22. Since everyone who will ever read John’s record of Jesus’ life will be doing so after Jesus’ death and resurrection, John gives us the background information right up front so that we can put Jesus statement into the proper perspective.

You see, the point we need to take away from this passage is that…

B. We need to recognize that Jesus has demonstrated who He is.

That is the big message that John is trying to get across to all of His readers. We do not need to look for another sign which demonstrates Jesus is the Son of God, the Messiah, the Savior. He has conclusively demonstrated it all ready.

A couple of weeks ago, we saw the first use of a key term in the first half of John’s gospel…it is the term “sign” in verse 11. Turning the water into wine was the first sign showing Jesus’ glory. Now, Jesus has given another sign, yet the Pharisees asked for a different sign. Jesus pointed to the ultimate sign…Jesus’ resurrection. But the question always comes down to a simple one…do you believe the signs that Jesus gave and John recorded. The first part of John’s gospel is filled with these signs…all which give the same message: Jesus is exactly who He says He is…the one who died for my sin and your sin so that we might have the opportunity of experiencing eternal life.

The question is, what are you going to do with the signs? Are you going to ignore the signs right in front of your face…printed here in the Word of God? Or are you going to attempt to demand your own set of signs for Jesus to perform…so that He will become a Savior according to your making. We live in a country which tries to create a Jesus of their own liking that will prove himself according to their demands. Are you doing that? Are you saying that Jesus would have to do something special for you before you are going to believe in Him? Let’s be honest…a god who answers to your demands is not much of a god…and it is certainly not the God of the Bible. The God of the Bible answers to no one. He is God!

Yet this is the very same God who loved us enough to send His very own Son to come and die in our place. Jesus died for each of us to pay the price that each of our sins deserved. Yet we spurn that sacrifice when we refuse to accept Him as our Savior. If we reject Him we are acting just like the leaders who refused to see the sign He had just performed for what it was. He died for our sin because our sin deserved an eternity in hell to pay its penalty. But we must accept Him as Savior before His payment applies to our sin. Have you done that? Have you accepted Jesus as your Savior.

Just because Jesus was raised from the dead 3 days after He died doesn’t lessen His sacrifice in any way. It is the only thing that can pay for our sin. What His resurrection does though is conclusively demonstrate that He is who He claimed to be. We need to recognize that Jesus has demonstrated who He is.

Transition from body to conclusion:.

Jesus has demonstrated that He is the Son of God. He has already demonstrated that He is the Son of God based on his actions.

CONCLUSION

Just like those road signs that I talked about at the beginning…the ones that stretch across the freeway so that we should never miss them…the signs that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God are just as clear. Jesus has demonstrated that He is the Son of God. This is the simple fact. Jesus has demonstrated that He is the Son of God. The signs are there. He is the Son of God who can pay the penalty for our sin and has the authority to set the direction of our lives.

The question becomes, what will you do about it? Will you be like the Jewish leaders and demand additional signs to demonstrate His authority. Jesus will not demonstrate that He is the Son of God according to our demands.

Or will we respond like the disciples…consider what Jesus has done and recognize that He has given us all the signs we need. Jesus has already demonstrated that He is the Son of God by His actions.

Jesus has demonstrated that He is the Son of God. The question really comes down to our response to that fact. I pray that today we will each respond by bowing to His authority and following His path for our lives. That path begins with accepting Him as Savior and continues with obeying His word.