Sermon Tone Analysis

Exegetical Point: Fulfilling prophecy John shows that Jesus is the Christ is the zealous worshiper, the greater Temple and the knower of hearts.

Homiletic Point: Jesus enables us to come to God in worship, via his temple despite our hearts

Intro

Recap

John is laying out a bunch of evidence that Jesus is the Christ, so that believers can trust him and have eternal life.

Every word!

Over the last few weeks we have followed the early days of Jesus earthly ministry.

John skips over the story of Jesus’ birth and only starts telling the story when Jesus is an adult.

John the Baptist was the warm-up act, preparing people for Jesus.

Then he proclaimed: Jesus id “the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!”

Jn 1:29.

He testified, gave eyewitness evidence that Jesus was the promised messiah!

Then the first disciples started to see it too!

Jesus was revealed to them as the Christ, and he started to display his power with a prophetic insight.

He called himself Jacob's Ladder.

Then Jesus was revealed as messiah when he did his first “Sign” - he changed the water into wine at a wedding feast.

We’ve seen that Jesus’ identity is being seen by more and more people!

He is being revealed as Messiah/Christ, King, Prophet and now today almost as a priest!

Three Truths about Jesus.

Three Truths about Jesus.

1. True Worship (v13-17)

In the passage we’re looking at closely today, we see that Jesus knows and practices true worship.

Now last Sunday night and over the next couple Sunday nights we’re spending some time fleshing out what true worship looks like and how that shapes our Sunday gatherings.

One of the things that is most obvious as you start to dive into the Bible is that God has a lot to say about worship!

You know why?

Because you and I have been designed for worship, and our worship drive has been corrupted.

We need God to reveal himself to us, and we need him to teach us how to worship so that we can do it right!

Under the previous dispensation, the Old Covenant, God had laid out heaps and heap of instructions about how to worship, but as time wore on, people were going through the motions of worship but their hearts were far from God.

They were checking boxes but not actually seeking the Lord.

Perhaps that is you here this morning?

When worship becomes mundane and heartless we want to innovate.

We want to make it exciting.

We want to make it convenient.

We want to mess around with God’s design to see how far we can mangle it while still calling it “worship.”

The Jews of Jesus day were doing the same thing.

Making things more convenient, letting people profit from the worship experience!

But Jesus - the Son of God, was not impressed.

He had been staying with his family in Capernaum, but then:

Wow!

Jesus is scary!

He is the friend of sinners, but he is scary!

He’s a friend like an Islander.

It’s a cliche I know, but your average islander mate is the friendliest bloke you’ll meet.

Gentle and respectful.

But man, you wouldn’t want to get on the wrong side of him, he’s tall and built solid.

He could put you in your place real quick!

Jesus reveals a taste of the anger of God against sin and he puts them in their place.

Jesus comes up to the temple to worship God, but instead of a place where God’s people can come to worship, be taught truth and meet with God, they are assaulted by the clamor of the market place!

This was a special time of year for the Jews, it was time to look back into their history and remember how God had delivered them from slavery.

As they killed and ate a Passover lamb, they painted their doorways with blood and God’s wrathful angel of Death passed over their families, sparing them from God’s judgment.

Every year the Israelites were to re-enact this with a commemorative meal that reminded them of their history and fueled their thankful worship of God!

For this commemorative reenactment and for other temple ceremonies you needed animals like sheep and cows and doves.

So you needed to bring your own animals to sacrifice in worship.

But here’s the thing.

Not all of the Jews lived in Jerusalem where the temple was.

They were spread out across their country, and, due to the dispersions, there were Jews across the Roman world, from Rome to Athens, to Antioch to Alexandria.

People would be coming from all over the place to worship at the temple.

So lets imagine you live in Rome, and you need to sacrifice a sheep in Jerusalem.

It a fair way to take a sheep!

Imagine if we had to go to our capital with livestock?

You might consider trailering a sheep from here to Canberra, but what if you live in Broome?

It’s a fair hike!

So many people would, instead of traveling with an animal, just bring money and buy their sacrificial animal once they arrived.

But who’s got time to traipse around Jerusalem looking for livestock when you get there?

Some folks saw this as an opportunity!

A business opportunity!

We don’t we make it super convenient and sell the animals right at the temple!

Like the snack bar at the movie theater, put it right outside so it’s super convinient, then hike up the prices!

On top of that, the temple wont accept roman of other foreign money, especially if it has pictures on it of other gods or roman emperors, so they had their own currency that you needed to use at the temple.

That means if you came in fromout of town you’d have to change over your money, and pay a fee in the process!

All of this stuff was ok in principle - God doesn’t begrudge businessmen, or buying an animal to sacrifice and so on.

But here’ the problem - they were commercializing the temple itself!

They were taking the ordinary profane things and bringing them into the holy space!

Most scholars suspect that this was taking place in the outer courts of the temple.

If you know your Jewish temple facts you would remember that the inner building, the temple itself was actually off limits to almost everybody.

That was the place where God’s presence dwelt and only priests could go in there and only for certain reasons.

So people could meet around the temple, but only certain people could get close.

It was limited so that Jewish men could be the closest, then Jewish women, and then anybody else could be in the outer courts such as gentiles (people who were not ethnically Jewish).

This meant that the outer courts were essentially the only place where all God’s people could be together.

This was the place where the scripture could be taught and explained.

This was the place where outsiders could come to hear about God and his wonderful deeds!

This was the closest place the converts to Judaism could get to God’s holy presence.

Yet,

in this place fro the worship of God and the building up of God’s people, there's a market.

It is unloving to God, and unloving to the people trying to worship God!

And Jesus is angry.

He sees that God’s Holy home is being overrun by the profane.

He is passionate and zealous for his Father!

He sits down and ties a whip together.

Then he begins to cleanse the temple.

He purges the courts!

He drives out the animals and overturns tables!

Jesus was fulfilling the prophesy of Malachi, given some few hundred years earlier:

In many respects, Jesus clears the temple so that worship can really take place!

SO that worship will be made good and righteous.

But, on a symbolic level, it reminds us that in order to truly worship God, we need Jesus to cleanse and prepare the way.

He did it in the lead-up to Passover where they would remember the rescue of God through the death of a lamb.

It is as though Jesus was cleansing the temple in preparation of a death that would bring rescue.

We need Jesus to go before us and clear out all of the profane, rubble that encroaches on our spiritual lives so that we can worship God truly and fully!

What things are you metaphorically trying to bring with you into the temple of God?