OUT OF SYNCH
Text: John 2:13 – 22
Joh 2:13-22 The Passover of the Jews was near, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. (14) In the temple he found people selling cattle, sheep, and doves, and the money changers seated at their tables. (15) Making a whip of cords, he drove all of them out of the temple, both the sheep and the cattle. He also poured out the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables. (16) He told those who were selling the doves, "Take these things out of here! Stop making my Father's house a marketplace!" (17) His disciples remembered that it was written, "Zeal for your house will consume me." (18) The Jews then said to him, "What sign can you show us for doing this?" (19) Jesus answered them, "Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up." (20) The Jews then said, "This temple has been under construction for forty-six years, and will you raise it up in three days?" (21) But he was speaking of the temple of his body. (22) After 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. (NRSV).
At one time, a Harvard Church historian (George La Piana) made this observation: “… every religious movement passes through three stages: the ethical, the theological, the aesthetic. It begins as an instinctive moral reform; it goes on to the reflective formulation of its faith and practice; finally, it elaborates in terms of beauty its buildings and the apparatus of its worship. The last of these stages marks a point of intellectual arrest and often of incipient moral decay. The movement must be born again in a fresh reformation, primarily moral in its intention.” (George A. Buttrick ed. The interpreter’s Bible. Volume 6. Willard L. Sperry. “The Book Of Malachi: Exposition”. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1987, [Thirty-second printing], p. 1139). If you follow his train of thinking, you see it begins to make sense. Then, you begin to see how people can religiously get out of synch with the way that they worship as it may have deviated away from what God intended.
OUT OF SYNCH
There is no doubt that Jesus sees that the temple system is out of synch with what God intended in this passage of scripture (John 2:13 – 22). That is precisely why Jesus got mad.
1) Is it possible that there is an eclipse that we all have to address in our own lives? When the moon blocks out the sun, we call it an eclipse.
2) Could it be that the words of John the Baptizer in John 3:30 give us a hint when he says, “Jesus must become more and I must become less?”
The religious pilgrims were not able to authentically see where things were amiss. What was the object of their obstruction? What was blocking their path to genuine worship?
1) Recalling: The Passover (recalling how God delivered the children of Israel from Egyptian bondage, see Exodus 12:1- 14) is one of the greatest, perhaps the greatest of all feasts.
2) Deviation: Over the course of time, human corruption evolved and bled into the observance of this feast.
3) Obedience: According to William Barclay, “Every adult male (over 19 yrs. old) who lived within fifteen miles of Jerusalem was bound to attend it [the Passover Feast]”. This mandate got its origins from Exodus 30:13 – 14: Exo 30:13-14 Each one who is numbered in the census shall give this: half a shekel according to the shekel of the sanctuary (the shekel is twenty gerahs), half a shekel as an offering to the LORD. (14) Everyone who is numbered in the census, from twenty years old and upward, shall give the LORD's offering” (NKJV). Even though Jews were literally scattered all over the world, they never forgot this feast.
4) Headcount: Barclay estimates that there were possibly “two and a quarter million” who would attend this feast. That is a lot of people right?
5) Opportunity: Do you see a business opportunity to make money here? Caution! Jesus said, “No one can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other. Or he will be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Money” (Matthew 6:24 NIV). As we know it is not the money that is evil, but the love of money that is evil (II Timothy 6:10).
Does opportunity knock only once? There is an old proverb that says that “Opportunity knocks only once.” Most of the time that is true. However, the people behind the temple tax and the sale of sacrificial animals see dollar signs in the crowd that possibly numbers “two and a quarter million people”. According to Barclay, all kinds of money were valid in Palestine but the temple tax had to be paid in either Galilean shekels or shekels of the sanctuary. Therefore, the “… foreign money which was considered unclean could be used to pay ordinary debts but not a debt to God.” Why was that such a big deal? After all, it takes money to pay the bills right?
Were they out of synch in their ceremonialism?
1) Approval denied: In Amos 5:22 God explains that He is not pleased with burnt offerings, grain offerings and peace offerings that offered for the sake of ceremony where there has been no inward change. Why? The reason why has to do with the fact that those making the sacrifices had not wholeheartedly expressed genuine love for both their God and their neighbor.
2) Sincere reflection required: Psalm 51:16 – 19 illustrates how God wants us to be inwardly genuine and penitent in our worship. As someone said (George Beasely-Murray) said in response to Jesus’ anger: “Observe that the wrath was directed not against those engaged in or leading worship, but against those [price-gouging money changers and vendors] who detracted from it. …. “Jesus purified the temple, showing … that [H]e had come to remove all barriers to the true worship of God. ” (Bruce M. Metzger. gen. ed. Word Bible Commentary: John. Volume 36. Second Edition. Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 2000, p. 39).
3) Proof texting: These things proof text and point out in the words of Jesus how God wants our worship to be “in spirit and truth” (John 4:24 and 25).
CLEANSING THE TEMPLE
Just as Jesus cleansed the temple we have to take an internal inventory of where we stand. As we know, taking an internal inventory of our own lives is not comfortable is it?
1) Knowledge: We all know that we have sinned and have fallen short of the glory of God (Romans 3:23).
2) Conviction friction: We do not like taking those kind of inventories because we might not always like what we find within ourselves.
3) The rut of denial: Satan, the father of lies according to John 8:44 would rather have us live in denial as a comfort zone and look without so as to take the bait of deception by avoiding the truth.
4) Discernment: Consider Psalm 51:6: Behold, you delight in truth in the inward being, and you teach me wisdom in the secret heart. This is a Psalm of David that addresses that runaway part of David’s inward being that wanted to remain a fugitive.
5) Liberation: Just as Jesus cleansed the temple within, He wants us to be clean within. We have to remember that the heart is a harbor as the fifty-first Psalm tells us. God would rather have us living as children, because slaves (slaves of sin) do not have a place in God’s family (John 8:34 -35).
We have to address that eclipse that we spoke of earlier. We have talked about how the individual does that but what about how the church does that? Like the individual the church has to take inventory of its life as an institution. As someone (Joseph D. Small) noted, “A diseased institution cannot reform itself. … Reform of the Church must always be in harmony with Christ and in conformity to Christ.” (David L. Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor. eds. Feasting On The Word. Year B. Volume 2. Joseph D. Small. “Theological Perspective”. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2008, p. 96). Could this notion of the church taking inventory explain why some people level complaints against what they say is “organized-religion”?
What about organized religion? Consider this excerpt from an internet site known as “Compelling Truth”:
“Organized religion goes wrong when it drifts away from God's expectations and panders to human influence. Most dangerous is the tendency to propagate false doctrine. The existence of organizational practices and administration does not guarantee the accuracy of a group's beliefs or the purity of its motives. Some groups use their organizational system to abse their members instead of helping them.
Another potential problem is for the organization to become the religion. Administration should never be allowed to take priority over faith, and people should not be encouraged to identify themselves by their organizational label over their religion.
Religion is meant to be organized. After all, God provided Moses with hundreds of specifics as to proper worship for the Israelites. However, organization was never intended to replace the Spirit's leading in the church. When we stray from God's intent, organized religion can be harmful and abusive. If the organization supports, and is secondary to, the biblical worship of God, then, yes, organized religion is good. But if sinful man has tampered with either the organization or the religion, then there is a problem”. (Read more:http://www.compellingtruth.org/organized-religion.html#ixzz3TSC3Xdjp). The point is clear, Jesus must be Lord of the dance!
The church can grow when we let God lead the way! In his book Way To Grow, Ronald J. Lavin points out “Many inactives and unchurched people think of the church in terms of institutional forms, committees, and budgets. No wonder they don’t see the necessity to participate. The church looks a religious club with rules and regulations.” (Ronald J. Lavin. Way To Grow. Lima: C. S. S. Publishing Company Inc., 1996, p. 111). How can this problem be solved?
Jesus tore down the barriers that kept religion from being genuine in the temple. We have to remember that the Church is God’s house. We also have to remember that the church is a hospital for sinners and not a rest home for saints!
British journalist Malcolm Muggeridge was captivated by Mother Teresa’s deep compassion for the poorest of the poor in Calcutta’s slums. But he, an unbeliever, could not accept her faith. He could not join the church, which was such a flawed institution.
Once, when Mother Teresa visited London, she and Muggeridge took a walk. “I took up my well-prepared defensive position about the church, whose deficiencies, crumbling barricades, and woeful future prospects, I expatiated upon, with little effect,” the journalist said. Later Mother Teresa sent Muggeridge a small devotional book. Here are excerpts:
I’m sure you will understand beautifully everything if you would only become a little child in God’s hands. Your longing for God is so deep, and yet he keeps himself away from you. He must be forcing himself to do so, because he loves you so much, as to give Jesus to die for you and for me. Christ is longing to be your food. Surrounded with fullness of living food, you allow yourself to starve. The personal love Christ has for you is infinite. The small difficulty you have regarding his church is finite. Overcome the finite with the infinite. Christ has created you because he wanted you. I know what you feel, terrible longing with dark emptiness, and yet he is the one in love with you.
Eight years before he died in 1990, Muggeridge finally overcame his objections and joined the Christian church. (Craig Brian Larson and Phyllis Ten Elshof. gen. eds. 100 1 Illustrations That Connect . [— Kevin Miller, Wheaton, Illinois ]. Zondervan: Grand Rapids, 2008). Only Jesus can clean us.
Only Jesus can get us back in synch with God. The church is God’s house. Jesus reminds us that He is control of the temple---His house. They thought that Jesus meant the temple that was built by human hands. They misunderstood because Jesus relates the meaning of the temple to be being His own body. Only after the resurrection did the disciples grasp that Jesus is the lamb who takes away the sin of the world. Only Jesus can forgive us, justify us, heal us, sanctify and save us and set us free for service in His Name! This text reminds us of how the season of Lent calls us to take an inventory---an inward look at ourselves to see where God is in charge and where God needs to be in charge of the areas that we have not yielded to Him. We are called to be the church in the world. Like John the Baptist said, Jesus must become greater and we must become less! In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
