Open your Bibles if you would to John 2:12. We have been going through the book of John. We are taking as long as we need to go through the book of John. It looks like it is going to take a little while longer. You may recall last week we looked Jesus’ first miracle; the miracle of turning the water into wine. This week, as you can tell by the video, we are going to be looking at Jesus cleansing the temple. Clearing out the merchants and cracking whips and that sort of thing. Last week, we got to see the nice, gentle Jesus that does everything nice and what people want. Helped his mother out. Helped the bride and the bridegroom out and the master of the banquet. This week we get to see the angry Jesus that makes everybody mad. We don’t like this kind of Jesus. The question we have to ask, and hopefully we can resolve it, is why did Jesus get so upset? Hopefully, as we read through the passage and go through the sermon we might understand why. Reading from John 2 starting at verse 12. (Scripture read here.)
These first few verses remind us that when it was almost time for the Jewish Passover, Jesus went up into the temple. That is where he found men selling cattle, sheep, and doves. That is what seemed to upset him because he saw them also exchanging money. A little bit of background about this idea of Passover. Passover was one of the three required feasts for Jewish men over 18 years of age. They would all have to attend three major feasts. One was Passover. Another was called Pentecost and another one was called The Feast of the Tabernacle. Of the three, Passover was probably the most important feast. It was big feast. You may recall that Passover was the feast that celebrated the deliverance of the people from the hands of wicked Pharaoh. That is what was celebrated. The word Passover actually comes from the event that preceded the deliverance of the people. It was the night before the Pharaoh let the people go and the people were instructed by Moses to slay and lamb and put the blood of the lamb over the doorpost of their homes. When the angel of death would pass through the area, they would pass over their house and hence the name Passover. Passover was a very big feast. Estimates are anywhere from one to four million people would come into Jerusalem for the week-long celebration of Passover. It was a big deal. A lot of celebration. A lot of good things going on. A lot of joyous things. It was probably like a Mardi Gras of some sort. It was also a good thing for the merchants. The feasts were very good for business during that time. The merchants would set up the tables and booths and sell things like food and clothing. They would sell beverages. They would sell supplies that they would need to go back on their pilgrimage. Of course they would sell things that were required for sacrifice for people to be able to go up into the temple which is where they were all heading. Up into big Herod’s temple known as God’s House and they would sell them these supplies. Things like salt and oil and yarmulkes and of course animals. Doves and cattle and oxen and sheep. They knew that the pilgrims were coming in to do sacrifice so they would sell them these things. Many of them would set up on the outlying roads leading into Jerusalem to get a head start on the crowd as they came in. The farther out they sold these things, the pilgrims would probably get a better price. That is the way it worked.
One day, somebody got the bright idea, probably someone from the Jewish council, to set up a relationship with some of these merchants. That they can set up a contract with them to where they bring the merchants directly into the temple ground and they can set up their booths there. They can just sell all the things they need. They wouldn’t have to buy it out in the countryside. They can buy it right there at the temple. It would be a convenience for these people. At least they saw it as a convenience. When there is a convenience, sometimes there is a convenience fee attached to it. When you buy things right at the ballpark, it is expensive. That is why I buy my peanuts on the other side of Roberto Clemente Bridge. While I have the luxury to buy peanuts on the other side of Roberto Clemente Bridge, the pilgrims didn’t have that option. They had to buy the stuff right there at the ballpark. They didn’t have a choice because the Jews were in charge of regulating the quality of the animals. If they didn’t put their kosher stamp on it, they couldn’t use those animals. Someone might bring their lamb or dove in and they would look at it and say this isn’t quality stuff. You need the stuff that is kosher. You need the stuff stamped by us. They are thinking this doesn’t seem fair. The price is about two or three times. You are getting good quality stuff not the cheap stuff. So they take out their money that would be Egyptian coin or Greek coin or Roman coin and pass it to the person. The person would say sorry we can’t take this money. We only take temple money here. I don’t have any temple money. There is a guy over here that will fix you up. If you bring your Roman coin to him he will exchange it for you. It will be a nice courtesy. The trouble is the person who would exchange it would mark it up about 15%. They would go over there and they would give them $10 and get $5 back in temple currency. By the time you got into the temple, you felt ripped off. You surely didn’t feel like worshipping. They had a real problem with what was going on there.
That is why we see Jesus getting upset over that because Jesus knows exactly what is going on. That is what we see in verse 15. He makes whip out of cords and drives all the animals, the sheep and cattle, out of the area and scatters the coins of the money changers and he throws over their tables. To the ones throwing doves he says get these out of here. How dare you turn my Father’s house into a marketplace. He is tough on them. If we look at this scene in another passage, Matthew 21, we see really he is pretty direct on what the problem is. “He said to them, ‘My house will be called a house of prayer but you are making it into a den of robbers.’” This was the place that the people were supposed to be able to come up and worship. This was the place of prayer. This was the place they were supposed to go and find God. What they found was a den of robbers. Some translations say a den of thieves. Jesus was mad about the business activities, but he was mad about the greedy business activities that were going on at the site. Even though that is good enough for Jesus to get mad, I think there was more to it. In order to see that, if you stay with me for a minute, you might see what one of the big issues was. To do that we have to dig a little deeper in this verse here. Jesus is saying “My house will be called a house of prayer.” If you had your Bibles open and saw that, you would see what proceeds that is “It is written”. In other words, Jesus is quoting somebody. He is actually quoting an Old Testament prophet named Isaiah. You might recall that Isaiah is one of the big prophets of the Jewish people. They really revered Isaiah so Jesus would often quote from Isaiah. Isaiah was the prophet that preached during the time of the captivity when the Jewish people were taken away by their enemy. He was the one that was preaching to them when they were following idols and not being obedient. He was saying you better clean up your act or God’s wrath is going to come on you. That is really the first 39 chapters of the book of Isaiah.
But you may recall the last 40 chapters Isaiah is preaching a message of hope and peace. He also preaches a message that the temple is about to be restored. The glorious temple that they had in the old times, the place where God resided, God’s House, was going to be restored and bigger than you can imagine. It was going to be phenomenal and it would be a place of worship. It would be a place of prayer. If you have a cross reference in your Bible, you see that it refers you to a specific passage, Isaiah 56:7 because in that particular passage Isaiah is saying is not only will the temple be a place of worship for the Jews, it is going to be a place of worship for the non-Jews, also called the Gentiles. Gentiles is just another name for nation. During that time you had Jews and everybody else or Jews and Gentiles. Isaiah is predicting that there is going to be a time that this glorious temple is not going to be just an exclusive club for the Jews. It is going to open up for all the non-Jews. Not only is it going to open up. It is going to be a place of worship. It is going to be a place of prayer. Side by side they are going to offer burnt offerings. They are going to come together to praise God together and celebrate God’s presence together. I wanted to look briefly at that passage. The translation I put up here is out of the book The Message because it puts it in modern English terms. I think it is very clear what Isaiah is saying 500 years earlier than the situation takes place. This is God speaking through Isaiah. Isaiah was the mouthpiece of God. So God is saying “And as for the outsiders, being non-Jews, who now follow me, working for me, loving my name, wanting to be my servants, all who keep Sabbath and don’t defile it, holding fast to my covenant”. Basically what he is saying in those first three verses “Those non-Jews who follow Jewish law, I will bring them to my holy mountain (which he is talking about the temple in Jerusalem) and I will give them joy in my house of prayer. They will be welcome to worship the same as the insiders (the Jews) to bring burnt offerings and sacrifices to my altar. Oh yes, my house of worship will be known as a house of prayer for all people.” That is a powerful verse. That is a prophetic verse. This is a verse that was written about 500 years before this situation with the clearing of the temple. Jesus quoted Old Testament a lot. Jesus knew the Old Testament. The Jews knew the Old Testament. When he starts talking like this, they know exactly what he is talking about. They are getting a little antsy thinking he is quoting Isaiah. Likely thinking to themselves that they don’t like it when Jesus quotes Isaiah because we know that Jesus knows his Bible.
Giving credit to the Jews, they actually did a pretty good job trying to assimilate the Gentiles in. They saw it to their benefit to be nice in the community to connect with people. To get along with the non-Jews. When Herod remodeled this temple, they made it into a beautiful large temple with room for the Gentiles to come into. Herod was smart. He knew he could use that place for a marketplace and for different activities. I found an image that shows what the temple would have looked like back then. It has been long destroyed. In A.D. 70 it was actually destroyed by the Romans. I want to draw your attention to where the arrow is pointing there. That is called the Gentiles courtyard. You have this outer wall that everybody would come to. Then you had the surrounding area called the Courtyard of the Gentiles. This was apparently large enough to hold 75,000 people. This was 35 acres in here. This surrounding nice area was for the Gentiles. They had a nice space but they better not go past that space. There were signs found in archeological discovery that would say Do Not Enter Upon Penalty of Death. They found inscriptions that would say that. Herod built them a nice big courtyard that they could come hang out at and ideally they would say their prayers there.
Getting back to the story, Jesus said my house will be called a house of prayer but you have made it a den of robbers. You made this big place. You allowed the Gentiles to come into this area. But you wouldn’t let them go any farther. And to make it worse, the space that you had allocated to them you turned into a flea market. You turned it into chaos. How can somebody pray in that situation? I was trying to think how can I relate to this in modern terms. I began to think of an analogy. It is not a pure analogy but I think it might work. Let’s say there is somebody out there in Bellevue seeking God. They are disconnected from God and want to get to know God and they want to go back to church. They don’t know where to go so they go down to Shepherd’s Door bookstore and they greet Marilyn down there with her smiley face or Grace or Kelly or somebody down there or Carol. The smiling faces are just waiting for the customers to come in. They come in and ask a question. I fell away from God and I need some prayer and I need to get connected back to God. Do you know any good churches? Of course Marilyn would say Bellevue Christian Church. That is the place where you are going to go where you are going to experience the presence of God in a mighty way because we have a Pentecostal piano player and if that is what you are looking for. They just want to go find a place to pray. They ask when the service is. They go to our church the next Sunday and they are greeted by someone from the First Impressions team. But instead of handing them a bulletin they hand them a vendor list. They say okay what is this? This is the list of approved vendors for our church. And he says okay. What do I do with this? Behind you are all the vendors sitting in the foyer about 15 of them. They all have their tables lined up and you might want to visit them before you go into the sanctuary. So he walks over to the tables and there are Bibles and cups and bookmarks and coffee and everything else people are selling. He goes up to the Bible table and says do I need one of these? Oh yeah. You have to have a Bible if you are going to go into church. Okay I will take one. How much are they? It is $50. At Shepherd’s Door bookstore they were going to sell me one for $25. Convenience charge, sorry. You are on the premises now. You have to pay full price. You didn’t have to carry it down here. So he pulls out his money. I am from the North Side. You have to get to the Bellevue Christian Currency. I don’t have any of that money. Our treasurer is sitting over in the corner and she will fix you up. So they go to the corner to make the change. I will take $10 and he gives him back $5 in Bellevue Currency. Sorry, convenience charge. He starts climbing the stairs to go up in the sanctuary. Just then our top notch security team led by Bridget go up there and say where are you going? There is a sign there. Can’t you read the sign? What sign. It says Christians only. Let me see your card. I don’t have a card. I just decided I wanted to go to church for prayer. Sorry. You are limited to this area here. You are limited to the foyer. I just want to pray. There is a spot over there by the coat room. I think we can make a spot for you. But it is so noisy and crazy. You have all these vendors. I just don’t think I could pray. Sorry you have to leave. So the person leaves.
That is how the people would have felt going up to the temple because the place that they thought that they could go to meet God was turned into a flea market. They had no place to go to meet God. That was the place where they were going to meet God. The Jews weren’t going out to evangelize. They were going into the temple. They were trying to get in the temple but they put up all these restrictions and made it impossible to meet God. That is why Jesus goes crazy and cracks the whip. Then the Pharisees start getting upset because he is messing with their business. John writes “Then the Jews demanded of him, ‘What miraculous sign can you show us that you have the authority to do this?’” You may remember last week we talked about signs. It was about changing the water to wine. It was a sign of something. But a sign points itself to something else. In this case they were looking for a miracle that would point to the fact that he had the authority to do what he was trying to do; cleaning the whole temple. Jesus is thinking I may give a sign for my mother. I may change water to wine for the bridegroom but I am not going to pull a rabbit out of my hat for you. I am not going to do it. On second thought, if you want a sign, you destroy this temple and I will raise it again in three days. They say raise it in three days? Huh! It took us 46 years to build this temple. You are going to raise it in three days? At that point what happens is John the gospel writer gives a little bit of editorial comment and says the temple that Jesus was talking about was his body and when the disciples saw the resurrection, then they tied it altogether. John is telling us that. Even the disciples didn’t know what he was talking about. Basically, they say I get it now. The glorious temple that Herod built is now going to be destroyed, which it was in A.D. 70. It was completely destroyed. The only thing left is the Wailing Wall. They are crying because the glory of the Lord had departed their temple. That is why they are weeping at the wall. They are praying that God would restore that temple. You know what is there now? A Muslim Mosque. A mosque has replaced that glorious temple. Ever since A.D. 70 it has been desolate. The Jews stand there and wail and wail. That is what is going on here. Jesus is going to take the glorious temple that is no longer going to be in existence and the temple will become Christ. The temple will become Christ and the body of Christ will be the Church.
That is the end of the story. Like other stories, like the changing of water to wine, we can look at that and say that is a nice story. Something I need to put in my Bible trivia so I always know how to answer when it comes up in Sunday school. There is more to the story. There are always applications. As we open up to read the scripture, what we call the living word of God, filled with the Holy Spirit, the one who wrote the book is reading us. He is looking at our hearts, minds, and souls to figure out what are the problems that we have that we have to fix. What are the things that we have to deal with? There are some applications. Some are pretty surface level. The typical question what does this have to do with us today? The first one is Jesus got angry so we have a right to get angry too. Especially righteous anger. We have the ability to get mad for righteous things. I would say that is probably true. We do have the right to get angry but we should get angry the way that Jesus got angry or get angry for the things that anger Jesus. Things like greed, injustice, exploitation of children or the innocent or foreigners. We should be angry about the fact that probably right now somebody is selling heroin stamps in Giant Eagle’s parking lot and some kid is going to die eventually. That should get us mad. That should get us angry. What about the fact that someone is getting bullied in school and bullied so much that they are considering suicide. That stuff should get us angry. But in our anger we don’t sin. We are not Jesus. We can’t go flipping over tables, but we can work through the existing processes to do something about it. You are right. This is an example that we should have righteous anger.
The second application some people would say this is proof that you shouldn’t have any sort of business activities anywhere near the church. Some of you come from larger churches like Orchard Hill or Victory or Allison Park. They all have nice bookstores and cafes. They sell a lot of nice stuff. They have CDs and cups and mugs. Somebody says this is proof you shouldn’t have any of that stuff there. I don’t think so. I don’t think Jesus was that concerned about those things as much as he was about the motive behind it. Why are they doing that stuff? We were talking in our home group the other day watching a video. The speaker said there is really no line between the sacred and the secular. We try to make a clear dividing line. A clear line is between light and darkness. We can’t draw the line between the secular and the sacred as the door there or any of these doors. Having said that, we do have to examine ourselves and look at the activities we have going on in the church and ask ourselves why are we doing this thing. What is our motive behind it? Are we trying to line our pockets? Are we trying to do something that we think will bring somebody better into the presence of God or possibly support our ministry in the community to bring people into the presence of God? In other words, to support the value of worship that we put on the sign there on Highway 65. If we are doing that, I think we can feel okay about some of the money we are taking in here.
In closing, we think about the third application, which I think is really the more important application. Are we doing anything that is hindering people from coming into the presence of God? Have we created a metaphorical or a mental court of the Gentiles? Somehow suggesting that you can come this far but you can’t go any farther for penalty of death. You can’t get past this point. It is possible that we have. I think we have a pretty good church going here and even in the community there are a lot of good churches, but there are 9,000 residents and I guarantee there are not 9,000 people in church today. We would be lucky if there are 2,000 or 3,000. Why? There are a lot of reasons but I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that we have created these barriers that have not allowed people to come into the presence. There are simple barriers like some people think the church is too out of touch with reality. They use a lot of religious language and stuck in tradition. The world is going this way and they are stuck here. I am not saying compromise tradition, big tradition, the gospel tradition, i.e., Jesus Christ, but sometimes we hold so tight to the little tradition, man’s tradition, that we alienate people. We say hymns were good enough for us so they are good enough for our kids. We are going to sing nothing by hymns here. If you don’t like it, go find another church. They have and they do. That is why Central Methodist closed and there is a for sale sign out there. The people got their way. We are not going to change. We would rather close so they closed. They were looking at man’s tradition. They weren’t looking at God’s tradition. They weren’t looking at the greater tradition, the gospel of Jesus Christ. That would be a reason. But I also think that bottom line people think we don’t care. Or that we care more about money than we care about people. It goes back to our home group again because we were talking about the idea of sharing your faith at the workplace. Somebody said I find it very hard because every time I mention church somebody says well they just want your money. That is why I don’t go. I always think that is not us. We aren’t just about getting people’s money I hope. Most mature Christians know that the church has overhead. It has bills to pay. It costs money to run a church. The electricity, the lights, the toilet paper, the hand sanitizer, all that stuff costs money. The mature Christians know there is a cost. We could just stop passing the offering plate if we are worried about offending somebody. Then I thought what we could do is just send everybody a bill. I did the math. The reality is we run about 200 people per Sunday. Our annual budget is about $350,000. That 200 are adults and kids. Take out the kids. It takes about $1500 to $2000 per adult per year to run this church. That means if you are a couple and making a reasonable income, you should be giving anywhere from $2,000 to $4,000 a year. Some are likely thinking; Whoa. I can’t do that. There are some people doing it for you. It is that 20-80% rule. 20% of the people give 80% of the giving. People are carrying other people’s loads. Once again, I am not laying any guilt on it because I know people have seasons but that is what is happening. People are carrying other people’s loads. You go through seasons, but the reality is everybody giving what they should give. It’s not a guilt thing. I don’t even think it is that much of a money thing. I don’t think visitors really are that concerned that we are passing the offering. They know we pass the offering plate. They know when they go to church they pass the offering plate. We tried a couple years ago to come up with something creative. We thought we will pass the offering plate during worship time. Everybody is up there praising God and the plate is just going front and back and people are getting out their checks and the plate is gone. You would think the mature Christians would say I missed it but I will send my check in. Wrong. Offerings took a nosedive. You thought Jesus looked deranged. You should have seen Marilyn balancing the books. She looked like Lethal Weapon 3 with Mel Gibson. God bless her! Once again, I don’t think people would be offended if you pass the offering plate. It really has to do with attitude issues.
Getting back to the person who comes in and they meet vendors. They might even be welcomed in and sit in the back. The first thing they get is a flyer about an upcoming mission trip and it says if you want to give money go see so and so. They sit in the back and watch the announcements that says we have this upcoming fundraiser and we need money for Easter eggs or this or that. Then they are sitting there and during moments of hospitality or friendship nobody even introduces themselves. They are sitting back there all alone. During the sermon they can’t hear because of the all the distractions because of the texting, laughing, and talking, they get distracted. All they hear is money, money, money. In fact, today, people are probably saying Chuck is talking about money again. It really isn’t about money. Then they get to the end of the service and offering time. They pass the plate. The very last thing we do is we get up and Chris has an announcement and he is raising money for a trip for the youth. By the end of the service he or she has been hit up four or five times asking for money. The person leaves the church not a hello, not a goodbye, no prayer and the person did not meet God. The person came in to experience the presence of God and instead they leave feeling they got robbed. They got hit up for money. The only thing they left with was an empty pocket book. They gave $20. They are thinking I could have taken that $20 and gone to the Pirates game. That is what they are feeling.
What is the answer? In a nutshell, it is be the church. Be the body of Christ. In other words, you are the church. The church isn’t this building. Hopefully, if the church ever burned down, we would still have a church. We would have the people. Consequently, all of us collectively have the responsibility for making sure when somebody comes in seeking God in any way that they come on their terms that you try to meet them because you are the church. You have a responsibility of ushering them in. It could be as simple as greeting them with a handshake. It could be as simple as meeting them, which means during times of hospitality if they talk a little bit, talking to them and find out who they are. Find out what might be hurting them. Some sort of pain or grief they might be going through. You might want to invite them to the fellowship time over here and you might even dare try to invite them to your home. It might not happen in one visit. It might be several visits. People will give more than one visit. They realize at the first visit they are not going to get connected. That is your responsibility. In order to do that, you may have to change some attitudes. If Jesus came in cracking the whip today, I don’t think he would be knocking out the flyers and he wouldn’t be getting rid of the coffee. He wouldn’t be getting rid of the books we are selling or the curriculum. What he would be getting rid of are some attitudes of the mind. The attitude that says I am better than you like the Jews had. That you are not clean. You are not pure. We look at people and make judgments right off the bat. We are all guilty of it. Someone might be disabled or a different color or from a different race or maybe from a different faith. We hear people that are badmouthing different denominations in the area. They have these attitudes that they have not dealt with and what they have done is create these walls of separation. They have created a court of Gentiles collectively in the church. You say I don’t want to do that. I just want to come and be entertained. It is Chuck and Chris and Debbie. That is your job. Sorry, it’s not. Our job as I see it is we focus more on the vertical. In other words, Chris, Debbie, and I with the word and song, our job is to lift people up into the presence of God. To exalt the name of Jesus high. That is our job. We get to do that. We get to usher them into the head. You get to usher them into Christ’s body. You get to bring them deeper into the presence of God. You do that by making those connections. I got a text from somebody last week who texted me a verse Acts 6 that had a story about the elders and pastors were getting overwhelmed because of all the work they had to do. The orphans and widows had been neglected. This person said what can I do? It has convicted me. I said I wish everybody felt the same way. As much as we like to minister to each and every one of you, 200 people is too much for three people. If you are waiting for Chuck, Debbie, or Chris to come visit you, I am sorry, but we can’t. Don’t be mad at us though. Be mad at the person who has been sitting next to you for ten years and you don’t even know their name. Haven’t even introduced themselves. That is the one who should be ministering to you. If everybody did that it would look like the church.
In closing, it really goes back to this verse. “But the temple he had spoken of was his body. After he was raised from the dead, his disciples recalled what he had said.” We know that the temple was destroyed by the crucifixion but yet we know the temple was raised in a new way with Christ as the head and the church collectively as the body. In closing, the last verse comes out of Paul’s letter to Corinthians and says it so well. He says “Don’t you know that you yourselves are God’s temple and that God’s spirit lives in you? If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy him; for God’s temple is sacred and you are that temple.” The temple of the church will never be destroyed again. Let us pray.
