John 2:13-22 - Exploiting the Message of Salvation
A few years ago as we were leading up to the new millennium, I watched in disbelief as a famous television evangelist made the following statement to the thousands who packed the auditorium in front of him
„X ¡§The Lord has told me it is only those who give an offering to the Lord today who will avoid the curses of the new Millennium¡¨
„X He then went on to list the curses that were going to befall our nations and to repeat his claim that the only way to avoid these curses was to give a generous offering
„X It was one of the most blatant and unashamed misuses of the gospel I have ever seen, all with the intent to extract money from gullible and most likely sincere followers of Jesus Christ
„X Today our section of scripture in John 2:13-22 is another story of exploitation where once again, sincere worshipers of God became victims of shameless greed
Background to the Story ¡V Jesus driving the moneychangers from the Temple
„X John¡¦s purpose in his gospel is to prove conclusively that Jesus is the Son of God and all who believe in Him will have eternal life
„X There is a common theme which runs through Chapters 2 through 4 and that is a replacement of the old with the new
„X Wedding Supper in Cana - wine in place of water (2:1-11)
„X Drives money changers out of the temple - a new temple (2:14-19),
„X The conversation with Nicodemus - a new birth (3:1-21),
„X Samaritan woman at the well - a new source of water (Living) (4:7-15)
„X and new worship (In Spirit and in Truth) (4:16-26).
„X So we see this theme of the new replacing the old
John 2:13. When it was almost time for the Jewish Passover, Jesus went up to Jerusalem.
„X the timing is important to our story. It was the time of the ¡§Jewish¡¨ Passover
„X The gospel of John records the ministry of Jesus within the context of three Passover seasons Chapters 2, 6, 11
„X This is significant and we will come back to it later
14. In the temple courts he found men selling cattle, sheep and doves, and others sitting at tables exchanging money.
„X Overhead with Temple Layout
„X The temple precincts were made up of four courtyards that surrounded the temple building, each decreasing in their importance to the Jewish mind.
„X First, there was the Court of the Priests. Only the priests were allowed to enter this court
„X Second, there was the Court of the Israelites. This was a huge courtyard where Jewish worshippers met together for joint services on the great feast days.
„X It was also where worshippers handed over their sacrifices to the priests.
„X Third, there was the Court of the Women. Women were usually limited to this area except for joint worship with men on the Great Feast Days or to make a sacrifice
„X Last was the Court of the Gentiles. It surrounded all the other courtyards, and was the place of worship for all Gentile converts to Judaism.
„X Notice it was also the furthest removed from the Holy of Holies, which represented God¡¦s presence
„X A high wall separated the Court of the Gentiles from the other courts, so this was the closest they could come to God¡¦s presence
„X There were even signs hung threatening death to any Gentile who went beyond their own courtyard (Museum in Istanbul has an original)
„X The whole temple prescient covered approximately 35 acres
„X So this is the scene as Jesus enters this Court of the Gentiles
Let me ask you, what is your concept of a temple? What would you expect to find at a temple? What kind of activities?
„X Place to worship, prayers, adoration
„X Place to bring offerings ¡V sacrifices, money
„X Place to meet God ¡V to experience his presence, his grace, his reassurance
„X Is this what Jesus finds?
14. In the temple courts he found men selling cattle, sheep and doves, and others sitting at tables exchanging money. 15 So he made a whip out of cords, and drove all from the temple area, both sheep and cattle; he scattered the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables. 16To those who sold doves he said, "Get these out of here! How dare you turn my Father’s house into a market!" 17His disciples remembered that it is written: "Zeal for your house will consume me.¡¨
„X So instead of finding a place of worship, where people can go to meet God, Jesus finds a circus
„X And we see a side of Jesus we didn¡¦t learn about in Sunday School and they were lucky He only used his physical power against them
„X You can tell a lot about a person by WHAT gets them angry; shallow people get angry over shallow things; deep people get angry over important things
So what was going on here that got Jesus go upset?
Two things
1. Discrimination, worshipers like the gentiles and women who wanted to come and worship God were being hindered by the temple system ¡V How would you ladies like to come to church and sit in the foyer for services
2. Jews were exploiting those who had sincerely come to worship the Lord by taking commercial advantage of the situation
„X They had turned the temple prescient into a One-stop shopping mall
„X This was the ¡§Worship Warehouse¡¨ of the time ¡V everything you ever needed for worship was available for a price
„X Animals ¡V for those who had to travel at inflated prices
„X currency exchange - as Roman coins could not be used as they had the impression of Caesar on the coins, so they had to use temple coinage
„X doesn¡¦t take much imagination on our part to know how corruption may have slipped into this system
„X We have the same problem today when we give $30 million payouts to retiring CEO¡¦s
„X Greed gets the better of something which may have started off as a good service
„X To make things worse, Annas, the high priest, was complicit with the whole system!
„X Sarcastic commentators of the time dubbed the temple the ¡¥Bazaars of Annas.¡¦
„X The high priest actually sold franchises for money lenders and stock merchants to operate in the temple prescient
„X Jesus, quite rightly was horrified, he went berserk not over something frivolous, but something very important - The exploitation of God¡¦s people coming to worship Him
„X On God¡¦s list of sins, this one has to be close to the top of the heap
Yet even today, we see the temple merchants alive and well, those who would exploit the gospel in some way to gain a profit
„X We see it in preachers who use guilt to manipulate people to give more like the example we used at the beginning
„X We see it in the false gospel of Health and Wealth, those offering a special formula for prayer which obligates God¡¦s to pour out his blessings on you
„X They interviewed Rabbi Kushner on this TV program I mentioned at the beginning and he said, ¡§I hope there is a special place in Hell reserved or those who profiteer on the health concerns of God¡¦s people¡¨
„X These unscrupulous men misrepresent our Savior, making him a ATM machine who if you punch in the right code will shower us with only blessing of good health and buckets of money rather than preach about the One whose true blessing was to die a miserable degrading death for their sins, who sides with the weak and suffers with the oppressed
„X We see it when we open up a bookstore catalogue which advertises not just the original best seller any more but ¡§¡K......¡¨ for women, teenagers, kids, cups, underwear, t-shirts
„X A man walked into a gift shop that sold religious items. Near the cash register he saw a display of caps with "WWJD" printed on all of them. He was puzzled over what the letters could mean, but couldn’t figure it out, so he asked the clerk. The clerk replied that the letters stood for "What Would Jesus Do", and was meant to inspire people to not make rash decisions, but rather to imagine what Jesus would do in the same situation. The man thought a moment and then replied, "Well, I’m sure Jesus wouldn’t pay $17.95 for one of these caps."
„X There is nothing wrong with selling books and making a fair profit for your labors, but we need to be careful that what starts off as something which is a blessing to God¡¦s people doesn¡¦t turn into exploitation of God¡¦s people
„X We see it when the gospel is presented as works oriented, rather than grace oriented
„X We need to beware of any message that suggests we can gain God¡¦s approval by our ¡§good works¡¨
„X We see it when entertainment passes for church services and supplants genuine worship and a focus on God¡¦s Word
„X The gospel doesn¡¦t need us to dress it up, it has a power of its own
„X We see it when groups claims to have a special insight which gives them an insider status with God
„X This esoteric knowledge makes them more special than the rest of the Christian community
„X Anytime the gospel is equated with winning, personal advancement, gaining God¡¦s approval, or personal satisfaction, it is a false gospel and is being exploited or misrepresented
„X Our faith is not a commercial transaction, it is a gift from God to be enjoyed not exploited
„X Our faith is not a list of do and don¡¦t, its an encounter with the Living Christ
Jesus railed against the commercialization of the gospel
„X He gave two warnings (Jesus actually drove the money changers out twice ¡V (Matt 21:12-17, Mark 11:12-19, Luke 19:45-48) and the third time the Roman Legions arrived and stopped this hypocrisy once and for all
„X Our Lord is a consuming fire and its more that a little ironic that His most famous outburst of anger is reserved for those who would exploit and twist the gospel message for their own gain
„X There are a couple of other times in the OT when the proper regard for things sacred didn¡¦t turn out so well
„X Anyone know the incidents? Nadab and Abihu, sons of Aaron (Lev 10) and Uzzah and the Ark (2 Sam 6)
„X This was the ¡§Shock¡¨ and ¡§Awe¡¨ of God¡¦s OT campaign
„X So what does this tell us about the regard we need to have for all things sacred?
„X we need to be very careful what we claim to do in God¡¦s name and what we do in His house
„X Reverence is the term used in our respect for God and we need to be careful in all that we do is lifting ourselves to God¡¦s level rather than dragging Him down to our level
18 Then the Jews demanded of him, "What miraculous sign can you show us to prove your authority to do all this?" 19Jesus answered them, "Destroy this temple, and I will raise it again in three days."
20The Jews replied, "It has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and you are going to raise it in three days?" 21But the temple he had spoken of was his body. 22After he was raised from the dead, his disciples recalled what he had said. Then they believed the Scripture and the words that Jesus had spoken.
Now we come back to this point of the ¡§New¡¨ replacing the ¡§Old¡¨
„X At this time of the first Passover of His ministry, Jesus gives the sign that on his death, the old temple system with all its corruption and failings would be replaced with the new temple, Himself
„X In John 6, again the context is Passover, the second of his ministry, v.4, Jesus teaches about the significance of his death and his being the ¡§true Bread from heaven¡¨
„X then at the time of the third Passover of his ministry in (John 11:55), Jesus accomplishes his work and dies as the true Passover lamb
„X So the whole of Jesus’ ministry occurs in the framework of Passover and in this context of we see Christ the lamb of God effectively fulfilling and replacing the Mosaic system and all that was associated with it
„X John 1:16-17 And of His fullness we have all received, and grace for grace.17 For the law was given through Moses, but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.
„X This is why John uses the terminology in John 2:13, of Jewish Passover as by the time John wrote his gospel, about 85-90AD, the temple had been destroyed and the old Mosaic system had been abandoned by the early church
„X They understood the new system revolved around Jesus himself, He was the new temple as He claims here
„X He was the new focal point of salvation history, rather than Herod¡¦s temple with it associated feasts and sacrifices
„X Now the real temple was here, the old system was no longer needed
„X Jesus is the Temple of the New Covenant
„X No longer was it great inanimate stone building built by man¡¦s hands to which the worshipers brought their sacrifices, now they are brought to the living Jesus Christ
„X Now worshipers could meet God and speak with Him face to face
„X Now worshipers could experience God¡¦s love and forgiveness on a personal level
„X The sacrificial rituals of the Mosaic Covenant could never save us, but the blood of Jesus Christ can
„X The Law never could give us new life, but the resurrected Christ can
„X As such the church now began to call itself ¡§Christian¡¨ as opposed to ¡§Mosaic¡¨ or ¡§Jewish¡¨
„X That¡¦s why we use the terminology of ¡§Lord¡¦s Supper¡¨ rather than ¡§Passover¡¨ today
„X The new temple, Jesus, instituted a new system to remind us of our deliverance from sin through His sacrifice
„X The ¡§Passover¡¨ reminded the Jews of their deliverance from Egypt
The question for each of us is, at which temple do we want to worship? The old, associated with the Mosaic covenant, or the new, the Living Jesus Christ
„X The sad thing is, the Jews never did make the transition from the old to the new. We need to make sure we do
„X We need to clear our hearts of all these false misconceptions about the gospel just as Christ cleared out the misconceptions in his day
„X The power and presence of God is no longer found in great stone buildings
„X He¡¦s not found in the traditions and rituals and ceremonies of our churches
„X Rather he is found in the hearts of the those who have a personal encounter with the Living Jesus Christ
„X And incredibly, we become His temple as He takes up residence in our hearts
„X We carry around the Glory and Holiness of God in our being
„X What condition is that temple in? To what use is that temple put? Does it reflect that glory and holiness or have we allowed that glory and holiness to fade?
What about the temple we come to each week for Worship services. Does it accurately reflect the Glory and Holiness of God?
„X It is not a place for a preacher to be the center of attention ¡V we are merely spokesman, not the Word
„X Its not a place for the gospel to be misrepresented
„X It is not a place for the worship team to be the center of attention
„X It is not a place to conduct business
„X It is not a place of entertainment
„X Its the place to come and experience a personal encounter with the living temple, Jesus Christ
„X He is the center of worship
„X Every time we miss church we miss an opportunity to commune with God
The sin of the temple custodians of Jesus¡¦ time was they hindered people coming to perform that most important of human functions, the worship of God.
„X Our job as the custodians of the gospel of Jesus Christ is not to hinder, but to facilitate the process of bringing people to worship God. We should never allow anything to get in the way of that process
