Focusing on the Valuable
Following Jesus
We had our MCC Tour last Sunday and I shared with a number of our newest guests that we didn’t want them to join Meridian Christian Church.
You see, we’re not about joining – we are about following. Our mission is to help people find their way home. This is a spiritual home. This is the Family of God and we have found our way home by following Jesus.
But what does it mean to follow Jesus?
This Sunday is the last one in our series on living the good life. The lesson is from John 2 and it is an important one that will help all of us to focus on the valuable.
Do you remember the children?s games you played that taught you how to be a follower? As babies we played "peek-a-boo" and covered our eyes just like the person who played it with us. I’ve been having a lot of fun with my grandson Gabe!
In preschool we all played "Follow the leader" and walked, ran, rolled on the ground, and did whatever the leader did. In Kindergarten the game of choice was "Simon Says" and we learned to watch out for the tricky stuff and the attempts to trip us up with complicated commands. I was pretty good at "Simon says"!
In the school years it was no longer a game. In the elementary grades it was the serious business of "I dare you" and "I double dare you". And when it was really, really serious there was the "I Double Dog Dare Ya". Here was a dare that no school kid - girl or boy - could ignore.
Eventually we grow up and put away childish games. In the formative years of maturity at Junior High and High School we played "HORSE" on the basketball courts and we all learned the importance of dressing alike to prove we were different. This makes sense only to a High School student.
Of course in college the game of "HORSE" went away because it was too juvenile. It was replaced with the "I Double Dog Dare Ya". People, especially freshman, revert in college and become little children.
It is through all of these games that we learn to follow. So how do you follow Jesus? You imitate him. You do what he did when he was here. You do what he would do if he were in your place. You become like Jesus.
And what was Jesus like? He was a man of passion. This Sunday we will study and learn from one of the wildest and emotional moments of Jesus beginning ministry years. The day he tossed the money changers out of the Temple.
If you are going to follow Jesus - here is one lesson you simply must learn. The lesson of focus and passion without distraction.
Following Jesus is not for the easily distracted
You must focus on that which is valuable and important
You must have a sharpness in your spiritual vision that penetrates the worlds ability to blur, to distract, and to misdirect your attention.
That cannot be done without one key ingredient: passion
John 2:12-25
When the Passover Feast, celebrated each spring by the Jews, was about to take place, Jesus traveled up to Jerusalem. He found the Temple teeming with people selling cattle and sheep and doves. The loan sharks were also there in full strength.
Jesus put together a whip out of strips of leather and chased them out of the Temple, stampeding the sheep and cattle, upending the tables of the loan sharks, spilling coins left and right. He told the dove merchants, “Get your things out of here! Stop turning my Father’s house into a shopping mall!” That’s when his disciples remembered the Scripture, “Zeal for your house consumes me.”
But the Jews were upset. They asked, “What credentials can you present to justify this?” Jesus answered, “Tear down this Temple and in three days I’ll put it back together.”
They were indignant: “It took forty-six years to build this Temple, and you’re going to rebuild it in three days?” But Jesus was talking about his body as the Temple. Later, after he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered he had said this. They then put two and two together and believed both what was written in Scripture and what Jesus had said.
During the time he was in Jerusalem, those days of the Passover Feast, many people noticed the signs he was displaying and, seeing they pointed straight to God, entrusted their lives to him. But Jesus didn’t entrust his life to them. He knew them inside and out, knew how untrustworthy they were. He didn’t need any help in seeing right through them.
His Focus was His Father’s House
Jesus was full of “Zeal” for the House of God
Jesus Knew what was valuable
Jesus was full of passion for the temple of God
When he saw that which had no place in the temple he was compelled to clean up. There was never any doubt in him as to what was right and what was wrong. It’s refreshing to know where you are going and what it takes to get there.
2:17. Jesus’ disciples remembered Psalm 69:9, which speaks of the fact that the Righteous One would pay a price for His commitment to God’s temple. This zeal for God would ultimately lead Him to His death.
Psalm 69:9 (NIV)
9 for zeal for your house consumes me, and the insults of those who insult you fall on me.
There are three temples in the Bible
The First Temple of God
The temple was not like a church. The temple was a place for God. Only a few people could go into the inner rooms and only one man, the high priest could go into the innermost room. And then it was only once a year and for a limited time and a specific purpose.
The people could only to into the outer courtyards where they prepared for their worship. The temple courts refer to a large courtyard, the Court of the Gentiles, surrounding the temple enclosure. (See the sketch of the temple.) The buying and selling of animals in the area was probably rationalized as a convenience for the pilgrims coming into Jerusalem. But abuses developed, and the pilgrim traffic became a major source of income for the city.
With money to be made, worship easily became corrupted. The money changers were another convenience for the pilgrims. Temple dues had to be paid in the acceptable Tyrian coinage, and a high percentage was charged for changing coins.
Jesus cleansed one temple and referred to a second Temple
He said, “If you tear it down I will build it up again in three days.”
Now we know that Jesus was referring to himself because John tells us this.
Jesus is the temple of God and he gave a prophetic statement that the people no one understood at the time. At the time, the disciples didn’t understand it. It was only after they looked back that it could make sense of it.
They were standing in Herod’s temple and it had taken years – even centuries to build – and this rabbi was saying that if they tore it down he would build it up in three days.
They must have looked at him like he had only one ore in the water.
What no one understood at that time was that Jesus was the dwelling place of God. He was the place where God lived. This was God in a body of flesh, blood, bone, and sinew.
When you look at it this way it kind of makes the whole crucifixion thing personal to doesn’t it.
But there is a third Temple of God
There is another temple – not made with hands. It is the church – both corporate and individual. We are the dwelling place of God
1 Corinthians 3:16-17 (NIV)
16 Don’t you know that you yourselves are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit lives in you? 17 If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy him; for God’s temple is sacred, and you are that temple.
Jesus was filled with zeal for the House of God!
Which one? All of them!
It certainly starts with the everything in the Jerusalem Temple had gotten backwards
The religious leaders were using the people and abusing their power. It was all about money money money, power, power, power.
Listen, There are some bad eggs out there in the world of religion and the land of liturgy.
I have a friend who once attended a church that had leaders who were a lot like these religious leaders. In fact the speaker at a Sunday service spoke on this text with some passion before making his announcements at the end of the service. His number one announcement… “Be sure to buy a raffle ticket to win the new Cadillac parked out front of the building.”
And when my friend mentioned the “irony” of the message and the announcement the response was one of anger.
The problem was not worship and sacrifice at the temple
There is nothing wrong with sacrifice. The issue was that what started as a convenience to worshippers (having animals and money changers on hand for those who wanted to give sacrifices) was abused and got out of balance.
What was good became bad when it lost touch with the meaning and purpose of worship.
Jesus put it this way: “The Sabbath was made for man, man was not made for the Sabbath”
God didn’t create human kind to jump through religious hoops, follow ritual patterns, and obey righteous rules. He gave us worship, praise, tithes, offerings, spiritual gifts of service, communion, baptism, every other religious form to help us connect spiritually with our Father God and with our brothers and sisters in the family of God.
There is nothing wrong with worship that is people centered. There is everything wrong with worship that focuses on action and misses the people.
It’s about your heart
It’s not about ritual and sacrifice. It’s about the heart. God wants our hearts.
It’s about loving God not ritual
It’s about living for God not liturgy
It’s about serving God not guilt and duty
His Passion was for Holiness
Jesus cleaned out the temple because it had become impure
It had become a market place. The “message” calls it the shopping mall. These “religious” leaders had turned the temple of God into a Wal-Mart on Saturday afternoon.
The people were focusing on the wrong things! Sometimes you just have to clean it out and start over.
The Most Important Thing in the World is Holiness – not Happiness
Take Time to be Holy
We will stand and sing hymn 325,” announced the worship leader, “ ‘Take Time to Be Holy.’ We will sing verses one and four.”
If I had been sitting with the congregation instead of on the platform, I might have laughed out loud. Imagine a Christian congregation singing “Take Time to Be Holy” and not even taking time to sing the entire song! If we can’t take the time (less than four minutes) to sing a song about holiness, we’re not likely to take time to devote ourselves to “perfecting holiness in the fear of God” (2 Cor. 7:1).
Happiness, not holiness, is the chief pursuit of most people today, including many professed Christians.
They want Jesus to solve their problems and carry their burdens, but they don’t want Him to control their lives and change their character. It doesn’t disturb them that eight times in the Bible, God said to His people, “Be holy, for I am holy,” and He means it.
1 Peter 1:15-16 (NIV)
15 But just as he who called you is holy, so be holy in all you do; 16 for it is written: “Be holy, because I am holy.”
“He that sees the beauty of holiness, or true moral good,” wrote Jonathan Edwards, “sees the greatest and most important thing in the world.”
Have you ever thought of personal holiness—likeness to Jesus Christ—as the most important thing in the world?
In God’s kingdom, holiness isn’t a luxury; it’s a necessity. “Follow peace with all men, and holiness, without which no man shall see the Lord” (Heb. 12:14). Yes, God wants His children to be happy, but true happiness begins with holiness. “Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness; for they shall be filled” (Matt. 5:6).
“If I had my choice of all the blessings I can conceive of,” said Charles Spurgeon, “I would choose perfect conformity to the Lord Jesus, or, in one word, holiness.”
Would you make the same choice?
Leviticus tells new Testament Christians how to appreciate holiness and appropriate it into their everyday lives. The word holy is used 91 times in Leviticus, and words connected with cleansing are used 71 times. References to uncleanness number 128. There’s no question what this book is all about.
“But wasn’t the Book of Leviticus written for the priests and Levites in ancient Israel?” you may ask; and the answer is, “Yes.” But the lessons in Leviticus aren’t limited to the Jews in ancient Israel. The spiritual principles in this book apply to Christians in the church today. The key verses of Leviticus—“Be holy, for I am holy” (Lev. 11:44–45)—are applied to the New Testament church in 1 Peter 1:15–16; and the Book of Leviticus itself is quoted or referred to over 100 times in the New Testament.
His Passion was for Your Holiness
Ok – you ready? What about your temple?
If Jesus showed up at your house what would he start cleaning out?
There three kinds of stuff that need to be cleaned out of your temple
The stuff that you know you should destroy
There is some stuff you would want to destroy – the stuff you would be embarrassed for anyone to know about – let alone Jesus. You know what this stuff is. I don’t have to make a list. You already have it in your head. It is whatever has its hooks in your heart and soul.
The stuff that isn’t bad but sometimes isn’t what it should be
There is some stuff that you would be just a little uneasy and a little uncomfortable about. Things that don’t look all that bad but, well, their presence when Jesus sits down in your living room makes you a little nervous.
Things like your calendar.
Not the calendar itself but the things that are on it. Where and how you have scheduled your life - the busyness that sucks you in and crowds out God and his family.
Things like your checkbook.
If you would let me see your checkbook I could tell you the condition of your heart.
Do you believe that? It’s true. Jesus said, “Where your treasure is, there is your heart also.” I can look at where your treasure is and tell exactly where your heart is. By the way the way to change that is by changing where you put your treasure – your heart will follow – always does.
The stuff you hide and protect
But there would be some stuff you would try to protect – here is the truly dangerous stuff. Stuff like the grudges you nurse and nurture. Things like the secret room filled with boxes and boxes of silent rage and containers of liquid bitterness. This stuff is toxic.
It is corrosive to the soul and it leaks out. You think you have it under control. You think it serves you. You don’t. It doesn’t.
Clean Sweep
Is it time for you to follow Jesus?
Decision time
Prayer and Ministry Time
