1.
Grace,
mercy, and peace to you from God our Heavenly Father and our Lord and Savior
Jesus Christ. The message from God’s
Word today from John 2:13-25 focuses on Jesus our Lord being about His
Father’s Business. He came into the
temple cleansing his house, warning his opponents and giving hope to His
church. Dear brothers and sisters in
Christ.
2.
Imagine
this scene in a school. The students are all taking their exams. The teachers
are preparing for a big Open House when parents and friends will come to visit.
Everyone is excited. It’s the biggest moment in the school year. Suddenly the door of the principal’s office
bursts open. In walks a student, with a few friends behind him. He goes
straight to the desk where the secretary is organizing a pile of tests, and
turns the desk upside down, scattering the tests all over the room. He proceeds
into the head teacher’s private room, where with a single sweep of his arm he
knocks to the floor all the letters and papers, the invitations and
arrangements, so carefully made for the School’s Open House that’s coming up. He turns on the astonished onlookers. ‘This whole place is a disgrace!’ he shouts.
‘It’s corrupt from top to bottom! You ought to be ashamed of yourselves!’ Before he can get away, the head teacher
himself arrives. ‘What right have you got
to behave like this?’ he asks. ‘You can fail me if you like,’ replies
the pupil. ‘You can throw me out. But I
shall go to the university. I’m going to train as a lawyer. And one day I’ll
put an end to corruption like this. Your system is finished!’ Then, before
they can stop him, he leaves.
3.
Now
all such stories are only partly parallel to the astonishing scene in the
Temple. No illustration can do justice to what Jesus did; we have to understand
the event itself, unique as it was, and to understand as well what John wants
us to see within it. Here in John
2:13-25 we see that Jesus was About His
Father’s Business.
4.
Today’s
text is in the early stages of Jesus’ earthly ministry. It’s time for the
annual Passover celebration, so as a faithful Jew, Jesus goes to Jerusalem as
required. But, when he went to the
temple, he was disgusted by what he found. The temple courtyard had been turned
into a marketplace! Merchants had set up shops selling pigeons, oxen, and sheep
to the faithful who had come to Jerusalem from far-off lands. Money-changers
were also there, changing foreign currency into local money, again, so the
faithful could pay the temple tax of one-half shekel.
5.
To
have these things available to the foreign worshipers wasn’t
bad, because worship of the Lord demanded the people bring sacrifices in
proportion to their wealth. And it was totally impractical—if
not impossible—for someone who had come a long distance to bring his own
sacrificial animal. There needed to be some way for
those things to be acquired in Jerusalem. In the Old Testament, God had even
given instructions for this kind of arrangement. The problem was that the sellers had set up
shop right in the temple itself, in what is known as the court of the Gentiles.
The people had made the house of God into a stinking spectacle.
6.
Think
of it! The worshipers, as they passed through the courtyard on their way into
the temple, were probably more focused on bargaining over the cost of the
animals or bickering about the exchange rate for their foreign money than they
were on singing entrance psalms and preparing their hearts for worship of the
Lord Most High! What a disgrace! No problem recognizing how guilty was everyone
involved in all this business. As Jesus came into the temple, the “bad guys”
were right out in the open for all to see.
7.
Jesus,
incorrectly thought by some to be weak and soft—well, Jesus shows himself to be
a man of strength and action. He personally took on all of them. He took cords
and, using them as a whip, drove the animals and merchants out of the temple,
thus fulfilling an Old Testament prophecy that the Messiah would have “zeal”
for the house of God (Ps 69:9). Again,
for those who think of Jesus as a “softy,”
you have to think again. Not only did he take them all on, but also, according
to the account before us, not one of the merchants
even dared to stand up to him!
8.
We
hear this story, and we say, “Good! Good
for you, Jesus! You saw that those insiders from the temple hierarchy were ‘bad
guys,’ and you busted them, kicked ’em out in quick order!” There’s no doubt this smelly spectacle of
sweaty people and droves of animals being sold right within the house of the
Lord was bad, but Jesus was seeing even more. He looked into people’s hearts.
He saw through their their hiding behind God’s instructions in order to make a
fast buck. As bad as the scene and the smell had to
be, the spiritual stench of the place—lust for money
at God’s expense—was worse!
9.
And
how could Jesus know that? John tells us: “because he
knew all people” (v 24). Jesus knew
their hearts and saw them for what they were—sinners through and through, more
interested in making a few shekels than in honoring the Lord’s house. Again John reminds us, “[Jesus] knew all people . . . for he himself
knew what was in man.” The Lord Jesus knows all and sees all. And, if he
knows the hearts of the money-changers and animal purveyors, he knows your heart as well!
10.
He
sees your real attitude
toward those Ten Commandments we heard as our Old Testament Reading a bit ago! Although
you might not be caught bowing down to a “carved
image,” he sees your attitude toward the many other things
you allow to be first in your life—such as your work, your money, your family,
your vacation, your ____ (and you fill in the
blank!). He sees your attitude toward sins of the flesh, toward other people’s
property, toward speaking well of your neighbor.
11.
Oh,
yes, he sees it all! Admit it: you—just like the
temple merchants—you are one of the “bad guys”
rightly deserving to have Jesus take a whip and drive you out of his presence forever! Dear people
of God, we, too, have a “spiritual stench,” and it’s far worse
than the largest holding pen of sheep and oxen in a closed-up barn on a hot,
humid summer day!
12.
During
this holy season of Lent, our Lord calls us to recognize our utter need for
cleansing of our hearts laden with sin. He calls us to allow his right and just
Law to show us our sins and then in repentance and faith to receive him as he
reaches out to us—to
you—with his love and mercy. He
urgently desires to cleanse “the house of
[your] heart,” to wash it pure with the only cleaning agent that will get
the “stench” out—his holy, precious
blood shed for you and the whole world! This
is what it means for Jesus to be about
His Father’s Business.
13.
This
he did on the blessed cross of Calvary, about three years to the day after he
cleansed the temple. “Zeal” for his
Father’s house drove him to cleanse the temple that
fateful day, and “zeal” for you—zeal
motivated by his eternal love—drove him to the cross
to cleanse you, so that you could be a “temple
of the Holy Spirit” (1 Cor 6:19)—your body and soul washed clean and pure,
making you to be a righteous one of his forever!
14.
You’re
no longer a “bad guy” in God’s estimation. No! Through faith given to you in
the washing of renewal in your baptismal waters, you’re now one of his very
own, a forgiven child of his. Rather
than chasing you out of his eternal presence with a whip, he eagerly walks
toward you, always seeking to embrace you, inviting you to dine at his Table, regularly here on earth and eternally
with him in heaven!
15.
Dearly
brothers and sisters in Christ, continue to walk with the Lord Christ in
repentance and faith. Let Jesus be about
His Father’s Business for you. On this day, led by the Spirit of Christ, vow
that you’ll allow the house of your heart to be—and remain—cleansed,
that it will forever be a temple of God! Amen.
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