John 2:13-22 New American Standard Bible 1995
First Passover—Cleansing the Temple
13 The Passover of the Jews was near, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. 14 And He found in the temple those who were selling oxen and sheep and doves, and the money changers seated at their tables. 15 And He made a scourge of cords, and drove them all out of the temple, with the sheep and the oxen; and He poured out the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables; 16 and to those who were selling the doves He said, “Take these things away; stop making My Father’s house a [a] place of business.” 17 His disciples remembered that it was written, “Zeal for Your house will consume me.” 18 The Jews then said to Him, “What sign do You show us [b]as your authority for doing these things?” 19 Jesus answered them, “Destroy this [c]temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” 20 The Jews then said, “It took forty-six years to build this [d]temple, and will You raise it up in three days?” 21 But He was speaking of the [e]temple of His body. 22 So when He was raised from the dead, His disciples remembered that He said this; and they believed the Scripture and the word which Jesus had spoken.
The Word of God for the Children of God.
Glory be to the Father,
and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost;
as it was in the beginning,
is now, and ever shall be,
world without end. Amen, amen.
Seismic Sight: An Angry Crowd and a Zealous Jesus
John 2:20-22 The Message
20-22 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.
In our Scripture for today, John portrays an angry Jesus.
If you’ve dealt with angry people, or your own anger, you know how unpleasant it can be.
The apostle Paul warns, “In your anger do not sin” (Ephesians 4:26).
Jesus got angry when he saw what was happening in the temple courts.
And yet he did not sin.
Jesus was upset about local vendors providing worshipers something for a fee.
But not just any fee – an exorbitantly high fee which most people could not pay.
He called it all – “den of thieves.”
Mark 11:15-17 New American Standard Bible 1995
Jesus Drives Money Changers from the Temple
15 Then they *came to Jerusalem. And He entered the temple and began to drive out those who were buying and selling in the temple, and overturned the tables of the money changers and the seats of those who were selling [a]doves; 16 and He would not permit anyone to carry [b]merchandise through the temple. 17 And He began to teach and say to them, “Is it not written, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations’? But you have made it a robbers’ [c]den.”
He was zealous that God’s temple should foremost be a place of worship. and a house of prayer.
There wasn’t room for people to pray.
There wasn’t a place for them to worship.
“Stop turning my Father’s house into a market!” he said.
Only later did the disciples connect his zeal with Psalm 69:9 “Zeal for your house will consume me.”
Psalm 69:9 The Message
9 I love you more than I can say.
Because I’m madly in love with you,
They blame me for everything they dislike about you.
Christ’s passion for God’s holiness made him exceptionally zealous to save us.
We are made in God’s image (Genesis 1:26-27).
Genesis 1:26-28The Message
26-28 God spoke: “Let us make human beings in our image, make them
reflecting our nature
So they can be responsible for the fish in the sea,
the birds in the air, the cattle,
And, yes, Earth itself,
and every animal that moves on the face of Earth.”
God created human beings;
he created them godlike,
Reflecting God’s nature.
He created them male and female.
God blessed them:
“Prosper! Reproduce! Fill Earth! Take charge!
Be responsible for fish in the sea and birds in the air,
for every living thing that moves on the face of Earth.”
And in Christ we are the new temple of God (1 Corinthians 3:16-17).
1 Corinthians 3:16-17 The Message
16-17 You realize, don’t you, that you are the temple of God, and God himself is present in you? No one will get by with vandalizing God’s temple, you can be sure of that. God’s temple is sacred—and you, remember, are the temple.
Christ’s exceptionally zealous passion carried him to the cross to make us “living stones,” drawn together by His blood as God’s temple (1 Peter 2:5).
1 Peter 2:4-10 The Message
The Stone
4-8 Welcome to the living Stone, the source of life. The workmen took one look and threw it out; God set it in the place of honor. Present yourselves as building stones for the construction of a sanctuary vibrant with life, in which you’ll serve as holy priests offering Christ-approved lives up to God. The Scriptures provide precedent:
Look! I’m setting a stone in Zion,
a cornerstone in the place of honor.
Whoever trusts in this stone as a foundation
will never have cause to regret it.
To you who trust him, he’s a Stone to be proud of, but to those who refuse to trust him,
The stone the workmen threw out
is now the chief foundation stone.
For the untrusting it’s
. . . a stone to trip over,
a boulder blocking the way.
They trip and fall because they refuse to obey, just as predicted.
9-10 But you are the ones chosen by God, chosen for the high calling of priestly work, chosen to be a holy people, God’s instruments to do his work and speak out for him, to tell others of the night-and-day difference he made for you—from nothing to something, from rejected to accepted.
Jesus was undeterred.
He was heading for the cross to fulfill God’s mission. God’s image would be restored in us only through the work of his Son (Philippians 1:6; Colossians 3:10).
If Jesus is so zealous to restore the holiness of God in us, shouldn’t we be also?
As much as he was undeterred, ought we not too become as equally undeterred?
Another Seismic Event – Restoring the Temple
John 2:15-17 The Message
15-17 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.”
It is quite clear that the 2020/2024 General Conference of the United Methodist Church has caused seismic shifts of orthodoxy within the mission of the church.
And people are right to be both zealous and angry about it.
And people are also right to be both zealous and exuberant for it.
It is only human to have these feelings and responses to what has happened.
Have them – own them – pick up your Bibles – read – study – pray over them.
But, for God’s sake, let us not beat each’s soul to to a pulp – Philippians 2:1-4
Philippians 2:1-4 The Message
He Took on the Status of a Slave
2 1-4 If you’ve gotten anything at all out of following Christ, if his love has made any difference in your life, if being in a community of the Spirit means anything to you, if you have a heart, if you care—then do me a favor: Agree with each other, love each other, be deep-spirited friends. Don’t push your way to the front; don’t sweet-talk your way to the top. Put yourself aside, and help others get ahead. Don’t be obsessed with getting your own advantage. Forget yourselves long enough to lend a helping hand.
There is enough mission and ministry in the World for everyone to engage in.
How God, the Father and God the Son and God the Holy Spirit will bring forth fruit from this seismic event in the life of His Church is yet to be seen or known.
But whether we are zealous and angry or zealous and happy, we must strive to set ourselves aside in the face of God’s sovereignty to remember this one truth;
Ecclesiastes 3:9-13 The Message
9-13 But in the end, does it really make a difference what anyone does? I’ve had a good look at what God has given us to do—busywork, mostly. True, God made everything beautiful in itself and in its time—but he’s left us in the dark, so we can never know what God is up to, whether he’s coming or going. I’ve decided that there’s nothing better to do than go ahead and have a good time and get the most we can out of life. That’s it—eat, drink, and make the most of your job. It’s God’s gift.
Because in the end of it all, God is the One with the only plan that will work.
Because in the end of it all, God is only One with authority to make it happen.
Ecclesiastes 12:9-14 The Message
The Final Word
9-10 Besides being wise himself, the Quester also taught others knowledge. He weighed, examined, and arranged many proverbs. The Quester did his best to find the right words and write the plain truth.
11 The words of the wise prod us to live well.
They’re like nails hammered home, holding life together.
They are given by God, the one Shepherd.
12-13 But regarding anything beyond this, dear friend, go easy. There’s no end to the publishing of books, and constant study wears you out so you’re no good for anything else. The last and final word is this:
Fear God.
Do what he tells you.
14 And that’s it. Eventually God will bring everything that we do out into the open and judge it according to its hidden intent, whether it’s good or evil.
And through prayer and discernment, I’ll offer this insight and observation;
Isaiah 54:1-6 The Message
Spread Out! Think Big!
54 1-6 “Sing, barren woman, who has never had a baby.
Fill the air with song, you who’ve never experienced childbirth!
You’re ending up with far more children
than all those childbearing women.” God says so!
“Clear lots of ground for your tents!
Make your tents large. Spread out! Think big!
Use plenty of rope,
drive the tent pegs deep.
You’re going to need lots of elbow room
for your growing family.
You’re going to take over whole nations;
you’re going to resettle abandoned cities.
Don’t be afraid—you’re not going to be embarrassed.
Don’t hold back—you’re not going to come up short.
You’ll forget all about the humiliations of your youth,
and the indignities of being a widow will fade from memory.
For your Maker is your bridegroom,
his name, God-of-the-Angel-Armies!
Your Redeemer is The Holy of Israel,
known as God of the whole earth.
You were like an abandoned wife, devastated with grief,
and God welcomed you back,
Like a woman married young
and then left,” says your God.
A father would understandably burn with a righteous anger if he saw drugs wreaking destruction in the life of his child.
We wouldn’t expect him to flippantly dismiss such devastation.
No, we would expect him to do everything necessary to drive that evil out and see restoration take place.
When Jesus, the Son of God, entered His Father’s house on earth—the temple in Jerusalem—and looked round at the scene, it was painful to Him.
A place intended for the worship of God had become a place given over to the worship of money.
A place intended to beckon the world to meet the living God had become one that kept the nations at arm’s length.
He found it intolerable that the name of God, the glory of God, was being besmirched and tarnished.
There is no reason for us to stand back and try to mitigate Jesus’ actions.
The holy righteous and zealous anger of Christ burned with red hot zeal and purity. This moment in John 2:13-22 was not the time for polite conversation.
Jesus knew exactly why the temple was there.
It was the place of meeting God.
It was meant to be the joy of the whole earth.
What He found instead was completely opposed to its purpose—and in His words and actions, By the actions of his whip He made that abundantly clear.
Interestingly, when the Pharisees confronted Jesus afterwards, they didn’t challenge His actions; they challenged His authority.
Jesus responded to this challenge with a puzzling statement: “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up” (John 2:19).
The temple He referred to, John explains, was Himself (v 21).
One day, Jesus would come to Jerusalem not to visit the temple complex but to give His own body and blood as the full and final sacrifice for sins, and then to rise to new life and to reign forever.
It was on that authority that He was making clear the difference between what God had intended the temple to be, what it had been made to become by man.
Here, then, we are confronted by a Jesus who is radical—who responds with zeal and protectiveness to the issue of God’s glory.
This Jesus is not meek and mild, always affirming and never challenging.
He is the only Great High Priest, who came not only to cleanse the temple precincts but also to cleanse our hearts, zealously deal with our alienation.
In Him, the true temple, God has built “a house of prayer for all peoples” (Isaiah 56:7).
Isaiah 56:7-8 The Message
6-8 “And as for the outsiders who now follow me,
working for me, loving my name,
and wanting to be my servants—
All who keep Sabbath and don’t defile it,
holding fast to my covenant—
I’ll bring them to my holy mountain
and give them joy in my house of prayer.
They’ll be welcome to worship the same as the ‘insiders,’
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.”
The Decree of the Master, God himself,
who gathers in the exiles of Israel:
“I will gather others also,
gather them in with those already gathered.”
Let the truth be revealed through prayer and the courage to be honest with God;
Whether you are zealous angry, or zealous exuberant, over General Conference,
Just sit down with God and let Him do all sorting out that He knows is required:
Psalm 139:23-24 The Message
23-24 Investigate my life, O God,
find out everything about me;
Cross-examine and test me,
get a clear picture of what I’m about;
See for yourself whether I’ve done anything wrong—
then guide me on the road to eternal life.
If Jesus were to walk into the Courtyards of the Temple men called the United Methodist Church the same way he entered the Temple in Jerusalem, would his actions have been any different or any less zealous to get HIS church in order?
So step back and look afresh at Jesus, who brooked no compromise in pursuing the glory of God through enabling the nations to pray, to worship Him rightly.
Pray, look afresh at Jesus, who used His authority and perfections willingly to take our place and bear our punishment in His body so we could be restored.
Pray, look afresh at Jesus, of whose amazing grace we are each a beneficiary.
For the sake of His Kingdom alone -let His zeal for God’s glory also be yours.
In the name of God, the Father and God the Son and God the Holy Spirit,
Let us Pray,
Holy God, the passion of your Son both inspires and scares us. May his zeal for your holiness inspire us to be his disciplined followers, your faithful people. In his name.
Psalm 24 The Message
24 1-2 God claims Earth and everything in it,
God claims World and all who live on it.
He built it on Ocean foundations,
laid it out on River girders.
3-4 Who can climb Mount God?
Who can scale the holy north-face?
Only the clean-handed,
only the pure-hearted;
Men who won’t cheat,
women who won’t seduce.
5-6 God is at their side;
with God’s help they make it.
This, Jacob, is what happens
to God-seekers, God-questers.
7 Wake up, you sleepyhead city!
Wake up, you sleepyhead people!
King-Glory is ready to enter.
8 Who is this King-Glory?
God, armed
and battle-ready.
9 Wake up, you sleepyhead city!
Wake up, you sleepyhead people!
King-Glory is ready to enter.
10 Who is this King-Glory?
God-of-the-Angel-Armies:
he is King-Glory.
Glory be to the Father,
and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost;
as it was in the beginning,
is now, and ever shall be,
world without end. Amen, amen.
Loving God, Living God, Loving Hope, Living Hope, Loving Living Life His Way! "Many things are possible for the person who has hope. Even more is possible for the person who has faith. And still more is possible for the person who knows how to love. But everything is possible for the person who practices all three virtues." - Brother Lawrence (1605-1691), Practicing the Presence of God (1692). 