Good evening. Joy and Delphus
are with us for a couple of weeks, so we'll have a piano. Anyway,
let's open this morning's service with hymn number two, and your
hardback hymnal number two, Love Divine, and let's all stand together.
Number two. ? Love divine, all loves excelling
? ? Joy of heaven come down to earth ? ? Fix in us thy humble
dwelling ? ? All thy faithful mercies crown ? ? Jesus, thou
art all compassion ? Pure, unbounded love thou art, Visit us with
thy salvation, Enter every trembling heart. ? Breathe, oh breathe,
thy loving spirit ? ? Into every troubled breast ? ? Let us all
in thee inherit ? ? Let us find that second rest ? ? Take away
our bent to sinning ? Alpha and Omega be, and of faith as its
beginning, set our hearts at liberty. to deliver, let us all thy life
receive. Suddenly return and never, nevermore
thy temples leave. Thee we would be always blessing,
serve Thee as Thy hosts above, pray and praise Thee without
ceasing, glory in Thy perfect love. ? Finish then thy new creation
? Pure and spotless let us be ? Let us see thy great salvation
? Perfectly restored in thee ? Changed from glory into glory
till in heaven we take our place, till we cast our crowns before
thee, lost in wonder, love, and praise. Please be seated. Good morning. There's a line in that hymn this
morning that we just sang that says, nevermore thy temples leave. And that's a reference, of course,
to the believer being a temple of the Holy Spirit and the believers
a desire for the Lord to never leave them to themselves again. And a reason I call attention
to that is because I want to try to look at the cleansing
of the temple in John chapter 2 this morning from that very
perspective, that the temple of God is his church and it is
his children. Nevermore thy temples leave. Let's go before the Lord and
ask his blessings on our time together before we continue.
Our Heavenly Father, we thank you for thy church,
which you have called the household of God. We thank you for the
work of grace, whereby you have made centers to be thy temple. Lord, we thank you for the work
of grace that you continue to perform in your temple, continually
cleansing it, and making it whole. Lord, we come into thy presence
now and ask Lord that you would do that for us now. We pray Lord
that those who have never looked to Christ alone for all the hope
of their salvation would be cleansed of their self-righteousness We
pray, Lord, for those of us that you have taught the truth, Lord,
that our eyes will be brought once again fixed on Christ and
denying, Lord, any work of the flesh as the hope of our salvation. Father, we Pray for the men that
are traveling to Malawi, and we ask, Lord, that you would
bless the preaching of your gospel and build up thy church. We ask it in Christ's name. Amen. Gabe Stoniker left yesterday
from Kingsport with a couple of men in that church to go visit
Willie in Malawi, Africa, which we've been supporting now for
some time. and praying for them. There's
also a small group in South Africa that they're gonna stop over
and preach for. So if the Lord enables you, they're
gonna be gone for two weeks, the Lord enables you to remember
them and pray for them in that trip. Let's open our Bibles to
John chapter two. I've titled this message, Zeal
for His House. After the Lord performed this
act of cleansing the temple at the very outset of his public
ministry, the disciples remembered the verse that the Holy Spirit
had given to David in Psalm 69, when the Lord said prophetically,
speaking of Christ, the zeal of thine house hath eaten me
up. And that's what we see the Lord
has told us in this passage, the purpose of what he did. was to fulfill that prophecy. The zeal of thine house hath
eaten me up. In Matthew chapter 21, after
our Lord's triumphal entry into Jerusalem, when he rode on the
donkey and they cried, Hosanna to the highest and then A less
than a week later, the same crowd is crying, crucify him, crucify
him. At the end of his public ministry,
he did exactly the same thing he did at the beginning of his
public ministry, he cleansed the temple. The difference is
in Matthew chapter 21, he rebukes the Pharisees by saying to them,
you have taken the house of prayer and you've turned it into a den
of thieves. And it was a word of judgment
and condemnation by God against all forms of a works gospel,
whereby men think that they can earn favor with God by something
that they do. Here in John chapter two, I want us to look at this first
cleansing, not as a act of righteous indignation or wrath or judgment
against man-made works religion, but as a work of grace. At the beginning of our Lord's
ministry, whereby he is establishing the very reason why he came. The reason why he came was because
the zeal of his house had eaten him up. He came with the desire,
with the passion, with the purpose of cleansing his temple and making
it a fit place for him to reside. We all come into this world with
the moral law written on our hearts. Romans chapter two, the
Lord tells us that the Gentiles which have not the law. Now, when that was written, these
Gentile nations would have had no clue, no revelation given
to them whatsoever written of the Word of God. You know, we
think that even the irreligious have some knowledge today of
the Ten Commandments. These nations would not have
had that as far as a written code given by God. But the Lord tells us in Romans
chapter 2 that the Gentiles, which had not the law, When they
do, by nature, the things contained in the law show that the law
of God is written on their hearts. All men, whether they've ever
been exposed to the moral law of God, know that lying's wrong. They know that stealing is wrong. They know that murder is wrong.
They know that adultery is wrong. God has written that on every
man's heart when he comes into this world. And even in Romans
chapter two, it refers to conscience. And that is what we call the
conscience. Men have a conscience. They don't
go around boasting in being liars and being thieves and being murderers.
They do those sort of things in secret because their conscience
tells them that that's not something to be proud of. Contrary to that,
men will boast in their self-righteousness. They will glory in what they've
done. to win favor with God. They will exalt their will and
their works and their wisdom and proudly declare those things
to the world as their righteousness. You know, one thing I've come
to believe is that all men, all men, Believers and unbelievers
alike have one thing in common. They want their righteousness
to be exalted. They want their righteousness
to be exalted. The unbeliever will exalt his
free will, his works, his knowledge, his wisdom, because that's their
righteousness. The child of God, the Lord Jesus
Christ himself, is all their wisdom, all their righteousness,
all their sanctification, all their redemption, and they want
him to get the glory. They want him to be exalted.
You see, all men want their righteousness to be exalted. The difference
is what their righteousness is. That's the difference. And the
point that I'm trying to make is that you and I don't need
the Holy Spirit to convict us of lying, of stealing, of murder,
adultery. We don't need the Holy... The
men who have not the Holy Spirit of God have a conscience for
that. What we do need the Holy Spirit
to convict us of is our self-righteousness. Because left to ourselves, we
will boast. You see, that's what we are by
nature. By nature, we come into this world self-righteous. We come into this world believing
that there's that there's something that we can do. But for the grace
of God, we will trust in a works gospel. We will deny Christ his
glory and salvation by adding something to his finished work. We will set ourselves up on the
throne of God and will we make our salvation something to be
purchased from God. We have a mercenary gospel by
by nature, in that we get paid for what we do. And unless the
Spirit of God reveals to us the sin of that, and the sin of that, the sin
of self-righteousness is so much worse than the sinful behavior
of the flesh. You know, the sinful behavior
of the flesh is just the natural thing that men do, but the sin
of self-righteousness? All that come before me are thieves
and robbers, and we will rob from Christ his glory and salvation,
and we will steal from men the hope of their salvation. By promoting
a works gospel, that's what we do. That's our natural bent. And that's what we need the spirit
of God to convict us of. That's what we need the spirit
of God to reveal to us. And that's what he's come to
do. It is expedient for you that I go away, for if I go not away,
the Comforter will not come. But when he comes, when he comes,
he's gonna convict you of sin because you believe not on me.
He didn't say he's gonna convict you of sin because you've lied
and you've stolen and you've murdered and you've, no, he said
he's gonna convict you of your sin because you believe not on
me. That is the sin that doth so
easily beset us. That's the mother of all sin. unbelief, not trusting Christ
alone for salvation, but finding some other thing that we can
look to to find false peace and false hope and false comfort.
And it is the Spirit of God that you and I must have or we will
rest our hope in our works, in something we've done. for the
hope of our salvation rather than trusting Christ alone. He will convict you of sin because
you believe not on me, of righteousness because I go to my father. You
see, only the Holy Spirit can show you that all of your righteousness
is seated at the right hand of the majesty on high in the person
of your substitute. and that apart from him you have
no righteousness whatsoever. And those things that we would
call our righteousnesses are as filthy rags before God. You
see, that's what the unbeliever can't see. That's what you and
I would not be able to see but by the Holy Spirit. and of judgment
because the prince of this world has been judged. That's what
the Holy Spirit's gonna do. We look back 2,000 years to Calvary's
cross and we know that when the Lord Jesus Christ bowed his mighty
head on Calvary's cross and he cried, it is finished. Father, into thy hands I commend
my spirit. that the judgment for sin was
accomplished, that Satan was defeated once and for all. That's where we're fighting battles in a war
that's already been won. We are. The spiritual would deal
with that in the second hour, but there's... You know, left
to ourselves, we will compare ourselves to ourselves and somehow
believe that we're getting better. We'll compare ourselves to one
another and somehow believe that we are better. But if God the
Holy Spirit ever reveals Christ to us and puts us in the presence
of God, we will know that everything about us is sinful.
and that the only hope of our salvation is completely bound
up in our sin bearer, our substitute, the Lord Jesus Christ. I could have titled this message
Recovering Pharisees. I called it The Zeal for My House
because the Lord Jesus is demonstrating the zeal that he has for his
house. But this problem of self-righteousness
doesn't go away at our conversion. We bear in our bodies This old
man, this Pharisee that never got, that's why we have to keep
hearing the gospel, isn't it? That's why we have to keep being
reminded that Christ is all of our salvation and that he is
all our righteousness because we've got an old man that we're
dragging around that would cause us to look somewhere else. and
cause us to find some false peace in something other than Christ.
He would cause us to at least hope that there's a potential
for righteousness. Child of God, you've had the
thought. You've had the thought. I can do this. I've got the potential for not
having that. No. I can improve my position
before God by something that I do or something that I abstain
from. You see, we are recovering Pharisees, aren't we? And we're
in need of the Lord to cleanse His temple once and continually. And that's what this act that
our Lord performs. is all about. John chapter two, verse 13, and
the Jews Passover was at hand and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. The Passover. When I see the
blood, I'll pass by you. Oh, this is the, now the Passover
lamb has come. And the Lord himself is going
to celebrate the Passover in three years with his disciples
in that sense for the last time. And he gives to his church. We
don't go through all the rituals of the Passover meal. The Lord
has fulfilled all those things. He has shed His precious blood
on Calvary's cross as a covering for our sin. He has eaten the
bitter herbs. He has drank the dregs of the
wine. He has put away our sin. And
now we celebrate the ordinance of the Lord's table. And as often
as we do it, we do it in remembrance of Him. But here's that Old Testament
Passover. and the Passover lamb is there
and they didn't know it. In verse 14, and he found in
the temple those that sold oxen and sheep and doves and changers
of money sitting. So you traveled to Jerusalem
from some far away town or village and you brought with you a sacrificial
animal And you presented that to the powers to be, and they
would say, they would find something wrong with it. Oh no, that's
not gonna be sufficient, you have to buy one of ours. And
they would force you to exchange yours for theirs, of course,
with making a profit, and then they would turn around and sell
yours to someone else. Money changers, how evil. How
evil they were. in robbing God of his glory and
stealing from men the hope of their salvation and making salvation
something that could be purchased from God. And when he had made a scourge
of small cords, he drove them out of the temple and the sheep
and the oxen poured out the changers' money and overthrew their tables,
and said unto them that sold doves." I think it's interesting
here because the doves would have flown away and the owners
of them would not have been able to catch them, but the other
animals could be recovered. But he says to the owners of
the dove, it tells me something of the, the spirit of the Lord in this.
This is not something that he's doing out of wrath and judgment. There's a spirit of grace in
what he's doing here. He said, take these hints and
make not my father's house a house of merchandise. And the disciples remembered
that it was written in Psalm 69, the zeal of thine house hath
eaten me up. What is the house of God? Many Jews in the world would
call the remains of this very temple. that are in Jerusalem
right now. They call it the Wailing Wall.
Many Jews would refer to that as the house of God. Many Catholics
would refer to St. Peter's in Rome as the house
of God. Many Muslims would consider Mecca
to be the house of God. Many would Many Hindus would
call the Taj Mahal the house of God. What is the house of
God? I asked Google how many Christian
church buildings there are in America and the number 350,000
came up. Are they the house of God? Though all these things that
I mentioned are but dens of thieves merchandising men's souls and
robbing from Christ his glory in salvation with a works gospel,
they are monuments to man's glory. They are not the house of God. Know ye not that your body is
the temple of the Holy Spirit? I in the Father and you in me
and I in you. Here's the temple of God. Here's
the house of God. Christ in you is your hope of
glory. The Lord's already written Ichabod,
the glory of the Lord has departed over all those other religious,
whatever they are around the world, the things that I mentioned
earlier. He's not concerned about cleansing those temples. He's
not worried about going around and trying to fix all those problems. He's already, he's departed from
them. He's left them to themselves. there will come a day of judgment
where God will say, you have turned the house of prayer into
a den of thieves. And the wrath and judgment of
God will come upon all men who practice a Christ denying, man
glorifying, works mercenary gospel. That will come. But that's not
what this is about. The Lord cleansing His temple
is the work of grace that He does for you and me. When He gives us His Spirit in
power and causes us to believe that all these temptations that
we have to buy our salvation and to earn our favor with God
based on something we do is but merchandising. It's not the gospel. And what a What a work of grace
it is that the Lord would do that for ourselves, for us, because
if He left us to ourselves, we'd be just like everybody else.
The whole world believes that they can buy from God His favor. The whole world is coming before
God with something in their hand. And only if the Lord comes to
his temple and makes small hordes and drives out the money changers
and drives out the ox and then the sheep and the doves. Turn with me to Ephesians chapter
2. Ephesians chapter 2. Look with me at verse 18. For through him, that is through
Christ, we both have access by one spirit unto the father. Now, therefore, we are no more
strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens with the saints
and of the household of God. What did the Lord say? Don't
take my father's house and make it a house of merchandise. And
now he's calling the church the household of God. And are built upon the foundation
of the apostles and prophets. What is the foundation of the
prophets and the apostles? Jesus Christ. That's who they
spoke of. All the prophets and all the
apostles spoke of him. In the volume of the book it
is written of me. This is who they were all pointing
to. So when he says we're built upon
the foundation, that foundation is Christ. The apostles and the
prophets is a revelation that God has given us of Christ in
his word. the chief cornerstone, in whom
all the building fitly framed together groweth into a holy
temple in the Lord." Here's the temple of God. Again, the Lord's not going around
the world cracking the whip and pronouncing judgment and
correcting the the religions of man. He's not
doing it. In whom you also are builded
together for a habitation of God through the Spirit. You see,
that's why I said I don't want us to look at this cleansing
of the temple as an act of wrath and judgment I want us to see
it as a work of grace that the Lord reserves for his household
and for his temple when he, for the first time, cleanses
us of the money changers. Why do you spend money for that
which satisfieth not? Isn't that what Isaiah said in
Isaiah 55? Come, buy of me, without money
and without price. Don't barter with God, don't
bring something in your hands. Eat of that which is fat, eat
of that which is good. Satisfy your soul in that which
God is satisfied with, the Lord Jesus Christ. He's not satisfied
with anything we bring. And how often, why do we have
to be continually reminded of that? Because that old recovering
Pharisee that would have us to look away from Christ and find
our hope somewhere else. And our God is a jealous God.
He's a jealous God. Zechariah chapter one verse 14
says, I am jealous for Jerusalem and for Zion with a great jealousy. And in Exodus chapter 34, the
scripture says, his name is jealous. Now, when we think of jealousy
in our own experience, it's always something sinful, isn't it? When
our Lord says he's jealous, there's no sin involved in his jealousy.
It's a holy jealousy. It's a righteous jealousy. It's
a loving jealousy. It's a jealousy that he has for
his children and for his household. And the zeal of the Lord or the
zeal of his house has eaten him up. It's eaten him up. Aren't
you thankful? Aren't you thankful that he's
not going to, that he continues to be zealous for his household.
He continues to be zealous for his temple. He continues to remain
faithful and, oh, he fights for his children. He keeps them. He makes the small
cords and He's made his temple a house
of prayer. That's what we bring. We don't bring to God something
in our hands. We don't bring to him sheep and
oxen and dove and merchandise our souls before
God thinking that there's something that we can do. We go to him
in prayer. Listen to this, by him, that
is the Lord Jesus, Hebrews 13, 15, by him, therefore, let us
offer the sacrifice of praise to God continually. That is the fruit of our lips. In another place, it's called
the calves of our lips. the calves of our lips. We don't
bring a calf as an animal, we bring the calves of our lips
continually giving praise to him and giving thanks to his
name. That's how we come before the
throne of grace. We come before God thanking him
for his mercy, thanking him for his righteousness, thanking him
for the judgment that he executed fully and completely at Calvary's
cross, thanking him that he didn't require anything from us because
we would never be able to produce it. We'd never be able to produce
it. And we're, if I can say, frustrated
with our praise, aren't we? We want to praise him with all
of our hearts and our praise is so falling short of what we
know he deserves and what our hearts really want to give him.
But here again, that old Pharisee's holding us back. One day, one day that old man's
gonna go where he belongs. He's gonna go where he came from.
He came from the dust, he's going back to the dust. And that which
is corruptible is gonna be made incorruptible, and that which
is mortal is gonna be made immortal, and we'll be given a resurrected
body, a sinless body, and in that day, we'll be able to praise
him as we ought, and praise him as he deserves. What a day that'll
be. In the meantime, in the meantime,
we are in continual need of him to take small cords. There's
a verse in Ecclesiastes, Solomon said this, a three-fold cord
is not easily broken. What has the Lord done? He has
braided together The Father's election, the Son's
redemption, the Holy Spirit's regeneration and continual sanctification
and a threefold cord is not easily broken. And that's the cord that
he cleanses his temple with. It's a scarlet thread that hung
from the window of Rahab that identified her as one of
God's. Psalm 118 says that the sacrifice
was bound to the horns of the altar by a cord. By a cord. Here's the cord that the Lord
uses. He binds Christ to the altar. so that the sacrifice is finished. It's done. Christ is... You remember in Acts chapter
27 when the apostle Paul was on that ship that was going down
and the sailors tried to lower the lifeboats and they were going
to escape the ship and the Lord told Paul, he said, you tell
the captain of the ship, if any man leaves this ship, none of
us will be saved. and they cut the cords of the
lifeboat. There's the three-strand cord. We would provide for ourselves
a lifeboat. We would try to escape this ship
by some other means, some other little boat. And the Lord, in
his mercy, every time he comes in the gospel and the power of
his spirit, and I praise doing it right now, cutting the cords
of our lifeboats, cleansing his temple once again, so that he gets all the glory. He gets all the glory. And believers and unbelievers
alike, have something in common. They want their righteousness
to be exalted. Let's take a break.