John chapter 2. I don't know how many of you
actually watch the evangelical landscape of culture. I don't
know how many of you actually pay attention to the news of
Christendom. There's a lot of news always
to be heard. There's a lot of things always
on not only Christian news outlets and whatever that means, I'm
just saying what they're called, but also in the context of the
wider view of Christianity worldwide. And these days, just like all
days and all seasons of our history, the Word of God is continually
under attack. And you might think, well, how
is the Word of God under attack? Is it under attack because they're
taking away nativity scenes? Is it under attack because they're
taking down the Ten Commandments? Is it under attack because they're
taking crosses off of desert plains? No. Those are not attacks
against the Word of God. Those are not attacks against
Christ of Christianity. Those are attacks against cultural
ideals and practices. The attack against Christ is
a direct attack against His Word. And as we sit here this morning
saying that with every fiber of our being that we love the
Word of God, that we love Jesus Christ, that we hold the Scriptures
to be authoritative and effectual to everything that we desire,
everything that we need, but yet we do not put our trust in
them, in the words of Christ, we actually do not believe and
hold fast to the sufficiency of Scripture. So let me give
you an example. When life comes against us as it will absolutely,
when our minds come against us as they will without fail, when
our bodies come against us as they will without fail, when
our relationships come against us without fail, we say that
we trust in the Christ of Scripture. But yet in order to find faith
in Jesus Christ, we must have faith in His Word. We must have
faith in the Word of Christ, that it, number one, is authoritative
and is supernatural and is powerful and effectual over our lives
as His Word. Secondly, we must understand
that the Word of God is the only place in which we will find solace
and peace and mercy and grace in our time of need. Many more things could be said
here, but beloved, The teaching of this scripture is sufficient
for everything we need. Yes, our solos have fallen off
the wall in the last few weeks. First was Solus Christos, I've
hung it up, it fell off again. Then Sola Fide fell down, and
then Sola Gratia fell down. So we're only left with Sola
Scriptura and Sola Deo Gloria. So I took them down just in case. I didn't want them to fall. We're
going to hang them up with bolts so they won't fall again. But
what if we were only left with, for the glory of God alone and
through Scripture alone, guess what the other three follow? Friends, if we could hold any
banner higher than ever, it must be the banner of God's Word.
We cannot hold Christ to the highest authority if His Word
is not Him. If His Word is not the full revelation
of who He is, and what He's done, and how He works in us and through
us this very moment in our contemporary age. And friends, just because
superstars of evangelicalism, great pastors of old, Historically
powerful pulpits fall in line to a cultural bend of nonsense. It does not make it authoritative. Nothing James Tippins has ever
said or ever will say is worth writing down. But everything that Jesus Christ
has said in His Word is worth writing down on the tablets of
every heart and mind and soul. And if what we learn and teach
from Scripture is not from Scripture, it is not authoritative. And you hear me say this, I swear
to you, if you go back and listen to sermons, and some of you think,
well, he's preaching the same thing every week. I always, almost
without fail, have an overwhelming burden in my heart every single
day that many of us do not hold to Scripture as the authoritative
power in our lives. And I can say it. I can get up
here, I can show you a presentation of why it should be authoritative.
I can get one of those TVs and sit up here and do a little big
PowerPoint presentation. I can give you 5,000 historical references
of the power and the authority of God's Word. We could do a
28-year series on Sola Scriptura. You think I'm joking? Yet nothing
would change. Nothing will change in what we
think or feel or how we believe, except that the Word of God being
taught to you opens your eyes. Except that the Word of God...
I could bang the pulpit. This one's not quite big enough
to beat, because I'll miss. I could get loud, or I could
get soft. I could use incredible oratory
techniques, speak a foreign language, sounds really authoritative.
Put on an accent or something. A little Hockney there. I could
do all sorts of things to get your attention, but nothing will
cause you to trust in the Lord and His Word except the Lord's
Word be taught to you. And that through the teaching
of the Word of God, the Holy Spirit opens your heart and mind
to read it by faith and read it with a believing heart. What is this commercial he's
giving about the authority of God's Word? Friends, I'm standing
here today teaching you the Scriptures. And you have come so that you
might learn the Scriptures. So there's got to be a reason
why we assemble each moment of our lives as often as possible
with zeal for the Word of God. Is it because you believe in
the Word of God? I've been accused in the last
few months of being a Bible worshiper. And I went, thank you. I worship the Word of God who
is Jesus Christ. And then sometimes my idolatry
kicks in and I really love the leather. Especially when you
first open it. You know, the new car smell.
They need the new Bible spray. All jokes aside, we worship the
Lord who is the Living Word. And every discussion, every comment,
every argument, every debate that's going on in our culture
today about, is this honoring to the Lord, or is this right,
or is this socially just, or what have you, it all boils down
to one thing, is that the people having these arguments trust
in the philosophy of human intellect rather than in the stupidity
of the Word of God. For the foolishness of God is
greater than the wisdom of man, and the weakness of God is greater
than the strength of man. So as long as we continue to
work out our salvation by trusting in our ability, and our flesh,
and our feelings, and our philosophy, we will never have the joy that
surpasses all understanding. We will never have the power
to stand in front of mountains and say, move! And the mountain
runs away. We will never, ever, ever understand
what Paul meant when he says, though daily being given over
to death, we live. Because we want death to stop
knocking. Wake up church, death is not going to stop knocking.
Temptation is not going to stop knocking. Civil strife is not
going to stop knocking. Relational problems are not going
to stop knocking. These things are not only not
going to cease, they are going to get worse and worse and worse. And when God through His supernatural
Word comes to our aid and gives us the solidity of the foundation
of our faith. We can stand and say, Hallelujah!
Praise be the Lamb of God that took away my sin. Praise to the
glorious grace of God who satisfied His judgment against me in the
person of Christ. What shall befall me that makes
me cower? Nothing. I stand on the solid
rock. See, and that's the power of
the Word of God. And you might say, well, what's
that got to do with the context here? Jesus is about to start
His first conversation with the Jews of Jerusalem. In John chapter
2 verse 12, we see that after this, this is last week's sermon,
you should listen to it on the church website if you weren't
here last week. After this, this miracle that
he did, proving he was the better bridegroom, proving he was the
one who came to give grace upon grace upon grace upon grace,
proving that the sacrificial system of Judaism was never meant
to do anything. and that it was worthless and
washed out. It was always a shadow and always
a symbol. And He did this miracle, and
He did not even take credit for it. For He provided for the groom
there at that wedding feast, who was a complete failure. He
provided for him redemption. Temporally. And when they left
this wedding feast, they went down to Capernaum, where were
they going on their way to Jerusalem? Friends, there is something that
many of you have heard me mention before called higher criticism.
I'm not talking about critical learning and learning new discoveries
about our Scripture, but higher criticism that teaches that the
Word of God should be looked at in such a way that we should understand it
based on new ideas. We need to grasp the reality
that many people would rather come and put their trust in what
men can do academically rather than what Christ has taught us
in His Word. Higher critics would say, well,
this doesn't make sense. Why didn't Matthew and Mark and Luke
record this particular thing? This must be an error on John
putting it in the wrong order chronologically. And what is that an attack against?
The Word of God. It makes the philosophy and the
historical mindset of man, it makes the archaeological aspects
in the pursuit of man authoritative over the Scripture. And beloved,
those things hold no water. They have holes in them. But
we know, in the context of the Word of God, is that Jesus cleansed
the temple twice. He cleansed the temple in the
beginning of His ministry, and He cleansed the temple at the
end of His ministry. And we see that. And so that here on John
2, read the Word of the Lord with me together this morning.
Verse 12, After He went down to Capernaum with His mother
and His brothers, and His disciples, and they stayed
there for a few days. The Passover, verse 13, of the
Jews was at hand, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. Jerusalem is
always up. It's 2,500 feet in elevation. In all the temple, He found those
who were selling oxen and sheep and pigeons and the money changers
sitting there. And making a whip of cords, He
drove all of them out of the temple. with the sheep and with
the oxen. And he poured out the coins of
the money changers and overturned their tables. And he told those
who sold the pigeons, take these things away. Do not make my father's
house a house of trade. His disciples remembered that
it was written, zeal for your house will consume me. So the
Jews said to him, what sign do you show us for doing these things? And Jesus answered, destroy this
temple and in three days I will raise it up." The Jews then said,
it has taken 46 years to build this temple and will you raise
it up again in three days? But he was speaking about the
temple of his body. When therefore he was raised from the dead,
his disciples remembered that he had said this and they believed
the scripture and the word that Jesus had spoken. Let's pray. Father, I pray that your word
do its work. God, as unworthy as I am to stand
here this morning to teach this Scripture, Father, I pray that
You would use me and my weakness and my fallenness to proclaim
the truth of You. And that no one would look at
me, but they would see You. No one would hear what I say,
but they would hear Your Word true. Father, as a people, we would
continue to labor, to labor, to trust in You by Your grace
through the power of the cross of Christ. We hold fast because
You have held us fast. You have sealed us with Your
Spirit. That is the sign of the covenant. That You are forever
with us and we forever with You. We pray these things in Christ.
Amen. Jesus is often, not often, is
considered by Jewish academics to be the most Semitic, the most
Jewish-like of all the New Testament writings, above and beyond Hebrews,
the letter to the Hebrews. And the reason being is because
the Apostle John writes his gospel from the context of all of the
Jewish festivals. And we see in John's Gospel there
are four Passover feasts mentioned here. This is one of the first
ones that we'll see. The Passover feast then runs
into the Feast of Unleavened Bread, which is another week.
And so we'll see what Jesus does in His first, His inaugural Passover
feast after coming to be called the Son of God by the Father
from heaven at the River Jordan. And then what He'll do as we
get later into the text, we see what He does at the last Passover
feast. The Passover was at hand. And the people who received this
letter were Jews and Gentiles alike. This gospel was written
so that people would know that Jesus is the Christ, the Son
of the Living God, and by believing in His name, they would have
eternal life. See, church, the reason that we know that Jesus
is the Christ, the Son of the Living God, is because the Bible
has been recorded for us supernaturally through the Spirit of God, that
Jesus even said that the Spirit that He would send would bring
to them all remembrance of everything He'd ever taught. And so if Jesus' Word is written
here as authoritative and powerful to us, it's written to His first
audience in the same manner. And there were Jews in this audience
who believed, or who would believe. And there were Gentiles in this
audience who believed, or who would believe. Now listen, some
people say, well what did the Gentiles know about Passover?
Everything. They watched Israel. They were
with them for thousands of years. And in this period of time, Rome
occupied. Gentiles ruled and ran Jerusalem. They watched these people do
these festivals. They understood that the Passover... I mean, how many of us with children
can get out of the parking lot and see something different that
wasn't there 30 seconds before, before a child goes, what's that? Say a new word. What does that
mean? Show them something else. Ride
down the street. Hey, what's that? You'll have
a wreck. What's that? What's that? They want to know. So don't you think
that there's an inquiry? Sometimes we act like the whole
of culture, first century culture, just ignored the fact that Jews
had this huge building that they were trying to complete. Which,
by the way, wasn't completed until just a few years before
it was destroyed. It wasn't completed during the time of Jesus. The
temple was not finished. And it's the largest structure
in the entire city and everybody pays money that's workless everywhere
else because Roman government had taken over the economic system.
And they go in and go, don't you think they inquired, what
are you doing? What kind of ridiculousness is this? The Gentile people understood
very well the history of what the Passover meant. And the Passover
feast was an opportunity for the Jewish people to remember
the faithfulness and the power of God in redemption. Y'all hear
me? Where does it come from? In the plagues of Egypt, the
very final plague, decreed by God after the grace of God hardened
the heart of Pharaoh purposefully. He sent the angel of death to
come and kill every firstborn man and beast. Firstborn. I'm a firstborn man. It wasn't
just children. It was any firstborn. So in that night, the angel of
the Lord told Moses to tell the people of Israel to take and
kill a lamb and to put the blood of the lamb on the doorposts,
side and the top, and that the angel of death, if they did by
faith, of course we know, put the blood there, the angel would
not kill the firstborn of that household. And imagine, imagine
the horror and the wailing and the tears of Egypt that night. As people watched like flies,
people falling dead for no reason. As mothers went to coddle their
children, prepare them for bed, nurse them at their breasts,
and they no longer had life. And out of all of the horror,
all of the screams, there were no screams amongst the people
of Israel. There was no horror there, for
God had spared them, not because of who they were, but for the
sake of His own glorification, the sake of His own name. And
the Passover feast was prepared in such a way, historically,
that they would never forget that God had spared them. And
it was very in-depth. All male Jews, 12 years of age
and older, had to report to Jerusalem to partake in the Passover feast.
They had to pay, what is it, like a shekel or a half a shekel?
I can't remember what it was. They had to bring a sacrifice,
because on the seventh day they would kill the lamb. The first of every Jewish year.
And the lamb had to be taken and it had to be without blemish.
Actually, on the fourteenth day, it was the second week, on the
fourteenth day, at six o'clock sharp, the lamb was killed. And this was called the Passover
lamb. And it was in addition to all
the other animals that were sacrificed for the sins of the families
represented there, as a reminder, according to Scripture, that
the wages of sin is death, and that only through God's grace
can one have eternal life. It was only by God's mercy, through
the blood of the lamb, that He spared Israel and Egypt that
time. It wasn't because of them, it was because of God's mercy. The celebration was very elaborate.
It had many elements, seven, eight different elements. It
was a prayer of thanksgiving by the head of all households.
The first drinking of the first cup of wine, then many cups after. The eating of the herbs. Have
you ever been to a Seder? I've been to one that was a demonstrative
Seder. It wasn't really a worship. And
you eat the herbs and they're bitter. What is that? To remind
the people of Israel of the bitterness of the slavery of Egypt. The son would ask the father,
why is this night set apart from all others? And the father would
reply by reading the answer. And then they would sing the
Hallel, Psalm 113 and 114. And then they would wash their
hands in the stone jars that Jesus just used to make wine. Then they'd carve and eat the
lamb together with the unleavened bread. And the lamb was eaten
to remember, to commemorate what the fathers had commanded in
Exodus 12 and 13, when the Lord smote the firstborn of all of
Egypt and saved the people. The unleavened bread was a memorial
of the days of the journey after that where they went into the
wilderness and they took nothing with them except their personal
belongings and some livestock for sacrifices. But God provided
them, what? Manna from heaven. That we'll
see perfectly in John chapter 6 what happened to the manna
and what purpose it actually had. This unleavened bread was
to remind them of those days in the wilderness. It was also
a picture, if you will, of purity. Because it had to be eaten hastily,
quickly, lest it, what? Perish. One would eat all they wanted,
but at last, they would eat the lamb. Then they would sing the
remaining Hallel, Psalm 115 and 116. And that's the Passover
feast. And this was going on here, now. This is what was happening when
Jesus went to Jerusalem after doing the miracle at Cana. After the Lamb was killed, the
seven-day feast of unleavened bread, which was celebrated afterward,
sometimes because of the close connection of these feasts, sometimes
Passover was even called the celebration of unleavened bread.
And they were interchanged. Well, here's the point of the
Passover. This was Jesus' most likely 18th Passover. His first
one. Do you remember His first one?
Where He goes into the house, to the tabernacle, to the temple,
rather, and He's teaching at 12. Now 18 years later, Jesus is
back in the temple. The first time He came in and
taught, but He submitted to His mother, for Jesus is holy and
righteous." And he obeyed and honored his parents. But he did
say to her, don't you know that I'm to be about my father's business.
He was still about his father's business. He'd gone to eight,
to 17 other Passover's, 16 other Passover's, now the 18th. and never said a word about what
happened or what Jesus did. He did nothing else. So for 18
years, he sat and watched the destruction of the temple of
God. For 18 years, he sat and observed the spiritual leaders
of Israel who, by God's election, were supposed to take the gospel
of Christ to the nations, but yet they shut out the world so
that they could have no life. For they counted themselves the
reason for their election rather than the mercy of God. This Passover was different,
for Jesus had been declared and revealed as the Son of God. So here's Daddy's house, and
the oldest son has come home. And he does not like what he
sees. It wasn't a surprise to him. He'd been watching it for
years. And many times, many times Jesus had overlooked Because
it was not His will, but the Father's will, and His time had
not yet come. Jesus had just used the ceremony
of washing jars, place in a place of grandstand, to make wine a symbol of joy,
a symbol of providence and power and provision. And He's going
to do some washing now in the temple. Because He is the true
Passover Lamb. And as we'll see, He is the true
temple. We need to see, going into verse 14, in the temple He found those
who were selling oxen, sheep, and pigeons. Now these people
were allowed to sell in the outer court, which was also called
the court of the Gentiles. The court of the Gentiles, because
no Gentile, no one who was not ethnic Jew could go into the
inner courts and to worship and to offer sacrifices. But the
Gentiles could be in the outer courts. Why? Well, they could
sell their wares or they could be there and pray. There might
have been some proselytes or some converted Gentiles, and
even though they may follow after Judaism and had been circumcised,
they still could not go into the inner courts. But in this temple courtyard,
it was full of livestock. It was full of doves. And you
might remember from the Old Testament, people were supposed to bring
their own sacrifice. Remember? The best and the first
fruits, the best lamb, the purest animal they could find. If they
couldn't afford a lamb, they could bring a dove. If they couldn't
afford a dove, they could bring a what? Sack of flour. Because see, it never was the
killing of the animals that mattered anyway. The Bible says that the
blood of goats and bulls you never were pleased in. Death of animals has never satisfied
God. It's a picture of what would
happen to Jesus, who would satisfy God. Jesus is the only true propitiation. And these temple courtyards were
full of people selling these things. No longer could you just
bring your animal in because the judges of the temple would
look at your animal and look in its mouth and look in its
ears and nose and look at its legs and tail and fur and if
they found any imperfection, I'm sorry, this animal's no good
for sacrifice. But you can go inside the court
here and you can buy one that are pre-approved. Now imagine what that would be
like if the offerings, with these money changers, you had to give
an offering, and you had to go in, and you could not give Roman
money, so you had to take your Roman money and buy Jewish money,
which was just operative inside the Jewish community, and just
inside the temple. And so if you had to give a dollar
in Jewish money, you'd give seventeen dollars in Roman money. The historical changeover rate
of selling of animals was 1500% markup. That's a historical statement. So for a 25 cent pair of doves,
they would charge equivalents of $4. 1500%. Nobody's animals were good enough.
They had to buy them in the court. Nobody's money was good enough.
They had to exchange it. And all the while, the priests
and the leaders of the temple were making commissions. The
money changers were making commissions. And this was obligatory for the
Jewish people, lest they were abandoned by God, you see, in
their own mind. The temple, according to Isaiah
56, was supposed to be a place where the people of God would
gather for prayer and for worship. But these people had made it
a den of thieves. Jeremiah 7, 11. Has this house
which is called by my name become a den of robbers in your eyes?
Behold, this is God speaking, I myself have seen it. See, in reality, the temple was
never meant to be anything but a shadow anyway. The shadow points
to the true. The type points to the anti-type.
The real. And the temple is Jesus Christ
and His body. And this text proves that. Jesus
was angered righteously and had zeal for the wickedness of the
hearts of Israel. And it showed even in their worship,
even in their prayer, even in the Passover celebration. The
temple where God met man, and Jesus was the only one who would
come from heaven. He is the mercy seat. And He
stood there and at 18th Passover, and it was through the will of
the Father that it was time for Him to show the sign of His authority. If someone came into our fellowship
today and started yelling, blasphemy, and came and took my Bible and
threw it against the wall, what many of you would do would be
surprising. Some of you would probably step up. Others might
go, what? Some of you would dial 911. But
for the most part, most everyone would just, what is going on?
Is this a trick? What's happening? My friends, that kind of tomfoolery
didn't happen in this culture. People just didn't come into
the temple and take over. The temple guard, they were not
people to be played with. They were not people who were
able to just be pushed around. These were armed men, trained
like police. But Jesus holds authority over
the shadow of His body. Listen to this. Verse 15, making
a whip out of cords, He drove them out of the temple with the
sheep and the oxen. The subject here are the money
changers and the merchants. And the Scripture says He drove
them out of the temple. And the Scripture says He drove
the animals out of the temple. And the Scripture says He turned
over their tables and He threw their money all over the ground.
Now what money was there? The money that had just been
spent. Now here's the outer court of the temple. Everybody there
being ripped off in the name of God. Everybody there not even
worshiping the one true God because Judaism is, at this time, a cult
of the devil. Some strong words, pastor. I'm
just repeating what Jesus said. Jesus called Israel the sons
of Satan. So how can He call them the sons
of Satan if they're following Yahweh? They didn't. They hadn't
followed Jehovah in years. Matter of fact, and we'll see,
even the ones who did, it was by the grace of God. It wasn't
in their practices that they followed God. It was by God's
mercy that they followed Him. That's why the freedom of will
and all this stuff that we hear in the evangelical circles today.
The Imam said that we want to change the culture. Jesus didn't
come to be a revolutionary. He came to be a reformer. Jesus
went into the temple and said, I'm going to show you what reform
looks like. Sola Scriptura. That's what He would be yelling
if He had come around a couple of thousand years later. You
know the Word of God says what you should be, what you should
be doing? He is the Living Word and He came and declared what
the prophets had declared thousands of years before, He fulfilled. And He gets a whip, He makes
a whip. Now, Jesus wasn't in obscurity. People knew who He was. Here
He is standing around and He's picking up cords off the ground,
tying knots in them. Wrapping them up, and they're
thinking, what's Jesus going to do? He must have a herd of
sheep he's going to bring in here. Imagine the first guy that gets
whacked. The first person where Jesus
walks up and just goes, boom, over the head. Get out of my
father's house. And kicks his table over. And
all the poor folks go scoundreling, scrolling around on the ground
for the money. Is this order? No, it's not order. This is disorder. Jesus has authority
over the worship of God. Jesus has authority over His
people. Jesus has authority over truth. Jesus is the truth. And
He whips them. In Matthew 21, He whips them
again and drives them out. He drove them all out. He ruined
their livelihood. Never again would they go back
into that temple and do what they did again. They lost all
their money. I bet they didn't reclaim their
livestock. He told those who were selling doves to take these
crates of birds out of here. And He ran them out too. Jesus
was about His Father's business at His first Passover, and He
was about His Father's business at His 18th Passover. Take these things out. Verse
16. Do not make my Father's house
a house of trade. And in verse 17 it says, His
disciples remembered that it was written. What is He talking
about? Psalm 69, 9. Which says, For zeal for your
house has consumed me, and the reproaches of those who reproach
you have fallen on me. So it's all likely that the disciples
were a little concerned, oh my goodness, Jesus is right in this,
these people are wicked. Especially Nathanael who was
a true Jew. Imagine what Nathanael thought
about it. He's like, man, it's about time somebody cleaned this stuff up.
But if Nathanael had barked out against the Pharisees and barked
out against the priests, he would have been tried and convicted
of blasphemy. Here's Jesus and nobody stopped him. Nobody stepped
in. Nobody dared stand in on Jesus. And there were thousands of people
here. Thousands and tens of thousands of people here. if not millions,
but inside this court. I mean, this will be akin to
a large Superdome, a large football field, full,
shoulder to shoulder, and all sorts of garbage, and defecation
of animals, and it's just a hustling place, unclean place. But it wasn't unclean because
animals were there, it was unclean because wicked men were there.
Jesus whips them. And the disciples thought, you
know, when David wrote Psalm 69, he had zeal for his house,
and it brought reproach upon him. People began to hate him.
Oh no, our master's going to be hated because of what he's
done. So if the disciples were thinking
this, we're not the Jews thinking this
as well. When I say the Jews, I mean the
leaders. Jesus was not, as I said, a revolutionary. He did not care about transforming
the culture or making the world look more Christian. He cared about the clarity of
truth. Hear this, church. He cared about the clarity of
truth, fulfilling His duty as the obedient and beloved Son,
and was willing to die for the world that was wicked and hated
Him, for that is why He was born. Jesus, at this moment, took possession
of the temple. They did not arrest Him because
they knew He was right. What do you do when someone does
something right? You're not the first guy to stand
up and say, stop him, because you look like the fool. They
didn't arrest Him. They knew He was right. So in
order to save face, they inquired. Verse 18. What sign do you show for us
doing, show us for doing these things? You know what they're
saying? By what authority do you come? Give us some miracle.
Show us who you think you are. Why did they ask that question?
Because they knew the prophecy. They knew the prophecy. It's
the prophecy of Malachi chapter 3 verse 1 through 3, which I
find very ironic. The New Testament church continues
to use Malachi 3 as the constitution for a mandated tithe. When the scripture teaches in
the New Testament, offerings, not tithes. We don't belong to the
Jewish tithe, we belong to the New Testament church. Malachi
3, behold God speaking, I send my messenger and he will prepare
the way before me and the Lord whom you seek, listen, the Lord
whom you seek. Now the Jews are the recipients
of this word from God directly through the mouth of Malachi.
The Lord whom you seek will suddenly come into His temple, and the
messenger of the covenant in whom you delight. Behold, He
is coming, says the Lord of hosts. Alright? And He's there, and
has been there many times. Now He's there. The question
then God asked, but who can endure the day of His coming, and who
can stand when He appears? For He is like a refiner's fire. and like fuller's soap. He will
sit as a refiner and purifier of silver, and He will purify
the sons of Levi, and refine them like gold and silver, and
they will bring offerings in righteousness to the Lord." So
that coupled with Psalm 69 verse 9, the Jews knew exactly who
Jesus was and exactly what He was doing because He did exactly
what they said He would do. He would have zeal for His Father's
house, Psalm 69, I mean Isaiah, yeah, Psalm 69. And He would
have, He would come and He would cleanse the temple, Malachi 3. And they have the audacity to
say, what sign? I don't know if you understand
prophecy. A prophet speaks as the Lord, the voice of the Lord,
and says, this will happen. That's what the prophecy is.
And then when it happens, that's the sign, you see. And Jews understood
that very well. But to save face, they say, what
sign do you do? You come in here and clean us
out? Who do you think you are? Show us a sign. Show us a sign. Kistenberger says that that's
the stupidest thing in the New Testament. It's just stupid. For them to ask what sign He
brings. But not only is it stupid, it's evil. It's a blasphemy of
the Holy Spirit. It's a rejection of the Son of
God. It's a rejection of all the years of Scripture. It's
a rejection of the authority of the text of the Bible. It's
a rejection of the power of God. It's a rejection all the way
around. It is explained already in the
outline of this Gospel, "...though He came to His own, His own did
not receive Him. But all who did receive Him,
who believed on His name, He gave the right to become the
children of God, who were born, not of decision of the mind,
nor the will of the flesh, nor of blood, but by the will of
God. These Jews have been teaching
the Bible for generation after generation after generation after
generation since Aaron. And they never looked at it and
believed. It was just a journey. And by this time it was a journey
of power, and a journey of prestige, and a journey of pocketbook,
purse. They became filthy rich. They recognized His authority,
but they wanted something more. They recognized the fulfillment
of God's prophecy, but they wanted to see something supernatural.
They wanted to see some power. And He revealed power by speaking
the Word of God and saying this day, as He said many times, this
is fulfilled in your presence. They inquired in a spiritual
sense in an attempt to save their own darkness, save their own
face. Keep in mind as we move through
2 and get into chapter 3 in the next week, that Nicodemus is a part of this
very dark Judaism. You see, when we preach this
way, sometimes we think, well, you know what? This is not politically
correct. We're not supposed to speak this
way about Jews. I'm not speaking this way about
Jews. I'm just reading the Scripture. This is not an opinion of mine.
This is not an emphasis of mine. This is an emphasis of John,
who was a disciple of Jesus, the one whom Jesus loved, who
reveals the fullness of the deity and the authority and the power
of Jesus Christ as the creator of the universe, who's eternal,
and who is God, who says that these people lived in outer darkness.
They lived in utter darkness, and they could not see, for God
had not granted them the eyes to see, but it was granted according
to Isaiah 6 that they not see. Because they hated Him. And Jesus, as He always does
with absolute divine certainty and authority, He does not say,
you don't get it, do you? Let me take you through a Bible
lesson. Why? Because no matter what you
do, no matter what argument you bring, like I said, that 28-year
series on Sola Scriptura, we could talk about everything.
We could look at the Greek. I could get scholars in here
that could put us to sleep twice. We go to sleep while we're asleep.
We sleep in our dreams. We're dreaming about being asleep.
And some of us will be like, man, this is great. Some of us
are like, I'm not coming back next week. I'll see you when
I'm 80. You know. We're just, it's not going to
make you see. What makes you see? It's the
Spirit of God. And these people could not see
what they could absolutely, what they should have absolutely known.
And Jesus says, destroy this temple in three days and I will
raise it up again. Now the subject is understood here. If you destroy
this temple." He doesn't say, command them, destroy this temple.
It's an understood subject. If you destroy this temple or
if this temple is destroyed, I'll raise it up again in three
days. Well, these riddles are all throughout
Scripture, aren't they? Psalm 69, Psalm 22, Psalm 51,
we see somebody talking in a literal sense, in their own words, about
their own circumstances, but ultimately we see that there
is a secondary and most important and absolute meaning behind them.
what they call two-part fulfillment. There may be a fulfillment right
now that we can see temporally, but then there's also an eternal
aspect of the fulfillment which comes to Christ, which is what
the whole nation of Israel is to start with, a shadow of temporal
fulfillment, which is Christ and the Church, ultimately. And
I'm not talking about replacement, shadow, truth, type, antitype. It points to Jesus and to His
work and to His redemption. So Jesus is the temple. He's
the point of it all. He's talking about the word temple
and the real cool thing is just like the word pneuma, like the
word spirit, and wind in John chapter 3 is the exact same word.
We used two ways. The word for temple can be used
as a building or a body, a physical body. We see that later. We see that all throughout. Don't
you know Paul would say that your body is the temple of God?
Don't you know that John, when he talks about it in Revelation,
in his revealing, his apocalypse, he says, at the temple I saw
the pillars of the temple of God, and those are the Christians.
It's a picture. Jesus Christ is the temple. And
Jesus was speaking both literally and spiritually about the temple
being rebuilt. But the problem is we mix them
up. The literal reality of what Jesus says, destroy this temple
and in three days I will raise it up again. The literal meaning
of that means He will literally raise His body up Himself after
He's been dead three days. He will raise it up. That's what
he's saying, literally. Spiritually, he's saying that
everything this temple stands for is worthless, it's never
worked, it's never fulfilled what it was pointing to. I am
the temple that is fulfilling all of this and I will raise
it up to what it should have been and what it is going to
be. I will raise the temple because you have already destroyed it. And how does God ultimately raise
the temple to what it was supposed to be? to the resurrection of
Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ, the temple of God. Jesus is the point of all of
it. Everything in every way pointed
to Jesus and now He stood there in the temple of Jerusalem at
the feast of the Passover as the true Passover Lamb, as the
light who shines in the darkness and those who were blinded by
the darkness could not see it, but many did and believed. But the Jews in their response
And this verse will be the end of what we can do today. The
Jews, in response, says, it's taken 46 years to build this
temple, and you will raise it up in three days? See, it's exactly
what Nicodemus did, right? What? Be born again? I'm going
to go in my mother's womb and come back out? It's exactly what
the woman at Sychar did. How are you going to give me
eternal water if you don't even have a bucket? It's exactly what
the Jews of John 5 did. How are you? How are you? I am. What do you know about
Moses? What do you know about Abraham?
You don't get it. You're not that old. You're not
able to do that. You don't have that kind of authority.
In John 6, let me have this bread. We want to have bread that we
never get hungry again. Give me some physical bread. And the
list goes on and on and on. John 11, Lazarus. Do you believe
that I am the resurrection of life? Yes, we know that everybody
will be raised alive for the resurrection. No, Martha. You're too busy washing dishes. You should have been sitting
with Mary. Listen, I am life. I command it. Lazarus died that
the glory of God may be revealed. We cannot see with spiritual
eyes unless we've been gifted faith. We cannot see with true
eyes unless the truth of God has been bestowed upon us supernaturally. Beloved, it is a fool's errand
to manage understanding of Scripture with a human mind, without the
Holy Spirit. Well, how do I get the Holy Spirit
to work for me? I don't know, stick your tongue out. As you
read, I don't know. How about just read the Bible
and pray and expect that God would give us understanding?
I mean, isn't that the dichotomy of studying Scripture? We open
it up and say, no, I've got to find something here. What am
I going to see? I've got to study this. I've got to do... And sometimes, you
know, you come into my study and there's books everywhere
and sometimes there's other things everywhere and sometimes there's
nothing anywhere. And I find that when there's nothing anywhere,
that God shows me things a lot clearer than if I've read 600
pages that week. Because sometimes the Scripture
by the power of God can just explain itself. And I don't need to go to the
Aramaic to figure out exactly what Jesus said literally in
the tongue that He spoke in, so that I could understand what
was written to me in the Word of God. How about I just expect that
the Lord would show me? After all, doesn't the Scripture
itself say, if anyone lacks wisdom, he just but ask God? See, there's
a difference in faith in the Lord and faith in us. But the Jews immediately went
to the earthly temple in their minds. It took 46 years to build
the temple to where it is today. How are you going to raise it
up in three days? Are you crazy? Not only did they not see the
reality of what Jesus was saying, they lied and bore false witness
against Him later in the text. Not John's text, but in Matthew's
gospel. We see what do they say in Matthew 26. This man said,
I'm able. You notice it said, he didn't
say, if you destroy. He says, Jesus said, or they
say Jesus said He was able. He says, I'm able to destroy
the temple of God and rebuild it in three days. So they just
twist what He said. And Luke's account in the Acts of the apostles. It says, for we've all heard
Him say, this Jesus of Nazareth will destroy this place and will
change the customs that Moses delivered to us. See, again, Jesus was the point
of it all. He's the point of the customs of Moses. We've already
seen that. He's greater than Moses. He's greater than Abraham.
He's greater than Jacob. He's greater than Isaac. He is
God. He is the eternal God who sits
at the Father's side and makes Him known. The God who sits at
the Father's side. He was the point of the temple
because He's the truth's temple. He did destroy the darkness of
Judaism, the false religions and the cults. All who serve
anything in addition to Jesus Christ are a cult, by the way.
And they live and they breathe among us. And sometimes they
live and breathe among us in the name of Christianity, in
the name of evangelicalism, in the name of Baptists. You think
we're in unity because we all consider the same documents to
be right? Well, we can have agreement on
those things, but that's not our unity. Our unity is in the
Holy Spirit of God. Our unity is in the rebirth through
Jesus Christ. Our unity is in the supernatural affection that
we have for each other for the sake of the glory and the grace
of God. The temple of men was already
broken. It was already destroyed. It was long over. And all those
who used it were long done with true worship way before Jesus
came in and cleaned it out. The question that I have in closing
is this, beloved. What about our day? What about
our Christianity? What about our faith? What about
our churches? What about our congregation? Have we become just another temple
of thieves? It's easy for us to say, well, we're not thieves. We're not selling and taking
advantage of people. We're not hiding this truth.
But as a culture, do not most congregations, do not we have
the tendency as human beings, even us, to rob God of His glory
in our worship? Like many that would celebrate
the sound of the music over the truth of Christ. Now, I love
good music. I'd love to have like a 300-piece
orchestra up here. And I just listen to them play
scales all day. I don't need anything else. There's a richness
to it. I love it. But it's not divine.
And I'm saddened that there won't be saxophones and cellos and
oboes in heaven. Until I look at Christ, I'm like,
they're getting in my way. We rob God of His glory and power
when we make men our idols. When we make our liturgy the
point of it all. When we take anything outside
of the Word of God and begin to add upon the authority of
God's Word. Our voices, our thoughts. The irony of this all is that
the temple was finished just a few years before it was destroyed
in 70 A.D. but it was really never built.
Because it was destined for destruction long before it began. Just as
God raised Pharaoh, so God raised the temple to be destroyed. Why? Because Jesus is the true
temple. And as we see in verse 21, He
was speaking of the temple of His body. See, all that would
be moot or ridiculous had the Word of God not taught us that.
Had the Word of God not shown us very clearly that Jesus was
speaking of Himself as the temple. Himself as what? As the true
God of heaven. The temple was a place where
men went to see God, to worship God, and to be with God. But
through Jesus and through His flesh, the veil has been torn
down. We have access to God our Father. Whereby we cry, Abba!
Father, as Jesus says to Nathanael, greater things than this you
will see. You will see the Son of Man with angels ascending
and descending upon the Son of Man. Two weeks ago when I talked
about heaven opened. Beloved, heaven is not opened
when we come in here. Heaven's not opened when we feel
something supernatural. Heaven's not opened when we see
a lot of folks out there come to faith. Heaven's opened. It's opened through Jesus Christ
and His Word, no matter if we're in a stall in an airport, or
if we're in a cathedral with a million people singing, Holy,
Holy, Holy, which sounds amazing. Not a million, but I have some
with 20,000. And that's an amazing song to hear in a big voice.
And you think, oh wow, the Lord is surely in this place. No,
it's just 20,000 men singing. It doesn't matter where we are.
When we're with the Lord's Word, we're with the Lord, and even
in our faithlessness, and we leave this on the counter, or
we leave this in the back seat, or we leave it on the dash, don't
do that, it'll burn it. But, I mean, when we leave it, and
we forsake it for an hour, or a day, or a week, Lord help us.
The Lord is still with us. Why? Because heaven is opened
to us, because Jesus Christ has saved us, and He's redeemed us,
and He's with us, and He's put His Spirit in us to live with
us. The temple is Jesus through which
we have access to God, through which we have redemption through
His blood, through which we have our glory, and our promise, and
our peace. Next week we will expound on
this reality as Jesus is the temple in relationship to the
church. But the result of this is just
like the result of His miracle in Cana. Just like the result
of His conversation with Nicodemus. Eventually, Nicodemus came to
believe. Just like every chapter that we see in this Gospel narrative,
Jesus is gracious. Jesus was gracious to reveal
Himself as the temple. Jesus was truth to reveal Himself
as the temple. And it's gracious when God takes
our idols from us, and takes the things that we really love
and we put our hope in, and shows us that it's not necessarily
where our joy comes from. And then we can, as we've always
been taught, my family, we hold all that the world has loosely
because it's not eternal in value. In verse 22, when Jesus therefore
was raised from the dead, His disciples remembered that He
said these things, and they believed, listen, what? They believed,
what? The Scripture. They believed
Psalm 69, and they believed Malachi 3, and they believed Zechariah. And they believed the promise
of God through His Word. Do you believe the promise of
God through the Word? Do you believe that God has saved you
through the life and the death and the resurrection of Jesus?
Do you believe that His Word and His Spirit is true? Do you
believe and are you holding fast even in the midst of unbelief?
Do you hold with a glimmer, with a shave, with a small seed of
faith that Jesus Christ is the only hope we have? I pray that
you do, beloved. And I pray that the Lord would
strengthen your faith through the hearing of His Word. And
I pray that the Lord would give you resolve in the midst of all
sorts of calamity and trial. And no matter what wind may blow
here, or in Houston, or anywhere else, no matter what we lose,
we have everything when we are in Christ. Do you hear me? Everything. They believe the Scripture. And
they believed the Word that Jesus had spoken, which now we have
as Scripture. I pray you believe on Christ.
Let's pray. Lord, I pray. Lord, I pray. Lord,
I pray. As I do every day, that our joy
would be complete in Christ. That our hope would be satisfied
in Him alone. that nothing could shake us because
You're holding us with Your mighty hand. And Father, not only for
us, but Father, for the loss of the
world. For those brothers and sisters of other congregations
who seem to sometimes just let go and just give up, we pray
for them. Lord, we pray that as the Word
has gone into our hearts today, though it's not as theologically
dynamic as so many other parts of Scripture, Lord, it is still
as powerful. For we see that Your Son, Jesus,
is the God of all creation eternally. That He is our only hope. And
He is the point of life. And through His blood, You have
passed over our sins, and You call us Your righteousness. Father,
we pray that the teaching of Scripture would settle into the
hearts of our children as they sit here, some fidgety, some
loud, some quiet, some sleeping. Lord, Your Word is powerful.
Let us not forget it. Help us to remind our children
what is true. through the teaching of Scripture,
through the reading of Scripture, and Father, through the example
of the life we live, showing that our assembly together is
first place, that our faith is first place, that our prayers
are first place above other things. Lord, help our children and the
generations to come see a people who are zealous for You, who
defend Your Word with humility and prayer. and who share the
faith through which you bring others into the fold. We pray
this in Jesus' name. Amen. Let's sing.