Well, it's good to see you all
out this evening. Remember those who requested prayer. Remember those
who lost loved ones. Seek the Lord's help for them. That's all. Okay, it's on, all right. As I said, Sunday service will
be 11 o'clock only. No afternoon service, no dinner.
Because you'll all be full of turkey, so. Let's begin our worship
service with hymn number one. Oh, worship the king. Hymn number
one. Oh, worship the King, all glorious
above, and gratefully sing his power and his love. I shield and defend the ancient
of days, pavilion in splendor and girded with praise. Oh, tell of his might. Oh, sing of his grace. His robe is a light whose canopy
space. His chariots of wrath the deep
thunder clouds form. And dark is his path on the wings
of the storm. Thy bountiful care what tongue
can recite? It breathes in the air, it shines
in the light, it streams from the hills, it descends to the
plain, and sweetly distills in the dew and the rain. Well, children of dust, and feeble
as frail, in thee do we trust, nor find thee to fail. Thy mercies, how tender, how
firm to the end, our maker, defender, redeemer, Hymn number six. Help us to praise. Father all glorious, O'er all
victorious, Come and reign over us, Ancient of days. Come Thou incarnate Word, Gird
on Thy mighty sword, our prayer attend. Come and thy people bless
and give thy word success. Spirit of holiness on us descend. Come holy comforter, thy sacred
witness bear. in this glad hour. Thou who almighty art, now rule
in every heart, and ne'er from us depart, spirit of power. To the great one in three, eternal
praises be. Hence evermore His sovereign
majesty may we in glory see, and to eternity love and adore. If you have your Bibles, turn with me
to the second chapter of John, the gospel according to John.
I'm going to read verses 12 through 22. after this, that is the wedding
feast at Cana, after this he went down to Capernaum, he and
his mother and his brethren and his disciples and they continued
there not many days and the Jews Passover was at hand and Jesus
went to Jerusalem and found in the temple those that sold oxen
and sheep and doves and the changers of money sitting And when he
had made a scourge of small cords, he drove them all out of the
temple, and the sheep and the oxen, poured out the charge-changers'
money, and overthrew the tables, and said unto them that sold
doves, Take these things hence, make not my father's house, and
house of merchandise. And his disciples remembered
that it was written, The zeal of thy house hath eaten me up. Then answered the Jews, and said
unto him, What sign showest thou unto us, seeing that thou doest
these things? And Jesus answered and said unto
him, Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it
up. Then said the Jews, Forty and six years was this temple
in building, and wilt thou rear it up in three days? But he spake
of the temple of his body, and therefore he was risen from the
dead, his disciples remembered. that he had said this unto them,
and they believed the scriptures and the word which Jesus had
said. Let us pray. Our Father, we thank
you for your great grace for ruined and wretched sinners who
are by nature without hope and without help in this world, who
can do nothing of themselves to better their situation. For
all men by nature are liars, The heart is deceitful and desperately
wicked and none can know it but thee. They come forth from the
womb speaking lies as soon as they're born. They drink a nickely
like water. All they can do and be is sin. They cannot lift themselves from
the graveyard of spiritual death. And they stand in this world
as a hopeless case And their only hope is that you do something
for them. And we thank you, Father, that
you took it upon yourself to save your people, to shed your
grace upon them and show them mercy, to shed your love abroad
in their hearts, to give them your Holy Ghost. and give them
faith to believe the Scriptures. We are thankful, Father, that
you have counted us among your chosen, that Jesus Christ became
our surety before the world was, and assumed the debt that we
owed you that we could never pay, and came down to this cruel
world, to His world, and knew Him not and received Him not. He came down here and gave himself
a ransom for his children to die in their room and instead
secure their salvation, redeem them by his blood, and become
their very righteousness. We thank you and praise your
holy name. Pray for those who are sick,
going through trials and tribulations. I've noticed every case. Pray
for our communities nearby that are suffering still from these
floods. We ask, Lord, that you might be merciful to them and enable those who are trying
to help to help them. We come upon a winter time, and
it's gonna be hard on them. Let us keep them in our prayers,
and when an opportunity arises to help, let us do so. Let us
pray for ourselves tonight, Father, as we gather here and look at
your word and see this great episode in the life of our Savior,
the Lord Jesus Christ. Give us grace. Give us understanding. We pray in Christ's holy name.
Amen. If one would listen to the descriptions
of our Lord in the rhetoric of religion of this day, you would
not hear of Jesus as he is seen in this passage of scripture.
He is presented today as an uber-tolerant sweetie who is utterly inclusive
of everyone. There's a commercial that goes
on TV, a religious commercial I've seen a lot of. And they
say, Jesus knows us. Jesus knows us, and he includes
us all. Well, I'd say these fellows here
in this temple on this day weren't included at all. They were excluded. For those who were merchandising
in the temple on this day, not one of them would call Jesus
Christ a hail fellow well met. The glory of this incident is
the exclusivity of Jesus Christ and His Church and the ease with
which He dispenses with His adversaries. The cleansing and the purging
of the temple is the fulfillment of the last of the Old Testament
prophets in Malachi. If you'll turn back there to
the last book in the Old Testament, the promise of John the Baptist
coming He said in verse one of chapter
three, Behold, I will send my messenger, and he shall prepare
the way before me. That's John the Baptist. And
the Lord whom you seek shall suddenly come into his temple,
even the messenger of the covenant whom you delight in. Behold,
he shall come, saith the Lord of hosts, But who may abide in
the day of his coming? And who shall stand when he appears?
For he's like a refiner's fire and like fuller's soap. he shall
sit as a refiner and a purifier of silver, and he shall purify
the sons of Levi, and purchase them as gold and silver, that
they may offer unto the Lord an offering in righteousness.
Then shall the offering of Judah and Jerusalem be pleasant unto
the Lord, as in the days of old, as in the former years. Here
is Jesus Christ suddenly coming into His temple, suddenly. Now after our Lord had attended
that wedding feast, which was probably about a seven day affair,
He left Canaan and traveled to Capernaum. He took with him his kinfolk
and his five disciples. He often came to Capernaum to
rest during his earthly ministry. He would many times resort back
to this town. Matthew called Capernaum his
own city in Matthew chapter 9. After a few days there, he journeyed
to Jerusalem because the Passover was near. The Jewish Passover,
as it's called in this passage of Scripture, because it was
a Jewish feast that God gave to His people. Now, John writes
of the Passover, and he's the only Gospel writer that does,
four times in his Gospel, and they form a kind of chronology
of the Lord's ministry. as they cover about three and
a half years which was the extent of his earthly ministry while
he was here preaching the gospel. The last Passover mentioned was
the time of the crucifixion. So here's his first Passover,
it's shortly after his baptism. And the last Passover mentioned
by John was the one just before he was baptized with fire. He
went to the temple, it says. There he found a loathsome sight. The temple had been reduced to
a place of merchandise. The apostle spoke in that kind
of language of those that entered the Church secretly or unawares. Peter called them merchandisers
of men's souls. This begins the understanding
of the true meaning of this passage. This passage is about Jesus Christ,
our Passover, who was slain for us, and is the only means by
which God passes over us in judgment. If you don't have Christ, God
will not pass over you in judgment. And remember, the old Passover
was a picture and a type of the Lord Jesus Christ, and Scripture
says in Corinthians that He is our Passover, or our Paschal
Lamb, our Lamb of God, slain from the foundation of the world.
Men have found many ways in their depraved minds to avoid God's
judgment, or at least believe they do. The first way is to
merchandise the sacrifices. That's what we find here. Those
that sold oxen and sheep and doves. And the order of mention
of those beasts denotes the value of the sacrifice. Oxen were for
the rich people and doves were for the poor people. They could
only afford to offer up a dove, but God would accept it. Now
the order is not important, but that's the way it's set up. The
buyers were probably visitors. Generally, the Jewish people
didn't buy their stock, they gave their own stock. They picked
one out of their own flock to offer up to the Lord. So these
people were probably visitors or Gentiles. And like most people,
they sought to take part in a feast, as men want to do. They want to involve themselves
in any festive activity, and this was a big deal. Passover
was a big deal. The false church has made much
of this economic tactic of selling things. I saw the other day,
and I couldn't believe it, but I actually saw it. It was amazing.
There was one Catholic church. I couldn't find out where it
was, but it was a selling acreage in heaven. You could buy a plot
of land in heaven. course they've been selling indulgences
for years that's why the reformation came about because they were
selling pieces of the cross supposedly and pieces of Simon Peter's foreskin
they were selling nails and things like that and saying you buy
this and your relatives can get out of purgatory and purgatory
was something they invented which was a limbo between heaven and
earth that people paid enough money they could get you out
of this situation, this purgatory, which the word purgatory means
to purge, and enter you into glory. They sold his indulgences
and that's why Martin Luther went crazy and nailed the ninety-six
theses to the door of Worms to tell them that this could not
go on, that salvation was not by this way. Salvation was by
grace through faith. That's how the Reformation started
because they were merchandising men's souls. That's what men
are doing today. The false church has made much
of this economic tactic. Just listen to men talk. The
currency of the purchaser is human merit. That's the currency. The currency of their purchase
is self-righteousness, works for righteousness and law-keeping.
That's what men sell in order to buy salvation. It is the legal
tender of the merchandise of men's souls. With spending their
works and will, they think they have purchased God's favor. Men
believe that. Men believe that going to church
or giving or reading their Bibles or praying is actually counting
something that would obligate God to do something for them.
That's the language that's being used in the religion of this
day. But the fact is, that ain't going
to work. That ain't going to work. Modern religion is all
about filthy lucre. They cry, as it says in Jeremiah,
the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the
Lord are these. The utter fallacy of religion
is to believe that the thing which has already been fully
paid for is up for sale, and it's not. It's not up for sale. They believe it can be purchased
with the filthy rags of their own religious purses. That holy
transaction, we know, according to Scripture, is FINISHED! That
was a transaction between the Son of God and God Himself, and
the people who were the OBJECTS of that transaction are ETERNALLY
POSSESSED! They are called God's purchased
possession. When you see the word peculiar,
speaking of the saints in the New Testament, we see the word
peculiar. That word means purchased. a peculiar people, a purchased
people. We understand that, don't we?
We understand what it is to buy something, to make a final payment
on something, to own it, to get the title of it. We don't expect
anybody to come back and say we need to pay more or anything
like that. This is a finished deal. But
men believe that by their deeds and by their works they obligate
God. They purchase their salvation
with these things. That's what's going on in the
temple here. That's what's going on in the temple. When our Lord
saw this shopping center firmly ensconced in God's house, His
anger was kindled. In verse 15, it says, And He made a scourge of
small cords, and He drove them out of the temple, and the sheep
and the oxen, and poured out the changers' money, and overturned
a table. He needs to rip that place up.
He ripped it up. I thought about this and in fact
every time I've read this account or in the account of the other
that he planted a whip of cords it says in another place. He
made a scourge, a whip, a cat of nine tails. And this cannot
be manufactured quickly. So I imagine these guys are still
doing their money changing. Here's this fella. He hasn't
said anything yet. And he sits down on a stool maybe
or on a rock on the side of the temple there and starts some
courts to get where they knew it or not often wondered these
religious retailers even paid attention as this man patiently
planted this weapons soon to be employed on their backsides
what religion think in this day they saw jesus in this not like
that Namby Pamby Jesus had no power,
just sweetness and kindness, no vengeance. They just don't
read the scriptures, what he said to the Pharisees. He said, you're a bunch of vipers.
He said, you're snakes. He said, you're open graves.
outside they painted the coffin all pretty and white but inside
it's just dead men's bones you're unclean and undone he says you're
two-fold if you get a convert to your religion you make them
two-fold more the child of hell than you are he didn't have nice
things to say about these people he was tough on religion now
he was awful kind of poor old wretched sinner what religion think today if
Christ presented himself after he had planted some cords and
walked into a church to start to clean out the place. I doubt, I expect they would
be driven from the temple by their own sensitivity about being
defended, wouldn't they? Being offended today. But on
this day, it was a lash that drove them out. They and their
livestock, their display tables overturned, their kiosks collapsed,
and their funds ended up on the floor. They are not welcome in
the Lord's temple. That's made plain. And they are
dismissed with prejudice. They are not a part of salvation. That's what that temple was about,
you see. It was the tabernacle first, then the wilderness, and
then the temple. And the things of the temple
were the same things in the tabernacle. You had the brazen altar where
the burnt offerings were made. You had the brazen labor where
the priest washed their hands. You had the golden altar right
before the curtain that divided it from the mercy seat. You had
the table of showbread, which had pierced bread and pictured
Christ. You had the light stand, the lamp stand, which pictured
Christ, the light of the world. And inside behind that curtain,
you had the Ark of the Covenant. once a year the high priest went
in to offer the day of atonement. All of that was about one thing. The curtains, the white curtains,
linen spoke of Jesus Christ righteous. The brass spoke of his ability
to withstand the fire of judgment. The gold represented his royalty.
The silver represented his blood. Everything in there was about
Christ and it was just made bigger and more prominent. when they
built the temple. It took 46 years to build that
temple, but inside that temple was exactly the same thing. The brazen altar, brazen laver,
the three elements in the holy place, and the Ark of the Covenant,
the Most Holy, divided by that curtain that was rent when Christ
said it is finished. It was rent from top to bottom.
All of that was about Christ. So this temple is not about men. It's not about merchandising.
It's not about making money. It's not about money at all.
It's about Jesus Christ. That's what this whole book is
about. That's what it's all about. And what our Lord is saying,
these people who are so involved in religion, making money off
of it, He says, you're not part of it. I have nothing to do with
you. Like those who stood before Him
in Matthew chapter 7 and said, didn't we prophesy in thy name?
didn't we do great wonders in thy name? Didn't we cast out
devils in thy name? Didn't we straighten out people's
lives? Weren't we good at psychology? Didn't we do that? He looked
at them and he says, depart from me. Now remember, they said,
didn't we do this in your name? In your name. That's what they
say today. This is in Jesus' name. In Jesus'
name. He said, depart from me, ye that
work iniquity. I never knew you. They worked
iniquity in the name of Jesus. And he cast them out. He said,
I never knew you. Depart from me, you that work
iniquity. They are not part of salvation. That alone belongs
to Christ. This is what it's about. Who
wields this whip to run them off. Salvation is of the Lord,
and the first to feel the pain are those who would have their
contribution honored. when they had no contribution
at all. The floor has been cleared and the only one left is the
only one of significance and that's Jesus Christ. In verse
16, our Lord gives the reason for doing this and the authority
He has for doing it. In verse 16, He said unto them
that so does take these things hence make not my father's house
and house of merchandise. He says this temple is his father's
house. And in one of the other gospels
he said it's the God's house. In another he said it's the Lord's
house. Here he says, because John, remember, presents Jesus
Christ as God, as the Son of God. Matthew represents Him as
King. Luke represents Him as the Son
of Man. Mark represents Him as the Servant of God. And John
represents Him as the Son of God. He said, this is my Father's
house, and you've turned it into a den of thieves. This is my
Father's house. Now it says something about the
Son having power over His own house over in Hebrews chapter
3. hebrews chapter three in verse
six it says this but christ as a son over his own house whose
house are we if we hold fast to confidence and rejoicing of
hope for him firm to the end he's the son and the ruler over
his own house he said this is my father's house what was he
saying what was he saying he's saying i'm god i'm the son of
god and i'm god he's the son of god and this is his house
And when his disciples heard these words, they remembered
the words of David back in Psalm 69, in verse 9. The zeal of thine
house hath eaten me up. That's what they say in verse
17. And his disciples remembered
that, what was written in Psalms. The zeal of thine house hath
eaten me up. Now what's interesting about that is that those were
the words of David and were concerning his suffering and reproach that
he was under at the time. But here, in this instance, it's
used for the Lord's deity and power and glory. This shows,
once again, that the New Testament gives spiritual understanding
to the Old Testament. You see many verses like that,
you look at them in the context of the Old Testament, and you
think, okay. Then we get the New Testament
quoted in the strangest places. we understand that's what they
meant spiritually that's what they meant I remember Dave Lambert
many years ago when he started coming I think it was Crow started
talking to him first was you started talking to Dave Lambert
first about coming to church anyway he come up here and I
was in the Old Testament I think it was in the book of Numbers
and he was just sat over there just aghast afterwards he said
I didn't know that I said you got to understand that all the
Old Testament is true and it means more, it means something
else. And here we have it, when our
Lord said what He said about His Father's house, they quoted
David, the zeal of thine house is eating me up, eating me up. And when the Jews in the temple
required of the Lord a sign, they were asking what right He
had to overthrow the temple merchants. give us a sign why you do these
things and under whose authority he did it verse 18 then answered
the jews and said unto him what sign showest thou unto us seeing
that thou doest these things and his answer and their response
is a reminder of the difference between the flesh and the spirit
it's a reminder look at verse nineteen and twenty and jesus
said And this is an odd and wondrous statement when you think about
it. Here the Jews are standing in the temple. This took 46 years
to build and it's been around for quite a while. Been used
for the last 400 years when God was silent and hadn't had a prophet.
And here Jesus Christ said, He said, destroy this temple and
I'll raise it up in three days. You know, I bet the disciples
went, destroy this temple and I'll
raise it up again in three days." And then they said that. What
that is is a statement of spiritual importance, spiritual power. And they answered in the flesh.
We'll see this really demonstrated in Chapter 3 with Nicodemus,
but we'll get there later. Then said the Jews, forty and
six years was this temple in building and thou will rear it
up in three days. They're talking about a natural
thing. He's talking about a spiritual thing and they don't get it. They don't get it. They can't
get it because the flesh always pays attention to the flesh,
never to the spirit. The spirit always pays attention
to the spirit and never to the flesh. He speaks of things that cannot
be understood can you understand that? Could you understand that?
And he said that to you. I said to you, tear down this
church in three days. Tear down this church. This church
was built in 1945. It's been here a long time. Tear
down this church and I'll fix it back up in three days. He
said, he's crazy. That's what they were thinking. He speaks of things that cannot
be understood. saved by revelation, by God teaching
us the meaning of it. He stood in this sacred structure
wherein resided all the furniture that pictured God's grace, but
was not the substance thereof, and spoke the impossible. Tear
down this temple, and I'll raise it up in three days. And the
flesh says, No way! That's crazy talk! They could
not know that He spoke of His death? of his burial and his
resurrection or that this physical temple that they stood in that
moment was but a figure of good things yet to come. They didn't
know that. He spoke of his body. He spoke
of his life. He spoke of his death. He spoke
of himself being all of salvation from the brazen altar to the
ark of the covenant. Verse 21, but he spake of the
temple. they didn't know in fact the
disciples didn't know either the disciples didn't get it he
spoke of his church those for whom he would die and quicken
from the dead the temple of the Lord who is his fullness and
of whom he is the head that's how the language is used over
in Ephesians chapter 2 beginning with Ephesians chapter 1 I remember
the first time I actually read this passage, and it absolutely
dumbfounded me, and I was overwhelmed, and I'll be honest with you,
I ain't got over it yet. Ephesians chapter 1, verse 22,
And hath put all things under his feet, and gave him to be
the head over all things to the church. Look at this next phrase. The church, which is his body,
the fullness of Him that filleth all. The church, those for whom Christ
died, are His fullness, what fills Him up. Now He fills all
things, but His fullness is those for whom He died, the church
over whom He is head. In chapter 2 of Ephesians Verse
19 says, Now therefore ye are no more strangers and foreigners,
but fellow citizens with the saints, and of the household
of God, and are built upon the foundation of the apostles and
the prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief cornerstone,
in whom all the building, fitly framed together, groweth into
an holy temple in the Lord. in whom ye also
are built together for the habitation of God through the Spirit." God
lives in His people, His temple, of whom Christ is the head, and
His disciples, when they heard this, they were as confused as
the Jews were because they didn't get this until about three and
a half years later. this is the first real message
that the lord is first real message went to their form before you
ever preach for you recently and his disciples they did three
years rest his did body and rule stone
role then they get when they're full Verse 22, He was risen from the
dead. His disciples remembered that
He had said this unto them, and they believed the Scripture,
and the Word of Jesus Christ was saved, not till after the
Resurrection. The Resurrection was a glorious
event, a glorious event. Paul said of the resurrection,
if there was no resurrection, then we're in trouble. We're
in big trouble. Look over at 1 Corinthians chapter
15. 1 Corinthians chapter 15 beginning
with verse 12. He says, Now if Christ be preached
that He rose from the dead, I'll say some among you that there
is no resurrection of the dead. But if there be no resurrection
of the dead, then Christ is not risen. And if Christ be not risen,
then our preaching is in vain. What I'm doing right now is a
waste of time. And your believing is also in vain. If Christ be
not risen, you can have all the faith you want to, it don't mean
a thing. He goes on to say, Yea, and we are found false witnesses,
because we go around telling people He's risen, because we
testified of God that He raised up Christ, whom He raised not
up, if so be the dead rise not. For if the dead rise not, then
is not Christ raised. And if Christ be not raised,
your faith is in vain, and ye are yet in your sins, your sins
have not been forgiven. because he was raised by a justification
before the Romans, 3 and 4. Then they also which fall asleep
in Christ, they're not going to heaven, they're not going
to be expended, they're perished, they're rotting in the grave.
If in this life only we have hope in Christ, then we are of
all men most miserable. This is all of it. there is no
resurrection. If there is a resurrection, thank
the Lord there is a resurrection. Back in Ephesians chapter 2 again
verse 5 and 6, that's the language used when Jesus Christ raised
from the dead that you were raised from the dead also because you
were in Him. In Ephesians chapter 2, verse five and six says, Even
when we were dead in sin, God hath quickened us together
with Christ, by grace your saved, and hath raised us up, and made
us to sit in heavenly places in Jesus Christ. And then in
Colossians chapter three, and I'll finish with these, verse chapter three verse one
that word is kai and the original means since since ye then be
risen with christ seek those things which are above where
christ sitteth on the right hand of god set your affection on
things above not on things of the earth for you are dead and
your life is hid with Christ in God. When Christ, who is our
life, shall appear, then shall we also appear with Him in glory. Tear this temple down. I'll raise
it up again in three days. What a wondrous thing. Father,
bless us to understand and pray in Christ's name. Amen. Don't
forget, Sunday service, 11 o'clock service only, no dinner.