Focus: The way to God is through Jesus. As you approach God through Jesus, take seriously his body, the church.
Function: To impress upon the people that Jesus, as God-in-the-flesh, temples or dwells in the church and gives us access to God the Father.
Text: John 2:12-22
When I met Gary in 1972, I learned quickly that Gary’s wife was a member of the Salvation Army and that Gary thought of her and himself as devout Christians. One night, during a break at my factory job as a machine operator, Gary and I were discussing Jesus. I mentioned in passing that Jesus was the sinless Son of God.
At that moment, Gary stopped me and said, “Not quite! For surely when Jesus took out that whip and cleansed the temple court from merchants, money changers, and cattle alike, Jesus’ anger was out of control and therefore he sinned.” I was startled, to say the least, and I did not know what to say to Gary at that time.
Perhaps you are like Gary. If there is one story in the Bible that many Christians can do without, then surely it’s this story of Jesus, running around the temple court with a whip, driving out cattle and merchants alike. I think I know why that is: many of us have come to domesticate Jesus. We tend to think of him as a loveable, huggable fuzz ball. We welcome pictures of Jesus’ humility, his kindness and forgiving spirit. We dig his suffering as a sign of grace and obedience. But when it comes to Jesus using a whip during an outburst of zeal or anger, we want to temper or tame him, so that he fits our image of what Jesus really is like.
If you picture Jesus as a domesticated fuzz ball, then today’s sermon is for you. If you think of Jesus as a wet blanket, you need to encounter him anew in this story. And if we think of the church as a shopping mall and of ourselves as pick-and-choose customers whose needs must be satisfied by the church, then the Bible has a word for you and me.
For you see, this story of Jesus cleansing the temple area teaches us that Jesus is the way to God. And as we approach God through Jesus, we must take seriously his body, the church. Today I want to drive home the message that Jesus, as God-in-the-flesh, temples or dwells in the church and gives us access to God the Father. And as I do so, I want to talk about hindsight, insight, and foresight.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
We begin with Hindsight: The apostle John writes his gospel about 35 years after the Lord Jesus died, rose again, and ascended into heaven. During those 35 years, the Holy Spirit, through the work of the apostles and early Christians, has been busy gathering people from all over the known world into a community called the “Church,” the body of Christ.
As John tells the story of Jesus, he does so by emphasizing Jesus’ identity, Jesus’ wondrous work or signs, and Jesus’ significance for the salvation of the world and human kind. In other words, as a close disciple and friend of Jesus, John is looking back as he writes his stories and eyewitness accounts of Jesus. The story of Jesus with a whip in the temple courts is a hindsight story.
Do you want proof? Then enter the story. When Jesus responded to the Jew’s demand for a sign to prove his authority to this ruinous work of cleansing the temple, Jesus said: “Destroy this temple, and I will raise it again in three days.” The Jews who asked for a sign, and the disciples who witnessed Jesus’ cleansing of the temple courts did not understand what Jesus was saying. In fact, the apostle John tells us in vs. 22 “After he was raised from the dead, his disciples recalled what he had said.” In other words, it is through the perspective or glasses of hindsight, that you and I hear the story of Jesus cleansing the temple.
This hindsight perspective means that the resurrection of
Jesus colors our understanding of the temple cleansing. In fact, there is a
close relationship between this huge temple in Jerusalem and Jesus’ body. The
one points to the other. We are dealing here with a hindsight perspective.
This hindsight perspective is also found in John’s observation
that the disciples began to understand Jesus’ actions in the temple court in
light of the O.T. scriptures. Psalm 69:9, for example, says: “I am a
stranger to my brothers, and alien to my own mother’s sons; for zeal for your
house consumes me….” Looking back from the perspective of Jesus’
resurrection and considering Jesus’ signs or claims about himself that he is
the Messiah, the Christ, John remarks in vs. 17 that “(Jesus’) disciples
remembered that it is written, ‘Zeal for your house will consume me.’”
Clearly, hindsight is the perspective in this story.
That
perspective of hindsight leads us now to Insights: There are at least 3
such insights. Number One: The temple in Jerusalem has become a place
of commerce and profit; it is no longer the place where we meet God. For
centuries, God revealed himself to his people by creating a place of prayer and
worship.
Think
of the tabernacle or tent of meeting during the desert wanderings; think of the
building of the temple in Jerusalem by King Solomon; and later on, think of the
rebuilding of the temple by King Herod in the decades before Jesus’ birth and
ministry. Through the mediation of the high priest, God would receive the
offerings of his people, and through pilgrimages and daily temple worship services,
God would meet with his people.
Now
Jesus took offence at the Jews making the temple area a commercial place. The
emphasis in Jesus’ days was no longer on God meeting his people through
worship, sacrifices, and prayers. Rather, the emphasis had shifted to
a business model, where
profits became the focus—not prayers. The courtyard of temple worship and
prayer to God had turned into a shopping mall and a lucrative business for the
Jewish leaders and temple priests. Jesus’ whipping actions demonstrate that he
was angry at such a perversion. The temple was no longer a meeting place with
God, but had become a religious fundraiser for the Jews.
Insight
Number Two: If you want to meet
with God, you must now go to another temple. When the Jews approached Jesus
and asked him to justify his actions by giving them a sign, they wanted to know
who this Jesus is. In his temple cleansing, they recognized that Jesus acts
with a superhuman or supernatural authority. They wanted to know where that
authority came from.
Jesus responded to them with a typical rabbinical saying.
Rabbinical sayings are like “double-speak,” or like riddles. Such sayings tend
to hold in tension two truths. In this case, the Lord Jesus refers to the
temple in Jerusalem in the same breath as the temple of his body. Listen: “Destroy
this temple, and I will raise it again in three days.”
Now the Jews thought that Jesus referred to the temple
complex in Jerusalem. The very context of Jesus cleansing the temple court
leads them to believe so. But Jesus is pointing to himself. He is the temple of
God. And Jesus’ point is simple: if you want to meet God, you must now come to
another temple.
In fact, Jesus predicted the destruction of the temple in
Jerusalem. That destruction will be typified and realized on Good Friday, when
Jesus is nailed to the cross and dies. But here is the sign: Jesus will raise
up the temple. That is, Jesus will rise from the dead. Therefore, get used to
this idea: if you want to meet with God, you must go to another temple.
Insight
Number Three: Jesus’ makes an
astounding claim. For you see, in a cryptic, veiled way Jesus is saying: if
you want to meet with God, you must now come to me! For I am God-in-the-flesh.
God meets us in Jesus Christ.
Jesus is the eternal Son of God, who has taken on our
flesh. Elsewhere, the Scriptures tell us that Jesus is “…the radiance of
God’s glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by
his powerful word” (Hebrews 1:3). And the apostle Paul says in
Colossians 1:19 that “…God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in
him….”
If you have a
domesticated picture of Jesus, tempered by your own notions of what a
benevolent person like Jesus is supposed to be or do, I suggest that you take
another look. That person with a whip in his hand, chasing the money changers
and animals from the temple court—is no other than God-in-the-flesh. He is the
Creator of the universe, bundled up in our humanity, making his dwelling in our
midst. It is to him that we must go. It is through him that we have access to
the triune God—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
These insights gained from hindsight now confront us with
matters of foresight. And matters of foresight confront us with questions for
today and tomorrow. They call for action on our part, for introspection, and at
times for repentance or a turning of our ways.
For
example, if you think that there is more than one way to God today, you lack
foresight based on the insight from scripture. For Jesus’ claim in the story
tells us that we must now seek our way to God through Jesus. That is, we must
come to grips or terms with Jesus. You can’t dismiss him; you can’t bypass him
and say, “I will find God by way of my own spirituality, or religiosity, or
good clean living.” There is no other name under the heavens by which we
can be saved. Jesus is the way to God the Father. He himself has reminded us of
that very truth when he said to his disciples: “No one comes to the
Father but by me.”
As you come to Jesus, you must acknowledge that he is not
your “huggable teddy bear of a Savior.” He is the eternal Son of
God-in-the-flesh. He is the Savior who offered up his body, who died on your
and my account, who paid the wages of our sins, who conquered the powers of sin
and death. And who is now seated at the right hand of God the Father. Jesus is
our King, our Lord, our God. To him we must go. Before him we bow and do his
bidding. Will you have this foresight and act upon this knowledge?
Secondly, when you come to Jesus Christ by faith and
unite with him through baptism and claim to be his follower, you and I must
learn from Jesus’ temple cleansing. You see, in his wisdom Jesus now temples in
the church. The church is the community where Jesus reveals himself and functions
as its head. He meets with us as the church; he receives our prayers and
worship; he speaks to us through the Word and Sacraments. And Jesus spreads his
influence through his body, the church.
When you seek to be part of the church, you must not
think of the church as a shopping mall; church members are not shoppers. We are
not customers who see the church as a supermarket or place of personal pleasure
or profit.
Christ temples in his body, the church. We are people who
receive and celebrate the gift of salvation, the forgiveness of sins, and the
promise of an eternal future on the restored, renewed creation with Christ in
our midst.
Christ invites anyone to
come to him for these gifts. And anyone who believes in Christ and the gospel
story of God may participate in the life of the church.
But you and I do not have the freedom to turn the church
into a shopping mall or convenience store. Nor may we treat the church with
contempt and re-make the church in our own “image,” where the church, for
example, becomes a lecture hall of philosophical ideas, or a free-for-all place
of accommodation for wild, riotous, and free-style living.
Oh, it’s true: the church is not a perfect place. After
all, we are broken, forgiven people, always in need of repentance and renewal.
But remember the words of the apostle Peter: (I Peter 2:4ff) “As you come to (Christ), the living Stone—rejected by men but
chosen by God and precious to him—you also, like living stones, are being built
into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices
acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.” Such is the church! A temple where Christ meets with us, and
where, through Christ, we meet the triune God—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
Glory
be to the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. As it was in the beginning,
is now, and always will be. World without end.
Amen.