John 2:13-22 – The Gospel of John

For being here, well done, for being one of the few that was able to register in time with our limited uh capacity.

Uh grab your phone or a Bible.

John chapter 2, uh 13.

John 2 · chapter mention

Really the 21.

Uh I'm gonna kick uh 23 to 25 into next week uh and put it into the discussion with Nicodemus.

We make transactions all the time.

You give money in a shop in exchange for goods or services or experiences.

You only get the thing that you want if you give the right amount.

Your job is a transaction as well.

You provide a uh a service, a benefit for your employer, and they remunerate you for it.

Or if you're a business owner, you provide a service or a good for customers and they pay you for that service or that good.

So it isn't really uh a question if you're uh an employee about whether or not your job, whether or not your boss loves you.

It's not really something you does my boss really love me, appreciate me, value me?

No, good bosses know the the added advantage and value of that.

Uh, but what you're looking for, by and large, is the uh remuneration at the end of the month if they simply just said, but I really appreciate you.

Uh I think you're really lovely.

You know, so yeah, and could you translate that into monetary terms uh and and place that into my bank account because I have rent to pay and things like that?

Uh sometimes we treat our relationships like that.

Sometimes uh sex and or even marriage can become transactional.

Both parties put into a relationship in order to maximize what they get out of it, they maximize their happiness.

And once your investment uh is more than your perceived return, then you think, well, this isn't a good transaction for me.

This isn't maximizing my happiness.

And and so people leave.

Transactions also take place in terms of our relationship with God.

You maybe you grew up in a culture uh where spiritual devotion was largely transactional.

You made your sacrifice, you paid your money, you did your pilgrimage, and the expectation was that the deity would look favorably upon you.

There are many reasons why people in our land have turned away from Roman Catholicism.

Uh, but surely one of them is because of the sense of this sort of meaningless transaction.

You go in, you do, you go through the motions, you say the prayers, and then you leave.

And it's not like we're immune from that.

You're not just to take kind of pop shots.

Have you ever come in here?

Maybe not here in the last month, but possibly.

Have you ever come to City Church and gone through the motions?

Done your duty, sang the songs, prayed the prayers, but it hasn't really done anything with your heart.

You do it out of an expectation that maybe God will be a bit more pleased with you, God will uh love you a little bit more, he'll look a bit more favorably upon you.

Or you do it, perhaps even worse, with a kind of cynical resignation that he doesn't really care either way.

Maybe one of the things that we can learn this morning as Christians is that Jesus does care.

Jesus does have an emotional response to our um perfunctory worship, our going through the motions, as we see Jesus getting angry here.

See, Jesus doesn't just care about the fact of our worship, but he cares also about the manner of it and the heart that lives behind it.

But in order to really understand what's going on here, we need to understand this morning what a temple is.

We need to understand what a temple is and what it's doing, because it's foreign to our mind.

If we don't understand what a temple is, what it exists to be, then we won't understand why Jesus claims what he does.

And we won't understand why that claim is so radical for our understanding of both our relationship with God and our lives today.

So let's first begin just by thinking about what is a temple.

In the ancient world, temples were hugely important.

It was one of the things that was a capital offense in the Roman world.

You couldn't desecrate a temple.

It was one of the things that you didn't do.

Didn't matter if the Romans didn't really particularly worship that god.

There was a capital offense if you desecrated a temple because they understood the importance of a temple.

A temple, essentially, is a place where heaven and earth overlaps.

It's where the eternal meets the temporal, it's where the supernatural and the natural, the material, kiss.

It's a cosmic crossroads.

That's what a temple is.

A temple was a place where the divine resided, where his, her, its presence was felt.

But it was also a place where human beings, you and I, bridged the gap that existed between us and the divine.

The ancients understood two things that we have lost.

They understood first that there is such a thing as absolute, transcendent, ultimate reality outside of the natural sphere in which we exist.

There is a power in the universe, and they described that power in lots of different ways, but they understood that it was there.

We've largely lost that, and we'll come to that in just a second.

But the second thing that they understood is that they understood that there was a gap.

That there was a gap between us and that transcendent reality.

That there was a gap between you and I and that power, that being, that God that needed to be bridged in some way.

Usually through a system of sacrifice or ritual participation.

They understood those things.

Now, to our ears, that all sounds quite bonkers and primitive.

To our ears, that's not perhaps what a temple is.

If you think about a temple, you might think about maybe an Eastern religion or maybe a Masonic temple, where strange secretive things happen and men are kind of rolling up their trouser leg and exposing their kind of left breast and things like that and making pledges and that sort of thing.

But by and large, in the West, we have been told and told ourselves that we have no need of temples.

That's why what Jesus is talking about and what Jesus is doing sounds so odd.

Because you see, for the last 200 years, since the Enlightenment, we've been told that there are no need for temples.

Why?

Because everything can be explained.

We've been told that there's nothing beyond the natural universe, there's nothing beyond the material, that everything can be seen through, everything can be explained away.

There is no transcendent deity, only the laws of nature and science that would ultimately guide us into a more perfect knowledge of the way the world worked.

And so the gap that you fill, it's not really a gap.

It's a result of your upbringing.

It's a result of institutions like the church or societies that have sought to repress you.

This is the kind of uh the idea that Rousseau has that you're all uh we're all born free.

Your man everywhere is born free, but everywhere is in chains.

Where do the chains come from?

The chains come from institutions.

And so the gap that you feel, that sense of uh you know, maybe guilt or shame or estrangement from true meaning, that's not anything transcendent.

That's not anything that is objectively true of everybody.

That is a result of your upbringing or the fact that the the church has has uh has constrained your true self.

And so what you need to do is throw off those those fetters and uh and live as though there is no gap.

Live your true, authentic, expressive self.

Once you've explained away those two things, there's no more need for temples.

But slowly I think things are changing.

People are searching again, looking for some deeper meaning, something more substantive, something that goes beyond the answers that the natural world can give us.

I think there are reasons for that.

Let me uh give you a couple.

I think one of the reasons why why people, maybe you here this morning, are kind of searching again, kind of post-Enlightenment.

Well, because one of the things that the Enlightenment promised us over the last 200 years is that really we would get to a point where there would be no more war, no more injustice, no more crime, no more racism, no more uh you know, all of those things.

You read uh early 20th century uh writers and philosophers about this, and they literally believed that, that the 20th century would be a place in which there would be no war.

And then 1914, 1939 came along and kind of disabused this idea that actually there are issues within humanity that are that are objective in a sense, that we can't just educate ourselves beyond.

And we're beginning to kind of grasp this idea that actually the Enlightenment doesn't hold all of the answers.

That maybe there might be a need for temples after all.

There still seems to be a problem of the human heart in terms of how we treat one another: injustices, racism, sexism.

I think the other reason why people are searching is because of the logical conclusion of saying that there's no ultimate reality.

C.S.

Lewis is really helpful in this, actually.

C.S.

Lewis has this idea of if you can see through everything, that is, if you can explain everything away, that uses this image of seeing through everything, if you see through everything, that's the same as living in an invisible universe.

That if you can, if everything is transparent, that is the same as being blind.

That if you can just explain everything away, you ultimately actually explain yourself away, your own rationale for existing.

And people say, no, there's got to be more than that.

And so Lewis again says that actually the reason why you see through something, the reason why you look through a window is in order to see the beautiful garden beyond.

The reason why science and the material, the reason why we're able to explain all of those things is so that we can see through them to something tangible, to something that is truly real, and behold that.

And I think that that is beginning to resonate more and more with us.

That we're the sense that we're made to see something deeper, something real with a capital R.

Something that cannot be explained away.

We long for that.

We long for that true reality, that lasting acceptance, that that infinite delight.

And being delighted in.

Put it onto our upbringing.

Well, I wouldn't be like this if my parents hadn't been X, Y, and Z.

Or I wouldn't be like this if I hadn't gone through that experience.

But we know that there's a there's a gap that we live lives that are in ways disconnected, not just from ourselves, one another, but from whatever that ultimate reality is.

The temple is the place where that gap is bridged.

For 200 years, we've been told you don't need temples, we've got laboratories, you don't need temples, we've got democracy, you don't need temples, we've got community services.

But perhaps we're beginning to realize that as good as those things are, and I'm not saying that there are being no advantages from the Enlightenment, please don't hear me say that.

All I'm saying is that we're beginning to realize perhaps that they cannot satisfy all the deepest longings of our hearts, they cannot bridge the gap between us and ultimate reality.

You see, this morning, if you're sitting here, if you don't see the need for a temple, what Jesus is doing won't make any sense.

If you don't see the need to be connected to an ultimate reality that is out there, and that there is a gap that exists between you and that, then all of what Jesus is doing is going to sound a bit mad.

It will make this passage simply about consumeristic religion.

Oh, well, you know, we shouldn't sell things at church, let's not have a bookstall.

But actually, the real surprise comes not in what Jesus does necessarily, but in what Jesus says.

So let's look at Jesus' claim.

Verse 18.

So the Jews, so Jesus has just overturned the tables.

We're gonna get to that all of that in a minute, but Jesus just overturned the tables in the temple.

He's drove driven out all of the animals and the money changers and all of those things.

And the Jews say to him in verse 18, What sign do you show us for doing these things?

Jesus answered them, destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.

The Jews said, It has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and you would raise it in three days.

But he was speaking about the temple of his body.

The physical temple in Jerusalem, uh, which existed up until 70 AD before it was finally destroyed by the the Romans, the physical temple in Jerusalem was for the Jews uh the place where human beings met God.

It's where the God of the Bible, Yahweh, had placed his presence, and it's where the gap between us and him was bridged.

It was their cosmic crossroads where heaven and earth overlapped.

It was an invitation back to that Edenic state, that state of Eden, that place of peace and harmony.

Before there was sin and injustice and darkness and discord and death.

But the implication of what Jesus is saying here is that that great stone structure that existed in Jerusalem, it was all a picture, Jesus is saying.

As grand as it was, it was a big signpost.

Now we talked about this last week, about the signs in John's gospel.

The thing about the signs is that they point to true reality, they point beyond themselves.

And Jesus is saying that the temple was doing that.

It was a sign pointing away from itself to him.

It was pointing to him.

That's what he means when he says, destroy this temple and I will raise it up in three days.

And John gives us that editorial note that he was talking about his body.

And so Jesus' claim here, remembering what we've just learned about what a temple does, Jesus' claim here is, I am the true temple.

I'm the place where heaven and earth overlap.

I am the ultimate reality that you seek.

I am the thing that you long for.

I am the thing that cannot be explained away.

I am the full, beautiful, good, and glorious revelation of the presence of God.

That's what the temple was.

The temple was where God had placed his presence.

And Jesus is saying, that's me.

Remember what John said at the start of his prologue in chapter one?

We have seen his glory.

The glory as of the only Son of the Father, full of grace and truth.

The glory of God has come and it dwells in Jesus.

You might remember in the Old Testament when Solomon, King Solomon, built the temple, and he prays this great prayer.

And what happens when he's finished the prayer?

The glory of God descends, and the priests can minister because they're so overwhelmed by it.

John is saying, In Jesus, the glory of God has come, has been made known to us.

Or back to that great Christmas hymn that we'll begin singing.

Hark the Herald Angels.

Veiled in flesh, the Godhead sea.

Veiled in flesh, the Godhead see.

The presence of God has come.

And so Paul in Colossians chapter 2 can say that in Jesus, in him, all the fullness of deity dwells bodily.

Colossians 2 · chapter mention

Jesus is saying, I am the full realization of everything that the temple had promised.

But he's also saying that my temple is different.

Jesus' temple is different.

In every other temple that you might go to, it's up to you to bridge the gap.

Remember those two things?

It's the presence of true ultimate reality, and it is a place where you bridge the gap.

But Jesus' temple is different because in every other temple you bridge the gap, you bring the sacrifice.

Not so with Jesus.

When Jesus drives out the animals, the sacrificial animals, he isn't just criticizing the commercialization of religion, though that is certainly part of it.

He's saying something much deeper, much more important for us this morning.

He's saying, I bridge the gap.

I am the presence of God on earth with you, and I bridge the gap between you and God.

All of that estrangement, all of that disconnection that you feel, all of that shame, that guilt, I take that.

I bridge that gap.

I bring the sacrifice, not you.

I am the sacrifice.

He's saying that he is the one who makes us worthy to come into the divine presence.

Think of Eden momentarily.

Indulge me for a moment.

Eden in the very start of the book of Genesis is this picture of perfect harmony between God and man.

Of peace, shalom, that deep abiding peace.

And we broke it, we destroyed it as a humanity, and we were sent out from the garden.

Can you remember what God placed at the entrance to the garden?

The entrance to the presence of God.

It was an angel, wasn't it?

What did the angel have?

The angel we're told had a flaming sword that flashed every way.

The idea being that you couldn't get past the sword.

The sword would get you if you tried to go back into the presence of God.

The only way back into the presence of God was to go under the sword.

Jesus is saying that I go under.

Under the sword for you to bring you back into the presence of God.

I quench the flame of the sword that brings you back to Eden restored.

I bring the sacrifice.

He is the temple that makes all other temples obsolete.

No more sacrifices.

No more ritual.

He is ultimate reality.

And he bridges the gap.

So what?

Why does any of that matter?

Well, let's look at three things as we conclude.

It transforms with three things, three ways that this matters.

It transforms our relationships in three dimensions.

First of all, it transforms our relationship with God.

Secondly, it transforms how we see ourselves.

And thirdly, it transforms our relationship with others.

First, it transforms our relationship with God.

Now, because you don't bring the sacrifice anymore, it means that Christianity, as a as a worldview, as a religion, as a faith system, isn't about transaction.

It's grace-based.

It's based on God's undeserved, unmerited kindness to you.

Christianity is not transactional.

It is the thing that snatches you out of the transactions of the world and gives you hope for something beyond.

You don't come to perform a transaction here this morning.

That's not what Christianity is.

Christianity is based on God's unmerited favor and kindness to you, though you do not deserve it, though I do not deserve it.

One of the problems with empty religion, the empty religion of our past here in Ireland, is that it was transactional.

It was impersonal.

You went through the motions, you said the right prayers, you took the Eucharist in the hope that God would like you, look after you.

You performed a transaction.

There was nothing personal about it.

And again, before we sit in judgment over the church of the past, it is entirely possible that you are here this morning out of a desire to leverage God.

You come here and you'll go through the motions and you'll pray your prayers and you'll take the Lord's Supper, and in the back of your mind, you're like, Well, God should like me more.

You're engaging in a transaction.

And that's what had happened to the temple.

The temple had been turned into a place of transaction, into a market.

So at the start, verse 13, the Passover of the Jews was at hand, and the Jews uh and Jesus went up to the temple.

In the temple, he found that they were selling oxen and sheep and pigeons and the money changers sitting there.

And making a whip of cords, he drove them all out of the temple and the sheep and the oxen.

He poured out the coins of the money changers and overturned the temple or overturned the tables.

And he told those who sold pigeons, take these away, this is key, take these away, do not make my father's house a house of trade, or do not turn my father's house into a marketplace.

What had the Jews done?

They had turned the father's house into a place of trade, into a marketplace.

It was one large cosmic vending machine.

You put in your sacrifice coin, you bought your lamb, you took it to the priests, they did their thing.

Quid pro quo, you were golden.

Didn't matter about your heart.

The problem, and this is a problem not just for the ancient Jews, but it's a problem for us, that if you live in this kind of transactional, this cold, impersonal relationship with God, the problem with that, you never really know where you stand.

Have I done enough?

Have I appeased him enough?

If things go wrong in your life, well, did I do something wrong?

And so it fills you, I think, ultimately, with anxiety.

Jesus says, no, it's not a market, it's the Father's house.

You aren't in a business deal, you're in a family.

And this is the thing.

You will either approach your relationship with God as a transaction, giving in order to get, or you will come by grace, knowing your need of Him, ready simply to receive.

Nothing in my hand I bring.

Only to your cross I cling.

Naked come to thee for dress.

Helpless look to thee for grace.

You will either come looking to get things, or you will come looking to get him.

There could be two people in this room this morning in the same church, but worshiping at two different temples.

You might be here and be in the marketplace.

Or you might be here and be in the Father's house.

It transforms your relationship with God.

Secondly, it transforms your relationship with yourself.

That is, to put it more bluntly, you're not in charge anymore.

The Jews turn to Jesus in verse 18, and when they say, What sign do you show us for doing these things?

Essentially, they're saying, Who the hell do you think you are?

Who gives you the authority to do what you're doing?

Imagine for a second I came to your house or your apartment, and when I walked in, I looked at the way you'd arrange things and said, um, could you move that sofa over over there?

I really don't like that painting.

If you could just kind of take it down.

Uh actually the table needs to be just turned 90 degrees.

That that that would be better.

Somebody came into your house, your apartment, and did that, you turn around and say, What authority uh do you do you have to do these things?

Like, who the hell are you?

They look at Jesus and say, What authority do you have to do these things?

But the answer is that Jesus is the owner.

I can come into my house and rearrange my furniture however I want.

Because I own it.

It's my stuff.

Jesus is the owner.

That means that when you come to him by faith, you are made part of that temple and he owns you.

The consequence of that is that he might rearrange your life.

Sometimes, as we saw last week, when Jesus turns the water into wine, sometimes he'll fill your table.

Other times he'll flip it.

He's the owner.

People often think if I become a Christian, will I have to give up X?

Will I have to become Y?

Will I have to vote for Z?

The answer is that every follower of Jesus who comes to him, the tables get flipped in some way.

It's kind of unavoidable.

Because he owns it.

He owns you.

The answer is to begin a journey of faith with him and to follow him wherever he leads, because he is good.

He's the one who satisfies the deepest longings of your hearts and bridges the gap between you and him.

So let him flip some tables.

Finally, it transforms your relationship with others.

The place where the market was set up here matters.

So let me explain that to you just briefly.

The temple in Jerusalem had multiple courts expanding outwards.

There was the uh there was the uh the the main temple court where the sacrifices happened, that's where the altar was, that's where the priests, only the priests could minister there.

And then you would move outward, and there'd be the court of the men, right?

And so that's where the men would pray.

Then out from that again, there would be the court of the women.

I'm just describing how it was, right?

There would be the court of the women, and they couldn't come any further.

And then beyond that again were the court of the Gentiles, the court of the non-Jews, the court of the outsider.

Where do you think they decided to set up the market?

They put it there.

They put it where the outsiders came to meet God.

They put it in the court of the Gentiles.

In other gospel accounts, like in Mark's account, we read that Jesus said that the temple was supposed to be a house of prayer for the nations.

That the temple, in a sense, it's supposed to be for the Gentiles.

They were supposed to be welcome in those courts.

The Jews were supposed to welcome in the outsider, the person who was different to them.

But instead of creating a place of prayer or of solemn communing with God for those who are far off, there was the clamor of cattle and haggling over money.

The money changer thing is basically people were coming from all over the Roman Empire with different types of money, uh, and only one currency was accepted in the temple.

That's what that is.

But the point is that there was all this noise going on in the place where the outsider was coming to worship God.

Imagine for a second, if uh if Bond was playing you right now, I don't imagine that I'd have your attention.

Daniel Craig might be more beguiling than me.

Although I I can't think why.

Imagine somebody coming in to visit us, somebody who maybe hasn't been to church for years and years and years, somebody who feels nervous coming in, they feel like that outsider.

And we've got bond going on, and I we're and I'm trying to kind of teach you from the Bible, we're trying to pray prayers and sing songs, and there's all of this clamor.

That outsider would not be able to meet with God.

If Jesus is the temple, then he is the place of welcome and of worship for those outside of the family of God.

Where those who think I could never be a Christian.

Those who think God could never love me.

Not after what I've done, not after the choices that I've made.

No, Jesus is the one who Jesus is the place where the outsiders come.

It is the place that they are invited to draw near to.

And that should transform how we do things.

Because 1 Peter tells us again that we are the temple.

As we gather together, we're built as living stones into that temple of God.

And we're supposed to show forth his righteousness and his justice and his grace.

And we're supposed to be that place that welcomes outsiders, both corporately and individually, in our in our response to people who aren't like us, who are different to us.

And so it's worth kind of asking ourselves: in what ways do we create a cultural barrier that distracts people from engaging with God?

Are we using jargon language, Christian ease, that alienates people?

It should challenge us personally as well.

Do I create a welcome for the outsider by my demeanor and who I choose to interact with after church and who I choose to go to lunch with or interact with, who I choose to engage with?

If Jesus is the temple, then everything is different.

Personal, intimate relationship with him is possible.

Do you have that?

Or is your relationship with him cold, impersonal, and transactional?

Is your relationship with him up and down because you think on you keep on thinking that you've done your bit and God isn't keeping his half of the bargain?

If you think that you're still in the marketplace.

Come rather to the Father's house.

Or do you shy away from Jesus because you don't want him to change you too much?

He is the ultimate temple that you are seeking.

He says, Come to me, and I will transform your life.

It'll be scary.

But it's what you want, and it's deep down what you know you need.