John: Jesus Anger and Love

All right.

So we've been going through the book of John very slowly.

I don't know if we'll go through the whole book of John all at one time.

We might eventually take a break and go somewhere else.

But where we've been the last six or seven weeks is the first week, you know, we talked about Jesus being the logo.

He's the creative energy of the world, that the world was created through him.

And we talked about Jesus as grace and truth, and we talked about Jesus as the way of freedom, and we talked about that God has unconditional love for us, and we see this in Jesus, that we see this objectively, historically in the person of Jesus.

We see God's humility, we see God's unconditional love for us.

So what we've been seeing is we've been seeing that Jesus is more than a model for like for us.

Okay, good, right?

It's good, it's true, but he's more than that.

I mean, he's more than just a teacher or rabbi.

He came to be that which we are not.

He came and he lived perfectly because we don't.

Because we did not.

It's God humbling himself that we might be found in Jesus and that we might be free.

Right?

I mean, it all begins with this big statement of confession.

I'm not as I should be.

I'm not even sure I'm better than I used to be.

I mean, I think I hope hopefully I am.

And in some ways I look and I go, okay, well, that got better.

You know, I used to be like, okay, that got better.

But then I'm seeing, like, you know, impati I thought I I thought my patience got better, and then I start to see it kind of come up in a different way, and you're like, I thought that was handled, and then it comes over here, you know, and okay, well, we got some stuff under control.

I got better over here, but now it's like, oh, I have so much issues with control.

I didn't even I have no idea how much issues I had with control.

And this is just like surfacing.

I don't feel any better.

Maybe I've gotten better.

I don't know.

I don't feel I don't feel like I've gotten any better.

This is how Paul felt like, I think.

I think I think this is how we should feel like.

The good news is that the goal is not really for us to get better.

I mean, when it is, it's not, it doesn't turn into a real healthy thing.

I think we become a little neurotic, we become very self-obsessed.

We're not very free.

The point is for us to go deeper and deeper in understanding God's love for us, what he's done for us, that Jesus is that which we are not.

Last week we talked about that story at the beginning of John chapter 2 at the wedding.

John 2 · chapter mention

This is a great story, right?

I mean, last week was just fun because it was Jesus at a wedding, at a celebration, and the party's shutting down, the wine has run out, you know, the host is going to be humiliated, the people are gonna have to go back to like normal life.

I mean, the party's over, and Jesus comes in and he creates more wine.

Not just more wine, a lot of wine, about 900 glasses or so of wine.

And and not just, you know, like not Trader Joe wine.

He created really good wine, really good wine.

I mean the guy who tasted it said, you know, you save the best wine for last.

And then we get this story today, the end of John chapter 2, and Jesus gets angry.

John 2 · chapter mention

And you're I mean, you're kind of going, you know, where's like the party Jesus?

Like I like the party, I really like the party Jesus at the beginning of John chapter 2, and now we see him in a temple, and he is raging with anger.

John 2 · chapter mention

To talk about this, I think we have to talk about what we like to talk about is Downton Abbey.

We have to start with that, kind of our beginning point.

If you don't like Downton Abbey, it's just because you haven't watched it or you haven't given enough time.

Here's why at least I like it, here's why I think a lot of us like it is because that stubborn, craggy dowager, right?

The older lady.

And then she has these moments where she's so kind to like an enemy that you thought, well, she would never be like that to that person.

Or or Thomas, I hate that Thomas.

Don't you just oh I mean, Thomas, horrible, horrible person in the show, right?

And and then there's this moment where you you get to see this like very fragile person that actually has a heart.

And then you get like Mr.

Bates, who's this wise, kind, gentleman, and you you get this glimpse of rage and anger.

This is why the show feels real.

This is how we are, not flat, right?

And this is the difference between flat and round characters.

Um I mean, the reason why we put down a book or we turn a show off is because the characters feel flat.

When a character is flat, you you you you see through the character, and what you actually see is you see like writers in a room, like just putting forth their plot.

But when the characters are round, they feel like people, and and you buy in.

God, Jesus, not a character, not a concept, person.

He's round, he's not, he's not flat.

So when we get to John chapter 2, we see Jesus get angry, and it shouldn't be like, oh, you know, I just thought he was loving.

John 2 · chapter mention

I just thought, you know, I thought he was kind of like this Middle Eastern Mr.

Rogers.

I thought it was just, you know, and it shouldn't surprise us.

And why it shouldn't surprise us is because he's he's a person, he's a living being.

He's not a he's not he's not a concept, he's not flat.

But it's easy to keep God as a concept, I think.

Uh it's easy for us.

We'll talk about that.

Let's jump into the passage.

John chapter 2, um, beginning in verse 12.

John 2 · chapter mention

After this, Jesus went down to Capernaum.

After just talking about the passage before we read last week, with his mother and brothers and his disciples.

They stayed there for a few days.

When it was almost time for the Jewish Passover, Jesus went up to Jerusalem.

In the temple courts, he found people selling cattle, sheep, and doves, and others sitting at tables exchanging money.

So he made a whip out of course.

I love how it just goes from verse 14.

So he made a whip.

Like, I mean, he found people selling sacrificial items.

This would have been, you know, people needed these.

People there were they were there for Passover, they were there to make a sacrifice to God because they have not been what they should be.

Let the lamb die so I don't die.

Right?

This should so he sees this, and we would see this and go, okay, this makes sense.

He sees it, he makes a whip.

So he made a whip out of cords, and he drove all from the temple courts, both sheep and cattle.

He scattered the coins of the money changers, and he overturned their tables.

To those who sold doves, he said, Get these out of here, stop turning my father's house into a market.

So the scene here is in Jerusalem, Passover.

So the people, people of God are coming to Jerusalem.

Jerusalem up in the mountains, they're coming up the mountains.

I mean, this is in the book of Psalms, you have these Psalms of Ascent.

It's because literally these people were singing these songs as they walked up into the mountains.

The Psalms of Ascent.

They are ascending up to Jerusalem.

And about 80,000 people or so are thought to be living in Jerusalem at the time, but about three to five hundred thousand people would come into Jerusalem for the feasts and festivals.

Massive influx of people, people coming from all over.

And because people are coming from all over, they're coming from distances, they're not dragging all their sacrificial animals with them.

And so this whole little system developed, a pretty good lucrative system for some of these Jewish religious people that are leading the way and they're in control.

I mean, they've developed a pretty good little system of making some money, some livelihood here.

And so I think over time, what happened was that it just made sense to put it in the outer court.

I mean, after all, the outer court was for the Gentiles, it wasn't for the Jews, it was for the Gentiles.

And so the Jewish people said, well, we'll just put it in the Gentile court.

That's where it'll go.

And so people would come in here and they would exchange money because they were coming maybe from a different area with different money, and they come exchange money, they make their purchase for their animals, and the Jewish people would go into their court, which is further end into the temple, and they'd make their sacrifices, and the Gentiles, they just get stuck making the sacrifices there with everybody else.

And so this is part of the anger of Jesus.

He's standing before the temple in Jerusalem, this massive brick, gold, beautiful building, and he sees this market going on.

And just anger rises up.

I mean, enough anger that it sticks around.

He made a whip.

He didn't go find a whip.

I don't know how I didn't time how long it takes to make a whip, but I'm thinking it takes more than about 30 seconds.

He went, he made a whip.

There's enough anger there, and he causes a huge scene.

So again, last week we saw like the point where we would have really given like a moralistic message about, you know, drinking wine and you know, slow down, let's not let the party get it too out of hand.

And he creates more wine.

I mean, that was kind of blew my mind.

And then this week is like, I would say, you know, just don't create a scene, right?

You know, just don't create a scene.

Maybe talk to some people on the side afterward.

And he makes a whip and he makes a scene, and it's chaos, and people run, animals will scatter, I mean he turns tables, and people are scared.

I mean, it's very interesting.

One man was capable of driving out all these people.

When he does, just probably the anger in him.

In case you see these Gentiles, they've been they've been traveling by foot, a lot of them.

Up into the mountains.

And they're they're going, it's Passover.

They're coming to make a sacrifice to God to be relieved.

Right?

I mean, I mean, think of think of all the stuff you've done, I mean, your shortcomings, your failures, the way you've been impatient with your children, your parents, or neighbor, or friend, and your lust and your greed and your materialism and all of that.

And they're coming to make a sacrifice and be relieved of this, and they get there and they're doing it in like the eatery.

They're doing it in at the mall?

They're doing it at Phipps, they're doing it at Lennox.

I mean, this is supposed to be a place of freedom, this is supposed to be the place where they're relieved, and there's a marketplace going on.

Jesus gets angry because this is about God's glory, respect, and reverence for God has gone way to convenience.

And the freedom of these people.

Just disregard for them.

So a few questions.

Three questions for this morning.

What does this tell us about Jesus?

What does this tell us about anger?

And then what does this tell us about Jesus' anger?

So, first, what does this tell us about Jesus?

I was reflecting back on I read the Chronicles of Narnia, C.S.

Lewis's stories.

I read them last year for the first time.

I'd never read them before.

And I read through them last year.

So in the Lion Witch in the wardrobe, we get the kids have gone through the wardrobe into this other world.

And so they're in this other world, and you have Lucy and you have Susan.

What's the boy's name?

I forgot the boy's name.

Edward?

Is it Edward?

So they're there in this other world, and they meet Mr.

and Mrs.

Beaver.

And Mr.

and Mrs.

Beaver start to tell them about the lion.

The lion is the ruler of the kingdom.

And here's the dialogue.

Lucy, little Lucy, she's maybe five or six years old.

She says, Is he a man?

asked Lucy.

Aslan a man, said Mr.

Beaver sternly.

Certainly not.

I tell you he's the king of the wood, the son of the great emperor beyond the sea.

Don't you know who the king of beasts is?

Aslan is a lion, the lion, the great lion.

Oh, said Susan, I I thought he was a man.

Is he quite safe?

I shall feel rather nervous about meeting a lion.

That you will, dearie, and make no mistake, said Mrs.

Beaver.

If there's anyone who can appear before Aslan without their knees knocking, they're either braver than most or else just silly.

Then he isn't safe?

asked Lucy.

Safe?

said Mr.

Beaver.

Don't you hear what Mrs.

Beaver tells you?

Who said anything about safe?

Of course he isn't safe, but he's good.

He's the king, I tell you.

So we just have to kind of unflatten Jesus.

You know, out of being a concept into being a person, into being a living being.

And Jesus is not always nice.

Nice isn't even all that great.

I mean, nice is needed socially.

We need nice.

Nice isn't really that great because nice doesn't ultimately care about you.

I know a lot of nice, unloving people, right?

You know people like this too.

Sometimes I am a nice, unloving person.

I can learn to be nice and not love you at all, not care about you at all.

But grace is about love.

It's about unconditional acceptance of the other, no matter how messy they are or what's going on in their life or what they've done.

Nice doesn't want to deal with that.

Just nice.

Grace is about seeing and going into brokenness and accepting us, anyways.

A nice Jesus doesn't shine his light and deal with you and work with you and love you with your lust and your greed and your anger and your mess and how you just want to perform, you want to justify yourself with your work or with money or with clothing or with a relationship or with sex or with whatever.

But he wants to deal with all that.

He wants to go into all of that.

He wants to accept you, you know, even though, because of all that, and it and he wants to be there with you in it.

Nice is just nice.

And he does this.

He does this for God's glory, he does it for our freedom.

Yet still, when I read this, I just go, I really like the meek, mild, sweet Jesus.

This is not it.

He is rounded off here.

He's a being, he's not a concept.

He's the full expression of love here.

We see a whole nother side of love here.

And maybe you say, well, I'm with you.

I prefer the meek, mild Jesus' passage.

I'd rather just kind of avoid it.

But I think when we do that, what we've done is we've conceptualized Jesus.

And what we've chosen to do is we've chosen to deify our own understanding of him rather than deify him.

Right?

These are two very different things.

I mean, basically, we're choosing to worship ourselves.

You go, I don't care for that wild Jesus that can get angry.

I just want the meat mild one.

And what you're saying is going, I would rather just worship myself and like how I think rather than something that is.

So this is preferences.

I understand preferences, right?

But at some point we have to submit our preferences to reality and to truth.

So I was thinking about all this this week, just kind of contemplating it.

And I took a bag of trash and it had some clippings, so it had a limb in it down toward the bottom.

And I was taking a bag of trash out to the curb, and I was carrying it, and it was it was pretty heavy.

You know, you carry something heavy, you kind of lean it up against your body, and you're kind of like shifting your weight with it.

And the the limb, it went through the trash bag and it scratched my leg.

It was right across, just scratched my leg.

So it scratched my leg.

I go in, I clean it up, and then I'm in there and I'm fixing my lunch, and I get a tomato, it was one of granddaddy's tomatoes.

Very good tomato.

I get the tomato and I get the knife and I wash the tomato, I get the knife, and I just cut the tomato, right?

And stick went right through my skin, no problem.

I get this knife, knife goes straight through the tomato.

This stick broke my skin.

This knife breaks right through the tomato.

And here's what this has to do with God, at least for me, on about Tuesday morning as I'm doing this.

Um, God's glory means weight.

That's what that's what the word means, weight, density.

When God comes up against us, he breaks through us.

Our heart, our mind, our thinking.

He goes into it.

Do you understand that?

We don't go into him.

He comes into it and begins to get in there.

He accepts us and loves us, which is great, and he begins to get in there, he transforms us.

If this is not occurring in us, this is just us understanding God conceptually, but not really God.

This is us getting two tomatoes and rubbing them together.

They don't ever cut into each other.

So, what does this tell me about Jesus?

Well, it tells me he's not always nice, but he's good.

And this is the way he is.

This means he's not a concept.

Question number two.

Let's keep going.

Question number two.

What does this tell us about anger?

This is a story.

What does a story tell us about anger?

I just want to kind of like take a timeout from the story.

Just like maybe you're here and you're angry.

Maybe you're covered up with all sorts of stuff, but it comes out.

I mean, you don't you don't get angry at traffic.

You're angry about something else.

Traffic reveals the anger.

Nobody gets angry about traffic.

Right?

Let's just come clean about that.

Nobody gets angry about if you're getting angry about traffic, you're angry about something else.

Right?

So that our anger reveals it.

Maybe, maybe you're angry.

I'm angry.

I get angry about maybe you're angry about the way you grew up.

I get angry about the way I grew up.

Maybe you're angry about an injustice that was done to you, an abuse.

And I would say rightfully angry.

Maybe you're angry at your parents, maybe you're angry at sickness or a disappointment, you could be angry at an unfulfilled dream, or maybe you're angry at the dream you got and it wasn't what you thought it would be.

You can be angry at your kids, you could be angry at your career, you can be angry at the boss who has a job you think you could do and you could do it better.

Maybe you're angry at other moms.

They look at you with that judgment.

Maybe you're angry at trying to be perfect, or angry at people letting you down, or angry at the work at work, or maybe you're angry at the work at home.

Maybe you're angry, you're not skinnier.

Maybe you're angry or you're angry, you're not shorter.

Maybe you're angry, you're not smarter, or more creative.

Alright, I'm with you.

Alright, maybe I've covered, hopefully I've covered all of us at this point.

The interesting thing is Ephesians 4.26, in your anger, do not sin.

Now, most of my anger is people in life interrupting my own self-absorbed plans for this world.

That's most of my anger.

That's worth just repenting of and letting go of.

But there's some legitimate anger.

We would call this righteous anger.

This is this anger that Paul's talking about Ephesians 26.

In your anger, do not sin, meaning you could be angry and not sin.

We've got to be careful with this.

It can still go into bitterness, it can still go into revenge.

But this is anger birthed out of concern for other people.

This is anger birthed out of respect for God.

This is this is an anger that doesn't get fleshed out into bitterness or revenge, but it's a frustration with an injustice.

So, what does this tell me about anger?

Well, here's what that tells me.

It tells me when I think about some of the messed up stuff that has happened in my life and around me.

It's okay to be angry.

That can be relieving.

That can be very healthy.

Third question: what does this tell me about Jesus' anger?

Ultimately, this story is about Jesus' anger, it's not about our anger.

Verse 16, to those who sold doves, he said, get these out of here.

Stop turning my father's house into a market, right?

The fight's always the same for Jesus.

It's for God's glory and it's for our freedom.

And here we have a story, and both of these have been challenged.

God's glory has been challenged.

There's no reverence, there's no respect, and it angers him.

And the freedom of these Gentiles to come and be relieved of their sin, this has been challenged.

They've turned the court, they've turned their temple, they've turned their temple experience into a shopping mall.

This stuff always angers him.

This is why we get these flare-ups throughout the gospels where the religious people who are who are limiting the freedom of people and they're putting rules back on people, you know, obey these rules, you'll be right with God, and he calls them snakes or calls them vipers, or he'll have some name, or he'll be just spiteful and be kind of angry.

I mean, kind of where you would go, I don't know if I'd be like that toward somebody, and Jesus is like this toward them.

He get he gets very angry when God's glory and our freedom is being challenged.

I think it's very clear Jesus throughout the Gospels, it's very clear he is love.

But he's fierce.

Verse 17.

His disciples remembered, so they saw the story play out, and Jesus just said this about what you've done here, and his disciples remember that it's written, zeal for your house will consume me.

This is what's going on.

They're thinking this, this is what's going on with Jesus right now.

They're trying to figure this out too.

Then the Jews then responded to him, What sign can you show us to prove your authority to do all this?

I think a very kind of natural question.

Give us some authenticity here.

Show us something here.

He answered them: destroy this temple, I will raise it again in three days.

This is where Jesus is.

Jesus begins his own conversation.

He does this all the time.

He's in a conversation with somebody and then he starts his own conversation.

Like from here on out, these people don't even understand what he's talking about.

Destroy this temple.

I will raise again in three days.

But they replied, it's taken 46 years to build this temple.

They're looking at the building.

See, Jesus is looking at his body.

Jesus understands himself to be the temple.

He understands himself to be the sacrifice.

So Jesus is talking about his body.

Destroy me.

Three days later I will rise again.

They're thinking, it took us 46 years to build this.

You can't rebuild this in 46 years.

Verse 21, but he was speaking about the temple of his body.

When therefore he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered when he had said this, and they believed the scripture and the word Jesus had spoken.

Jesus is saying, I'm the temple.

I'm the priest, I'm the altar, I'm the sacrifice.

Here's what he's saying.

He's saying, All this is where all this is headed.

I'm going to be killed.

This is where all of this is headed.

I will be the sacrifice, so you don't have to keep maintaining these sacrifices.

You don't have to keep coming here.

You don't have to keep having to have a priest be in your intermittent.

You don't have to purchase these animals and make this sacrifice and keep ongoing and obey all these laws.

I will fulfill the law.

I will fulfill the moral law.

I will fulfill the ceremonial law.

I will be the final sacrifice.

We still do this.

We don't carry lambs and cut them on you blood.

We still make our sacrifices to God.

We bring our sacrifices to God.

But there'd be some like moralistic kind of like, you know, record we bring before him and say, you know, here's what we've done.

You know, now, do I am I approved now?

Okay, I'm approved now, or here's what I've done for you and your kingdom.

Am I approved now?

Okay, now I'm approved.

And Jesus said, you don't have to do that.

I am the sacrifice.

You want right relationship with God?

Jesus is the right relationship with God.

That's it.

It's unbelievable freedom.

This is the very thing that transforms our hearts that need this sort of relief.

He's redefining spirituality.

He's redefining what it means of relationship with God.

Maybe you're here and you're still unsure about a loving God who could show anger.

But isn't it about what he's angry about?

Like, not whether or not he ever gets angry, but what is it that he what is it that he's angry about?

He's not angry at you.

He's not angry at you.

What have you done?

What have you thought?

He's not angry at you.

That's already been settled.

All of his righteous wrath towards sin, and this is rightful wrath, because sin destroys hearts and lives.

And I'm not just talking about behaviors.

I'm not talking about like drinking too much and cussing.

I'm talking about just the heart position of justifying yourself, you know, the selfish kind of self-absorbed position as the beginning of all things for us.

I mean, this is that beginning root, sin, not sin's behavior, that too, but it begins with the condition.

He's not angry at you.

All of that wrath was absorbed into him on the cross.

That's what the cross did.

So you don't ever have to worry about whether God is angry at you or not.

And yet, I think God is always angry at sin.

I think God's always angry at the ways in which we try to justify ourselves apart from him.

Because he knows it, what does it do?

The things that are going on in the temple.

It limits his glory.

It limits our freedom.

If we believe in Jesus and find refuge in him, God's not angry at us.

He's not angry with us today.

He won't be angry with us tomorrow.

He is fiercely in love with us and fiercely against the sin that limits our freedom.

Let's pray together.

God, we thank you for the story.

It's just so quite different than how we want to or tend to think about you, as soft in some way.

And um, God, would you help us to get a bigger view of you?

Would you enlarge our view of you?

Not that we can understand all of you, but that we might see how big you are, how sovereign, how how fierce.

God, would you would you help us to continue to move you out of some flat concept into a round living being?

God, we we thank you that you care for your own glory.

Now this is the best thing for us because fighting for our own glory, for our human glory, it's so detrimental.

Help us to get on board with fighting for your glory.

We thank you that you want to fight for our freedom.

We thank you that you did and you accomplished it.

We thank you that you're still wanting more freedom for us.

We thank you that those of us who've been Christians for a while, that you you have freed us from so much, you've freed us from maybe so many external sins, and yet you are still wanting to give us more freedom, freedom from control, freedom from anger, freedom from power, freedom from selfishness.

And God, we confess that this will not come by us doing five things this week.

This will come by us being more and more dependent and enamored in you and your love for us and what you've done for us.

We thank you that you have absorbed the wrath.

And that what's left for us is fierce love.

We pray this in Jesus' name.

Amen.