From the Temple to the Glory of God Dwelling Among Us - John 2:12-22

We're going to continue in John this morning and get a pickup where Pastor Royce left off last Sunday with John, chapter 2.

John 2 · chapter mention

You know, last Sunday was a very interesting service.

If you were here I'll tell you.

Why it was interesting to me is because I got up here to lead our worship and then when I went to go down and prepare for Pastor Royce's sermon, I felt like I had something weird on my head.

And I went like this and realized that the whole time I had been leading worship I was wearing a hat, which is not a problem, but it was unusual for me because I don't think I've ever led worship and church with a hat on before, and so that was very interesting to me.

And the whole time I didn't even notice.

And then when I went over there I was like what is on my head in there?

What is that hat on?

It was very interesting.

You know the reason it's interesting.

The reason why I bring that up is this I don't know how you grew up.

I'm sure that if you grew up in church, you probably grew up in very different types of church environments, different types of traditions when I was growing up.

I'll just tell you a little bit about me when I was growing up.

I grew up in a church where everything was very we weren't high church and high liturgical, but everyone dressed up.

I wore a suit and tie, even as a little kid.

When I was Hudson's age, I would wear a suit and tie and I'd show up at church and everything was done in a particular way.

There were things that you were not supposed to do, very clearly understood, and there were things that you were supposed to do and very clearly understood.

Wearing hats inside of a building is very much more than just a church culture.

In America it's been an etiquette culture that has been around for a long time.

When someone walked into a building, a man would walk into a building and take off their hat.

That's recently changed within the last couple of decades.

A lot of times there's not really a rule per se, but in church when people would pray, men would take off their hats and so on.

There's a lot of things that could be said about that.

We're not going to talk about that this morning.

I'm just bringing that up as an example of the kind of things that we might have been influenced by because of certain things that had been read or understood in a particular text of Scripture, another one.

For me that was a big deal.

My parents and I don't know how many of you did this when you were in school or you've experienced this, but when we would have these fundraisers in school where we'd have to sell candy bars to raise money for a school function For me, my parents told me I was not allowed to sell candy bars at church.

That was not appropriate place to sell candy bars.

The closest we ever got to that.

My mom would say you can put it in the back of the car.

Make sure you don't leave it in the sun so they melt.

Put it in the back of the car, and if they want to come out to the car and do it in a shady way out of the back of the trunk, then you can do that.

That's appropriate, but you can't sell it at church.

For me, I'm like, okay, there's obviously a very, very distinct purpose behind why we would be allowed to do this or not be allowed to do a particular thing.

Maybe you had similar experiences, maybe you had different experiences.

Well, today, as we look in this text, we find something very, very interesting, actually very, very unique to the life of Christ.

John places this right at the very beginning of announcing who Jesus is.

Last week we see the first sign that Jesus performs in order for people to start identifying that he has power and that he has the ability to perform miracles.

He changes water into wine, not just mediocre wine, but the best wine and lots of it.

At this wedding they ran out and his mother came to him and his faith asked him would you help us out?

We're out of wine.

He performs this very first miracle, which ends up John identifies as the first sign to people that he was who he claimed to be.

Well, we're going to go from that situation of a party at a wedding to now a very, very different situation.

I'm going to read this passage for us this morning that I asked you guys to follow along with me.

I'm going to pick up where Pastor Royce left off in verse 12.

So this is John, chapter 2, beginning in verse 12.

John 2 · chapter mention

After this, he went down to Capernaum with his mother and his brothers and his disciples and stayed there for a few days.

The Passover of the Jews was at hand and Jesus went up to Jerusalem.

In the temple he found those who were selling oxen and sheep and pigeons and candy bars no, not candy bars Pigeons and money changers sitting there and making a whip of cords.

He drove them all out of the temple with the sheep and oxen, and poured out the coins of the money changers and overturned the tables.

He told those who sold the pigeons take these things away, do not make my father's house a house of trade.

His disciples remembered that it was written feel, for your house will consume me.

So the Jews said to him what sign do you show for doing these things?

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

The Jews then say it has taken 46 years to build this temple and you will raise it up in three days.

But he was speaking about the temple of his body.

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

This is the word of the word Amen.

As we look at this text, there's a lot of things that we might be able to conclude based on this text, and we'll talk briefly about a few of these.

I already mentioned the idea of selling in a sacred space, like these people were selling in the temple.

Why was that so significant?

My parents were righteous in not letting me sell candy bottles.

I'm not going to talk too much about that, but I want us to ask these questions because, as we come today and as we look at this, we see Jesus a very, very different Jesus than we might say we see in the entire rest of the Gospels.

He does things.

He does something here that is unlike almost any other thing that we see him do in the Scriptures.

He has seen calamities, he has seen horrible things happen right in front of him and he has responded in grace and compassion and strength.

But to put together a whip and to run people out of a temple, hmm.

What I want us to see here is this why would Jesus make such a big deal about this?

More than almost anything else, what we will see, what I hope for us to see today, is this is that and this is important for us to understand if we truly want to have a relationship with him, we need to understand that Jesus is the only means by which we can fully experience the eternal presence and the glory of God.

Jesus was there to make a statement.

He was there to create a conversation, and he made a conversation happen through his actions, which were, in fact, righteous.

But he was there to make a statement that would create a conversation, that would, at the beginning of his life, be the only means by which we could fully experience the eternal presence and the glory of God At the beginning of his ministry, that he would declare himself to not only be greater than the temple, but in some ways, he would be the replacement of this temple.

You know, I was thinking about this I don't know if you guys ever.

Well, I used to go to Juana when I was a kid.

I don't know if you guys ever heard of Juana or been a part of that.

So one of the things that we would do is we'd always have these relays.

You know, now I would reference the Olympics, except right now we're in the Olympics and I've never even run track and I know that I ran around a circle and we'd have these baton relays right and when I was learning how to run these baton relays, we'd have the person running with the baton in their hands and then the next person would take the baton and then they would run and there was like four different people who would run laps around this particular race.

Well, one of the things that we learned was if you just try to slap it in the person's hand or throw it to the next person, and more than likely it's not going to happen, it's not going to pass.

Well, you're going to see, you're going to have a mess, right.

So there would be a starting point that it was like, as soon as this person gets to this point, you both need to grab onto the baton and you need to continue on until you know there's a firm grasp on the runner that's going and the make and continue on and the other person can let go.

I kind of see what's happening here is the baton pass is starting to happen.

Here you have the Jesus who is going to pronounce himself to be the temple of God, enter the temple in Jerusalem and there's a touch point that takes place.

We have the temple, which is the place where God would come, and he would come into the Holy of Holies and the priests would carry out their sacrificial, ceremonial sacrifices.

They would conduct all these things and it was a place where God would dwell and then, all of a sudden, you have Jesus coming in and he basically without them really knowing and we'll talk about this in a little bit but without them really knowing, he said I am the temple and we know that he actually is the greater one.

There was a baton being passed, and I like to think of that time, when Christ was at the cross and the curtain ripped in two, as being the time when the temple let go and Jesus was now ultimately the everything that he claimed to be, everything that he sees.

But in order for us to understand this this morning, I have three points that I want us to look at in this passage, three realities, if you will, that I want us to look at, that we can take from this passage to help us see that Jesus is the only means by which we could fully experience the eternal presence and the glory of God.

The three things are this.

Let me put them up there for you Number one, that man desecrates what God designs.

Number two, that Jesus cleanses what man corrupts.

And three, god resurrects what man destroys.

So man desecrates what God designs and Jesus cleanses what man corrupts and God resurrects what man destroys.

So, first of all, man desecrates what God designs.

There is a problem for us, as humans, to experience and experiencing the presence of God.

We look around us.

We see the sunlight, we see the beautiful trees.

There's so much in this world that points to the glory of God.

There's so much around us that can point our attention to the glory of God.

God has created everything perfectly and exactly the way that it needs to be, so much so that when he was done, after the six days that he created everything, he said everything is very good.

So he has designed a particular way in which this world is to function, the way that it operates.

I was watching a reel that popped up on social media this week and I don't watch the show Young Sheldon, but it was a real clip taken from Young Sheldon that was put out there.

I don't know what the scene was about, except for the fact that his mom was going through and Young Sheldon was asking him do you not believe in God?

Why do you not believe in God?

And he says and she goes I basically just have struggled.

And he says you know what's interesting?

He goes.

You know the gravitational pull is exactly perfect in order for this world not to burn up.

If the gravitational pull of the earth was any stronger, we'd be sucked into the sun and we would not be able to survive.

It was any further away from the sun and if it was any less strong, if it was any weaker, we would then basically implode and we would cease to be.

It's exactly what it ought to be.

And the point that he makes to his mom is this he goes there are billions of people, eight billion people, in this world, and it's amazing to me that you are the exact right mom for me and I don't, like I said, I don't follow the show, but I think it's just interesting that God has everything particularly designed.

Whatever it is that's in creation, it's intended to be a particular way, it's intended to have a particular purpose and a particular way that it functions.

Same thing with the relationships of things that God brings into our lives.

As a particular design and in His love and for His glory, god creates everything.

That is, everything very good and beautiful.

And yet, man, in our greed and in our pride, we take whatever we can get for ourselves in any way we want and we make ourselves the authority over it, and we make it whatever we want In our sin nature.

Our sin nature drives us to take the goodness of God and try to find a way that we can get more for ourselves, get more out of it for us to be able to benefit in a way that God maybe didn't necessarily intend for it to happen.

This goes all the way back to the Garden of Eden.

This goes all the way back to where God put them in a beautiful space in the Garden of Eden.

He said I've made everything perfect.

The one thing that I want you to be aware of and that I want you to refrain from is this tree, the knowledge of good and evil.

Don't eat from it.

Satan, as a snake, comes up to them and he tells them look, god's holding back from you.

You can have more than this.

What you can become is greater than what you are already.

He convinced them that by eating of this, they would have their eyes open and they would be able to see things and know things about life that God was keeping back from them.

They took them.

They entered into this transaction, if you will, that caused the sin and the curse to follow.

From that point on, we've just continued to go on.

We continue to desecrate God's design.

We look at it in marriage, we look at it in family, we look at it in our communities.

We look at it in so many other ways.

We pursue things that are not designed to be a particular thing, a particular way.

God has a particular plan and we choose to pursue things that desecrate.

So let's look at the passage here.

Let's see how this happens here.

We look at the passage, verses 13.

The pastor of the Jews was at hand and Jesus went up to Jerusalem and the temple.

He found those who were selling oxen and sheep and pigeons and money changers sitting there and making a whip of cords.

He drove them all out of the temple, with the sheep and the oxen, to pour out the coins and the money changers and overturn their temples.

The temple was a place specifically designed by God for him to come down and be able to meet with his people.

It was a particular place.

In some sense it was at the heart of the identity of God's people.

Israel was just a nation, another nation if it weren't for the presence of the true God, if it were not for a people who had an experience and a relationship with the God who made the universe.

So this was a place of identity for the Jews and the temple, in its features and its architecture was designed in a particular way to draw their attention and to draw their focus and to carry out the actions the way that God designed and the way that God wanted them to think of them.

If you were to look at the temple, you would notice very quickly that there was a place for everyone.

There was a courtyard, even for Gentiles.

There was a courtyard where Gentiles could come in.

There was a place where nobody was marginalized.

Everyone was welcome to come in and be apart.

But there was also a place of protection, because not everyone was allowed to go into the Holy of Holies.

There was a need for a mediator, a need for somebody to be able to go in there and to interact with God on behalf of the people and to also take the words of God to the people.

And so there was openness and privilege for people to come and to experience the temple.

But there was also protection there, because anybody who was not acceptable or worthy to encounter God in the way that he had laid out, that seemed to be killed.

It was the end.

So there was a sanctuary for sinners, but there was a scary part of the intersanctum, if you will, where it was.

God means business, and he was very, very serious about the relationship that he has with his people.

So, even further, if you look at this, this temple is the carryover of something that had been around from the beginning of time, because if you go to the temple, this was not the first temple.

If you study the Bible, you know that Solomon built the temple.

It was the first temple.

It was a beautiful temple.

This was not Solomon's temple.

So this was the second temple that Surabhbaba had built, and even that was under work for a long time.

This particular temple saw its newest revision 46 years before this, when Herod King.

Herod came in and started making a bunch of renovations.

He started making everything greater and bigger and grander.

So that's where the reference comes in when they say look, it took 46 years to build this temple.

Actually, this temple, in its origin, had been around for hundreds of years, but Herod came in and started doing a bunch of remodeling and had been doing that for 40 years, but that was after the temple had been destroyed by the Babylonians.

Solomon's temple had been around for over 400 years.

It had been designed in a beautiful way and had been destroyed by the Babylonians, but before that it was the Tabernacle.

The Tabernacle was a place where so many of the same elements existed, but in a mobile form.

It was a mobile unit where they would go and set up a tent and God would come and meet with his people through that.

But all of that bears marks of the original Garden of Eden, where God would meet with people, where he would dwell with them.

As a matter of fact, if you went into the temple and you saw the design of the temple, there were things that were designed like trees.

The menorah candle was designed to look like a tree in a sense, so that it would bear the marks of the Garden back in Genesis 1.

And so you see that this is a place, just like in Genesis 1, where God intended to have this relationship with man, but man broke it through his sin.

God had these indicators of what it would one day lead to.

It would one day lead to the presence of God being here and now, and all of that brokenness would one day be fixed and the relationship with God and man would be restored.

It would be reconciled.

And so that's the experience that was intended to understand.

If Israel, if mankind, did not have this, this temple, then we didn't have anything.

We have no hope, and so this was a very, very particular place that was intended to remind us and to offer us hope of the relationship with God that would one day come through his promises.

The temple was intended to serve as a reminder of the past and would also give hope and a glimpse into the future kingdom of God that would one day come to earth.

However, we have noticed I already mentioned that the tabernacle was temporary that the temple was destroyed by the Babylonians.

Man is not doing a good job of holding on to this connection with God through the temple.

As a matter of fact, one of the things that we see very much like Jesus casting out these people from the temple.

We see that even Adam and Eve, when they sinned against God, they were not worthy to stay in the garden and they were thrown out of the garden, and there were soldiers or there were cherubim that were set with swords that would keep them from returning to the garden.

God was very serious about this place and this space that he would come down and meet with his people.

The temple was right at the heart of who they were, without the presence of God, without a place to meet and receive forgiveness through sacrifice.

They were just like any other people.

This was the place that gave definition to the Jesus.

So here the temple was specifically designed through the worship of God, through prayer, through sacrifice.

The temple would already be somewhat.

It wouldn't be this perfectly solemn place If you go to some places and it's like shh, you can't talk.

It would be very, very quiet.

Well, there were sacrifices being done and there were a lot of people there.

So automatically, without really even without the market that they had put up, there was already a loud, noisy place.

There was smelly, animals were being sacrificed, so there was the smell of animals and blood.

So it wasn't necessarily always pure and clean, but in carrying out with these sacrifices and these ceremonies that were expected by God, there was definitely a lot of noise and smell.

That was there.

But Jesus doesn't just get annoyed because of the animals and all the people there.

What is it that sets him on?

What is it that makes him get frustrated?

Well, jesus, he says that in his own words, that his father's house is turned into a house of trade.

My father's house is now a place where people have built businesses, have found a way to make money to skim off the top, to be able to put money, extra money, in their pocket over something that was expected by God's people to do every year.

It was part of the way that they were to actually live.

So here you have people that came up with this idea and said, hey, you know, what if these people were traveling from a long way away?

What if they were just able to get it in actually in the temple and we can make extra money?

Matter of fact, there was already a temple tax that was being charged to every male individual from over the age of 12.

And obviously you can look at the convenience fee.

Man, you didn't even have to carry your sheep with you, you could just get it here and we're going to bump off the price a little bit.

And people started building a business around this.

People started making extra money around this rhythm of worship that was expected of these people, and so what you start having is people focusing on how can I make more money, how can I use this, how can I leverage it for my benefit, for my good?

And all of a sudden, the focus now becomes less about my sin and the sacrifice and the forgiveness and the carrying out of the Passover with your family and with your community.

Now it's about convenience and quick commerce, and we can start making all of this.

We can streamline this.

So Jesus comes in here and realizes that meeting with God, receiving forgiveness from God, is not the focus here.

There's a lot of other things that are going on.

We do this often.

We can find ways to make things a little bit easier and a little bit more convenient.

As a matter of fact, I was thinking we do this actually really well.

We as a community do this.

You go into Target and you're like I wish I would stop for coffee.

There's a Starbucks in the lobby.

How convenient.

I can grab coffee and walk through the store and do my shopping together.

You go into the Oakland A's game and you stop.

I forgot my jersey.

I wish I had a jersey.

Oh, look at that.

There's people selling them right outside the stadium.

I can just grab one right there.

We find other conveniences that people have thought of and said hey, we can make life easy for you.

We don't even have to make a meal anymore.

We can just get fast food if we want to.

We do a good job of trying to cut corners and create new ways.

This is not what Jesus is upset about.

He's not upset about people being creative and being wise in their business practices.

What he's doing is saying you guys have started to create these businesses and these conveniences that have now taken the focus and the attention away from the glory of God and what it means to come and to practice these sacrifices.

The chief accusation here is that there's a disregard for the holiness of the place, that there's a perversion to its purpose and its intention.

At the heart of it all, jesus sees his father's house desecrated by the wicked hearts of men who are greedy and use these opportunities for their own personal gain.

The Jews have created this system in which they are exploiting those who are coming to worship for them and taking advantage of them for themselves.

So it's very important for us to recognize that when something is sacred to God, that we need to be very careful, when we try to contribute to it or we try to cut corners, that we don't desecrate its significance.

Secondly, jesus cleanses what man corrupts.

Jesus cleanses what man corrupts.

Look at verse 15,.

And, making a whip of cords, he drove them all the way down out of the temple for the sheep and the oxen and poured out the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables and he told those who sold the pigeons take these away, do not make my father's house a house of trade.

His disciples remembered that it was written feel for your house will consume me.

So the Jews said to him what sign do you show for doing these things?

You know, this morning, as my family was getting ready for church, I said something to my son in which he, like a preteen would do, responded very snippy to me and look at that, you can see the guilt on his face.

He responded very snippy to me, to which I then went into the kitchen and I grabbed the leftover flowers that I'd given my wife for Valentine's Day and I wrapped them up, made a whip out of them, and then I went into his room and began to beat him and began to knock off all those Lego sets all over the shelves and all of those things, and I just wanted him to recognize that what he did was inappropriate, that he should not have done that, and I made sure that the thorns from the roses were facing out.

Just kidding, I did not do that.

I did not do that.

But you have to wonder was Jesus I mean humanly speaking was Jesus righteously?

Was he righteous to get angry?

It didn't actually see that he was angry, but he responded in something.

That matter of fact, if you're a teenager my son I know but if you are familiar with Dude Perfect and their YouTube videos, they have this thing called Rage Monster, where something little ticks one of them off and they just go and start destroying everything that's in their site.

You would almost say that this was the first account of Rage Monster in the temple, where Jesus goes in there and just starts throwing things and starts dumping things and starts beating people.

What was going on here?

Well, we look at this.

Jesus does no doubt cause a stampede of animals and chases them out of the courtyard.

He drove them all out, drove all to the sheep in the oxen.

He poured out the money.

He overturned the table.

Was this appropriate?

Was this good and right Now?

I just want to make this note here that some people have used this in a way to justify righteous anger.

I can act that way.

Jesus did it one time.

We do have to remember and it's important for us as we understand this text what was actually happening here.

Jesus is the Son of God.

He makes the point this is my Father's house, I am the Son of God and he takes this personally, what's happening here and he is holy, he is righteous, he is perfect, so he has the ability to come down and do whatever he would like.

As a matter of fact, I think that this was, if you think about what he could have done and what could have happened in this place.

It was very mild.

It was a very mild response for God to have when this is taking place here.

But if you look at the rest of Jesus' life, so many times he offers forgiveness and mercy and he shows love in a way that is very unlike this.

So I do think that when we look at this and this is just a side note I'm just making if we do this and I think we need to be careful that we don't use this particular text to justify the kind of anger that we might have it doesn't mean that we can't be angry, and righteously angry, about things that are truly wrong and unfair and unjust, like I think that, as we as humans, made in the image of God, I think we have a sense of right and wrong and moral and immoral actions, and I think that we have in us these kind of things that grow in us, that we respond to something that is truly unfair or unrighteous.

But we also have to realize that we are not God.

We also have to recognize that we do not have the right to have the authority that Jesus displays here.

The Old Testament talks about the anger of God being kindled at His people most of the time for things that they did.

He is a jealous God.

He does not share His glory with others, so for Him God is like this is the way that I have designed these things and I have made them, and so Jesus is just God in the flesh.

Coming down here, what we see is this we have this well oil machine.

No doubt the logistics and strategies for making these acts of sacrifice were convenient for everyone, but now it was a trashed and chaotic courtyard.

It is interesting if you read in a Bible that has titles for these sections.

It says that Jesus cleanses the temple, and I just thought about that.

It was probably in much better shape before he started this than after, and yet, in a very righteous way, it was considered clean when he was done.

You have money thrown all over the place, you have animals running all over the place, you have people scattered, and now it is clean, now the mess has been dealt with.

The Bible says it is one of the things that when we look at this, we have to recognize.

We can't look at this from our perspective.

We are limited in our understanding of what God is and what he wants.

We understand Him entirely.

His ways are far above our ways.

His thoughts are far above our thoughts.

As the Spirit indwells us and moves us and leads us, we start to see things His way, but we are limited in how we see things.

In other parts of the Scripture we read that God says that I do not desire sacrifices or I would have asked for them.

He says I want a broken and a contrite heart.

There is something here that is significant.

Here the people have set this up God, don't you want sacrifices?

Don't you want these things to happen?

Don't you expect this?

If I would have wanted sacrifices, I would have demanded them or I would have expected them.

What I really want is a broken and a contrite heart.

There is a desire for God's people not to just do this in the most convenient and logistical, most logistical and the most strategic way, but for them to do it out of a heart that is broken and that is contrite.

That has to exist first before all these other things can take place.

If we cut corners and we don't have the brokenness and the humility and the contriteness of our hearts, then these sacrifices have no significance.

They don't mean anything.

It's interesting too that the disciples kind of had a Psalm that popped into their head when all this was happening.

The disciples remembered that Psalm 69 said a seal for your house will consume.

That verse in Psalm 69 says the seal for your house has consumed me, and the reproaches of those who reproach you have fallen on me.

This was written by David.

No doubt David was feeling as a leader of the people of Israel, as a king of Israel.

He was feeling the reproach that people had against him as the leader of God's people.

He said the reproaches that they have against you are against me.

Here we have Jesus.

They are like wait a minute.

Jesus is the greater David, he is.

The passion for God's house is consuming him.

You can see that what Jesus is feeling is what God is feeling.

As they have desecrated and corrupted this space the sellers might have been the ones who felt the reproach.

They might have thought well, it's them who are feeling the reproach, but in fact, by them being there, it was the opposite way around.

Jesus was feeling the reproach of what was happening there.

The seal for the holiness and the specialness of that place was consuming him.

There are two things that we need to take away from this that are important.

One is that Jesus is clearly making a statement and making it clear to everyone who is there that this, what is happening here, is unacceptable.

This is not the way that it was meant to be.

But the second thing he was making a significant statement was that he was the Son of God, because they come to him and they say to him what is the sign that you have that gives you the right to do what you just did?

You just made a mess, you just came in here and destroyed everything that we're doing.

What gives us your credentials?

We want to see a badge.

We want to see why you have the right to come and hear Jesus.

And Jesus responds to them in a way that kind of sees like what I don't get it Like.

Are you just talking in like riddles here, or like what's going on?

He says to them destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up.

What does he mean?

I mean they're like wait a minute, it's taking us 46 years to build what we have here and you're going to say you can raise it up in just three days.

What are you even talking about?

Well, jesus was indeed giving them a sign, but it was a sign that was still yet to come and when it does come, very likely those who were there would not see it and receive it and believe it.

But we do know, based on John's notes, after the fact that the disciples, after Jesus had been raised from the dead, remembered.

We know what it is.

Let's look at those verses.

Verse 18,.

The Jews said to him what sign do you show for doing this?

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

The Jews then said it's taking 46 years to build the temple and you will raise it up in three days, but he was speaking about the temple of his body.

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

So, lastly, jesus resurrects what man destroys.

I want to say just as kind of a wrap up of what we just talked about, in that that Jesus cleanses what we corrupt.

I want us to think about this in our own life.

Just a quick application for ourselves.

Sometimes, when Jesus has to cleanse our wayward pursuits, we think that sometimes he's left our life a mess.

Sometimes, when we're faced with our own problems and our own struggles, we feel that our life has been left a mess.

Things have been turned upside down, things have been ravaged in a way, and in reality, when we're left with a mess, instead we are left with more space for the presence of God and a room, and more room for us to meet with Him again.

When you clear out the wayward pursuits, we can go back to realizing that we were made to have a relationship with God, we were made to have communion with God, and the clutter has been cleared out of our lives and now there's room for what we were created for and what we were meant to be.

So, finally, here again, god resurrects what man destroys.

This is a veiled answer to the question of when they look for His credentials or looking for a sign.

He basically gives them a riddle and they don't understand it altogether.

But I want us to understand this that if we, in our sin and in our sin nature, continue to pursue whatever it is that we want, whatever it is that we desire apart from God, we will eventually destroy what God has made Our life.

We will destroy our lives, we will destroy our communities, we will destroy our families, we will destroy all the things if we pursue our own way of doing things.

Now, jesus was saying here, he was giving them an imperative statement you destroy the temple.

And I'd like to think he was almost implying you keep doing what you're doing and this is the direction it's going to go Destroy the temple.

And I think he also meant quite literally tear down the temple.

He also meant it very divinely, in the sense that he knew that if these type of men, these type of people were the ones that were going to kill Him on the cross, they were the ones that were going to crucify Him, because it's this kind of heart that creates these sorts of places within the holy presence of God.

It's this sort of heart that will take the Son of God to the cross and crucify Him.

So there are so many different ways that we can look at it.

But he said you destroy this temple and I will raise it up again in three days.

And we now know what that means.

Is that Jesus, the ultimate, final temple, the one I want to see?

Before we close here, I want to just go right back real quick to the chapter one, verse 14.

Chapter one, verse 14.

Remember we said that the beginning of this book really creates the theological foundation for us to understand the rest.

Look at John 1.14.

And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us and we have seen His glory, glory of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.

That word dwelt.

Pastor Royce preached on this text.

That word dwelt, the word became flesh and it's the same word as tabernacle.

He came and tabernacled among us.

He came and set Himself down in the center of our lives.

He came and set Himself down as a place where we could meet with God in the center of our lives and we see the glory of God through Jesus.

So the tabernacle in the Old Testament was temporary, the temple was temporary, but it was all meant to point forward to the temple who would be destroyed by these men, but because of God and His power and His love, would raise Jesus up again and he would be glorified.

He would be established as the place where we, the place, the person where we meet with God.

So when we gather here today in this place, we don't gather in a temple.

We're gathering in a fellowship hall that has stains on the carpet and wear and tear.

We could meet in my living room, which also has stains on the carpet and wear and tear.

We could meet outside, we could meet in the park and we could still experience the presence of God.

You know why that is?

It's because Jesus is the temple.

So you can sell candy bars at your own cheap.

But what we need to understand is that anything that we do, anything that we pursue, anything that we create as a convenience or a corruption or a corner that's cut so that we don't engage with the living God, that we don't experience who he is and what he's done, if we treat the scriptures lightly, if we come to the table unworthily, if we don't engage in heart and humility and contrition, all of these things are things that are not intended to be the way that they ought to be when we engage with God.

But how do we know that we're engaging with God?

Is it the place?

No, it's the person.

It's Jesus Christ.

Jesus Christ is the meeting place for His people to come and to gather together with Him.

He is the glory of God.

He is the glory of the Father.

So that's one of the reasons why we, as a church, make a big deal about all the things that we do together.

That's all focused on Jesus.

We don't want anybody to come here and experience this and say, oh, that was great, the music was great.

We want people to.

I mean, we want the music to be good.

We want there to be work done so that the sermons are for I still have to work hard to make sure they're not lost because I go to the public.

But the thing that we need most of all is we want people to walk away and say, wow, jesus was there.

We did not miss Jesus.

He was there in everything that was done and you can see Him from the beginning.

And when we walk away, we say I met today with the people of God in the presence of Jesus and he was there with us and we beheld His glory and we experienced that relationship with God.

And one day as we hold onto that hope that one day we will live with Him forever and ever, and it will be the way it ought to be, and that's the way that we need to conduct ourselves, that's the way that we need to live, because Jesus is worthy of it.

Let's pray, lord, thank you so much for this account.

Thank you for your authority, your sending Jesus, your Son, to come to meet with us, to be the true temple, the dwelling place of with God in this earth and in our lives.

So, god, help us to live lives that pursue your holiness, that pursue humility and contrition, so that we can live the kind of life that would bring glory and honor to you.

Through Jesus Christ, we ask these things for.

Thanks, kevin, have a good day, have a good night.

Thank you very much, because we had such a long journey with God and with the presence of God, and he was.