John 2:13-25

Hey friends. Welcome back.

Thanks for joining us again.

As we continue through the Gospel of John.

We're in the second chapter, the 13th verse, in an interesting passage

and an interesting passage in John.

I don't know whether to deal with the passage or the interesting part first.

Michael, I guess let's just go through.

Let let me read it.

I'll try to get all the way through it fairly quickly.

It's going to be familiar to many of you, I think.

And so we'll come back and have some discussion.

The Passover of the Jews was near, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem.

In the temple he found people selling cattle, sheep and doves and money

changers seated at their tables, making a whip of cords.

He drove all of them out of the temple, both the sheep and the cattle.

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

He told those who were selling the doves.

Take these out of here.

Stop making my father's house a marketplace.

The disciples remembered that it was written, zeal for your house

will consume me.

The Jews then said, what sign can you show for doing this?

Jesus answered them, destroy this temple

three days again, and I will raise it up.

The Jews then said, this temple has been under construction

46 years, and you will raise it up in three days.

But he was speaking of the temple of his body.

After he was raised from the dead, the disciples remembered that he had

said this, and they believed the Scripture and the word Jesus had spoken

when he was in Jerusalem during the Passover festival.

Many believed in his name because they saw the sign that he was doing.

But Jesus on his part would not entrust himself to them,

because he knew all people and needed no one to testify

about anyone, for he himself knew what was in everyone.

So a couple of things about this passage.

It is one of the passages that is in all four of the Gospels.

It's a visual passage.

It's an interesting passage.

I think it's memorable to people.

Many of us learn this story as kids, and it just kind of sticks with you.

It is a troubling passage for some that Jesus

shows kind of a moment of anger or passion.

I think partly that's why it is remembered.

But the setting here is this is the Passover in Jerusalem.

Many Jews were expected.

It was even required in some circles that at some point

you would make a passage, a Passover pilgrimage

to Jerusalem, to the temple, and there you would offer sacrifice.

So it's the busiest time.

And as such, there are people there

that instead of having to bring animals,

there are people who will sell animals and also eat at the temple.

Roman, Greek worldly currency was not accepted.

It had to be Jewish currency.

And so there were money changers.

Just as if you go to another country, you can exchange dollars for whatever

that was happening here.

And all of this is the context, Michael, for what

then happens when Jesus sees all of this activity?

The the fact that this is happening in the temple is not particularly new.

It's not as if this is just come up, Clint.

So there's a way in which Jesus, his actions here are going to be received

as being particularly pointed and in some ways

going to be surprising and some of this does have historical precedent.

You have to recognize that, ultimately, you have multiple courts

within the temple, and each court sort of offers different access.

And one of those courts is the courts of the Gentiles.

And that's the farthest you could go if you weren't a Jewish person.

That was the end of the steps.

You could go into the temple.

And then there was also a court for women, and then there's a court for Jewish men.

And then you've got the Holy of Holies, that place where only the high priest

to go or the designated, priest could go once a year.

So the temple is this very,

sacred, dated in that way sort of experience.

And here in the court of the Gentiles, the place where Jesus is going,

this is the farthest a Gentile could go into the temple.

And this matters, because this is also the place

where the animals would be sold for sacrifice.

And so if you were to stand in the middle of this court, clan,

you might see animals on your left and you might see,

a fervent Gentile on your right trying to worship in the space.

And at the same time that that kind of very chaotic

worship is happening or that blend between commerce and worship is happening,

you also have this thing of the the money actually be exchanged in that place.

And there's a whole thing

that we don't have time to go into with, you know, whose image is on the coin.

And there's a lot of subtleties to what's happening here.

But at the end of the day, the fact that money is being exchanged,

that it's happening in the midst of this place, that certainly

not honoring God, that's the worship of the temples designed to do.

Jesus calls this out, and he, in

what is a very otherwise unique telling of Jesus.

Really, in the Gospels,

we don't have a lot of Jesus making a whip of chord stories.

And here Jesus, in a kind of prophetic, righteous anger,

he drives out those who are sullying the worship of the one true God.

And this is one of the things that makes this story

unique, I think, is the fact it does paint Jesus and the Gospel of John

so early in his telling, as having that kind of prophetic force.

It's not just the force of his words in this case,

it is the actual manifestation of his righteous anger

against this sullying of the worship of God.

Yeah.

You know, at the risk of overstating it, think of something like Black Friday

if if you are engaged with the temple, if if you are

one of the people charged with selling animals at the temple

or changing money at the temple, this is your day, I mean, your week.

And so here is Jesus and again, I think that's what makes this story so memorable.

You have this kind of wild man moment

where Jesus loses himself in his anger at what's happening.

The idea that people are being abused, taken advantage of in the name of worship

at the temple, at a place that is supposed to be sacred.

And his reaction to it is, is one of cleansing.

And in fact, that's what this is usually called, cleansing of the temple.

And so then in John that occasions this question, you know,

they don't say much about the conflict it causes at the time.

That's a bigger deal in the other gospels.

And we'll talk about that in a moment.

But, here it says his disciples, remember that it's written,

zeal for your house will consume me.

And the Jews then said,

what sign can you show for doing this?

In other words, what authority? What?

Why are you doing this?

And Jesus says, destroy the temple.

They have this conversation.

Remember in John you're going to see,

some pretty significant examples of this in the very near future.

Misunderstanding is one of John's favorite ways to tell a story.

So Jesus says something they misunderstand.

Jesus says something spiritual.

They take it literal.

Jesus says, destroy the temple three days.

They say this temple took 46 years.

What are you talking about? You're crazy man.

And then I want you to notice.

John jumps ahead

after he was raised from the dead.

Again, no delaying of this.

John assumes that if you're reading this story, you know where it's going.

And so he's not shy with those details.

There's no delayed conclusion here.

And it's that kind of mechanism, I think, Michael, that's helpful to keep in mind.

And, John, that that misunderstanding piece is,

is really a powerful storytelling tool that John uses.

It's powerful and maybe also, over time, becomes a little numbing maybe.

Yeah.

And I think that as we go through this book together,

I think you're exactly right to say this early, Clint,

that we're first of all, we want to point out

that this is the very beginning of this being worked into the gospel,

but we're going to see it so very often, friends, that, you know,

at some point you're going to just get a muscle for this.

It's going to become very familiar, but it's worth

pausing for a second here to reflect upon what you were saying, because

in reality, in verse 22,

when John says editorially, his disciples, remember that he had said

that my imagination is that Jesus is going along his ministry

and that they're just, you know, kind of carrying a book or a journal.

And Jesus said stuff, and they write it down with that kind

of quizzical look on their face, like, what in the world is he talking about?

And here John lists

the quote of what Jesus had said previously,

but now with a greater sense of understanding of what he meant.

Right?

In other words, Jesus wasn't talking about

rebuilding the physical temple in three days.

It wasn't about going from its current state of 40 plus years of construction

and then finishing off in some Superman like effort.

When Jesus was talking about was the fact that his body would become

the final connecting point between God and humanity,

that he would become the place where that relationship and connection

would be once and forever finally united and Clint's.

That kind of insight of what Jesus

had said compared to with what now John understands it to mean.

This is so very important because it shows us the heart behind this gospel.

This is not just merely a historical account

of Jesus's life, it is John is attempting to do so.

But many of our astute viewers are going to recognize that in the other gospels.

This story comes at the end of Jesus's ministry.

But in John it comes here in the beginning.

And the ordering of that is, I think, partially understandable

when one realizes that John has the entire story in mind from page one.

He's not trying to lay it out in this kind of sequential case.

He's trying to teach us something from all of these moments in Jesus's life.

And this is a powerful moment.

And part of that is I don't want to expand too far into this,

but part of this is because now we're beginning to see how the Jews demand

a sign when Jesus is the sign.

And by definition, therefore, since they are so caught up

in demanding Jesus to do a thing, they miss the Jesus

who stands in front of them, who is the thing that they're looking for?

And this is the fundamental confusion.

The disciples are confused, yes, but the Jews are confused in a different way.

And it's only one is going to lead to faith.

One is going to lead to destruction.

And we're going to see that building through this book.

I think there's a sense in

which, as you mentioned, Michael.

So this is in all four gospels, but in the other three

Gospels, in Matthew, Mark and Luke, this happens as part of Holy Week.

In fact, it's one and it's generally thought of

as the first thing that happens or essentially the first thing that happens.

Holy.

And it's one of the lynchpins that cement Jesus's fate.

It it is the thing in the aftermath of cleansing the temple

in the synoptic Gospels, the Jews go and plot

a way to kill Jesus.

John doesn't use the story that way.

Not only does he not, he puts this.

I mean, we're not through the second chapter yet.

This is very early in Jesus ministry in John.

Now that that interest Bible scholars and it troubles Bible readers,

because if you want this to be seamless, you now have to try and say something

like, well, either John thinks it happens earlier, John

doesn't care too much when it happened and wants to tell it earlier

because it's so important to him or it happened twice.

And there are people who make that case,

and you can weigh those options and find what works for you.

What I think is true about where

John puts this story is that I think it indicates

how well it fits his understanding

and what he's trying to say about who Jesus is.

Jesus is a person who attacks what stands between God and people.

That's going to be true of the demonic.

That's going to be true of the religious.

That's going to be true of of sin, the devil.

Jesus is

passionately opposed to that which opposes God.

And I think John loves this story for that reason.

Now, again, the early, late question, okay,

that that has to be settled in some way, but

don't let that distract from

what I think is the importance of why

John elevates this story by putting it so early.

I think it just captures for him something important about who Jesus is.

The fact that Jesus goes on Passover

to the temple, to the place where all of these fervent

worshiping Jews from around the world are gathering to to worship God.

The fact that Jesus goes to that place, that he sees people,

he sees systems, he sees economies

built around putting barriers between

the people that God loves and God's presence.

You have to understand that in John's gospel writing,

the John, the likely the latest gospel written,

when John is putting these words down and has all of the benefit

of understanding that the Christian church and its history

up to the point of of delivering this book and and the moment in which it's

circulating amongst those earliest Christian communities, I think there's

this absolute astonishing

insight of what is happening in this cleansing moment,

because what Jesus is doing

is, is demonstrating physically for all to see

that God is done with these arbitrary lines, that that the

the barriers that are being put in between people and God's presence and God's

redemptive love, that that is a barrier

that that Jesus is unwilling to accept.

And so when when he

does this thing which is out of his character,

in so many other of these stories where Jesus uses wit or wisdom

or Jesus uses miracle power and and that way sort of circumvents this.

Jesus meets head on and the sign

is the intensity of his response to it.

And and make no mistake,

you've got the water in the wine from the story yesterday.

The wedding. Right. The celebration.

You now move to this, this radically different emotion,

this radically different affect that Jesus shows here at the temple.

Make no mistake, these both, I think, prefigure the ending of this story.

I think John is intentionally, in this case, pointing us towards

the end of Jesus's death at the hands of the people who are disrupted,

the ones who are happy to remain at the center between the people and God.

I make no mistake that this story, it's already

kicking off the impetus that the arc of the conflict,

which is only going to grow between Jesus and as John calls them, the Jews,

this generic term we're going to learn more about as we go,

that this is going to build towards the end.

And John is showing us in this story that it started at the beginning,

that this is a path that Jesus had been on the whole time.

I think there in this, one of the benefits to this story is

that it pushes our understanding

and maybe even our comfort level, with Jesus a little bit.

You know, the idea that Jesus gets upset by things

that are wrong, that are hurtful,

that are abusive, that are manipulative,

Jesus is enraged by false

religion or by, religion

that takes advantage of people instead of truly focusing on God.

And I think that's a helpful corrective to the idea

that Jesus is quote unquote nice.

That that's too shallow of an idea.

Jesus's is far more complicated

and far more wonderful and far more mysterious than that.

Jesus is kind and gracious,

and Jesus, when it comes to it, is

willing to take a stand even,

an aggressive one to try and right or wrong.

And I I've, I appreciate about this story that it

it broadens our horizons.

When we think about who Jesus is a little bit.

It broadens our horizons because it reveals who Jesus is.

And that's the sign, right?

Is this idea.

And, just as we come to conclude, I realize that we're not going to spend

a lot of time talking about this, but verses 23 through 25,

let it be said, this idea of Jesus is not entrusting himself.

He knows all people know.

He needs no one to testify.

There are these cryptic passages in John that we're going to find all the time.

Clint, related to this idea of testimony related to the idea of sign

miracle wonders.

So just note that we're going to see that often,

and there are going to be times in John where something is

rather worthy in the way it's written, and it may leave you scratching your head.

Some of that is the mystical nature of this book.

Some of that's the mystical nature of Christ.

Some of that is us looking back on this with a thousand years of distance,

trying to lean into it, just know that that's there.

We're not passing by it. You're going to see it again.

Just give that voice.

If you're ever in a moment where you need to resonate with the Jesus

who asks questions and has weaknesses and wrestles with doubts,

and in is unsure at times, don't look in the Gospel of John.

Yeah, John. John doesn't.

John doesn't do that.

Jesus knows all the things about all the people.

He doesn't need anyone's counsel because he already knows what's in their heart.

That's just John's going to remind us of that kind of thing regularly.

And so we'll have plenty of chances to talk about it.

Thanks for being with us here today.

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There so much more of John to come.

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Thanks for spending some time with us.