Well good morning to everyone. Thank you Mark for leading us and the good songs. We are continuing our study this morning in the Gospel of John in chapter 2 and we've been studying John the last Sunday of the month for our communion services. 

And this morning we come to one of the most fascinating accounts from the ministry of Jesus. In fact we see this account at the very beginning of his ministry in his first public act in Judea as recorded by John. And then we will see a similar event at the end of his ministry when Jesus cleanses the temple again. 

Well in the flow of the text in the context of the Gospel of John, John is presenting Jesus as God. He has recorded these events in Jesus' life and ministry, his words, his deeds, for one express purpose which he states in chapter 20 at verse 31. He says these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in his name. John wants us to believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and believing to have eternal life in his name. 

So we see throughout the gospel that John records the words, the teachings of Jesus. He also records and highlights many of his works, the miraculous signs that he performed. We saw the very first of those signs, those miracles last time at the wedding of Cana where Jesus changed the water into wine. And in our text this morning we see another miracle, a great act that was not for friends and family in a very small private group setting, but we see Jesus go up to Jerusalem for the Passover, a time when the city is bursting with people from all over. 

Literally tens of thousands of people would have been present in and around the temple. And Jesus performs a very public act involving many, many people as he cleanses the temple and drives the people out of his Father's house. This event shows the power and authority of Jesus as he claims to be the Son of God, we see clearly understood by the Jews, and he also claims to have authority, in fact shows authority over the temple, the house of God. 

It's difficult for us to grasp the magnitude of what Jesus did here, and the multitudes of people, the security of the temple, the power of the priests and the Sanhedrin in that time, in that culture, just exactly what Jesus did with a whip of cords. The word literally is scourge, the same type that was used to whip and beat prisoners such as Jesus at his crucifixion, but here simply the cords that were used to tie the animals that were lying around in the temple. He put a handful together, made a whip, a sign of authority, and he drove them out. 

What he found there was a hypocritical worship, a false worship really, that angered our Lord. Jesus' zeal for his Father's house was a desire to honor and exalt the Father, to maintain the holiness of this place, but it was gone. Ichabod was written over this place, the glory had departed. As the Judaism of his day was corrupt, it was an extortion racket, pilfering the poor who came to worship. The traders of the temple were indeed traitors against the holiness of God and desecrated his house. Jesus drove them out. 

And what we see here is a foreshadowing of the coming of the new covenant, a sign of the end of the old. God was going to destroy this system of worship and the entire system of Moses as a way of life for his people. Jesus cleanses the temple here at the beginning of his ministry and again at the end of his ministry when he would soon present himself as the final and full sacrifice, fulfilling the old covenant pictures and shadows, and ending the entire worship system of the temple and the law. 

We see at this time that the veil was rent from top to bottom and access was made directly to the Father through faith in our Lord Jesus Christ. And not long after this, God would send the Romans to destroy this temple, this place of sacrifice and priesthood, because there was now a new temple, a dwelling place of God in the church. Jesus was pointing to his body, to the temple of his body and his death, burial, and resurrection when he gave them the sign that they asked for. 

And Paul and Peter tell us that now in this new covenant it is our body that is the temple of God, a dwelling place for the Holy Spirit. And indeed Jesus was foretelling the soon-coming new covenant and an end to the corrupt and hypocritical religion and worship that the Jews had twisted and perverted out of the Mosaic system which was given by God. 

Let's look at our text, John 2.13. It says, Now the Passover of the Jews was at hand, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. And he found in the temple those who sold oxen and sheep and doves and the money changers doing business. When he had made a whip of cords, he drove them all out of the temple with the sheep and the oxen and poured out the changers' money and overturned the tables. And he said to those who sold doves, Take these things away. Do not make my father's house a house of merchandise. 

Then his disciples remembered that it was written, Zeal for your house has eaten me up. So the Jews answered and said to him, What sign do you show to us since you do these things? Jesus answered and said to them, Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up. Then the Jews said, It has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and will you raise it up in three days? But he was speaking of the temple of his body. Therefore, when he had risen from the dead, his disciples remembered that he said this to them, and they believed the scripture and the word which Jesus had said. 

I've given you five points on your outline. First, temple trade. Second, zeal for his house. Third, the sign, death and resurrection. Fourth, a new temple. And fifth, they believed. 

Well, first we need to set the context for the story before us. After the miracle at Cana, Jesus and his mother and his disciples went to Capernaum. But they did not stay long there, and it says, Then came the time of the Passover. Now, Passover was one of the obligatory feasts for the Jewish people, and we find the origin of the feast of unleavened bread, or Passover, is found in Exodus chapter 12. 

Turn back to Exodus chapter 12 with me at verse 1, please. Exodus 12 at verse 1 says, Now the Lord spoke to Moses and Aaron in the land of Egypt, saying, This month shall be your beginning of months. It shall be the first month of the year to you. Speak to all the congregation of Israel, saying, On the tenth of this month, every man shall take for himself a lamb according to the house of his father, a lamb for a household. 

And if the household is too small for the lamb, let him and his neighbor next to his house take it according to the number of the persons, according to each man's need. You shall make your count for the lamb. Your lamb shall be without blemish, a male of the first year. You may take it from the sheep or from the goats. 

Now you shall keep it until the fourteenth day of the month. Then the whole assembly of the congregation of Israel shall kill it at twilight. And they shall take some of the blood and put it on the two doorposts and on the lentil of the houses where they eat it. Then they shall eat the flesh on that night, roasted in fire with unleavened bread, and with bitter herbs they shall eat it. 

Do not eat it raw, nor boil it all with water, but roast it in fire, its head with its legs and its entrails. You shall let none of it remain until morning, and what remains of it until morning you shall burn with fire. And thus you shall eat it with a belt on your waist, your sandals on your feet, your staff in your hand. So you shall eat it in haste. It is the Lord's Passover. 

For I will pass through the land of Egypt on that night, and will strike all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both man and beast, and against all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgment. I am the Lord. Now the blood shall be a sign for you on the houses where you are, and when I see the blood I will pass over you, and the plague shall not be on you to destroy you when I strike the land of Egypt. So this day shall be to you a memorial, and you shall keep it as a feast to the Lord throughout your generations. You shall keep it as a feast by an everlasting ordinance."

Well this of course was a picture of God's care and providence in providing the Lamb of God in the sacrifice of Jesus. But notice for the Jews this was a feast they were to keep every year as a memorial, a feast to the Lord throughout their generations. So each year every Jewish family would converge on Jerusalem and bring a sacrifice to the temple. 

Now it's estimated at that time that there were about a hundred thousand people living in Jerusalem in Jesus' time. Some say more, some say less, but the significant thing is that during these feasts, such as Passover, the city swelled to amazing numbers of people. The historian Josephus recorded that there could be as many as two million people in Jerusalem for such a feast. But even if we take a number that's half of that it would be ten times the normal population. So this was a very busy, very crowded time, especially around the temple. 

Josephus also said that as many as 250,000 sacrifices would be performed at the annual Passover. I've done a fair amount of butchering animals. 250,000 lambs killed in the temple during the Passover. Amazing, amazing event. Imagine the logistics of such an event. Imagine with me, you entrepreneurs, the business potential that surrounded this whole event. This was true for the people who had the VRBOs at that time, who could provide a room or a bed. It was true for those who could provide food, but it was no more true for anyone than it was for those who provided the commanded sacrificial animals to the people for their worship and who exchanged the money. 

Many people traveled far, it would be impossible or at least cumbersome for them to bring animals on the journey, and in addition you'll notice in the text in Exodus 12 that we read that the animals were to be without blemish, and the ones who did the inspections and made that determination were the priests in the temple, the ones who had control over the selling of the animals. So the people knew that even if they brought their own lamb, it would likely be rejected and they would have to buy another lamb from the temple. 

There was also a caveat, the animals could only be brought, be bought with Jewish money, and there was a temple tax that had to be paid in Jewish money, a half shekel, and many of these people came from Gentile communities with Greek and Roman money and thus they had to exchange their money in order to pay their tax. All of this was rife with corruption and was nothing less than extortion of the people, and these traders and merchandisers who had traditionally been set up outside the temple had moved their business right into the temple court in the house of God. 

This was the temple trade system to which Jesus came that day in Jerusalem, and the high priest was in control of the whole thing and profiting from it all. And it was the hypocrisy of it all, the false worship, that so offended Jesus. It was nothing new in Judaism in the history of Israel. Let's go back to Isaiah 1, Isaiah chapter 1, 700 years before this, Isaiah 1 at verse 2, this is God talking to Israel at that time about their worship situation. 

He says, "'Hear, O heavens, and give ear, O earth, for the Lord has spoken. I have nourished and brought up children, and they have rebelled against me. The ox knows its owner, and the donkey its master's crib, but Israel does not know. My people do not consider. A last sinful nation, a people laden with iniquity, a brood of evildoers, children who are corruptors, they have forsaken the Lord, they have provoked to anger the Holy One of Israel, they have turned away backward. 

Why should you be stricken again? You will revolt more and more. The whole head is sick, and the whole heart faints. From the sole of the foot even to the head there is no soundness in it, but wounds and bruises and putrefying sores. They have not been closed or bound up, soothed with ointment. Your country is desolate, your cities are burned with fire. Strangers devour your land and your presence, and it is desolate as overthrown by strangers. So the daughter of Zion is left as a booth in a vineyard, as a hut in a garden of cucumbers, as a besieged city. 

Unless the Lord of hosts had left to us a very small remnant, we would have become like Sodom, we would have been like Gomorrah. And why is it like this in Israel? Hear the word of the Lord, you rulers of Sodom. Give ear to the Lord your God, you people of Gomorrah. To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices to me, says the Lord? I have had enough of burnt offerings, of rams, and of the fat of fed cattle. I do not delight in the blood of bulls or of lambs or goats. 

When you come to appear before me, who has required this from your hand to trample my courts? Bring no more futile sacrifices. Incense is an abomination to me, the new moons, the Sabbaths, and the calling of assemblies. I cannot endure iniquity and the sacred meeting. Your new moons and your appointed feasts my soul hates. They are a trouble to me. I am weary of bearing them. When you spread out your hands, I will hide my eyes from you. Even though you make many prayers, I will not hear. Your hands are full of blood, wash yourselves, make yourselves clean, put away the evil from your doings from before my eyes, cease to do evil, learn to do good, seek justice, rebuke the oppressor, defend the fatherless, plead for the widow. Come now, let us reason together, says the Lord. Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow, though they are red like crimson, they shall be as wool." 

The problem in this time is the same problem that they had in Jesus' time. God had prescribed the system of worship, the temple, the priesthood, the sacrifices and feasts and celebrations. What was going on here 700 years before Christ in the nation of Israel, it's the very same thing that Jesus saw when He came to Jerusalem in the beginning of His ministry. Hypocrisy, sinfulness, twisting and distortion of all that God intended, a perverse and ugly thing. A works-righteous, man-centered, pride-filled religion used as a weapon to impoverish and bludgeon the people and enrich the hierarchy. 

Sound familiar? Men are still doing this today. But this was the house of God. And God said through Isaiah, I am sick of your sacrifices. Your incense is a stench to my nose, take it all away, stop going through the motions with no heart for the Lord but only an evil heart of unbelief filled with rot and stench and sinful works for self-enrichment and abusive power. This is the religion of men, my friends. Men in Isaiah's time, in Christ's time, and now in our time. The issue is not the outward worship, the issue is the heart. 

And the hearts of these religious leaders in the temple and their traitors, or should we say traitors to God, were far from the Lord. And their acts and motives were a vile offense to the holiness of our Lord and the Father. God brought judgment to Israel because of this very thing by the Assyrians, by the Babylonians, and so on. And the judgment we see pictured here as Jesus cleanses the temple and the zeal for the Father's house eats him up is only a small picture of the judgment that would come in 70 AD for this whole system of worship and the final great judgment that will come for the whole world system and carnal men in the second coming of Jesus Christ. 

The disciples remembered Psalm 69, and here we see Jesus' heart and despair and anger expressed by David in his situation of trouble and his desire for judgment of the wicked and deliverance of the righteous, of setting up of the kingdom of God in which righteousness dwells. It's a hard thing to live in this world as a son of God because of the unrighteousness that persists all around us. We see things now, I mean, things have gone insane in our world in very recent years. And we look at this and it troubles us and we have this burden. But this has always been true. 

Go back to Psalm 69, let's look at David. We could read many of David's psalms, Psalm 37, Psalm 73, tremendous desire for justice and being offended, being heartsick at the wickedness of the world. In Psalm 69, 7, where we get this quote in our text from Psalm 69, starting in verse 7, because of your sake I have borne reproach, David says. Because of God's sake he had borne reproach, shame has covered my face, I have become a stranger to my brothers and an alien to my mother's children. Because zeal for your house has eaten me up, and the reproaches of those who reproach you have fallen on me. 

When I wept and chastened my soul with fasting, that became my reproach. I also made sackcloth my garment, I became a byword to them. Those who sit in the gate speak against me, and I am the song of the drunkards. But as for me, my prayer is to you, O Lord, in the acceptable time, O God, in the multitude of your mercy, hear me in the truth of your salvation. Deliver me out of the mire and let me not sink, let me be delivered from those who hate me and out of the deep waters. 

Let not the flood water overflow me, nor let the deep swallow me up, and let not the pit shut its mouth on me. Hear me, O Lord, for your loving kindness is good. Turn to me according to the multitude of your tender mercies, and do not hide your face from your servant, for I am in trouble. Hear me speedily, draw near to my soul and redeem it, deliver me because of my enemies. You know my reproach, my shame, and my dishonor, my adversaries are all before you. Reproach has broken my heart, and I am full of heaviness. I looked for someone to take pity, but there was none, and for comforters, but I found none. 

They also gave me gall for my food, and for my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink. Let their table become a snare before them, and their well-being a trap. Let their eyes be darkened so that they do not see, and make their loins shake continually. Pour out your indignation upon them, and let your wrathful anger take hold of them. Let their dwelling place be desolate, let no one live in their tents, for they persecute the ones you have struck, and talk of the grief of those you have wounded. Add iniquity to their iniquity, and let them not come into your righteousness. Let them be blotted out of the book of the living, and not written with the righteous. 

But I am poor and sorrowful. Let your salvation, O God, set me up on high. I will praise the name of God with a song, I will magnify Him with thanksgiving. This also shall please the Lord better than an ox or a bull which has horns and hooves. The humble shall see this and be glad, and you who seek God, your hearts shall live. For the Lord hears the poor and does not despise His prisoners. Let heaven and earth praise Him, the seas and everything that moves in them. For God will save Zion and build the cities of Judah, that they may dwell there and possess it. Also, the descendants of His servants shall inherit it, and those who love His name shall dwell in it." 

This is the scene, the context, into which Jesus comes in Jerusalem at the temple. And that is why He commands authority, it's why He shows His divine power and drives out these multitudes of people, turning over the money changers, driving out the traitors of the temple for zeal, for His house, His honor, His justice, His holiness has eaten Him up. 

And we must remember, Jesus had no place in the temple. He was not a priest, He was not a leader, He had no authority, and there were plenty of people around, men, I'm sure some large men in the tens of thousands, temple police, authorities, Sanhedrin, and Jesus was just some guy from Nazareth, carpenter's son. Why didn't they stop Him? Why not arrest Him? This was a sign, my friends, a validation of His power and authority. 

This temple was His Father's house. John here presents Him as the Son of God, and the only thing the leaders could do with all their supposed power and authority over this whole system and this place was to be indignant. John 2.18 in our text, it says they answered Him and said, what sign do you show us since you do these things? What authority do you have to do these things? He destroyed the whole game here. He upended their entire business, their scheme and profit, destroyed the infrastructure they had set up in the courts and drove them out. 

And this is their response, show us a sign so that we know you have authority to do this? My brothers and sisters, this was a profound event. They were afraid. They were not about to confront Him with the power and authority He just displayed. If it were anyone else, He would have been arrested and beaten and jailed, but His time had not come, and He was in full control here. 

They were not sincere. Jesus clearly had performed signs. They wanted some cosmic disturbance, some great wonder, but what they really wanted was to reject Him. What they really wanted was not to believe, and no sign would change their hearts. I always think in the book of Revelation, when we look at the tribulation time, and they know, they go to hide themselves in the rocks, they say, let the rocks fall on us because the time of the wrath of the Lamb has come. They know that these judgments and bowls and trumpets, all these things are being poured out from God. 

And what's it say at the end of each of those events? They would not repent. It's not a matter of signs, it's not a matter of Revelation, it's a matter of the heart. But Jesus does give them a sign, not the one they were looking for. Verse 19 of our text, Jesus answered and said to them, destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up. 

Now this statement is not a command, it's the word luo, it means to separate, to loosen, or to destroy. And here we find it's a first aorist active imperative. But it's a permissive imperative, so it's not a command to do, it's not that He's telling them to do this. What Jesus says to them is this, if you destroy this temple, and you will, then I will raise it up in three days. It's really a bit of predictive prophecy, and Jesus hides the meaning in a parable form from those who had hard hearts, but notice that it was meant for the disciples who would remember and who would believe. 

That's John's purpose in writing, you know, I write these things that you might believe and that you might have eternal life, well what it says is they remembered what He said and they believed. Of course He spoke of the temple of His body, and He said you leaders of Israel will destroy my body and then I will raise it up on the third day. They would not hear Him. Look at verse 20 in our text. 

Then the Jews said, it has taken 46 years to build this temple and will you raise it up in three days? Herod had been working on this temple for 46 years. But He was speaking of the temple of His body. Therefore, when He had risen from the dead, His disciples remembered that He had said this to them, and they believed the scripture and the word which Jesus had said. 

What we see here in Jesus' words in the cleansing of the temple and the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ is the changing of the guard, a new temple, a new covenant in His blood. With this judgment, Jesus is casting out the old and He's bringing in the new. And again, this is just a picture, it's just a small sample. God is coming for hypocritical false religion and nowhere more acute than in the very house of God. And we will see Jesus fulfill and end the old covenant and institute the new covenant in His blood at the cross. 

We will see the veil rent at His death. We will see a new temple instituted for the dwelling place of God and the new covenant in the church beginning at Pentecost. In Ephesians 2.19 it says, now therefore you are no longer strangers and foreigners but fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God having been built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ Himself being the chief cornerstone in whom the whole building, being fitted together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord, in whom you also are being built together for a dwelling place of God in the Spirit. 

First Peter 2.5, you also as living stones are being built up a spiritual house, holy priesthood to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. And that passage in 1 Corinthians 6 where Paul says, or do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you whom you have from God and you are not your own for you were bought at a price therefore glorify God in your body and in your spirit which are God's. 

The old temple was wiped out. It was fully destroyed in 70 AD and it has not been rebuilt since and the new temple in this new covenant time in the church is our body, the dwelling place of our God. Father Son and Holy Spirit, John 14 says, have come to make their home in us. And my friends, we no longer worship according to the law, by the letter, but now we worship in spirit and in truth. 

We live by the Spirit who dwells in us and empowers us to live for Him and we present our bodies as a living sacrifice day by day to Him. This is the glorious truth of the new covenant, regeneration, new birth, the life of God in us, the very power that raised Jesus from the dead empowering us to live for Him. 

Jesus gave the sign, the sign of the prophet Jonah as he said in Matthew 12. As Jonah was in the heart of the fish three nights and three days, so Jesus would be in the heart of the earth three nights and on the third day He would rise from the dead. And my friends, they didn't believe that sign either. Even though one would be raised from the dead, they would not believe. 

But for those who received Him, for those who believe in His name, to them God gives the right to become His children, His church, His temple on the earth. And that's what we see. The disciples remembered what He said, the sign He gave, and they believed. They believed Jesus and they gained eternal life. Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God. And this event in Jerusalem at the beginning of His ministry shows us this truth and so much more about the new covenant to come at the cross in His blood. 

And that's why we're here this morning. That's the event which we remember the last Sunday of every month as we were commanded by Jesus to celebrate communion often, to remember what He did for us so that we might worship Him in spirit and in truth. 

Let's close in prayer. 

Father, we... thank you. Thank you for Jesus. We thank you for your power, your authority. We thank you for your sacrifice. That Jesus died in our place for our sins, and that by faith in Him alone we can have your righteousness imputed to us, our sins imputed to the cross. Thank you that we have salvation in Him, and thank you that we have the hope and the promise of eternal life. 

There's coming a time when you will make things right on this earth, and you will create a new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells, and we long for that. We groan for that time, for glorification, for eternity in heaven with you. And we look back to the cross where you accomplished this salvation, and we remember what Jesus did, and we praise you, and we give you glory. We thank you. In Jesus' name.