St Theodore's Sermon

	St Theodore's Wattle Park

Sermon of the Week

14/2/99

Christ the True Temple of God John 2:12-25

I think it's hard for us who live in the western world to fully appreciate how important temples were in the ancient world. For us a church is often little more than a convenient place to meet even if it does have particular associations or provides an atmosphere of devotion or worship. If something happened to it we'd be upset but it wouldn't affect our faith or stop us from worshipping. We'd simply hire a school hall, or put a tent up on the carpark. But in the ancient world things were different. Temples were so highly revered that, for example, in the Roman Empire it was a capital offence to desecrate a temple; any temple! And of course if you were a Jew you had an even stronger reason to revere the Temple. Because here was the place where God, Yahweh, had chosen to meet with his people. This was the dwelling place of God on earth, going all the way back to the exodus. As the Jew went up to worship at the temple they'd no doubt be reminded of how when the people of Israel were going through the desert God went before them in the cloud or in the pillar of fire, and when they stopped, the cloud would descend upon the tabernacle to indicate that God was present with them. They'd remember how Moses used to go into the Tabernacle to speak with God, and when he came out his face shone so brightly from the reflection of God's glory, that the people couldn't look at him. And how each year on the day of atonement the high priest would enter the Tabernacle with the blood of a bull, which he'd sprinkle on the mercy seat on top of the Ark of the Covenant, as a sign that God had forgiven the sins of the people. And then as time went on and the people were settled in the land God allowed Solomon to build a great Temple to replace the tabernacle, and they'd remember how at the consecration of that temple God's glory came down and filled the Temple, so that the priests couldn't see to offer their sacrifices.

They'd remember too, the exile, and that terrible vision of Ezekiel 10 & 11, of the glory of the Lord departing from the Temple as a sign of God's judgement, followed by the later vision of Ezek 33 of God returning to dwell with his people forever. And as they came 3 times a year to fulfill their duties as faithful Jews, as they walked around the rebuilt Temple, beautified by Herod over a period of some 46 years, they no doubt consoled themselves with the thought that here was the place where God met with his people and would do so forever.

The importance of the temple was so great that even when, some 30 or 40 years later, Jerusalem was besieged by Roman troops, the temple continued to function. Even when people were dying of starvation, to the point where they reportedly took food from the mouths of those who were too weak to resist, and even resorted to eating their own children, the temple sacrifices continued, until there was no-one left to offer them.

So the temple was of far more significance to the Jew than we can even imagine. But what we discover in this passage from John 2, is that all was not well with the Temple and with Jewish worship in particular, and that, in fact the coming of Christ meant the Temple was replaced by a new and living way to come to God.

   Before we look at the passage before us, I might just comment on the question of this account of the cleansing, compared with those in the other gospels which occur in the week before Easter. There's some debate among biblical scholars about whether these are the same or different events. Many commentators argue that they must be the same, on the basis that Jesus couldn't have cleansed the Temple twice and got away with it. Well, there are a few arguments against that. First of all, of course there could have been 2 such occasions, particularly if nothing changed as a result of the first. Secondly, Jesus mightn't have got away with it if he'd tried to do it a couple of days later, but 2 years later is a different matter. Thirdly, the account in John's gospel agrees markedly with the testimony against Jesus at his trial, yet at that time the witnesses couldn't quite get their stories to agree. Now that would be much more likely if these things had been said 2 years before than three days before wouldn't it?

   So the conclusion I draw is that this is a different event to that described by the other gospel writers. That also fits with the rest of chs 2-4 being unique to his gospel. But enough of that. Let's look at the passage itself. The first thing we discover here is that:

   The Temple must be Cleansed (2:13-17)

   Jesus goes up to Jerusalem in time for the passover, and when he comes to the temple what does he find? People selling cattle, sheep, and doves, and others exchanging money.

   Now you have to understand that what was happening here wasn't in itself a bad thing. I mean, people came from all over the Roman Empire to worship at Jerusalem, and when they got there they needed to have a sheep or a calf, or at least a dove to offer to God. Now it took long enough to get there in the first place without having a sheep or a calf to slow you down. So people brought their money and bought the animal when they got there. Similarly, the law required only the purest silver to be used to pay the temple tax required of every male Jew, so if you were giving an offering of silver, you had to exchange your own money for Tyrian silver, which was the purest available. So these merchants were offering a service that was important to those who were devout in their worship of Yahweh.

   There's no hint in the passage that they were acting unethically, though that may be the implication in the later accounts. No, the trouble here was that they were in the wrong place. What should have been a place of prayer for all peoples had become a market place. You see, what had happened was that the market used to be across the Kidron Valley, near the Mount of Olives, but economic rationalism had set in. Someone had realised that it was much more efficient to have their stalls right in the Temple precincts. In fact in the Court of the Gentiles. That way if someone got there and needed to buy a dove or a sheep, they could readily purchase it without needing to walk all the way across the valley in the heat. I guess it was a bit like supermarkets having those shelves of magazines and chocolate bars at the registers to attract the impulse buyer in all of us or the banks moving their branches out of small strip shopping centres like Wattle Park into the larger centres where the big supermarkets are.

   The result of this was that the worship of God had been subordinated to things that were only meant to support it. The market had become more important than the prayers of the faithful.

   The Temple needed to be cleansed. So Jesus makes a whip out of cords and drives out the sheep and the cattle, knocks over the tables of the money changers, and says "How dare you turn my Father's house into a marketplace?" As I said before there's no hint that there's anything wrong with having this market. It's just in the wrong place. It's just that in trying to keep up the form of worship, the intent has been lost. That can happen so easily can't it? We can be so concerned that we have the right sort of hymns, or the right sort of prayers, the right prayer book, the right furniture, the right language, or whatever it is, that we lose sight of the real reason we meet together, that is to worship God. The Corinthians knew all about that didn't they? They were very keen to worship God as well as they could, but their practice just ended up breaking the church apart. So much so that Paul spends most of his first letter to them correcting their mistakes.

   In fact, if I can take a slight excursion at this point, the letter to the Corinthians is full of Paul addressing concerns of the Church there. All the way through he has this 'yes-but' approach. He says "You've got this bit right but you're wrong here." But when he comes to discuss the way they celebrate the Lord's Supper, he says "In the following matters I have no praise for you, for your meetings do more harm that good." You see the end result of their concentration on getting the outward things right, wasn't true worship of God at all. Rather it was a destruction of that worship.

   Now John says lots in his gospel about worshipping God. We'll look at one of those things in a few weeks time when we come to the woman at the well. There Jesus tells the woman that we're to worship God not in some geographical place but in Spirit and in truth. Worship in truth is bound up with him who is the truth. Jesus, we're told later in the gospel, is the true vine, the true shepherd. He's the way, the truth, and the life. So to worship in Spirit and in Truth is to worship Christ-centredly. The only way to ensure that our worship isn't consumed by the outward forms rather than the inward intent is to ensure that Christ remains our focus, not the ways we worship or the aids to worship that we employ.

   Well, at this point we're told that the disciples remembered the Scripture, from Ps 69, "Zeal for your house will consume me." It's ironic isn't it, that those who were so concerned to get their worship right thought they were showing zeal for God's house, but in fact had missed the point. It was actually Jesus whose zeal led in the right direction. There's also an ironic twist in this quote, in that in the end it's Jesus zeal for the house of God that destroys him. When we come to the cleansing of the Temple in the last week of his life we discover that the Jewish leaders decide that it's the last straw. It's time to have him killed.

   At this time, however, all they do is to ask "What sign can you show us for doing this?" Here we come to our second point:

   The Temple must be destroyed and raised up again

   Theirs is an interesting response really. There were plenty of laws to deal with someone who came in and upset the temple. So if Jesus was just a trouble maker they could easily deal with him. But that's not how they respond. Rather they respond at this stage of his life as though what he's done is the act of a prophet. All they ask is for some sign of his prophetic authority. The sad thing abut this is that they examine him without any sense of self-examination. You see, it wouldn't have taken much self-examination to see that what he had done was in fact a prophetic act that carried its own authority. The truth of what he said should have been self evident. And if what he did was truly a prophetic act then it was done with an authority that came from God. But no, they want to stand in authority over him, to test him.

   Of course they're not much different from the crowds we encounter at the end of the passage, who believe in Jesus because of the signs he was doing. You see, there's a danger in seeking signs to prove the trustworthiness of God. Have you ever thought about those people who cried out on Good Friday, "show us you're the Son of God by coming down from the cross." What if he had come down. Apart from the failure to complete his work on earth, what sort of faith would that have engendered? It would have impressed people for a while, but it wouldn't have been long before they'd have begun to demand some other sign, and then another and then another, until Christ became a bit like a genie in a bottle, incredibly powerful, but at the beck and call of those who claimed to be his followers. No, it doesn't work like that, does it?

   What about you? Have you ever tried to make a deal with God? You know the sort of thing. You ask God to give you some sign that you should do a certain thing and then you'll do it. Or you tell God that if he does some thing then you'll believe in him. Do you see how demanding signs is an attempt to domesticate God, to control him. And that's what the Jewish leaders are trying to do here. It's what the crowd would like to do.

   Well, Jesus does offer them a sign, but the sign he offers is more than just a sign of his authority. It's a prophecy of doom for the earthly temple, it's an exposition of the true temple of God that's to come, and it's the overwhelming sign of the authority that Jesus has.

   The temple is doomed because Jesus has replaced it with the perfect Temple. Here's what Hebrews 9 tells us: (Heb 9:11-12 NIV) "When Christ came as high priest of the good things that are already here, he went through the greater and more perfect tabernacle that is not man-made, that is to say, not a part of this creation. ¹²He did not enter by means of the blood of goats and calves; but he entered the Most Holy Place once for all by his own blood, having obtained eternal redemption." John 1:14 has already told us that "the Word became flesh and lived among us" but what we've lost with our English translations is that the word used there is an unusual one. It's the word 'tabernacled'. As soon as you see that word you're meant to think of the original Tabernacle in which God came down to meet with his people. Jesus comes as the perfect tabernacle. He comes as the perfect temple in whom we are enabled to meet God personally. All those Old testament images of the temple as the meeting place between God and his people, as the place where the sins of the people are removed, as the place where the Messiah will appear, all of them find their fulfilment in Jesus Christ.

   What we discover here is that the true Temple is brought to completion in Jesus death and resurrection. The incarnation isn't enough. It wasn't enough that Jesus should take on human flesh. It was also necessary that Jesus die and rise again on the third day. Only then could he bring true redemption and the forgiveness of sins. Only then is it possible for us to enter God's presence with impunity. This theme is developed through the rest of the New Testament, not least of all in Hebrews, in passages like that one I just read, until at the very end of the Bible and the vision in Revelation of the new heaven and the new earth, we discover that all is complete. There is no Temple there because the Lord God and the Lamb are its Temple. The need for mediation, for sacrifice, for a place to meet with God is past. There we will be forever in the presence of the Lord, cleansed, purified, by Jesus blood shed on the cross.

   The passage finishes with two by-plays. First both the Jewish leaders and the disciples misunderstand what he's talking about, a common theme in John's gospel, and second there are those who believe in him because of the signs he's doing, but Jesus won't trust himself to them. There's something of a play on words here. They trust Jesus because of what he does, but he doesn't trust them or won't entrust himself to them. Why? Because he knows what's in their hearts, or if you like he knows the signs they do. He knows that when the time comes they'll abandon him and cry out for his death along with the rest. Only those whom the Father has given to him will remain with him at the end.

   So what we find here is that the Temple must be cleansed. That is, true worship of God must take precedence over the outward forms in which it appears, and secondly, true access to God comes only through the risen person of Jesus Christ. His death and resurrection establish his authority and his death and resurrection form the means by which we can come freely into God's presence, our sins purified and our consciences cleansed. The Temple is in place until that glorious day when Christ, the true passover lamb, is raised on the cross, and there makes atonement for the sins of all people, creating in his own body the new Temple of God where all people can come to worship God in Spirit and in truth.


	Contact us	Preaching Program	Home		Last Week's Sermon

	Sermon of the Week
	14/2/99
	Christ the True Temple of God	John 2:12-25

	I think it's hard for us who live in the western world to fully appreciate how important temples were in the ancient world. For us a church is often little more than a convenient place to meet even if it does have particular associations or provides an atmosphere of devotion or worship. If something happened to it we'd be upset but it wouldn't affect our faith or stop us from worshipping. We'd simply hire a school hall, or put a tent up on the carpark. But in the ancient world things were different. Temples were so highly revered that, for example, in the Roman Empire it was a capital offence to desecrate a temple; any temple! And of course if you were a Jew you had an even stronger reason to revere the Temple. Because here was the place where God, Yahweh, had chosen to meet with his people. This was the dwelling place of God on earth, going all the way back to the exodus. As the Jew went up to worship at the temple they'd no doubt be reminded of how when the people of Israel were going through the desert God went before them in the cloud or in the pillar of fire, and when they stopped, the cloud would descend upon the tabernacle to indicate that God was present with them. They'd remember how Moses used to go into the Tabernacle to speak with God, and when he came out his face shone so brightly from the reflection of God's glory, that the people couldn't look at him. And how each year on the day of atonement the high priest would enter the Tabernacle with the blood of a bull, which he'd sprinkle on the mercy seat on top of the Ark of the Covenant, as a sign that God had forgiven the sins of the people. And then as time went on and the people were settled in the land God allowed Solomon to build a great Temple to replace the tabernacle, and they'd remember how at the consecration of that temple God's glory came down and filled the Temple, so that the priests couldn't see to offer their sacrifices.
	They'd remember too, the exile, and that terrible vision of Ezekiel 10 & 11, of the glory of the Lord departing from the Temple as a sign of God's judgement, followed by the later vision of Ezek 33 of God returning to dwell with his people forever. And as they came 3 times a year to fulfill their duties as faithful Jews, as they walked around the rebuilt Temple, beautified by Herod over a period of some 46 years, they no doubt consoled themselves with the thought that here was the place where God met with his people and would do so forever.
	The importance of the temple was so great that even when, some 30 or 40 years later, Jerusalem was besieged by Roman troops, the temple continued to function. Even when people were dying of starvation, to the point where they reportedly took food from the mouths of those who were too weak to resist, and even resorted to eating their own children, the temple sacrifices continued, until there was no-one left to offer them.
	So the temple was of far more significance to the Jew than we can even imagine. But what we discover in this passage from John 2, is that all was not well with the Temple and with Jewish worship in particular, and that, in fact the coming of Christ meant the Temple was replaced by a new and living way to come to God.
	Before we look at the passage before us, I might just comment on the question of this account of the cleansing, compared with those in the other gospels which occur in the week before Easter. There's some debate among biblical scholars about whether these are the same or different events. Many commentators argue that they must be the same, on the basis that Jesus couldn't have cleansed the Temple twice and got away with it. Well, there are a few arguments against that. First of all, of course there could have been 2 such occasions, particularly if nothing changed as a result of the first. Secondly, Jesus mightn't have got away with it if he'd tried to do it a couple of days later, but 2 years later is a different matter. Thirdly, the account in John's gospel agrees markedly with the testimony against Jesus at his trial, yet at that time the witnesses couldn't quite get their stories to agree. Now that would be much more likely if these things had been said 2 years before than three days before wouldn't it?
	So the conclusion I draw is that this is a different event to that described by the other gospel writers. That also fits with the rest of chs 2-4 being unique to his gospel. But enough of that. Let's look at the passage itself. The first thing we discover here is that:
	The Temple must be Cleansed (2:13-17)
	Jesus goes up to Jerusalem in time for the passover, and when he comes to the temple what does he find? People selling cattle, sheep, and doves, and others exchanging money.
	Now you have to understand that what was happening here wasn't in itself a bad thing. I mean, people came from all over the Roman Empire to worship at Jerusalem, and when they got there they needed to have a sheep or a calf, or at least a dove to offer to God. Now it took long enough to get there in the first place without having a sheep or a calf to slow you down. So people brought their money and bought the animal when they got there. Similarly, the law required only the purest silver to be used to pay the temple tax required of every male Jew, so if you were giving an offering of silver, you had to exchange your own money for Tyrian silver, which was the purest available. So these merchants were offering a service that was important to those who were devout in their worship of Yahweh.
	There's no hint in the passage that they were acting unethically, though that may be the implication in the later accounts. No, the trouble here was that they were in the wrong place. What should have been a place of prayer for all peoples had become a market place. You see, what had happened was that the market used to be across the Kidron Valley, near the Mount of Olives, but economic rationalism had set in. Someone had realised that it was much more efficient to have their stalls right in the Temple precincts. In fact in the Court of the Gentiles. That way if someone got there and needed to buy a dove or a sheep, they could readily purchase it without needing to walk all the way across the valley in the heat. I guess it was a bit like supermarkets having those shelves of magazines and chocolate bars at the registers to attract the impulse buyer in all of us or the banks moving their branches out of small strip shopping centres like Wattle Park into the larger centres where the big supermarkets are.
	The result of this was that the worship of God had been subordinated to things that were only meant to support it. The market had become more important than the prayers of the faithful.
	The Temple needed to be cleansed. So Jesus makes a whip out of cords and drives out the sheep and the cattle, knocks over the tables of the money changers, and says "How dare you turn my Father's house into a marketplace?" As I said before there's no hint that there's anything wrong with having this market. It's just in the wrong place. It's just that in trying to keep up the form of worship, the intent has been lost. That can happen so easily can't it? We can be so concerned that we have the right sort of hymns, or the right sort of prayers, the right prayer book, the right furniture, the right language, or whatever it is, that we lose sight of the real reason we meet together, that is to worship God. The Corinthians knew all about that didn't they? They were very keen to worship God as well as they could, but their practice just ended up breaking the church apart. So much so that Paul spends most of his first letter to them correcting their mistakes.
	In fact, if I can take a slight excursion at this point, the letter to the Corinthians is full of Paul addressing concerns of the Church there. All the way through he has this 'yes-but' approach. He says "You've got this bit right but you're wrong here." But when he comes to discuss the way they celebrate the Lord's Supper, he says "In the following matters I have no praise for you, for your meetings do more harm that good." You see the end result of their concentration on getting the outward things right, wasn't true worship of God at all. Rather it was a destruction of that worship.
	Now John says lots in his gospel about worshipping God. We'll look at one of those things in a few weeks time when we come to the woman at the well. There Jesus tells the woman that we're to worship God not in some geographical place but in Spirit and in truth. Worship in truth is bound up with him who is the truth. Jesus, we're told later in the gospel, is the true vine, the true shepherd. He's the way, the truth, and the life. So to worship in Spirit and in Truth is to worship Christ-centredly. The only way to ensure that our worship isn't consumed by the outward forms rather than the inward intent is to ensure that Christ remains our focus, not the ways we worship or the aids to worship that we employ.
	Well, at this point we're told that the disciples remembered the Scripture, from Ps 69, "Zeal for your house will consume me." It's ironic isn't it, that those who were so concerned to get their worship right thought they were showing zeal for God's house, but in fact had missed the point. It was actually Jesus whose zeal led in the right direction. There's also an ironic twist in this quote, in that in the end it's Jesus zeal for the house of God that destroys him. When we come to the cleansing of the Temple in the last week of his life we discover that the Jewish leaders decide that it's the last straw. It's time to have him killed.
	At this time, however, all they do is to ask "What sign can you show us for doing this?" Here we come to our second point:
	The Temple must be destroyed and raised up again
	Theirs is an interesting response really. There were plenty of laws to deal with someone who came in and upset the temple. So if Jesus was just a trouble maker they could easily deal with him. But that's not how they respond. Rather they respond at this stage of his life as though what he's done is the act of a prophet. All they ask is for some sign of his prophetic authority. The sad thing abut this is that they examine him without any sense of self-examination. You see, it wouldn't have taken much self-examination to see that what he had done was in fact a prophetic act that carried its own authority. The truth of what he said should have been self evident. And if what he did was truly a prophetic act then it was done with an authority that came from God. But no, they want to stand in authority over him, to test him.
	Of course they're not much different from the crowds we encounter at the end of the passage, who believe in Jesus because of the signs he was doing. You see, there's a danger in seeking signs to prove the trustworthiness of God. Have you ever thought about those people who cried out on Good Friday, "show us you're the Son of God by coming down from the cross." What if he had come down. Apart from the failure to complete his work on earth, what sort of faith would that have engendered? It would have impressed people for a while, but it wouldn't have been long before they'd have begun to demand some other sign, and then another and then another, until Christ became a bit like a genie in a bottle, incredibly powerful, but at the beck and call of those who claimed to be his followers. No, it doesn't work like that, does it?
	What about you? Have you ever tried to make a deal with God? You know the sort of thing. You ask God to give you some sign that you should do a certain thing and then you'll do it. Or you tell God that if he does some thing then you'll believe in him. Do you see how demanding signs is an attempt to domesticate God, to control him. And that's what the Jewish leaders are trying to do here. It's what the crowd would like to do.
	Well, Jesus does offer them a sign, but the sign he offers is more than just a sign of his authority. It's a prophecy of doom for the earthly temple, it's an exposition of the true temple of God that's to come, and it's the overwhelming sign of the authority that Jesus has.
	The temple is doomed because Jesus has replaced it with the perfect Temple. Here's what Hebrews 9 tells us: (Heb 9:11-12 NIV) "When Christ came as high priest of the good things that are already here, he went through the greater and more perfect tabernacle that is not man-made, that is to say, not a part of this creation. ¹²He did not enter by means of the blood of goats and calves; but he entered the Most Holy Place once for all by his own blood, having obtained eternal redemption." John 1:14 has already told us that "the Word became flesh and lived among us" but what we've lost with our English translations is that the word used there is an unusual one. It's the word 'tabernacled'. As soon as you see that word you're meant to think of the original Tabernacle in which God came down to meet with his people. Jesus comes as the perfect tabernacle. He comes as the perfect temple in whom we are enabled to meet God personally. All those Old testament images of the temple as the meeting place between God and his people, as the place where the sins of the people are removed, as the place where the Messiah will appear, all of them find their fulfilment in Jesus Christ.
	What we discover here is that the true Temple is brought to completion in Jesus death and resurrection. The incarnation isn't enough. It wasn't enough that Jesus should take on human flesh. It was also necessary that Jesus die and rise again on the third day. Only then could he bring true redemption and the forgiveness of sins. Only then is it possible for us to enter God's presence with impunity. This theme is developed through the rest of the New Testament, not least of all in Hebrews, in passages like that one I just read, until at the very end of the Bible and the vision in Revelation of the new heaven and the new earth, we discover that all is complete. There is no Temple there because the Lord God and the Lamb are its Temple. The need for mediation, for sacrifice, for a place to meet with God is past. There we will be forever in the presence of the Lord, cleansed, purified, by Jesus blood shed on the cross.
	The passage finishes with two by-plays. First both the Jewish leaders and the disciples misunderstand what he's talking about, a common theme in John's gospel, and second there are those who believe in him because of the signs he's doing, but Jesus won't trust himself to them. There's something of a play on words here. They trust Jesus because of what he does, but he doesn't trust them or won't entrust himself to them. Why? Because he knows what's in their hearts, or if you like he knows the signs they do. He knows that when the time comes they'll abandon him and cry out for his death along with the rest. Only those whom the Father has given to him will remain with him at the end.
	So what we find here is that the Temple must be cleansed. That is, true worship of God must take precedence over the outward forms in which it appears, and secondly, true access to God comes only through the risen person of Jesus Christ. His death and resurrection establish his authority and his death and resurrection form the means by which we can come freely into God's presence, our sins purified and our consciences cleansed. The Temple is in place until that glorious day when Christ, the true passover lamb, is raised on the cross, and there makes atonement for the sins of all people, creating in his own body the new Temple of God where all people can come to worship God in Spirit and in truth.

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