Latest / Heart Check Podcast / Bible Study with Pastor Los | The Gospel of John (2:13-22)

Transcript

Bible Study with Pastor Los | The Gospel of John (2:13-22) · Heart Check Podcast

• 0:13
  What's up, everybody? Welcome back to Heart Check
• 0:15
  Podcast. I'm your host, Pastelos.
• 0:18
  Yeah, let's go. And so excited to be back with
• 0:22
  you guys. We are going to continue our
• 0:24
  journey through the Gospel of John.
• 0:26
  We are going to be in John chapter 2 and we're going to be
• 0:30
  verses 13 through 22. And remember, I'm reading
• 0:33
  through the NLT version. Let's get straight to it.
• 0:37
  Verse 13, it says this. It was nearly time for the
• 0:41
  Jewish Passover celebration, so Jesus went to Jerusalem.
• 0:45
  Verse 14 In the temple area he saw merchants selling cattle,
• 0:49
  sheep, and doves for sacrifices. He also saw dealers at tables
• 0:53
  exchanging foreign money. Verse 15 Jesus made a whip from
• 0:59
  some ropes and chased them all out of the temple.
• 1:02
  He drove out the sheep and cattle, scattered the money
• 1:05
  changers coins over the floor and turned over their tables.
• 1:10
  Verse 16 Then going over to the people who sold doves, he told
• 1:15
  them, get these things out of here.
• 1:18
  Stop turning my father's house into a marketplace.
• 1:22
  Verse 17 Then his disciples remembered this prophecy from
• 1:26
  the Scriptures. Passion for God's house will
• 1:29
  consume me. Verse 18 But the Jewish leaders
• 1:33
  demanded, what are you doing? If God gave you authority to do
• 1:38
  this, show us a miraculous sign to prove it.
• 1:41
  Verse 19. All right, Jesus replied,
• 1:45
  destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up.
• 1:49
  Verse 20. What they exclaimed, It has
• 1:52
  taken 46 years to build this temple, and you can rebuild it
• 1:56
  in three days. But when Jesus said this temple,
• 2:00
  he meant his own body. Verse 22 After he was raised
• 2:04
  from the dead, his disciples remember he had said this and
• 2:09
  they believed both the scriptures and what Jesus had
• 2:13
  said. Let's go.
• 2:15
  I love this. This is this is a, this is a
• 2:18
  pretty fire story. This is an interesting one too,
• 2:21
  because this is 1 where we see Jesus's righteous anger that
• 2:26
  Jesus ain't playing games about his Father's house.
• 2:30
  But when we go back up, remember the first verse 13 says it was
• 2:34
  the time for the Jewish Passover celebration.
• 2:36
  If you don't know what that is, all of the Jewish people from
• 2:41
  wherever they were, 'cause Jewish people weren't only in
• 2:43
  Jerusalem, they were scattered now around the world.
• 2:47
  All of the Jewish people would come back to Jerusalem to
• 2:50
  celebrate the Passover. And the Passover is from Exodus.
• 2:54
  Remember that last plague that God has sent?
• 2:56
  We talked about this a few episodes ago.
• 2:59
  The last plague that God sent was to kill all of the first
• 3:02
  borns of Egypt. And so for the Israelites, God's
• 3:06
  chosen people, for them to not have that come to their house,
• 3:11
  so to have the Angel of death Passover their house, so to not
• 3:14
  kill their first borns, their first born sons in their house.
• 3:19
  He told them to kill a lamb and to put the lamb's blood over the
• 3:25
  doorpost, the door frame of the top of their door, to cover it
• 3:29
  with that blood. And so then when the Angel of
• 3:32
  death came, it would go over their house, saving them from
• 3:36
  what the Angel of death was going to do in Egypt, which is
• 3:39
  kill all the first born sons. And so the Passover celebration
• 3:44
  was just Jewish people coming back to Jerusalem, coming to the
• 3:47
  temple to celebrate what God had done for them back then.
• 3:52
  That he delivered them out of Egypt, but not just delivered
• 3:55
  them out of Egypt, that he saved them, that he passed over their
• 3:58
  house, that this is a celebration that all the Jewish
• 4:01
  people would come back to Jerusalem for.
• 4:03
  And then it says in verse 14, in the temple area, Jesus comes and
• 4:08
  sees these merchants selling cattle and sheep and doves for
• 4:12
  sacrifices, that he also saw dealers at tables exchanging
• 4:16
  foreign money. And it wasn't necessarily that
• 4:20
  the the the money that the reason it's described is foreign
• 4:23
  money, man. This foreign money would have
• 4:25
  false gods on it. But it's not even necessarily
• 4:28
  the false gods that are on this money that's in the temple.
• 4:32
  It's that these people have turned a place of worship into a
• 4:36
  den of thieves, as another translation says that they are,
• 4:40
  That they are turning this holy, holy and sacred place into a
• 4:44
  place of selling items and merchants and money being
• 4:49
  exchanged. That, you know, kind of in our
• 4:51
  day and age, it looked like you'd be like walking into a
• 4:55
  church thinking you're walking into a church building, but then
• 4:57
  you really walk into a casino. You walk into, you walk into a
• 5:01
  casino and see people playing slot machines or at the
• 5:05
  blackjack table, people exchanging money, people selling
• 5:08
  goods. And you're like, I thought this
• 5:10
  was a place of worship. I thought this was a church.
• 5:13
  I thought this was a place where we came to, to glorify and
• 5:17
  praise God, to pray to God, to spend time with him.
• 5:21
  But Jesus comes in and sees what's going on in this place of
• 5:25
  worship, the temple. And Jesus ain't too happy that
• 5:29
  Jesus ain't playing games that he takes time to make a make a
• 5:35
  whip a rope to get them up out of there and not and let or
• 5:40
  remind them of where they are at that do that they're doing
• 5:44
  business. And they're specifically doing
• 5:46
  business in the temple. Remember, there's outer courts
• 5:48
  and the outer courts of the temple where the where the
• 5:51
  places where the only place where Gentiles, people who are
• 5:54
  not Jewish could come and worship that this area, the
• 5:58
  court of Gentiles was made into a House of merchants, that this
• 6:02
  is where this is happening. And isn't that interesting that
• 6:06
  Jesus comes to the place of the temple where people who are not
• 6:09
  Jews could come to worship him because God's created all of us
• 6:13
  in his image. That anyone could come to put
• 6:16
  their faith in him. That anyone could come to be a
• 6:18
  child of God through their faith in Jesus.
• 6:21
  He goes to that place, the place where Gentiles worship.
• 6:25
  And this is where he comes and sees what they're doing, that
• 6:28
  they are taking over a place where other people could come to
• 6:31
  know the God who created them and worship him and focus on
• 6:34
  him. This is what they've turned to
• 6:36
  do. Identities that they're
• 6:37
  exchanging money that they're that they're selling cattle and
• 6:40
  sheep that they've they've ruined a place that's supposed
• 6:44
  to be holy and sacred and set apart for God.
• 6:49
  And so Jesus in verse 16, it says he goes over to the people
• 6:52
  who sold doves and he told them, get these things out of here.
• 6:56
  Stop turning my father's house into a marketplace.
• 7:00
  Jesus is reminding them that this is a place of worship, that
• 7:05
  this is a place meant for God, that you guys, we not them, just
• 7:11
  us. How many times do we take
• 7:14
  lightly the places that we're supposed to be holy and set
• 7:18
  apart? Jesus later on talks about his
• 7:22
  temple being tore down and the temple being his own body.
• 7:26
  And in Scripture we learn that when we've put our faith in
• 7:28
  Jesus, now the Holy Spirit dwells within our temple, that
• 7:33
  we are supposed to be holy and set apart.
• 7:37
  And the things that we do to our temple, the things that we allow
• 7:41
  to be done to our temple when it's supposed to be a place of
• 7:44
  worship. Let's read something that
• 7:47
  reminds us what our bodies should be.
• 7:50
  Romans 12/1 through two says. And so, dear brothers and
• 7:53
  sisters, I plead with you to give your bodies to God because
• 7:57
  of all He has done for you. Let them be a living and holy
• 8:01
  sacrifice, the kind he will find acceptable.
• 8:05
  This is truly the way to worship Him.
• 8:09
  Romans 12/1 reminds us that our bodies, our temples, we're
• 8:14
  supposed to give them to God as a living and holy sacrifice.
• 8:18
  That this is truly the way to worship him and Jesus as he's
• 8:22
  reminding the people in the temple courts that you have
• 8:26
  turned a place that is supposed to be holy for God into a place
• 8:32
  of, of thieves and selling cattle and sheep and money
• 8:37
  exchanging. This has become a House of a, a
• 8:39
  den of thieves that you've allowed a place that's supposed
• 8:42
  to be holy and set apart to become this.
• 8:45
  That's why he says, get up out of here, that this place is for
• 8:49
  God to honor him. And I think that hit me that I
• 8:54
  want to do a way better job than I've done in my life to give my
• 8:59
  body as a living and holy sacrifice.
• 9:02
  That's truly the way to worship God, as verse two goes on in
• 9:07
  Romans 12. To not conform to the patterns
• 9:11
  of this world. To not live like people who
• 9:14
  don't know Jesus. To engage in sexual temptation.
• 9:19
  To engage in overeating. To engage in gossip.
• 9:23
  To engage in drinking. To engage in treating our
• 9:26
  temples in a way that is not holy and set apart.
• 9:31
  But to remember that the God who created us now dwells in us for
• 9:35
  the believer. That we should honor him with
• 9:38
  everything we say, think, or do. That our temples should be a
• 9:42
  sacrifice for him, a pleasing aroma for him.
• 9:46
  That we give everything over to him as he dwells inside of us.
• 9:49
  That we honor him with our temples.
• 9:54
  Remember that cleansing was part of the Passover celebration.
• 9:59
  That this was a cleansing ceremony, reminder of who God
• 10:05
  is. Removing every speck of anything
• 10:09
  from the yeast, as the Jewish people did from the home, was a
• 10:13
  symbol, a picture of cleansing from sin.
• 10:16
  The Passover celebration was literally a cleansing ceremony.
• 10:20
  To remove anything from a Jewish person's home was a symbol, a
• 10:25
  picture of cleansing from sin. To remember that we are sinners,
• 10:31
  that we are broken, that God is holy and righteous and perfect.
• 10:36
  And so we see Jesus cleansing the temple, that he's cleaning
• 10:41
  out the place that's supposed to be holy and set apart for God.
• 10:45
  He is cleansing the temple. And that we are being reminded
• 10:49
  that we're being corrected. The people in the temple courts
• 10:52
  are being pushed out to cleanse the place of worship.
• 10:58
  But I love how it goes on to say then the disciples remembered
• 11:02
  this prophecy from the Scriptures, passion for God's
• 11:06
  house will consume me. That Jesus is reflecting the Old
• 11:12
  Testament Psalm 69, nine where it says passion for your house
• 11:16
  has consumed me and the insults of those who insult you have
• 11:20
  fallen on me. That this is connected to the
• 11:26
  zeal Jesus had for the purity of God's house and worship practice
• 11:31
  there. That John began with a miracle
• 11:35
  of conversion, changing water into wine, and then he showed us
• 11:39
  Jesus performing now a work of cleansing, the cleaning of the
• 11:44
  temple. And this is always how Jesus
• 11:47
  works in his people. That we have the conversion
• 11:51
  first our faith in Jesus were converted to now a child of God,
• 11:54
  a follower of Christ. And then the cleansing comes,
• 11:57
  then the sanctification. As Philippians 16 says he who
• 12:01
  began a good work in you will bring it to completion on the
• 12:03
  day of Christ Jesus returns. That now we're being sanctified
• 12:08
  more into who Christ is to look more like Jesus, talk more like
• 12:12
  Jesus, think more like Jesus to have a zeal for God's place of
• 12:18
  dwelling to truly be a living and holy sacrifices.
• 12:23
  That what your life looks like today is your temple is your
• 12:28
  life a living and holy sacrifice that's pleasing to God.
• 12:34
  But then you know, these Jewish leaders, of course, got to come
• 12:36
  up in here as if they gonna do something.
• 12:39
  Come on now you talking to God verse 18.
• 12:43
  But the Jewish leaders demanded, what are you doing?
• 12:45
  If you if God gave you the authority to do this, show us a
• 12:48
  miraculous sign to prove it. Which is pretty funny 'cause
• 12:52
  they're saying, show us a miraculous sign to show that you
• 12:54
  have the authority to do this. But even their request is funny
• 12:59
  'cause Jesus already showed a sign.
• 13:02
  The Jews wanted to know if Jesus really had the authority.
• 13:05
  The problem is that they demanded a sign for Jesus to
• 13:07
  prove it. And their request is pretty
• 13:10
  funny because the irony is that the religious leaders themselves
• 13:13
  would be the means by which the prophecy was fulfilled.
• 13:18
  And when Jesus said destroy this temple, he knew that they would
• 13:20
  in fact be the ones that would do their best to destroy it.
• 13:24
  But also, Jesus has already shown that he is who he is by
• 13:29
  clearing the temple. That if someone who really knows
• 13:33
  God knew him and loved him and obeyed him, as these religious
• 13:38
  leaders should be, they would have already done what Jesus
• 13:42
  just did. Because they're witnessing and
• 13:45
  watching a place of worship be turned into a den of these.
• 13:49
  That they would have already cleansed the temple that way.
• 13:52
  They would have kicked out these merchants.
• 13:54
  But the problem is that they weren't.
• 13:57
  That they didn't know God, and they weren't even able to notice
• 13:59
  that the Son of Man was right in front of them.
• 14:02
  That cod and flesh was the one now reminding them of what this
• 14:06
  place was supposed to be. The place that they were being
• 14:08
  allowed to steward over, that they were allowing it to be
• 14:12
  turned into a place of evil rather than a place of worship.
• 14:17
  But Jesus responds in verse 19, All right, Jesus replied,
• 14:21
  destroy this temple in three days.
• 14:22
  I will raise it of and we know what Jesus, if you don't know
• 14:27
  what Jesus is referring to, again, destroy this temple.
• 14:30
  Not the building, not the temple, not the bricks, not the
• 14:34
  walls. He's saying this temple, my body
• 14:37
  destroyed, and three days later I will raise it up, As we know
• 14:41
  and we'll come to read about as we journey through this gospel,
• 14:45
  that Jesus will die of death that we deserve for our sins.
• 14:48
  But three days later he will raise from the grave, defeating
• 14:51
  death and sin forever. So Jesus is saying, all right,
• 14:56
  destroy this temple, and three days later I'll raise it up.
• 15:00
  But the Jewish people, these Jewish leaders, are still not
• 15:03
  getting it. They're still not understanding
• 15:06
  what Jesus is meaning when he says that he claims confidently
• 15:11
  that he will raise himself from the dead.
• 15:14
  And he repeats this claim over and over again.
• 15:17
  And the resurrection of Jesus was a work of each person of the
• 15:21
  Trinity working together. No mere man could make the claim
• 15:26
  to raise himself from the dead, even if one had confidence that
• 15:29
  God would raise him. The claim of Jesus is remarkable
• 15:33
  and it is evidence of his self-awareness of his deity.
• 15:38
  And he's saying to them, I am God, that you try to destroy
• 15:43
  this temple and guess what? I'm going to raise it three days
• 15:45
  later and the Jewish leaders respond with what?
• 15:49
  It has taken 46 years to build this temple and you rebuild it
• 15:52
  three days again. They're thinking like a human
• 15:55
  like we do that they're thinking and and focusing on what they
• 15:59
  can see rather than what Jesus is actually saying.
• 16:03
  When Jesus said this temple, he met his own body that after he
• 16:08
  was raised from the dead. I love how John finishes this
• 16:11
  story, verse 22. After he was raised from the
• 16:14
  dead, his disciples remembered he had said this and they
• 16:18
  believed both the scriptures and what Jesus had said.
• 16:23
  And I love this quote from a theologian named Morris.
• 16:26
  It said the placing of Jesus saying alongside scripture is
• 16:30
  interesting and it's Christological implications
• 16:34
  should not be overlooked. This proved to not just the
• 16:42
  disciples, but to us as well that Jesus is who he says he is.
• 16:47
  That Jesus said this at a moment in time and foreshadowed and
• 16:53
  proved later on that he would be raised from the grave, that his
• 16:58
  temple could not be destroyed, that he would defeat death and
• 17:02
  sin. And he would be the one who is
• 17:05
  the Messiah who was promised long ago.
• 17:09
  And I just hope through this story that we're reminded that
• 17:14
  Jesus is holy and set apart, that Jesus is worthy of our
• 17:18
  worship, that all of our lives, all of our hearts, I hope, are
• 17:22
  being surrendered to him. That as we talked about last
• 17:26
  week, we're being filled to the brim with Jesus.
• 17:28
  And I pray that we start to take a whip and a rope and we start
• 17:32
  to cast out the things in our lives that are infiltrating our
• 17:37
  hearts and our, and our lives and making us become a den of
• 17:41
  thieves that are making us start to walk a path that's not, not
• 17:46
  God's path. That we start to cast out the
• 17:48
  things and people in our lives that are taking us from who God
• 17:51
  calls us to be. That we take this seriously just
• 17:55
  like Jesus did. Jesus walked in and didn't just
• 17:58
  see this stuff happening in the temple and go, uh huh, people
• 18:03
  being people. Oh, you know, just sin.
• 18:06
  No, he casted it out. He cleansed the temple.
• 18:09
  He didn't play games with it. And I think you and I need to
• 18:13
  take heed from Jesus's actions and remember that Jesus is real
• 18:18
  and Jesus lives inside of us. And Jesus has teachings and
• 18:20
  commands that we're called to obey and live to now as
• 18:23
  followers of him. And that when we see things in
• 18:26
  our lives starting to take place that start to represent the
• 18:30
  world, that we are reminded that our bodies should be a living
• 18:34
  and holy sacrifice. That that's truly worship that
• 18:38
  pleases God. That we give him all of us.
• 18:41
  And that we clean out. That we clean house.
• 18:45
  That we cast out the sins in our lives, the compromises in our
• 18:49
  lives that continue to take us from who God calls us to be.
• 18:52
  That we change our circles. That we delete that website.
• 18:55
  That we get rid of that social media app.
• 18:58
  That we stop watching that TV show.
• 18:59
  That we stop having those conversations with those people.
• 19:01
  That we stop hanging out with that group of friends.
• 19:03
  That we stop dating that girl or boy that continues to lead us
• 19:06
  into sin, that continues to influence us and not in a godly
• 19:09
  way. That we cut off our hands, That
• 19:12
  we clear the temple. That we ask God to purify us
• 19:16
  because he says that if we confess our sins, he is just to
• 19:22
  purify us, to cleanse us of all unrighteousness.
• 19:25
  That Jesus forgives us, that God wipes our sin clean, that he
• 19:29
  casts our sin as far as east and West that are, that his mercies
• 19:33
  are new and afresh each morning. I pray that you start to walk in
• 19:37
  obedience to God, that you let your temple be filled with the
• 19:41
  Holy Spirit, and that Jesus is what overflows out of your life.
• 19:45
  I love you guys so much. Let me pray so we can get up out
• 19:48
  of here. Lord Jesus, we love you and Lord
• 19:51
  Jesus, we thank you so much for your word and Jesus, thank you
• 19:54
  for reminding us who you are through these stories that are
• 19:58
  true in Jesus. I pray that you help cleanse us,
• 20:04
  that you continue to sanctify us more into your likeness.
• 20:08
  God, that we start to represent you, to talk like you, act like
• 20:11
  you think like you. God, continue to mold us more
• 20:15
  into who you created us to be. We love you, Jesus.
• 20:18
  And I pray God that we start to give you all of our bodies as a
• 20:22
  living and holy sacrifice. And we pray all this in Jesus
• 20:25
  name, Amen. I love y'all.
• 20:27
  God bless.