Sermon

March 23, 2003
3rd Sunday in Lent
John 2:13-22
Pastor Joel Zank

Jesus Goes about His Father's Business

(John 2:13-22) When it was almost time for the Jewish Passover, Jesus went up to Jerusalem.14 In the temple courts he found men selling cattle, sheep and doves, and others sitting at tables exchanging money.15 So he made a whip out of cords, and drove all from the temple area, both sheep and cattle; he scattered the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables.16 To those who sold doves he said, "Get these out of here! How dare you turn my Father's house into a market!"17 His disciples remembered that it is written: "Zeal for your house will consume me." 18Then the Jews demanded of him, "What miraculous sign can you show us to prove your authority to do all this?"19 Jesus answered them, "Destroy this temple, and I will raise it again in three days."20 The Jews replied, "It has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and you are going to raise it in three days?"21 But the temple he had spoken of was his body.22 After he was raised from the dead, his disciples recalled what he had said. Then they believed the Scripture and the words that Jesus had spoken.

In Christ Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, dear fellow redeemed,

For many years a sign hung just above the door of St. Peter Lutheran Church in Schofield, WI-my home congregation. That sign never failed to capture my attention. Its message was simple but so effective: "Silence! This is none other than the house of God." For all who read them, those words set the tone for worship. All chitchat about the weather, all visiting about afternoon plans was to stop at that door, so as to give way to the much more important words waiting to be spoken in the hour ahead. The sign said that the hearts and minds of all who entered were to focus on nothing else but God saving Word and work.

Today in the Scriptures, we find Jesus living the message of that sign. We see him focused on the most important work of all; and in the time we spend with him today, he's looking to give us that same focus. So let's watch and listen as "Jesus Goes about His Father's Business" 1) cleansing his Father's temple; and 2) building his people's faith.

It might strike us as a bit odd to see Jesus entering the temple to worship. After all he is God. Who is there for him to worship? But don't forget Jesus came to our world to be the substitute of sinners in every way. He came to keep all the commandments for us, including the Third, "Remember the Sabbath Day by keeping it holy." So one of the first things Jesus does after beginning his ministry is to go to the Temple on our behalf to worship his heavenly Father. John tells us that it is the time of the Jewish Passover. But this isn't the first time we've seen Jesus observe this ancient festival. Scripture records an earlier visit to the temple by Jesus. Do you recall it? It was the Passover at which the twelve-year-old Jesus spent his time listening to and questioning the religious teachers at the temple. That was the time Mary and Joseph couldn't find Jesus and when they finally did, Jesus was absolutely astonished that they hadn't realized he would be at his Father's house going about his Father's business?

Of course he would be at the temple at age 12 and at age 30. Could there be anything more natural than the Lamb of God, who came to take away the sins of the world, celebrating the Passover, the very festival that foreshadowed his soul-saving work? Passover was the time when all Israel gathered to recall how God had delivered them from slavery in Egypt. They came to the temple to praise God for sparing their ancestors when death passed over their houses in Egypt, the houses of all who were protected by the blood of the lamb. But more than all this, they gathered to remember God's promise of a greater Lamb whose blood would free them from the slavery of sin and spare them from eternal death in hell. This was the Father's business, the business of saving sinners--this and nothing else was to be on the hearts and minds of all who gathered at the temple for worship.

But look at what Jesus' found at the temple: "...men selling cattle, sheep and doves, and others sitting at tables exchanging money" (John 2:14). I won't tell you that these men were not providing a valuable service. Animals were needed for sacrifice. Foreign currency needed to be exchanged so that worshipers could pay the temple tax with Jewish coins as prescribed by the Law of Moses. But this was not the business of the temple; this was not the Father's business. It was the business of people whose hearts were focused on wealth and profit. For fear of losing customers, their greed brought them from the streets surrounding the temple to its very courts. Caring nothing for God's House they turned worship there into a livestock auction with all the sights and sounds and smells that go along with such an event. It was all happening right there in church so that if there were anyone present who did want to worship God and his Christ, it would have been nearly impossible to do so. But now we've put a finger on the other problem-no one really seemed to care-not the worshipers, not the religious leaders, no one.

No one, that is, except Jesus. He had come to worship his Father in spirit and in truth, but the very sinners for whom he would soon die had trashed his Father's house and made a mockery of the worship to be offered there. Is it any wonder that Jesus became angry? He loved his Father's house because of what it stood for. There God chose to make his dwelling among men. There God chose to meet with sinners who were sorry for their sins, who sought God's mercy, and who rejoiced to know that God forgave their sins for the sake of the promised Messiah. The Savior's anger does not explode out of control. He's not angry because his feelings have been hurt or because his pride has been insulted. This is the anger of the perfect Son of God, anger that is completely holy. We sinners know nothing like it. But I suppose we might begin to comprehend it in some small way if we think of it as the anger of a loving parent who cannot stand to see his children destroy themselves. It is anger tempered by mercy and concern, anger that takes steps to warn, rebuke and correct in hopes of saving sinners from self-destruction. It is in righteous anger that Jesus goes about his Father's business, cleansing his Father's temple: So [Jesus] made a whip out of cords, and drove all from the temple area, both sheep and cattle; he scattered the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables.16 To those who sold doves he said, "Get these out of here! How dare you turn my Father's house into a market!" (John 2:15-16).

Given the fact that we have no livestock for sale in our chancel and no moneychangers seated in the narthex, we may be tempted to think that Jesus isn't speaking to us. But we would be wrong. He still goes about his Father's business, cleansing his Father's temple. He still demands that worship carried on in a place like this be done decently and in order so that nothing might distract us from focusing on the Father's saving Word and work. But do not think that a building like this is all that Jesus has in mind when he speaks of his Father's house. Rather he says to us through the Apostle Paul, "Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God?" (1 Corinthians 6:19).

God has made each of us his house, his temple by the faith he's given us in Jesus. Now that same Jesus finds it necessary today to point to everything in our hearts and lives that might be keeping us from worshiping our God as we should. What a busy place our hearts can be, so filled with greed, so consumed with worry, so distracted by lust, and envy, and anger that though we are here in body today, we may not be worshiping our God at all. Jesus once said of his fellow Jews, "These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me" (Matthew 15:8). Are we giving him reason to say the same of us? Are we merely going through the motions of worship, while our minds are preoccupied with the argument we had on the way over here, or with our plans for spring break, or with that project at work that must be completed this week? How it must anger Jesus to think that we so easily permit ourselves to be robbed of this time with our Father's life-giving Word and over such foolishness place our souls in the greatest eternal danger. You can almost feel his whip can't you? And as Jesus points at our hearts so crowded with love for pleasure and money that we leave him no room for him, you can hear him shout all over again: "Get these out of here!"

Tell me, how will you react to the Savior's scolding? Will you challenge his right to say and do such things like the Jews in our text? They demanded: "What miraculous sign can you show us to prove your authority to do all this?" (John 2:18). They had all the evidence they needed. Jesus had single-handedly cleansed the temple. Furthermore he had referred to it as his Father's house. He acted with the authority of God because that is who he was and is. But unbelief demanded and, by God's grace, received another sign: Jesus answered them, "Destroy this temple, and I will raise it again in three days" (John 2:19).

From the Jew's perspective Jesus was the spoilsport, destroying all they had worked so hard to accomplish. We may often view him in the same way-as the one who spoils the fun we want to have and ruins our lives with his holy demands. But Jesus turns the tables on us. We are the destroyers. By our sins we destroyed the temple of God-not the building in Jerusalem where God dwelled among the Jews, but the body of the Son of God, the very body in which God lived among us on earth. Our sins nailed that temple to the cross. We sent him to hell and then buried him in a tomb.

Sadly the Jews failed to understand what Jesus meant. Instead they laughed at him, supposing he had in mind to rebuild the structure in which they were standing, a building that had taken 46 years to refurbish. Jesus' words became a stumbling block to so many who refused to call him Lord and Savior. Pray God that never happens to us, for I fear it could so easily.

Jesus points to our sins today. In sinful pride we can reject his authority to do that, or in sincere repentance we can humbly bring our sins before him and plead for his forgiveness-the forgiveness he died to win for us, the forgiveness assured to us by his resurrection from the dead. You see, as our substitute, Jesus was happy to spend his days on earth honoring God with a perfect life of worship, a life for which he now gives us all the credit. So great is his love for us, and greater still because in love he was also willing to face our punishment in hell, a punishment that would have destroyed us forever, but not Jesus. Because he, our brother, is also our God he was able to destroy hell and death too, so that we might live with him forever.

Jesus has passed through death. He lives and goes about his Father's business, building his people's faith, your faith. He did this for his first disciples. As they studied the Scriptures they found Jesus to be the fulfillment of all God's promises. Verse 17 says they saw Jesus' zeal for God's house and by it recognized him as the Messiah long promised in Scripture. Verses 21and 22 tell us that after the Savior's resurrection those same disciples recalled his promise to rise and so worshiped him as their living Redeemer. We will want to do the same for in Jesus God fulfills all his promises to us. God promises us peace. Jesus grants it, saying, "Your sins are forgiven." God promises us life. Jesus guarantees it, saying, "Because I live you also will live." These and all the Savior's words have great faith-building power. That's why he wants us to come to him often in worship so that he may speak and so that it may be said of us as it was of his first disciples, "Then they believed the Scripture and the words that Jesus had spoken" (John 2:22). God grant us all such a faith as this, always for Jesus' sake. Amen.

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