Sermon Tone Analysis

Our Disruptive Lord

\\ John 2:13-25

 

June 22, 2008

 

We’ll start with a reading from Experiencing God Day-by-Day; entitled,  *Beware of the Amalekites!*

He said, “Indeed, [my] hand is [lifted up] toward the Lord’s throne.

The Lord will be at war with Amalek from generation to generation.” — Exodus 17:16

The Amalekites were the persistent and relentless enemies of the Israelites.

When the Israelites sought to enter the Promised Land, the Amalekites stood in their way.

Once the Israelites were in the Promised Land and seeking to enjoy what God had given them, the Amalekites joined the Midianites to torment the Hebrews in the days of Gideon.

It was an Amalekite that caused the downfall of King Saul.

The Amalekites continually sought to hinder the progress of God's people and to rob them of God's blessing.

Thus God swore His enmity against them for eternity.

As you move forward in your pilgrimage with the Lord, there will be “Amalekites” that will seek to distract and defeat you.

God is determined to remove anything that keeps you from experiencing Him to the fullest.

If your commitment to your job is keeping you from obedience to Him, God will declare war against it.

If a relationship, materialism, or a destructive activity is keeping you from obeying God's will, He will wage relentless war against it.

There is nothing so precious to you that God will not be its avowed enemy if it keeps you from His will for your life.

King Saul mistakenly thought he could associate with Amalekites and still fulfill the will of the Lord.

You may also be hesitant to rid yourself of that which causes you to compromise your obedience to God.

Don't make the same mistake as King Saul.

He did not take the Amalekites seriously enough, and it cost him dearly.

Let’s read today’s Scripture now.

Please turn to John chapter 2 and we’ll read verses 13 -25: /The Passover of the Jews was near, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem.

And He found in the temple those who were selling oxen and sheep and doves, and the money changers seated at their tables.

\\ And He made a scourge of cords, and drove them all out of the temple, with the sheep and the oxen; and He poured out the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables; \\ and to those who were selling the doves He said, "Take these things away; stop making My Father's house a place of business."

His disciples remembered that it was written, "ZEAL FOR YOUR HOUSE WILL CONSUME ME."

The Jews then said to Him, "What sign do You show us as your authority for doing these things?"

Jesus answered them, "Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up."

\\ The Jews then said, "It took 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.

\\ So when He was raised from the dead, His disciples remembered that He said this; and they believed the Scripture and the word which Jesus had spoken./

/Now when He was in Jerusalem at the Passover, during the feast, many believed in His name, observing His signs which He was doing.

But Jesus, on His part, was not entrusting Himself to them, for He knew all men, and because He did not need anyone to testify concerning man, for He Himself knew what was in man.

/

Many people have a hard time reconciling the love and grace of Jesus with the anger of Jesus.

Yet the story of His cleansing of the temple is a crucial element in understanding the /truth /of Jesus.

It is a story with profound implications for our lives today.

Isn't the gospel account of Jesus cleansing the temple amazing?

It stands in stark contrast to many popular notions of Jesus' character.

Here is no picture of a gentle, soft-spoken Jesus calmly confronting the religious establishment with authoritative teaching and divine wisdom.

Rather, here Jesus appears with His sleeves rolled up ready for a fight, full of righteous indignation.

This is the same righteous indignation Christians today should have about practices such as abortion and euthanasia.

After making His very own whip, He charges through the heart of the religious establishment striking forcefully and aggressively at a religious system that has become skewed.

Imagine it!

Jesus is opening pens and cages of oxen, sheep, and doves with one hand, while, with a whip of cords in the other hand, He is driving animals and people alike into confusion and retreat.

John describes an incident which happens at the beginning of Jesus’ public ministry.

How appropriate that Jesus would cleanse and purify the temple.

This fulfills the prophecy of Malachi, chapter 3 as Jesus comes to His temple, His Father’s house.

He comes as a refiner’s fire, a launderer’s soap, a purger of His people that they may offer to God an offering of righteousness.

(v.

1-3)

John records the fact that this cleansing occurred at the time of a Passover feast.

He undoubtedly wants to remind us that at the Passover, every Jewish household spent the day before the feast meticulously going through the house, seeking out any kind of yeast or substance that could cause fermentation, then cleansing every such manifestation from the home.

This was absolutely necessary to properly celebrate the Passover.

So when Jesus enters Jerusalem, He enters a city in which every household is involved in a process of cleansing.

By contrast, when He arrives at the temple, the very House of God, He finds it filled with clutter and noise, dirty-smelling animals, money-changers and merchandise.

No one in the temple seems to be concerned that the House of God is itself in need of cleansing!

So Jesus became angry.

He was not only angry about the confusion, the clutter, the noise, and the smells.

He was most particularly angry at the extortion and racketeering that was going on.

Here is how the extortion racket worked:

Once a year at Passover time, every Jewish male was required to go to the temple and pay a half-shekel temple tax.

The tax could not be paid in Roman or Greek coin but had to be paid in a special temple coin.

So it was necessary to change the secular coins for temple coins.

Money-changers were allowed to use the temple grounds as a convenience for those who had only secular coins.

The problem was that the exchange rate they charged was outrageously high — often nearly 50 per cent above the face value of the coins being exchanged!

The temple collected enormous revenues from this practice.

Another exploitative practice was the selling of animals for Passover sacrifice.

If people had an animal of their own to bring, they didn't have to buy an animal at the temple — but the animal they brought had to pass inspection by the priests.

The animal could not be sacrificed if it had a blemish or imperfection.

Since the priests profited from the sale of animals by merchants in the courtyard, the priests had a built-in motive for rejecting as many animals as possible that were not sold by the temple merchants.

You can be sure that if a priest looked hard enough, he could find /some /tiny imperfection on almost /every /animal!

As a result of these practices, even people who brought their own animals usually had to buy one of the approved animals from the temple herd, which were sold at inflated prices.

It was barefaced extortion — legalized robbery, using religion as a gun.

The victims were frequently the poorest of the poor.

No wonder our Lord's anger was inflamed!

So great was His anger that He made a whip out of the cords that held the animals together and He drove the swindlers and extortionists out of the temple.

Is this really our Lord Jesus?

What about His commandments to turn the other cheek or to give your cloak also if anyone takes your coat (Matthew 5:39-40)?

What about loving your enemies and praying for those who persecute you? (Matthew 5:44) Mercy and love do not seem as evident in this account of Jesus driving people out of the temple like so many animals.

Yet all four gospels agree (Matt 21:12-13; Mark 11:15-17; Luke 19:45-46) that our merciful and loving Lord Jesus charged through the temple like a bull in a china shop.

He overturned tables and poured out the coins of inappropriate commerce on the floor.

Jesus drove money changers and animals from the temple.

At the height of the Passover season, no less, in a city filled with pilgrims gathered at the temple to commemorate God's delivering mercies and covenantal love, an angry Jesus -- God's Son, our merciful Lord -- is overturning tables and disrupting the religious life of the people.

This account of Jesus' aggressive behavior doesn't mesh too well with our cherished views of Jesus as teacher, healer, comforter and gentle shepherd.

So we may be prone to think Jesus didn't swing the whip too hard.

If He did wield the whip forcefully, He surely didn't hit anyone with it.

Our Lord would never do anything that disruptive, would He?

As someone said to me once, "Maybe, maybe not."

But overturning tables and disrupting life really is the way of our loving and gracious Lord Jesus, you know.

Did He get their attention?

You bet He did!

Here we see a different Jesus than most people like to think about.

We are comfortable picturing Him as the "gentle Jesus, meek and mild," the loving, understanding, forgiving Jesus.

We'd prefer to serve a Jesus who lets us get by with anything, who winks at our sins and says, "Hey, you're not so bad.

Don't be too hard on yourself."

But the /real /Jesus is not an indulgent, permissive Santa Claus-type character.

The /real /Jesus of the gospel of John is a Jesus who demonstrates anger and who drives out oppressors and thieves.

Yet, even while we squarely confront the fact of Jesus' anger, we should recognize that His anger is not like our own anger.

His /anger was under control.

/He didn't rage and strike out blindly.

His lash may have stung, but He didn't wound anyone.