The sermon by Scott Brown, based on John 2:12-25, examines the significance of Jesus cleansing the temple. The speaker highlights that Jesus' actions are symbolic of removing worldliness and restoring true worship. The temple is portrayed as a representation of God's presence, and believers are urged to maintain the holiness of their own 'temples,' or bodies, which are seen as houses for the Holy Spirit. Jesus' actions are linked to His role in fulfilling the ceremonial law and establishing a new covenant, characterized by spiritual renewal and joy. The sermon emphasizes the importance of zeal for God's house, both in the physical sense of the church and in the spiritual sense of personal holiness. It also draws connections between the Old Testament symbolism of the temple and the New Testament fulfillment in Jesus Christ, encouraging believers to seek purity and joy in their spiritual lives.

The sermon text is from John 2 verse 12 through 25. After this he went down to Capernaum, he, his mother, his brothers, and his disciples, and they did not stay there many days. 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 46 years to build this temple and you will 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 had said this to them and they believed the scripture and the word which Jesus had said. Now when he was in Jerusalem at the Passover during the feast many believed in his name when they saw the signs which he did but Jesus did not commit himself to them because he knew all men and had no need that anyone should testify of men for he knew that what was in man let's pray father you do know what is in us I pray that we would we would trust your authority to purge us and I pray that that we would also have the same zeal for the temple of the Holy Spirit. Thank you, Lord.

Amen. Here in John chapter 2 verses 13-25, we find the Lord Jesus Christ coming to cleanse his temple. This passage has tremendous applicability to us as a church, as we exist together in the body of Christ. It has tremendous applicability to us as we, as many, have homes, because a home is really a picture of a greater home in heaven and It has tremendous applicability for our lives personally and and the cleansing of this temple the body and The the impact of the presence of God in these temples that God has provided for us. And here in verse 13 you find Jesus, he's at the Passover, he's doing what he's always done, And then in verses 14 through 16, he drives the money changers out of the temple in the most violent act that he performs in his ministry.

And then he declares that this physical temple will be replaced by a spiritual temple, the temple of his body, the church, the body of Christ, and he's really speaking figuratively of the bodies of individual believers, which are temples of the Holy Spirit. And then we finally read of the impact of it all in verses 23 and 24, where many believed—we'll get to that in a minute—but the situation of the cleansing of the temple ought to be interpreted in much the same way as the turning of water into wine. And that is that first, Jesus is putting sweeter and more wonderful refreshment in those water pots than the rites of purification ever did. And he's bringing in a better covenant. And he's gathering the outcasts of Israel to make them joyful in his house of prayer.

And then secondly, he's also proclaiming himself to be the fulfillment of all the ceremonial law, and he's also contradicting the inventions of Israel that had crept in, like selling there in the temple grounds. And each action here is a sign. And we know why these signs are here this is a sign at the very end of the gospel of John John makes it very clear that there were many signs many signs that Jesus performed right in front of his disciples and that the signs were designed so that you might believe and so that you have life in his name and every every time we enter into the gospel of John we should ask what sign is here to help me to believe you know What would it take for you to believe? What kind of sign would you need? Well, we've already experienced the glory of Jesus Christ and his this sign in the turning the water into wine and now the sign of the cleansing of the temple.

And we find Jesus, He's confronting a joyless nation to show them how to have new wine. And here in this passage, he's addressing an empty nation where there was no joy in the house of prayer and the lack of the presence of God among them was so evident. Now the cleansing of the temple that happens here happens twice in the ministry of Jesus right at the beginning when he enters into the celebration of the Passover, and then the very last time that Jesus celebrates the Passover, he does the very same thing at the end of his ministry. And so we have this progression that is clear in the context. In chapter 2, you know, at a wedding, Jesus is announcing that He is new wine and He makes all things new.

And now in the second part of chapter 2, at the Passover, He's announcing a new temple. And then this continues in chapter 3 with Nicodemus, where Jesus is announcing new birth and then in at the end of chapter 4 with the woman at the well He's announcing new worship worship in spirit and in truth not on this mountain not in this temple But everywhere you go and that the worship of God is expanded to everywhere. And it's all about the newness of Jesus Christ and how he makes the sinner a new creation. And this was the purpose of the temple from the very beginning. Now, this passage should teach us much about the type, the figure in the Old Testament of the temple.

And when we get to the end of this message I hope to examine this more carefully because it's important that we somehow consider why Jesus would act so violently. He never did anything like this except at the beginning and the end. He never took such vehement action like this. And so it's unusual in the ministry of Jesus Christ. But before we get to the end, I want us to give us a foretaste of why, at least one reason, He does such a violent thing.

And there are three passages of scripture that I want to use for this purpose. And the first we've read early in the service, Isaiah 56, that the purpose of the temple was to make the outcast joyful in his house of prayer. And this had been lost in Israel at that time. But I'd like to have you turn to 1 Kings 9, verse 3, because I want us to really ponder the matter of the temple. And, you know, this passage was brought to me, I think it was two weeks ago, a friend of mine sent me a text and he said, what's the meaning of 1 Kings 9 verse 3?

So if you would look at 1 Kings 9 verse 3, you find one of the elements of the significance of the temple. And this is at the dedication of the temple of Solomon in 960 BC, you know, many years before Jesus cleansed the temple here, but in 1 Kings 9 verse three, at the very end, the Lord says this, "'I have consecrated this house, which you have built to put my name there forever. My eyes and my heart will be there perpetually." And with that phrase you get an idea of why Jesus would be so vehement. His eyes and his heart. Think about that.

Think about the impact of his penetrating eyes and his heart, his heart which is toward his people, his heart which desires to bring the outcasts out of their defilement and into his joyful house of prayer. This is the heart of God. When we talk about the temple, We're talking about the nearness of God. The temple always symbolized the nearness of God, and he says here, my eyes and my heart will be there perpetually. This is the presence of God in your life and among the people of God when they gather together.

Now turn to Revelation 21. Now we get to the, really to the end of all of this, there's so many ways that God manifests His glory through this image of the temple. But in Revelation 21, we even see the same thing. And what you find is when you read anything about the temple the themes are always the same. There are the imagery and the figures.

They say the same things from Genesis to Revelation. And in Revelation 21, of course, we find ourselves at the end of it all. And in verse 3, well, let's begin at verse 1. Now I saw a new heaven and a new earth for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no more sea than I John saw the holy city, New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from heaven saying, Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and he shall dwell with them, and they shall be his people.

God Himself will be with them and be their God, and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes. There shall be no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying. There shall be no more pain, for the former things have passed away. Then he who sat on the throne said, Behold, I make all things new. And he said to me, Write, for these words are true and faithful.

And he said to me, It is done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. I will give of the fountain of the water of life freely to him who thirsts. He who overcomes shall inherit all things, and I will be his God, and he shall be my son. But the cowardly, unbelieving, abominable, murderers, sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars shall have their part in the lake which burns with fire and brimstone, which is the second death.

You read, But I saw no temple in it, for the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are its temple. The city had no need of the sun or of the moon to shine in it, for the glory of God illuminated it. The Lamb is its light, and the nations of those who are saved shall walk in its light, And the kings of the earth bring their glory and honor into it. Its gates shall not be shut at all by day. There shall be no night there, and they shall bring the glory and the honor of the nations into it.

But there shall by no means enter anything that defiles or causes abomination or a lie, but only those who are written in the Lamb's book of life." I think that these verses should help us to understand the vehemence of Jesus Christ and why He would take such radical action and make such a statement in what was the most severe action of his entire ministry. But what we know about the temple of God is that the temple of God always represented the nearness of God to his people. And if you go back to this verse in 1 Kings chapter 9, you know, we should be very touched to the heart that his eyes and his heart are mentioned there. Because it's in the temple where his eyes and his heart penetrate, his living water heals, his precious stones become your precious stones, his home becomes your home, his joy becomes your joy. And I believe this is one of the great reasons that the temple is dealt with in such a way.

You know, in the temple there was sacrifice for sin. You came as sinners to repent of your sins, to be revealed of the pains and the burdens of your sin. And truth was spoken in the temple. Repentance was there, reconciliation was there, the glory of God was there to lift you out of your own lack of glory. The signs of love in the temple were all over the place.

You had the mercy seat, the bread, the lights, the laver, the water, the curtain. These were all the pointers to the love of God that's in Jesus Christ. Every single one of them pointed to Jesus Christ and His love for His people. Even the colors in the temple reminded of heaven and God communicates his mercies through his eyes and his heart on his people in the temples of his presence throughout redemptive history. And he did it in the wilderness.

He did it in Jerusalem. He did it in Jesus' day And he does it now in the hearts of his own people and and when they gather and it began in the Garden of Eden when God walked among His his children and there was water flowing and there was gold and there was jewels and there was and there was the voice of God there in the garden. And this theme runs from Genesis to Revelation. And when Jesus chased the money changers out of the temple, it was the most physical demonstration of His wrath ever recorded in the Bible. And He chased probably hundreds of thousands of people out of the temple.

He cleared the place and they allowed him to do it, which is really remarkable. It was a miracle, But it was also a reflection of something else that I think comes out in the exposition of this passage. And what God so desires is for the consolation of His people. And He calls them with every word to everlasting consolation. Every command that he gives you to relate with your brothers and sisters is for your consolation and for your joy.

Every act of forgiveness, every call to holiness, everything is really summed up in what God's intentions were for the temple. Don't you love it in Ephesians chapter 1 where it speaks of the kind intentions of His will? And it says that He does whatever He wants. He does whatever he wills in heaven and earth, and his intentions are always kind for his people. And so he cleanses the temple and he's giving the Jews a warning, and he'll give them another warning.

And it also brings us to something we've talked about many times in this church. We encountered it in Ezra and Nehemiah, and we've encountered it in other places. And that is when you want to rebuild your life, You always have to begin with an altar. You always have to begin rebuilding your worship of God. That's the beginning of all healing.

And when things go wrong in the worship of God in your heart, when you're distracted, when things go wrong in the temple of God, among the people of God and the church of God when you get distracted, then it's always reflected in a loss of so much that we really long for. Because the Lord said that His house shall be called a house of prayer for the joy of all His people. When you lose the holiness of God in the temple of your body and in the gatherings of the people of God in the church, you lose the thing that you want the most. Joy, His peace that He gives to you not as the world gives but as He gives. So I wanted to just give a foretaste of some more that I want to share about the temple.

But I want us to recognize that this is a most vehement reaction, and there's a reason for it. And it's all about the love of Jesus Christ for His people, for you and for me, and His desire to deliver us from our own worldliness. And to call us away from every impurity, everything that defiles, and to call us into his holy presence, and that we would cease from every joy diminishing thing in our lives. And so he cleanses the temple. Well, let's begin now in verse 13.

You see the setting, you see an outline before you and I've broken it up into four sections and then finally some applications. In the first we see here is the setting and the setting is the Passover. It was the Passover of the Jews. So he goes from a wedding to the Passover. He goes to a wedding and he's the bridegroom and now he goes to the Passover as the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.

And Passover was one of those annual feasts of the Jews and remarkably there were feasts that composed a tremendous amount of time in the lives of the people of Israel 22% of each year was dedicated to these feasts where you suspended from work and you just came and you Celebrated and you feasted it just gives you an idea of what Jesus wants for his church a celebrating feasting church now Jesus was a regular attender of the Passover in Luke chapter 12 verse 41. We learned that Jesus' parents took him to the Passover every year of his life. They celebrated all the three major feasts in Jerusalem. And so Jesus was, he was always doing this. He, this was nothing new to him.

And as he went there, people knew who he was. I'm confident. And he'd been doing it since he was a baby. And we know it, at age 12, he astonished the teachers of the law with his questions when he went into the temple, and he, they were thunderstruck. They were dumbfounded by his wisdom at age 12.

And let's be very clear, Jesus was known. He had to be known. Because he wasn't like anyone else. His whole life long, even at the ripe age of 12. His insight was known by the religious leaders.

Now it's interesting, in Exodus 12.1, we read that the Passover was called the Passover of the Lord. And do you know what John calls it? The Passover of the Jews. Because it had ceased to become the Passover of the Lord. And it had become the Passover of man, the Passover of the Jews.

Now it had so many of the manifestations of biblically regulated ordered worship that was required But the Lord Jesus Christ comes on Passover. There are two other Passover's identified in the Gospel of John. If you take John 5-1 as a Passover then there are four times that are listed in John. But When we think of the Passover and we think of Jesus Christ celebrating the Passover, we have to go to 1 Corinthians 5 verses 6 through 8, where we read, For indeed Christ our Passover was sacrificed for us. Therefore let us keep the feast, not with old leaven, Nor with the leaven of malice and wickedness but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth and God in Jesus Christ He as the Passover himself is the one who delivers us from malice and wickedness and everything that is so harmful and he brings to us the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.

Worship in sincerity and truth is worship without rancor or guile toward mankind and it's love toward God and dependence upon Him. But Jesus is the Passover. So in Christian theology, you know, you have Jesus is the fulfillment. He's the temple. He's the Passover.

He's the lamb. He's the bread. He's the summation of every beautiful thing that was ever revealed in the Old Testament. Now there were about a hundred to three hundred thousand regular inhabitants of Jerusalem on normal days, but when the Passover came there were probably three million people in the city and every room in the ends would be occupied, thousands of animals would be sacrificed. The historian Josephus tells us that about 250, 000 animals were sacrificed over the week of Passover from the hours of 9 a.m.

To 6 p.m. People traveled often long distances. In fact, the Psalms of ascent In the book of Psalms, there are 15 of them, beginning in Psalm 120 up to 134. They were sung by the families as they went up to Jerusalem because they're going up onto this mountain. But if you live far away, it was allowed to purchase animals for the sacrifice, and those animals were normally purchased on the Mount of Olives, but then it was moved for some reason for convenience, for something we're not really told.

It makes sense it would be more convenient to move it right into the to the temple courtyard. It'd be a lot easier wouldn't you? You wouldn't have to make a stop and then bring these animals from the Mount of Olives and bring them into the temple. So it just made it so much easier perhaps that was the reason and you would have to have your money changed if you were from a foreign country. The Jews would not accept money inscribed with a foreign ruler, a god-hater, so you had to change your money And historians tell us there probably was a 10 or 12 percent markup on the money.

You had to bring pure money and this was transacted right there during the Passover. And it's...and then the Lord Jesus Christ, as he comes to the Passover, verse 14, he cleanses the temple. He takes this violent action. Verses 14 through 16, and he found in the temple those who sold oxen and sheep and doves and the money changers doing business." Now I'm just going to assume that he's seen this before and he's seeing it again and he drove them he made a whip of cords and he drove them all out of the temple with the sheep and the oxen and poured out the money 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." You know, There are many issues that we'll camp on as we walk through this passage, but the main point is this.

His Father's house had become the house of men, and it had lost its beauty, the beauty of the presence of God. And the chief treasure of the temple was lost. And so he's in the temple, This refers to the entire temple complex, I believe. The Temple Mount was the holiest place for the Jews. And of course, it's the third holiest place in Islam.

It's Mount Moriah where Abraham offered his son, his only son, to sacrifice and was provided a ram. But now today the Muslims control the Temple Mount and they know it as the sacred noble sanctuary. It's Mount Zion. And for the past 3, 000 years this temple has been located on Mount Moriah and Solomon built a temple in 960 BC it stood until 586 BC when God desired to punish his people for not delighting in the Sabbath and for rebelling against him and rejecting his worship and so he sent Nebuchadnezzar and Nebuchadnezzar decimated Jerusalem and he destroyed the temple and he took the children of Israel captive and he walked the best and brightest of Israel to Babylon and he educated in there for 70 years. And then God broke the judgment and he brought them back into the land.

King Cyrus issued a decree and God opened up the doors and the people came back and they rebuilt the temple and Zerubbabel, Jeshua, Ezra, Nehemiah built, finished the temple in the 5th century BC. And there it stood until 20 BC when Herod initiated a massive remodeling and expansion project, spending enormous resources, 10, 000 workers they say, and remarkable, remarkable resources to do it. And it took 46 years to build and then it was finally destroyed by the Romans in 70 AD just a few years after it was finished. So that's the temple. That's where he went Now when Jesus went to the temple it was a house of merchandise.

They were selling oxen and sheep and doves and the money changers were doing business so it became a marketplace and the message the message that we I think hear from Jesus Christ as he goes into his temple is this this place is not holy this place is not special this place is not set apart it's not utterly blessed and awe-inspiring now when you think about the purpose of the temple, you have to see how contradictory all of this was to what God designed his temple for. And the biblical function of the Old Testament church had been lost. And by the way, that can happen in your heart, and it can happen in your home, and it can happen in your church, where the biblical functionality has been diluted by all kinds of worldliness. And it's the most harmful thing you can ever do to your soul. Now this was fulfillment of Old Testament prophecy the last prophet of the Old Testament Malachi He foretells this moment in Malachi 3, 1 through 3, where we read the words, the Lord whom you seek will suddenly come into his temple.

That was the last prophecy of the Old Testament. He will come into his temple and here he is. Here around 400 years later he's coming in And the Old Testament prophesied that the Messiah would come and he would build the temple in Zechariah 6. The branch, the man would come and he'd branch out and he'll build the temple of the Lord. That's what he's doing here.

In Matthew chapter 21, the Lord Jesus Christ speaks of this in the form of a parable about the wicked vine dressers who had been given land to cultivate and it bore no fruit and he came back. The owner comes back and there's no fruit there. And they kill the son of the owner. And that's a parable of this, that Jesus has come into his temple and there's no fruit, there's no joy, there's no love, there's no happiness, there's no reconciliation, there's no mercy, there's no forgiveness of sin. And it tells us the story of how people can come into the church of God and they're not They're not even converted.

They don't love him with all their hearts and there's no fruit It's a picture of that and it's also a picture of people who are converted who go astray and they fill their minds with so much worldliness that when they come to the worship of God it's just dead to them. But the reason it's dead is because they become like stickmen. They've been watching pornography last night. They they've been filling their their life with entertainment. They've been watching silly films.

They go from one foolish YouTube clip to another, and then they come into the words of God and they say, how come I don't feel anything? Well, it's because you are dead, that's why. And so this was a sign of judgment on a people who are living like that. You know, people haven't changed, have they? It's just like it is today as it was back then.

And so there is also this judgment on a corrupt system. And so he says to those who are selling the doves, take these things away. Do not make my Father's house a house of merchandise. And so what had happened is that the worship of God was diluted and compromised by worldly elements and the church had diverted from its intended purpose and they they were all wrapped up in minutiae. That distracts.

Jesus Christ in him crucified is not minutiae. The Word of God is not minutiae. But often what happens in a church or in a heart is that We go on with life and the system continues on and we have our minds on other things, you know, debatable matters and offenses and rabbit trails and activities and all kinds of things. And then Jesus sort of tiptoes out of the church. But everything keeps going on, like even on a massive scale, like here, millions of people involved, beautiful, gigantic facilities.

And Jesus says, you know, this people honors me with their lips, with their heart, is far from me, and they're missing life as a result of it. And so, Jesus is restoring true worship. And we learn how he manifests his glory that way over and over again in the Gospel of John. This is not the first time we'll encounter this matter of the reformation of worship he deals with the woman at the well on the very same issue and He desires truth in the inward parts. He he desires mercy not sacrifice And I this really does take us to the regulative principle of worship, you know, that we have no right to worship God in our own way and to turn the church into places of entertainment or showcasing performance or creating a bunch of onlookers, but people who worship Him in spirit and in truth.

The only way that you can even facilitate that is by bringing the Word of God and the singing of God and the prayer of God and the the table of the Lord this is this is how God deals with his people and but the purpose is singular. It's the presence of God. And that's the function of the gatherings of the church and it's the function of your home And it's the true function of your heart. Whenever you hear the word temple, you need to think across many categories. Think biblically about the temple.

You know, Jesus, he was speaking to Judas, and he says, I say to you that in this place there is one greater than the temple, but if you'd known what this means, I desire mercy and not sacrifice, You would have not condemned the guiltless, for the Son of Man is the Lord of the Sabbath." He says something greater is here, Judas. You've seen the miracles, you've seen the remarkable throngs, You've seen the wisdom, but there's something greater here and You don't you don't have it in your heart That was the tragedy of Judas. He saw it all He heard it all and yet he didn't have anything. So you know the Lord Jesus Christ, he clears this temple. And commentators marvel at how he could do this because there were a lot of people around here, around.

And if some nutcase started doing that, it would be easy to stop it. In fact, there's a story of one of the priests, people were not very happy with him and so there were there were some dishonorable people who started throwing lemons at the high priest's head that's all they were doing they were just throwing lemons at the high priest's head and he had them all slaughtered So actually there were means of dealing with people like this in the temple. There were temple guards, there were ways to deal with this kind of problem and this kind of insurrection, okay, but they did nothing. And I don't know why they did nothing. You know, John MacArthur says it was a miracle.

I do believe it was a miracle, but it might have been astounding in this way, because Jesus was known by the religious leaders as a remarkable person. And he had astounded them not too long ago. And they were not too old to remember it. And when he was there, I believe they knew who he was and no one touched him. There was an authority, there was a love, there was a beauty, There was a care for the law of God such that no one touched him.

And it's astonishing. Could anyone else have done this? Because here the Bible says, he cleared the whole place. Can you imagine that? He cleared it out.

And one of the other narratives, he says, my house shall be called a house of prayer, not a house of merchandise. And I think this is an example of what James says, be angry and do not sin. Jesus didn't lose his temper. He didn't fly off the handle. That's not what this was at all.

Jesus never broke a single law of God, not that in this occasion or not on any other occasion. He did everything out of love. In Revelation 6 verse 16 we actually read of the wrath of the Lamb. In Revelation 6, he's an angry lamb. The lamb of God is more than you think he is.

You know, we have this, well, sweet Jesus, meek and mild. Well, he was that, but he was more than that. And this situation speaks of it. And so you see this lack of concern, this compartmentalized life, this willingness to compromise, this insensitivity to God and His glory and their inventions. All these things are loaded into what is happening here.

And then after he clears the temple there's a discussion and you see this discussion, verses 17 through 21, and There's a dialogue between Jesus and the Jews. Well, first of all, John makes a comment, he kind of inserts it here, it's a little bit out of place because it's something that actually happened way in the future, you know, after his resurrection. Then his disciples remembered that it was written, zeal for your house has eaten me up. And so the Jews answered and said to him, What sign do you show us since you do these things? And 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 had said this to them, and they believed the scripture and the word which Jesus had said. So the disciples are they don't understand what this zeal for my father's house means until after the resurrection and he's quoting Psalm 69 where David is calling his people to true worship, the slanders are there at the gates and you know the drunkards are mocking him and their parties and all, it's just terrible and but it's about the reproach of true worship and of David who is a figure of Christ. Because of your sake I have borne reproach. This is Psalm 69 verse 7.

Shame has covered my face. I have become a stranger to my brothers and an alien to my mother's children because the zeal for your house has eaten me up and the reproaches of those who reproach you have fallen on me so they remembered they remembered the scriptures later on. This was, what kind of zeal was this? Well, the word zeal is an important word in the Greek New Testament, and this word zeal is connected to this zeal that's spoken of in Psalm 69. And it was a zeal of love.

It was a zeal that you have when someone you love commits a harmful wrong, and they go astray, and they turn away from the gentle waters of Shiloh. And you want to do something that will drive them back. Martin Luther says that it's much like a parent who's pining away and hurting for their children who are going astray. He goes on at length to describe the pain of a parent and he talks about how a patricidal, matricidal force enters the heart of a child and they're actually murdering their father and mother by dishonoring them. And he's talking about the parent who just feels the pain.

He sees the parents seeing their children defile themselves in various ways. And Luther, he's using this as an illustration for what Jesus means by zeal, and he correlates it to the pain of a parent and their desire to rise up and deal with their children who are messing with the trifles of this world and then he also correlates it to a husband who in jealous anger who sees another man making advances on his wife it so he's he wants to rescue from destruction but But he's rescuing from much more than destruction. He's rescuing from a joyless, happiness-free, forgiveness-free life. That's what he's rescuing from. And this is his zeal, and it consumes him.

Zeal for my father's house has consumed me. You know, I was reading some authors on this consuming and he's... They say we don't know what it means. Maybe it's he's consumed with the grief that he must take action. Or his love consumes him in death.

In other words, he is so consumed with zeal for his church that he is going to be consumed by death and the crucifixion So, I don't know but he's he's definitely consumed with zeal for the joy of God's people. This is what drives him. He's always driven by the love of God, always. Every action is for the love of God. And he's demonstrating his zeal for his father's house.

And I think we should ask, you know, do I have zeal for my father's house? Do I have zeal for the cleansing of my own temple personally do I have zeal? For the purity and the holiness of my family and my church you know am I is this my greatest concern that the holiness and the beauty and the love of God and the joy of The Lord would be the central matter of everything You know in my life and you know and what needs to be cleared out to restore the worship of God in my heart and you know be zealous Jesus in the book of revelation in chapter three to the church of leo de silla he says be zealous They were lukewarm. They didn't care. You know, are you lukewarm?

Do you care? If you don't care, God is speaking to you now. And he's saying be zealous. Be zealous. Don't let things slip any longer.

They left their first love in Laodicea. You know, it's very interesting that the disciples remembered this after the resurrection and JC Ryle makes it makes a very interesting comment about this and it's I hope I hope it helps all of us particularly you who are parents and maybe even you who are pastors or maybe you who are aspiring to be a pastor. Maybe this could encourage you. But he comments on the situation and he says that God often causes a resurrection of sermons in children's hearts which they heard in their youth. They heard a lot of sermons, they heard you read a lot of the Bible to them, you sang a lot of songs.

But often it happens that there's a resurrection of those sermons and a resurrection of those songs. But it might be years. It might be years. I think that Solomon alludes to this when he says, train up a child in the way in which you should go, and then he won't depart from it. You know, There's a principle in Scripture that you reap what you sow, but we don't always reap in our own time when it comes to teaching.

And I feel that very much as the Lord teaches me that the reaping of the fruit of the teaching takes so long. I feel that in a church too. I've preached many, many sermons. I've read the Bible for hours and hours and hours in my home. We sing songs here 52 weeks out of the year.

And people say, well, how did the sermon go? And I never know. But I always think the same thing. God knows and we will know in time. Here's a reality.

Sermons and Bible readings and songs often experience a resurrection long after the time they're hurt. So parents be encouraged. Keep teaching, keep singing, keep reading the Bible, keep filling your heart in your home with the Word of God. That's really our only hope. It's the only hope for this church as well, is that we have the Word of God to guide us.

And we're going to keep preaching sermons, we're going to keep reading, we're going to keep reciting, we're going to keep singing, because God has a way of bearing fruit in his own time in our lives. And then the Jews ask for a sign in verse 18, and I've wondered if this was a sarcastic statement or if it was an honest question At the beginning of the week, I thought it was just a sarcastic Show us more she give us another show just like the devil he took him on to the pinnacle of the temple and said jump off another show please people love the show was it that or was it really a serious question at the end of the week now I think it was a serious question because they had seen they see they had seen the wisdom and the power and the love of this man. And they knew he was right in their hearts, though they rejected him. It's quite likely they understood their sin. And they said, show us a sign, but they didn't really want the sign.

And then Jesus explains the meaning of his actions in verse 19. Jesus answered and said to them, destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up." Now, he's speaking, he's really, they don't know what he's talking about. Jesus does this, doesn't he? He doesn't explain everything because he's on God's timeline and God is going to reveal when he's going to reveal the meaning of things. And so, but he knows that he's going to be crucified, he's going to be killed, and he's going to rise from the dead after three days.

And you know, he turns water into wine on the third day in the previous section, the day of resurrection, and here he declares that he's going to rise, he's going to rise on the third day. And then the Jews comment on Jesus' statement and they say, well it took us 46 years to build this, how are you gonna do this in three days? Good question actually. And by the way, one of the commentators, Lightfoot, tells us that it took 46 years to build Zerubbabel's temple and it also took 46 years to build this temple. Now they weren't quite done with it yet at this moment.

They had a few more years that had wouldn't completely finished. Herod's temple wouldn't be completed until 63 AD just seven years before the Romans would come in and destroy it. And then John, John the Apostle explains in verse 21, but he was speaking of the temple of his body. Now remember, you know when you read about the temple, you always have to think across various categories. 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.

You know these things were written that you might, these believe and that you might have life in His name. This sign did such a marvelous work in the lives of the disciples. But the temple was just a shadow of Christ's body. In Colossians the Apostle Paul explains it like this, these things are a shadow of things to come, but the substance is of Jesus Christ. The substance of the temple is Jesus Christ and everything that he does in your life for the good.

Jesus is the temple and he raises up the temple and creates a new one. And it is the new temple is the body of Christ, the church and the individual believer. And then we find the impact of all this. Verses 23 through 25, verse 23, many believed, now isn't that, many believed, that's amazing, this sign was so that you they might believe and many believed They walked out of there astonished. They had been just driven out of the temple And they believed That's why I you know Jesus had a stateliness and authority and a love and a clarity and a truth about him and They believed when they saw him do this.

They weren't thinking this is a serial killer. They weren't thinking that at all. They believed, and he uses this word, the common word for belief, Pistuo, to entrust. Many entrusted themselves to Him when they saw the signs. They entrusted.

That's salvation. It's when you entrust yourself to God and you follow Him and you quit following yourself. To entrust everything to Him. If anyone wants to be saved, here's how they're saved. They entrust their entire life to Him, and they give up their life and they follow Him.

That's what it means to follow Jesus. And many did that right there. You know, this was one of the greatest evangelistic campaigns, you know, that was ever conducted, you know, and it was with a whip. But some did not believe, verse 24, but Jesus did not commit himself to them because he knew all men." Now John turns this phrase in a really interesting way. Jesus did not commit, the word commit is the same word for belief, Pistuo.

Jesus did not entrust Himself into the care of man. Because He knew all men and He had no need that anyone should testify of man, for He knew what was in man. So many believed, but Jesus did not entrust himself into the care of man. He knew all men. His eyes see into the innermost beings of your heart.

He knows every thought you're having right now, every thought you've ever had, everything you've ever looked at, he knows what's in man. So Jesus cleanses the temple and then apparently All the traders came back in and three years later he does the same thing. They learned nothing from this. While many believed, many did not. Jesus knew what was in man.

Okay, let's talk about some applications here. We can't miss the significance of the incarnation Everyone was so amazed about the clearing of the temple, but but that's not the main point at all The clearing of the temple is astonishing, but it was just a shadow, it was just an example. And John is wanting us to understand that Jesus is God with us. He's Emmanuel. He's the Word made flesh and we be held as glory.

Glory is of the only begotten Son of the Father, full of grace and truth. John wants us to see the value and the power and the beauty of the incarnation. That Jesus Christ, the Son of God, has come to earth and he's declaring his glory through these signs so we can't miss the the the incarnation the two natures mixed into one person you're like like the the hymn says veiled in flesh the Godhead see But Jesus doesn't just stop with the figures and shadows and we can't just stop at the temple. We can't stop at the water turning into wine. We have to see the meaning of it, and that is that Jesus Christ is the temple.

You can see Jesus' priority for His people. He He's clearing away a lifeless religion. And those ones who believed, they were never the same again. They really believed, and the lifelessness, the deadness that they had was all gone. And they'd received a new life in Jesus Christ, and He was restoring true joy, and He was healing them, which was what the temple was all about.

Now, when I woke up this morning, I was met with a beautiful sunrise and the changing of the hues of the blues and the purples in the skies, the colors on the clouds were changing, and I was reminded of what I've been reading this week about the temple. And I tried to work through a couple of good books on the temple, and I was reading Gregory Beale's book on the temple, The Church's Mission, and he walks through the whole doctrine of the temple and how everything in the temple points to the life-giving love of Jesus Christ. He traces the designs for the temple and the colors and the Materials and how they all how they all point to Jesus Christ the precious stones you know the the the blue stones that that were really designed in the temple to point you to heaven because really the temple was about joy in heaven for all eternity and the the various colors the value of everything in the temple and he goes through and he talks about the first temple was in the Garden of Eden and he talks about the rivers and the gold and the precious stones and God walking in the garden and the priests keeping the garden then he goes to the tabernacle and what do you find you find water and precious stones You find the beautiful colors of the rainbow.

You find the priests, you know, dressed in robes for beauty and for glory, and there's, there are all these precious stones on their vestments to signify the preciousness of God's people. And then he moves to the to the temple, Solomon's temple, and the same, you find the same thing. You have the sea and you have the precious stones and the beautiful colors and the rich blues and the purples. All these point to heaven. There, he says they're all the same from Genesis to Revelation the temple is the place of the beauty and the glory of God and the happiness of God's people And when you get to Revelation 21 and 22, it's the very same thing.

You know Ezekiel speaks of it. You know a few weeks ago, I was so taken by Ezekiel 47 and and Ezekiel is brought to the temple and the temple is being measured by the way in the Bible you find the temple being measured all the time because it's it's a real place and It's made by God and it has requirements or regulations some stuff happen like real stuff happens in that temple and even in heaven it's measured, it's real. The heavenly glory is real and the figure in earth just points to that heavenly glory. But anyway Ezekiel, He's brought to the temple and out of the temple is flowing water. And he's walking, he goes a thousand cubits and then it's flowing just to his ankles.

And he goes another thousand to his knees. And he goes another length and it's up to his Waist and then it gets so deep that he can't He has to swim in it He's completely immersed in it and the fish are there and their trees growing up on the side of the river and they're bearing fruit and they're bearing fruit every month. They're not like any other tree. They just keep on bearing fruit. And it says that they were for healing and that the trees were for medicine.

And this is why God is looking for worshipers who will worship Him in spirit and in truth, who would turn away from every defilement in their body and the church turn away from everything that would hinder Because of the beauty that God covets for his people. He's a jealous God. What's he jealous for? He's jealous for sinners. He wants to take the outcasts of Israel and he wants to put them and make them joyful in his household of prayer.

And so Jesus cleanses the temple with vehemence that is unparalleled in any part of his ministry. And I want to just suggest that there are three reasons Jesus cleansed the temple. First, because of what the temple is. It's the healing, happifying presence of God. Secondly, because of what it had become.

The worship had been stripped of its reality, And it was not just full of inventions, but it was full of hypocrisy and just going through the motions. And then thirdly, because of what the temple means. And what the temple means is that Jesus Christ has created a new temple and it's the temple of your body and he desires to dwell there and that his loving kindness his mercy his goodness his beauty his value his treasure would just fill the temple And that you would fill every part of your life with the glory of Jesus Christ. And that's why Jesus Christ cleansed the temple. It's very dangerous to defile the temple of God.

The Apostle Paul said, Do you not know that you are a temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwells in you? If anyone defiles the temple of God, God will destroy him. For the temple of God is holy, which temple you are." He says, you are not restrained by us, but you are restrained by your own affections. What fellowship has righteousness with lawlessness? And what communion has light with darkness?

There in 1 Corinthians 6 verse 14. And why is this important? The apostle Paul says because I will dwell with them and walk among them and I will be their God and they shall be my people. Therefore come out from them. Now my intention this morning was to spend a great amount of time to urge all of us to turn away from every impure thing, everything.

David said, I will walk within my house with a pure heart. I will set no unclean thing before my eyes. Brothers, sisters, please, if you are defiling your bodies through pornography or any other means, even the silliness of this world, Even the very best films that exist today, they're godless. They present an atheistic world where all these remarkable things happen and people have all these feelings, but there's no God there. Don't...you know, even...

These things are deceiving. Fill your family's lives with every good thing. And if you think you can drink of Hollywood and not be defiled, you need to think again. Please think again. Please think again.

With all my heart. Do what David did. I will set no unclean thing before my eyes. And I don't have time to develop that, but I want us to just understand that Jesus took such radical action because of the loving kindness that he has for his people to deliver us from every impure thing. And by the way the Lord Jesus Christ is still cleansing his temples by the word of God.

This is the work of sanctification. Thanks be to God that he's given us his Spirit to continue to sanctify and cleanse us, and he's given us his word to help us. Would you pray with me? Oh Lord we thank you that you are the temple, you are The refuge, you are the sweetness, you are the truth, you are the love, you are the glory. And oh Lord that you would give us such urgency in our own temples, the urgency that Jesus had, that we would take out the whip of cords and drive them out of the temple, drive them out and let them never come back in.

I pray that you would give that to each one of us. I pray you'd give that to me. And Lord, as we conduct our lives together in this Church, that your holy word and the presence of Jesus Christ in His Holy Gospel would fill the temple. Amen.