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Good morning, church family.
My name is Stevie.
I'm part of the North Berkeley Community Group.
This morning I'll be reading the scripture lesson.
It's from the Gospel of John, chapter 2, verses 15 to 23.
When it was almost time for the Jewish Passover, Jesus went up to Jerusalem.
In the temple courts he found people selling cattle, sheep, and doves,
and others sitting at tables exchanging money.
So he made a whip out of cords and drove all from the temple courts, both sheep and cattle.
He scattered the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables.
To those who sold doves he said,
Get these out of here.
Stop turning my father's house into a market.
His disciples remembered that it is written,
Zeal for your house will consume me.
The Jews then responded to him,
What sign can you show us to prove your authority to do all this?
Jesus answered them,
Destroy this temple, and I will raise it again in three days.
They replied,
It has taken 46 years to build this temple,
and you're going to raise it in three days?
But the temple he had spoken of was his body.
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.
Now while he was in Jerusalem at the Passover festival,
many people saw the signs he was performing and believed in his name.
But Jesus would not entrust himself to them,
for he knew all people.
He did not need any testimony about mankind,
for he knew what was in each person.
This is the gospel of the Lord.
Praise to you, O Christ.
Good morning, Christ Church.
And again, Happy New Year.
New Year, new you, right?
How many of you made New Year's resolutions this year?
How many of you, your resolutions included the word Omicron?
So many disappointing disruptions right now, right?
But thankfully, this appears to be mild.
We think it's going to peak in the next week or so,
and hopefully pass over pretty quickly.
And I'm grateful to have such a highly vaccinated and boosted church.
We were 98% vaccinated back in May.
If you're new with us, that's just maybe helpful information to have.
And our plan during this season is what it's been the whole time,
which is just to keep calm and carry on.
Remember when the NBA shut down and the pandemic became real.
You guys remember the NBA shutting down?
Well, I think the NBA is going to lead us out of the pandemic as well.
The Omicron wave seems to have peaked in the league already.
And if the NBA can find a way to keep playing,
then surely the people of God can find a way to keep doing what we do.
Because I believe what we're doing is infinitely more important
than what the NBA is doing.
And with that, I want to say go Warriors.
And actually, I think Steph Curry would agree with what I just said,
which is really cool.
Maybe your New Year's resolution did not include the word Omicron,
but what kind of change are we typically hoping for with these resolutions?
Many of us want to exercise more, lose weight, get organized,
learn a new skill or hobby, kick a bad habit,
spend less, save more, invest more time in our family and our friends,
maybe travel more, read more books.
What's interesting to me is that 50% of Americans set New Year's resolutions,
but you know what happens a year later?
88% of those resolutions fail.
That's 156 million failed resolutions.
Maybe you're here today and you resolve to lose five pounds.
Nine days in, you've only got 10 pounds left to go, right?
Change is hard.
And if it were easy, everybody would do it.
We need support for whatever change we want to see in our lives.
So if one of your desires is to grow closer to God in 2022,
I want to say that you won't do that on your own.
That you need a church, this church or any other church,
you need to form the habit of Sunday worship every week,
get involved in a midweek community group,
maybe come to our Christianity Explored,
which starts this Wednesday night.
But if you want to see change in your life,
research has shown us you can't do that strictly on your own.
You need a strong community that's built for change.
And here in the church, we have the means of God's grace.
We have the gifts of the Holy Spirit.
We have 2,000 years of enablement for deep and lasting change.
You want to know what my New Year's resolution is for your life?
It is to lead you into a deeper relationship with Christ and His church
through community and for the city.
As Andrew mentioned, that's our mission.
That's our New Year's resolution for you in 2022.
It's the reason we preach the Gospels every year from Christmas to Easter.
It's the reason we create discussion questions for our community groups.
The reason we create a daily Bible reading plan through the Gospel of John.
All of these are meant to help you have an encounter with Jesus Christ.
Because there's no more powerful agent of change in the whole world
than to have a relationship and a relationship that's getting deeper and deeper with Jesus.
If He rose from the dead, whatever change you want to see happen in your life is no problem for Him.
But He wants to do it in the context of His community.
And right now, everything's telling us to lean away from community.
And I'm inviting you to lean in to community.
Unless you're sick.
Stay home.
We're in the Gospel of John.
We focused for a few weeks on John 1 leading up to Christmas.
And we started the New Year in John 2 last Sunday where Jesus changes the water to wine,
changes shame to joy.
Today we're looking at Jesus who cleanses and redefines the temple.
And I think God's word for us today is that zealous Jesus makes bold claims
about God, His body, and our hearts.
Zealous Jesus makes bold claims about God, His body, and our hearts.
I want to start with this, that zealous Jesus makes bold claims about God.
Listen to verse 13.
When it was almost time for the Jewish Passover, Jesus went up to Jerusalem,
and in the temple courts He found people selling cattle, sheep, and doves,
and others sitting at tables exchanging money.
Some historical context, if you don't know the Bible very well,
you can't be a Jew without the Torah and the temple.
And in the Torah, the first five books of the Bible,
we learn about Israel's exodus from Egypt, the night of the Passover,
the sacrificial lambs, the blood on the doorposts, the mercy of God,
the angel of death passing over to save God's people.
And that yearly, there's a yearly celebration of that Torah event
in the temple on Mount Zion.
And Jesus, being a faithful Jew, He walks, you know,
that five-day journey from Galilee to Jerusalem three to four times every year
to celebrate the biblical feasts.
And He gets to Passover, this one particular year at the beginning of His ministry,
and tiny Jerusalem is full of people.
Probably about two million-plus people are packed.
It's just crowded wall to wall.
And what does Jesus do to start His ministry at Israel's ground zero
amid massive crowds of pilgrims?
We read in verse 15, this is what He decided to do.
He made a whip out of cords and drove all from the temple courts,
both sheep and cattle.
He scattered the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables.
Probably not the best way to win friends and influence people.
Is this the Jesus that we introduce to our young kids?
Maybe you had a picture of Jesus in your room or in your Bible as a child,
and it was this idealized figure in a meadow with a lot of flowers,
and He's holding a lamb, and little boys and girls are reaching out to Jesus.
It's probably a sentimentalized, anemic, passive figure.
We teach our kids about gentle Jesus, meek and mild,
healing Jesus, forgiving Jesus, feeding Jesus, teaching Jesus.
But what about whipping Jesus, who's driving the animals?
What about table-turning Jesus, who's scattering the coins?
We love the Jesus of John 2, who turns water into wine and brings the joy of the feast.
But we're not so sure that we like this Jesus.
The rest of John 2, that makes a whip of judgment.
Now, the cords of this whip were the rushes that you would put under animals,
and they were not strong at all.
They wouldn't have hurt the animals.
It's just a little whip woven together out of straw.
Jesus is not physically overpowering these animals,
but what He is doing is spiritually overpowering the people with His zeal for God
and His moral outrage.
Now, imagine what would happen if you did this.
You waited till the biggest day in your office or your department.
It's an open house.
There's a year-end party, and you bust open the doors,
and you start turning desks upside down and throwing papers all over the place.
And you say, with a really loud voice, you say,
this whole place is a disgrace.
It's corrupt from top to bottom.
You ought to be ashamed of yourselves.
This entire system is finished.
What do we do with this Jesus?
Well, you basically have two options.
You can go the Thomas Jefferson route,
and you can basically just cut this part and any other part
out of your Bible that you don't like.
Or you can get comfortable with a Jesus that makes you uncomfortable.
And I think that's why stories like this are in the Gospels.
Listen to verse 16.
To those who sold doves, He said,
Get these out of here.
Stop turning my Father's house into a market.
His disciples remember that it is written,
Zeal for your house will consume me.
Zeal.
What is zeal?
Zeal is energy.
It's enthusiasm.
It's passion and fire.
It's intensity, fervency, and vigor.
The antonym of zeal is apathy and indifference.
What this tells us is that the real Jesus of the Gospels
is going to do things and say things over and over
that rub you the wrong way and make you say,
who do you think you are?
Which is what they ask Him here.
Jesus comes in and He says,
This is not your market.
This is my Father's house.
Who has the audacity to call God my Father?
Not our Father, but my Father.
Jesus is making a claim to a special,
unique relationship with God as the eternal Son of God.
And what is He so zealous for?
What is consuming Him and burning in Him and eating Him up?
It's not so much the evils of the world.
It's the fact that the people of God have lost their purity.
This is to be the house of my Father,
but you turn it into a market.
This is to be the place of worship,
but what you filled it with is a bunch of noise
and mess and distraction and business
and banking and money and deals.
Now, don't get me wrong.
Banking and business need to be done.
Money needs to be changed.
The animals here need to be purchased
so they can be sacrificed.
All of this is legitimate and essential.
But the issue here is location, location, location.
Jesus says, I want you to prepare for worship
and I want you to do it in a different way,
at a different time, in a different place.
Why?
Because God deserves respect.
And Jesus has come to restore honor to God.
What's the first thing He teaches us to pray
in the Lord's Prayer?
First line.
Our Father in heaven, hallowed be thy name.
And He puts that at the top line of the prayer
because it's His highest concern.
It was precisely Jesus' passion for God's worship
that led to Jesus' passion and death at human hands.
That's why they arrested Him and put Him on trial.
Jesus was so on fire for the majesty, the power,
the holiness of God that He would get badly burned.
And that's what Jesus' cross tells us.
It tells us that if you have zeal for God and for His house,
it's gonna hurt you too.
So what does this mean for us, Christchurch,
as we start a new year?
I just wanna ask some questions.
How closely do we resemble Jesus' zeal
about worshiping and honoring God?
And would people recognize in us
Jesus' consuming passion for the quality,
authenticity, and purity of our relationships with God
and our worship given to God?
I want you to think about this text from the prophet Malachi.
This is Malachi chapter three, verse one.
You've probably heard this if you've ever heard
Handel's Messiah.
It says this,
Then suddenly the Lord you are seeking
will come to His temple,
but who can endure the day of His coming?
Who can stand when He appears?
For He will be like a refiner's fire
and a launderer's soap.
He will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver.
He will purify the Levites and refine them
like gold and silver.
And then the Lord will have people
who will bring offerings in righteousness.
If Jesus were to put us in our worship
through His refiner's fire,
what slag, what dross would be removed
so that what remains is pure gold?
If Jesus were to cleanse us in our worship
with His launderer's soap,
soaking and beading and scrubbing and rinsing,
what dirt, what stains would be removed
so that what remains is pure fabric?
If Jesus were to put together a whip
to drive out the animals of distraction in our lives
and to overturn the tables of lesser priorities
in our lives that keep us from morning prayer
and daily scripture and showing up prepared
and on time week after week to Sunday worship,
what would those distractions and lesser priorities be?
Malachi 3 says,
then the Lord will have people
who will bring offerings in righteousness.
John 2 says that whatever is in our lives
that needs to be burned up in the refiner's fire,
whatever needs to be washed away by the launderer's soap,
whatever is impure,
whatever is unrighteous,
whatever is insignificant and unimportant
and not worthy of God,
Jesus says to that thing that He's pointing at
in my life and in your life,
get rid of it.
Get it out of here.
Get rid of everything that's keeping you
away from my Father's house
and get rid of everything that's not appropriate
and fitting to bring into my Father's house.
You guys with me?
Okay.
The mask, I can't tell.
The house of my Father is not a transactional market
among equals.
The house of my Father is the place
where the almighty, majestic, holy God
wants little people like us to come
and be at home with Him
in personal, intimate relationships.
The Father's house is a place
where we enter into a familial covenant bond
with Him by His Son and by His Spirit.
It's the place where by the Spirit
we come to share in the relationship
that the Son has with His Father.
Wow.
What a high privilege.
And yet what a high responsibility
for the people of God.
You see, in John 2,
we encounter the Lord of the wine
and the Lord of the whip.
Both.
We can't separate them.
We have to have both together.
In the sermon on the wine,
we expect in a healthy church
to find Jesus meeting the personal needs
of ordinary people
and quietly entering into their private crises
and gently but powerfully
moving individuals and families
from shame to joy.
That's the turning of the water into wine.
But the sermon on the whip
tells us to expect a Jesus
who will come and judge the public worship
of the people of God
and to raise up a people
who are zealously passionate
for the purity of the people of God.
So that's zealous Jesus.
Add that to all of your other Jesuses.
Zealous Jesus wants to make bold claims here
about God,
but also about his body.
He wants to make bold claims about his body.
It's a minor miracle that Jesus
is not arrested on the spot.
It's shocking that people put up
with this behavior,
this protest from this lone agitator,
this unknown prophet from Galilee,
but they do have questions.
And in verse 18, they say,
what sign can you show us
to prove your authority to do all this?
Now, Thomas Jefferson,
he did actually remove this part
from verse 17 and following
from his Bible
because he didn't much like
a divine authoritative Christ.
Because listen to Jesus' answer.
How does he answer the question?
He says in verse 19,
destroy this temple
and I will raise it again
in three days.
That's a cataclysmic claim.
We modern people miss it
because we don't really know
what temples are,
but ancient people knew
that the temple was the place
where heaven and earth,
where the eternal
and the temporal,
where the supernatural
and the natural
intersect and meet together.
It's a cosmic crossroads
crossroads,
where the divine resides
and where the divine presence
is mediated
and where the gap
between us
and the divine
is bridged.
If you go to Mount Zion today
in Jerusalem,
you'll see that it's,
you'll see why it's one of the
wonders of the ancient world.
It's a building project.
Some of us went a few years back.
It's a building project
that lasted 46 years
and it's just a remarkable
architectural achievement.
Massive retaining walls,
1,500 feet long,
150 feet high
and some of these,
some of the blocks
are 40 feet wide,
500 tons apiece.
And it's this platform
that creates 37 acres,
basically 25 American football fields
on the top of this platform.
And when you get up
on the top of this gigantic plaza,
there are these large staircases
that go up even higher
into the court of the Gentiles
and then the court
of the Israelites.
And then you come
to where the Passover lambs
were placed
on the altar of sacrifice
and then you look beyond that
to the temple itself
covered in gold,
towering another 150 feet high
where only one priest
can enter one time a day
and where only the high priest
can go into the very innermost part,
the Holy of Holies,
one time a year.
What's up with all this?
What does all this mean?
Why go to all the trouble?
Well, the temple tells us
that the ultimate transcendent mystery,
the mystery behind all mysteries
in this world,
that gap between that mysterious power
and us has been bridged
and that all that's wrong with us
can be made right here
by the priests
and the sacrificial lambs
and all the prayers
and the price that's being paid
in this place.
The temple is the place
where you find the one thing
in the whole world
that you can't explain,
the one thing that explains
everything else.
And what does Jesus claim
about this place?
He says, I'm it.
I am the temple.
I'm the ultimate reality
that you seek.
Now, if you go back
just a minute
to the Old Testament,
to 2 Chronicles 7,
King Solomon
builds this amazing temple
and he dedicates it.
He prays this prayer
and we're told
when he prays,
fire came down from heaven
and the glory of the Lord
filled the temple
to a degree
that the priests
couldn't serve anymore.
The people,
it says,
they fell down
with their faces
on the ground
and they worshiped
and they cried out,
the Lord is good.
His love endures forever.
That's what the scriptures
call the Shekinah glory of God.
And that same glory,
that divine presence of God
had come down
at Mount Sinai
a long time before.
It's basically an earthquake,
a hurricane,
and a volcano
all in one
and Moses had the audacity
to say,
Lord, show me
the fullness of your glory.
And what did God say to Moses?
He said,
Moses, no way.
You would die.
You can't handle my glory.
And here,
the glory of God
comes down to the temple
and it sweeps people
off of their feet
and it casts them down
on the ground
and here,
Jesus at the Passover says,
that's me.
My body,
my physical person
houses the Shekinah glory
of God.
And the question for us
is have we adequately
understood Jesus' claim?
Colossians 2 verse 9
says,
for in Christ
all the fullness
of the deity
lives in bodily form.
And we've been looking
over and over
at John 1 14
where it says,
the word became flesh
and tabernacled
or templed among us
and we have seen
his glory,
it says.
Now that's a huge claim
in and of itself,
but Jesus goes
one step further here
and he says,
take this temple
and destroy it
and I will raise it up
again in three days.
This destroyed
yet rebuilt temple
is simple code
from Jesus
about his crucified
yet resurrected body.
And what he's saying
is that every other temple
you go to the priest,
you bring the sacrifice,
you pay the price,
but in this new temple,
I am the priest,
I am the sacrificial lamb
and I pay the full price.
Here is where
the atoning work of God,
the mercy of God,
the forgiveness of God
happens right here
in me.
Jesus is saying,
I'm the God
on the other side
of the gap
and I've come over
on your side
and when I die
on the cross,
I'm gonna put a bridge
that's gonna bridge
the infinite gap
between you and God.
For I am the temple
that all humanity
has been looking for.
I've come to fulfill
the highest ideals
of all the temples
of this world
and render them
obsolete.
Has anybody else
made such a claim?
Any other religion
made such a claim?
Jesus,
on this Passover,
claims to be
the temple,
the house of the Father,
but three Passovers
from now,
in the spring of 30 AD,
on the night
before his crucifixion,
Jesus gives his disciples
a new Passover.
At that time
when liberation
and freedom
and rescue from slavery
are being celebrated,
Jesus breaks bread
and he pours out wine
and he says,
my body
and my blood
are the new Passover
sacrifice for you.
And friends,
the crucified yet risen
Jesus comes among us
every time we gather
in this place
and he does the same thing.
He says,
the temple of my body
was destroyed on the cross
to free you from your sins.
The temple of my body
was raised up
on the third day
to liberate you
from death.
You cannot bridge
the gap
without me.
You cannot
be the priest.
You cannot pay
the sacrifice.
You cannot
give
what it takes.
You can't do it
without me,
so come
put your trust
in me.
Seek the continuing
presence of God
in me.
Make your home
here with me
in my Father's house
and that's what
we're going to do
in just a moment
as we come
to Jesus
at his table.
But I want to say
one final thing
because Jesus,
zealous Jesus,
makes a bold claim
here about God.
He makes a really
bold claim here
about his body.
But he goes
one step further
and he says,
he makes a bold
claim about us,
about our hearts.
Jesus came
at a time,
Passover,
and to a place,
the temple,
that was so central
in the life
of Israel
that what
he did there
had to reverberate
through all
of Israel,
through the whole
nation because
the temple
is the beating
heart of Judaism.
It's not just
another church
on the street
corner.
The temple
is the center
of worship
and music,
of politics
and society,
the center
of national
celebration
and mourning.
And here this
unknown prophet
from Galilee
comes and he
shockingly turns
everything upside
down and he
makes quite a
stir.
In fact,
he impresses
quite a number
of people.
In today's terms,
we would say
that Jesus had
many followers
on Twitter
and Instagram
and TikTok.
Somebody would
have made a
popular YouTube
channel and
started a podcast
and he'd
have had lots
of likes
and shares
and views
and Jesus
goes viral
in this moment
and he becomes
an influencer.
An influencer
is, quote,
someone who has
large followings
of enthusiastic,
engaged people
who pay close
attention to
their views.
Now,
what does Jesus
think about all
these new
enthusiastic followers?
How does he
relate to them?
How does Jesus
leverage his
mega-influencer
status?
Verse 23,
now while he
was in Jerusalem
at the Passover
festival,
many people saw
the signs he was
performing and
believed in his
name, but Jesus
would not entrust
himself to them
for he knew
all people.
He did not need
human testimony
about them for
he knew what
was in them.
Jesus knows
the difference
between believers
and believers.
Jesus makes
a key distinction
between two
different types
of belief,
which seems
to be the
difference between
belief that is
shallow and
belief that is
deep.
Belief that is
temporary and
belief that is
ongoing.
Belief that is
circumstantial and
belief that is
authentic.
And the question
here is, will
the belief of
these so-called
believers stick?
Will it abide?
Jesus is constantly
begging this
question.
His first and
greatest parable is
the parable of the
sower, the seed, and
the soils, where
three soils received
the seed of God, but
they failed to bear
fruit.
And only one of
those four soils,
who got the divine
seed, took root and
bore fruit.
And in that parable
that interprets all
the rest of the
parables, Jesus is
saying, look, there's
a belief that's
shallow and
temporary and
circumstantial, and
there's a belief that
is deep and
ongoing and
authentic.
And Jesus is
deeply concerned
here about
untrustworthy types
of believing.
This belief is
based upon things
that are seen, not
upon the Holy
Spirit who is
unseen.
Jesus is
looking for a
faith that he can
believe in.
Right?
He doesn't believe in
their belief in him.
Why?
Because like it
says in 1 Samuel 16
7, the Lord does
not look at the
things human beings
look at.
People look at the
outward appearance,
but the Lord looks at
the heart.
So how can you know
that you're a
believer with the
kind of belief that
Jesus believes in?
Well, say you
invite a friend over
to your apartment or
to your house, and
they walk in and
they say, hey, you
know what, let's move
this couch from here
to there, and let's
put that table here,
let's put that right
over there.
And you say to
yourself, hey, what
sort of authority do
you think you have?
I'm the owner and
you're the guest.
But you see, that's
the point of John 2.
Jesus comes in and
he starts moving all
the furniture around.
And he's telling
people what to do as
if he owns the place
because he does.
And Jesus, we're told,
he knows the difference
between someone who
sees him merely as a
guest of their life or
as the actual owner of
their life.
Between somebody who
renders to him marginal
authority and somebody
who surrenders to him
absolute authority.
Somebody who says,
Jesus, come on in and
sit here as my guest.
Or Jesus, why don't you
come on in and move my
couch and rearrange my
life in whatever way you
see fit.
That's the Jesus we have
in John chapter 2.
And that's why over and
over the scriptures tell
us to examine ourselves.
Paul says in 2 Corinthians
13, 5, examine yourselves
to see whether you are
actually living in the
faith.
Examine yourselves to see
whether you are actually
living in the faith.
And that's probably not a
bad way for us to start a
new year, 2022.
Do we have the kind of
belief that Jesus believes
in?
That's the question for us
today.
In the name of the Father,
the Son, and the Holy
Spirit.
Amen.