Sermon Text: John 2: 13 – 22
Jesus Clears the Temple Courts
13 When it was almost time for the Jewish Passover, Jesus went up to Jerusalem.
14 In the temple courts he found people 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 courts, 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! Stop turning my Father’s house into a market!”
17 His disciples remembered that it is written: “Zeal for your house will consume me.”
18 The Jews then responded to him, “What 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 They 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.
Morning Message
What to we think the church is? This building? The true church is the people, the body of Christ. We are the church; the people called by Jesus to minister in this world. We spend a lot of time making sure that everyone understands that we are not to worship the building. We could be the church even if we did not have a building. The mothers and fathers of our faith worshiped in houses, mostly behind closed doors, in fear of persecution. They gathered together and worshiped God where they could. In many ways, because of the pandemic, we have returned to worshiping at home, in front of our televisions or computers. The only difference is that for many of us, we gather alone, maybe two by two, but for the most part what we have lost is the community of the church. We worship God, but fellowship with one another is lost. True worship is when we gather together before God and commune with Him and with one another.
The temple in Jerusalem was a special place. When it was first built in the time of King Solomon it was a glorious sight to behold. There has not been anything like it since. Solomon dedicated the temple with a very long prayer that you can find and read in 1 Kings chapter 8, and in chapter 9 the Lord consecrated the temple and promised that His eyes and heart would always be there. The temple was meant to be a holy place. At the time of Jesus’ visit to the temple, the high priests were ruthless, greedy, evil men who used their position to extort money from the people. Jewish law required every family to bring their own sacrificial animal to the Passover, and some of them traveled from great distances. The high priests, knowing this, started to sell animals that could be used for sacrifice at the temple – but at exorbitant prices. In this way, the corrupt priests used their power to establish an unjust system.
Why was Jesus upset? After all it was just a building wasn’t it. It had become just a building to the priests and even to the people, but God didn’t see it that way. The temple then and the church today can be as meaningful or as ordinary as you want it to be. God blessed the temple because of the dedication of the people. God also warned the people that if they abandoned Him and stopped seeking his presence in the temple that he would also abandoned them. The church today, this church can be a holy place, it can be a special place of worship; it can be meaningful in our faith, if we make it that way. This is just a building and in and of itself nothing special, but we can make it special if we meet God here. If this is the place where you worship God then it should be special to you. The problem today is that we have lost our zeal for our place of worship. We don’t have to worship the building, but we should respect and love the place where we meet God together with our brothers and sisters in Christ.
There is a very real threat to our churches today. I believe that this threat exists because we, as God’s people have become complacent about our faith and about the importance of our churches. I received an email from Franklin Graham this week calling for urgent prayer. The government, our government, the government of the United States of America, a country built on the principal of faith and the need for separation of church and state, is considering a bill called the cares act. If this were to be passed it would force schools, churches, and hospitals to accept the government’s beliefs and mandates. I don’t want to get into the whole thing except to say that the church would be dictated to about what we can and cannot say or do.
We are headed in a bad direction in this country, and the world will eventually turn from the ways of God. The church that we love will become a tool of the government and the god of this world. As Christians we need to regain our zeal for God’s house while we still can. I believe that there is still time to recommit ourselves to making this church a shining light for this world, but we have to make it a focal point of our lives. We must stand up to those who would take away our rights to be the church. We can only do that as one body worshiping together, gathered in our church. It’s not too late, but we need to regain our zeal and be consumed with our faith.
In Christ’s Love and Peace
Pastor Bob
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