Jesus Clears the Temple Courts | John 2:13-24

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Welcome. Good morning friends. Morning to you watching at home or watching later in the week. My name's Alex. I get to be one of the pastors here. I'm gonna trip over this cable here we go. We are in a book called John. If you have a text in front of you, if you have the scriptures in front of you, I'm gonna invite you to turn to John chapter two.

We're gonna start at verse 13, but before we spend time in John we're gonna. Work a little bit elsewhere. We're gonna exercise your ability to turn to different books at the same time. And just see what this text means, thousands of years, potentially after some other texts.

Because I think what Jesus and John, the writer are doing here is fairly spectacular. I was about five years old. When I remember learning that there was something different about being in church. I was part of a small community church, about a hundred people. We were that family, like the ones that always turned up late, they always had to put out an extra row for us at the back.

'cause we weren't the sort of family that you sat the front. If you are someone who. Turns up late. You have a brother right here because we did that regularly. And so we would cause a lot of chaos in the church, especially my brother and I, and have this distinct memory of one moment where I came flying around a corner at top speed.

Chasing my brother somewhere in the church, and I ran straight into the youth pastor. This wasn't like the cool hip youth pastors of today. This was like the old school youth pastor who was doing it because it had to be done. And he told me very clearly you don't run in church. It's not a space.

For running there, there is no running in church, which to my five-year-old mind was an easy step from there to this idea. There's no fun in church. Which was another easy step to believing that if church isn't fun, then God isn't, is probably not very fun either. Or like an emotional rollercoaster for a 5-year-old.

I'm glad my kids have not carried that with them. As I joined in ministry, that was one of our determined points that our kids, oh there must be a sign. I'm going in the wrong direction this morning. I'm just like. Say something else. My kids have not carried that weight on them around church. There's always one delightful moment a few months ago where my son, Jude was playing on stage after the service, something I will say he has been told not to do.

And Aaron, our worship pastor, came up to him and said could you get off the stage please? And Aaron's intimidating even for an adult. And my son, Jude turned around to him and said. It's okay. My dad's the pastora, like full on just you're okay. You can just. Stand down.

Don't worry. My dad's the pastor. It's going to be fine. You can easily get this message that there is something distinct about church, and that's actually a narrative that you would find early on in the old Testament. Keep your finger in John chapter two if you have a text in front of you.

If you don't worry. We're gonna have them all up on the screen. Exodus chapter three. This is a story about a man called Moses, a prophet for the Jewish people significant in the books of Exodus and beyond. Now Moses, at this point, a shepherd was tending the flock of Jethro, his father-in-law, the priest of median, and he led the flock to the far side of the wilderness.

He came to Horeb, the mountain of God. There, the angel of the Lord appeared to him in flames of fire from within a burning bush. Moses saw that though the bush was on fire, it did not burn up. So Moses thought I will go over and see the strange sight, why the bush does not burn up. And when the Lord verse four say, saw that he had gone over to look.

God called to him from within the bush. Moses, all sorts of stories in the scriptures about God calling people by name twice. Interesting. Not sure why but something to note. And Moses said, here I am. And then this is what I want you to notice here, verse five. And do not come any closer.

God said, take off your sandals for the place where you are standing is holy ground. In the ancient world, the ancient Near East, the area primarily today, caricature by the Middle East and a little bit beyond. In the ancient world, there was the sacred thing and there was everything else. There was the sacred place and everything else that Hebrew word there is the word Kadesh holiness, sacredness, even sanctuary.

This place, this space has a root in this term. Kadesh, if you jump over to Exodus 25, I told you we're gonna work this out a little bit. Exodus 25, verse eight to nine. Then have them, the people make a sanctuary kadesh for me, and I would dwell amongst them. Make this tabernacle and all its furnishings exactly like the pattern I will show you.

Exodus 26, verse 31. Make a curtain of blue, purple, and scarlet yarn finely twisted linen with cherin woven unto it by a skilled worker. Hang it with gold hooks on four posts of acacia wood overlaid with gold, and standing on four silver bases. Hang the curtain from the clasp and place the arc of the covenant.

Of law behind the curtain. The curtain will separate the what? The Kash, the holy place from the most holy place. There are people in the room far better than Hebrew, at Hebrew than I am, and, but I believe that the translation there is Kash ha kashian or something similar to that. The most holy of holy places.

There is the sacred space. We guard dwells in the ancient world. There is a sacred space. And then watch as we move on. Verse 28 chap chapter 28, verse two to three, make sacred garments Kadesh for your brother Aaron, to give him dignity and honor. Tell all the skilled workers to whom I have given wisdom in such matters that they are to make garments for Aaron, for his consecration.

So he may serve me as. Priest. There is a sacred space where you go and God is, and then in the ancient world, there is also a sacred, usually a man or man. There's a sacred man who controls access to that space. He determines who can come into this space to meet with God and who cannot. This is how things were in the ancient world.

You came to the sacred. To be with God. That is the place where God was on this earth. This verse in Leviticus, a couple of books over, so just keep going, right? If you're not sure where you are you'll find it. Leviticus verse chapter 10 verse eight 10. Then the Lord said to Aaron, you and your sons are not to drink wine or other fermented drinks when you go into the tent of meeting or.

You will die. This is a lasting ordinance for the generations to come so that you can distinguish between the holy and the common. In this ancient world, there are the things that are secret and the things that are common every day. God is in the places that are sacred and not in the places that are common.

This is how they saw it. In the ancient near East in the ancient world. So you have Kadesh Holiness, sacredness, sanctuary, and then you have coal. You have the common, the profane, and the unholy. In the ancient world, you had the sacred

over here like this.

The stage, the platform, the holy place, and over here you had the,

the common, which is you guys down here, B, you got to hold this. You're a representative. In the ancient world, if b, she is far from common. She's wonderful. But in the ancient world, they were very aware of the split between what is here and what is there. There is the holy of Holies, there is the holy place.

Then there is beyond, there is the outside the gathering space, the foyer. Afterwards, you returned to the common life. You went to the sacred spaces to be with God, and afterwards you went back to what is. Common and things operated there on different terms. For those of you that are fans of the TV show, marvelous Mrs.

Maisel, which works through the whole Jewish worldview of the 1950s in New York. There is a wonderful moment where one of the main characters, Abe Wiseman, a father and old Jewish figure, has just gone through the festival of Yom Kippur and afterwards his daughter asks him to lie for her. And he responds, I'm not gonna blow a whole year of sinning for you.

Like you deal with that yourself. There was a worldview that said what you did in the common space didn't matter to the same degree as the sacred space. And you would go from the common to the sacred, and there you would receive forgiveness. This is the way it was in the ancient. It's got like a Walter Cronkite thing there.

This was the way it was or something like that. Dunno where that came from. I won't do that again. Don't worry. And so think about this worldview as we enter this text. A whole bunch of people that were very aware of what was sacred. And what on the other hand was common? Think about B You can put that down.

You don't have to keep holding it. Sorry, I should have made that clear. I gotta stand for my word here. Think about this idea as we enter in to John chapter two, verse 13, when it was almost time for the Jewish pass Passover, one of the principle holy days where hundreds of thousands of pilgrims.

Would enter into the city of Jerusalem. Most estimates say that Jerusalem probably had about 120,000 residents in Jesus time but the number of people in the city could get up to close to a million by the time it got to one of the significant festivals. It's almost time for the Jewish Passover. And Jesus has already poked the bear in this backwater of Cana, where he is turned water into wine and seems to take a shot at the Jewish purity laws.

And now. He's going to Jerusalem, he's going to the heart of what is sacred. And Jesus went up nearly at the Passover time. Jesus went up to Jerusalem. J Jerusalem was both up physically Galilee and that area, he is around 800 foot below sea level, Jerusalem, somewhere about two and a half thousand feet above sea level.

So you physically go upwards quite significantly but it's also spiritually upwards. It's a different kind of place. Jewish people would throw out phrases like this year in Jerusalem, this is the center. Of everything in John chapter two, Jesus arrives at the center of the sacred world in a worldview that saw sacred and common.

And Jesus now is in the center of that sacred world and specifically we're told in the temple courts. He found people selling cattle, sheep, and doves and others sitting at a table exchanging money. Jesus arrives at the temple courts, the sacred space. This is a kind of layout of Herod's temple, which was finished actually almost exactly at this time that Jesus land lands there.

They've been renovating it for a chunk of years and so you have like over, over this way, the very holy places, the most sacred, and then you have the rest of the sacred space. In the idea of a person in the ancient world, Jerusalem has about 1% sacred space, and all the rest then is common space. And Jesus has particularly landed in the sacred space of this ancient world.

In the temple courts, he found people selling cattle, sheep, and doves, and others sitting at tables exchanging. Money. There was a marketplace attached to the temple, which enabled people to do what they needed to do. People came from all sorts of different places, different backgrounds. They wanted to offer a sacrifice.

They wanted to enter the temple. They had to pay in a specific kind of money, and these money changes would make it possible for people to do that. People had to offer a sacrifice, maybe a cow, maybe a dove, something like that. And these people made it possible for them to do that. And so knowing that and the importance of that marketplace, we might be surprised when it says, so Jesus, he, Jesus made a whip out of chords.

This isn't something you do on the spur of a moment, right? You don't just say, I'm just gonna grab some cords, lying around, and you have to look for something like this. You have to go into this with some intentionality. There's some energy to this passage that if we have a certain view of Jesus. Might surprise us.

I wouldn't want to attach Jesus to like a toxic, modern masculinity, but also I think we can go too far in over presenting Jesus as this meek and mild character. What we're about to see is a prophetic action, and he has some energy to it. He makes a whip out of chords and he drives. From the temple courts, both sheep and cattle, he scattered the coins of the money changes and overturned their tables.

Think about the energy required to move these huge cattle, these sheep. Think about what it is to get people out of this area, or imagine yourself going into today, perhaps say megachurch and saying that perhaps they overly obsessed with prosperity gospel and trying to drive people out of it and imagine how people might respond.

It's not the sort of thing people might respond friendly to. And so this is what we're told about what Jesus does to those who sold doves. He said, get these out of here. Stop turning my father's house into a market. And his disciples remembered an old saying back in Psalm 69, verse nine, zeal for your house.

Will consume me. This is the action Jesus enters into when he arrives in this sacred space at the heart of the sacred world. Now, for those of you that have read the different books within the scriptures, let me ask you a question and if you're unsure, that's fine too. Is this what happens in the synoptic tradition?

Matthew, mark, Luke, is this the same story? It is, and it also isn't, there's a similar story in Matthew, mark, and Luke but the scholar, Leslie Negan points out six significant differences here. We're not gonna do all six, but there's two that kind of matter to us for the first part in the synoptic traditions.

Jesus does this as he enters into Jerusalem to die. He's come to Jerusalem for the first time for a Passover festival, and he shortly after he is crucified and rises again, and then also in the synoptic traditions. The story itself has just a little bit of a difference. John places it really early in his writings about Jesus as though it's the first thing we heard him say last week that he wasn't ready to begin his journey, his hour and we wonder whether maybe this is how it was supposed to begin.

But his reason for doing it here is completely different to the reason he gives in the synoptic traditions. John remembers something very different about what Jesus is doing here and it matters that it's different. In Mark 11, this is what Mark remembers Jesus saying or has heard that Jesus said as he was teaching them, saying to them, is it not written my house?

Shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations, but you have made it a den of rubbers in the synoptic Trisha traditions. The point is that the people running the marketplace are dishonest. They're taking money off innocent people. They're overcharging, they're charging huge amounts of interest, and they're profiteering from it.

But John doesn't mention that at all, and what John remembers about what Jesus does. He has a different point. John is interested in what Jesus does. Sure. But he's also deeply interested in where Jesus does it and where he does it a lot. A lot of writers think that Jesus is actually acting out the last verse of a book called Zacharia, and on that day, there will no longer be a merchant in the house.

Of the Lord Almighty, but this is a map of the temple. Let's go back to it for a second. This red area that I shaded for you here, this is where all the traders were. They weren't usually there because of the temple renovations that had to move into this specific area. They'd been misplaced, and this is also the only area of the temple of Temple.

They're Gentiles. non-Jewish people could go the area that's usually designated for people that aren't Jewish but want to worship the God of the Jews. The term, the place that's usually given for them to attend is now filled with a marketplace. And if they can't go there, where can they go? There's no other option for them.

I would suggest in this passage, the distinct thing that is happening is that the line between the sacred and the common is starting to move just a little bit. Jesus is starting to redetermine who has access and how they have access. In a world where there is no access for people outside of the Jewish face, suddenly the line starts to move just a little bit in this story and then.

I would say this is just the beginning. Jesus is finding a place for those on the margins. People actually like you and me, people that aren't from a Jewish background, suddenly they now have space again to enter the sacred space. But this is just the beginning of what this passage, I think is trying to tell us.

It's only the beginning. Look what happens afterwards. Jesus has driven everybody out. There's now space for Gentiles to reengage with worship that problem is fixed. But then of course, when you. Commit to an action like this. You're going to get some questions in John two, verse 18. We read this, the Jews then responded to him, what sign can you show us to prove your authority to do all this?

I actually love these people. 'cause it's not like you shouldn't do this. It's just like, how do we know you're allowed to do this? It's actually a brilliant question, really. And Jesus responds this way, destroy this temple. And I will raise it again in three days, destroy the temple, and I'll raise it again in three days.

A as they're about to point out. Th this temple has taken a long time to build that. The original temple was destroyed back around 600 AD. It took a long time for it to be rebuilt. It was rebuilt in about five 30 ad something like that, by a guy called Ubal, and now a guy called Herod has been redeveloping it for about 46 years.

And then Jesus comes along and says, destroy the temple and I just rebuild it. A as we might imagine, no one at the time has the slightest clue. What he's talking about. This is the re reply of the Pharisees but his disciples have just the same response. It's, it is taken 46 years to build this temple and you're gonna raise it in three days.

This isn't Minecraft. This isn't like Lego. This is like a temple. How are you going to do this? And then we get this kind of like commentary from John. Where he talks about how they actually didn't realize at all at the time, but afterwards it began to make sense. But the temple he had spoken of was his body.

After he was raised from the dead, his disciples recalled what he had said, and then they believed the scriptures and the words and that Jesus had spoken. When Jesus is asked why he is allowed to drive everyone out the temple, why he is allowed to change, who gets access and when He says it's because of what I'm about to do.

Destroy this temple and I'll raise it again in three days. As we learn last week, we get to notice when three days is mentioned at all in the scriptures, given what we know. And then we get to reflect on this Matthew 27, verse 51. And when Jesus had cried out again in a loud voice, he gave up his spirit.

And at that moment the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. Jesus in this passage begins to reorganize, begins to correct who's allowed in this sacred space and then who isn't. But then in just a few years from now, he'll change what sacred space means for good 'cause when a curtain rips, remember we've read back in Exodus why the curtain's there?

Suddenly all sorts of people that didn't have access before now have access. But I would say more importantly. What used to be sacred space is no longer sacred space. You can go in, but also God is now out. As someone once put it, God is alive and loose in the world. Everything changes here in Jesus' story.

The line between sacred and common is broken. There is no sacred. There is no stage, and then the seeding, there is no platform. There is no this, and then that, that, that doesn't exist anymore. In this story this is what this is about. I would suggest the Sacred Center, the thing that for thousands of years is what people believe in the ancient world, the thing that they hold to is no longer real.

The Sacred Center is no longer sacred and no longer center. I would suggest you know what this means already. Wendell Berry, the writer says this. There are no uns sacred places. There are no sacred places. There are only sacred places and desecrated places. God is now everywhere in the world accessible to all.

This is a picture a friend of mine took in the Houston floods a bunch of years ago now. This place where it seems like God must be absent. The thing looks broken. Everyone doesn't know what to do. Everyone's suffering. People are dying. And then he also wrote this at the same time as being there and watching it.

15 trillion gallons of rain. That's trillion with a T. How many individual raindrops do you suppose that is? And the mystery is this, though the God who numbered each raindrop also numbered the hairs of every head on which they land. I've never seen anything like this, what I've seen in the last few days, the best of humanity responding to the very worst of situations.

God help us. This is what happens when this world looks broken. It's not because of all sorts of people that show up in the middle of it. As writers start to figure out what Jesus has done in his death and resurrection and what he's pointing to in this moment, we read here, they say things like this.

This is Paul in one Corinthians three. Don't you know that you yourselves are God's temple? And that God's spirit lives in you. There's no longer sacred places. There's actually people like you and I that God lives within that we get to be in all sorts of places in the world, and even when we go places as that temple, we see God in the most common of places, the most common of people.

Have you ever got the privilege of going to a different place? And as you are there meeting people who seem like they are the most poor, seem like they are the most disadvantaged, and God beautifully show up in these kinds of image bearers. This is me with a crew out in Haiti. A few years ago.

I got the privilege of being in this country where economically they're in the worst situation possible, but in all sorts of other ways. They're beautifully rich. They're relationally rich. They're spiritually rich. And so I had this moment as I'm in this room, in this dirt floor with kind of a falling down ceiling above us, and there's maybe me and a hundred Haitian kids playing soccer.

One of those games where the ball comes to you and you get it for about two and a half seconds before about 10 other people pile on top of you. And I remember in the sweat. It and the heat and the poverty of it thinking. I've seen God in very strange ways in this kind of place. When the lines between sacred and common are broken down, you're as likely to see God in the midst of a group of people in Haiti as you are in a church building in some kind of beautiful cathedral.

It is the reason that Jackie Pollinger, who were 18, got on a boat and went to work in Beijing, said this, if you want to see revival plant your church in the gutter, there's all sorts of signs that God is at work there. C as Lewis said this, the there are no ordinary people. You've never talked to a mere mortal.

And so when sacred spaces break down and suddenly they, they overtake every part of the world, suddenly you get to interact with all sorts of people that God is at work in that can teach you about who God really is. So that leaves us with this question, what do we gather here for if there's no sacred space?

Anymore if the lines between sacred and common have broken down, why do we do this thing? Why do we gather together? And I would suggest for a very important singular reason. Here we get to retell the story together. We get to tell of the one who broke down those kind of lines. Who broke down the barrier between what is sacred, holy, and special, the sanctuary and what is common.

And then we get to go back into this world that is equally common to this space and equally sacred to this space. And we get to see beautiful kinds of transformation. This is a passage from tis Warren Harrison. The idea that all good work is holy work was revolutionary. The Reformation toppled a vocational hierarchy that had placed monks, nuns, and priests at the top, and everyone else below the reformers taught that a farmer may worship God by being a good farmer, that a parent changing diapers could be as near to Jesus as the pope.

This, in its day, was a scandal. Imagine if we, as a group of people took that seriously. Imagine if we believed honestly, that what one person does is just the same as what everybody else does, and almost any role. Can be done beautifully and and bring the light of Jesus' story into this world in new ways.

I asked Eric if I could use him as a volunteer really quick for a super spiritual reason, not a silly volunteer reason. Eric was the first person that came to mind, so I just asked him. E Eric is what? You are what? For a job? What do you do? Teach. You teach. So imagine in the same way that when people go on mission trips and they join churches on pastoral staff roles, imagine if in the same way we welcome them and say, we'd love to pray for you, that God will bless you.

We got to do all sorts of things like this. Jesus. We thank you that Eric. Is someone who is not waiting for students to come here, but is with them in some of the most difficult spaces. Who journeys with them? Who cares for them deeply, who devotes his life to seeing them grow in the world of education?

Who in the midst of that loves them and prays for them and knows them in a season of life with the most need to be known? We pray you would fill in with your spirit and that you would help him to bring life to those who desperately need the life and light of Jesus. Amen. Imagine if we did that and you can go Thank you.

Imagine if we got to do that for Eric and for John and for John, because apparently lots of teachers here are called John. Imagine if we got to do that. For those of you that live in the counseling realm for Jesse, for Leslie, for David, for Lisa. Imagine if we got to do that in all sorts of ways for the many of us that live in, in, in fact, the all of us that live.

In those spaces for those of you that own businesses and care for your employees and get to see them flourish in life, for those of you that have staff members that you work with, that you care for deeply, that you spend time in prayer for. We have a whole hundreds of people that do this all the time.

They enter into all sorts of places that may not seem sacred in the old rules, but the old rules don't matter. Anymore. Every single one of you get to enter into these things in the most beautiful. Of ways. This is the writer worship leader, Shauna Rist. I want all of the holiness of the Eucharist to spill out beyond church walls, out of the hands of priests and into the regular streets and sidewalks, into the hands of regular grubby people like you and me onto our tables in our kitchens and dining rooms and backyards.

It seems it goes beyond what we do for work, but it goes into how we live life in the world around us. And there's just the possibility that we miss it because we still only look for God in what we think are sacred spaces. About 10 years ago the band, you too, were asked to go undercover and play in so a sub subway station in New York, 42 and Grand Central Terminal, right where that big cool building is on 42nd Street.

And so they went in disguise. And Bono with this lights out. Beautiful soaring voice sings the words of a song that is, oh, so famous. You broke the bonds, you lose the chains. Carried the cross of my shame. Of my shame. I believe it, but I still haven't found when I'm looking for, but I still haven't found what I'm looking for.

What it stood out to me was this, all of these hundreds. Of busy people after work wandered past one of the most famous bands of our time. Just seeing on the surface another group doing a cover song as best as they could, guitar amplifiers in a shopping cart, all sorts of things that didn't quite make sense, and he walked by, they missed it.

After a while, the band took off their. Masks and suddenly people gather. People recognize, but the thing was, the thing all along, there was something to be seen even when they were in disguise. About this time you two were playing regularly in Madison Square Garden in New York, just down the road from this tickets sold for about $500 a night, and people were offered it for free.

As Grace comes always free of charge on the house, no strings attached, but people missed it because they're used to looking for things in sacred places, and yet it seems like it comes just as regularly in the most common of places. And we get a front row seat. You get a front row seat. The Sacred Center is no longer sacred and no longer center.

Whatever you do. Is a sacred place

at Jesus. We have all sorts of people in all sorts of vocations, some retired, some working. All of us with friendships, people that we interact with regularly. Some we pass by quickly. Some we stop and value, and yet you are the guard of more than the sacred spaces. Earth is the Lord's and everything in it.

The work of his hands. We are grateful that we are in that number of people made by you, redeemed by you, your temple in this world. The temple goes out and seeks those that need to hear this good news that shares it brings new life. Thank you, Jesus. Amen.