Why Did Jesus Turn Tables in the Temple?

we're going to continue the series that we've been starting in john and i'm going to give you a little bit of a disclaimer again i when i prepare a message i what i usually what i'll do is i'll i'll pray of course and then i'll study the text is best that i can and get as much information as i can on the text and then i'll based upon all the information that i gather i'll kind of try to formulate where i believe the holy spirit is leading us initially when it came to today's text i i had i had an idea where i wanted to go and i realized that there was so much content that there's no way i could cover it at all and so we're actually going to split today in the second part in two parts and my prayers that that you will see in the story today probably similar to last week some things that maybe you've never really seen before and when it comes to application um i know i did and i'm still even as i'm sitting here i'm thinking man i you know like there's so much more and i know i'm kind of setting it up a little bit right but i just want us to be open to what god is saying and what he's showing to us and um and that being said as well if you're here today and you want to get baptized and you've not been baptized like we'll still do that today like right after the service or today even during the first service um so we we're certain the water's warm and i'll be happy to go in it with anybody and duncan so if you want to do that let me know be happy to do that um have you ever heard the story about when jesus goes to the temple and he and he finds people selling stuff and people at this the table and if you in the way you picture the story is jesus you know somehow gets some stuff to make a whip and then he makes this whip and if you see the picture you see like jesus whipping people and turning over tables and like going get out of here and like and people are like shrieking in fear um that's the version of the story that i've always been told of what happened and the question is is like why would he do that does jesus have an anger issue is there something that we're missing that he can't control his wrath at that point and so we're going to talk about that today but just to give you a little bit of a background to to i'm actually looking in john chapter two in case um you you wanna turn to john chapter two verse 13. what at least once a year the jewish males were expected to go to jerusalem to the temple where they would bring sacrifice and so at least once a year they would go and they'd bring a sacrifice and offering and then they'd pay the taxes so um like this was something that jesus would have done for 30 years that's important to know because we're going to get to that part next week potentially like 30 years jesus would have gone to the temple and for 30 years he would have done the same thing at least once a year most likely more than once a year and what would have happened is people would have been bringing um their their their sacrifice their their offering to pay for their sins and and so jerusalem on passover was by far the biggest day and here here's kind of what jerusalem he's a model if you go to by the way if you go to israel with us we have room for three people three people we want to move on a quick so if you want to go to israel you need to let us know like right away but this is one of the models that that we will probably see and this is what they think jerusalem looked like back in jesus day and so uh these things right here these are the walls if you can see the walls going around can you guys see those okay so the walls and this is this here would be the the temple this is what's still standing today of course this would be the area of worship um ironically so like this these steps right here i believe are the southern steps if i recall correctly at any rate within this area here remember this is this is like um this is what it would look like in jesus day when this area here you would have had about 250 000 men alone josephus the historian says within this area you would count around three million people that's a lot of people so it would have been packed coveted would have been having issues big time right and and so and in the way the story goes is the passovers of the jews was near the jews went that's when jesus went to jerusalem i'm gonna go and turn the text down there so the passover of the jews was near jesus went up to jerusalem in the temple he found people selling cattle sheep doves and money changers seated at their table so i'm going to stop there for a moment let's go back and so we we think that maybe this would be kind of the core of the gentiles maybe it was out here that they were selling stuff or might even been in here within the actual temple area we're not real sure but um there's different views of maybe what it was but so but that's not that's really not weird it wouldn't it's not it's not a weird thing that people for example if you're if you're traveling from from um like italy rome if you're traveling like from another nation you you don't want to bring some cattle with you to go sacrifice right like you like if it's a long journey you're not wanting to bring some sheep along this huge journey and so the fact that they actually had something available isn't necessarily a bad thing so like you need to know that um even even having like the money changers isn't necessarily bad and so if when we go to israel we take our american money and we turn it into shekels and so that we can purchase things easier in israel and so having a place where you exchange your money isn't necessarily bad that like that's not what jesus is really upset about i don't believe but something was happening within the context of something that was probably okay in itself but something was distorted that created some some tension and so what was that verse 15 making a whip of cords he drove all of them out of the temple both sheep and cattle stopped there for a moment so you should see this um pesto jesus the pastor of the jews was near jesus went to jerusalem the temple he found people selling cattle sheep doves money changes seated at the table making a whip of course he drove all of them out of the temple both sheep and cattle and so just just so you know jesus didn't make a whip of cords and drive the people out what did he drive out the sheep and the cattle so he's like get out of here he's not whipping people in the back this whatever it's worth because we have pictures of that so anyway making whip of course he drove all the amount of pill out of the temple both sheep and cattle he also poured out the coins the money changes and overturned their tables he told those who were selling the doves take things out of here stop making my father's house and marketplace the disciples remember that is written zeal for my house or for the house consumes me so like what what's happening matthew mark and luke uh those gospels share a very similar uh story and in their gospels they talk about jesus going into to the temple area and and driving out the money changers and saying things like don't make my place into a den of robbers don't you know making it's called be a house of prayer so this like what we know in in every situation that that something's happening where people this is important where people are having to go through certain steps that god didn't design for them to get to worship are you following me like there was obstacles man-made obstacles that were being put in place that prevented people to worshiping god there was something that was happening people were trying to if you will use god's name to to highlight their own agenda so so we don't know necessarily if you know did jesus clean up the temple twice like did he go to the temple and you know like because he went every day every year at least but so we don't know if it happened twice we don't know if it happened once we're not really sure but we know this the reason why john would place it at the beginning is it's going to show us something about who jesus is and this is where we're going to go next next week but so we talked about in chapter 1 how jesus was the lamb right so remember john john's gospel remember the john's gospel what's point of john's gospel that like you might believe he's the son of god and by believing you might like my belief might be changed might have eternal life so john's gospel setting up this idea of who is jesus he's the son of god and john starts helping us to believe that so he's chapter one so jesus is the lamb for the slaughter remember was talking about that chapter two we get to cana and cana jesus is the wine he's the blood that will pay for the sins of humanity the next story remember we talked about signs last week how you have a sign and scripture says that there's another sign that's given when jesus does this there's a sign that happens and jesus is saying i'm the fulfillment of temple worship and so john the author the gospel of john is setting us through the stage of like okay who's jesus he's the lamb that's going to be slaughtered he's the sacrificial blood that will pay for the sins of humanity and he's a fulfillment of the temple of god that's kind of where we're going with this both passages jesus is upset why that's what i want to walk through today in essence um god like god made us for worship you like you were created to worship you were created to have intimacy with with god like that's what you were created for that's your priority number one jesus god god the father did everything within his nature to allow us the freedom to worship when we place man-made obstacles in front of people and we place criterias of what people have to go through what they have to look like what worship looks like we stop the very thing that jesus gave his life for for people to worship him i know is that following through and so like the first thing that happens is in essence people being people were being used and people using god in in several ways the first way is that people were traveling long distances was difficult to take their animal with them so so this is what's crazy so travel a long distance maybe you're coming from from rome or something you're and you know you're taking your family maybe you're taking your son with you for his first time in jerusalem maybe it's the whole everybody we don't know but they're taken with you and and so instead of bringing the animal with them they would go to the temple and say hey you know like i want to honor god i want to sacrifice to god let us do his and so can i can i get a spotless lamb can can i get a dove as a peace offering can i can i can i get a cattle and make a sacrifice to the lord for my family's sins like like i want to worship god i can can i do this and what they were doing instead of giving them a fair price and said absolutely yes here's a fair price they were jacking it up and they were using faith as a way to raise the price like like they were saying this in essence hey if you really want to worship god then you're willing to pay this price to worship it was creating an obstacle for people to worship they were jacking up the prices away in other words saying hey god i want you to bless my agenda i want to become rich off of giving people the opportunity to worship you like like just think about that for a moment people were becoming wealthy by using worshipping god like like creating the environment where if you wanted to worship god you had to come through me and that people were making wealth out of that so that's the first thing was happened in essence god was saying hey i'm not okay being used for your agenda the second thing was happening if you brought a sacrifice with you maybe you you know maybe you came from galilee or something so it was maybe a couple days journey and and you brought some sacrifices with you they had people that were stationed at the temple and you would have to bring your sacrifice before them and say hey this is my sacrifice and they would look at it to see if it was approved and they were saying no and so you maybe had the slam that you had been raising up that for the year to bring as a sacrifice to the lord you'd be bringing it and maybe you had your you know your 14 year old son or whatever and like here's the sacrifice and they would say no it doesn't qualify go to that money go to that table and and buy another lamb and so the very thing that people have been worshiping or thinking about worship for the whole year were being denied the opportunity to give it and again jesus is saying hey i'm not okay with being used for your agenda the third thing that was happening was the money changer tables and so you know you you had to do it in shackles you had to pay your taxes and sheckles and so the money changer tables they would come there and say hey you know i have the this this money thing from egypt and with the egyptian god and they didn't want to use that so they're like can i exchange this egyptian money for you know something else and the money changers would say like yeah absolutely but they were robbing them like totally ripping them off making money off of worship so i really started thinking about that i thought man like are we ever guilty of that like not necessarily us as a church but like even me as an individual is there ever either situations that i put like my obstacles my idea my agenda and and create a pathway that people have to go through my world to like worship and at first we pick on people like don't we like like so how many think of how many can think of ways maybe we do this in the church capital c the big church like raise your hand real quick how many think of some ways i mean i it was easy for me like here's some ways that i see it happening in the in the church uh televangelists we love picking on televangelists i guess we be one right now because here we are on like the tv so anyway um and so they'll be like hey i have got this water from the river jordan and it's an anointing water from israel and if you buy it right now for 1999 i will give you a vial and you can pray for your loved ones have you ever heard that before or how about this one i have a prayer cloth we've been praying over it and fasting over it and i've just been and like right now you're just praying for the cloth it's 15 for the cloth we'll send it to you and you can pray for your loved ones that one ever worked for you have you ever heard about that before oh this one would be good this one sounds really good i almost changed my voice to do it but because there's a certain voice you have to as a gruddle it's a gruddle kind of growl like seed faith if you just have some seed faith if you plant some seed into this ministry god will bless that seed faith and produce a harvest in your life and i'm like oh my gosh are we are we making profit off of people wanting to worship like are we using god to bless our agenda what about the local church one of the churches that i uh attended for a while in my life was a smaller church and uh almost every sunday almost every sunday somebody had a need in a smaller church you know you just spoke up and you'd be like sister and so and souls car broke down this week and i just can we can we can we try to raise some funds real quick to help her and everybody would pull out the checkbook and they'd help sister or someone have you anybody been a part of church like this before you raise your hand but like at first it sounds really good until you attend for like six or seven weeks and it's like every single week somebody has an issue coming up this is where this is where it gets really crazy so i started started to realize that you know what like it's not every issue that's coming up it's not everybody that has a need it's everybody that was in close connection with this individual that had the guts to speak loudly like somebody from that type of church like look at me as if you know what i'm talking about some people are louder and they'll speak louder and so like if you were close to this individual she would speak on your behalf and so the key was if you wanted to get something you had to become close to this individual share your need with this individual that individual would share with the rest of the congregation and your funds would be raised like to me the principle is probably good but i believe it can distract us from worshiping it can be about you know like like just you coming in and i want to worship god and then i'm like every week it's like money whatever like so like like to me that's a way of saying man like are we creating obstacles for worship and i i'm even a little bit nervous sharon because i the antithesis of it is that like god wants us to be generous givers right so on the same token you can be just really stingy and you can be creating a block from worship because you're just being stingy it's just kind of a two-sided coin if you will no pun intended it's going to hit really home in just a moment but first i want to just kind of walk you through some things um maybe some ways we've kind of dealt with it as a church good or bad i don't i don't know um like everything we have is god's everything we have is his and so like what's important as a church that we worship god and part of worship is giving and so at new life we've kind of wrestled this as best we could to say you know we're only going to talk about three places to give we're going to talk about your tithe which isn't really giving it's really bringing because it's the lord's anyway so malachi talks about that so we're like you know what we worship in giving we worship through tithing that's the first 10 of the lords like we're just his voice person if you don't like it that's between you and god we're just speaking it right so we kind of we deal with that but then we bring up two other issues around a regular basis we said hey missions we believe in reaching the world for jesus and we're going to be a part of reaching the lost and so like we're unequivocally unapologetically saying give the missions and by the way we're building a community center and we're unapologetically saying be faithfully giving to the community center by the way the green slide just went up and i went down and it's really fast so um we'll post a picture on that on that later but so we so we taught we try to talk about um you know so here's three areas that as a church is an organization that we try to like really highlight but that doesn't take away from what god might do in your life i love it when people have needs and like i don't even know about them but i hear people meeting the needs do you know what i mean like to me that's church when the church is meeting one another's needs it's not like i have to go to the organization the organism and like i just talk like friends are meeting each other's needs that's what church i believe should look like so um so like we try to make some things set up within our church that so that we're not having the appearance of making a profit off of people uh people's salvation um even by the way when we sell books uh we sell them at cost because we think you should grow better knowledge and so we're not making money off of the books when we sell them and we buy t-shirts and hats because we want you to look good and we're not making money off of that so it's so so again we're trying to make sure that hey you know like you don't have to like be wearing a new life shirt to love jesus and so we try to make sure that that we have a an attitude of within our church that like doesn't stop us from from connecting with god it doesn't create a hindrance and it doesn't stop the flow even like fundraisers we won't do a lot of fundraisers if we do a fundraiser we'll say hey is it okay i'm talking with you guys about this is that okay i'm just kind of working through this is that all right you guys just get to hear like this whole week is this is this all right because i'm like you know i'm just i've just been working through this thing this whole week and going man like what do we do i'm like are we guilty of this and i've just been thinking a lot of like a lot of stuff about who we are and individually and and i just want to make sure like like we god are we honoring you do we put things in front of people even as a local church that stop them from worshiping you man-made deals and so that's something i've just been i'm talking to you uh just kind of working through this if you will maybe it's a sermon to me i don't i don't know um and so we we try not to do a lot of fundraisers when we do a fundraiser we'll say hey this is a fundraiser so you're paying more for this product because we're raising funds for missions deal but but we're not saying to love jesus to get into the sanctuary you have to buy fudge like right that's not like one of the deals like sacrifice fudge oh we don't anyway so i'm just kind of working through this thing uh we're trying to we same thing with people people have a hundred great things happen in their lives and and we try to we should try to say hey please don't stand on the foyer and you know sell stuff because we just don't want that appearance people coming through and all of a sudden someone say hey would you buy this or would you help my kids did you help little joey like you know he's playing soccer and someone's got to help him play soccer would you help him play soccer like we just don't want that and so we say you know please don't do that and probably offends people sometimes but we try not to do stuff like that but we're like hey talk to all your friends just don't stand out there doing it please so those things that we try to do that that so we don't create a marketplace you know atmosphere where people feel like they're pressured um so what are some things that we have to be careful of individually as a church let me give you just a few that i kind of thinking about i think we have to be careful that we don't ever use uh manipulation or guilt to get people to do what they should do but aren't doing that's hard right it's hard when you've got two services and you need people to serve like we really need people to serve like this is your church you should serve but how do you say serve but don't gilt them into serving what would jesus do right like you don't want to say you're not growing if you're not serving but at the same time you're probably not growing if you're not serving like so there's this this this constant struggle that we have to be careful of that we we present opportunities for people to grow become closer to god but we don't create as a condition for worship same thing with in my we i don't look at people's giving because i couldn't handle it i i couldn't you know some you know it's hard for me when i know that someone isn't giving generously because i'm like man i gotta give you so much and so i i don't i don't wanna know because i don't wanna ever like look at people a certain way or treat them a certain way because they give or don't give right like this is things that pastor jennifer we have to struggle with i love the fact that even you know god doesn't guilt us even into salvation he simply says hey choose life or choose death like who will you choose what will you do all right so here was really we're gonna we're gonna we're gonna think have you ever used your idea belief political world oh personal beliefs as a standard for how people can come to worship have you ever kind of put a standard and said hey if you don't believe this way then like you're not really following god have you ever done that have you ever put obstacles up in front of people that maybe prohibit them from totally engaging god have you ever gotten in the way of someone worshiping god have you been an obstacle what you said what you did how you responded has that ever gotten away from someone worshiping god guilty both hands raised what we do what we say even sometimes what we believe i think we can all be guilty at times of of trying to get god to bless our own agenda right we can all be guilty of times of saying god bless my agenda and in putting parameters around how we define the what life should look like and like we sometimes we use social media we'll use like prophetic messages even sometimes a public giving to advance our own name to advance our own you know persona to kind of build ourselves up and and i want to suggest that we need to be super careful that we're not asking god to bless our agenda and that we're not creating a blockage for someone coming to god like we're not creating a stopping point because of something that we're going through or looking like or or struggling with what what happened what happened in the temple courts and this isn't so important what happened in the temple courts is that the focus of worship the focus of worship went away from worshiping god and the focus became on the how the focus removed from the who to the what and let us be very careful that we don't ever change our worship focus and focus more on the what and the how instead of the who let us be mindful that within our own personality within our own dna within our own beliefs that we can have mindsets of what worship should look like music style music speed appearance giving criteria like you name the list political view or like amount of prayer attendance like whatever it is like service like we can put in parameters of what worship should look like and we can focus more on getting people to fulfill the parameters of what worship should look like instead of fulfilling the very act of worship itself which is communicating with god let us just be careful so i didn't expect to sit here at 10 o'clock on sunday there's a whole more of this passage that i'm like oh my gosh there's so much good stuff but like i just felt like i couldn't get past this and i've got a baptism sunday and like how is this aligned with baptism i have no idea i'm even like i'm talking about monica i don't i don't even know like what i'm gonna do because i it's like it's there it's just screaming out to me but it's water baptism sunday like how do i how do those two connect i don't know but it's god's word and i just feel like it's imperative that we that we think about it the last verse i want to share with you i'm going to think of amos chapter 5 verse 21. and here's what here's what god says to the israelites that had been sacrificing and worship and doing certain um days that were really important and they'd done like all the stuff all of the acts of worship all of the all of the exteriors were in place but they forgot the who in amos chapter 5 verse 21 here's what here's what god says he says i hate my mama told me never i can't say i hate but that's what god said i hate i despise your feasts i take no delight in your solemn assemblies and your gatherings even though you offer me your burnt offerings and grain offerings i don't accept them and your peace offerings and your fat and animals i don't look upon them take away from me the noise of your songs ouch does anybody else feel it like oh man take away from me the noise of your songs the melody of your harps i will not listen to they used harps we use guitars just whatever it's worth but let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an ever flowing stream stop coming to me with a form of worship stop coming to me with what worship looks like to you stop focusing on all the different parts of what worship should look like what people should do and just come to me with righteousness and justice and let it just roll unto me like that's what god is calling us to true worshipers with our heart with no pretense and just i tell people you men you can worship god anywhere if you focused on the who instead of the what so i don't know if that helped anybody else today but man it sure kicked me in the butt can i say that in the pulpit i guess i'll ask my wife later and she'll tell me you know probably not so let us continue focus on who we worship father we thank you so much for your presence here today we thank you for that you love us too much to leave us where we are that you love us too much to let us stay in our mess that you love us too much to be okay with status quo but lord that you're constantly speaking life and truth in our lives you're constantly calling us back to you and lord we we want you we want life we want to serve you lord we don't want to create any obstacle in in people that stops them from worshiping you god we don't want to create man made or what's of worship that stops people from worshiping you like god we don't want to get in the way of what you're doing in people's lives so father remove our preference remove our ideals remove the things in our lives that hold us people back from seeking you so that god people can freely come lord we don't want to be like the pharisees or the sadducees or the people at the temples that were like hey just making a prophet in your name like god we want to honor you we want to worship you and we want to bring people to you not away from you so god let that be the desire of our heart expression of who we are let it let it ring and everything that we do and everything that we say god help it to just reflect who you are jesus name amen

Channel: New Life Escanaba

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Id: 4MXHG_oqHs4

Length: 38min 49sec (2329 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 01 2021