This is resurrection morning and we want to have our thoughts and our affections directed to the risen saviour – the Lord Jesus. We are glad this morning to remember that, not only did the Lord Jesus die to remove our guilt, but Romans 4:25 says he rose so that we could be confirmed innocent – justified. If Jesus had died and remained dead then no one would have been made perfect, because death would have had its victory over God. But, up from the grave he arose
with a mighty triumph over his foes. Over sin, over death and over Satan, forever.
So, if any of us are to have a hope of heaven, then the resurrection of the Lord Jesus is the foundation of that hope. Our passage in John 2 tells us that one day, during Jesus’ life of ministry, he went up to Jerusalem, to the temple. The temple was where God had promised to meet with his people. Jesus called it “his Father’s house”. When Jesus arrived, he went into the outer courts of the temple which was a large space. And what he found was, instead of worshippers, a market place with people buying and selling sacrificial animals and money changers controlling the price of produce by lending at exorbitant rates.
This house was meant to be sacred and sanctified and set apart. It was meant to be the place where people confessed their sins before their holy, perfect and glorious God and had atonement made for them. But Jesus found the house of God full of people who loved gold more than God and market value more than their Maker’s value.
I think that we should be very careful about using righteous anger towards other people. You have to have very solid ground to launch an attack on other people is defence of the Lord and, you should never resort to violence, but Jesus was no ordinary human being and he was consumed with righteous anger against these people. Jesus’ heavenly father was being marginalised. His glory was being trodden in the dirt, under foot and in that moment his holy jealousy for the honour of his Father, and his holy indignation against sin, welled up within him.
He made a whip and drove every single person from the temple court. He overturned the market tables and told the money lenders to leave. His anger led him to cleanse the temple of the evil that had taken up lodging there. God’s house was meant to be about glory and honour and majesty, and Jesus found it filthy and darkened and sin-sick. His actions were completely justified and they tell us that God doesn’t take sin lightly. He is utterly offended by it and he cannot co-exist with it.
Sin must be removed. God’s holiness demands it.
The next thing that happens in the account is fascinating and is all about resurrection Sunday and that’s why we’ve spent some time focusing on the story up to this point.
You can imagine that the Jews who had been driven out of the temple courts by Jesus were not very happy about it. They were making good money from their false use of the temple courts and they didn’t regard Jesus as anybody special. He certainly had no authority from the High Priest in charge of the temple to do what he did. So, by what authority was he doing this? His self-confessed authority was the authority that came from heaven and was conferred on him by his heavenly Father and they knew that was his claim. So, they ask him what sign will you show us to prove to us that you have the authority to throw us out of the temple?
And Jesus’ unflinching answer is,“Destroy this temple and I will raise it again in three days. That will be the sign that proves I had the authority to clean this temple of the filth that had made its dwelling place in the holy house of God.” That is a remarkable statement. Imagine if I turned up at someone’s garage and cleaned out all the rubbish and they said, “who said you could clean up my garage – I liked things the way they were?” And the response came back, “I’ll rebuild the whole garage in a day.”
They’d laugh me out of the room. “The temple took 46 years to build and you’re telling us you’ll rebuild it in 3 days!” the Jews said to him.
On face value, it is a laughable statement. But we’re told Jesus wasn’t talking about the temple building, he was talking about his own body. A few years later the Jews would destroy the Lord’s body by having it nailed to an instrument of torture and death. They would ensure that Jesus’ body was whipped, mocked, stripped and crucified. Destroyed. But 3 days later Jesus showed them the sign they had asked for. A resurrected body. On resurrection Sunday and in the days following before his ascension he appeared to more than 500 people (1 Cor 15:5-7) proving not only that he had indeed raised the temple in 3 days – that he was alive even though he had been dead - but also proving by this sign that he had the authority to cleanse the temple of the warehouse that it had become.
You might ask how this was proof of authority. The high priest was the highest authority in charge of the temple, but he was a man. There have been many priests since death prevented them from continuing in office. Their authority was a conferred authority that could only last as long as their lives could last. But Jesus showed the Jews who he had thrown out of the temple, that his authority was an everlasting authority. And that meant it was a divine authority. When he raised himself from the dead he showed that he would live forever and therefore his priesthood would be permanent and his authority everlasting.
So, if he wanted to cleanse the temple then he had the divine authority to do it and nothing in heaven or on earth could call that authority into question. Not angels, not the devil, and certainly not some black-marketeers. His resurrection is therefore very significant and very foundational.
It establishes his divine authority. No resurrection, means no authority. In that case, he’s just a man like any other man and his death means nothing special and the bible can be regarded as nothing more than a good history book with some ethics thrown in for good measure. But the resurrection gives every claim the Lord Jesus made about himself authenticity and basis, and then he’s no longer just a good man, he’s our great God and he is worthy of adoration and praise and glory and the very uppermost place in our lives.
There’s a profound undercurrent to this event in John 2 that is worth a few more moments of our time. 1 Corinthians 6:19 says, “Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit.”
There’s enough language in Romans 8 about the spirit living, residing, dwelling in the heart of a Christian to say the soul of a person is a house for something all the time. God’s original design for it was that it would be a house for his Spirit to live in. God made us to be indwelt by him. For our spirit and his Spirit to fellowship together forever. That’s how it was for Adam and Eve in the beginning. When sin entered in, the spirit of God left the soul of man. But the soul of man is never empty. It’s always occupied by something. Ecclesiastes 9:3 says “the hearts of people are full of evil and there is madness in their hearts whilst they live, and afterward they join the dead”.
Jesus comes to many temples; to many bodies; to many souls. He is so eager to find a high and holy temple where the spirit of God resides and where he is revered. Where his beauty is regarded as more valuable than life, than wealth, than health, than family, than anything. He comes into the outer courts as it were and he looks for the goodness of God but what does he find?
He finds a den of robbers in the soul of that person.
He finds the idols of fame and fortune, but no God.
He finds the love of comfort and pleasure, but not the earnest desire for God’s glory.
He finds the joy of money, but not the wealth of God’s words.
He finds the value of success but not the preciousness of God’s character.
He searches all the quarters, but the temple has become a warehouse of rubbish and God is nowhere to be found.
The zeal of the Lord rises within him.
He would cleanse that soul of all that is wretched and defiled.
He would sweep it so clean that God would come back in and His Spirit would make residence there. But those money lenders, they don’t budge so easily. Those traders don’t roll over and die.
They put up a fight. And here’s what they say: “show us proof that you have authority to come in here and unseat us”. And then Jesus says to that soul, “destroy this temple and I will raise it in three days”.
There’s an old plantation hymn and each stanza starts with a question:
“Were you there when they crucified my Lord?
Were you there when they nailed him to the tree?
Were you there when they laid him in the tomb?
Were you there when God raised him from the tomb?”
The questions are rhetorical. In the hymn the answer is never given, but the refrain says,
“sometimes it causes me to tremble”. The answer to all the questions is “I was there”. More than that, I nailed him to the cross with my sin. I destroyed that body. But thanks, be to God, he raised it up again! 3 days later he raised that temple.
So, who has authority to cleanse your soul of the sin that has taken up residence there? Jesus has!
What sign will he give to prove that he has the authority? One word: Resurrection.
Think on this: Everything you hold dear in your heart that is not God will die with you. Everything. Not one single thing can die and be raised back to life. Not money, family, not success, not experience, not fame, not friends, not songs, not relationships, not marriages, not games, not teams, not holidays, not homes. Nothing. All will perish with you and me. But Jesus raised himself up again. Therefore, he has authority over all those things in our hearts which are of dearest merit, to sweep them out – they must take their rightful place in our lives; which might mean they need to go on the rubbish heap.
When he died on the cruel cross, he died to cleanse the soul that would cling to him as if its eternal life depended on it – and it does. When he rose again, he rose with the authority to reinstate God in his rightful place, in our hearts. Jesus’ resurrection guarantees a new heart where God lives by the power of His Spirit.
John 2:22 says, that “After he was raised from the dead, his disciples recalled what he had said.”
And then John records a very significant thing. It doesn’t say that what happened next was a consequence of recalling what Jesus had said, but we can reasonably infer that that is what is meant. John says: “Then they believed the scripture and the words that Jesus had spoken”.
The direct consequence of the resurrection in the disciple’s minds and hearts was that they knew he had the authority he had said he had. By his resurrection, he showed that he had divine authority and therefore all his words and the scriptures that had spoken of him, were all believable. The resurrection makes the bible divinely believable and it makes the person and work of Jesus divinely believable.
May the Lord cleanse us from our sin and help us by his resurrection from the dead to believe in him.
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