This recording is from Willow Creek Church in Winter Springs, Florida where Reverend Kevin Levy is our senior pastor. Today's message is part seven in a series on the Gospel of John titled Abide. The sermon is taken from John chapter 2 verses 13 through 22. Now here's today's message. Listen to God's word as it's found in the Gospel of John chapter 2 verses 13 through 22. The Passover of the Jews was at hand and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. In the temple he found those who were selling oxen and sheep and pigeons and the money changers sitting there. After making a whip of cords, he drove them all out of the temple with the sheep and oxen. And he poured out the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables. And he told those who sold the pigeons, take these things away and do not make my father's house a house of trade. His disciples remembered that it was written, zeal for your house will consume me. So the Jews said to him, what sign do you show us for doing these things? Jesus answered them, destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up. Then the Jews said, it has taken 46 years to build this temple. And will you raise it up in three days? But he was speaking about the temple of his body. And therefore he was raised from the dead. His disciples remembered that he had said this and they believed the scripture and the word that Jesus had spoken. This is the word of the Lord. If you have children that you'd like to participate in children's worship, Drew Taylor, our director of children's ministries is back there ready to receive them and take them to a time of worship prepared just for them. And one thing you should know, if you're new or newer to Willow Creek, Drew Taylor and I work together to prepare a message on Sunday morning for folks in here. And he prepares a message on the same text for the children. So the idea is to have it so that families can talk through these things, if the spirit should move together and not have two separate worship experiences. But to view children's worship is just a continuation of what we're doing here. Let's go to the Lord in prayer as we open up his word. We are delighted to have you here this morning. You are a great God and you have revealed yourself down through the ages in so many ways. In the Old Testament, we saw you in shadows. But Lord, in the new, we saw you in your glory. You taking on flesh and dwelling among us and taking those shadows and bringing them into realities that we can enjoy and receive by your grace and grow in our faith thereby. So we pray this morning that as we receive your word as your word, as your Holy Spirit testifies inwardly in our hearts and minds, we pray that you would shine the light of your salvation into our understanding that we would grow in holiness to bring you glory and honor in our thoughts, our words and our deeds more and more, knowing that we all stumble and fall short in many ways but trusting in Christ in this great sacrifice that despite our sin, we are now forgiven because Christ has offered his life as a sacrifice for that sin. And his life of perfect obedience is now reckoned to our account that we might be the righteousness of God through him. Lord, help us to grow in that awareness, knowledge, and all of the peace, and joy, and reassurance that it produces. We pray in Jesus' name, amen. Well, I'm in a very good moon this morning and I'll tell you why it has nothing to do with this morning's message. We've got a golden retriever this week and I just want to tell you that if you're having a hard week or a hard day, you come on over to the House of Labby and just spend 15 minutes with this dog, you will feel like a God among men. This dog is just wonderful, been very, very loving and kind and in fact, if you remember several weeks ago, I shared about the first and only other dog my family's had, how much that dog ran away from us toward the filth and stink of the world would roll in it and then come home when it felt like it, only to leave us again whenever it wandered off and felt like moving away. This dog is a portrait of sanctification where that dog was a portrait of sin and its suffering. This dog is so remarkably compliant. I'm tempted to think that it's somewhat divine but it's not. It is a wonderful, wonderful creature of God. And I said to my family, how could you look at a dog like this and think this universe exists by accident? There is good in this world even with all of the darkness and we're going to turn our attention to that good this morning. Last week we noted that Jesus transformed water into wine and we said that that was his first public sign in Miracle but we were careful to say that it wasn't just any water that Christ transformed into wine. It was the water of cleansing, of purification. It was water that was contained in stone vessels and used for Jewish ceremonial rights. And so when Jesus and his few disciples go to Cana and Galilee to attend a wedding, it was from those stone vessels that water would have been drawn to cleanse the guest hands, even their feet, the utensils use there so that the wedding would be a solemn and sacred occasion. There was an understanding in Jewish Old Testament law revealed in the Old Testament scriptures that we are not clean before God and that if we will stand before him we must be cleansed from our impurities. Now did that physical water remove the stain of our corruption? No, it was not designed to. The water in those stone vessels was designed to teach and to point us to a greater cleansing that would only come through Christ. As Christ offered his life on the cross and the toning sacrifice for our sins he satisfied the wrath of God and in baptizing us with his Holy Spirit the Holy Spirit would work inwardly to cleanse our hearts of unrighteousness, to gradually conform us more and more to the will of God and to render us what we are declared graciously by God to be. Holy, we are holy now, positionally, God views us as holy because of what Christ has done on our behalf but we are in the process of being made holy through Christ's Spirit who's now at work in us. When Jesus transforms that water into wine he's signifying that a new day is dawning, that a new thing is happening, the old is gone, the new is coming into the world as the people of the Old Testament were prepared to receive his cleansing that cleansing is now here. His hour is almost at hand. He's going to shed his blood on the cross and you remember that in the second sacrament of the Christian faith the Lord's supper we take the cup and we drink Christ's blood that cleanses us from all unrighteousness but what we should see in that first miracle is not merely a foreshadowing of Christ's blood though it certainly is. We should also see what it was in that day and age of the wedding. That was celebration, the time of religious striving and working and never knowing where we stand before the Lord as fullness is coming to an end. What is now coming is sure, Christ is making us righteous and it's time to, in a real sense and this is a no way to diminish the sanctity of what's described in that passage, it's time to party. One of the things that is so sad, our own elders have commented on it, is that we've been led to believe that the sacrament of the Lord's supper is just like a funeral where we all gather together in mourn that Jesus died and certainly there is awe in reverence that's respectable and in respectful as we approach the table with that because our sin is so great. It requires a great sacrifice and that should move us to a degree of sorrow but when we come to the Lord's table we're not at a funeral. Jesus is not dead, he's not on the cross, he's alive and he's invited us to the wedding feast of the Lamb, his own feast, a party to celebrate his triumph and grace. The time of striving is over, now is a time of rest in a sense because in Christ we can rest in the knowledge that we are loved and were cleansed. What we could not accomplish with our own hands has been irrevocably forever accomplished by Christ. It's over. In a sense we're wandering pilgrims in this land moving home but in another sense spiritually we're seated with Christ. We are home. In a sense it's over. So rejoice. Take hold of your salvation and walk in the light and we were careful to say in those first few messages in the gospel of John that this hopeful message strikes at the messaging of the world. If you go on the news channels and read the paper certainly you don't move to hope very easily. It's more of the occasion you move to despair and disillusionment, it's world awful and it is but there's good here like my golden retriever there's good here. Jesus Christ has entered the world to retrieve us and bring us home and his kingdom's advancing. John is written, the light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not understood it. The darkness cannot overcome it either. What Christ is doing in the world cannot be turned back in no obstacle of heaven or hell, no obstacle of this earth can stop it. And we're about to see that in another great sign of Christ's earthly ministry his cleansing of the temple. He's going to remove obstacles that conceal the love of God in the world and in removing the obstacles reveal the love of God in the world and thirdly and finally we'll see how Christ in this act is paving the way to heal our deepest wounds. When I was a pastor up in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania there was a woman in my church who was married and blessed with a child and she wanted that child to be baptized. And as we went through the discussions leading up to the baptism she shared that she was not baptized when she was younger and the reason for that was the local pastor at her church would not baptize her because her mother was not married at the time she was born. The exact words of the pastor to the girl's mom where I won't baptize your bastard child. The woman was heartbroken, though she had faith in God and trusted in his grace, though she was striving hard to know him and serve him, she found within the church an obstacle to the means of God's grace for sinners. The message that day was you're not worthy because your performance isn't what it should be. Well, if our performance is what matters, none of us will enjoy the means of God's grace. It grieves me in my heart to hear that, but my heart leaped within my chest when we were able to baptize her child and in part to her the wonderful truth that Christ Jesus came to save sinners and that no one is righteous, no not one, and that God did not send his son into the world to condemn the world, John 3.17, but to save the world through him. We're going to see in this passage this morning that God despises unnecessary obstacles to the means he's appointed for his grace. And Christ is zealous to preserve his Father's glory in the world so that anything that would shroud that glory, any darkness that would seem to overcome the lights of his salvation, Christ will not let it overcome, but instead will expel it as he does in the temple. Now I want you to imagine you're a faithful Israelites, you're living back at the time of Christ and you want to go down to Jerusalem to observe the Old Testament Passover. If you didn't grow up in the church, you've not read the scriptures you might not know what the Passover is. Let me just explain to you that centuries before God's people were slaves in the land of Egypt. Pharaoh, the leader of the Egyptians, was exceptionally cruel to them and they cried out for deliverance. God sent to them a deliverer, Moses, a foreshadowing of the coming greater deliverer Jesus Christ. And in order to bend Pharaoh's heart to get him to relent and let God's people go, God performed through Moses and his brother Aaron, ten miraculous signs, plagues brought upon the Egyptians. And these were not just willy-nilly plagues. These were very intentional, methodical, escalating, theologically relevant plagues. You see the Egyptians worshiped many things. And in every one of the plagues, God showed his mastery over what the Egyptians worshiped as their gods. So if the Egyptians worshiped the sun, God would send a plague of darkness. And God escalates through these plagues and finally shows Pharaoh the ultimate expression of his power. It's in the death of the Egyptian firstborn child. The first born sons of Egypt would be struck down overnight. And this in retaliation, just retaliation, wrath, justice, for Pharaoh striking down the first born of the Israelites years before. So God sends through the nation of Egypt, the angel of the Lord's wrath, and the angel cuts down the Egyptian firstborn, but passes over the houses and homes of the Israelites their children live. The means by which that grace is shown to the Israelites is through the shedding of blood. They have to take a lamb without blemish and sacrifice it. They have to take its blood and apply it to the door frame of their home. And when the angel of death passes through Egypt, if he sees blood over the home, he will pass over the home and not bring the curse upon it. That Passover feast is one of the strongest preforeshaddlings of Jesus Christ, who John the Baptist is called in our own book this morning, as we've been working through John, the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. What can wash away my sins, the Bible said, or are we saying nothing but the blood of Jesus? The blood of Jesus applied to your life as it was applied to the Israelite door frame, causes God's wrath to pass over you and for you to live. Now when you're in Israelite, living at the time of Christ, you're going down to celebrate that beautiful expression of grace. And you want to do it at the temple because the way you think is that you're living at that time is that God, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, is at the temple. We as Christians know that the Spirit is omnipresent. He's everywhere. The temple is now the church and the church spans every nation on earth. The Spirit is everywhere, but at that time, God's glory and presence was localized at the temple and you, a faithful Israelite, you wanted to go there and you wanted to offer sacrifice. Not that you believe necessarily that sacrifice would take away your sins, but you wanted to honor the coming sacrifice of Christ and show your faith in it by offering that. You're moving toward Jerusalem. I want you to envision. You see the temple in the distance and it's gleaming. You see the gold gleaming in the sun. You see the marble shining. You see a beautiful city and your heart just leaps and you can't wait to get there. Now, if you're an FSU fan, I imagine as you approach the stadium, you have a similar view or maybe a gator fan, but not recently, I'm sorry, but you get the point. Your heart is filled with joy. You're leaping. You can't wait to get there. You want to smell the smells. You want to see the sights. You want to hear the sounds of God's communion with His people on earth and you want to offer your sacrifice because you have been loved by God and you love Him in return and you want to honor Him in the way that He's appointed in His Word and you're excited. And you get there and you know you have to offer attacks. You've got to do your part to keep up the temple, which is fine. Exodus, chapter 30 outlines, some of those contributions. When you get there, you realize that your Roman money is no good. You have to offer in fulfillment of the law a half-shackle so you have to exchange it so you could own money changer and pretty soon you have a dark realization. And it's all this beauty of God in His grace is the ugliness of human pride and greed. You're gouging you in your act of worship. Your own brothers and sisters are taking advantage of you. They want to become wealthy on your worship. You pay the tax, exchange your money, what other choice you have but now you've got a bad taste in your mouth. What should be so beautiful in moving you to worship is now distracting you. You're becoming confused, maybe even a little angry and bitter and worse yet it gets worse. You go to buy the animals to offer, maybe a dove or a pigeon, and you find that they're being sold at exorbitant rates so that others can profit again on your worship. Because you're seeking God, they're seeking your wallet and you're trapped. The atmosphere in and around the temple isn't one of awe and reverence. It's a circus, a pitiful display of raw money-gruffing opportunism. You're sick and deflated, disillusioned, you wonder to yourself, is this the religion of my forefathers? But what can you do about it? You're just one person. It seems to have the approval of the religious leadership. The shepherds of Israel are presiding over this, they seem to be okay with it. Who are you to question them? It's bigger than you, it's been going on for many years. What can you do to change it? Is that member's mom brought her to be baptized and couldn't be baptized? That mom left broken. The very means of God's grace were concealed rather than revealed. The church became an impediment to her enjoyment of salvation rather than a means of God's grace in her life. Sadly, the church today can be the very same thing. If we allow anything to become an unnecessary obstacle to someone, coming into the fellowship of the church and receiving God's means of grace, we have sinned gravely and Christ's reaction to it shows just how zealous the Father is or Christ is for the Father's glory. We can do this in a variety of different ways. We can do it through our moralism, telling people they need to clean up their act before they come in the church. They can't come in as sinners, they can't come in as broken people, they have to at least appear to have it all together because after all there's a certain amount of brokenness that we can't handle here in the church. How sad. When Christ Jesus made his friends the drags of society, who are we to tell those very saying that they're not welcome? These are sin so less compared to theirs and they're so great compared to ours that we would create an artificial hierarchy through which some attain the favor of God through their performance or do we believe the gospel and are we looking and seeking? For those who are lost like Christ, the good shepherd seeks after the one sheep that's wandered off. The lost coin. We can do it when we elevate secondary matters to issues of primary importance. When we don't keep the first things, the first things, but we say the secondary things, these really matter. And if you don't believe as we believe on these secondary issues, the peripheral issues surrounding the gospel, then you're not welcome here either. If you don't vote like we vote or think like we think you can't come here, we've concealed rather than revealed the pathways to God. Christ welcomed all. He called into his group of disciples, those who were religious zealots, those who were political zealots, those who were prone to wander, those who were zealots to stay, but for all the wrong reasons. Into his inner circle, he welcomed them all and he ministered to all. And he will not have God's grace concealed. So verse 15, and making a whip of cords, he drove them all out of the temple with the sheep and the oxen, and he poured out the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables. And he told those who sold the pigeons, take these things away, do not make my father's house a house of trade. These disciples remembered that it was written, zeal, for your house, will consume me. One time I was getting on an airplane and I went to my seat and somebody was in my seats and I was a young guy at the time and I'm not prone to conflict in general and so I looked at the man and I gently asked him, would he kindly move? I think he was in my seat and he wouldn't move. He was quite adamant, he was not getting out of the seat, it was a full flight. I didn't know where to go steps and I was a young guy, it's kind of terrifying, what do I do here? I felt powerless. And so I just stood there kind of, stupidified, like I don't know what to do when God did the most amazing thing, there was a black woman behind me who took it upon herself to defend me. And I'm serious when I say this, this is true, it happened in Newark, New Jersey, so you have to believe it because it's Newark, but her arm went over my shoulder, she pointed right in the face, she said, get out of that boy's seat now. And I turned around and I looked and I thought, who are you, you're an angel. She said, get out of that boy's seat right now and the guy stood up and got out of the seat and walked away and she said, yes, that's what I told you, get out. I turned around and I thanked her and she said, don't worry about sweetie, I sat down and I enjoyed the rest of the playwright, it was glorious. Now I don't want to speculate beyond the bounds of Scripture, but you know this dysfunction had to be noticed by so many living at the time of Christ. They just didn't know what to do about it. And suddenly you start to realize where the multitudes thronged the follow after Jesus, this guy and let me not be disrespectful, hopefully you know me well enough to know that this is a little tongue and she goes, he goes tall, he makes a whip and he just starts bashing it down on the ground, he starts toppling tables, there's two dangers here, one is to imply that Jesus is erratic and out of control, he wasn't. He wasn't out of his mind, I would say he's the only guy in his mind because he's the only one that really understands what the temple is all about and how offensive this is. He's the only one acting remotely rationally even as he's toppling this table. But the other thing is, do you have this conception of Jesus that he just floated around and oh, go, go, go, no, this was, this was M-M-M-M-A fighting, this was bad stuff, I'm sure people were running for the hills, Jesus is cleaning house literally and what is the takeaway from this? Well obviously, Zeal for his father's house consumes him, he loves the father, but less obviously, and hear me, he loves you. And somebody was getting between you and your dad and your big brother came along and said knock it off, get out of his seat, if that doesn't stir your heart, I don't know what does. God loves you, doesn't love you in the ab strax, he loves you, he delights in you, Jesus is your big brother and he won't let anyone mess with you with impunity. You come at one of God's kids, the everlasting eternal child of God is going to come after you, be of good cheer. Now certainly, Moses and the prophets had spoken that Jewish leadership of that time should have known better, Jesus could have gotten up and simply preached, but it didn't need to be said anymore, it had already been said a thousand times, they were just numb, he didn't care anymore. Well, God seemed to be away, they were twisting and contorting the faith into a self-serving exercise and they got comfortable and lazy and Jesus grabbed a whip and whipped him out of their apathy. And you know what, shame on us if we grow apathetic and think this is about us, it's not about us, it's about him. And if we ever make this about us to the point that it excludes other, I hope God whips us to, not out of hatred or wrath, but out of love, shake us out of our apathy, topple our tables, pour out, drive our animals off, get us back focused on the one thing that this is all about, the Father's glory. But you know what the Father's glory is to see His character revealed in the world. And God is about to reflect His glory in the sacrifice of Christ. The glory of His justice will be perfectly satisfied when the hour comes, and Jesus hangs on the cross, and it's not human beings that merely kill Jesus, it's the Father who sacrifices Christ and pours out His wrath upon His own Son so that you would not have to taste that cup. He's drinking the cup of the Father's wrath for you so that you can drink the cup of grace and party with Him in the fullness of the Kingdom of God. Jesus is zealous for the Father's glory to be revealed, He will reveal His justice. But in this act, and also at the cross, He will reveal the glory of the Father's character His desire to show mercy, because our God is a great God. He's not a capricious God. He's a loving God who's been methodically working out a plan for our redemption from before the foundation of the world. That's why Jesus can speak of His death on the cross as His hour. He knows the hour is coming. It's been appointed. This is all according to plan. And so notice what Jesus does for 18. So did you said to him, what sign do you show us for doing these things? I'm one authority do you have to run around the temple and run a month? Jesus answered them, destroyed this temple in three days. I'll raise it up. Of course, they're very literal. They think he's talking about the stone temple all around them. The Jews said it's taken 46 years to build this temple. You're going to raise it up in three days. This is their way of diminishing Christ as a lunatic. But notice what John says, he was speaking about the temple of his body. What was the temple? It was the place where God's glory dwell. What is Christ's body? The exact representation of God, according to Paul and Colossians. It's where God dwells among men. He's the temple. You're going to knock it down. I'm going to raise it up in three days. When, therefore, he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered, but he had said this and they believe the scripture and the word that Jesus had spoken. What is Jesus doing? When he cleanses the temple, it brings the temple into a closer conformity to God's will. What he desired for it. Certainly, people that day were blessed because all of the clutter was cut away, but that healing didn't go deep enough. That cleansing didn't go deep enough. There had to be a deeper healing and cleansing to come. That was God solving and healing our deepest wound, our alienation from the Father through Christ. God reconciles us to Himself. It takes away the stain of our sin and corruption. It cleanses us through the Spirit and gets what we become. The temple of God. We become the temple of the Holy Spirit and the Holy Spirit is zealous for the Father's glory. And the Holy Spirit, just as Christ cleans the temple, the Holy Spirit is going to cleanse your temple and cast out the darkness because He's zealous for the Father's glory, too. It's awesome. You're on root to glory. And no obstacle, no impediment is going to stop it. Philippians 1.6. He began a good work and you see it through the completion. That's going to happen. Now, what's to take away from that? Let me just give you one final thing, or then we give you two. One, don't let anybody ever, ever erect an obstacle between you and your Father in heaven. Don't let anybody tell you you have to do X, Y, and Z to approach the throne of God's grace. God has forever removed every impediment, every obstacle. Christ is your mediator. He is the way the truth of the life. No one comes to the Father but by Him. He's the only way through Him, Him alone. It's all you need. So when the writer of Hebrews says you can enter God's throne room of grace, boldly walk in. Head held high. Not in your righteousness, your performance, you stink in Christ's righteousness and performance. Walk in, head held high because Christ has forever reconciled you to the Father. That's the first thing. The second thing is that we need to be very careful in the church. That we don't use the church and our faith for self-centered reasons. Are we commanded to self-regard? Sure. Love your neighbor as yourself. You're not commanded to hate yourself, disregard yourself. They'd love yourself. But you love your neighbor as yourself and your neighbor's lost. And your neighbor doesn't need any more extras added, doesn't need a new legalism, doesn't need moralism, doesn't need any impediment. They need what John the Baptist sought to bring for Christ to make the rough place a smooth, to clear away a highway because the Lord's coming. And if the Lord would come here to Willow Creek Church, it's because we have by God's grace through spirit prepared away, removing unnecessary obstacles. So bring them all, seek them all, love them all, draw them in, see what the Father can do. Will it be terrifying at times? Absolutely, it's overwhelming. I'd be lying to say church is just easy peasy and lots of fun. It can be very difficult. But if you want to see the glory of God and be zealous for that glory, you're going to remove those obstacles just as zealously as Jesus did. Father, we thank you so much for your grace and your mercy, that you love us and care for us and that you are zealous to defend us, that you will not allow anyone or anything to get in between you and your kids. There's neither height nor depth, angel nor demon, nothing in all of creation that can separate us from you and the love that you have for us and Christ Jesus. What a remarkable thing. Father, help us to reflect your glory in the world by being a little bit more like you to tear down those obstacles and to welcome all who would come into your church. We pray in Jesus' name, amen. Willow Creek Church is a congregation of the Presbyterian Church in America. Our website is www.Willow Creek Church.org and our phone number is 407-699-82-11.