See Your Savior’s Passion!

3rd Sunday in Lent, 3/11/12
John 2:13-22


See Your Savior’s Passion!
I. For God’s house
II. For God’s people


Do our spoken words, “I love you,” or our written closing words “With love,” always convey our emotions accurately? We certainly hope so. After all, we’re careful about whom and to whom we say them or write them. These are people we know and genuinely love to one degree or another.

But, at times, our actions display something less, sometimes far less. We think of the gut-wrenching cruelty when the words “I love you” are spoken by an abuser to a victim. More commonly, we heard those words, “I love you” yesterday, but we doubt them today after what the speaker just did or failed to do. In fact, we fail to see their expressions of love driving them to do much of anything that would convince us that those words are true.

It’s sad but true that our expressions of love at times ring hollow.

But that was never true about your Savior, Jesus Christ. First and foremost, Jesus loved his heavenly Father. He showed it by letting nothing and no one interfere with his relationship with his Father. And he showed his love for us by letting nothing and no one deter him from carrying out his work as our Savior. He was devoted to his Father and to every sinner. We would say he was passionate about these two all-important relationships in his life.

That passion was on display in amazing form in the event recorded for us this morning in John 2. This event likely occurred at the beginning of his three-year ministry among the Jews. It left no one wondering what Jesus cared about. They could see it with their own eyes. See it yourself! See your Savior’s passion! And as we do so, may the Holy Spirit give us a deeper confidence in him as our Savior and a firmer commitment to him.

Part I.

What we worship in says much about what our God means to us. Before I talk about that further, it’s true that our God accepts our worship of him no matter where we choose to worship. The early Roman Christians, under persecution, worshipped the Lord in the catacombs under the city. They didn’t have a choice. But we do and, throughout the history of God’s faithful people in Old Testament and now in New Testament times—from the time of Moses to this very day—God’s people have always had a desire to worship in a place that expresses how they feel about him. That’s why churches are often some of the most amazing and expensive structures on earth. God’s people sacrifice to give him their best, even in their choice of a building for worship.

The Temple in Jerusalem was just such a structure. 900 years before Jesus was born, King Solomon constructed a temple that was second to none. Its walls were lined with gold. That temple had been destroyed by the Babylonians. The one Jesus worshipped in as described in our text had been built by King Herod. Although the walls weren’t lined with gold, it was a magnificent structure nonetheless. It was one of those structures that cause your eyes to soar and your jaws to drop. In a word, it was beautiful.

But what went on inside was ugly. John describes it for us, “In the temple courts he found men selling cattle, sheep and doves, and others sitting at tables exchanging money.” The Temple was comprised of several areas, and, as you made your way in, each area became more restrictive until you came to the place where only the priests were allowed to go. What John describes was happening in the outermost area, but that doesn’t excuse it. This was still the house of God where the people should have been able to smell the burning of incense and the smoke of burnt offerings, but it smelled more like the livestock barn at the county fair. Everywhere you looked there were Jewish men trying to sell animals for sacrificing to worshippers who had travelled from afar. They had a monopoly, so imagine the prices being far above market value and yet, with so many vendors, there was plenty of negotiating between buyers and sellers.

And then there were the money exchangers. The payment of the temple tax was required by every Jewish male, but it had to be paid in Jewish currency, not foreign currency. That transaction involved an exchange rate and customary fees for such a service. Again, imagine an exchange rate far below what was customary and fees far above. This was a captive market.

And all inside God’s house! And no one seemed to care! It was as if this was expected—the necessary business side of worship! Truth be told, that’s the only reason so many of them were there. The Passover was the highest of Jewish festivals, a time of solemn worship. But for all too many, there was no heart for worship. There was only a heart for money to be made.

So the Son of God—the One to whom all these sacrifices pointed—put an end to it. John tells us, “So he made a whip out of cords and drove all from the temple area, both sheep and cattle; he scattered the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables. To those who sold doves he said, ‘Get these out of here! How dare you turn my Father’s house into a market!’” This was his Father’s house, the most sacred place among God’s people, but what was happening there was anything but sacred. Jesus would not allow it to go on.

See your Savior’s passion, his passion for God’s house.

Our Lord is so concerned about our worship that he forcefully enabled it to happen here at this Passover. He was passionate about what happened there. Can we say the same? To be sure, we aren’t so crass as to set up shop and use the time for worship as an opportunity to earn a living, honest or otherwise, but do we come to worship passionate about giving the Lord our best, trying our best to focus on his word and to resist the temptation to let our minds wander toward things that really interest us? Is our confession of sins heartfelt and honest or merely a formality? Are we unhappy when worship extends to 63 minutes and elated when “pastor gets it done in under an hour”? You know what I’m talking about. We’ve all been there and done that. Friends, Jesus was passionate about his Father’s house because he knew that there, more than any other place, God met with his people. He came to them with his holy law and convicted them of their sin. He confronted them with sin’s punishment, but he also pointed them to sin’s solution, our Savior, Jesus Christ. May our love for our Savior make us passionate about worshipping him.

Part II.

But let’s not miss this one important point. Worship that is acceptable to our God only comes from a heart of faith in Jesus. Worship can take place in the grandest of cathedrals surrounded by priceless artwork and featuring the most beautiful music ever heard. But without faith, it’s not worship. It’s empty, meaningless.

Jesus wanted those people in the Temple that day to have such hearts of faith, but they refused. Listen to their reaction to what Jesus did, “Then the Jews demanded of him, ‘What miraculous sign can you show us to prove your authority to do all this?’” They challenged his authority. They wondered who he thought he was that he could presume to tell them what to do in their Temple. How dare he drive their merchandise and them from their Temple! And yet, when he was in the act of driving them out, John’s account says nothing about them resisting. Instead, the account gives the impression that no one challenged his authority while he was in the act of cleansing the Temple.

But they still demanded a sign. It was a typical Jewish reaction. Throughout his ministry the Jews were looking for signs from Jesus which would verify what he was saying and doing. The demand for signs doesn’t arise from a heart of faith; it arises from a heart of unbelief, a heart that refuses to take Jesus at his word.

To battle their unbelief, Jesus gave them a sign. Not the one they were looking for but it was exactly the one they needed. First he foretold his death. At the hands of his enemies—some of whom might have been present there in that Temple that very day—Jesus would be crucified. They would destroy this Temple, the very body in which the very Son of God was living.

But that wouldn’t be the last of him. No, he would rise again three days later. While this might have been the first time Jesus referred to his resurrection, it would not be the last. He wanted his enemies and his friends alike to watch for this sign. Look for him to go to his death on the cross just as his Father in heaven had planned all along. But look also for him to rise on the third day just as God had foretold. His enemies couldn’t defeat him. Not even Satan and death could stop him. That’s why he had come to this earth—to suffer, die and rise again. That’s what he would do. He would be the world’s only Savior. It was his passion.

See your Savior’s passion, his passion for God’s people.

It’s frustrating to work hard at a relationship when the other person is hardly working at it at all. I wonder how often Jesus feels that frustration with us. Can you hear him say, “They just don’t get it! I died for them!”? But that’s precisely why he came. To suffer and die for us because too often we just don’t get it. And now he has given us hearts of faith, hearts that love him, hearts that he empowers to be passionate about him. That’s what Lent is all about. May his passion for us feed our passion for him, for our worship of him, for caring about others as he cares about them. Amen.