(Please note that I did some editing of the sermon after the recording, so the recording will not match the sermon text exactly.)
Lent 3 B
The Temple Business
St. John 2:13-25
8 March 2015 – Redeemer
The Jesus in today’s text doesn’t make the Sunday School lessons. You might have a picture of Jesus the Carpenter or Jesus the Good Shepherd on your walls at home, but you don’t have the whip-cracking, red-faced, coin-scattering, table turning Jesus over your fireplace for guests to see when they visit home. Oh, that’s an interesting picture. Oh yes, that’s the famous “Jesus with the Whip.”
Jesus is obviously outraged by what He sees in the temple, but, as you may have gathered from the text, Jesus has more in mind than the temple in Jerusalem.
The Old Testament temple was where God met His people to forgive them, to be their God, to do for them what they couldn’t do for themselves. The Temple was where the Divine Service took place, where death and blood obtained forgiveness for God’s people. The Lord, in His mercy, had established a system of sacrifices. The wages of sin is death, but God provided the people with substitutes to die for their sins. Innocent victims were killed and their blood was shed and these sacrifices atoned for sin.
The temple was simply the place where God’s “business” took place (and I hate using the word “business”) perhaps the better word is God’s “economy” and this is how God’s economy works – He does the work, He provides the sacrifice, He sheds the blood, so that your blood will not be shed. He provides the place where He will meet you and do for you what you cannot do for yourself.
Sacrifices were required in the Old Testament. Animals needed to be brought or purchased. The temple had its own money system so coins needed to be exchanged, but all of this had come into God’s house. There was one place where non-Jews could be in the temple grounds – in the court of the Gentiles, but now this area of worship was filled with bulls and bull droppings, bleating goats, and the clatter of coin and the bickering of deals. And everyone saw this as a great arrangement – the rich man didn’t need to drag his prize bull 20 miles into Jerusalem to see it sacrificed and make no profit on it. He could buy some local bull that meant nothing to his bottom line. The middle class guy could go through the drive-up window, change his money, buy and sheep and be on his way. Oh sure, the exchange rates weren’t great, but the convenience was worth it. The merchants – they were tickled. The livestock owners were getting grade a prime money for animals destined for the dog food plant. The money changers were making about as much money as the concession stands at Target Field.
The temple had been instituted by the Lord as the place where God’s people would receive the fruit of His work, where they would depend on His sacrifices, His priesthood, His presence for their forgiveness. According to Jesus God’s house had now become “an emporium” where men did the marketing and by their work made something for themselves.
This text almost begs a preacher to address how convenience and our busy-ness has found its way into God’s house. There were churches this Lent offering drive-thru Ashes for your forehead on Wednesday. There are churches where you can bring your coffee into the worship and tweet or facebook your comments during the sermon. Surely you are aware that every Sunday service at Redeemer never gets over in one hour. I hope the Lord’s Supper doesn’t inconvenience you.
While that would be a fun sermon to preach most of the folks who need to hear it aren’t here. I’m guessing if you brought your coffee cup into the pew with you one of our members would tell you – you can have that before church or after church, but not during church. So let’s not talk about them – let’s talk about you by talking about the real temple in the text.
Do you know what the first temple was in the Bible? It was Adam. God formed Adam from the dust of the ground. God put His Spirit in Adam. Adam was made in the image of God. Adam’s life was living in the Divine Service – to live by what God gave him, to live by receiving God’s Holy Word. Adam lived under God’s economy – his life was the life God gave him.
But Adam tore down that temple. He chose to make his life his own business. Instead of receiving gifts from God he decided to steal something for himself. Instead of depending upon God’s gifts he decided to depend on himself. When Adam ate the fruit he expelled God from his life and his living body became a temple of death. A temple without the living God is an empty building.
What’s the economy that’s at work in the temple that God has given you? Your busy-ness or God’s business? Is life judged by what you’re getting out of it or what you are receiving from God? Is your life lived in faith toward God and in love toward neighbor or in judgment over God and greed for neighbor? Now, let’s be clear. I’m not suggesting some monastery movement where we all hang around at Redeemer 24/7. I’m quite sure that would be too much of you for me and too much of me for you. No, let’s use that Word “economy”? What do you value, what indicates that your life is worthwhile? Is what you acquire and do? Or is it what God has done for you and bestows upon you? Everyday we hear how the U.S. economy is doing – Dow Jones, S&P, Nasdaq, Jobs, Employment. What about your economy? What are your standards – your acquisitions or God’s gifts?
Repent because I know your answer. It’s my answer too. I judge my life and the Lord by how my personal economy is going. Repent. Look away from your dying temple to the living temple of God. Look to Jesus. “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” We destroyed His temple. We rejected God. Our sin is the reason Jesus died, but in that temple of God, where God dwelt fully in human flesh, that death was our salvation. Every bull, sheep, and dove sacrificed in the temple pointed to Jesus. All that blood shed for sin, was really a sermon preaching that God Himself would shed His blood for our sin.
This is God’s amazing and foolish economy. For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. God does not consider the cost or the return on his investment. He gives His only begotten for you. Jesus Christ dies for the sin of the whole world, even though the majority of the world will reject Him as Savior. Jesus goes to the temple to be about His father’s business and they reject Him and crucify Him. Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe. Indeed, what folly? Jesus for me. Jesus for you. What does He get out it? He doesn’t charge you, tax you, ask for any return on His investment. He simply gives it to you – poured on your head, put in your mouth, preached into your ears. “Here,” He says, “Have forgiveness for all your sins. Have life instead of death and resurrection instead of the grave. Have My favor instead of My judgment.” What’s the return on His investment of Jesus holy and precious blood? It’s you. What folly and what riches for you. That’s the business of God’s house in the name of Jesus. Amen.
Pr. Bruce Timm
7 March 2015 anno Domini