Removing the barriers to His Presence John 2:13-22

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1 Removing the barriers to His Presence John 2:13-22 Proposition; God wants to remove barriers in our church and in our lives that get in the way of a full, joyful, relationship with Him. I doubt that you and I will ever know, will ever be able to perceive just how much Jesus wants to remove barriers in our church and barriers in our lives to us having the best of relationships with Him. Our words cannot comprehend how passionately God feels about the church and about you. Our words cannot capture God s zeal to have you walking close to Him, but we get a hint of it in this account of a few hours in the life of our Lord and champion today. John 2:13-22 Contemporary English Version (CEV) Jesus in the Temple 13 Not long before the Jewish festival of Passover, Jesus went to Jerusalem. 14 There he found people selling cattle, sheep, and doves in the temple. He also saw moneychangers sitting at their tables. 15 So he took some rope and made a whip. Then he chased everyone out of the temple, together with their sheep and cattle. He turned over the tables of the moneychangers and scattered their coins. 16 Jesus said to the people who had been selling doves, Get those doves out of here! Don t make my Father s house a marketplace. 17 The disciples then remembered that the Scriptures say, My love for your house burns in me like a fire. 18 The Jewish leaders asked Jesus, What miracle will you work to show us why you have done this? 19 Destroy this temple, Jesus answered, and in three days I will build it again! 20 The leaders replied, It took forty-six years to build this temple. What makes you think you can rebuild it in three days? 21 But Jesus was talking about his body as a temple. 22 And when he was raised from death, his disciples remembered what he had told them. Then they believed the Scriptures and the words of Jesus. How predictable to do you think that God really is? You see, for me in my experience of the Lord it seems that at any day at any time God might ask me to do something that on the face of it seems pretty random and a bit challenging. I cannot predict what He will do each day in our lives. Often when I pray for people, nothing bad ever happens but how the Holy Spirit works in someone s life is often not how I was expecting Him to work. On this day in our story, the disciples must have really thought We didn t see that coming. They had heard Jesus introduced to them as The Lamb of God. They had been invited lovingly by Him to 1

2 come and follow me. They had been to a wedding with Him and He had quietly and humbly worked a miracle so that no one would even know what He had done, and yet now he seems to go from The Lamb of God to The Lion of the tribe of Judah. He goes from the humble one at the wedding feast to a rampaging vein popping storm trooper. What is going on? I mean the one that is full of joy and peace and gentleness one minute to the one that is full of Holy anger kicking over tables and cracking a whip the next. Has Jesus the Lord got a split personality? One commentator says that mercy, the extreme mercy that the Lord Jesus continually showed to others and Justice, unwavering Holy Justice are really two sides to the same coin. It is God s desire for you and I to walk in real intimacy with Him, to be filled with His joy, to experience His presence 24/7 to be free; but what we don t often realize is that the freedom and the joy we experience in this life is only possible if we and others around us live to God s standards. There has to be rules and a referee. Most of us in NZ have grown up playing sports; rugby, soccer, netball, volley ball or something else. Have you ever noticed that when there is no referee and people are cheating and doing their own thing you no longer have the sense of freedom and fun is lost from the game. When everyone is doing their own thing, there is just a stressful chaos but when the rules are clear and someone is helping the teams stick to the rules, you can have so much freedom and fun. With the Lord it is the same. God invites us to have fun, to make choices, to live life to the full, but He also sets standards and helps us adhere to them, so that we and others can really enjoy life. That is why when we see a Jesus who is merciful and gentle, and a Jesus who will take on the religious leaders, the businessmen and the temple guards without a hint of fear the justice is in fact a necessary component to the mercy we see in Him. Why was Jesus so angry? Let me give you the historical context and you will understand. HISTORICAL CONTEXT The temple, the place where you would go to get to know God and to pray and to sacrifice and to worship had four outer courts. You progressed to the temple, if you were allowed, by going through each court and into the next one which was nearer still. 1. THE FIRST COURTYARD WAS CALLED THE COURT OF THE GENTILES Anybody from anywhere was allowed to come to worship and meet God in this court: Men, woman, children, Syrians, Egyptians, Burmese, Kiwis, rich, poor, black or white. Anyone could come into this area to seek God and to meet with Him. There was a wall at the end of this first court that had a large door in it that led into the next court and beside it was a sign that basically said that any non Israelite that went through this door would be immediately executed. 2

3 2. THE SECOND COURTYARD WAS CALLED THE COURT OF THE ISRAELITES Clearly this was only for the Jews to worship here. You did not go into that second courtyard unless you were a Hebrew. Through another door in another wall was 3. THE COURT OF THE MEN which as you guessed it was for men only and finally, 4. THE FOURTH COURTYARD WAS CALLED THE COURT OF THE PRIESTS and only the priesthood was allowed that close to the temple where only a huge curtain would separate the priests from the very presence of God. Now it was in this first courtyard, the courtyard of the gentiles that Jesus became very angry and severely disciplined the wheelers and dealers there. People from the nations of the world were coming into that courtyard to find the One true God, to offer Him sacrifices, to give Him their tithes and offerings and to spend time in fellowship with Him. It was in this courtyard where the foreign seekers would come that religious business people had set up tables and stalls and stock pens to fleece the visitors of every last cent they had. Because foreigners had coins that depicted Caesar or an Egyptian deity on them they couldn t be given as a tithe and so these greedy priests/ business people/ extortionists would have a currency exchange table so they could change their unacceptable money into Hebrew Shekels. Some historians suggest that they would overcharge ten times what was reasonable for their services. Other priests, business people and extortionists set up tables and pens for trading in sacrificial animals. Folk wold bring their bull or their sheep all the way from a foreign country only to be told by the priest, that actually there is a bit of a blemish here, sorry you can t offer this to God but, this is your lucky day, we just happen to have some pre inspected, pre-approved bulls, sheep and doves just over here. I know they are expensive but you can make your sacrifice right now if you buy one of these. The priests were supposed to be helping the people by introducing them to God and His purity and joy and holiness and his acceptability. They were meant to helping people encounter a loving, Holy God. People were coming to seek after God and to meet with Him and there were getting ripped off. Instead of the priests feeding the sheep, the seekers as it were, they were, fleecing the sheep for every last cent and so Jesus stormed in, making a whip out of small ropes, kicking over tables, releasing the livestock and chasing out the cattle. He was very angry. I want you to notice the three other occasions in the bible were Jesus is angry because they are not dissimilar. THREE OTHER OCCASSIONS IN THE BIBLE WHERE JESUS WAS ANGRY 1. When the disciples tried to stop the children from coming to Jesus. Jesus was surrounded by a crowd of people all wanting help, all wanting teaching and miracles and the little children just wanted to be around Him because they felt so loved by 3

4 Him and they just wanted to touch and get to know Him. The disciples said, children push off, don t bother the master, you are too young to understand spiritual things, you are not important enough. Jesus was very angry, and He told the disciples off for stopping the children coming to him and said don t stop the children coming to me. 2. Jesus said on another occasion if you make it hard for a little child to know me it will be better for you to have a millstone tied around your neck and for you to be thrown into the ocean. 3. On a third occasion the Priests in the synagogue didn t want Jesus to heal a man with a withered hand. This man needed Jesus help. He was looking to the Lord for healing but there were a whole lot of religious leaders there who said you cannot heal people on the Sabbath and they were waiting to see if Jesus would heal this man s deformed hand so they could accuse Him of being a law breaker, and it says that Jesus looked at these priests with anger and disgust. Now notice this. There are 4 occasions in the bible where we see that Jesus is angry and all of them have this one thing in common. JESUS ALWAYS GETS ANGRY WHEN PEOPLE PUT BARRIERS IN THE WAY OF SEEKERS WHO WANT TO KNOW GOD. Whether it is telling children they can t be saved and baptized and filled with the spirit, or traditions that say in our church you must wear a suit, you must stop smoking before you are welcome here, we don t heal people on Saturdays, or people saying your sacrifice, your offering, your prayers are not good enough. When people put barriers in the way of others coming to experience the presence and the joy of the Lord Jesus always gets angry according to scripture. You and I thought He might be angry that we don t pray enough or read our bible enough or witness enough, but it seems from the Word that Jesus gets angry when we make it hard for others to come into His presence. Now that raises for me two questions: 1. Lord, at the Ranui Baptist Church mission station, are we putting barriers in the way of people coming to know you? 2. Lord in my life, are their barriers and thoughts and sins that I am holding that prevent me from experiencing life and life in all its fullness? There are two types of temples in the bible. Firstly as in the days that the Lord cleansed the temple there was a place where people would come to meet with God and they were separated from God by 4 courtyards and a huge weighty curtain. On the day that Jesus died, God ripped that huge curtain in half, effectively saying, no more barriers, no more courtyards, everyone can come to me. Come into my presence anyone and at anytime and you will find my help in times of need. 1 Corinthians 6 says that in this age, we are the temple of the Holy Spirit. That is once you have received the Holy Spirit, God dwells in you, and he wants to continually remove every barrier, every wrong thought, every sin that would stand in the way of you enjoying His presence 24/7. 4

5 First question; are we putting any barriers, any tables in the way of seekers of every culture, of every age, of every socio-economic background coming to know the Lord in this place? Are we adopting traditions, setting dress codes, putting manmade hurdles or tables in the way of people who just want to know the Lord? Dear Lord if we are, please cleanse this fellowship, Lord please bring your whip in amongst us and turn over and drive out whatever you need to. One of our four awesome elders Glenda Winn can often be heard in prayer meetings and in services saying Lord you have called us to be a church without walls. What she describes prophetically is exactly the type of church Jesus wants. That is a church that does not put barriers, hurdles, tables in the way, demanding things from folk, but a church that anyone can come to just as they are and encounter the God of wonders. Many folk thank us for being so welcoming as a fellowship. God has made this a church without walls but I suspect that there are barriers that we put in place to make it hard for others to find the Lord here and we are not even aware that we are doing it. Jesus, any time and all the time we invite you to turn over what needs turning over and chase out what needs chasing out. The second question; are there barriers in my life, areas of pride, areas of sin, areas of tradition and comfort that I have erected that prevent God from filling me with His joy and freedom and presence 24/7? There is an interesting scripture in Hebrews 12:6 Hebrews 12:6 6 The Lord corrects the people he loves and disciplines those he calls his own. There are times when things seem to be going wrong, when I am hurt or frustrated when I feel the Lords correction or teaching. Sometimes it can even come through the words of a child, or the challenge from a friend. Once I recognised the Lord s correction when I got a speeding ticket. Not only are we wise and pleasing to the Lord as a church if we actively invite Jesus to challenge and remove any barriers we put up to make it harder for others to meet Jesus but also personally. You and I are wise if we say; Lord in this season it feels like you are trying to redirect me, you are challenging me about my motives or that temptation. Because you love me and because Jesus you took the worst beating and death on my behalf I will trust you to do whatever you need to do in my life, turn the tables over, chase out my pride, my wrong thinking, so that I can walk in your grace, and freedom and presence 24/7. Still today Jesus gets angry if we put barriers in the way of seekers and if we erect barriers in our own lives. He wants to give us life in all its fullness now and prepare us for heaven. May the Lord have freedom to sort this temple (the church) and this temple (ourselves) constantly. 5