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Grace, mercy, and peace be to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, the text is the Gospel reading. You may be seated. This morning’s Gospel reading is one of those texts that on first glance it’s hard to understand it. And for that matter, at second and third and fourth and fifth glance it can be hard to understand.
The problem is that we try to put our feelings and emotions onto Jesus. Though he is 100% human, he is also 100% God. And though he is 100% human, he is not sinful in any form or fashion. You and I, at any time in our life when we have expressed anger, express it either by bawling up and not saying a word and shutting down, or by expressing it with flamboyancy and great gesticulations of our mouth and body. Either way, both are sinfully expressed. Because that anger is based upon your pride and my pride. That’s where it comes from. And our pride is always sinful.
Our frustration with anything other than ourself, including ourself, flows from our sinful inclinations. So when Jesus has this anger, it seems, at these money changers and such in the temple, we can read that and think, how can there be this righteous anger and it not be sinfully motivated? Because that’s all you and I can understand. Right? I wish I could have a perfect explanation for you, but I don’t. His anger is not sinful. When he expresses this and experiences this, he is not like yours. Or maybe the better way to say it is, your anger is nowhere like his. Yours and mine are completely sinfully motivated; his is sinlessly motivated.
But if this cleansing of the temple is to have any meaning, what does it mean then that he cleansed the temple? That he doesn’t want people to sell things in God’s church? Really? Is it about that narrow of a law? You know Jesus doesn’t deal in narrow things. He always deals in broad things. He wants the hearts of his people to be pure.
So let me share with you three texts, three excerpts from Paul’s letter to the Corinthians. Not this morning’s letter whatsoever, but it’s in 1 Corinthians; the first two are, and the third one is in 2 Corinthians. Either way, all three present a reality that I want you to grasp today that has everything to do with this cleansing of the temple in your life and in mine.
Paul says, “Do you not know that you are God’s temple? And the Holy Spirit dwells in you. If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy him. For God’s temple is holy, and you are God’s temple.” Well, if we’re God’s temple and we’re holy, why are we holy? We’re not holy because of our acts, are we? By no means. We are holy because of the one who dwells within us, who is holy, and that is the Holy Spirit, as the text said, God.
But Jesus himself, in a different place in 1 Corinthians, says the same thing. Listen: “Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God?” Finally, from 2 Corinthians, Paul says, “We are the temple of the living God. As God said, I will make my dwelling among them…will walk among them, and I will be their God, and they shall be My people.”
So obviously, this walking among them is in them. Here’s this beautiful connection. It’s very clear from the Gospel reading that Jesus is trying to get all people to see that this earthly temple that stood in Jerusalem at one time was never meant to be the end of all things. It was only supposed to be a picture, and it was supposed to be a picture of the temple, which is Jesus Christ in the flesh for us.
Which is why Jesus said, “Destroy this temple,” meaning himself, “and I will raise it again in three days.” And it’s also why, in 70 AD, the Romans destroyed utterly and completely the Jewish temple and allowed the Muslims to build the Dome of the Rock on top of it. He is constantly trying to move people to quit seeing the temple as the end all. For that matter, he is constantly trying to get you not to see the things in this world as being eternal; they never were meant to be. They’re merely a picture of what is to come. Heaven is your and my home, not here.
So I hope you see this connection here between what our Lord said to the Jews: “Destroy this temple and I will raise it again in three days,” and what Paul is saying: “You are the temple of God, for God dwells in you.” If he’s the temple, and by being baptized into him, you have him in you, then you are now the temple of God. Or Paul would have never said those things in Corinthians. And he didn’t just say them once, mind you. Three different times.
Your body is His temple, and He will not destroy you. You will be raised with a new body. You are His dwelling place. This concept that Paul is writing about in Corinthians, that ties into this morning’s text, is meant for one reason: to bring you comfort, to bring you confidence in your identity as God’s dwelling place. If He inhabits you as the dwelling place of God, you are His. You are His.
Be comforted. Be not wearisome or scared. You are His. But it implies some things. If you are His temple, He will not tolerate stuff in His temple that has nothing to do with Him. And the kind of stuff that He wishes to refine in you are the things of your fleshly desires. Each one of those is unique to you. Your fleshly desires are different than mine. The things that you cling to and hold tight to that are not godly are different than the things that I cling to and hold tight to that are not godly. But all of us have those things within us because our flesh is still a part of us.
If Jesus cleansed the earthly temple as a picture of Him cleansing His dwelling place, which is in you, then Jesus will cleanse you. He will make the cord of whips within you to purify you, to remove those things that are dear and near to you and aren’t to Him. To turn over the tables in your heart that you’ve placed your pretty precious things, just like I’ve placed my pretty precious things that are not pretty and precious to Him. He will do so because He will not stand divided attention. I mean, excuse me, he will not stand divided attention. He will only accept undivided fidelity and love. Just like you expect that of loved ones in your family, so much more does he expect that of you in whom he dwells.
The application is, just as he cleansed the temple then and there, he daily and regularly cleanses you. He turns over your tables. Drives out the things that are not healthy for your relationship with Him. Prunes those things which you thought were really great but are not unbeneficial to your faith. That’s love. Because He could, if He chose to, let it go to seed as it were. And that would be to release you to yourself. That’s frightening. He chooses to remain in you and cleanse you and discipline you and refine you and purify you and prune you. That’s His will for you.
Consider what the psalmist says about such disciplining Him. This first one: it’s a great one. “When you discipline a man,” and the psalmist is referring to God, “when you discipline a man, like he does to you, you consume like a moth what is dear to him.” Not the beneficial dear things that benefit your relationship with your God, but the things that are dear to your flesh that do not benefit your relationship with him. That’s loving. None of you parents would ever allow your child to live in and/or consume unhealthy things; your God will not allow you, His child, to experience and condone unhealthy spiritual things either.
The things that are dear to you that are not dear to your God, that He has said, “That’s not healthy,” He will discipline you and consume those things. Even if we don’t want them consumed, He will still consume them because He is God and He loves you. And more importantly, you’re His temple. He dwells in you. The psalmist in another place says, “Blessed is the man whom you discipline.” And again, “My son, do not despise the Lord’s discipline or be weary of his reproof.” The psalmist wouldn’t have said either of those two things if being disciplined by God wasn’t always necessary.
Unpleasant. And it is, isn’t it? What’s the unpleasant part of God’s disciplining or refining? It’s that you and I have to come to terms with the things that are dear to us that need to be gone. You and I have to come to terms with our hypocrisies, our fears, and all those things which we do not wish to let go of or have illumined, and they are out of love.
Finally, it’s the writer to the Hebrews that captures this struggle that you and I experience in this disciplining process. He says, “That nailed it on the head, didn’t it?” But he goes on. “But later, this discipline yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness.” Righteousness. Not just righteousness, not just the fruit of righteousness, but the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by this discipline. And that’s what God is doing in you. Every single day, He is doing it to you because He dwells in you and He will not tolerate divided love or attention.
He will not tolerate excuses. And He will not tolerate justification other than in His Son’s blood. That’s what Jesus was doing in the temple there, showing them the great picture of what He does to us. Paul picked up on this in his text in Corinthians, which is the concept that makes this biblical text have even an application to you. He cleansed that temple to show you what He does in you every day, cleansing you, because He wishes to do in you what He said God did in Him, which is to dwell.
So repent of the uncleanness of your heart. Repent of your desires, which are not beneficial for your relationship with your Lord God. Jesus said this about abiding in you and you in Him. He said, “…whoever feeds on my flesh and blood abides in me and I in him.” The same thing that Paul said; it’s just different words. “…if he abides in you who are going to feed and eat upon his flesh and blood, he will purify you for himself to make you a pure and holy person.”
So in this text, Jesus is a temple cleanser, and the application is now He is your cleanser, isn’t He? And He’s proven that authority. You know that one phrase in here that many people have misunderstood? And it goes like this: His disciples remembered that it was said, “Zeal for your house shall consume me.” What the heck is He talking about there? He is not talking about the temple. Though He did cleanse the earthly temple, He doesn’t dwell there anymore.
So where is His house that He has zeal that will consume Him? You are that house. Where is it that it consumed Him but on the cross? His great love for you is what consumed Him. For you that He may dwell in you. That’s what that text means. “Zeal for your house shall consume me.” It did. And He rose again on the third day to validate that authority. Because you can’t love anything in this world with that kind of consuming love. Because you and I always put ourselves in the mix of everything.
Listen to what St. John said in the book of Revelation regarding these things. He says, “Jesus said, Those whom I love, I reprove and discipline.” Simple, easy words. Those whom I love, I reprove and discipline, which implies that if He doesn’t love you, He lets you go. Frightening. So be zealous and repent, He says. And then the rest of it that you’re familiar with. “Behold, I stand at the door and knock, and if anyone hears my voice,” and His sheep always hear His voice, “opens the door. I will come, not to him, I will come into him.” The very thing that Paul was saying.
The very things Jesus said about whoever eats His flesh and blood abides in me and I in him. “I will come into him, and he doesn’t end it there; I will come into him and eat with him and he with me.” This beautiful fellowship. This beautiful union. Amen.
In the name of Jesus, who continually cleanses you for your sake. Amen. The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and your minds on Christ Jesus to life everlasting. Amen.
