A good house cleaning

John 2:13-22 When it was almost time for the Jewish Passover, Jesus went up to Jerusalem. ¹⁴ In the temple courts he found men selling cattle, sheep and doves, and others sitting at tables exchanging money. ¹⁵ 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. ¹⁶ To those who sold doves he said, "Get these out of here! How dare you turn my Father's house into a market!" ¹⁷ His disciples remembered that it is written: "Zeal for your house will consume me." ¹⁸ Then the Jews demanded of him, "What miraculous sign can you show us to prove your authority to do all this?" ¹⁹ Jesus answered them, "Destroy this temple, and I will raise it again in three days." ²⁰ The Jews replied, "It has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and you are going to raise it in three days?" ²¹ But the temple he had spoken of was his body. ²² After he was raised from the dead, his disciples recalled what he had said. Then they believed the Scripture and the words that Jesus had spoken.

When Jesus entered the temple for the Passover, He found a faith that was stale, downright dirty. People were taking advantage of others and ritual had become more important than the condition of the heart. What Jesus did was challenge a smug, hypocritical religious system that desperately needed to change. Therefore, a little demolition was necessary, not to mention an all out assault to clean house.

People had come to the Jerusalem temple to worship and offer sacrifices to the Lord. Temple worshipers must have animals to sacrifice. Many had come from great distances – too far to bring drag their goat, walk with their cow or carry their pigeons for sacrifice. So the chief priests offered a service – sacrificial animals for purchase. Plus, they provided money changers because the worshipers could not give God Roman money because it had a picture of Caesar on it, and that would be blasphemy. They had to convert their local currency to the temple currency.

So far so good.

But Jesus has a problem with where they set up their trade. The money is being converted and animals are being sold in the temple court itself – more specifically in the courtyard set aside for Gentile converts. The Jews worshiped in the temple. The Gentile converts worshiped in the courtyard. But this was like you paying good money to go to a movie this weekend, then missing it because of the noisy people talking on their cell phones behind you and the kids who won’t sit still in front!

As a Jewish man, Jesus could have passed through the courtyard to the designated area in the temple. He could leave all this noise and commotion behind. But He is furious because the Gentile worshipers cannot. On behalf of those Gentiles who wish to worship His heavenly Father, He angrily turns over the tables and drives out the animals.
Jesus is a one-man wrecking crew, swinging a sledgehammer. There is no way to make improvements in an old house without making a mess. There is plaster dust, dirt, nails and smelly carpet. It is hard work. It is impossible to paint without getting paint on yourself. I am sure that Jesus absorbed a few skinned knuckles that day, not to mention getting his garment dirty.

Just as Jesus needed to do some serious house cleaning in the temple that Sabbath, so He needs to do some serious house cleaning in the temple of our hearts. For the Bible says that our body is the temple of the Holy Spirit (1 Corinthians 6:19). He takes a whack at our sinful pride. The pride that causes us to think we are good enough on our own; that we don’t really need God all that much. He knocks over our lack of courage. The cowardice that causes us to bend, compromise, sell out and look the other way when it comes to God’s morality.

Jesus swings His whip at our lack of worship. Let’s be honest. How many of you were thinking that this was a weekend away from church, a weekend to sleep in, goof off and relax away from worship? If Pastor Roekle and I hadn’t decided to do this for you, how many of you would have worshiped at the WELS church on Saturday afternoon, or if you had a basketball game at that time, would have driven 20 miles on Sunday morning to go to the nearest WELS church? Is worshiping God really that important to you? Does it really bother you if you miss church? Does it plague your conscience that when you are not giving God the worship He deserves you are breaking His third commandment?

It is good for us to be here together. Not just to play a silly basketball game or to hang out together. But to struggle a little to find a space and time for worship. Too often our worship is too easy. And look what happens. We skip it. We need Jesus to challenge us. To scold us. To correct us. To take His whip to us.

And then we need Him to forgive us.

Why did Jesus go into the temple to drive out the money-changers and the sacrifice-sellers? The same reason that He came to earth in the first place. He came to keep God’s Law’s, His Father’s Ten Commandments, in our place. Jesus came into the world to snatch us from the jaws of the Law’s condemnation, to free us from the burdens of the Commandments and even from the requirements of the sacrifices. Which, in the end, all of these Laws, Commandments and sacrifices simply pointed ahead to Jesus Himself – the Fulfiller of the Law, the Keeper of the Commandments, the Sacrificial Lamb.

Jesus came as God in human flesh. Earlier in His Gospel, when John described Jesus as a human being, He said, “the Word became flesh and made His dwelling among us.” That word “dwelling” in the Greek literally means “He set up His tent or tabernacle” among us. Here was Jesus, the very tabernacle of God on earth entering the tabernacle of God in Jerusalem. The Lamb of God was chasing away the goats and lambs of sacrifice. The Son was protecting His Father’s house of worship.

And since God in His holiness cannot abide sin, it should not surprise us that Jesus drives away the sinning moneychangers and the objects of their greed and of their avarice. Indeed, here we see the tabernacle of God cleansing the temple of God. And that’s what Jesus does in us. He does a good house cleaning of our hearts and souls so that He can set up His tabernacle inside us. That’s what we mean when we pray in the Lord’s Prayer, “thy Kingdom come.” The purity of Jesus wipes away and drives out the impurity that we set up inside ourselves. Jesus crushes our apathy to worship and replaces it with a zeal for the Lord’s House. He overpowers our selfish sacrifices and moves us to proper stewardship of His gifts. He conquers our overbooked weekly schedules so that we surrender those schedules to Him.

Jesus comes to the temple to be the tabernacle of God in human flesh. He cleans the house of our heart by chasing away our sin and replacing it with His wondrous love that caused Him to come to this earth; replaces God’s wrath with His forgiveness that caused Him to die as the Lamb of sacrifice; and replaces our lethargic worship with His glorious resurrection on the third day.

You parents have the greatest influence over whether or not your children will worship in God’s House as an adult. I have a friend who was raised in a home where it was inconceivable to skip church. But he told me about a time when he was about 16, had stayed out late the night before, got up on the wrong side of the bed, was tire and irritable and didn’t want to go to church. And he told his father so. His father said that it was his decision not to go to His Father’s House for worship. But it was also the dad’s decision whether or not to let his son eat his food since it was the father’s house. The dad made it clear that going to church would be required if the son wanted to eat his food. He decided to be fed – in both houses.

What an opportunity we have this weekend to teach our children what real worship is all about. We agree with David when he wrote in Psalm 122: “I rejoiced with those who said to me, ‘Let us go to the house of the Lord.’” It is good for you to go to your house of the Lord regularly every Sunday and Wednesday Sabbath. But, it is also good for us this weekend to see that true worship of the Lord does not have to be inside of church walls. True worship is setting aside time each day, and even more so on that special day of worship, to tabernacle with our Lord, who tabernacled among us. He has cleaned out the house of our heart. Let’s fill it up with Him and Him alone. Amen.

Preached for basketball tournament in Freeport, Illinois, March 11, 2012