Becoming a Better Person Through and Through
A Study of John 2:13-25
There’s a YouTube Channel called “What’s Inside?” in which a dad and his son spend every weekend smashing things open to see what’s inside them. It started with a second-grade science project. One episode was devoted to what’s inside a giant wasps’ nest. What’s inside an oyster? What’s inside a computer? What’s inside a punching bag? What’s inside a golf ball? This father and son team have over 7 million subscribers because people want to know what’s inside of things.
Well, what is inside of you? What’s inside of you and me? That’s a hard question. We can often figure out what’s inside of us physically, but morally and emotionally and spiritually and psychologically?
Well, Jesus knows—and He can help us with the stuff within us that isn’t so good. And that’s the theme of today’s message. Let’s continue our study of the Gospel of John today by reading the paragraph we’re coming to in our pulpit studies—John 2:12-14:
When it was almost time for the Jewish Passover, Jesus went up to Jerusalem. In the temple courts He found people selling cattle, sheep and doves, and others sitting at tables exchanging money. So He made a whip out of cords, and drove all from the temple, 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! Stop turning my Father’s house into a market!” His disciples remembered that it was written, “Zeal for Your house will consume Me.”
The Jews then responded to Him, “What sign can You show us to prove Your authority to do all this?”
Jesus answered, “Destroy this temple, and I will raise it again in three days.”
They replied, “It has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and You are going to raise it in three days?” But the temple He had spoken of was His body. 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.
Now while He was in Jerusalem at the Passover festival, many people saw the signs He was performing and believed in His name. But Jesus would not entrust Himself to them, for He knew all people. He did not need any testimony about mankind, for He knew what was in each person
1. Jesus Knows What Is In You
Notice that final dramatic phrase. Jesus knows what is in each person. Now, that requires omniscience, because human beings are fearfully and wonderfully made. We are complicated. I’m glad Jesus knows what is in each person, because I really don’t know all that is right or wrong within me. Humans are very complicated creatures, and we’re hard to figure out, and a lot of it has to do with our fallen and sinful nature.
Let me show you some verses about it.
- Jeremiah 17:9 says, “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked; who can know it?”
- Jesus said in Mark 7: “For from within, out of the heart, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, coveting, wickedness, deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride, and foolishness.”
- Ecclesiastes 9:3 says: “The heart of the children of man are full of evil, and madness is in their hearts while they live.”
- Psalm 51:5 says: “Surely I was sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me.”
That last verse is rather shocking. We were sinful even before we were born. Inside our mother’s wombs, we had a sinful nature that we inherited from Adam. That’s why you have to teach your children good habits, and why the bad ones spring up naturally.
Only Jesus Christ was perfectly righteous in His mother’s womb. There was something mysterious and wonderful about the virgin conception and birth of Christ that protected him from the blood disease of sin. That’s why He could die for us, as our substitutes, and offer us His righteousness in return. So when we come to Jesus Christ we are saved from the penalty of our sins, but we still struggle with the temptations and we are subject to failure.
With that understanding, let me ask you a question. If you ask the Lord Jesus Christ to help you with one area of your life, to improve, to grow, to overcome and to be victorious, what would it be? In other words, do you have a habit that needs to be expunged from your life? Or a habit you need to change or to begin? I thought so. I have a few areas in my life I’m working on too, believe me. Let’s take this seriously today. I wonder if you would just pause right now and pray. Let’s pray together in unison from Psalm 139:
Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting. In Jesus’ Name, Amen.
2. He Is Zealous to Cleanse Your Life of All That’s Harmful
And that’s exactly what Jesus Christ did at the temple. The first lesson today is that Jesus knows what is in us. The second lesson is that He is proactive in helping us improve, and that brings us to this famous story of His cleansing the temple.
We have one interpretative challenge in this story. In Matthew, Mark, and Luke, the Gospel writers place this story at the end of our Lord’s ministry, during the passion week. John places it at the beginning of His Gospel. There are two possibilities about this. Perhaps Jesus did this twice, once at the beginning of His ministry and once at the end. The other possibility is that John knew very well that this activity happened at the end of our Lord’s ministry, but John wasn’t giving us a strictly chronological account of the life of Christ. He was writing thematically and He wanted to show from the very beginning the zeal and passion and purity of our Lord the Messiah.
In my own opinion, I believe Jesus did this both at the beginning of His ministry as we read here in John’s Gospel, and at the end as we read in Matthew, Mark, and Luke. It seems reasonable to me that the ministry of Jesus would come full circle in this way. And here is one reason for that. Look at verse 13: When it was almost time for the Jewish Passover, Jesus went up to Jerusalem.
Have you ever heard that the ministry of Jesus lasted only about three years? How do we know that? The Gospel of Luke tells us Jesus began His ministry when He was about thirty years old. But none of the Gospels tell us how old He was when He was crucified and resurrected, and none of them tell us how long His ministry lasted.
But John’s Gospel is built around three Passovers, the Jewish festival which occurred once a year, in the Springtime. The first Passover is recorded here in this chapter. The second Passover is mentioned in chapter 6. And the third is when He came to Jerusalem in John 12 at the beginning of Passion week. So based on John’s three Passovers, we estimate the duration of our Lord’s ministry at about three years.
The passage goes on to say: When it was almost time for the Jewish Passover, Jesus went up to Jerusalem. In the temple courts He found people selling cattle, sheep and doves, and others sitting at tables exchanging money.
From everything I can read about this, it seems the problem wasn’t what was happening, but where and how it was happening. So let me give you a little background. The Passover was the Jewish festival that commemorated the slaying of the lamb in Exodus 12, and it was a Jewish national holiday. Every family went to Jerusalem if they possibly could, and each family needed a lamb to offer for sins. Some didn’t raise sheep, and others had trouble transporting animals over the miles. The same was true for the other animals that made up part of the Jewish sacrificial system. So there was an allowance made permitting people to purchase a lamb or a sacrificial animal close to the temple. Furthermore, each person had to pay a coin to enter the temple, and most of the people had Roman coinage. So the moneychangers would change it into the Hebrew shekel.
What infuriated Jesus is apparently two things. First, all this activity had been brought right into the temple courts, ruining the reverence and sense of awe and the holiness of the setting. The presence of God in His temple deserved reverence and awe and a sense of holiness. Instead when you ascended from the staircase onto the Temple Mount, all you saw was bedlam and arguments and livestock and moneychangers. They should not have been up there in the courts of the temple. From what I can learn from Jewish sources, the money-centered Jewish high priest, Caiaphas, had only recently allowed it because he got a cut of everything.
Second, these merchants and moneychangers were gouging the people and cheating the people. They were overcharging. They weren’t interested in ministry to people but in making money. And so Jesus found some cords, made a small whip, drove the animals away and upset the tables of the moneychangers. He wanted to disrupt these bad habits.
In fact, He was zealous. When the disciples saw the look in His eyes and the tone of His voice and the force of His personality, they remembered a verse from the Old Testament that said, “The zeal for Your house has eaten me up! It consumes me!”
And in the same way the Lord zealously wants to disrupt the bad habits in our lives and cleanse us and help us. The Bible says that in the New Testament era, the very bodies of Christians are temples of the Holy Spirit, who lives within us. If you know Christ as Savior, your body is His temple—the dwelling place of the indwelling Holy Spirit.
So imagine the Lord Jesus taking some cords, making a small whip, and coming after your bad habit, trying to drive it out of your life. I believe He is zealous about it.
Recently I’ve become fascinated by the way the book of 1 Thessalonians ends. Many of the New Testament epistles end with a very rich and liturgical benediction, and these are some of the most wonderful blessings in the Bible. Look at 1 Thessalonians 5:23-24: “May God Himself, the God of peace, sanctify you through and through. May your whole spirit, soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. The one who calls you is faithful, and He will do it.”
The word “sanctify” is similar in concept to the word “cleanse” in John 2. And God wants to sanctify you through and through. He wants our spirit, soul, and body to be blameless at the coming of Christ.
Now, think of that habit or trait or tendency in your life. How can you cooperate with the Lord Jesus Christ as He seeks to sanctify you through and through, to drive out what doesn’t belong in you. Well, you have be zealous, like Jesus was. And I want to use the word “zeal” as an acronym for the steps we have to take.
The Z stands for Zero in on the Change You Need to Make. I don’t know about you, but I’m generally aware of patterns in my life that are going bad. In fact, I have a small list right now in my prayer journal of things I need to change and improve.
It’s true that we can be self-deceived and live in denial. A lot of people are walking around with a bitter spirit and they’re blaming other people for their bad attitude. But earlier when I asked you to think of a habit in your life that needed the Jesus-in-the-temple treatment, you probably thought of something. If you’re not sure what it is, ask your husband or wife! But zero in on that habit and take it seriously.
The E stands for Educate Yourself. We do that first of all by learning everything the Bible has to say about that subject. For years I struggled with melancholy. Katrina just wouldn’t know what to do with me when I got into a despondent mood. Finally I realized that’s not the way the Lord wanted me to live, and I got a concordance and looked up every occurrence in the Bible of the words “joy” and “rejoicing.” I typed them all up and tried to systemize them. I studied them in their contexts and looked up cross-references. By the time I was done, I had so many verses that I found it impossible to organize them. I never preached a series of sermons on joy because I was overwhelmed with the scriptural data, but that personal study was the thing that turned the corner on my habit of being down in the dumps.
Whatever issue you’re struggling with, the Bible probably has a significant number of verses on that. Do a very personal study and educate yourself with what God has to say about the issue you’re struggling with.
This is an amazing aspect of the Bible. This is why I’m a lifelong student of Scripture. No matter what I’m struggling with – and there could be ten thousand issues – somehow there is a cross-section of Bible verses that speak to that aspect of my life. If your issues are related to sexual habits, there are entire passages in the Bible that will inform and help you. Whatever it is!
And then, we should read what others have to say—especially solid Christian writers. Look up material. If you have a struggle with your temper, for example, or with some particular addiction, there’s a lot of research that can help you. After Katrina passed away, I realized I’d let myself become a little bit debilitated in the task of caregiving, and I bought a book having to do with improving your health when you’re at my age. That book has been very helpful and motivational. So educate yourself in the area in which you need to improve.
The “A” stands for Ask for Help. First of all, ask help from God by making this area of your life a matter of prayer. Learn to confess your sins and to ask God’s help in specific areas of your life. And then ask help from others. Ask a good friend to stand with you so you can have an ally. You might need a support group or LifeGroup. You might need counseling from someone who is trustworthy and wise. You may need medical help or a treatment program. You’ve got to be honest and get the help you need.
The “L” stands for Let Nothing Stop You. I want to show you a verse that I’ve put to use a hundred times – Proverbs 24:16: “…for though the righteous fall seven times, they rise again.” In other words, no matter how many times a godly person falls, they keep getting back up. They aren’t going to stay down there in the ditch feeling sorry for themselves. They going to get up and try again. So if you mess up, don’t let that stop you. Confess your failure and keep fighting that habit, even if it takes years.
3. He Died and Rose Again to Accomplish It
There’s one other thing I want you to notice. Even with our best efforts, we cannot be victorious without the power of our Lord’s resurrection. Let’s go back and look at this passage again:
The Jews then responded to Him, “What sign can You show us to prove Your authority to do all this?”
Jesus answered, “Destroy this temple, and I will raise it again in three days.”
They replied, “It has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and You are going to raise it in three days?” But the temple He had spoken of was His body. 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.
Our sinful habits would have pulled us down to Hell if Jesus had not risen up to Heaven. But His resurrection power broke the back of sin and Satan, and our victory is found in Jesus. Let me show you one last passage having to do with this.
Ephesians 1:18-21 says: I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which He has called you, the riches of His glorious inheritance in His holy people, and His incomparably great power for us who believe. That power is the same as the mighty strength He exerted when He raised Christ from the dead and seated Him at His right hand in the heavenly realms, far above all rule and authority, power and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in the present age but also in the one to come.
The temple of your life can be cleansed and sanctified. You can improve and grow better and stronger each day and each decade. You just have to remember these three things:
Jesus knows what is in you.
He is zealous to cleanse your life of all that’s harmful.
He died and rose again to accomplish it.
Benediction
“May God Himself, the God of peace, sanctify you through and through. May your whole spirit, soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. The one who calls you is faithful, and He will do it.”