How you can see and enter God’s Kingdom – John 3:1-21, Part 3

I first saw the Epcot globe in the summer of 1984 when my family visited on a vacation. It was still a new feature in a new theme park at Disney World in Florida, having opened in 1982. That huge globe, pictured above, was for me, an impressionable ten-year old, an amazing sight to see. What really sparked my curiosity, though, was the thought of what was inside. Would I be able to enter? Could anyone enter? Or was access restricted for VIPs?

These questions are quite similar to what Jesus discusses in John 3:1-21. In that passage, we’ve already learned that Jesus is having a conversation with a man named Nicodemus. How will Jesus respond to the greeting (which we learned about here) from Nicodemus, the powerful religious leader who meets with Jesus to talk with Jesus about the miracles Nicodemus heard Jesus performed.  Look at John 3, verse 3.

Jesus just jumps right into the deep end of the theology pool.  He talks about the Kingdom of God and who can see it. That alone is interesting.  The Kingdom of God, Jesus insinuates, is invisible.  As we’ll see, Nicodemus doesn’t seem to respond to this.  As a passionate Jewish leader, however, Nicodemus was well aware of his nation’s history, that Israel was a once powerful kingdom, with glory days under the reigns of King David and Solomon.  The Kingdom of God, in the Jewish mindset, was very much a piece of land, a geographical area in the middle east: Palestine, the Promised Land, Israel, and its centerpiece was Jerusalem, also known as Zion, the City of God, with God’s house, the temple, as its most important feature.  God’s Kingdom was something you could touch.  But here Jesus suggests something different, that no one can see the Kingdom, except for those who go through a bizarre change.  They must be born again, born from above.

I wish I could see the look on Nicodemus face when he responds to Jesus in verse 4. 

Nicodemus is no dummy.  He knows that the literal interpretation of Jesus’ words is impossible.  It is actually laughable, and I wouldn’t be surprised if Nicodemus started laughing at Jesus’ image of adults being born again.  It could be that Nicodemus laughed a mocking derisive laugh.   It could be that Jesus himself said “You must be born again” in a joking way, trying to get a laugh.  In other words, Jesus could have been telling a joke here, though not in the sense that the joke was false.  Jesus wasn’t kidding, or telling a lie.  He was speaking figuratively, not literally, raising the image of the impossible, to get at the possible, or, really, to get at the necessary, which is a new way of thinking about and seeing the Kingdom of God.

Did Nicodemus understand this new way of thinking about the Kingdom?  No.  Jesus explains it in verses 5-8.

Jesus initially said “No one can see the Kingdom unless they are born again”; now he says “No one can enter the Kingdom.”  Jesus’ concern is not just that people can see the invisible, he wants something so much more. He wants us to participate in it.  That means that Jesus is not interested in people just standing on the outside as observers.  He wants people to be able to enter in.  Having one’s eyes opened to be able to see the invisible is amazing, but seeing is only part of the good news Jesus teaches Nicodemus. Think about it this way: imagine you could see Jesus, but you were unable to reach him, talk with him, or interact with him in any way. What kind of relationship would that be? 

This “seeing vs. entering” got me thinking about a construction sight. First you see construction vehicles preparing the ground, clearing trees and rocks, moving dirt and leveling the space.  You wonder what is going on when you drive by.  What are they building? After the sight is prepared, the construction company builds a huge wall around the construction site.  You can now see nothing.  You feel the tension of knowing that something is happening, but you can’t see in.  There is no way to satisfy your curiosity.  Then the company installs plexiglass viewing stations in the wall, and now you can see!  You can watch their progress day by day, week by week.  You can see cranes from far away as you drive nearby. Thankfully, now that you can see inside, because of the viewing stations, you watch as they are building a giant globe.  Think huge, like the globe at Epcot Center.  Now a new curiosity fills your mind.  Why a globe?  You notice they have built an entrance, but you can’t enter.  You’re stuck behind the glass.  You want to know what will be happening inside the globe. Finally, after many months, when construction is complete, sadly the wall stays up, and all you can do is watch.  Then shockingly, some people are allowed in, they enter the globe, shut the door behind them, and they come back out excited and celebrating.  What happens inside the globe?  You can see, but you are not allowed to enter. That is seeing without entering, and it is highly frustrating.

Except that Jesus says to Nicodemus, there is a way to not only see the Kingdom of God, there is also a way to enter.  Jesus is answering Nicodemus’ confusion about being born again.  Jesus says, “Actually, you need to be born of water and the Spirit.  That’s what I mean when I referred to being born again.”  What Jesus is getting at is that there are two kinds of birth.  The first is common to any human.  We are born in water.  The amniotic fluid in which children grow in utero.  One of the most common signs of childbirth beginning is when a pregnant mother’s water breaks.  It is through water, then, that we are born as humans.

Jesus says to Nicodemus that there is another kind of birth that is necessary to enter the Kingdom.  Being born again, or born from above, is to be born of the Spirit.  Jesus said it is like the wind, which you cannot see, but you know it is blowing.  You hear it, you feel it, you see its effects.  The same is true with the Spirit. You cannot see the Spirit, but we know the Spirit works because the Spirit changes lives. Being born of the Spirit, then, happens in an unseen, spiritual way.  But that birth is vitally important, as Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 5:17, “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come.” 

After this further explanation by Jesus, however, Nicodemus is still confused.  He says in verse 9, “How can this be?”  So Jesus continues explaining things, and I think Jesus might still be joking around.  Look at verses 10-13. 

Woah. Is Jesus joking with Nicodemus, or is Jesus being harsh?  Maybe Jesus was blown away, “How can you not know this?” as if it was so obvious that a religious scholar wouldn’t know this important truth?  In verse 11, it does seem that Jesus is frustrated at least somewhat.  But he gets around to explaining that he is talking about heavenly things, not earthly things.  He is speaking of a spiritual reality that transcends the physical reality.  Jesus is saying that the Kingdom of God is more than just buildings and geographical nations.  Then in verse 13 he refers to himself as “the Son of Man, who came from heaven.” 

That’s a bold claim, and yet it is totally consistent with how Nicodemus already described Jesus in verse 2.  When I mentioned Nicodemus’ description of Jesus in verse 2, I suggested that it is hard to know if Nicodemus fully believed what he was saying, or if he was just buttering Jesus up.  Now here in verse 13, Jesus is saying, “I am the Son of Man who is from heaven.” 

Think about that: “Son of Man…from heaven.” Do you see how that might come across as odd or even contradictory?  Shouldn’t Jesus be calling himself “the Son of God from heaven”?  Why “Son of Man”?  Jesus will use that title for himself more frequently than any other title.  In fact, earlier in our study we heard him use this title in John chapter 1, verse 51.  The title of “Son of Man” comes from the prophecy of Daniel, chapter 7, verse 13, where the “son of man” is used to describe the Messiah who would come.  As Jesus continues talking to Nicodemus, he uses this title again, but in a prophecy of his own. 

We’ll look at what Jesus says in the next post.

Photo by Nathan Langer on Unsplash

Did Jesus really do miracles? – John 3:1-21, Part 2

In the previous post, we met a new character in the Gospel of John. The powerful and respected Nicodemus, who is both a Pharisee and a member of the Jewish Ruling Council. As we continue studying John 3:1-21, we read in verse 2 that Nicodemus visits Jesus at night. We are giving no context to explain what leads to this visit. Nicodemus, however, in his greeting to Jesus, seems to reveal why he met with Jesus. Before we get to the greeting, it is interesting to speculate why John includes the detail about the meeting taking place at night. Presumably someone of Nicodemus’ stature does not want to do any damage to his reputation by interacting with a lowly upstart teacher.  Maybe Nicodemus didn’t want to be seen having a serious talk with Jesus.  Or maybe it just worked out that they met at night.  Either way, the timing gives them the opportunity to have a good talk.

Nicodemus begins by showing Jesus respect, calling him a Rabbi, saying, “We know you are a teacher who has come from God.”  Is Nicodemus just following societal conventions of being polite?  Does he really believe Jesus is a Rabbi, a teacher, and most of all, that Jesus has come from God?  Or does Nicodemus doubt?  We don’t know yet.  We’re aren’t given any details about his motivation.  He could be buttering Jesus up, almost like a spy would if they were trying to get information from whomever they are spying on. 

Nicodemus then mentions the miracles.  But he doesn’t call them “miracles”.  He calls them miraculous signs, which is the way John has described them every time he has talked about Jesus doing miracles.  They are signs, which means they point to something.  They are not just miracles for the sake of doing miracles.  These miracles have a purpose beyond the miracle itself.  Yes, Jesus’ miracle of turning the water into wine helped the wedding go smoothly.  It had that immediate purpose. 

But John shows us in chapter 2, verse 11, that it was a miraculous sign through which Jesus showed his glory, and his disciples placed their faith in him.  The same is true for the miracles he was doing in Jerusalem, as John tells us in chapter 2, verse 23.  He did miracles there also, though we don’t know what they were.  Most of his miracles were physical healings, and my guess is that these miracles were in that category.  The category doesn’t matter, though, as John calls them miraculous signs, leading people to put their faith in him. 

Nicodemus, when greeting Jesus, also calls the miracles “signs”.  It seems that Nicodemus is making a connection, following the signpost directions, that only someone who is from God could do the miracles.  So maybe there is more to Nicodemus than most other Pharisees who seemed only to undermine Jesus. Maybe God is at work in Nicodemus’ life.  It does seem that his sentence, “No one could do the miracles if God were not with him” reveals in Nicodemus a genuine search for God at work.

Nicodemus is not equating Jesus and God.  In Nicodemus’ view, Jesus is from God.  God is somehow with Jesus.  That alone is remarkable for a Pharisee and member of the Ruling Council to admit.  As we will see, and as all four Gospel writers frequently describe, the vast majority of Jesus’ interaction with the Pharisees is adversarial.  They do not believe he is from God.  They think he is a fraud.  But Nicodemus seems to be different.  He seems to be teachable, humble, with an open mind for how God might be at work in the world in a new way. 

Notice that Nicodemus does not lead with a question.  His greeting in verse 2 is a statement.  But I wonder if buried in the statement is a question.  We’ll learn in the next post that it seems Jesus heard Nicodemus’ greeting that way, as a question.  Perhaps the question goes like this: “Who are you, Jesus?  We’ve heard about the miracles. Are you really from God?”  Does Nicodemus have his doubts?  I bet he does.  It would be, in my view, 100% normal for him to be uncertain that a no-name, unschooled handyman from tiny town Nazareth would be from God, and especially that this Jesus would be a miracle worker.

When I hear about miracles in our day and age, I immediately doubt.  Probably too quick, to a fault.  We live in a scientific age, an age where there are plenty of people telling us that there is no such thing as miracles, no such thing as God, no such thing as anything supernatural.  The only thing we should have faith in, they say, is the belief that science is the only real explanation for all things. 

But we Christians hold to the supernatural as bedrock to our faith.  Just think of Jesus and his resurrection.  We believe Jesus is God, and that he died a physical death and was raised three days later to physical new life.  That’s the most important miracle of all.  Our faith is soaking in the supernatural.  Even still, many of us, perhaps most of us, have a very hard time believing in miracles.   So it makes complete sense if Nicodemus doubted what he has heard about Jesus being a miracle worker.

How will Jesus respond to this greeting from this powerful man? 

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John 3:16 is not enough? – John 3:1-21, Part 1

What is essential to an understanding of the Gospel, the good news about Jesus?  What I remember as a kid was hearing that John 3:16 was it.  That’s the Gospel in one verse.  That’s all you need to know. Therefore John 3:16 is the most important verse in the Bible.  So put it on banners and fly those banners at football games.  Put it on signs and place those signs in your yard.  John 3:16 is the Gospel.  But is it?

No. John 3:16 is not the Gospel.  John 3:16 is not enough.  In fact, by focusing on John 3:16, it is very possible that Christians who have tended to really emphasize John 3:16 have not shared the Gospel and have done a disservice to the Kingdom and mission of God.  We need to stop with John 3:16.  Why? This week on the blog, we’re going to find out we not only need John 3:16, but we need more than John 3:16.

Turn in your Bibles to John chapter 3 and read verse 1. There we meet Nicodemus. Who was he?

For starters, we read that Nicodemus was a Pharisee.  Who were the Pharisees?  We hear a lot about them in the Gospels, and usually they are not described in a good light.  Why?  Because one of the primary plot lines in the Gospels is the Pharisees versus Jesus. They are so often against him.  Why?  It goes back a couple hundred years. 

The Pharisees first appear in the time between the testaments, the approximately 400 years between the events at the end of the Old Testament and the events at the beginning of the New Testament.  Numerous important events happened in the life of the Jewish people during those 400 years, including the creation of this group of deeply religious men, the Pharisees.  They were passionate about keeping the law of Moses.  The name, Pharisee, means “separated ones” referring to their lives of being separated from the common approach to the Law.  Pharisees were going to be above and beyond, radically committed to obeying God. 

Their movement grew to the point where in Jesus’ days, there were approximately 6000 Pharisees located throughout the entire country of Palestine.  They would serve and teach in synagogues all over the land, and of course in the temple in Jerusalem.  They saw themselves as guardians of the true way of God.  That meant they could be very legalistic, which often led to the conflict being them and Jesus, because Jesus was not legalistic at all.  This man, Nicodemus, he’s one of those guys.  A Pharisee, which means he sees himself as super committed to God.

We also learn that he is a member of the Ruling Council. That means Nicodemus is one of the top leaders in the nation.  He is a bigwig.  In that ancient Jewish culture, politics and religion are often mixed because they were a theocratic nation, founded by God on the Mosaic Law.  There is no separation of church and state.  Of course, at that time, they are controlled by Rome, and everything they do is subject to permission by Rome.  But within the Jewish culture, the Ruling Council is totally fluid with religion.  The Ruling Council would include priests, Pharisees, scholars of the Mosaic Law, and wealthy people.  So there is Nicodemus, one of 70 or so people in the whole nation who is on this Ruling Council, and he is also a member of the ultra-serious Pharisees. It is hard to underestimate the high position Nicodemus has.

So far, Jesus has mostly interacted with peasants like himself, people on the margins of high society.  Small town Nazareth.  Small town Cana.  Medium town Capernaum.  Then he enters the temple, as we studied last week, where he creates a small riot, whipping up the large animals into a stampede, flipping over the tables of the money changers.  Look at John chapter 2, verses 18-20, and we read that the Jews show up.  John is referring to the temple leaders, which is a different group of leaders than the ruling council. 

Jesus has, therefore, at least once interacted with some important people.  They confront him, as you would expect them to confront someone who is responsible for upheaval at the temple.  Their confrontation is actually a challenge to him to perform a miraculous sign to prove his authority, thus showing he was from God.  But he answers them with one his typically cryptic responses, throwing the challenge back on them, that if they destroy the temple, he’ll rebuild it in three days.  He sounds crazy, so it seems they respond to him as if he is crazy, “You’ll rebuild the temple in three days? It took 40 years to build it.”  The incident, as John tells it, goes no further.  We learn that Jesus, during his stay in Jerusalem, actually does do numerous miraculous signs, and people believe in him.

So in chapter two of John, starting with his miraculous transformation of the water into wine at the wedding in Cana, and then as he performs more miracles in Jerusalem, a theme has emerged.  Jesus is a miracle worker.  As you can imagine, that doesn’t go unnoticed.  People are talking.  Someone doing miracles is big news. 

Don’t assume that this was Bible times and therefore miracles are happening all the time.  While there were miracles in the historical accounts of the Old Testament, remember that 400 years had passed since the end of the Old Testament, and even then it had a been a long time before that since miracles were present in the nation.  You’d have to go back all the way to the ministry of the prophets Elijah and Elisha, which was about 900 years earlier.

That means that talk of a miracle worker in town would have been big news, and probably the kind of news that many people shrug off saying, “Come on…no way.”  But these reports of miracles have a credibility about them.  Multiple reports, eyewitnesses.  That news has made it to the desk of the authorities, including Nicodemus. 

Check back in to the next post, and in that post we’ll hear how Nicodemus starts this conversation with Jesus.

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Bannerman…an homage or a satire? – John 3:1-21, Preview

This week as I have been studying the next section of the Gospel of John, it reminded me of a song by Steve Taylor, a Christian rock musician.  The song, “Bannerman,” came out in 1993 during my sophomore year of college. You can watch a video of the song here.

In the song, Taylor writes an homage to a group of people who would travel to sporting events, usually NFL games, with banners.  They would position themselves where the cameras were showing the game on live TV, holding up banners that simply said, “John 3:16”.  My guess is that many of you have seen people do this, as you watch sporting events on TV.

What was unique about Taylor’s song is that it was not a satire. He had made a name for himself writing songs that satirized Christianity.  When Taylor wrote satirical songs, he did not mean to do damage to Christianity, but instead he attempted to help Christians critique the ways we, thinking we are acting faithfully, can actually venture away from the mission and Kingdom of God.  Taylor’s satirical work was similar Jesus’ parable in Matthew 7:21-23, the parable about people who thought they were absolutely part of Jesus’ Kingdom, and they even had ministry cred they believed proved their claim.  Jesus shocks them when he says, “Depart from me, I never knew you.”  Taylor wrote satire, then, trying to help Christians follow Jesus authentically, just as Jesus calls us to.

“Bannerman” at first glance seems to be a classic Steve Taylor satire, poking fun at people who hold up John 3:16 signs at football games.  But Taylor, in numerous interviews, said that the song was actually an homage, a song meant to show respect to the Bannermen for their often sacrificial efforts in frigid weather, efforts which likely resulted in people shaming them.  Before you get upset at people shaming the Bannerman, how would you feel if you paid your hard-earned cash to go to an NFL game, only to have the guy in front of you hold up a huge banner, blocking your view at all the exciting moments of the game? 

While we can certainly honor the Bannermen for their courage and commitment, I believe Taylor could have also written a satire about them.  Why would I want to write satire about people sharing the Gospel?  I would do so, because satire pokes fun at something, hoping to reveal its insufficiency.  

Am I saying that the Bannermen, in their attempt to proclaim the Gospel, are insufficient in some way?  Yes, I am.  I hope their efforts helped some people to meet Jesus.  I do not know if their efforts did or did not.  What I am concerned about is the insufficiency of what they communicated when they held up those John 3:16 banners.

Am I saying the John 3:16 is insufficient?  No…and yes, actually.  No, because I don’t think there’s anything wrong with John 3:16.  Yes, because I think what you’ll see as we study this passage next week is that John 3:16 is not enough.  To find out how, I invite you to check back in on Monday.  In the meantime try to see if you can guess how ahead of time by reading John 3:1-21 for yourself.

Are we allowing anything to block our worship of God – John 2:12-25, Part 5

John tells us his disciples would remember this day.  Look at verse 22.  The disciples remember Jesus’ cryptic statement after Jesus rose again on the third day, and they finally understand what he meant.  The temple was his body.  He died and rose again!  The disciples remembered what he said, and they believed that Scripture was being fulfilled in him.

What happens next?  We don’t know specifically. Apparently the religious leaders choose not to act, not to arrest Jesus. Jesus and the disciples walk out from the huge mess, and they go about their day.  In John’s telling of the story, the scene changes.  Look at verse 23.

Jesus and the disciples remain in Jerusalem for the Passover Feast, and during that time Jesus’ ministry continues unimpeded.  Interestingly, he does more miraculous signs, and more people believe in him, which is a throwback to verse 11.  In verse 11, at the wedding in Cana, which we studied here and here, where Jesus changed the water into wine, the disciples saw that one miraculous sign and placed their faith in him.  Now in Jerusalem, he does more miraculous signs and many people believe in him. 

But in verses 24-25, John tells us something about Jesus’ heart and mind.  He tells us that Jesus is cautious.  While it sounds great that people are placing their faith in him, he is concerned about entrusting himself to the people.  What is he concerned about?  The people could seek to make him king, and it is not the right time.  They could be just gushing over him because they saw his miracles, meaning that they could be focused on what they could get out of him, how he could benefit them, rather than truly placing their faith in him and his mission, his value system.

What about us? Is there any significance in this event for us?  What does it matter?  Was Jesus’ dramatic prophetic protest in the temple just a waste of time?

Jesus’ act of cleansing the temple matters because there is a great value in prophetic signs.   Jesus took action to show the truth.  In the temple, Jesus observed injustice.  God’s heart was for the Gentiles to have a place to pray and worship. But the religious leaders were trampling on that desire.  An injustice was taking place, so Jesus enacts a prophetic sign to show the situation as it really was, unjust, against God’s heart.  You can bet the news of Jesus’ actions spread through the city and around the country lightning fast.  How many people understood the prophetic sign and remembered it?  We know at least a few people remembered.

John tells us the disciples remembered, which I mentioned above.  Also, the religious leaders also remembered.  They used Jesus’ words about rebuilding the temple in three days as evidence in his trial, blaming him for being an insurrectionist.  So you could say that this temple cleansing was part of the reason that got Jesus killed. 

What I think is really important to ask, though, is this: Did the people understand why Jesus cleansed the temple?  Did anyone get the message about God’s heart for the Gentiles to have a place for worship?  Did anyone think, “You know, I think Jesus is right…we shouldn’t have a marketplace in the temple.  I think I’m going to speak to the religious authorities about this.”?

I doubt it. I suspect the next day the animal sellers and money-changers were probably right back at it providing their goods and services in the court of the Gentiles. So let’s not miss what we can learn from this story.  What do we see that can apply to us? 

Jesus was so connected to his father, he knew that the temple marketplace would grieve God’s heart.  If it grieved God, and it did, Jesus also felt that grief.  What was it that grieved God?  An unnecessary barrier to worship had been added.  The Jews were not fans of the Gentiles, so they likely didn’t take the court of the Gentiles seriously.  You can imagine them saying, “Oh, we can allow people to sell animals and exchange money there, because the Gentiles don’t matter anyway.”  There was a barrier that made it difficult or impossible for the Gentiles to worship. This was an ethnic problem.  If you are the right ethnicity you could worship.  If you are not Jew, you can’t worship. Have we created barriers so some people cannot worship God?

Jesus was about breaking barriers, though.  He wanted people to experience freedom.  And that leads us to the second thing.  What barriers are in the way of our worship?  What barriers have we erected in our lives keeping us from worship?  What barriers have we erected so those on the margins cannot meet God, cannot worship God?  What have we allowed to clutter our ability to pray, to worship, to sit with God?  I’m not talking about a building.  I’m talking about the pattern of our lives.

One blockade I believe some contemporary Christians have allowed to be built in their lives, keeping them for worshiping God, is political and social ideology. In the last five years, I’ve had numerous conversations with people who have said to me that unless I preach about _____ or say specific words about ______ they will look to worship elsewhere. They have been from both conservative perspectives and from progressive or liberal perspectives. I have responded that as Christians, we are citizens of the Kingdom of Heaven, and Jesus is our King, therefore we focus on him and the mission of his Kingdom. I believe that means we will bring theology to bear on politics and social issues. But the church should be a place for all. Red and Blue should love one another in the family of faith. Sadly, some cannot accept that kind of selfless unity, and they have moved on. I believe they have allowed ideology to block worship.

Is there some way our worship, your worship, has become polluted and needs to be cleansed?  Examine your heart, your mind. 

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How Jesus got himself into a pickle…and how he got himself out of it – John 2:12-25, Part 3

Jesus is in a very bad situation. Frankly, it’s a situation he got himself into. You could say it is his fault. Jesus at fault? Did he do something wrong? Isn’t Jesus supposed to be perfect? What’s going on?

As we’ve been studying this week on the blog, in John 2:12-25, we read the story of how Jesus entered the temple in Jerusalem, went over to the marketplace the religious leaders allowed to operate in the Court of the Gentiles, and Jesus threw the market into chaos. What he did was wrong in the eyes of the religious leaders who gave permission for the market to be there. But in the eyes of God, Jesus says, what he did was right, cleansing the temple, bringing it back to the place of worship it was supposed to be. As you can imagine, the religious leaders seem only to see the situation as Jesus undermining their authority. So they confront him with what seems like an impossible challenge: “What miraculous sign can you show us to prove your authority to do all this?”

How will Jesus answer?  Look at verse 19. 

He answers with a typical Jesus answer.  It’s mysterious, it’s cryptic.  “Destroy this temple and I will rebuild it in three days.”  Remember that show, Extreme Makeover: Home Edition?  In each episode, they would tear down a house and rebuild it fast.  I don’t think they ever did it in three days, though, even with a huge team of workers.  But Jesus is not talking about a single-family home.  He is talking about a temple made of stone, on a 37-acre complex.  It took decades to build, and it still wasn’t done. 

What Jesus was offering, then, would have been an obvious miraculous sign. But notices how he turns it around on on them.  If they, the religious leaders, tear down the temple, he’ll perform the miracle of rebuilding the temple in 3 days.

Jesus’ answer got me thinking.  Is he indulging them?  Is he giving in to their request for him to perform for them, to jump through hoops for them?  In another words, is he caving to their authority?

No.  He knows they’re not going to destroy them temple.  He knows they don’t believe he could do the miracle.  And what’s more, though he uses the word “temple,” he isn’t talking about a building made of stone and wood.  Except the religious leaders don’t know that when they respond to him, which we read in verse 20.

They think Jesus is being literal, talking about the temple building, and they are probably rolling their eyes at him, thinking he is a fraud.  But Jesus isn’t just being literal; he is, in one of his genius moves, speaking with a double-meaning.  He is not only answering their challenge about a miraculous sign by turning the situation around on them, Jesus is also being figurative.  How is he being figurative?  John tells us in verse 21.

The temple he was referring to is his body.  This is such a curious statement.  It is likely no one knew what he meant.  Think about this scene.  All around them is the carnage of the stampede and overturned tables.  Trash and debris are strewn about.  It’s probably a huge mess.  People are gawking, and the Jewish leaders are red hot angry at what has happened in this outer temple court.  They confront the man at the center of it all.  Everyone knows this man is in big trouble.  He will probably be imprisoned for this act of insurrection.  He may lose his life.  What can he possibly say to get of the mess? 

“Destroy this temple, and I will rebuild it in three days.”?  

What?  This answer, this challenge from Jesus, seems to them to be so beyond the realm of possibility, that many there likely thought he was insane, a mad man. 

But John tells us his disciples would remember this day. In the next post, we’ll find out how and why.

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Two very different viewpoints on Jesus’ cleansing of the temple – John 2:12-25, Part 3

When Jesus’ disciples thought about Jesus’ wild actions of cleansing the temple, believe or not, it makes them think about a poem, a song, Psalm 69.  Only Psalm 22 is quoted more frequently in by the New Testament writers.  That means the earliest Christians saw in Psalm 69 numerous connections to the Messiah.  If you read it, you’ll see why.  In verse 9, to be precise, we read “Zeal for your house will consume me.”  Watching in wonder as Jesus performed his protest in the temple, hearing him declare that the temple leaders had a made a mockery of God’s house, the disciples could remember Psalm 69:9, a Messianic psalm, and think, “That’s him.  The Psalm is talking about him.  That’s the Messiah doing what the Messiah was supposed to do.” 

There are two other Old Testament prophets who speak about something like this.  They are Zechariah 14:21: “And on that day there will no longer be a merchant in the house of the Lord Almighty.” and Malachi 3:1, 3: “Then suddenly the Lord you are seeking will come to his temple … he will purify the Levites and refine them like gold and silver.” One commentator says, “This means that this act of prophetic symbolism was a denunciation of worship that was not pure. It was a prophetic invitation to worship God from the heart, without clamour or distracting influences.”[1]

But not everyone there that day had the same viewpoint as the disciples, that Jesus was fulfilling a prophecy, that he was doing a good thing, trying to help people worship.  We discover in verse 18 that some other people there were not happy at all.

“Security” personnel has finally showed up on the scene, and they are not happy.  That’s who John is referring to when he says, “The Jews.”  Not all Jews or just any random Jews.  He is referring to the religious leaders who oversaw the temple and what happened there.  Interestingly, they don’t just have Jesus arrested and removed, like you’d think they would.  Why not? Well, the story takes an interesting turn.

The marketplace was operating there by permission of the religious leaders.  People didn’t just walk into the temple, cause a stampede and start flipping the moneychangers’ tables. Isn’t it peculiar, then, that the religious leaders ask Jesus for a miraculous sign?  In their eyes, they didn’t believe he had authority to do what he did. They believed theirs was the only authority that mattered.  Therefore they don’t ask him, “Who gave you permission to do this?” because that would have been a pointless question.  Only they could give permission to clear out the market, and they did not give permission. So they ask him instead for a miraculous sign. 

Does that strike you as odd? A random guy, at least in the religious leaders’ minds, seems to lose his mind and go wild in the temple, and they ask him for a miraculous sign to substantiate his authority? Why would think anything like that? It seems that there was an interpretation of Old Testament prophecy that the Messiah, Israel’s savior or deliverer, would do miracles. So if this person could do miracles, then he comes with God’s authority, and his actions would supersede the religious leaders’ authority.

The readers of the Gospel should have a light bulb go off in their minds as they read verse 18.  A miraculous sign!  Where have we heard that before?  In the passage we studied last week.  At the wedding, Jesus did a miraculous sign, changing the water into wine!  John, it seems, wants his readers to make that connection, answering the religious leaders with, “I know what miraculous sign he did! He changed water into wine!” 

Also, the people there that day, including the religious leaders themselves, could answer their own question if they wanted to, just by looking at the mess caused by the stampede and overturned tables.  Jesus had just performed a sign, in the fashion of the many prophets who had gone before him in Israel’s history.  This was a prophetic sign, a symbolic message that what had been happening in the temple was a disgrace.  Perhaps that’s why the religious leaders didn’t immediately arrest him, because they knew he was right.  And yet they can’t just allow this challenge to their authority go unconfronted.

More than likely they not only believed he didn’t have any authority, they also thought he wasn’t able to produce a miracle, and so they would be able to arrest him. They want to see how he’ll answer this important question.  How will Jesus answer? We’ll find out in the next post.

[1] D. A. Carson, The Gospel According to John, The Pillar New Testament Commentary (Leicester, England; Grand Rapids, MI: Inter-Varsity Press; W.B. Eerdmans, 1991), 179.

Photo by AbsolutVision on Unsplash

Why Jesus starts a stampede in church – John 2:12-25, Part 2

Imagine a scene with me as you read this post. Jesus is in Jerusalem with his disciples for the Jewish Passover Feast. The city is packed with other pilgrims, and many of them head to the temple for worship. Jesus and his disciples join the crowd. They enter the temple complex, as everyone does, first walking into the vast courtyards. What do they see? In the outermost courtyard, the Court of the Gentiles, they see a busy marketplace in what was supposed to be a quiet place for prayer. 

If you’re looking at Jesus, you likely see him start to breathe faster, deeper. You see his face tense up. He’s about to do something.  But we don’t know what he actually looked like in that moment because the story doesn’t tell us. I’m referring to the story in John 2:12-25. Look at verse 14. All John tells us is that “he found” the marketplace in the courtyard.

But what we don’t know is the look in his eye.  We don’t know his tone of voice.  We don’t know his body language.  Then look at verse 15. We don’t know how he got hold of cords, or how he made them into a whip.  Was he calm about it?  Was he quiet?  Were the disciples watching him, whispering to themselves, wondering, “What is he doing?”  Or were they talking with him?  Was he conversing with them?  We don’t get those details. 

What we know is that Jesus turns into a cattle rancher, swinging his makeshift whip, driving the animals in a stampede right out of the temple.  There is only the most minute possibility, at least in my mind, that this stampede was calm and quiet.  I just can’t see that.  Instead I think it was much more likely a raucous affair.  Loud.  Out of control.  Disorderly. 

We took our grandson to the Lampeter Fair a couple weeks ago, and those animals are massive and loud.  At Lampeter Fair, they were all sitting calmly in their pens, many sleeping, but when they started mooing, it was loud. 

That brings another scenario to my mind.  When I go running with my dog on the many farm roads in our community, there are plenty of them with pastures close up to the road, always separated by fencing.  If there is an animal eating grass right up by the fence, my dog will lunge at it growling, and the animal will often jump and scatter. 

Now imagine what would happen if a grown man with a whip would do that…in the Lampeter Fair, running up and down stalls whipping the animals.  It could get out of hand fast.  Animals could easily break right through the stalls, freaked out, mooing, baaing, braying, and the whole fair could be in a shambles in a matter of minutes. 

That’s not unlike what Jesus was doing in the temple that day. Can you imagine what the animals’ owners were doing?  They would likely be out of their minds, trying to find out what is going on, and seeking to get the temple guard in there to sort it out.  They would be scrambling to get control of animals gone wild. 

But just as the stampede is raging, Jesus turns his attention to the financial section.  What he decides to do there is a move we know well.  It’s a move that is used on movies and TV shows a lot.  Maybe you’ve used the move yourself in your house or office.  What I am talking about is the desk-clearing sweep of the arm.  Usually a person pulls out this move when they have just experienced a painful betrayal.  Maybe they get off a troubling phone call, slam the phone down, or toss a cell phone across the room, and with frustration and rage filling their bodies, they sweep everything off their desk or table, yelling out in anguish, as the pencils, pens, staplers, phone, and papers go flying onto the floor around them. 

That’s pretty much what is going on, except in this case, Jesus upgrades the move to the sweep and the flip.  You know that one too. The table flip. I can see Jesus running from table to table, sweeping and flipping, sweeping and flipping, one right after the other.  I do not think we should see a calm, meek Jesus saying, “Excuse me, sir, but you shouldn’t be in here.  Can you please pack up your business and leave?” while he gently turns the table on its side.   

But Jesus is still not done.  We read that he turns to face the aviary, the place where birds are kept.  They’re doves, also used for sacrifices, probably kept in wooden cages.  By now the sellers of the doves have been watching the mayhem.  They see Jesus turn to them, and you can see their hands reach out to grab the cages, protecting their investment.  Jesus says, “Get these out of here!”  I bet they went running, and started loading cages on to carts.

Why was Jesus doing this shocking act of protest?  And where was security?

As we read, Jesus makes an interesting comment as he tells the sellers of doves to get out. Look at the end of verse 16, and he says, “How dare you turn my father’s house into a market.” 

This is the first time in the Gospel that Jesus refers to God the Father.  What this hints at is his close relationship with his father.  He knew the Father’s heart.  And what grieves God’s heart, grieves Jesus’ heart.  Jesus is performing a cleansing, showing his allegiance to his father, and to the purpose of his father’s temple. 

It was to be a place for prayer, for worship, for hearing the word of God, for performing the religious rituals of sacrifice and offering.  Yes, those animals and money-changers served a purpose, but they should not have been allowed to set up shop in the temple’s Court of the Gentiles, right in the place where the worship and prayer was supposed to happen.  This was to be a place of welcome for Gentiles.  It was to be a place they could pray, worship and meet with God. 

Everything about this situation is a bold move on Jesus’ part.  What he does, and what he says.  But for a purpose of welcoming those on the outside.  Does anyone care? Do people get it? Will Jesus’ courageous act make a difference?

In the next post, we’ll learn that maybe right that day, maybe years later, the disciples have a theological awareness about this event. 

What Jesus saw at the temple that filled him with emotion – John 2:12-25, Part 1

As we begin our study of Jesus’ surprising behavior in John 2:12-25, it reminded of this video of a protestor who ran onto the field during a Rams/49ers football game.

When he first jumped onto the field, carrying a smoke canister which let out pink smoke, referees blew the whistle to stop play, but the protestor was fast enough that security personnel couldn’t catch him.  As they are supposed to do, the players on the field watched as security chased the guy.  That is until the guy made the fateful decision to run near the Rams sideline.  One of the Rams players had enough of the protestor’s shenanigans, and just as the protestor was passing near him, the Rams player lunged and tackled the guy.  There was actually a second protestor at the same time, but she didn’t make it far onto the field by the time security tackled her.  People run or streak onto the field, often just for fun, but these two were protesting.  Their cause was animal rights, and they decided to interrupt the game and draw attention to their cause.  It worked.

Believe it or not, this is quite similar to what Jesus did on at least one occasion.  In John 2:12, we read that after the wedding in the town of Cana, Jesus, his disciples, his mother and brothers went to the nearby town of Capernaum and stayed there a few days.  Capernaum was one of the largest towns in the region of Galilee, so Jesus made Capernaum his home-base for ministry.

Just as quickly as we learn these details about Capernaum and Jesus’ entourage, in verse 13, we read that Jesus went to Jerusalem for the Passover feast.  A pilgrimage to Jerusalem for a major festival was commonplace, so in his decision to participate, Jesus is just doing what any good Jew would do.  It was a 90ish mile trip, likely requiring 3-4 days.  As we will learn, it seems his disciples went with him.  We hear nothing further about his family. 

What happens in Jerusalem is shocking, but first we need to set the scene.  Look at verse 14. 

Jesus goes to the temple, which is a massive place.  Throughout the history of Israel there had been two previous temples.  The original temple built by Solomon was destroyed by the Babylonians, which we learned in our recent Ezekiel series.  Years later after the Jewish exiles returned from exile, the second temple was built under the leadership of Zerubbabel, but that temple was smaller than the original. The Jews longed for the days of Solomon and the glorious temple he built.

That longing led to the third temple, and that was the one in Jesus’ day.  It was called Herod’s temple, because Herod the Great, the same king who wanted to kill all the babies born in Bethlehem at the time Jesus was born, ordered a total overhaul of Zerubbabel’s temple.  The temple building itself was about the same dimensions as the previous temples, though Herod’s temple was 15 stories high, and it had a new and extensive system of courtyards surrounding it, making it by far the most magnificent of the three temples. 

The temple courtyards were still under construction during and long after Jesus’ day.  If you visit Jerusalem today, the temple and its outbuildings are gone, destroyed by the Romans in 70 CE.  There is one wall remaining, the famous Wailing Wall.  Centuries later, when Muslims controlled Jerusalem, they built the mosque still there today, the Dome of the Rock.  It was opened in the year 1023.  But even today you can still see the size of the temple mount, which gives a sense of the extensive courtyards.  The temple mount covers 37 acres. 

In Jesus’ day the four courtyards were the wide-open spaces where people could come and pray.  The temple was not like a church, where anyone could enter the temple building.  In fact, most people never went into the temple building itself.  That was only for the priests. 

So the regular Jewish person would come to the temple courtyards to worship.  But it wasn’t so simple as that.  There were various courtyards you could access depending on who you were.  The priests had the most access, able to enter all four courts.  Jewish men had the next level of access, able to enter all but the courtyard of the priests.  Jewish women could enter the courtyard for women.  Non-Jews had the least amount of access, only able to go to the courtyard of the Gentiles.  But there were still places for all of them.  

Except there was a problem.  In the Courtyard for the Gentiles, the religious leaders had allowed a market of sorts to take place.  It wasn’t like they just built a grocery store inside the temple.  It seems the original intent of the market was actually a good one, to help people worship.  How so?  The market had two main kinds of businesses: sellers of sacrifices and money-changers. Regular worshipers often needed both of them.

Just as God commanded them in the Old Testament Mosaic Law, the Jewish sacrificial system required people to buy a variety of animals to sacrifice.  But because they came from all over the world for feasts, they were bringing numerous kinds of currency.  Some people needed money changers, therefore, just to buy the sacrifices they needed for worship and give monetary offerings.  To make worship convenient for worshipers, the religious leaders allowed these small businesses to set up shop right there inside the temple, in the courtyard of the Gentiles. 

Otherwise, the people would have to traipse all over the city taking care of the business of money-changing and purchasing sacrifices for worship.  Convenience is a good thing.  But the religious leaders took it too far.  They allowed what was supposed to be a place of worship, a place of connecting with God, to become a place of busy, bustling, distracting, commercialism. 

Jesus enters the temple, sees this, and he is very, very concerned.  This was to be a place of peace, a place for Gentiles to pray and worship.  Instead it had become a place of commerce, where people were making money off worshipers, interrupting worshipers.  As Jesus stands there, my guess is that he already knew this marketplace was there, from his previous visits.  What he does in response is wild. 

In the next post, we’ll find out what Jesus does.

That time Jesus borrowed a move from Ezekiel’s playbook – John 2:12-25, Preview

Do you remember our blog series through the book of Ezekiel?  That series began in 2021, and continued through the first half of 2022.  I know.  Seems so long ago, right?  But try to remember with me, as there was something about Ezekiel that relates to the next episode in the life of Jesus, which we are studying through the Gospel of John.

Do you remember what made Ezekiel so unique?  To answer that question, it might help to recall who and what Ezekiel was.  Ezekiel was a man who lived in Jerusalem 6th century BCE, near the end of the Judean monarchy, when the powerful nation of Babylon invaded and captured the city, sending 10,000 Jews to exile in Babylon.  Ezekiel was one of those 10,000 Jews who made the months-long journey, probably walking 900 miles to be relocated in a foreign land.

There in Babylon, though, God appeared to Ezekiel in a vision, calling Ezekiel to be God’s prophet to his fellow Jews.  In that day and age, there were many prophets, but this calling was likely shocking for Ezekiel.  But things went from shocking to really bizarre, really fast, for Ezekiel.  God shut Ezekiel’s mouth so that he was not a typical prophet.  Ezekiel was not going to be standing on the street corner with a signboard and megaphone declaring the end of the world (at least not initially…).  Instead, he was a mostly silent prophet.

If he was silent, how did he communicate the word of the Lord? God asked Ezekiel to perform prophetic skits.  Remember the Prophetic Stare?  Ezekiel would step outside his house and “set his face against” something, just looking quietly at them.  Remember when God asked him to lay on the ground in front of his house for longer than a year?  Remember when God asked Ezekiel to build a model of Jerusalem and play with it?  Remember when God asked him to cut his hair and burn it?

All those stories are only the tip of the iceberg of the weird dramatic acts that God called Ezekiel to perform.  Why?  To get the people’s attention.  To call them to repent and return to God.  Their rebellion against God was what got them exiled in the first place.

Would you believe that sometimes Jesus followed the prophetic example of Ezekiel?  Am I saying that Jesus did skits?  Yes and no.  Jesus was an artist.  His creative stories are his most well-known works of art.  We call them parables, fictional short stories that communicated powerful truths about the word.

Often those stories were prophetic, speaking truth to power.  I’m not talking about prophecy in the sense of predicting a future event.  Jesus’ prophetic ministry was much more often the prophetic role of declaring the truth about the world as it really is.  In addition to the parables, Jesus sometimes borrows from Ezekiel’s dramatic playbook.  Next week on the blog we’re going to learn about one of those episodes.  If you want to see for yourself ahead of time, read John 2:12-25.

Just as Ezekiel’s skits were meant for Jews living over 2500 years ago in Babylon, but still had important implications for our lives now, this story from Jesus’ ministry will have just as significant applications for us.  We would do well to pay attention. Check back in on Monday!