Tear Down This House
Hey there, family!
We are taking a break this week from gathering in person because of the possibility that some of you were potentially exposed to the Coronavirus last week as I taught. So rather than meeting in person this Lord’s Day, you are going to have the opportunity to lead and pastor in your own homes.
We are going to be back in the Gospel of John this week but we are going to do that, not by jumping back into John 9, we will save that for when I return back from my quarantine. Instead, we are going to build on the sermon that I delivered last week from Revelation 3 by revisiting a passage that we already considered earlier in the Gospel of John.
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TEAR DOWN THIS HOUSE
Open your bibles to John 2 and I’m gonna show you something that I skipped over when we previously looked at the passage. And my Bible Nerds, get ready because this is really cool.
READ John 2:13-22
This is a familiar passage to anyone who has spent time in the Gospels. In fact, it is probably safe to say that even if you had not, you probably know something about this scene. It is the first time in the Gospel of John that we discover that Jesus is not as safe as we probably imagined him to be. Is Jesus meek and mild, abounding in unwavering love for his people? He most certainly is. But that is not all that Jesus is. Jesus is also holy and righteous. Holy means he is altogether separate, unlike anyone or anything else in the entire Universe. And to say that Jesus is righteous is to say that he is perfect in all that he is and does, for all that he is and does is given to him and through him by his heavenly Father, the LORD.
John records for us, in John 5:19-20, that Jesus said he only does what he sees his Father doing. That tells us that Jesus did not just fly off the handle when he walked into the temple precincts that day. No, ma’am, he was doing exactly what he saw his Father doing.
On the surface, it would seem pretty clear to us why Jesus turned over the tables and drove the money changers out of his Father’s house. These money-changers were gouging faithful pilgrims who were at the temple to purchase animals for sacrifice. And these money-changers were there to exchange currency for the pilgrims who were bringing their foreign coins into Jerusalem. There is nothing wrong with that. In fact, the Law of Moses sanctioned the practice. The problem with these money-changers was that they were charging God’s people an exorbitant rate on the exchange of their currency. On top of that, we also understand from the passage that the Court of the Gentiles had been turned into the Ft. Worth Stockyards. John likely only mentions the release of pigeons on this occasion because pigeons were the sacrifice of the poor. And nothing makes God angrier than when someone commits an act of injustice against those who are on the margins of society.
READ Leviticus 25:35-37, Psalm 140:12, and Proverbs 14:31
Jesus was working out the heart of his Father at that moment. The anger that he felt at the temple that day and his fury moved him to cast out the money-changers, it was the wrath against sin that filled his own Father’s heart. And the anger that was kindled at that moment (and a thousand acts of injustices committed before) would culminate in the utter destruction of that temple.
ONCE. TWICE. HOW MANY TIMES DID JESUS CLEANSE THE TEMPLE?
If you pay close attention as you make your way through the Gospels you might notice that John has Jesus cleansing the temple at the beginning of his ministry while the Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, & Luke) each have Jesus cleansing the temple during the week of his crucifixion. And the reason why this is the case is not entirely clear. There is a lot of disagreement about why this is the case.
Some biblical scholars believe that Jesus only cleansed the temple once and that John likely moved this story forward, toward the beginning of his Gospel because he has a particular theological goal in mind that is supported by his particular literary rearrangement. Still others, the more conservative scholars, believe that the Gospel of John along with the Synoptics together tell the story of two separate and distinct episodes. There are good people on both sides of that question. But for the sake of our time right now, I am going be operating from the position that the more conservative view is correct. Namely, that Jesus cleansed the temple both at the beginning of his ministry and at the end.
!!!BIBLE NERD ALERT!!!
Now then, we are going to take a wild left turn. So mind your heads so that they do not bounce off the window.
Ready?
Here we go.
Let’s talk about leprosy for a moment. That’s right. You read that correctly. Leprosy.
Most of us, when we think about leprosy, we probably have an image in our minds of a colony of people who are milling around like zombies with parts of their bodies falling off or rotting away.
Most people imagine the Walking Dead in their mind’s eye because there is a disease today called Hansen’s Disease, which if left untreated, may result in the sorts of gruesome deformations of the body that you’d expect to see on an undead creature that would like to eat your brains. And it so happens, that Hansen’s Disease is also called Leprosy.
That zombie colony image is probably a significant departure from the reality of what was happening in Israel at the time when the scriptures were being recorded. While Hansen’s Disease would have certainly been considered a leprosy by the Israelites and Jews, that particular disease is too narrow an illness to account for what we find in the Bible. Eczema, Psoriasis, for instance, would have been considered a leprosy.
The very odd but interesting thing is, leprosy was not just an infection or condition that humans might develop, buildings could also be infected with the disease. That’s right, a family’s home could actually develop leprosy.
READ Leviticus 14:33–47
Notice the procedure that is taking place. If a leprosy is discovered in your house you would have it inspected by a priest and the priests would determine whether what you found was a leprosy. And if it was determined to be a leprosy there was a protocol for having it removed. And if the leprosy returned after having it removed, the entire house would be destroyed.
Think of it this way, if you hired Black Diamond Construction to do some renovations on your bathroom and Buddy discovered black mold growing behind one of your walls, depending on the size and scope of the infestation you might decide to call out a professional to mitigate the mold. What I am confident of though is that you would not then hire Architectural Salvage to come out to your property and demolish your home if the mold returned. That would be an obvious example of a cure being far worse than the disease itself.
Here is what you need to understand about that biblical and historical context that makes it different than our approach to removing toxic molds from our homes today. While the concern caused by discovering mold in your home 4,000 years ago may have included the health of the people living there, the concern that was experienced was not primarily about the family’s health. It was about their holiness and purity. And a home that developed a spot on the wall was considered unholy and impure. It was not just the house that would be deemed unholy. The people who were living there, if the leprosy was not removed, they would have been considered unholy as well.
So what does that have to do with Jesus cleansing the temple?
Let’s return to the Gospels and I will explain.
BACK TO THE FUTURE
In Matthew’s account of the temple’s cleansing —we will consider this the second time that Jesus has done this— Jesus quotes the prophet Jeremiah. He says, “‘My house shall be called a house of prayer,’ but you make it a den of robbers.” (Matthew 21:12-13).
Jesus is a very clever man. He is clever because he does not just quote Jeremiah, he quotes Jeremiah only after he has strategically placed himself in the same situation as Jeremiah was when he spoke these same words 700 years before. In Jeremiah 7 we find Jeremiah’s “Temple Speech”. In this speech, Jeremiah is standing in one of the gates leading into the temple’s courts. The episode very likely happened during one of the great feasts when it would have had the greatest impact and the largest audience. And Jeremiah stands up and begins to prophesy against the people of Judah.
READ Jeremiah 7:8-15
Jeremiah is warning the people that they had foolishly believed that they were safe from God’s judgment and the threat of their enemies because the temple was still standing.
The “den of robbers” imagery is really important and what I want you to see in this passage. What he is describing here is the empty and vain religious practice of the people. The crowds were full of people who were not keeping covenant with God. They were oppressing the poor, the widow, and foreigners visiting or living in their land, and then they would return to the temple to offer their sacrifices to God.
Jeremiah’s rebuke is sharp and strong. He says that the people are living like a gang of marauding thugs who go about committing acts of injustice and then shelter in the security of their stronghold, believing foolishly that their sins will not be discovered.
The people are the robbers and the temple has become their stronghold. And Jeremiah is warning them if they do not repent and reform their behavior, God will destroy their stronghold just as he destroyed Shiloh where the tabernacle once stood.
Jesus’ message was exactly the same as Jeremiah’s. The leaders of Jerusalem were mistreating the poor and ignoring the injustices experienced by the widows and the foreigners who were visiting and living in their land. And the consequences of their covenant disobedience would be exactly the same.
COMING FULL CIRCLE
With everything above in mind, if we now zoom out on the story of Jesus’ ministry —with John’s cleansing at the beginning and the Synoptics’ cleansing at the end— what we find is a peculiar correlation between the cleansing of the temple and cleansing a building where leprosy was found.
When Jesus visited the temple on Passover in John 2, he did not just see the money-changers defrauding faithful pilgrims out of their money, he saw leprosy. Not physical leprosy. It was the leprous and unjust abuse of the poor and the faithful. At that moment, as Jesus surveys the corruption that had infected the house, he steps into the role of priest and he removes the leprosy.
Jesus then returns a second time to survey the temple again. And in Matthew 21, we read that he sees that the leprosy that he had removed from the temple 3 years earlier had returned once again.
Do you remember what the protocol was in the Law if the leprosy reappeared in a house after it had been removed?
Leviticus 14:43 “If the disease breaks out again in the house, after he has taken out the stones and scraped the house and plastered it, 44 then the priest shall go and look. And if the disease has spread in the house, it is a persistent leprous disease in the house; it is unclean. 45 And he shall break down the house, its stones and timber and all the plaster of the house, and he shall carry them out of the city to an unclean place.
Doesn’t that sound just like what Jesus said as he was leaving the temple that very same day?
What did he say, you ask? Let me remind you.
Matthew 24:1 Jesus left the temple and was going away, when his disciples came to point out to him the buildings of the temple. 2 But he answered them, “You see all these, do you not? Truly, I say to you, there will not be left here one stone upon another that will not be thrown down.”
It would take a generation for that prophecy to be fulfilled, but it was fulfilled, 40 years later on the ninth day of the month of Av, in 70 AD.
And here is the really crazy part. The destruction of the second temple that Jesus foresaw, was destroyed on the exact same day on the calendar as the first temple was destroyed more than 600 years before. That’s right! The second temple was destroyed on the anniversary of the first temple’s destruction. And Jesus called it 40 years in advance, just like Jeremiah had predicted the razing of the temple in his day.
Coincidence, right?
THE HOME STRETCH
Now, let me see if I can pull all of these loose ends together for us and make some application.
The Jews in both Jeremiah’s and Jesus’ day believed that the temple was a symbol of God’s protection and that their religious behavior kept them in God’s favor. And to some degree they were right. God made his dwelling there in the midst of his people and he promised that covenant obedience would secure their safety and prosperity. However, at some point in their history, the people had lost their way. They were covenant-breaking people. While they were observing their appointed feast and offering sacrifices to the Lord, their religious practice was rejected by God because it was contaminated with the leprous abuse of the poor and marginalized in their cultures.
Our situation today, as those who are in Christ, is different from the situation of those who were in Israel. Their prosperity was contingent upon their obedience to the Law, while our prosperity is contingent upon the obedience and victory of Jesus. That being said, there are some principles here that transcend the covenantal divide between national Israel and the followers of Jesus.
God hates the exploration and abuse of the marginalized but he rewards those who seek peace and work justice on their behalf (Proverbs 19:17, Isaiah 58:10).
So here is what I’d like you to do. Spend a few minutes answer the following questions:
Who are the marginalized or the oppressed in our world today?
How are we participating in their oppression, whether actively or passively, if at all?
How are we responding to the cries for justice by the oppressed and the needs of the poor?
Has “church” and moral behavior become an empty and vain exercise for us?
Do we praise Jesus in song and attend church services faithfully while simultaneously ignoring the needs and injustice that surround us?
As I wrote at the very beginning, we are building on what was shared last week. And last week I asked whether the church bears any responsibility for the world that exists around us right now. The answer I offered was yes. And this week I want you to consider that the shaking in America that we are now experiencing, particularly within the church, whether what we are feeling is the crumbling walls of our leprous house. Perhaps what God is now doing is not far removed from what he did 2000 years ago.
Is it possible that Jesus is turning over the tables of a myopic American church that has focused too intently on the life that is to come and not enough time considering how to live obedient to Jesus in the life right now? Is he rooting out the leprosy of our spiritual lethargy, our passivity with regard to injustices, and our tendency to ignore the needs that exist around us?
I think that is a possibility worth considering.
WHAT SHOULD WE DO?
Just as we discovered last week from Revelation 3, Jesus stands ready to forgive us, to reform us, and to commune with us. All that we need do is to zealously repent. How do we do that? We get up when we hear Jesus knocking and we answer the door. And when we do that his promise to us is that he will sit with us and feast.
GOD IS NOT ANGRY WITH YOU.
Here is the really fantastic news. While it may be true that God is rooting out the corruption in our church, it is not true that he is angry with you. Displeased and grieved, perhaps. But he is not angry with us.
How do I know that?
Because before Jesus returned to destroy his Father’s corrupted house in 70 AD, he had already begun to build a new temple for his Spirit to dwell. And this temple is different than the previous temple. It is not a brick and mortar building and it is not fixed to a plot of land in Jerusalem. It is made out of living stones. And when I say living stones I mean us. And this temple spreads across the entire globe. It is us. We are his new and better temple.
We are God’s home. And in the same way that you would pay to have a leprous toxic black mold removed from your house, the Father pays an infinitely high price to remove the leprous stain of our sin from his. When Jesus died for us his blood was the bleach that killed our sin and made us white like snow. And when he did that, he made his people, his Church, a suitable temple for his Spirit to dwell.
Jesus willing did that for us.
Why?
Because he loves us. He loves his church. And he loves you.
Do you believe that? If you do, then begin living your today like you believe that it is true.
RESPONSE
Spend a few minutes discussing the sermon. What did you learn? Do you feel the Spirit leading you to change any of your patterns of behavior?
If you have elements available, consider sharing communion with one another.