8-26-18 Grace-Tucson Sermon

Pastor Tim Patoka Build On The Rock, Week 13: August 26, 2018 A Special Temple John 2:13-25 1) Jesus Is God’s Temple 2) Jesus Has All Authority It takes a lot of work and time to build something right. If you’ve been around Grace Lutheran for the past year, you’ve heard about our building plans of a church and Child Learning Center in Sahuarita. While we haven’t put a shovel into the ground yet, I’d be curious to see how many hundreds of hours have already gone into the process between the land search, the meetings, and the time spent in prayer. There’s nothing wrong about that. In fact, it’s wise to spend all this time beforehand so that when we do put shovels in the ground, we know how we want things to be. But even then, it is going to take a while to lay the foundation, build the walls and roof, put in the interior touches, and make sure everything passes city code. Even if you’re building something smaller, it takes a while. Say you wanted to build a single-family house from scratch. On average it takes as few as 4 months to as many as 16 months depending on how original you want it to be.

One does not simply build something in a matter of days or weeks. It takes time if you’re going to do it right.

In our verses for this morning from the Gospel of John chapter 2, we hear about two vastly different time frames to build a temple. For one it is 46 years; for the other it’s 3 days. Now we can wrap our minds around the 46 years when we account for the technology in Jesus’ time and the continual need to secure funds.

But 3 days for the other? That’s a construction miracle even by today’s standards!

And yet, 3 days is what it took to build the special temple that is the focus of our sermon this morning. For that special temple was not a physical building, but rather the physical body of our Lord. A body that he raised up 3 days after it was torn down to show that he has all authority.

1) Jesus Is God’s Temple If you would have gone to the temple in Jerusalem during the Passover Festival in Jesus’ time, you probably would not have pegged it as a house of worship because of what greeted you when entered its courts. You would have seen with your eyes, heard with your ears, and smelled with your nose a scene that would be more at home at a rural county fair than the center of worship for God. There were animals all over the place being sold for sacrifice and money changers nearby with their questionable scales and weights. If you were from out of town, 1

Pastor Tim Patoka Build On The Rock, Week 13: August 26, 2018 you would have appreciated having the option to buy your sacrificial animal in Jerusalem than having to transport them for miles from your hometown. But a line had been crossed when all those dishonest dealings were happening on the doorstep to God’s house distracting everyone who came to worship him. And so Jesus, consumed with zeal for his Father’s house, did this. “He made a whip out of cords, and drove all from the temple courts, 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! Stop turning my Father’s house into a market!’” (John 2:15-16) Jesus took immediate steps to get his Father’s house back to the original purpose – to be a place for worship and learning of God’s Word.

This rightly caused a ruckus in the temple courts. So the Jewish people asked Jesus what gave him the right to cast out the sellers of sacrificial animals.

And what is Jesus’ answer? As John records, “Destroy this temple, and I will raise it again in three days.” (John 2:19) Now it may not have been understood in that moment, but Jesus was talking about himself there. His future death and resurrection was the proof he gave to explain why he had the authority to cleanse the temple in such a drastic fashion. But before we get to that point of how Jesus’ death and resurrection gives him all authority, did you notice what Jesus calls himself? He calls himself a temple, a special place where God’s presence dwells and his promises are remembered. In him dwells the entirety of the Trinity and in him are all of God’s promises of salvation found.

This isn’t something people know by nature. When the Jewish religious leaders and other people in Jerusalem looked at Jesus, do you know what they saw? A regular looking Jewish people. Now he certainly didn’t commit any sins, but he got hungry and thirsty and sleepy just like any other person did. It wasn’t until they saw Jesus do miracles and teach his divine knowledge did they realize that he was something special. But even then, not everyone believed Jesus to be the Promised Savior. That’s because of who we are by nature, a sinful nature, that blinds us to Scripture’s truths and reject what Jesus says. We today still have that same sinful nature. While technology has improved so that it doesn’t take 46 years to build a temple building, we’re still no better off when it comes to matter of the faith. We’re dead in our sins and blind to the light that is Christ from the minute we have life in our mother’s womb. And you know what people think when they read about Jesus? That, if he even existed, he’s no more than an ordinary human who was made larger than life by the early Christian church because they were 2

Pastor Tim Patoka Build On The Rock, Week 13: August 26, 2018 desperate to legitimize their faith. That Jesus is nothing special in and of himself.

That’s what you and I used to think, at least before the Holy Spirit ripped into our sinful hearts and brought his gift of faith. And I pray that we may never deviate from that belief or give the impression that Jesus is nothing but a man. Because if Christ is nothing but a man, Christianity is nothing but a man’s religion. And therefore it can promise us nothing about the life that is come.

But Christ is more than a mere man. He is God’s temple, the physical embodiment of the wholeness of God in whom all his promises of salvation are found. And more than that, Jesus is God himself. So that when we read the words of our 1st Lesson from Isaiah chapter 53, we see how important it is that he was stricken, smitten, and afflicted. So that we can rejoice with these words from Isaiah, “Surely he took up our pain and bore our suffering, yet we considered him punished by God, stricken by him, and afflicted. 5 But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds we are healed. 6 We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to our own way; and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all.” (Isaiah 53:4-6) Because Jesus has died, we will not. Since the Lord has laid on our Savior the iniquity of us all, we have confidence that we are saved from our sins. And when this special temple was torn down on Calvary’s cross, it was raised back up 3 days later just as Jesus said in our verses for this morning. That stone which has been rolled away from the tomb shows the Easter truth: that our Savior has risen, that the special temple was been raised up, that Jesus is much more than a mere man. He is both God and man. And therefore Christianity has much to offer all people because our Savior has all authority.

2) Jesus Has All Authority Jesus’ death and resurrection is proof that he is a special temple, that he is both God and the Son of God. As a son has the authority to enter his father’s house, so he has the authority to keep it in order. But Jesus has more than the authority to keep worship centered on God. He has all authority for he is God and has power over all. As Jesus said at the Great Commissioning of his believers in Matthew chapter 28, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.

19 Therefore go and make disciples of all nations” (Matthew 28:18-19a) by baptizing them and teaching them everything that God has said in his word. It in this Word of God, the Holy Bible, where we find those authoritative blessings that Jesus has spoken. First and foremost this authoritative blessing is the forgiveness

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Pastor Tim Patoka Build On The Rock, Week 13: August 26, 2018 of sins. No matter how many they are or how bad they may be, God has taken your sins away. Jesus died for them on the cross so that you are declared not guilty for the wrongs you have done. We’re also learn in our verses that Jesus knows what is in everyone’s hearts, that he knows all things. And that’s a comforting truth for those who believe in Christ. He knows what our wants and needs are, he knows how best to provide for us in both our physical life and our walk of faith. And he will as he promises in his Word.

There are many other authoritative blessings that Jesus speaks to us in his Word. And I would like to encourage you to keep coming back here to Grace Lutheran so you can see what those are. Start your week off in the ways of God with our worship services and Bible studies. Dig deeper into the Lord’s authoritative Word during the week with one of our many midweek Bible studies in the greater Tucson area. Take God’s Word into your own hands with a private or family devotion on your own time. Because no matter how it is you get yourself into God’s Word, you’ll find yourself experiencing the same thing that Jesus’ disciples did after the resurrection. You’ll gain a new appreciation of the blessings he has already promised you. And because it comes from him, you know it comes with authority and certainty.

It takes a while to build things right: 46 years for the temple in Jerusalem, hundreds of hours in planning for our project in Sahuarita, and months to do a single-family house nowadays. But for the special temple in John chapter 2, it only took 3 days for it to be raised back up. The special temple that Jesus was referring to was himself, the physical embodiment of God and his very Son. As true man and true God, he was torn down as prophesied in Isaiah chapter 53 and near Jerusalem. It was also there where Jesus came true on his Word and raised himself up from the grave 3 days later. He, and he alone, is the special temple of God. He, and he alone, also has authority over all things. So that he when says something, we can believe it to be true no matter how impossible it may sound. A promise that we are renewed in whenever we come back to his Word and reread his authoritative blessings. May God grant us the faith to continue believing that Jesus is both God and man and trust in his authoritative blessings found in his Word.

Amen.

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