Ocean View Methodist

Women's Bible Study

February 24, 2011

READ John 2:13-17

• Think of something you really love, something really special to you.  Something really important to you.  
• For me, I think of something very close to my heart and my family.  That is Mexican food.
• This is something I am very passionate about, something that I take great pride in and find very important.  I feel it is my personal mission to pass on good Mexican food and inspire people by eating my Mexican food.
• This is something I pass down from my family, as my mother is Mexican-American. Her full name is Alicia Maria Delores Morena Mimiaga Collins.  When she grew up they would make fresh tortillas every day, and it was a normal day to have a house filled with the flavors and passion of Mexican food.
• This is something I care deeply about, so when I enter a place, a restaurant where they have bad Mexican food, I have a deep passion that comes out from within me and wants to fix it.  I cannot accept something that goes against the beauty and possibility of Mexican food.
• Because of my love, because of my passion, I can become enraged and filled with emotion about this kind of food I love

• Emotion and passion are things we find in Jesus as we follow his story as told by John in the Gospel of John
• John tells the story of Jesus going to the Temple early on in his ministry, and spares no detail to tell us about the rage and anger that Jesus feels upon seeing the state of the temple at this time

• It was actually the fulfillment of a prophecy that the Jewish Messiah would cleanse the temple, as stated in Malachi 3:1-4
• It seems that it has been known throughout history that God would come to fix the Temple, fix this place of worship and make right so many things that had gone wrong
• This white-hot anger would have been a terrifying and awe-inspiring thing

• We see this scene set in Jerusalem, who is the significant center of the Jewish faith and practices
• It was the annual passover feast, and for this celebration, any Jewish male within a fifteen mile radius was bound to attend it.
• But even beyond Palestine, all Jewish males would have been looking towards Jerusalem.
• It was a Jewish custom that no matter where in the world a man lived, he would make it to at least one Passover in Jerusalem
• It was likely that there was over two million Jews celebrating there with Jesus in Jerusalem
• Two things were happening in the Temple that day that made Jesus really angry.  The first was the Temple tax – it was a tax paid by Jewish worshipers for the temple, but the 'money changers' would charge a fee for changing the money around and would keep a large sum for themselves.  The other problem was that when people came to the Temple, they wanted to give a sacrifice to God, which needed to be a pure animal. There were stands at the temple selling 'pure' animals for exorbitant fees, and it was an unjust and immoral practice, taking advantage of the poor who journeyed for days or weeks to arrive at the temple.
• Jesus comes into the temple and 'cleanses' it.  He has a white-hot anger that could be seen for miles, and what He sees is unthinkable.
• Men have taken something so holy and special, and they have made it to be something unholy, self-serving, and monstrous.

• Humans have taken the beauty of God's worship and turned it into something that only serves themselves.
• I wondered what God had meant by Old Testament worship, the worship that Jesus comes upon in the Temple.  Here are some things we can know about this worship.

1. It was to be different – It was to be God’s way.  

• Deuteronomy 12:4 “You must not worship the LORD your God in their way.”
• We aren't supposed to look for worship that makes us feel or act in a way we desire, worship is supposed to be defined by God and for God

2. Worship involved going to a specific place.  

• Deuteronomy 12:11a “Then to the place the LORD your God will choose as a dwelling for his Name — there you are to bring everything I command you
• There were special and holy places that God set aside for worship, and when God would appear outside of those places, the worshipers would make a marker of that place to remember that God's presence was in that place.
• In our society, specific places are designated for important functions, and too, God wanted His people to go to a special place and worship Him

3. Worship involved sacrifice.

• Deuteronomy 12:11b “your burnt offerings and sacrifices, your tithes and special gifts, and all the choice possessions you have vowed to the LORD.”  
• Worship wasn't at all about what you would get – but all about what you could give from yourself to God.

2. Worship was in the presence of God.

• Deuteronomy 12:7 “There, in the presence of the LORD your God, you and your families shall eat and shall rejoice in everything you have put your hand to, because the LORD your God has blessed you.”
• In worship, we come before the Almighty, the Creator of the World, the Savior of our Hearts.
• Worship celebrated God and all He had done for His people.  They remembered His good works and looked forward with confidence that He would be working again.

• This was what Jesus longed for in coming to the Temple, and he found sin and selfishness and something meant to be holy twisted into something evil
• He knew that innocent people were coming to that place and falling prey to the money changers and sacrifice sellers, and also missing out on true worship.
• Nothing was more important to Jesus but that God's people would worship their Father God in Spirit and in Truth.
• True worship was everything for Him.

• We so often focus on the anger of Jesus in this story, and it seems so distant from the compassionate and peace-seeking Jesus we normally read about.  But this is the same Jesus, and it is the same God of the Old Testament
• Our God is a loving God, but He is also a just God.  He LOVES us too much to allow us to keep walking in sin, especially when it is about worship.

So there are two things we can take from this

1. We need the passion Jesus has about true worship.

• Have you ever thought about that, that we could sin in worship?  Intense, and something still the church misses.
• We need to seek out true worship in our churches, but this doesn't begin with more meetings, and it doesn't begin with calling everyone else out.  It begins with YOU and it begins with me.  
• You must be a true worshiper.  You must ask God to search your heart for the places where you are worshiping, but taking some for yourself or trying to protect yourself in some way.  Do you ever come to God for what He can do for you?  Do you ever try to make a deal with God?  Do you ever worship, but in your heart you are just following the motions?  Then Jesus would like to come and knock over the tables in your heart

2. We also need to know the place of Holy Anger.  

• Now with the New Testament covenant, God is not just in a Temple, but He is everywhere.  We can worship God anywhere and at any time.  We have a freedom to see Him at work in a way the Old Testament worshipers could have only dreamed of.
• But that means there are times for Holy Anger in our world too.  If there are injustices, if there is sin, if there are people who have turned their faith into something that isn't anymore of God, maybe it's time to turn over some tables!
• We have become so passive in the church, and when people are in sin or turning from God, we just watch and talk from the shadows.  Jesus would never had done this.  He loved us too much to let us stay in sin.  Why don't we love others enough to call out their sin.  Their response is not up to us.

• Tonight we are going to come to Jesus in worship, we are just going to being to pray, if you have a song to sing, then sing it, if you have a prayer you want to pray out, pray it, we are just going to create a spontaneous time of worship and pray that we would come to Him in spirit and in truth

John 4:23-24

23 Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in the Spirit and in truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. 24 God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in the Spirit and in truth.”