John's Gospel, chapter 2.
On the third day there was a wedding
in Cana of Galilee.
Cana, as the verse describes, is in the
region of Israel known as the Galilee, which
is the northern region.
It's interesting that John identifies the city for
us because it helps us to understand a
little bit about why Jesus and his disciples,
Jesus' mother Mary, are at this wedding in
Cana of Galilee.
Cana is a city that is a very
short distance from the city of Nazareth where
Jesus was raised by Joseph and by Mary.
And when we take our trips to Israel,
we always visit Nazareth and Cana on the
same day because of the closeness of the
proximity.
And in those days, I mean, Cana today,
there's two Canas.
They don't even know which one it was
that Jesus was at as it relates to
this miracle.
But in those days, Cana would have been
a very, very small town.
And so you've got a wedding going on
in those days, and a wedding in those
days was a real celebration, especially in small
towns.
It was a real reason to gather together
and to enjoy one another's company.
When you lived in a small town like
that, you knew everybody else in town.
You watched all the kids grow up.
And here to watch them, Tevye's daughter Mary,
the tailor.
I mean, everybody knows each other.
Everybody knows everybody's business, this kind of thing.
And you watch them, and here they are.
I mean, where does the time go?
They're getting married.
How can you believe it?
And the excitement of going to a wedding,
the excitement that a wedding was in the
Hebrew culture.
Now, we live in a country where you
can get a wedding invitation and go, another
wedding?
I can't afford this.
But in those days, they didn't pick up
the San Francisco Chronicle or the Modesto B,
and on the Friday or the Saturday, look
in it and find listed literally 100 things
to do on that weekend with your time.
You didn't necessarily have two days off on
the week.
You didn't have four weeks of vacation.
You couldn't vacation all over the place.
That wasn't the way that things were.
There wasn't the kind of discretionary money that
we have in this culture, which is astonishing
in man's history.
So to have a wedding was a time
to come together to celebrate a special occasion,
maybe the only one in the whole town
this year.
And they went on for seven days.
And the families fed you for those seven
days.
That's pretty good.
Again, in a day when to go to
bed not being hungry, to have your stomach
full around the year, that was a big
deal.
I think I'm starving when I'm not stuffed.
It's a satisfying thing to be able to
eat, to be able to eat in this
kind of company, to be able to celebrate
an institution of God from the earliest section
of the Law and the Prophets.
The honor of God in doing it, so
they'd really get into it.
The mother of Jesus was there, Mary.
Now, both Jesus and his disciples were invited
to the wedding.
Now, you look at it and you wonder,
why in the world was Jesus and his
disciples invited to this wedding?
And from the context of it, it seems
to be that this was a family wedding
or a wedding involving someone very close to
their family.
Mary is very involved in this wedding, as
we're going to see in just a moment.
When they run out of wine, she feels
somehow in her involvement, she feels constrained to
rectify the situation.
It would seem that someone, either a family
member or someone very close friend of the
family, is being married here, and thus all
of them are present there.
And then the catastrophe happens in verse 3,
and when they ran out of wine, the
mother of Jesus said to him, they have
no wine.
Now, here's a culture in which hospitality is
like the biggest thing, and it would have
been a great embarrassment to the bride, to
the groom, to the family that was responsible
for supplying the wedding to run out of
the food and drink that was necessary for
the wedding, because hospitality was so highly prized.
And nobody wanted everyone for the rest, again
a small town, to people to 20 years,
40 years later say, now whose wedding was
that where they ran out of the wine?
Don't tell me, it's at the tip of
my tongue.
Nobody wanted that.
And yet they run out of wine, for
one reason or another, we don't know why,
but they ran out of wine.
Now, you run out of anything today, wine
or dip or chips or anything today, it's
like no sweat, I think Rayleigh's is still
open or Safe Mart or we could go
to Safeway or we could go to this
or then you got 20 stores you can
go to.
In those days, Cana was so small, they
didn't even have a Safe Mart.
I'm talking about small, it was pre-McDonald's
for there, kosher McDonald's, no cheeseburgers.
And so it's a catastrophe.
There is no wine to express hospitality through
for this group of people.
And Mary comes to Jesus and informs him
of the catastrophe.
And Jesus's response to her is an interesting
one.
I'm going to get a little bit ahead
of myself here.
Jesus said in verse four to her, woman,
what does your concern have to do with
me?
And then here's the key.
My hour has not yet come.
An odd thing, when you read it, she
comes and says they're out of wine.
I understand everything.
Woman, what does your concern have to do
with me?
I'm tracking okay there.
But then when he says my hour has
not yet come, it baffles me because somehow
it appears that Jesus understands that Mary is
asking more of Jesus than just to supply
more wine for the wedding.
Somehow she is asking him, in Jesus's mind,
to manifest himself as the Messiah of Israel
through miraculous provision at this wedding.
And he says to her, my hour has
not yet come.
Mary paid an enormous personal price all of
her born days to be the woman chosen
by God to bring the Messiah into the
world by virgin birth in order to fulfill
the scriptures.
She is blessed among women today in the
minds of Christians all over the world.
She did not have that blessing in that
day.
And later on in the book of John,
when we get to it, and Jesus is
confronting and confronted by the religious leaders, and
they get a little bit upset with the
fact that they can't trap this guy, and
one of them blurts out, we were not
born by fornication.
We're not bastards.
We're not illegitimate children in a day when
that was a tremendous stigma in a culture.
That was not just a slam against Jesus.
That was a slam against Mary.
And it was the widespread feeling or suspicion
concerning Mary all of the days of her
life.
And there is perhaps with Mary here the
desire in saying to Jesus, would you do
something spectacular here?
I've been telling people that you're the Messiah,
that you are virgin born, and if you
do something spectacular, maybe they will then recognize
you as the Messiah and accept the truthfulness
of the virgin birth.
I don't know.
It seems like there's a little bit more
happening there than just the request for wine
is as best as I can see it.
She's wanting her story to be often confirmed
by heaven, by the Lord.
Jesus' response to her in verse four again
is, woman, what does your concern have to
do with me?
Now the word woman is kind of harsh,
isn't it?
I don't know what your mother was like,
but I never called mine woman.
I would have been afraid to go to
sleep at night.
Clean your room, woman.
Those are the things you only say once
in life.
And I have a friend who is a
pastor.
The pastor is at Calvary Chapel.
Sometimes he comes and speaks here.
I won't identify him, but he has a
French Canadian accent.
And he for years referred to his wife
as a term of affection.
He called her woman.
So he'd say woman this or woman that,
you know, and it was a thing just
between them that worked, you know, not everybody
else understand it.
He finally had to stop referring to her
in that way because all of the women
in the church were so offended by it
and perhaps fearful that their husbands might take
a lesson or two from it or something
like that.
I don't know.
But he ended up stopping doing it.
And of course, you know, what it meant
in that culture and what it means in
this culture are two entirely different things.
It's not nearly as harsh in that culture.
And it would be the way we would,
it was a term of respect.
It would be what we would refer to
someone as lady.
It's a lady.
So it wasn't derogatory in any way.
It wasn't condescending.
He said, woman, what does your concern have
to do with me?
My hour has not yet come.
And his mother said to the servants, whatever
he says to you, do it.
Now that's as good a counsel as you
can give anybody in all the whole wide
world about Jesus.
You can sit down to a sentence, huh?
Whatever he says to you, do it.
Now there were set there six water pots
of stone according to the manner of purification
of the Jews.
Now the Jews had all of these purification
ceremonies for hand washing and all of these
different kinds of things.
And so they had these six pots and
were told here that the pots contained 20
or 30 gallons a piece.
So you put the six together, you've got
somewhere between 120 and 180 gallons of capacity
in these six spots.
And so there they are, they're sitting there
and all in that place used for that
purpose.
And Jesus said to the servants, fill the
water pots with water.
And they filled them up to the brim.
And I like those four words up to
the brim.
He tells them to fill the pots.
They fill the pots and more.
They obey him as much as was humanly
possible to obey the command.
They didn't fill it to the neck.
They didn't fill it halfway.
They didn't fill it three quarters of the
way.
They filled it to the brim.
And at this point, they have no idea
that he is going to turn this water
into wine.
They have no idea that the degree to
which they obey him is going to be
the degree to which he is able to
fully bless them.
And the way to be blessed in the
Christian life is to obey God's word to
the brim, to obey it and every command
as far as it can be obeyed, to
experience the fullness of every blessing that is
behind every command, not halfway, not three quarters,
not seven eighths, but all of the way.
I really, I have difficulty.
I'm glad for the people that I get
to serve with here at this church, including
you.
And I'm glad to be surrounded by, to
the brim people, to the brim in their
Christian life, to the brim in their service.
If you've ever worked with a clock watcher,
they're in it for the money.
Their heart isn't in it.
That's why they're a clock watcher.
I mean, nothing could drive me more crazy
than that.
You never get to the brim out of
them.
Paul wrote to the Corinthians and he said,
therefore, whatever you eat or drink or whatever
you do, do all to the glory of
God.
He wrote to the Colossians and he said,
and whatever you do, do it heartily to
the brim as to the Lord and not
to men serving with exuberance, serving with that
extra leading worship with the extra doing what
I do for the Lord with the extra,
with the fullness of it.
And surely the fullness of joy, which we
get to in a moment, because wine is
a symbol of that.
Then he tells them, draw some out now
and take it to the master of the
feast.
And so they took it.
And when the master of the feast had
tasted the water that was made into wine,
he did not know where it came from,
but the servants knew who, who had drawn
the water knew.
I don't know if they're like winking and
stuff, you know, we know what happens and
the whole thing.
And so they knew what happened.
The why water that's been made into wine
is brought to the master of the feast
and the master of the feast called the
bridegroom after he tasted it.
And he said to him, every man at
the beginning sets out the good wine.
And when the guests have well drunk, then
that which is inferior is put out, but
you've kept the good wine until now you
have reversed the whole way that things are
done.
That's the way that it was with wine
at weddings.
You put out the good stuff when people
still had their taste buds operating and they
didn't have a buzz on or anything like
that.
And they could appreciate the good wine and
that kind of thing.
And then after you've gone past that, you
can serve them anything and they won't know
the difference.
So you break out the Thunderbird, you break
out the Boone's farm, strawberry Hill.
I don't even know if they make these
things anymore, but nobody knows because by then
they don't have the capacity to appreciate in,
in all of this.
And so he commends the bridegroom.
He doesn't know that Jesus has done this.
He thinks that this is something the bridegroom
is.
And it's interesting that Jesus doesn't do anything
to kind of, you know, to expose those
that he's kind of covering for here.
It's the way he is.
This is you've reversed the pattern of inferior
going from superior to inferior.
That's how the Lord works.
The world always goes from the superior to
the inferior.
And I hope you know that, especially you
young people, they will only show you the
best at the beginning.
They'll never give you the slightest inkling as
if this is how good it is now.
And you just, you know, you know, cast
your sail with us and then it's going
to get better and all, always hiding the
fact that when you get lured into that
stuff in disobedience to the Lord, you're tasting
the best at the beginning.
It only goes downhill from there.
It's the way that sin is.
It's the way that rebellion against God is,
but God and how he operates, it goes
from inferior to superior.
And I don't know of a single person
that I've talked to at the end of
their life that ever has had a complaint
of living for the Lord all the way
to the brim.
That hasn't said, I am glad that I
have lived for him as fully as I
live for him.
I wish I had another lifetime to do
it even better.
Life has got nothing but better for me
in my walk with the Lord.
And so it's true of Jesus and wine
that a wedding is true of Jesus and
a human life.
He takes something inferior and he makes it
into something superior.
Now, one of the things that always interested
me concerning this miracle, since the gospel, according
to John, is built upon seven miracles with
the idea that they would cause a person
to come to a saving faith in Jesus
Christ.
And you look at the miracle of Jesus
turning water into wine and you can ask
John, Charm, why did you include that miracle?
What is the big deal?
I know that only God can turn water
into wine, but aren't there more spectacular miracles
that he did that could have been included
rather than this one?
Like Lazarus, when he's raised from the dead
there in John chapter 11, which is the
last miracle of the book.
And here you have Jesus, a miracle at
the wedding and then a miracle at a
funeral.
He's with us in the best and the
worst of times in life.
But isn't there something to top this?
Is this just kind of a little dog
and pony show turning water into wine?
What's the big deal in all of this?
Why is the first miracle that he records
the changing of water into wine?
Because what Jesus is doing here is much
more about much more than changing water into
wine.
Because what he is doing here in this
first miracle represents an endorsement of marriage as
understood by the Jews, by Jesus.
And you cannot use your miraculous power in
any higher way short of the resurrection than
to let all of the world know forever
and ever how important marriage is to you
and marriages to heaven.
That's what he's doing here.
That's what he's communicating.
He is endorsing marriage, which is an institution
of God.
And he's not endorsing marriage as defined by
the United States of America.
In this passage, he is endorsing marriage as
practiced by the Jews and as taught in
the Old Testament scriptures.
It is an endorsement of a family and
the family unit.
But what you have here is an endorsement
of a family by God's definition as a
building block of a human society.
The Lord does not endorse living together.
He endorses marriage.
You know, when I was a kid, nobody
lived together.
We didn't call it that.
We called it shacking up.
The terminology has always changed in order to
remove the sting.
But there is a point when a society
is in a free fall where you don't
help people necessarily.
And I don't know what the answer to
it is, except to call things by their
biblical terms.
But today, the terminology that's foisted upon me
and foisted upon us as a culture is
that people are living together.
But when I was a kid, maybe it
happened, but I didn't know it.
I did not know of a single one
of my friends or anyone where the parents
were living together or shacking up together.
There's plenty of sexual immorality, but they wouldn't
do that.
And now today, it is so prevalent and
people think that this is just another way
to live.
And what they don't understand is that they
are living a life and they are supplanting
an institution of God and they are living
in rebellion to that institution.
They are tearing down an institution of God
in our culture and in this world.
It is not an issue of a single
man and a single woman deciding to do
what they want.
Sin is far-reaching within a culture.
There are effects of it.
And for every person that chooses to live
together or to shack up or whatever it
might be or to fornicate, which is the
biblical terminology for it, it isn't just that
they are doing that, but they are doing
damage to the institution of God, the family
as it's defined by God, the building block
of any society.
And so the young boy and the young
girl, they live together, they fornicate together.
Then one day you get the phone call.
It hasn't been my experience for which I
thank God, but I have known many who
have.
They're living together in violation of everything that
you believe and everything that you raised that
daughter in.
Now the holidays come and they want to
come and stay in your house.
How am I supposed to view that boy?
Do you think I raised that daughter, my
flesh and blood, for your sexual expression in
adult life?
Do you think that that's what I dreamed
of for her?
Do you think I am happy that you
like her enough to fornicate with her, but
you don't love her enough to marry her?
And then you want to come and spend
the weekend in my house and I'm supposed
to like that.
How can there ever be a relationship based
upon respect when you have so disrespected me
in this way?
And now you have a fallout throughout the
entire family as a result of it.
In this passage, Jesus is endorsing marriage by
biblical definition.
He is not endorsing living together or fornication.
He puts his blessing upon this institution.
It's this one he's able to take it
from the inferior to the superior.
It's those that are living within the confines
of that institution and a commitment toward one
another that he's able to bless in the
way that he wants to bless and he
wants to bless.
And in all of this, Jesus is endorsing
not all of these new definitions for family
that are floating about in the United States
today.
He is endorsing marriage that involves a husband
and a wife and children being brought into
that God-instituted organism.
That's what he's excited about.
That's what he understands to be important for
the longevity of any culture.
Now, the marriage that Jesus endorses here, Jewish,
as laid out in the Old Testament, it
was spiritually and legally binding.
It would have required a writing of divorcement
to terminate the marriage.
No Jewish young man or no Jewish young
woman would have ever lived together and then
even remotely thought that this was acceptable before
God or acceptable in the law of Moses.
And I have continually over the years run
into mostly men, some of whom who have
claimed to be Christians and say, well, it's
just a sheet of paper.
Doesn't mean God knows what's in my heart.
Yes, God knows what's in your heart.
You have no commitment.
That's what's not in your heart to the
other person.
They say, well, it's of no real importance.
You know, it's just a sheet of paper
and all, but it is much more than
that in a society.
And it's more than that in the eyes
of God.
It's more than a sheet of paper.
He endorses it here.
And marriage is so important to the Lord
that he even makes it the imagery for
the relationship between Jesus Christ and the church.
That's what he uses to paint a picture
to the world for the beauty of the
relationship between an individual human being and the
body of Christ as a whole, and then
with him.
And it is marriage that represents this relationship,
not two people living together and fornicating.
It's interesting when you read all of the
statistics that the divorce rate among those who
live together prior to being married is actually
higher than the divorce rate for those who
do not live together.
Now, in the human mind, you would expect
it to be the opposite.
You say, well, you kind of tried each
other out and gotten to know each other
and all this kind of stuff and everything
and the whole deal.
And you'd think, wow, you'd have a much
higher success rate having lived together for a
little while.
But God knows what he's talking about in
all of this.
And there is a certain level of commitment
and respect on the part of one person
toward another when there is a desire and
a willingness to marry that is not present
in the other situation.
And everybody knows it.
You cannot violate God's word, who is the
maker of man, and expect that my wisdom
in violation of his word is going to
be better than how the maker knows he
made us.
You might have read a few months ago
in the newspaper, it's covered in the newspapers
and the magazines and all of this, that
Jewish school in New York, and they should
have known better, which they decreed about the
time of Mother's Day and then Father's Day,
that they will no longer allow for the
celebration of Mother's Day or Father's Day in
the school because it's not inclusive enough.
It does not give proper respect to the
new definitions of family, principally homosexual.
And when these young children are in this
school and they're talking about their mommy and
their daddy, that it causes those that have
two mommies or two daddies to be uncomfortable.
So who gets to change?
Out goes mommy and out goes daddy as
terms, and out goes Mother's Day and out
goes Father's Day.
And little by little you see God's definition
of the family unit disappearing before your very
eyes.
I've had the privilege to go to Europe
a number of times for one reason or
the other, mostly to go do something for
the Lord there.
And to go to Europe, I mean, you
see the most amazing castles, the most amazing
buildings, the most amazing, amazing, amazing, amazing things.
This is why tourists go, of course.
It's one of the most amazing scenery.
Though I'm pretty hung up on California.
I think it's the most beautiful part of
the world that I've ever seen.
I'm not which part of California, I'm just
saying.
You wouldn't catch me living on the coast
there with all that cool weather during the
summer.
No siree, not me.
And to me, and I don't know if
it's anybody else, but when I've walked through
those countries, my spirit is more grieved than
as if I walked into a seance, especially
in France and England.
Switzerland still has a strong Christian influence.
And there are Christians in all of these
places, but they've been overrun.
And you look around at what has happened
to their society under their own wisdom.
And they're the future.
That's the future of the United States of
America apart from people making a stand on
these issues.
And it may be even if we make
a stand in light of the Scriptures on
the last day.
I was talking with Chuck Fleming over there
last time we were there in York, England.
And we walked from the town center of
York out to where Chuck and Daryl and
the kids are living.
It's about a three-mile walk.
It's a beautiful walk.
And I was just talking with him about,
as I looked at these people and I
looked at everything going on, and I said,
tell me about society here.
Tell me about the family.
Tell me about these things.
And we began to talk about these things
and all.
I'm thinking, how are we going to reach
them?
I mean, where do you start here on
all this?
And we got to Chuck's house, and I
asked Chuck, I said, in this neighborhood that
God has put you in, how many children
do you know of that are being raised
by both their biological father and biological mother?
Chuck said, not one that I know of.
There may be some, but not one that
he knew of.
And on television in England, in all of
the advertisements and in the newscasts, you never
hear reference to husband or wife.
It's always partner.
So no one is offended by the moral
code of another, even if it's God's moral
code.
And so what a blessing here in this
passage that Jesus comes in knowing sometimes the
tide that people have to go against in
order to live faithfully for God and to
marry, and marriage is not always something that
is so easy.
I happen to be in an easy one.
She does everything I want and without a
peep, and it's so fabulous of the repent
a moment here, just a second on that.
But it really is.
It's an easy one.
We respect each other and we love each
other and we just kind of move forward.
There's no, you know, nobody's setting the house
on fire or anything like that, you know.
But you know, sometimes for others, there's, you
know, some things where maybe it's not as
easy for other people.
But this is what the Lord blesses.
And I would say to you, if you're
a young person, and of course, when they
do the newspaper articles, they always say that
the young people are abandoning marriage because the
terrible things and the lack of commitment, the
high divorce rate among their parents and all.
Listen, your parents did not institute marriage.
You haven't seen God's institution of marriage so
often.
So you can't throw it away because it's
been poorly represented by someone even as close
to you as your parents.
You have to look at it for what
does God say about it and the virtues
of it and the wisdom of it and
just the pure obedience to it.
And give yourself to that.
But I think that this passage represents and
communicates to us just Jesus's desire to bless
a wedding, bless a marriage, because, you know,
wine in the scripture so often is used
as a symbol of joy.
And here he is.
He makes sure that the supply of joy
is consistent, that it's always supplied.
In fact, superior joy, ongoingly superior.
And when a marriage is in his hands
and under his control, the joy gets greater
and greater and greater and greater.
And joy is superior to happiness.
Happiness is based upon having some kind of
things.
It's based upon some physical deal.
And it's based on something temporal.
Joy is a fruit of the spirit.
It's based upon something higher.
And you can be dirt poor and not
have two quarters to rub together and have
the most amazing joy in a marriage because
the Lord is the foundation of that marriage.
Joy is different from happiness.
Vastly superior.
Now, let me say for a moment before
we leave this, a little bit about Christians
and wine here in Gallo country.
And I'm kidding on that.
Sometimes people will look at this and they'll
say, well, Jesus turned water into wine.
You know, there's an excuse for drunkenness.
The Bible says that we're never to be
as Christians under the influence of anything other
than the Holy Spirit.
We're never to be drunk with wine.
The Christian, according to Romans chapter 14, is
supposed to take other brethren into consideration as
it relates to this and the wine, of
course, in those days, it was kind of
the drink that they drank, kind of like
the way people drink sodas today.
It was you put the wine a little.
The beverage would be you'd put a little
bit of wine in it or you'd have
a weak kind of wine.
It would kill all the amoebas in the
water.
So it made it safe to drink, but
it wasn't the high alcohol content necessarily that
we have today.
But the Bible says that we shouldn't partake
of something that would stumble a brother.
And I think that for the most part,
certainly for someone that's in my position, that
to partake in drinking of any kind would
stumble another person if they saw it or
certainly have great potential to do it.
And the Bible says that love tells you
to put your liberties away in order to
do that.
And I think as Christians, we also have
to be considerate of the fact in all
of this, in terms of any and all
alcohol, is that there can be a large
number of people in the body of Christ,
just as is the case in the world,
who have a difficulty with alcohol.
And so they don't need the aggravation.
They don't need the temptation.
They struggle with it.
So why would I bring that in before
them?
And so this beautiful miracle that was done
and then the effect of the miracle upon
the disciples, this beginning of signs, Jesus did
in Cana of Galilee and manifested his glory
and his disciples believed in him.
And after this, he went down to Capernaum,
he and his mother and his brothers and
his disciples, and they did not stay there
many days.
Now, the Passover of the Jews, which was
a religious feast of the Jews, was at
hand and Jesus went up to Jerusalem.
Now they're in the north at Capernaum.
And when they're going south now to Jerusalem,
you think they'd be going down to Jerusalem,
but they don't.
Always in the scriptures, when they talk about
going to Jerusalem, they talk about going up
to Jerusalem.
And the reason they do is that Jerusalem
is an elevated city.
It's on a mountain, it's on a plateau.
And so you always went up to Jerusalem.
And that's why when you read the psalms
and those final psalms of the 150 of
those psalms, many of them are called the
psalms of ascent.
They were the psalms that the pilgrims would
sing when they were ascending up into Jerusalem
from the low country up into the city
of Jerusalem.
So they go up into Jerusalem and Jesus
found in the temple those who sold oxen
and sheep and doves and the money changers
doing business.
Now, when he comes to the area, and
it's not in the temple itself, the temple
building, it's on the temple grounds.
And he goes up there and they're selling
oxen and they're selling sheep and they're selling
doves on there.
And it was a practice that probably began
innocently enough because when people would come from
all over the world, the Jews would come
to offer sacrifice during these great feast days.
And they would have to bring a lamb
or an animal without spot and without blemish.
And if you're coming a hundred miles or
hundreds of miles or a thousand miles to
bring that lamb with you or to bring
that goat with you or whatever, or the
dove with you, I mean, that really made
a trip a lot longer.
And so they realized that this created kind
of a hardship for the people.
And so someone had the bright idea, somewhere
along the line apparently, that let's provide some
animals here that they can just bring their
money with them, buy the animal, and then
sacrifice it.
They don't have to deal with it on
the journey.
Well, it was a good idea.
And good ideas kind of catch on.
And so people begin to take advantage of
this convenience and everything.
And then pretty soon somebody's eye got on
it and realized, hey, this is very, very
popular.
I think we could make some money off
this.
And then they began to reject any of
the animals under false, you know, kind of
ways.
They'd find something on the animal that wasn't
really there and say, no, you can't offer
that.
You got to buy one of these.
And they're forcing everyone to buy these animals.
And they're charging a fortune for the animals.
That's what's going on in the scene.
Jesus comes into it.
And I love the way that John puts
it here by the Holy Spirit.
He sees them doing business.
Verse 14.
The money changes the same way.
You couldn't offer Roman money, and Roman money
is what everybody used.
Couldn't offer Roman money to God.
Roman money had a face on it.
Because it had a face on it, the
Jews considered it to be an idol.
So you would have to take the money
and you would have to exchange it into
Hebrew shekels and then offer that money to
God.
Because on the Hebrew shekel, there was always
some kind of an agrarian symbol on it.
Take the offering here.
I was to declare to you that we
no longer accept the United States currency for
our tithes and our offerings.
Now, you have to understand, for the Jews,
it was mandatory to give.
Certainly considered that to be in their mind.
It was mandatory for us to give.
But I mean, for them, there's no question
about it.
And what if I said, listen, we're not
accepting the United States currency.
We're only accepting Calvary bucks, which we're exchanging
out in the fellowship hall at 25%
exchange rate.
What would happen?
Well, you'd probably find another church.
But let's say you lived in a town
where there wasn't another one.
There are no options.
You might do it out of your love
for God, but you'd grind your teeth.
And the Lord recognized what these people were
doing.
And the whole operation was now under the
supervision of the high priest.
And they actually, with the number of pilgrims
that would come in, they would come in
like a million pilgrims for each one of
these three great feasts.
And all you've got to do is make
a buck or two off of each one.
And it's said by Josephus that in that
day, they were making millions of dollars equivalent.
They're making a fortune.
And so Jesus comes in and he sees
this whole thing and he sees that this
thing has turned into a business.
And may I say to you that almost
all of the ministry models that I receive
through the mail are business models for the
church.
They're what works.
This is what you do.
And then they do this.
And the Lord has never been thrilled with
a business model because the bottom lines of
business is always numbers and money.
And that doesn't matter to God.
His model is always a servant model that
the leaders exist to serve the body, not
to fleece them.
So he looks at this whole scene and
he's troubled about it and he makes a
whip of cords.
I don't know how long it took him
to make it, but he made it and
he drove them all out.
There's some strength there.
He drove them all out of the temple
with the sheep and the ox and he
poured out the money, the changers money, and
he overturned the table.
I mean, he just, the whole place goes
up in smokes here.
And he said to those who sold doves,
and it's interesting because the doves were the
offering for the poor.
These guys couldn't even keep their hands off
the poor.
And he told them, take these things away.
Do not make my father's house a house
of merchandise.
And he scatters them out.
These guys, now sometimes you think about these
guys that are doing all of this stuff
and everything.
These are not wimpy people.
And Jesus begins to do what he does
and just the anointing upon him.
Nobody even tries to stop him on what
he's doing.
And I have a sense, as we'll see
next week, that anyone with a conscience left
knew that this man was doing what was
right in that place.
And Jesus does what?
He cleans house.
He said, take these things away.
Do not make my father's house a house
of merchandise.
He cleans the house out, which is very,
very interesting in terms of the timing, because
the feast of Passover was a single day.
It was a one day feast, but God
adjoined to that one day feast, a seven
day feast called the feast of unleavened bread.
And during that seven day feast, the Jews
would go through the entirety of their house.
And if they had any leaven, which was
a symbol of sin in the Old Testament,
the leaven was to be removed.
Not that they were just to remove the
physical thing of leaven from their house, but
they were to check their entire house for
any corruption that had been brought into their
house over the course of the preceding year.
It was a way in which God instituted
for people, his people to stop and consider
everything in their house in the light of
him at least once a year.
It's not a bad thing to do.
And so what does Jesus do?
He knows that since everyone else is cleaning
their house in the light of the feast
of unleavened bread, he says, well, I might
as well clean my father's house out of
all of the corruption.
And so he drives it all out.
Then his disciples remembered that it was written
zeal for your house has eaten me up.
Now, let me say this.
For those of you who have trouble with
your temper, trouble with your temper is a
nice way to put it.
Let's let's let's put it this way.
Those of you who are dealing with the
sin of wrath and anger, I know nothing
of it.
You cannot take this and say, yeah, but
you remember Jesus, you know, and I mean,
all manner of fleshly anger, you know, is
attempted to hide behind this this thing.
All of this was a righteous, righteous anger
that was expressed here.
And so the Jews answered and they said
to Jesus, what sign do you show us
since you do these things?
Now, this is kind of the temple security
and they had temple police.
It's a pretty big kind of tough, brawny
guys.
And it was their responsibility to keep peace
there in that temple area.
They come to Jesus and they said, what
sign do you show us since you do
these things?
And Jesus answered and said to them, destroy
this temple.
And in three days, I will raise it
up.
And these Jewish men said to him, it
has taken 46 years to build this temple
and will you raise it up in three
days?
But he was speaking of the temple of
his body.
And therefore, when he had risen from the
dead, the disciples remembered that he had said
this to them and they believe the scripture
and the word which Jesus had said.
So they asked for his authority.
To clear the temple.
He said, I'll give you a sign that
will reveal to you that I have not
only the authority to cleanse this temple, but
I have the authority to do anything I
want because I am the son of God,
because on the third day I will raise
myself from the dead.
What is my authority?
I cleansed this temple in the authority of
being the Messiah and the son of God.
That's what he's saying to them.
It's 46 years to build this temple.
They've been building it for 46 years.
They had a workforce of 18,000 men
who worked nonstop for 46 years on that
temple.
Now, those of you who are contractors, you
tell me what you could build in 46
years with 18,000 people, slave labor, and
unlimited resources to give to it.
And they would spend another 20 years building
it.
And they would finish at 1967, 68 AD,
they would finally get finished building this temple.
And the amazing thing, no, in 66 AD,
they finished building the temple.
And then in 67 AD, the Jewish revolt
against the Romans began culminating in the destruction
of Jerusalem and the temple.
In 70 AD, they didn't even have a
year to enjoy it.
And why was God not troubled with the
destruction of the temple?
Because he no longer abided in that temple.
He had departed the temple in the Old
Testament long before.
And he had created on the day of
Pentecost, a new temple made up of living
stones called the body of Christ.
That temple meant nothing to him any longer.
And when he was in Jerusalem at the
Passover during the feast, many believed in his
name when they saw the signs which he
did.
But Jesus did not commit himself to them
because he knew all men and had no
need that anyone should testify of man, for
he knew what was in man.
There's something about the commitment of these people.
In verses 23, 24, and 25, that Jesus
looks at and says, that's not a commitment
I'm going to commit to.
Something superficial about it, and he knows it.
And it appears that the superficialness of the
commitment is because their faith was based upon
the miracles that he was doing.
But whatever it is, he doesn't like it
and he doesn't commit to it.
And then in John chapter three, as we
look at Lord willing next week, we see
a faith that he will commit to.
In his dealings with Nicodemus, signs and wonders
are never a great faith for having in
God based upon signs and wonders, faith comes
by hearing, hearing by the word of God,
faith comes by hearing the word of God.
And a faith that is based upon the
word of God is a faith that's going
to be unshakable because the word doesn't change.
But miracles, sometimes God does them, sometimes he
doesn't do them.
And so if I have a faith based
upon miracles, then when he doesn't do the
miracle that I want him to do, then
my faith is shot.
And here you've got this relationship that's up
and down, and I'm in with him, and
I'm out with him, and I believe in
him, and I don't believe in him, and
the whole kind of thing that goes on.
Maybe that's what's going on here.
But Jesus is going to make sure with
Nicodemus that it's going to be a faith
that's based upon the word of God and
a clear understanding of who he is and
what he's about.