Third Avenue Baptist Church
Louisville, KY
1 Corinthians 8:1–13
May 11, 2025

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Third Avenue Baptist Church
Louisville, KY
1 Corinthians 7:17–40
May 4, 2025

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Third Avenue Baptist Church
Louisville, KY
1 Corinthians 1:1-17
February 2, 2025

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Third Avenue Baptist Church
Sunday School — The Gospel of John Series
December 22, 2019

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Third Avenue Baptist Church
Sunday School — The Gospel of John Series
December 8, 2019

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Third Avenue Baptist Church
Sunday School — The Gospel of John Series
December 1, 2019

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Third Avenue Baptist Church
Sunday School — The Gospel of John Series
November 17, 2019

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Third Avenue Baptist Church
Sunday School — The Gospel of John Series
November 10, 2019

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Third Avenue Baptist Church
Sunday School — The Gospel of John Series
September 8, 2019

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Third Avenue Baptist Church
Sunday School — The Gospel of John Series
June 30, 2019
Father, we thank you that you give us this unspeakable privilege, opening your book, reading it aloud, and then going back to understand it. Father, we pray that you will give us that understanding even as you gave us your Word. We pray this in the name of the incarnate Word, the Lord Jesus Christ, Amen. 
When we arrive at John chapter nine, we arrive at one of the pivotal chapters, I think in all of Scripture. I will say that this is one of those chapters that reveals whether or not we are prepared to read the Bible as Christians. You say, isn't that true of every text? Yes, it's true of every chapter and every verse, but there are some particular chapters that present particular issues. The issue of belief and unbelief are just thrown into dramatic contrast and in ways that will often shock many believers. There are some explosive moments in this passage. John nine is a big chapter. I'm gonna do what might appear to be a little unpredictable here in the beginning. I have a particular purpose in reading the entire chapter aloud together before making a single comment about the text.
One of my purposes in doing this is to reveal one of the attributes of scripture as God's Word, which is the fact that it is self explaining. If you read the text carefully, reading the text as the text is written, there is an absolutely astounding self-explanatory character to the text. But I'm talking about the text rather than reading the text, so let's turn to the Word of God, John chapter nine and read the text together. 
“As he passed by, he saw a man blind from birth. And his disciples asked him, ‘Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?’ Jesus answered, ‘It was not that this man sinned, or his parents, but that the works of God might be displayed in him. We must work the works of him who sent me while it is day; night is coming, when no one can work. As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.’ Having said these things, he spit on the ground and made mud with the saliva. Then he anointed the man’s eyes with the mud and said to him, ‘Go, wash in the pool of Siloam’ (which means Sent). So he went and washed and came back seeing.
The neighbors and those who had seen him before as a beggar were saying, ‘Is this not the man who used to sit and beg?’ Some said, ‘It is he.’ Others said, ‘No, but he is like him.’ He kept saying, ‘I am the man.’ So they said to him, ‘Then how were your eyes opened?’ [11] He answered, ‘The man called Jesus made mud and anointed my eyes and said to me, ‘Go to Siloam and wash.’ So I went and washed and received my sight.’ They said to him, ‘Where is he?’ He said, ‘I do not know.’
They brought to the Pharisees the man who had formerly been blind. Now it was a Sabbath day when Jesus made the mud and opened his eyes. So the Pharisees again asked him how he had received his sight. And he said to them, ‘He put mud on my eyes, and I washed, and I see.’ Some of the Pharisees said, ‘This man is not from God, for he does not keep the Sabbath.’ But others said, ‘How can a man who is a sinner do such signs?’ And there was a division among them.  So they said again to the blind man, ‘What do you say about him, since he has opened your eyes?’ He said, ‘He is a prophet.’
The Jews did not believe that he had been blind and had received his sight, until they called the parents of the man who had received his sight and asked them, ‘Is this your son, who you say was born blind? How does he now see?’ His parents answered, ‘We know that this is our son and that he was born blind. But how he now sees we do not know, nor do we know who opened his eyes. Ask him; he is of age. He will speak for himself.’ (His parents said these things because they feared the Jews, for the Jews had already agreed that if anyone should confess Jesus to be Christ, he was to be put out of the synagogue.) Therefore his parents said, He is of age; ask him.’
So for the second time they called the man who had been blind and said to him, ‘Give glory to God. We know that this man is a sinner.’ He answered, ‘Whether he is a sinner I do not know. One thing I do know, that though I was blind, now I see.’ They said to him, ‘What did he do to you? How did he open your eyes?’ He answered them, ‘I have told you already, and you would not listen. Why do you want to hear it again? Do you also want to become his disciples?’ And they reviled him, saying, ‘You are his disciple, but we are disciples of Moses. We know that God has spoken to Moses, but as for this man, we do not know where he comes from.’ The man answered, ‘Why, this is an amazing thing! You do not know where he comes from, and yet he opened my eyes. We know that God does not listen to sinners, but if anyone is a worshiper of God and does his will, God listens to him. Never since the world began has it been heard that anyone opened the eyes of a man born blind. If this man were not from God, he could do nothing.’ They answered him, ‘You were born in utter sin, and would you teach us?’ And they cast him out.
Jesus heard that they had cast him out, and having found him he said, ‘Do you believe in the Son of Man?’ He answered, ‘And who is he, sir, that I may believe in him?’ Jesus said to him, ‘You have seen him, and it is he who is speaking to you.’ He said, ‘Lord, I believe,’ and he worshiped him. Jesus said, ‘For judgment I came into this world, that those who do not see may see, and those who see may become blind.’ Some of the Pharisees near him heard these things, and said to him, ‘Are we also blind?’ Jesus said to them, ‘If you were blind, you would have no guilt; but now that you say, ‘We see,’ your guilt remains.’”
Boom. Wow. Here's this passage in which all of John's characteristic irony, in contrast to the other gospels, comes through in one grand narrative. Irony is powerfully disclosive. John is the master of irony in all of the New Testament. He demonstrates, as the Holy Spirit inspired him to write this Gospel, that Jesus used irony in teaching. You think the story's supposed to go this way, but it swerves this way.
Irony is sometimes described as two things put together in unresolvable tension. You see that here. Irony will make you smile. That's the reason why irony is the most sophisticated form of humor. This is the distinction between slapstick humor and the master of irony in contemporary American culture, who would be Seinfeld. It's a humor that you get, rarely by laughing out loud with a soundtrack. It's more the wry smile. Irony means there's an inside and an outside. If you get it, you're on the inside. If you don't get it, you're on the outside, which is exactly the point of the passage.
The stunning irony in the passage is that the people who think they're on the inside are actually on the outside. The people who think they're seeing are the people who don't see and the people who don't see actually do see. And then it's in the play of the word, ‘know’ in John chapter nine, the word ‘know’ plays this hugely ironic thing. They go to the man who was born blind and they said, ‘What do you know?’ He says, ‘I don't know what I know.’ ‘Well, who healed you?’ ‘I actually don't know.’ ‘Well then what do you know?’ ‘Oh, I know I was blind. And now I see.’ ‘Well, how do you know that?’ Then they begin to suspect that he wasn't even actually blind. He'd been playing blind for his entire life, just to show up the Pharisees at this moment. It's an astounding passage. But even as it's an astounding passage in its irony, it's astounding in its testimony to the sovereignty of God and the purpose of life. 
Look at the beginning verses, “As he passed by,” and this is Jesus passing by, presumably on the way to the temple, “As he passed by, he saw a man blind from birth.” It's just a fact here. This is not someone who became blind by accident or illness. This is a man who was born blind and in the first century to be born blind was a horrifying reality because being blind, one could not care for oneself. The assumption in the twisted theology of the time was that this was the curse of God. Being blind meant you could not work. You were reduced to begging. Blind beggars lined the way to the temple, hoping for alms, so that the Jews going to give alms as a part or their religious duty would see the blind and give to them. 
He was a beggar. It's a very low state. The assumption in a bad theology, we have to watch this, a conventionally minded theology in contrast to a Christian theology says, “If someone is in this state, then they deserve it. If someone is born with this deformity, God must not like them as much as God likes me.” It is such a thing that in much of the world today, and in particular in Asia, there is a theological avoidance of people who have deformities. It is bad karma even to be in their presence. Throughout much of the middle east, as in the time of Jesus, babies who were marked by these afflictions might just be set out. Of course, the ancient Greeks and Romans did the same thing, just as infanticide. Babies just abandoned and allowed to die. But this man's parents did not do that. Thus, he survived. But notice what happens. His disciples ask him, “Rabbi who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” There's that conventional theology. It's a bad theology. It's a very bad theology. Sometimes, here's what we have to watch, inside God's people who operate out of what they think is a basic Biblical theism, bad theology can infect invisibly until it comes out just as it comes out here. So the disciples ask the question. They're not embarrassed to ask the question. They assume it's kind of an obvious question. Who sinned that this man was born blind. Was it he? Or was it his parents?
Their assumption is that where there is a man born blind, there was a sin, someone's sin who is behind this. That's insidious. Notice how deadly that is. That means that in this case, if someone is blind, then you can blame him for the blindness. This must be God's judgment upon his sin. Well, especially if someone's born blind, then that's really tough. This must be some kind of family heritage sin, or even some kind of prenatal sin. Who sinned, this man or his parents? Maybe his parents sinned and God's judgment upon their sin was to strike their son blind. It's an insidious, corrupted theology, but it’s easy to see how this sneaks in. It's easy to see how we would ask such questions. Cause and effect in the universe, how are we to understand this? 
By the way, who sinned that this man was born blind? There is a right answer to that question, that is Adam. To be even more correct, we sinned in Adam. The Fall brings blindness, deformity, deafness, everything bad into the world with the effects of sin. There is no rhyme or rhythm. There is no theological guide to why there is this kind of birth defect of blindness. 
Sometimes there is a cause and effect in sin. Someone gets drunk, causes an accident, and there's an injury; you can draw that. Someone climbs a tree and falls out of it; you can draw that. But someone born blind? You can't. 
The text not only raises this, it puts it very clearly that the disciples are holding to this theology. It's the conventional theology of the time. It's rancid but it's conventional. So, they ask who sinned, this man or his parents? Jesus's answer is astounding. He says, “It was not that this man sinned or his parents, but that the works of God might be displayed in him.” I said, this is one of those passages that reveals whether you read the Bible as a Christian or not. If you read and understand what Jesus just said, it throws the entire world upside down. Jesus says straightforwardly that this man was born blind for this moment. It either is or isn't true. If it isn't true then we're stuck with that conventional theology. If it is true then God's sovereignty extended in this case to understanding that before the creation of the cosmos, before the incarnation of the Son, the Father arranged that this man who was born blind would be in this place, at this time, therefore Jesus to heal him, that the works of God might be revealed in him. 
That's exactly what Jesus says. Jesus says, “It was neither this man nor his parents who sinned but that the works of God might be revealed in him.” It is an astounding statement of divine purposeness. This tells us bluntly that there are no accidents in the universe. There are no accidents. There's no, “Oh, that just happened in the universe.” Everything is tied to the sovereignty of God, the meticulous Providence of God and there is purpose that we don't get to see into everything. Jesus says, “I'm gonna tell you the purpose in this case. This man exists and he was born blind because I am about to do something in him to reveal the glory of God.” That's why. We're either gonna read that as Christians or not, because that is a real demand on the reader. You either believe this or not, because Jesus says it straightforwardly. You can try to come up with all kinds of theological ways to define away the Providence of God, or to try to throw in contingency or chance or to say, “There is no ultimate meaning to these things,” but Jesus says, “Oh yeah, there's an ultimate meaning to everything. There's an ultimate meaning to every atom and molecule. You may not know it. You may not see it. In this case, I’m going to tell you what it is, because I'm about to do something.”
It's an astounding statement of the sovereignty of God. Jesus said, “It was not that this man sinned or his parents, but that the works of God might be displayed in him.” Now, hold on a minute. In verse four, he speaks of the works of God. He says, “We must work the works of him who sent me while it is day; night is coming, when no one can work.” John 9:4 is one of the theme verses of my life. I think of it every single day. It is a statement of our purpose and the stewardship of our time in this life. We must work the works of him who sent me while it is day. Night is coming when no one can work. In this life, we are given day to work, but night is coming when no one can work.
The Quaker theologian, Elton Trueblood, on whom I wrote my honors thesis at Sanford many years ago, a man who I got to meet, one of the American figures of the 20th century, he wrote his memoir and entitled it, “While it is Day”. I thought, “If the Lord gives me the opportunity to write a memoir, I’ll be very tempted from this very same verse to use that title ‘While it is Day’.” That is our purpose. That is our assignment. We work while it is day. Night is coming when no man can work, but it is not here yet. Until it is night, we've got work to do. 
We work while it is day. Jesus says something else here. We must work the works of God. Now you may remember that in John chapter six, Jesus warned people about using this language. This very same language is what the people who went across the sea to find Jesus the next day, after the feeding of the 5,000, and they said, “What must we do to work the works of God?”Jesus makes very clear, you can't, but here he's talking to his disciples. They can. Okay, so that's fantastic. It turns out that now there's an outside. Outside Christ, you can't work the works of God, but inside Christ, you can. These are Christ’s disciples. He says, “We must,” not I, it's we, “must work the works of him who sent me well to this day.” 
Then he says, “As long as I'm in the world, I am the light of the world.” Now he's already said that he's the light of the world and he says that again. In the gospel of John, Jesus often does not repeat these ‘I am’ statements, but he does so here. Why? Because he's about to shine light. As long as he's in the world, he's the light of the world. Notice what he does. There's no break in the text. He doesn't say, “I'm going to explain this by showing you something, boys.” Instead the text tells us, that “having said these things, he spat on the ground and made mud with the saliva. Then he anointed the man’s…”, hold on the man’s?
Now he's not the blind man. He says “the man”. “He anointed the man's eyes with the mud and said to him, ‘Go wash in the pool of Siloam’, which means ‘sent’.” He's a blind man. All the disciples see is the blind man. Jesus sees a man. He doesn't see a blind man, but he sees an opportunity for the light of the world to bring light into this man's eyes as a sign. That is John's word for the miracles, a sign. It is always a sign of something more than just healing. That is exactly what happens here. Jesus spits into the ground and makes mud. This is gross. It is disgusting, which is the point, it turns out. Jesus takes mud and spittle and he makes a paste and he puts it on the man's eyes. Now what was the man made of? Dust. Jesus made him. The one who made him out of dust now takes dust and spits on it and puts dust on the dust he made, called a man, and tells him to go wash. John helps us to see that Jesus' miracles or signs of healing are reversals of the curse.
We have Genesis one, Genesis two, we have the Edenic garden. We have humanity in the garden before the Fall. After the Fall, things go badly. Before the Fall, there would have been no blindness. Before the Fall, there would have been no lameness. There would have been no deafness. There would have been no death, no injury. But on the other side of the Fall, horror. But Jesus is the Lord of all, the Lord of creation, the Word through whom the worlds were made, John has already told us. He takes the very stuff he made, dust, and spits on it and puts it on the one he made, the man. Then he tells him to go do something, to go and wash. Washing is a very important metaphor. There's a before and after washing. That is what he does. 
Notice the structure of the text. The structure of the text here in John chapter nine is so sophisticated. John writes with such elegance under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. There is a triple form that turns into poetry in this text. You are going to hear it again and again and again, and you are going to start to recognize it. You'll notice that we are told what the man did. What did he do?
Notice in verse seven, “So he went and washed and came back seeing.” He went and he washed and he came back seeing. He went in obedience and he washed in obedience and he came back seeing. Now, if someone was given sight having been born blind, how would you describe that he has been given the gift of sight? John says he came back, seeing. He left blind, but he came back, seeing. It's a present participle. It doesn't say, “He started to see”, or “He had been given the gift of sight”. It just says he came back seeing. So, present participle, he's now a ‘See-er’.The man who was blind from birth is now seeing, he came back seeing. 
If the text ended there, how magnificent would that be? But it doesn't end there. Instead it turns to the context. Jesus is now gone. Jesus was evidently gone when he came back seeing. Jesus having seen the man and having anointed his eyes and telling him to go and wash, the man went and he washed and he came back seeing, Jesus isn't there, but the neighbors are. Now remember, he's seeing everything for the first time. They've seen him his entire life, but he's never seen them before. He came back seeing and it turns out that's going to be a powerful metaphor because he's seeing not only with his eyes, he is seeing theologically what he never saw before and what the people who have perfectly good eyes obviously cannot see. It starts with his neighbors.
“The neighbors and those who had seen him before as a beggar were saying, ‘Is this not the man who used to sit and beg?’” Okay, so here's John's irony which is not hilarious, but it is intentionally humorous. One of the classic structures of humor is to reveal human foolishness, human foibles, and that is what is going on here. Remember that this man was born blind but everyone else could see. They had seen this man their entire lives. They have seen him enough to think, “This looks like the guy who was blind”, but they didn't pay enough attention to him, those who had eyes, to actually be sure this is actually the guy. “‘Is this not the man who used to sit and beg?’ Some said, ‘It is he.’ Others said, ‘No, but he is like him.’” 
How many ‘like him’ are there? How plausible is ‘like him’? This an evasive answer, kind of like you get from a defendant under cross-examination in court. “Is this the man you saw coming out of the bank with a bag of cash?” “Oh, it looks like him.” “Can you state as a matter of fact, that you're certain it is that man?” “Well, he is my brother-in-law. It looks like him.” I mean, it is just evasion. “What do you mean, looks like him?” But it gets even worse. 
“He kept saying, ‘I am the man.’” So it's like, “I did it. It's me. Hello there. I never saw you before, but I'm the guy you saw or I think you saw because I thought you were seeing.” It goes on and on like this. “So they said to him,” this is verse 10, “‘Then how were your eyes opened?’” “We demand an answer. You can't just show up here seeing”. Remember it was a present participle. “I came back seeing.” You can't do that. You can't do that. That breaks all the rules. Blind people are supposed to stay blind. “How are you gonna explain the fact that you came back seeing? We demand an answer!”
They, by the way, had ignored him. Given that theology of avoiding people with infirmities, this is the first conversation the man probably ever had with these folks. And so how then were your eyes open? “He said, ‘The man called Jesus made mud,’” he's so specific. Notice under cross examination here, he's so specific. “The man called Jesus made mud and anointed my eyes and said to me, ‘Go to Siloam and wash.’ So I went and washed and received my sight.” There's that triple poetic form again. He went and he washed and came back seeing. “I went and washed and received my sight.” 
Here he makes himself, very clearly, the passive. He is the one who was given sight. This was something that was done to him. “I went and I washed and received my sight.” “Then they said to him, ‘Where is he?’” meaning Jesus. “He said, ‘I do not know.’” Watch carefully how with his eye to irony, John picks up on the, ‘who knows and who doesn't know’. Who knows that he doesn't know and who doesn't know that he doesn't know and who should know, but doesn't know. And who, maybe should not know, but actually does know. ‘Know’ turns out to be a key, and this is where it shows up. He says, “I don't know.” Now, is it right or wrong of him to not know? He is not responsible to know. “Where is Jesus? I don't know.” 
“They brought to the Pharisees the man who had formerly been blind.” Now here, just a couple of powerful things in those verses. The neighbors tried their own kind of theological interrogation, but they don't know enough to get anywhere. So now they call in the big guns, they call in the Pharisees. “We got to call in some experts to come help us figure this thing out. Blind men don't come back seeing we don't like this. We don't have an explanation for it.” You call the Pharisees and the next thing is, it says, “the man who had formerly been blind”. It is like a business card. “Hi, my name's Ralph, formerly blind, born that way.” That is all they can say about this guy, but he will pick up on this many verses later. Don't forget, this is the man who had formerly been blind. Hold that thought. 
“Now it was a Sabbath day when Jesus made the mud and opened his eyes.” Oh boy. The Pharisees, the scrupulous guardians of the Sabbath. Remember, Jesus had already made clear in Capernaum when he healed a man's hand, when the Pharisees tried to set him up saying, “Is it right to do good on the Lord's day?” And Jesus said, “You know if a man has an animal fall into a pit on the Sabbath day, who would not lift out his animal? If you would do that then of how much more value is a man than an animal? So it's right to do good on the Sabbath.” And they had a man with a withered hand, Jesus said, “Stretch out your hand,” and so Jesus healed the hand. Then the Pharisees, Matthew tells us, “Went out, seeking how they might destroy him.” 
It is the Sabbath Day, so that just raises the anxiety for the Pharisees. “So the Pharisees again asked him how he had received his sight.” Here's the blind man, the man who was formerly blind, “How did this happen?” “And he said to them, ‘He put mud on my eyes, and I washed, and I see.” Notice in triple, triple, triple. This is poetry. John is sticking this so that we see it and we can't miss it. It comes up again, “He went and he washed and he came back seeing”, “I went and I washed and I received my sight.”, and now he says, “He put mud on my eyes, and I washed, and I see. Some of the Pharisees said, ‘This man,’ now speaking of Jesus, ‘this man is not from God, for he does not keep the Sabbath.’” In other words, Jesus cannot be divinely sent because he doesn't keep the Sabbath.
Their whole theology was so corrupted, they saw everything backwards. “But others said,” this is obvious, “How can a man who is a sinner,” that means facing God's displeasure, do such things, in this case, “do such signs?” Even the word sign there is in the words of one of the Pharisees. “And there was a division among them.” Look at verse 17. This is like the Keystone Kops. “So they said again to the blind man.” What is wrong with that? He is not blind now! He was the man who was formerly born blind earlier. “So they said again to the blind man,” but he's not blind, “‘What do you say about him since he has opened your eyes?’”
This is like being under cross examination. First of all, you say you were blind. Then you say this guy put spit on your eyes and told you to go wash, and so up you went and you washed and came back seeing? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yada yada. Okay. How do you explain this? Give an account for this. And he says of Jesus, “He is a prophet.” Again, a bomb goes off, less so in our ears than in theirs, but that is our problem. In this context in first century Judaism, to say that man is a prophet means God sent him and speaks and works through him. Remember there had not been a prophet in Israel for centuries. That looks like a little statement, but in this context, it's messianic. There is a prophet who is expected and he said, “He is a prophet.” He is truly sent by God. God, after centuries of sending no prophets, has sent us a prophet. How do I know this? Because I was blind. Now I see. 
The Jews understand this. They understand the audacity of what he said. In verse 18, “The Jews did not believe that he had been born blind and received a sight.” In other words, how do you deal with a miracle if you don't want it to have happened? You tried to deny that it actually happened, so how do you do it in this case? You deny that the man had really been born blind. Now the credulity in that is so lacking, it is ludicrous. Yes, this guy has been playing blind for his entire life into adulthood. He has been living this life of being despised and unrecognized. He has lived this life of horror and deprivation and it was just an act to frustrate you Pharisees on this Sabbath day. That's what it was. That t doesn't even hold water. 
“They didn't believe he had been born blind and received sight, until they called the parents of the man who had received his sight and asked them.” His parents turn out to be the two most spineless human beings imaginable. His parents throw their own son under the bus. “Is this your son who you say was born blind?” Remember what the disciples ask when they saw the man, “Who sinned, this man or his parents?” The assumption was it had to have been the parents. How could he have sinned prenatally? This must be something the parents did. They had borne the theological burden for this man's entire life until now of being the parents whom God has punished by giving them a blind son. No one would claim that their son is blind if their son had sight. It is ludicrous. It just shows you the powerful nature of unbelief in this case. It is so self deceptive. And he said, “They called the parents of the man who had received his sight and asked them, ‘Is this your son who you say was born blind?’” Verse 19, “How then does he now see?” Explain this. We demand an answer! 
“His parents answered,” Now, remember I told you, watch out for ‘know’. Watch out for the word ‘know’. It shows up in this passage. Here is what his parents say. “We know that this is our son,” Check. “And that he was born blind,” check. “But how he now sees we do not know.” They knew. “Nor do we know who opened his eyes. Ask him; he is of age. He will speak for himself.” Well, God save us from parents like this. His parents said, “He is on his own now. We will testify to the fact that he is our son. He was born blind, we know that. But how he sees? No, we don't know. Who did it? No, we don't know. Ask him; he is of age.” 
His parents said these things, we’re told, because the Jews had threatened to cast them out of the synagogue. That's not just being cast out of the synagogue, that is being basically cast out of the society. “They had already agreed that if anyone should confess that Jesus is the Christ,” The Messiah, that prophet, “he was to be put out of the synagogue. Therefore his parents said, ‘He is of age, ask him. So for the second time, they called the man who had been blind and said to him, ‘Give glory to God. We know that this man is a sinner.’” By this man, again, they meant Jesus. This is a second interrogation. They did not get anything and it is really the second Pharisee interrogation. It is his third interrogation. The neighbors interrogated them then the Pharisees had round one. This is actually Pharisees round two. When they say, ‘Give glory to God,’ that is pompous. They are trying to amplify their own importance. “‘Give glory to God. We know that this man is a sinner.’ He answered, ‘Whether he is a sinner I do not know.’” Remember, know, know, know. You know, I know, I don't know, we don't know. Here he says, “whether he is a sinner,” which means under God's curse, “I don't know. One thing I do know, that though I was blind, now. I see.” 
That is the hinge of the entire passage. “Whether he is a sinner, I don't know, but this thing I do know, I was blind and now I see.” What is going to happen from here on out is that the man who was born blind who now sees, from this point on in the passage knows, and no one else knows. The people who thought they knew are revealed to know nothing. And this man who says, “I don't know,” here for the last time, won't say, “I don't know,” again. Why? Because in the context of the verses that follow, he begins to know. The dots are connected. He begins to see, not only physically, but more importantly, he sees spiritually. 
They said to him, “‘What did he do to you? How did he open your eyes?’ He answered them. ‘I have told you already and you would not listen. Why do you want to hear it again? Do you also want to become his disciples?” This guy not only now knows, he is mad. He is being interrogated rather than the community celebrating the fact that God has worked this work in him as a testimony to God's grace and glory and sovereignty. Rather than the entire people of God rejoicing, as you would think they would do in the reversal of the curse and the gift of sight, instead they see it as a theological problem. He is now refusing to be seen as a theological problem. Basically he responds to them by saying, “I have figured you idiots out.”
He taunts them. “Do you also want to become his disciples?” “And they reviled him saying, ‘You are his disciple.” Well, is he or isn't he? He wasn't, now he is. He actually is. A disciple is one who follows Jesus. He's doing it now. He wasn't doing it just a few verses ago, but he's figured it out. “We are the disciples of Moses. We know that God has spoken to Moses, but as for this man,” notice the ‘know’ and the ‘don't know’. Notice the contrast. You have the Pharisees, they're supposed to know it all. “We do not know where he comes from.” By the way, that's where the entire gospel begins, “In the beginning,” but they don't know. “The man answered, ‘Why, this is an amazing thing! You do not know where he comes from, and yet he opened my eyes.” Why should I care about you idiots at all? “We know,” notice the ‘know’, now he's preaching! A few minutes ago he was a blind guy who didn't know Jesus. Now he knows Jesus and is actually called by the Pharisees, ‘one of his disciples.’ Now he is a preacher!
He is preaching now. In verse 31, “We know that God does not listen to sinners, but if anyone is a worshiper of God and does his will, God listens to him.” This is a man who was not even allowed in the temple because of his deformity and now he is preaching. “Never since the world began has it been heard that anyone opened the eyes of a man born blind. If this man were not from God, he could do nothing.” It is an amazing sermon coming from this man, and you'll notice how he throws it back to them. You don’t know? You see the anger of their response in verse 34. “They answered him, ‘You were born in utter sin, and would you teach us?’ And they cast him out.” They just won’t have it. They won't have the gospel. They won't have Jesus. They won't have the miracle. They won't have bind men seeing. They just won't have it. But the text isn’t over. 
“Jesus heard that they had cast him out, and having found him,” remember this man has never seen Jesus. He heard Jesus and Jesus gave him a sight, but he left to go obey Jesus by washing in the pool of Siloam and he came back seeing. He went, and he washed, and he came back seeing. When he came back, Jesus wasn't there. The first thing they asked him was, “where is he?” And he says, “I don't know.” But hearing what had happened, Jesus finds him. He said, “Do you believe in the Son of Man?” ‘Son of man’ is the main title in the gospel of John. You'll see in the other gospels as well that Jesus uses this self-designation. This is why we sing in ‘Fairest Lord Jesus’, “Lord Jesus, Son of God and Son of Man.” This title, Son of Man, means “that appointed one whom God has sent.” 
“Do you believe in the Son of Man,” in verse 36, “He answered, ‘and who is he, sir, that I may believe in him?’” What is happening? At this point, the man who is blind and now sees, believes that Jesus is a prophet. He might suspect that Jesus is more because he goes on to say, “Never in the history of the world has it been heard that a man who was born blind was given his sight.” Now Jesus stands before him and says, “Do you believe in the Son of Man?” His answer is, “‘Who is he, sir, that I may believe in him?,” Jesus said to him,” notice his words, “You have seen him, and it is he who is speaking to you.” He hadn't seen him, but he did see him. 
Jesus here reveals that there are two kinds of blindness. There is a physical blindness and there is a spiritual blindness. Even though this man was physically blind, when Jesus put the spittle on his eyes, somewhere between when he was anointed with that mud, he saw. It becomes a metaphor for our salvation, our regeneration. We see. We didn't see before, but now we see. Now we can't not see. And Jesus said, you have seen him and the one who is speaking is he. “He said, ‘Lord, I believe.’” That is just a short statement of faith, “Lord, I believe.” It is a complete honest, unevasive, straightforward statement of belief. “‘Lord, I believe,’ and he worshiped him.” That is bowing down to him. He recognized him. He is the very son of God. Remember the irony in which John has written this passage. Now Jesus speaks in these horrible, ironic words of judgment. “For judgment I came into this world, that those who do not see may see, and those who see may become blind.”
When I began, I said this is going to test whether you are willing to read the Scripture as a Christian or not. It is because Jesus says that he came in the world, not only so that the blind might see, but so that those who think they see are blinded. It is another statement of the judgment and the sovereignty of God. It is tough. No one is going to put this into a trite, little worship expression. No one is going to tell the congregation before he preaches, “Look, brothers and sisters, I am preaching so that those who do not see may see, and that those who won’t see but think they see, will be struck blind. That is what I'm doing this morning.” That is what Jesus said. It shows you that the great division in humanity is between those who see and those who will not see. 
It is not over. “Some of the Pharisees,” verse 40, “near him heard these things, and said to him, ‘Are we also blind?’” It is a pathetic moment. This passage ends with a fizzle. It ends with this Pharisee stupidity. It is a strong judgment from God. “‘Are we also blind?’ Jesus said to them, ‘If you were blind,’” meaning physically blind, “‘you'd have no guilt; but now that you say, ‘We see,’ your guilt remains.’” 
“I see right through you,” Jesus said. “I have come into the world so that those who are blind may see, and that those who think they see may be blinded.” The average Christian does not have a clue that is in the Bible. The average church is never going to preach this text like it demands to be preached. This is not happy-clappy Christianity. It begins with the sovereignty of God and a man born blind in order that the works of God might be performed in him. And it ends with Jesus saying, “By the way, that's why I came. So those who are blind may see. Oh, and so those who think they see may become blind.”
Let's pray. Father, we pray with all our hearts for the gratitude of the fact that you have allowed us to see. Otherwise, we would not see. And you have given us the gift of sight and the gift of salvation, no less than if you had put spittle on our eyes and sent us to the pool of Siloam and said, “Go wash,” and we went, and we washed, and we came back seeing. Father, we hear the judgment in this text. We pray that you will use this in our hearts, to call us to Christ and keep us to Christ. Father, may we see and through us, may there be others who also though blind, will see. We pray this in the name of Jesus Christ our Lord, Amen.

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Third Avenue Baptist Church
Sunday School — The Gospel of John Series
May 19, 2019

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Third Avenue Baptist Church
Sunday School — The Gospel of John Series
May 12, 2019

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Third Avenue Baptist Church
Sunday School — The Gospel of John Series
May 5, 2019

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Third Avenue Baptist Church
Louisville, KY
Numbers 28-36
December 15, 2024

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Third Avenue Baptist Church
Sunday School — The Gospel of John Series
April 14, 2019

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Third Avenue Baptist Church
Sunday School — The Gospel of John Series
April 7, 2019

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Third Avenue Baptist Church
Sunday School — The Gospel of John Series
March 31, 2019

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Third Avenue Baptist Church
Sunday School — The Gospel of John Series
March 17, 2019

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Third Avenue Baptist Church
Sunday School — The Gospel of John Series
February 17, 2019

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Third Avenue Baptist Church
Sunday School — The Gospel of John Series
February 10, 2019

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Third Avenue Baptist Church
Sunday School — The Gospel of John Series
February 3, 2019

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Third Avenue Baptist Church
Sunday School — The Gospel of John Series
November 4, 2018

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Third Avenue Baptist Church
Louisville, KY
Numbers 26-27
December 1, 2024

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Third Avenue Baptist Church
Sunday School — The Gospel of John Series
October 28, 2018

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Third Avenue Baptist Church
Sunday School — The Gospel of John Series
October 14, 2018

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Third Avenue Baptist Church
Sunday School — The Gospel of John Series
October 7, 2018

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Third Avenue Baptist Church
Sunday School — The Gospel of John Series
September 16, 2018

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Third Avenue Baptist Church
Sunday School — The Gospel of John Series
September 9, 2018
 
 
We'll be turning to the continuation of our verse by verse study through John. And we arrived this morning at John chapter two, verse 13. The passage that we'll be considering this morning is commonly known as the passage in which Jesus cleanses the temple. And I'm really looking forward to this time together this morning.
Let's pray together.
Our Father, we are, first of all, thankful that you are and that you speak and that you save and that you teach. This morning, we are thankful that, as you are, and as you have spoken, you've given us your word. And as you redeem and save and teach, you reveal all things in your word. Father, we pray to be not only knowers of the word but doers of the word. We pray this in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.
As we're following in the Gospel of John, we come this morning to John chapter two beginning in verse 13. As a boy raised in the nurture and admonition of the Lord by Christian parents who had me in a Christian church, I was in every dimension of church activity a child could conceivably be involved in. And that, of course, meant Sunday school. And back when I was a boy, it also meant the equivalent of Sunday school at night called training union. And then there was vacation Bible school. And as I tell people, I grew up in a Southern town, in a Baptist family in the 1960s, which meant that you did not merely attend your church's vacation Bible school; you attended every church's vacation Bible school. And so by the time you reached a junior high, you were quite Bible-schooled.
But some of you will remember the numbers of those who are included in these memories (I recognize will recede year by year). But some of you will remember the art that the Baptist Sunday school board used to provide for children's Sunday school. These were color pictures, about 16 by 20, that were done by an enormous team of illustrators for the Sunday school board. This was a very important role. And actually those who are interested in American art look to the biblical representations of these stories and to what's called Protestant Sunday school art as a particular genre of realism in art in the 19th and 20th centuries. With the 20th century, of course, you have full color plates. And so it was in living color that we saw these pictures of biblical themes, and most of them were quite Pacific. They were quite calm and quiet peaceful.
But the picture that I can remember, and this tells you something about the power of memory, I can remember the picture of Jesus cleansing the temple, and what stood out to us as children, preschoolers, and then school-aged children was, this was a scene you could only describe as violent.
There's no other way around it. The Protestant reduction of Jesus to the sweet Jesus system, cinnamon tablets, doesn't fit this biblical passage. This biblical passage is … Well it's more Clint Eastwood in one sense than what you see from other respects and other biblical accounts and other art representing those biblical accounts. Now that doesn't mean that those artistic representations were entirely helpful, but it does mean that even those who had to depict this passage in art understood this was going to be a different kind of picture than Jesus calmly teaching in Galilee. Or Jesus saying, “Let the little children come unto me.” It's a different picture.
We look to the text of Scripture in order to remind ourselves of the texts and to read it word by word and line by line, beginning in verse 13. “The Passover of the Jews was at hand and Jesus went up to Jerusalem and the temple. He found those who were selling oxen and sheep and pigeons, and the money-changers sitting there. And making a whip of cords he drove them all out of the temple, with the sheep and the oxen. And he poured out the coins of the money-changers and overturned their tables. And he told those who sold the pigeons, ‘Take these things away, do not make my father's house a house of trade.’ His disciples remembered that it was written, ‘Zeal for your house will consume me.’ So the Jews said to him, ‘What sign do you show us for doing these things?’ Jesus answered them, ‘Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.’ The Jews then said, ‘It has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and will you raise it up in three days?’ But he was speaking about the temple of his body. When therefore he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this, and they believed the Scripture and the word that Jesus had spoken.”
Now this is where Christians have often failed to recognize something that every first-century Christian, either Jew or Gentile, could not fail to recognize. I'm just going to assume that most of us in this room would be classified as Gentiles rather than as Jews, and thus, there is a huge question for us that we often don't ask, but we have to ask it in this passage. Over the course of the past several years, I've taught many of you in this room, verse by verse and word by word, through Genesis and Exodus for, not weeks or months, but years. Why would Gentiles spend so much time studying the books of the Jews? That's their story. Is it our story?
Of course, this raises a host of issues, but think of it this way: we don't understand what's going on in this passage unless we understand the centrality of the temple to Judaism, and the fact that we are not a part of that picture as Gentiles. This is a much bigger issue than most Christians tend to think about.
Recently, there was a controversy within evangelicalism (to which I responded) in which a prominent preacher has suggested we need to unhitch the church from the Old Testament. And I sought to identify the massive errors in that statement or in that argument. But why? Well, first of all, because Jesus represented, interpreted and taught about who he was entirely in terms of continuity of the Old Testament, that the pattern is, promised and fulfillment. We put “Old” and “New” because there is an old and a new, but Jesus made very clear that the church that he was establishing would be established upon a continuity between Israel and his church, a continuity between the old covenant (and covenants) and the new. And the New Testament tells us how we are to interpret all of this. First of all, in the words of Jesus himself, who teaches us by his own references to himself and to his work by Old Testament reference. And he helps us to understand by going all the way back to Abraham. I think of the ram hidden in the thicket and then follow through the entire sacrificial system and through the prophets. And Jesus clearly identifies himself as the one who was promised. Matthew makes this point in his Gospel by saying. “These things occurred in order that the Scriptures might be fulfilled.” The apostle Paul gives us the example of how to make Christian gospel arguments in 1 Corinthians 15, when he said for, “I delivered unto you what I also received as a first importance, that Christ died for our sins, according to the Scriptures and that God raised him from the dead according to the Scriptures.” And when Paul was using that phrase, “according to the Scriptures,” in 1 Corinthians 15, he was speaking of the Old Testament Scriptures. And of course we have the entire New Testament presentation of what it means for us to be included as Gentiles right down to the fact that the wall of hostility has been removed.
The temple of which we are reading in John chapter two is the temple in Jerusalem known as the second temple in Judaism of this era and thus second temple Judaism. We would be allowed only into the court of the Gentiles, the outermost court. It's really outside the temple, but it’s part of the temple mount. And we would be allowed there. We would be allowed no further if as Gentiles, we will be allowed to get close to the temple proper, but we're not included. We're not inside. We're included now. By God's grace, we're included now, because everything that went on in this temple reached its fulfillment in the life, death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ from the dead. The rending of the veil in the temple was the end of the entire cult, the entire practice, the entire faithful act of Judaism in the sacrifice of animals. It all came to an end and its fulfillment in the sacrifice of the sinless Son of God. But that hasn't happened yet, but it's happening in the near horizon. And the action that takes place this day takes place in the court of the Gentiles.
The text begins by telling us that it was during the Passover. The Passover of the Jews was at hand in the Gospel of John. As you follow the cycle of the Gospel, there are three different Passovers that are mentioned. There’s the Passover in general, which all Jews would have understood, but there are three specific annual observances. The Passover that occurred in John's Gospel, the Passover of the Jews, was at hand and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. Now, what does that tell us? Well, it tells us that Jesus was, as it is consistently demonstrated throughout the Gospels, living as a faithful Jew in obedience to the law. Now, again, that's important for our salvation because both in his active and in his passive obedience, Christ perfectly fulfilled the law in all its respects.
It's important for us to notice this. This is an act of faithfulness on Jesus's part. As a son of Israel, he is doing exactly what he should do in going to the temple. So he goes to the temple. It's up, given the temple mount to Jerusalem in the temple. “He found those who were selling oxen and sheep and pigeons and the money-changers sitting there.” Now let's just ask a question, because the general impression that I gained as a child was that these people were engaged in illicit activity, predatory business practices. That's not the main offense that we should see here. There are two basic forms of business that are going on here in the court of the Gentiles. One was the selling of animals for sacrifice. Now you have to understand that this was a matter of some convenience and sometimes necessity. You would travel the requirement to go to the temple. And of course there are different sacrifices to be made. According to the Old Testament, if you're a husband and a wife with children, and one of those children is a boy, then you have a presentation at the temple. You have a sacrifice to be made. You have annual sacrifices to be made. You have the Passover. That's a lot of animals to carry all over Israel and Judea.
So it was a matter of convenience, sometimes a matter of necessity. If you would need an animal for the proper animal for sacrifice, you need to buy it somewhere. And so it's really not a surprise that there were those who came close to the temple right into the quarter of the Gentiles in order to make those sales possible.
There's one another business going on here, and that's money changing. That’s changing into the currency necessary for the temple contracts. These were the money changers. That too was not only generally a matter of convenience, but something of necessity. So what's the problem here? This is not really illicit business. So what's the problem?
The problem is that they had filled the court of the Gentiles. Jesus will elsewhere say, “My Father’s house is to be a house of prayer.” This is where the Gentiles should be allowed to come in order to pray. And you have to realize what this means. What would it mean that a Gentile would show up in the court of the Gentiles in the temple, in Jerusalem? What does that mean? It means that the Gentile knows that the God of Israel, he is God. And so this is a Gentile getting as close as a Gentile can get to the worship of the One he knows as the true and living God. But he is the God of the Jews, and the sacrifice and atonement being made inside that temple is not for him. It's not for us. It's for the Jews.
That's the shocking realization. I think that does not come to most Christians. I think most Christians reading a passage like this don't pause to think for a minute that we're out of this picture. We're completely out of this picture. We’re those waiting somewhere trying to get into the court of the Gentiles. We can't get into the court of Gentiles because of the money changers and the sellers of animals. Even if we got into the court of the Gentiles, that's as far as we can go. This is not about us. Of course it is about us, but that's the very point. We only know it is about us because Jesus is there. That's the only way we know that this is about us, because otherwise this wouldn't be about us at all. And the sacrifices that are going on inside the temple, that sacrificial system that goes on over and over and over and over again, that sacrificial system is about an atonement being made for sins, but not ours. We’re out of the picture. But here we are only in the second chapter of the Gospel, that is, the Christian Good news of John. And we're being told of Jesus cleansing the temple.
Have you ever thought about the fact that if this temple still existed and if Jesus hadn't come, we'd be in the very same predicament right now? Atonement would be being made for sin, but not ours.
The animal sacrifices would continue there in the temple. Even the temple, described here, if it were to exist right now, those sacrifices would be going on. And if Jesus had not come, we would just not be included. Part of this is physicality, isn't it? Because the sacrificial system, as God made very clear in the Scripture, requires a place. The sacrifices were to take place in one place in this place, in the holy of Holies, the Most Holy Place inside the temple. When we were studying word by word through Exodus, we saw the tabernacle and how it was established by God in order to create a tent in which he would meet with Israel. And there the sacrifices took place on that bronze altar. And that was a picture of what would happen in the temple, but in the temple itself, there's now a permanent place, a most holy place where the sacrifices are made. In the case of the Most Holy Place, it's on the day of atonement. And otherwise in other places in the temple, the sacrifices are being made in order that sins might be forgiven. But not ours. The place is very important. The responsibilities here of the sacrificial system meant that only a relatively small fraction, a tiny fraction of humanity, can be included in this.
Anyway, there's an astounding kind of realization. If you're dealing with a spot one place Jerusalem, you're dealing with one temple on one mount, and you're talking about one cycle of annual sacrifices. And if you're talking about all the necessity of coming to Jerusalem, and the responsibility of, for instance, as you saw with Jesus, when you have a firstborn son, you go to make a particular sacrifice. That cannot be the world's population. That there can be only a relatively limited number of people in the world has to be a small, shall we say, national or tribal identity. It's just Israel.
The Lord says, “I didn't choose you because you're the most numerous of all the peoples of the earth but because you're not.” This is like what we read in 1 Corinthians 1 where God says, “I chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong.” Israel was not chosen because it was the mega power, the one true and only superpower of the age. No one would have considered Israel such. That was God's purpose. That was his point. But the point I want us to think about is that when you're looking at the temple, it includes only a very few of all the world's population. Only a very few. And they're identified by the fact that they are Jews, and their fulfillment of their responsibility is physical and having to get to the temple in order to fulfill this responsibility. This is really radically different than most of us think about.
The New York Times just a few days ago ran an article on the overwhelmingly daunting math of Islam. This shows you how big things go on in the world that we don't think about. Usually in Mecca was the annual observance of the Hajj, one of the seven pillars of Islam where faithful Muslims are to go and make the pilgrimage to Mecca. At one point last week, there were 1.7 million Muslims there in Mecca and a total of maybe 3.3 million who would be there in the course of the time. About a quarter are just from Saudi Arabia with others coming from all parts of the earth. But it is considered to be as one of the seven pillars of Islam a responsibility, a sacred responsibility, to make this pilgrimage. This is what faithfulness depends upon according to Islamic theology and according to the Koran. What's the problem? Math. That's the problem.
So it is the monarchy of Saudi Arabia, the house of Saud, that claims and has been recognized as having stewardship of the two holy sites of Mecca and Medina for quite a long time now. They're daunted by the math. Here's the New York times description of the math: “But even at a rate of 3 million people per Hajj, it would be impossible for all the world's 1.8 billion Muslims to perform the Islamic duty of the pilgrimage in their lifetimes. In fact, for all the Muslims who are alive today to perform Hajj, it would take at least 581 years.”
I found that really interesting. 581 years, just for all of the Muslims living today, to make the Hajj. Now that's just Islam. That's the Hajj. Let's take it back to Israel. Not that many people can be involved in this temple worship. That’s the math. That's the math of the temple. You cannot include very many people in this. We're out …except for Jesus. And this is Jesus in the Gospel of John, in his public ministry, showing up at the temple. How does he appear in the temple?
“He found those who were selling oxen and sheep and pigeons, and the money-changers sitting there. And making a whip of cords, he drove them all out of the temple, with the sheep and the oxen. And he poured out the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables. And he told those who sold the pigeons, ‘Take these things away; do not make my Father's house a house of trade.’”
This is what we remember. Jesus cleanses the temple. “Cleansing” is an interesting word there. Jesus is saying, “Get out of here, take your pigeons and go.” There’s a cleansing to its purpose, which was the main concern of Jesus. The main concern of Jesus was not that someone was selling these things that had been going on for as long as anyone could remember. It was a matter of convenience, sometimes a matter of necessity. But what had happened is that it had moved inside of the temple precincts. And this business had now moved inside, crowding out the Gentiles from the court of the Gentiles. It was turning the house of God into a house of trade, not into a house of prayer.
Imagine you’re a first-century Jewish man, and you see what has happened here. You are filled with outrage because you know what the court of the Gentiles is for you. You know it is to be a place of prayer. You know it's a sign of God's intention for what is happening inside the temple to be beyond Israel. It's because the court of the Gentiles is a sign of the promise that God gave to Abraham. “And you, and in your seed, all the nations of the earth will be blessed.” So the court of the Gentiles is a sign that God has a saving purpose that is actually beyond Israel and what is taking place inside that temple right now. There's a promise that something bigger is promised.
So you're a first century Jewish man, and you're filled with umbrage, but hey, you're just a man.The temple is not your authority. You go there, but you're not in charge there. It is an entire structure of Jewish authority that is in charge. And by the time you get to this passage in this period of second temple Judaism, you've got an entire authority structure of priests and, of course, organized into the Sanhedrin as a ruling council.
So if you're outraged, what would you do for redress of grievances? Well, you'd have to go to the priest, you'd have to go to the Sanhedrin and I guess try to make your best argument. That's what Jesus doesn't do. Jesus doesn't do that. Instead, he forms a whip of cords and he starts driving them out. And then he refers to the temple in a way we must not miss: “Take these things away. Do not make my father's house a house of trade.”
The act itself certainly catches our attention. And that's one of the problems with the way we might read this passage is that we would look at the action because the action is really dramatic. Going back, even to those Sunday school paintings, this act generally is dramatic. This is a violent scene. This is not Jesus saying, “You know, guys, I think this is not the proper use of the court of Gentiles. I'd really like to suggest you move your business outside.” No, this is outrage. This is an act of violent outrage. This is not the Jesus of liberal Protestantism who is always sweet. This is not the Jesus of reductionistic Christian sentimentality. This is the Jesus who is the outraged Son of the holy father. “This is the father's house, my father's house. And it is being abused.” He goes back. He goes back to the founding purpose of the temple. “This is not its purpose.” And he drives them out.
And the violence is not hidden in the passage. “He found those who are selling oxen and sheep and pigeons and the money changers sitting there, and making a whip of cords he drove them all out of the temple with the sheep and the oxen.” Wouldn't you like to see that? I'll admit I would. I would. I would like to have been there. Jesus, using a whip of cords to drive out.
This is one man, one whip. But look at all that He accomplished. He drove them all out. And not only that, he drove the animals out. Biblical commentators, by the way, are divided over trying to make the argument that the whip was simply intended for the animals, or the whip was intended for all. I'll just say it appears to be rather indiscriminate. It appears to have been a quite effective instrument of divine wrath.
And then just to make the point about the money, he pours it all out. Now this has got to be one of those dramatic scenes you just imagine because those who love money, love money. And we know that one of the greatest temptations that falls to humanity is to love money. And the one thing we can't stand is to see money wasted or just cast about. Especially when the coinage then was the value itself. And there it goes.
“He overturned their tables….” Something else you have to keep in mind is that what Jesus is doing here would not necessarily have been understood, even the way we're describing it here, by those who observed it. We’re reading John chapter 2, verses 13ff. So we're following in a sequence, and we know who Jesus is as Jesus enters the temple precincts and the court of the Gentiles and does this. But let's just imagine you are merely an observer, and you see this man go in, make a whip of cords, and then create absolute mayhem.
The thing to keep in mind is this was what was going on there authorized by those inside the temple. This was authorized by those who were performing the sacrifices. This is authorized by those who were the rulers of Israel. And so this is not only just the scene of one man entering into the picture and creating a whip and overturning tables and chasing both the people of business and their animals out and turning over the money. This appears to be a solitary act by an unauthorized agent. That's the point isn't it? This could only be authorized and could only be right if the one who is here is an infinitely higher authority than the ones who were inside the temple.
It is he who can use the first person possessive singular speaking of the father. “My Father's house….” This is one of those astounding revelations where all of a sudden you realize he is either mad, insane, or he is the Son of God.
The options are so few. We're only a few verses into the second chapter of John and you're going to have to decide who this is. Is this an unauthorized interloper? Is this a lone religious zealot? He would be claiming heresy, blasphemy, if he speaks of God in this way. And he would not be the Son of God.
This becomes really, really, really important in what follows, because here you see the insanity of people who are trying to figure this out. And here's the real insanity: it's missing what this means. Missing what is taking place here. Who missed it and who got it? Well, let's look at the passage. In verse 17, we read, “His disciples remembered that it was written, ‘Zeal for your house will consume me.’” Wait just a minute. Who's “me”? Who's “me” here? Well, this is Psalm 69:9. “For zeal for your house has consumed me,” writes David. “And the reproaches of those who reproach you have fallen on me. Zeal for your house has consumed me.” This is David. So when the disciples remember that the scripture said “zeal for your house shall consume me,” they remembered that statement from David in the Psalms. And they realized this is what's happening before our eyes.
What is the connection with David? Messiah. The one who is promised, who would come, who would reign on David's throne. You realize what's taking place here? It is as if the disciples recognized, “Oh, I get it now. If David were here in the flesh, he would do this.” Isn't that interesting? If King David were here and he saw this mess, King David would know what to do. He'd do something like creating a whip out of cords and chasing all these people away because zeal for the father's house has consumed him.
By the way, when did the disciples remember this? This is interesting. John doesn't specify when the disciples remembered. Did they remember it right then? Maybe they remembered it right then that would be nice. That would be good if the disciples remembered it right then. But John doesn't tell us they remembered it right then, only that they remembered it. And this is just a good affirmation to us that it took the disciples a while to figure these things out.
But isn't it also an encouragement that in figuring them out, they figured them out from the scriptures? And by the way, this whole idea about unhitching the Bible from the old Testament, had the disciples done that, they wouldn't have even known to make the connection between David and Jesus, between David and David's successor, Messiah, anointed one, Christ.
Well, it gets even more interesting. The scene shifts just a bit in verse 19. Let's actually look beginning of verse 18. “So the Jews said to him, ‘What sign do you show us for doing these things?’” Let's just stop there for a moment. The four Gospels together, present human beings asking some of the most stupid questions imaginable. And there's something very reassuring about the fact that human stupid questions are so accurately represented.
And here's the important part of the preceding verse. The disciples remembered Psalm 69:9. So when they remembered Psalm 69:9, and they saw what had just happened, they made the connection. We don't know exactly when they made the connection. It might've been right, then it might've been later, but they made the connection. “Zeal for the father's house has consumed him.” Okay. The Jewish authority, because that's what it means here when it says the Jews, the Jewish authorities clearly have not made that connection. The connection that the disciples made, they have not made. Hold that in mind. So what do they see?
Well, they don't appear to be, first of all, offended by what happened. They appear to be offended by who did it. What sign do you give in order to validate what you just did? Over and over again in the Gospel of John, of course, as we have already seen as in the first sign that that Jesus gave, it was the changing of water into wine at the wedding in Cana of Galilee. That was a sign. What is a sign? It's John's word for miracle. It’s a better word than miracle for us. It's a better word because sign is exactly what's most important. The miraculous act, the supernatural act performed by Jesus, is in its essence and in substance a sign. That's what it is. It is itself what cries out for attention and explanation and belief. That's it. Because when it happens, you're going to have to come up with some explanation for how it happens. And the only rational explanation is he did this because he is the very son of God. That's the sign. Every single one of the signs points to the fact that no human being can do this, save the one who is Lord over creation. And who could be Lord over creation except the one who is the very son of God? Colossians, for instance, will make this exceedingly clear.
But the amazing thing that is repeated over and over again is just how often the sign will take place. And then the people who will come next come up and say, “What's the sign that proves that sign?” Just think of the feeding of the 5,000, as we shall see when you get to John chapter five and John chapter six. And so what happens the day after? “What sign are you're going to give us?” “Wait, I just fed yesterday 5,000 men and not numbered women and children. That’s the sign. And of course, in other places, it becomes clear that Jesus himself is just the sign.
But now they show up and they demand a sign. You got to love this. We're only two chapters into John and already the great human experience is divided between those who saw what happened and remembered the scriptures, and those who saw what happened and demand a sign. Those are the two basic human responses. They're they are. Notice what Jesus says, “Jesus answered them, ‘Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up.’” Now, this is shocking. It's not perhaps shocking to us because we're familiar with biblical language, but we need to unfamiliar ourselves as best we can for a moment and just thinking about what Jesus is saying. Because he doesn't say, “I'm not going to give you a sign, you morons.” Instead, he says, “Okay, you asked for a sign. Well, here's a sign. You destroy this temple and I will build it back in three days.” Well, that's, that's astounding. It's astounding because this is the second great temple. Sometimes it's called the Herodian temple. You'll recall that the temple had been built by Solomon, but it was destroyed by invaders. And it has taken Israel generation after generation after generation to be able to have the political stability and the wealth to be able to rebuild this temple. And they did rebuild that temple. And as they remind us here in this passage, it took 46 years to build that temple. It takes a very long time to build a temple like this. And if you've been there, you would understand why, because it's not just a little hut on the top of a hill. It's this massive plaza, this massive court. You've got to build up the hill itself. You've got to make the way possible. You've got to level the ground for the perfect symmetry of the temple. It’s as if you're dealing with hand tools and giant stones. It took 46 years. Jesus said, “okay, okay. You asked me for a sign. I'm going to give you a sign. You tear this temple down and I will build it back in three days.” In missing the point entirely, the Jews then said, “It's taken 46 years to build this temple and you will raise it up in three days?” But verse 21 says, “He was speaking about the temple of his body. When therefore he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this. And they believed the scripture, and the word that Jesus had spoken.”
Again, there's more here than a fast reading of scripture would reveal. The Jews said it’s taken 46 years to build this temple. And you have to understand what this temple represented for Judaism. What did this temple represent? It represented the reestablishment of the cultists of the sacrificial system. It represented the reestablishment of the place where on the Holy of Holies, that most holy day, the priest, the high priest would enter into the most holy place with that blood that he took necessary for the forgiveness of sins and the atonement and the delay of God's judgment and wrath for the entire nation of Israel. If that doesn't happen, Israel bears the wrath of God. The idea of that temple being destroyed is the worst nightmare of the Jews in the first century. And of course it will be destroyed in AD 70. It's a real threat. It's the greatest threat to Israel. Israel's greatest fear is that something will happen to this temple. That's the greatest fear. And we can understand why in a sacrificial system, just read the logic of the Old Testament. If this temple isn't here, it is not just a matter of the fact that we can't go to church.
And so it's a matter of the reality that our sins will remain upon us. And Jesus says, “Well, I'll give you a sign. Tear this temple down, and I'll build it back in three days.” The horror of this is beyond what we would read as Gentile Christians reading this. This is horror to those who heard Jesus speaking. And so when they speak back and say, “It's taken 46 years to build this temple, and you will raise it up in three days,” it's like panic, panic in the heart, even to envision this temple might be destroyed.
But then notice the turn. “But he was speaking about the temple of his body. You don't pass that quickly. “The temple of his body”? So let's put ourselves in the position of the disciples now in this passage. What sense does that make? You'll notice that here John tells us helpfully, this is very helpful, that it was later. It was after the cross and the resurrection that they remembered that Jesus had said this. And then they understood it. Because they didn't understand it when Jesus said it. They didn't. They understood it later. Because what did it mean on this day when Jesus spoke of the temple of my body? Put yourself sympathetically in the place of the disciples for a moment, that had to be one of those things that you hear, and you say, “I'm going to have to think about that. I cannot comprehend it right now.”
We're told that Mary, you'll recall, pondered these things in her heart, even as the angel had spoken to her in Luke. We understand that isn't that the way it is with us sometimes with scripture? Let's just be honest. Sometimes we read a passage of scripture and we go, “I don't understand that. It's bigger. I can tell it's bigger than what I'm getting. I'm going to have to work on this. I'm going to have to ponder this.” Jesus said, “Then he was speaking about the temple of his body.” But Jesus doesn't explain that, John does. He was speaking about the temple of his body. What would happen in his body? Well, on that night he was betrayed in that Supper, he passed the bread and then he said, “This is my body broken for you.” And when he passed the cup, “This is the blood, my blood, which I will shed for the remission of sins.” He was saying, “This is the sacrifice. This is it. Everything the temple, everything the tabernacle, everything the Tent of Meeting had pointed to, all the covenants, all the promises, they've all been pointing to this. The act of atonement is not going to take place in the temple. The act of atonement is going to take place in my body, in the temple of my body. So Christ's body is the temple of our atonement. It was in that body that our atonement was achieved. Full atonement for sin, full substitution. It was in his body that propitiation was accomplished.
Now, fast forward, just a moment to where we are told that our bodies are to be the temples of the Holy Spirit. So even as we are Christ’s because of the atonement accomplished in the temple of his body. O body is not a body of atonement. It's a body of glory that redefines what it means to be redeemed humanity as we are the temple of the Holy Spirit. We are the one in whom the holy spirit is present.
His disciples remembered that he had said this “when therefore he was raised from the dead. And they believed the scripture, and the word that Jesus had spoken.” So that's how we end. So what was the response of the disciples? When they connected the dots, they believed the scriptures. So that's the model for us. This is what we do. Right now, we're not with Jesus as he cleanses the temple. We're not with Jesus as the disciples were after the crucifixion and resurrection, when they are looking back to when Jesus said this and they understand that's what he was talking about. Here we are in 2018. But the question is, what is our proper response? And it is exactly the response the disciples gave here. “His disciples remembered that he had said this, and they believed the scripture, and the word that Jesus had spoken.”
It's only because Jesus, in his body, was the temple that accomplished salvation that explains how we are included in this at all. We are included as Gentiles who were far off, who've been now brought near, and our access was not gained by Jesus, merely that we could get into the Court of the Gentiles. But the act that took place in the Holy of Holies never did atone for our sins. It wasn't that Jesus made it possible for us to get from the Holy of Holies into the court of Israel. It’s that in his body he accomplished full atonement in the temple, not in Jerusalem, this temple of stone, but in the temple of his body.
Let’s pray.
Our Father, we are just so thankful for every word you give us. And Father, we’re so thankful for this word, from the Gospel of John today. We pray that in the temple of our bodies, the temple of the Holy Spirit, we may glorify you as redeemed people. We believe the scriptures and everything Jesus has said. We pray this in the name of Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen.

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Third Avenue Baptist Church
Sunday School — The Gospel of John Series
June 24, 2018

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Third Avenue Baptist Church
Sunday School — The Gospel of John Series
June 3, 2018

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Third Avenue Baptist Church
Sunday School — The Gospel of John Series
May 20, 2018

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Third Avenue Baptist Church
Sunday School — The Gospel of John Series
May 13, 2018

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Third Avenue Baptist Church
Sunday School — The Gospel of John Series
May 6, 2018

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Third Avenue Baptist Church
Louisville, KY
Numbers 25
November 24, 2024

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Third Avenue Baptist Church
Sunday School — The Gospel of John Series
April 29, 2018

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Third Avenue Baptist Church
Sunday School — The Gospel of John Series
April 22, 2018

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Third Avenue Baptist Church
Sunday School — The Gospel of John Series
April 15, 2018

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Third Avenue Baptist Church
Louisville, KY
Numbers 21:10-24:25
November 3, 2024

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