90 - Life of Jesus
Week Six - Wreck it, Jesus
John 2:13-22 (also Matthew 21:12-17, Mark 11:15-19, Luke 19:45-48)
People were waiting for a Messiah who would “Fix it.”
Was Jesus more of a “fixer” or a “smasher?”
13 When it was almost time for the Jewish Passover, Jesus went up to Jerusalem. 14 In the temple courts he found people selling cattle, sheep and doves, and others sitting at tables exchanging money. 15 So he made a whip out of cords, and drove all from the temple courts, both sheep and cattle; he scattered the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables. 16 To those who sold doves he said, “Get these out of here! Stop turning my Father’s house into a market!” 17 His disciples remembered that it is written: “Zeal for your house will consume me.”
18 The Jews then responded to him, “What sign can you show us to prove your authority to do all this?”
19 Jesus answered them, “Destroy this temple, and I will raise it again in three days.”
20 They replied, “It has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and you are going to raise it in three days?” 21 But the temple he had spoken of was his body. 22 After he was raised from the dead, his disciples recalled what he had said. Then they believed the scripture and the words that Jesus had spoken. —John 2:13-22
Two things happening:
1. Jesus is dealing with
The Temple was not the point, it was meant to point
2. Jesus is clearing out an old
Cleaning the Temple disrupts the process of how people received forgiveness.
Jesus embodied a kind of radical alternative to the Temple. —NT Wright
John gets to this story earlier than Matthew, Mark, and Luke - some scholars think it’s because it could have happened twice (two different Passovers), but it’s more commonly believed that John includes the account earlier in Jesus’ ministry to drive home the point that Jesus is the new creation and the new Temple.
In John 1, he starts with “In the beginning” immediately making it clear that he’s writing the new Genesis.
And then in 1:14, he says, Jesus “made his dwelling among us,” meaning he “tabernacled” in our midst.
Jesus is the new creation. Jesus is the new Temple. Jesus is the mediator of our forgiveness.
Jesus
What parts of your life is Jesus more likely to disrupt than fix?
Do we want an “improved” version of the life we have, or the “new life” Jesus is offering?