The Third Sunday in Lent, John 2:13-22

March 11, 2012; Lent 3; Texts: Ex 20:1-17; I Cor 1:18-31; Jn 2:13-22 (23-25); Title: The Wisdom Foretold, the Sign Revealed; Rev. Tim Beck

Grace, mercy, and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ

Lent directs us to Christ’s cross; and because of that, Lent invites us to trust Jesus the Christ. That faith has something it believes, including a background you know, although your neighbor may not. For example, in our day we cannot assume the person next door knows what repentance is, any more than whom the gospel is. We cannot assume someone believes there is a God, especially those who blandly say, “Oh, I believe there is a God, whatever.” We cannot presume folks who attend a “Christian church” know the difference between the law and gospel, two doctrines that take us to very different ends.  We may need to say things, like God is real, and is really known in Jesus. The Living God reveals Himself for faith, that you receive His life (and you can say that).

          These things underlie our text, that God is God and is good, and reveals Himself, the law calling us to repentance and the gospel creating in us faith. Yet these things, the wisdom of the cross, seem like folly to unbelief.  To worship the true God is not our natural spiritual inclination. So the wisdom of the cross needs explaining, from the first revelation of God’s mercy unto its end. Don’t worry; we won’t cover all that ground today. But how well do you know the book of Leviticus, or the Chronicles, or Exodus? The foolishness of the cross began a long time before Jesus’ birth, as far back as Genesis. Why not learn these books? That’s a Lenten journey better than fasting, a trip worth taking because it takes you to the journey’s end.

          Today’s trip begins in a conflict 2,000 years ago with roots 1,400 years before that, at the first Passover. The people in our account know about the Passover, they know its origin and at least they keep the festival. Roasted Lamb is tasty after all. Besides, remembering the Exodus was heartening. So too Jews and even some Christians keep the Passover today. Why Christians do, I don’t know, unless it is to show what Christ fulfilled. Also today, many Christians and Jews change what the Passover indicated. I’ve seen in Passover literature the deliverance from Egypt is about ending addictions, bad habits, economic oppression, and sexual discrimination. That’s blind to the point, astray from journey’s end. The Passover doesn’t start with our felt needs. It starts with God (with God!) and includes law, gospel, and faith.  In Moses’ day this deliverance was not understood as a geo-political event, but a physical event for a spiritual reality.

          The angel of death passed over all doors marked with the blood of a lamb, and those inside lived - for a reason. Do you know the reason? The first Passover delivered a people from bondage in Egypt for this reason: to worship God… to worship the true God. (This afternoon review what Moses said to Pharaoh as the reason for the Exodus.) The goal of the first Passover was spiritual freedom. The unbeliever’s first born died only because they refused that worship, they refused to mark their doors with a lamb’s blood. So the first Passover, a sign of eternal mercy, brought Israel (and many           Egyptians… read who left Egypt) to worship; and it looked forward to journey’s end… the heavenly Promised Land. Following Passovers looked back to that Exodus and looked forward to the final passing over of what causes slavery to death... our sin.       

          And that’s why the sacrificial rituals ended fourteen hundred years later when God’s firstborn, when His temple, His body, was destroyed and rebuilt. When Jesus, “Saviour” appeared, the time for substitute sacrifices ended. Jesus is the final Pass-over, the Lamb slain whose blood washed upon the lintels of our brow (+), frees us from the penalty of death and the power of sin. Jesus fulfilled the Passover, so on the night of His betrayal transformed it into His Supper. What Moses, by God’s voice commanded in perpetuity, Jesus does not abandon but completes.  It is His Passover, His body, His blood, His pardon from sin, His gift of life. He removed the law’s condemnation, joins us to His life and pledges that in the next life we shall be righteous as He is. This is what the wisdom of the cross does for the repentant to give us a living faith in a living God. That’s why Christians no longer celebrate what anticipated our Saviour.  Rather, we receive Christ Himself, God-with-us in His body and blood.  In the Lord’s Supper we are joined to Christ until we enter the marriage supper of the Lamb. That’s the wisdom of the cross in the eternal Passover.

          There’s another expression in our text to explain: Jesus goes up to Jerusalem. He goes up because everyone goes up to Jerusalem, even if coming down from Mt. Everest. Geographically, Mt. Sinai is higher than Jerusalem and so is Mt. Carmel. But one always went up to Jerusalem because it was the location of the Temple. Where the Temple is, God dwells. What is higher than God? God promised to hear his people in the Temple, to forgive and to give a true worship. Like the Passover, the Temple was about more than Solomon’s cathedral of stone, or Zerubbabel’s or Herod’s. When God gave the Tabernacle design to Moses, and when the Temple followed its pattern, it announced the Holy God would dwell with His people. Like the first Passover, the Temple invited faith in The Promise, and like the Passover, it foreshadowed the worship to come.  The Temple directed faith not to stone, gold leaf, and money changers but to the habitation of the Holy God with purified sinners. To fulfill that promise, God Incarnate goes up to Jerusalem. When God Incarnate goes up to Jerusalem He enters the icon, the picture of Himself. He is the real Temple. Herod’s building is but a shadow of Jesus. Jesus, in humility, goes up to die to unite us with His death and so unite us with his life. In the former testament, in the old temple, the Living God promised to forgive and purify sinners. Now in a building not made by hands, but in a body made by and for the Creator, we encounter God’s Holy Presence.

          Jesus knows who and what He is. He calls Himself the Passover Lamb and He calls Himself the Temple. Why? …He is God for us, and the Holy God with us who both forgives and cleanses us. But what does the living Temple, the Passover Lamb hear when He arrives in Jerusalem? He hears a cry not of faith, but of selling in the Temple grounds.  Apostle John uses a word for selling, a loud hawking of wares. In the court of the Gentiles, where the nations were to worship, money preached. You see oxen, sheep, and pigeons and hear the traders barking over animal noises. Gentile, what are you to believe? You see priests examine the animals the worshippers brought, and say “imperfect;” then require they buy temple animals at inflated prices.  You see worshippers go to pay for the Temple sacrifice, and hear their money isn’t acceptable. They must exchange it for Temple currency, for a fee.  You see the scam, greed, injustice, and abuse when the worship of God is reduced to a profit. Gentile, what shall you believe? You are angry, and tempted to deny the God so badly represented by these priests. While “your” temple animal is sacrificed, you feel resentment and doubt the sacrifice does any good. What is this? It’s the trickle-down economy that benefited lots of people in Jerusalem. It is the wisdom of man compared to the foolishness of God. Like our times, like all times, worship was reduced to human need and wants.  Who believed “Repent and believe in the gospel?”  Moses believed. He said to the people, “Do not fear, for God has come to test you, that the fear of him may be before you, that you may not sin. (Ex. 20:21)

          What happened when human interest in the temple perverted the worship of God? What happened is another cry heard in the Temple grounds. When Jesus walks into the Temple that foreshadows him, what does He do? Jesus walks the way of His cross, in the foolishness of God, in the mercy of the redeemer, and cares about the first commandment. He cares about the revelation of God through the Law and the Prophets.  He cares about the promised deliverance, the purpose of the Passover and the reason for the Temple because He is the Temple’s Passover Lamb. His zeal to save makes enemies. Nevertheless, Jesus applies the law. He violently casts out those who pervert worship with a whip. And the law points out the sin of the merchants up to the High Priest. But they reject repentance and demand a sign, blind to the fact that He is the sign.  Can you image that, these usurpers presume to own the Temple. They reject its real owner and its real presence. They’re like church leaders today who say the Law is too stern or grace isn’t enough; who say Baptism is just water or the Lord’s Supper is only our act of devotion. They’re like us, whenever we break the first commandment, preferring our will to that of the heavenly Father; so repent daily. But Jesus cares about the outer court of the Gentiles because He cares for all nations. He is the Lamb, the Lamb for all, including the merchants up to the High Priest. He is the Passover Lamb, He is the Temple. He is the fulfillment of what is past. He is the end of the journey, the groom, the Lamb who bids us to the eternal feast.   

          So to us sinners who demand “give me a sign, my kind of wisdom. God, submit to my requirements,” Jesus says, destroy this Temple. The faithless think Jesus speaks about a temple they built, like the gods they made. Destroy what took wicked Herod the Idumean 40 years to build? Herod built the beautiful thing to placate the Jews, this wonder of the ancient world. But it was only a shadow of the real temple, of the incarnate God. Listen carefully to Jesus’ words. God-en-fleshed says in the imperative, “Destroy this Temple.” He commands.      And this command they freely obeyed, crucifying the Incarnate LORD with a vengeance. Yet this command, like the command to sacrifice a Lamb and spread its blood on doorposts, is the foolishness of the cross. It is pure grace. True God became true man - Jesus, Saviour - to be destroyed by sinners like us. This is how He gives life to his enemies and how He creates faith in you. In effect, Jesus said “If you want your sign, if you want faith, if you want God’s presence for life and peace, kill me.” Does this sound foolish to you, that those hypocrites, who thought so much of themselves and their religiosity, enough to kill Jesus for it, are pardoned by Jesus’ death? Yet this death, foreshadowed by the Old Testament, is our forgiveness, pardoning our guilt and giving us a righteous received by faith. This promise cannot disappoint. Jesus arose, His Temple rebuilt in three days as He said. That is the wisdom of the cross; His wisdom for you, His death to give you life; His life to give you faith.

          Did not your Saviour conquer what we fear most? Does He not await you at journey’s end, at an eternal wedding feast?  That is to ask, did He forgive you? So Lent directs us to Christ’s cross and to Divine wisdom. Lent calls us to trust in Jesus the Christ, the Passover Lamb. Lent calls us to faith so that we dwell forever in the true Temple of God. Lenten disciples receive our Lord’s Divine Service and respond in worship’s true praise. This is the wisdom of God, our Savior’s bloody death for your life, eternal life. It is the power of God to save.

             

The peace of God which passes all understanding keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Amen).