The Temple

Jesus Clears the Temple In Cana Jesus introduces something very painful- the need for CHANGE- many people tell us that change is always painful- even good change. Our son Peter is about to begin a great adventure by going to work in America for a year- that will be very exciting for him and it will be good for him but it will be very painful for us. We will miss him etc. Here Jesus is giving the very strong message that things are going to have to change- that is a message which is dawning on many churches and it will be very painful and difficult in many congregations where the philosophy has been- “as it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be. Amen” In many situations they have been doing things this way since 1066 and can see no reason to change now but unless we change, we die. In the process called “Church, Community and Change” we will have to face this likelihood that changes will be necessary and we will have to be supportive to one another . What do people see when they come into our church? What do we see? We may have to face the possibility of making some changes to the building or to the way we work but none of those changes are as radical as the ones that Jesus is pointing out in these chapters of John’s version of the Gospel. In The story of the wedding in Cana He ushers in the need for a whole new approach to religion- its not about the Law but about the Spirit- that was anathema to all Jews In this Temple incident we have the need for the old system of sacrifice to be REPLACED with Christ In the interview with Nicodemus he talks of the need to begin afresh- how could he say that about the children of Abraham? Today Christian Zionists would think something similar and in His chat with the Samaritan women He challenges the position of Jerusalem itself and says that worship will be completely different when the Messiah is finished- not only will it be more to do with Spirit and Truth but it will even include Samaritans- shocking to say the least! What does Jesus see whenever he enters the Temple in Jerusalem? He sees an entire system which is failing- he sees a sacrificial system- the very core of the faith of Judaism- failing miserably. Here are three reasons, based on the premise that the system DOES NOT WORK. It does not work because 1. IT HAD TO BR REPEATED TIME WITHOUT NUMBER Let’s give some thought to what the Temple stood for. The purpose of the Temple was for the worship of God’s people, certainly, but this worship was the worship of sacrifice. Every Jew recognised the need for reconciliation with God, since the fall. When the worshipper brought his sacrifice to the Temple it was for the purpose of making things with God better. This was most obvious in the Feast of Atonement. This was the day when the high Priest went into the Holy of Holies and brought the perfect sacrifice of the people so that all the people would be forgiven and reconciled to God. On the day of Yom Kippur the High Priest dressed himself in simple white robs instead of his usual ornate robs. He then took a bullock and made sacrifice for his own sins. Then he took the two unblemished goats on behalf of the people- one of them was slaughtered and the blood taken into the Holy of Holies and sprinkled onto the altar. This was the atoning sacrifice. Then the other goat was taken and hands laid on it as he prayed over it that the sins of the people would be transferred onto its head and then it was sent into the wilderness. In this ritual the sins of the people were removed and forgiven- the escape goat took the blame even thought it was not to blame. Now put that alongside what the writer t the Hebrews says in Hebrews 10:1ff and especially v12 The point is that this High Priest whom we know to be Jesus had , unlike the human priest who had to repeat the thing over and over and over again. He failed, Jesus did not. It took two goats in the human system but in God’s way Jesus Christ was the High Priest and the sacrificial victim all rolled in one. Al of this means that when asked the question- where is the goat? We can say HE HAS GONE. When asked about our sin we can say- “IT HAS BEEN TAKEN AWAY!” When Jesus entered the Temple He saw something which needed more than running repairs, it needed a radical overhaul- to all intent and purpose it was something very new- new wine, a new Temple- destroyed and rebuilt in three days but not with the hands of men but by the Spirit of God, much as Nicodemus would be told a little later. Can you see why it was necessary for the temple to be destroyed and rebuilt? IT FAILED BECAUSE IT HAD BEEN ASSUMED TO BE AUTOMATICALLY EFFECTIVE The feeling was that all a person had to do was to fulfil the ritual of the sacrifice- even though God had told the Jews all those years before in the days of Isaiah that he did not want this ritualistic, mindless activity they had the cheek to call worship. They seemed to think that it was just important to get all the “I s” dotted and the “Ts” crossed and they would be forgiven- God would have to forgive them- they were His people after all.. This is what happened in the days when Martin Luther began to think about the church of which he was a member and a cleric. They thought that it was the ritual that was important so that all a person had to do was to go to Mass and receive forgiveness by the priest and all would be well- so a person who received communion had taken Christ into His life and was born again, or whenever the Priest baptized the baby all its sins were removed automatically- there was no choice in the matter. This led to al kinds of malpractice such as baptising people forcibly. There are a considerable body of opinion within PCI today who still believe that taking Holy Communion will lead to forgiveness and so this is the biggest service of the year and then there is the equal and opposite idea that only the perfect people are good enough to take communion at all- both positions are wrong and both reflect a total misunderstanding of the gospel which is of grace and not works. When Jesus looked at the Temple He saw something which had become corrupted- not just by the traders[ who, in fact, had a right to be there but we will take that up later] but by the assumption that all would be right just because they were the people of God and had done all that was necessary in their liturgy to Last week Richard used the baking of a cake to illustrate, for the children the need for both ingredients and method when worshipping God and , of course, when worshipping God wants the right attitude of mind- is that another ingredient or a method? Adults should understand that we are not baking a cake and so there is something else needed and that is the person of Jesus Christ- He comes and replaces the Temple and He is the one we are to worship in Spirit and in Truth. There is no AUTOMATIC FORGIVENESS just because we have turned up at church. When Jesus saw this Temple He saw a system which did not work because IT NEEDED REPLACING The purpose of this system was to bring salvation and reconciliation with God- it was to make the relationship between God and man NORMAL again- it had not been normal since Adam goofed. Paul tells us that “Christ is the end of the Law”. He is both the priest and the victim. No amount of tinkering around with the service of worship is going to make a difference. We need to recognise that while it is important for our worship to be contemporary and to include all that is best in the contemporary world of praise we could be super contemporary and relevant but fail to reach men and women for Christ. Yes we need to communicate the timeless truths of the word of God but we need to know that the answer to the deepest needs of contemporary people is to follow Christ, day by day. Later when we look at Nicodemus we will come across the term being “born again”- we need to know that when Jesus used that expression which he uses nowhere else he was shocking Nicodemus into understanding and it is the same kind of way we need to shock some traditional Presbyterians- the Jews were shocked that Jesus should use this language with the children of Abraham.