Today’s Scripture:
“Jesus answered them, ‘Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.’” — John 2:19 (ESV)
Reflection
Okay so half of this is just straight yap so good luck to whoever is reading this!
Today’s QT is about Jesus cleansing the temple during the Passover. When Jesus went to Jerusalem, and the temple of God, He saw many people selling things, and converting money for tourists. Jesus got angry in a righteous way, and He drove out all the people and overturned their tables, calling it a “den of robbers” in the other Gospels. The zeal consumed Jesus. Next, the Jews were questioning Jesus’s authority to drive people out of the temple, and asked Him to show them a sign. Jesus told them that He will raise up the temple in three days, but He was really talking about His body, which the disciples remembered. Later, when He was showing signs, the people “believed” in Him for the miracles He was doing, but Jesus knew that they didn’t truly have a deep faith in Him.
I looked at P. Abe’s sermon notes again. I believe he split it up into three different sermons, but I was only there for the first two for some reason. The first one was about Jesus’s zeal. The definition of zeal is the great energy or enthusiasm in pursuit of something. If I were going off just my own thoughts, I would have thought that Jesus had a zeal for holiness and purity, but what I learned from P. Abe’s sermon is that Jesus’s zeal was really for us and for our salvation. Jesus was in pursuit of a real relationship with us, which is why He cleansed the temple. In the OT days, the temple represented God’s presence in Israel, and it was the home of God on earth. He cleansed the temple so that the Jews could continue to have their relationship with God in peace. Jesus’s zeal present day is still existing, as Jesus intercedes for us with God. But now this brings up the topic of Jesus literally being God with the Israelites, and now the topic of the Holy Spirit being in us as God’s presence, and also God being omnipresent anyway. I will leave that open for later conversation!
The second sermon was about Jesus raising the temple in three days. From a surface level standpoint, this is pretty straightforward, as Jesus is really talking about His body and resurrecting in three days. Going a little deeper into the text though, we see that Jesus was really talking to His disciples instead of the Jews, and He was signalling to them to remember His words. Later, when Jesus really dies and comes back to life, we see the fulfillment of this promise. This foretelling of the future truly shows us the authority of Jesus that the Jews were asking for at the beginning of this passage, and we see that Jesus is the truth that He says He is. P. Abe says that whenever we doubt the truth and fear death, we have to think of Jesus, who is the truth, and who died on the cross for our sins and ultimately overcame death by resurrecting again.
Last sermon was about Jesus knowing man. I wasn’t here for this sermon because I was probably in Chicago, but I’ll do a personal reflection. The symptoms of this passage are so easy to see in life today. Christians see the miracles of Jesus and hear stories of faith, and it is so easy to feel a state of faith that is not grounded and is superficial. This is so scary because Jesus knows our true hearts although others don’t, and on judgment day, there will be consequences for superficial faith. I know my own faith has been mentally grounded by Jesus through the lessons that He has taught me, and all the things I have learned about theology. I am extremely confident that by God’s grace, my brain’s faith cannot be shaken by anything. However, compared to my mental knowledge of Jesus, I feel like my heart is lagging behind in belief. Although I do still believe in my heart, I have a fear saying like, “what if it’s superficial”. I know that God has saved me and is shaping me through sanctification today. For those who feel as if their faith is superficial, I really recommend the basics: daily Bible reading and constant prayer. These are things that have helped me to grow in the past few years. When I first started Bible reading, it was like crazy how much my faith grew, and more recently, I have just been praying more. I don’t know everyone’s heart, but I know that God is omniscient and sees the hearts of man. Don’t hide from God; come to Him and truly believe.