All Glory to God the Father and to our Savior Jesus Christ
From Westminster Shorter Catechism (written in 1647), questions 55 to 58
Q55: What is forbidden in the Third Commandment?
A55: The Third Commandment forbiddeth all profaning or abusing [of] anything whereby God maketh Himself known.
Q56: What is the reason annexed to the Third Commandment?
A56: The reason annexed to the Third Commandment is, That however the breakers of this commandment may escape punishment from men, yet the Lord our God will not suffer them to escape His righteous judgement.
Q57: Which is the Fourth Commandment?
A57: The Fourth Commandment is, “Remember the Sabbath-day, to keep it holy. Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work: But the seventh day is the sabbath of the LORD thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maid- servant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates: For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the LORD blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it.”
Q58: What is required in the Fourth Commandment?
A58: The Fourth Commandment requireth the keeping holy to God such set times as He appointed in His Word; expressly one whole day in seven to be a holy Sabbath to Himself.
We continue on today with John 2, to the bottom of the chapter. Last week Jesus changed water into wine and there was much discussion as to how Jesus, who came to this world fully human and fully God (Hebrews 2:5-18) did what was asked of him; if you research this concept, there are very many references to it in the scripture. Link
Most of our conversation stemmed from my assertion that Mary, the Mother of Jesus was, at the point of her request to her Son to do something, was coming to her Savior as a supplicant and not at that time as His Mother. I will be quite free in my assertion that I might be all wrong about this, but you can go to your own bible and ask God for wisdom in this.
And an important fact to remember is when all the hubbub died down, we were all still brothers and sisters in Christ. That’s how Christian adults deal with things. If you look around, you’ll note that society as a whole has turned away from this way of dealing with each other. If you are still looking around and seeing clearly, you discern the cause of this. We as a people have for the most part, turned from God. Oh sure, our money still has “In God We Trust” and there are other remnants of an early time in which we believed more strongly, but it is like The Lord’s Prayer, read but not seen, spoken but not understood. (Mark 4:12)
When you just go through the motions, in a sense, God gives back what He receives from you. (Psalm 9:17) And quite often He turns us over to our sins. (Romans 1:18-28) Look upon this land and see a people given over to their sins. Not all, but a majority. And the rest of us are being shaken up, to see what can be shaken, and also to see what can’t be shaken and will remain. The specific verse I am talking about is Hebrews 12:26-29. This entire year has been shaken, take note of verse 27, “This expression, “Yet once more,” denotes the removing of those things which can be shaken, as of created things, so that those things which cannot be shaken may remain.” This is saying God will remove what has been shaken. It will be interesting to see what gets removed from our lives and what will remain.
This is where we come to the scripture passage for today.
We know from the beginning of this chapter that Jesus, his disciples and family went down to Capernaum after the wedding they had attended. (John 2:12) And now the time of Passover was here. Passover we know stems from the time when Moses confronted Pharaoh over his mistreatment of the people and wanting to leave to go worship their God. (Exodus 9:1) Pharaoh’s heart had been hardened (Exodus 9:12) and he refused to let the people go. God used Moses and Aaron to shake things up and remove that which had been shaken by cursing the land, Pharaoh and his people, which is found in Exodus 7 through 11.
Ten plagues were given unto Pharaoh and his people. They were (1) Blood (2) Frogs (3) Lice or Gnats (4) Flies (5) Death of Livestock (6) Boils (7) Hail (8) Locusts (9) Darkness and (10) Death of Every Firstborn, and it’s this last one from which we get Passover. Moses’s people were told to slaughter a lamb and rub its blood on the doorposts so an Angel of the Lord would see it and pass over their house and not kill the firstborn. Exodus 12 tells the whole story and in Jesus’s time, they were still celebrating Passover.
Jesus went up to Jerusalem, probably with His disciples, to celebrate the Passover (John 1:13)
When He got there, He found the temple had been compromised with people selling oxen, sheep and doves, and acting as money changers. The animals were for sacrifice, remember that all the Jews were still under the sacrificial law as described in Leviticus 1-7 and all the additional laws made by the Pharisees. The money changers were probably the worst though. Jewish law required a temple tax of a half-shekel (Exodus 30:11–16), Jews and visitors from other nations came to pay their taxes when they offered their sacrifices. But foreign coins with the likeness of pagan emperors would not be accepted in God’s temple. So money changers exchanged those foreign coins for Jewish money, but they did so at an exorbitant profit.
You might imagine how Jesus, fully human and fully God, felt when He saw the temple defiled as it was, as it is the House of God. Our Savior made a whip of cords and drove these people out of the temple area. He drove out the beast and tipped over the money changers’ tables, pouring out all the coins. (John 2:15) You can picture the money changers on their hands and knees, scrabbling around for all those loose coins like so many rats chasing crumbs.
To those who sold doves, He told them to “Take these things away!” They were informed by Christ in righteous anger to stop making His Father’s house a place of business. (John 2:16)
His disciples, who probably had witnessed the whole event with open mouths, then remembered Psalm 69:9 “Zeal for Your house will consume me.” (John 2:17)
The Jews were pretty put out by all the bedlam that this simple carpenter had wrought. They asked him for a sign as to the authority He had for doing what He had done.(John 2:18) Jesus gave them an answer they could not accept. (John 2:19) And here we have a classic ‘forest for the trees’ effect going on. These Jews knew the ancient texts, the scrolls that they studied and debated back and forth as to what it means. They should have known what this “sign” meant. Jesus told them “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” Of course the Jews took this as a literal event, and it was, (Matthew 27:32-56, 1 Corinthians 15:20) however not in the way that they imagined. Christ spoke to what they understood, knowing mankind as He did, and also to what the righteous would understand.
The Jews had so much pride in their knowledge of scripture and their Temple. They were incredulous that anybody could rebuild this temple in such a short time. “3 days? It took 46 years and you say 3 days?” (John 2:20) And yet it was an empty pride as God no longer resided in the temple as He once did. Ezekiel 10 describes God leaving the temple and later when Nehemiah asks his king to return to Jerusalem to rebuild the walls and temple, (Nehemiah 1) God did not return to reside there in the temple, not until Christ walked among them.
So of course our Lord was not talking about earthly things. He was speaking of the temple of His body, that which we are to remember when we have the Lord’s Supper (Luke 22:14-22). (John 2:21)
Speaking of Temples, we find this in 1 Corinthians 6:19-20 “Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God, and that you are not your own? For you have been bought for a price: therefore glorify God in your body.” I have always wondered about that with tattoos and piercings and such. The scripture does say that you are not your own, yet when this gets brought up in conversation with pagans, quite often on the topic of abortion. My body, my choice is what they tell us. That very thing is codified in our law to our dishonor. This from John MacArthur “Through God’s book of wisdom it’s easy for any believer to analyze the world. People who have no biblical background find it difficult to resolve controversial issues like capital punishment, abortion, or homosexuality. But the Bible has clear answers for those seemingly complex issues: If you take a life, you should die (Gen. 9:6); the life within the womb is a person made by God (Ps. 139:13); and homosexuality is not an alternate lifestyle but a damning sexual sin like adultery or fornication (1 Cor. 6:9-10; Rom. 1:26-27)”
Now after all that, we come to the part where I question the vaunted thought of free will. This whole storyline of John 2 speaks of things known in the past and happening in the here and now of Jesus’s time. Prophecy. God works in mysterious ways and that truly is good enough for me, but where does us working through the will of God, doing His will according to His will, end and Providence begin? The more I learn the more I wonder, and so did the disciples. When Christ was raised from the dead, the disciples believed what the scripture had said and which Jesus had spoken. (John 2:22)
And here we find the reason for all of this, written so long ago. Many observed His signs and came to believe. (John 2:23) But Jesus did not entrust Himself to them because He knew all people (John 2:24) and did not need anyone to testify about mankind, for He Himself knew what was in mankind. (John 2:25)
It may be disconcerting to you that Christ knows your thoughts and what’s in your heart, even before you do, as per the scripture. (Psalm 139:4) For those believing in the free will and the autonomous nature of man, that would be troubling I suppose.(John 15:5, Colossians 1:18, Philippians 2:13) Pro Tip, there is only one autonomous being in this whole creation, that being YHWH. You can get onboard with that or go cry in the truck. (Rodeo reference.)
I take comfort with my Savior knowing me, all of me. The more I study the scripture, the more I trust in my Lord to lead me into those green pastures (Psalm 23) and restore my soul. And when I stray from His will, He will discipline me (Hebrews 12:4-12). All part of a loving relationship of a Father to His son. When I repent, I am brought back into His loving embrace. (Matthew 3:8) Read your bible and call upon your Lord, often. And give glory to the Father in all things. Know that 2020 is being shaken by God and it is all part of His will. Find your rock of salvation (Psalm 62) and cling to it so that you will not be shaken but comforted. May the Grace of the Lord be upon you, and may He grant you peace.