Third Sunday in Lent (B)
March 3, 2024
Text:
John 2:13-22
“When therefore he was raised
from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this, and they
believed the Scripture and the word that Jesus had spoken” (John 2:22;
ESV).
The Lord’s resurrection on the Third
Day is the great sign He shows us for doing these things. The resurrection makes all the
difference. It is the proof of His
authority. It reveals who He is, and
verifies all that He has said and taught.
The disciples, never mind the Jews, don’t understand these things as
they happen. But they will understand
after Jesus has been crucified, and after three days when Jesus rises
again.
If Jesus has not been raised, then
the Jews are right. Who is this
Man to come into the Temple and turn the whole place upside down? Fashioning a whip of cords. Driving out the vendors. Releasing the sacrificial beasts and pouring
out the money. If a man came into this
holy house during our worship and began flipping over tables and lashing our
members with a self-styled weapon, claiming this sanctuary belonged to his
own father, and that he, therefore, had the right to drive us
out as trespassers… had the right, in fact, to destroy the place and
rebuild it, well… we’d demand some proof of authorization, and an explanation
at the very least. More likely, we’d
call the cops, and some may even administer justice themselves. (Well, I don’t know about that last bit, but
this is Idaho.) All these
reactions were at play in the Temple that day.
Have a little sympathy for those who were just going about their routine
business. Those selling animals were
there to aid the worship. The
money-changers were keeping profane Roman coins from defiling the sacred space. And if they took a fee each time the coins
were changed, look… we all have to make a living somehow. We have to remember, as we read this, that
Jesus had not yet been crucified, and therefore had not yet been
raised. “What sign do you show us for
doing these things” (v. 18)? The sign
was yet to come.
If Jesus has not been raised, then
this is crazy talk, this “Destroy this temple, and
in three days I will raise it up” (v. 19). What can this Man possibly mean? We already know Him to be violent. We’ve seen Him in action for ourselves. What He seems to be doing, here, is
recruiting people to join Him in another delusional messianic revolt. Destroy this Temple, He says. Well, we have to be careful, here. Because, if the Romans catch wind of
revolutionary rumors, no matter how unlikely, they’ll simply march down the
steps of the Fortress Antonia and wipe out anyone within orbit of the trouble. And anyway, raise it up in three days? Absurd.
It’s taken forty-six years to build it as it is, Herod’s great
post-exilic Temple renovation. (As it
happens, the project wasn’t completed until AD 64, just six short years before
the Romans came in and levelled the place!)
If Jesus has not been raised, then
why should we pay any attention to His Word, to His
teaching? Why are we even here this
afternoon? What a waste of time. And what a waste of life on the part of His
disciples. Among the Apostles, all of
them, with only one possible exception, along with countless other believers,
died a horrific martyr’s death, insisting that Jesus is the Messiah, God
in the flesh, and our only Savior from sin and death… insisting that He
had, in fact, died, and that He is now risen from the dead, and lives. And reigns!
Why anyone would go to torture and death holding on to that
delusion is anyone’s guess. It doesn’t
make any sense, if they knew it to be untrue… if they didn’t know
it to be true beyond a shadow of a doubt.
And if Jesus has not been raised,
who is He to make any claim on my life?
Who is He to come in and turn everything upside down in my own
heart, mind, and soul, and even my physical being, my body? Pouring out the money like He’s toppling an
idol! To quote George Bailey, that money
“comes in pretty handy down here, bub!”
Driving out the animals and those selling them! Look, we’re just trying to do our best to
fulfill our religious obligations! And
apparently those attempts aren’t good enough in Your eyes, Jesus. Who are You, anyway, to demand
everything we are, and everything we have?
Who are You to tell us how to worship, how to pray? Who are You to deem our sacrifices,
our works, our system of atonement, insufficient?
If Jesus has not be raised… He’s
nobody. Perhaps you are familiar
with C. S. Lewis’ famous “Liar, Lunatic, or Lord” trilemma. In Mere Christianity, he writes, “A
man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said,” and we could
add, did the sort of things Jesus did, as in our text, “would not be a great
moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic—on a level with the man who says he
is a poached egg—or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You can shut Him up for
a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His
feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronising
nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to
us. He did not intend to.”[1]
How do we know which it is? How can we make that determination? Jesus tells us, exactly, in our
text. “Destroy this temple, and in
three days I will raise it up.”
Either He will, or He won’t.
Either He did, or He didn’t. That
is the sign. He is speaking about
the Temple of His Body (v. 21). They
destroyed it, the people… we destroyed it, by crucifixion. The question is, what happened to it after
three days?
If Jesus has not been raised, this
is all an exercise in futility… in fact, in absurdity. But if Jesus has been raised… If, in
three days, He raised up the Temple of His Body, the place where God
meets man and dwells with us, the place of sacrifice, the place of redemption… then
it’s all true. All that He
said. All that He did. And everything He continues to do and
say.
Then, in fact, the House does
belong to Him, and to His Father, and He has every right to clean it out
and evict the trespassers. Then, in
fact, He is the Lord, the King, and the Romans, and every other earthly
power, have no power over Him, to defeat Him.
Then, in fact, He has every claim over my life, and yours, and
the lives of His Apostles, and countless disciples. Our prayers.
Our money. Our blood, sweat, and
tears. Our deepest ambitions and most
fervent loves. Then, in fact, He can
abide no idols, for He is our God. He
will not share us. And He is
the Sacrifice, the only and all-sufficient Atonement for our sins, and the sins
of the world. To save us from
death. To save us from damnation. Our sacrifices, our works, cannot do it. He must drive them away. But He does it. He makes atonement for us. He saves us.
Now, the tomb is empty. No one has ever yet produced His corpse. And there are eyewitnesses who saw Him
alive. Who touched Him. Who ate with Him. Who saw the crucifixion wounds. Perhaps even put their fingers into
them. He appeared to Peter. Then to the Twelve. Then to more than five hundred brothers at
one time. Then to Paul on the Damascus
Road. And we must not forget the women,
who saw Him first. Many of these were
tortured, many of them were killed, and all of them suffered for insisting
that it is true. The evidence is overwhelming. “But in fact Christ has been raised from
the dead,” Paul writes, “the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep”
(1 Cor. 15:20).
And you know it’s true. Because, though you have not seen Him, you
have heard His voice. You are hearing
it, now, as you do wherever His Word is preached and the Scriptures are
proclaimed. The Spirit testifies to you. You are baptized into Him, immersed in the
reality of His death and resurrection for you.
And He is in you. You eat Him and
drink Him as He comes to you in His body and blood.
And it overturns everything in you. Your sin is exchanged for His
righteousness. His weakness becomes your
strength. His death is your life, and
His life renders your death but a portal, that you may go further up, and
further in, to His life. And in the end,
now… the Beginning.
Resurrection. New Creation. He is the Firstfruits. You follow Him soon. Indeed, you are now His Temple, the House
where He dwells. Zeal for you has
consumed Him. He died for you. But He didn’t stay dead. Now, therefore, that He has been raised from
the dead, remember all the things that He says. Believe them, and live by them. If He was right about His resurrection,
everything He says is true. Therefore, let
us fall at His feet, and call Him Lord and God.
In the Name of the Father, and of the Son X, and of the Holy
Spirit. Amen.
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