John 2:12-25 - Wrong Way

Main Idea: I must surrender all of my behaviors and beliefs to the Lord Jesus.

MY RELIGIOUS BEHAVIORS DO NOT REFLECT THE HOLY GOD (vs. 12-17)

• I don’t reflect His goals.

• I don’t reflect His methods.

MY RELIGIOUS BELIEFS DO NOT ALIGN WITH THE HOLY GOD (vs. 18-25)

• I view as offensive and unenlightened what He calls good.

• I view as impossible what He knows is truth.

Sermon Transcript (Auto-Transcribed by YouTube)

Let's do this, we're going to be looking today, we're continuing our study in John 1-4, the word became flesh, that Jesus came to this earth.

And today's message from John 2 verses 12-25, as we've been working step by step through the gospel, is called Wrong Way. Have you ever had a scare while you're driving? I'm kidding, we're in Baltimore, you probably had a scare driving here today.

Of all the possible scares that one could have while driving, I would assume one of the worst possible ones would be seeing wrong way on a big red sign as you're driving along.

I know I've seen, actually, we were going up to an Iron Birds game, the one that we went to in July, and we saw on the other side of the road, someone go in the completely wrong direction on the highway.

And I was like, Oh, goodness, Lord, please, please help them. So you don't want to be heading the wrong way while you're driving.

And in the passage today, Jesus, along with his disciples, he enters Jerusalem, the religious and political center of his day, on one of the holiest days in the Jewish calendar Passover, the day of remembering God's deliverance of his people from

slavery. And he lets everyone know there that they are headed the wrong way. We're going to read through our passage and then look at what God has for us today, beginning in John 2 and verses 12 through 25.

After this, after the miracle that we heard about last week with Jesus turning the water into wine, saving the wedding, doing it secretly, it says after this, he went down to Capernaum, together with his mother, his brothers, and his disciples, and

they stayed there only a few days. The Jewish Passover was near, so Jesus went up to Jerusalem.

This would have been something that the Jews would have done three times a year for various festivals, that they came together as a people and thanked the Lord for what he had done for them in the Exodus, for the fact that he saved them from

Passover, and that God had given them new crops for the year. Those were kind of the three things that everyone came together for this purpose. And so Jesus is going up to Jerusalem for this.

And in the temple, he found people selling oxen, sheep, and doves. And he also found the money changers sitting there. After making a whip out of cords, he drove everyone out of the temple with their sheep and oxen.

He also poured out the money changers' coins and overturned the tables. He told those who were selling doves, get these things out of here. Stop turning my father's house into a market place.

And his disciples remembered that it is written, zeal for your house will consume me. The verse that Pastor Ron read today. So the Jews replied to him, what sign of authority, what can you give us to show us for doing these things?

It's not every day that someone comes into church, overturns all the tables, has a whip, and kicks you all out. I don't know in my limited church experience that I've ever had that happen to me.

And so, justifiably, these individuals went, why are you doing this, Jesus? And Jesus answered in verse number 19, destroy this temple, and I will raise it up in three days.

Therefore, the Jews said, this temple took 46 years to build, and will you raise it up in three days? But he was speaking about the temple of his body.

So when he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this, and they believed the scripture and the statement Jesus had made.

While he was in Jerusalem at the Passover festival, many believe they trusted in his name when they saw the signs that he was doing. Jesus, however, would not entrust himself to them since he knew them all.

And because he did not need anyone to testify about man, for he himself knew what was in man. In light of what we've read and what we'll study today, there's only one right response to God's wrong way signal.

I must surrender all of my behaviors and beliefs to the Lord Jesus. I'm not just saying me, by the way. For you as well.

I must surrender all of my behaviors and my beliefs to the Lord Jesus. Let's pray today. Lord, I ask today that as we look at your word, that you would speak to our hearts.

Lord, for every person here, may they have an openness to, as you speak to them, they will respond. Lord, if you convict of sin or of righteousness or judgment, that we would obey.

Lord, if you comfort us through what Jesus has done for us, may we receive that and put away the shame and guilt that Satan would have for us. God, if you have actions for us to take, let us pursue those.

But God, we ask that you would speak to us today. Lord, I ask that you would help me to only say what you would have me to.

Lord, I pray that if there's someone here today that does not know you as savior, that they are headed the wrong way, that you would save them even today. And God, I pray above all, that you would be glorified. Love you, Lord.

Pray all of this in your name. Amen. From the passage, we're gonna see two reasons today why we must surrender our behaviors and beliefs to the Lord Jesus.

And the first of these that we could find in verses 12 through 17 is that my religious behavior does not reflect the Holy God. My religious behavior does not reflect the Holy God.

As Jesus comes to the kind of temple complex on that day, he was walking into something that had just been status quo for a while.

You see, during that time period, obviously there were several times throughout the year that the Jews were supposed to come to the temple to worship, to bring sacrifices, to enjoy the festivals.

And as they did so, they would often bring offerings, or perhaps if they were coming from a far away place and they didn't really think that they could bring a lamb or an oxen or a dove the entire length of the journey with them, they would simply

bring along money. And they were in the Roman Empire, and so you would have various coins that would have the Caesar at the time's face on those coins, or it would have some emblem of Rome, and the Jewish leaders at that time had determined that

those coins could not be used to purchase animals to sacrifice within the temple. So all of the Jews knew, okay, we've got to bring sacrifices to the temple, either bringing the physical animal or the cost of what that animal would be worth.

And so they would bring these Roman coins, and here's what's mentioned as the money changers. They would take the Roman coins and then give some temple coins that would be acceptable to purchase the animals with. However, they used extortive prices.

It was a terrible exchange rate. This would be one of the things that, you know, your credit card company would tell you not to do. This is not worth that if you're exchanging these coins.

And so these people were getting rich off of exploiting those that were coming to worship God.

These were not perhaps the priests and the Levites that part of their regular thing that God had set up for them in the Old Testament was as they offer the sacrifices, as they give these gifts to the Lord, they have a portion of that that is theirs

to be able to live and to have food to eat. These were people simply making money off of God's people. And as Jesus enters, he recognizes that this behavior did not reflect the holiness of God.

Over and over again in the Old Testament prophets, as Isaiah and Jeremiah and Ezekiel, as they looked at the religious structures of their day, they saw people that were doing religious things, but with a heart that was far from God.

They offered sacrifices, but then went and took advantage of other people. They were singing in the congregation, and yet, afterwards, they were going out and robbing people or murdering people.

There was so much wickedness happening with God's people. And so Isaiah would proclaim that in the coming day of the Lord, when the Messiah would come, that God's house would be called a house of prayer. That wouldn't be a marketplace.

It would be completely cleansed, that there would not be evil in this place where God has set aside his worship to be anymore.

And frankly, for us today, that ought to be our heart, that as we come to worship today here at Tabernacle, that we would worship God in a way that is holy, that is pure, that we're not just trying to check something off a religious checklist today

and then go out and live the rest of the week however we want to live. We want to be faithfully with Jesus and pure in heart to him, worshiping in spirit and in truth every single day. This would be our desire.

But Jesus, because of his righteousness, because of his holiness, because he is the God that as we learned about in our series in Genesis 1 through 11, he is the one who made the world. He is the one that set up right and wrong.

He is the one that laid down, if you will, the curse, that is the condemnation of Satan for his actions in the Garden of Eden and told Adam and Eve about what they would go through now that their path had deviated from God.

He let them know where the path was headed and also how he would work to save them, to put them back on his path of forgiveness.

He is also the God that brought the flood, that cleansed the world and that holy God, the holy God that out of love for his people, out of love for those that were enslaved in the book of Exodus and the time of the Passover, that he brought the 10

plagues on Egypt and he brought his people out. And when Pharaoh and his army pursued them to the Red Sea, that God brought the Red Sea on them, that holy God is Jesus Christ.

And so as he enters into this temple and he sees people that are so poor that they're giving like the very base thing that you could possibly bring to the temple, they're the doves that people would bring. This was the poorest of the poor.

This is what Joseph and Mary brought when they were bringing the offering for Jesus' birth to the temple, as we read about in Luke 2 in last December.

And so for these people that were extorting the poor and taking advantage of them within God's temple, and all of this was taking place within the court of the Gentiles.

So how the temple structure was set up at that time was, you had the court, the inner court, where like the men were able to worship, and then you had kind of an outer court, where you had like women and children, some of those could worship.

And then you have the court of the Gentiles, which was supposed to be, where those that were from the other nations, they could come and they could hear God's word, and they could believe in him, and they could follow the God of Israel, that God had

a place that was for them. And yet the religious leaders of the day had shoved, in essence, had shoved them out to be able to say, we want to have a marketplace, where we can make some money, and we're going to shove out these people that God has

said, I'm going to save the whole world. My plan doesn't end with Israel. It extends to the uttermost parts of the earth.

And so Jesus, the holy God, coming in, seeing the wrong that was being done, the lack of love and care for people, Jesus, systematically, intentionally, this wasn't just a flash of anger where he's going around punching people.

Here, what he does is it takes time. He went through all the effort to make this whip that was there.

And driving out the animals, this is not the type of whip that's talked about sometimes in scripture where like this is what you use for prisoners or something like that. This would have been something to drive out these animals.

Frankly, this was a very demeaning thing from the leaders of that day that they said, okay, it's the court of the Gentiles. And since Gentiles are basically dogs, they're animals, it's fine if we sell these animals in this place.

And so Jesus in his righteousness and his holiness, he says, I'm going to uproot your religious behavior because it does not reflect the Holy God.

And his disciples, as they see all of this stuff that is happening, where Jesus says, get these things out of here, stop turning my father's house into a marketplace. A relationship with God isn't something that can be bought or sold.

If I tell you guys, hey, I've got like a holy handkerchief here, and if you buy this for the low cost of $99.99, you can get your prayers answered, you can be healed from sickness, that would be wickedness.

That would be turning God's house into a marketplace. Even in the Old Testament, where there was the sacrificial system, you can read what David wrote in Psalm 50 and 51, where he says, you do not desire sacrifice, otherwise I would give it.

The sacrifices of God are a broken and a humble heart. That, oh God, is what you will not despise or look down on.

So as the disciples see what Jesus is doing, see what he's saying, they remember what the Psalmist had written in Psalm 69, where he said, zeal for your house will consume me.

That they are in that passage as this person is being looked down on by other people because of their love for the Lord.

This person has a dedication to the Lord that as Pastor Ron read, that he's like, hey God, don't let you be downgraded or ill thought of because of me. But he does receive scorn from people because he is consumed with a love for the Lord.

Here, that's what Jesus is experiencing. That these religious leaders that had been more than happy to endorse religious behavior, to have it happen that went directly against God's word.

That then they look down on Jesus as a result, which is why they ask him like, hey, what sign of authority do you have for us? And we'll get to that in the next point.

For us today, it is not simply that people 2000 years ago had religious behavior that didn't reflect the holy God. If we are sinners today, and are you a sinner today? Or rather, do you sin today?

All of us do. And frankly, none of us engage in irreligious behavior. All of us have our religion.

Sometimes it looks different. It's not always the God of the Bible that we're worshiping. Sometimes we worship gods of entertainment, gods of popular culture.

We worship gods of our own pleasure. As we look back at human history, at the false gods that many people worshiped, they at least directly acknowledged that that's what they were doing.

Now we just say, well, I just really like this thing or that thing. It's not that I worship it. I mean, I spend time on it.

I give money to it. I try and enlist other people to think about it and to have good opinions about it, but I don't worship it. And frankly, we do.

So all of our behavior is religious behavior. It's, is your religious behavior like the holy God or is it just the gods, the things of this earth? Well, how does our religious behavior not reflect God?

Number one, we don't reflect his goals. We don't reflect the goals of our holy God. God's goals are salvation.

That God wants everyone to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth is what 2 Peter 3 tells us. For our end, for our goals, I want to make people moral. And if people are moral, I'm happy.

I want to make people fed. I'm ending world hunger. And that's my end goal.

I want to make people obedient. And that's my goal. Or I want to make them rebellious, just kind of stick it to the man.

That's what I'm trying to make in other people. Or I'm trying to make people educated. And if people are educated, then this whole world is going to be better.

God wants to bring people from death to life, to save them through Jesus' sacrifice. If you don't know the Lord today, if you don't know what maybe some of this is about, God is perfect in his nature and his character.

He has never said, done or thought anything wrong. All of us have sinned. We have rebelled against God's nature.

And so instead of finding life in the Lord, when we reject life, all that's left for us is death. We say things, we do things, we think things that go against the Lord, that are in direct opposition to who he is.

And it poisons every aspect of our life, that our bodies, our minds, our relationships, our finances, everything in our life is headed towards a path of eventual destruction.

And the Bible says that it's not simply that we have this life and then this life is the end, but there is eternity to come after this life.

And the Bible says that the wages, what the earnings of our sin, of our rebellion against God is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.

2,000 years ago, as John, the writer of this gospel, details for us, Jesus came to this earth. He lived a perfect sinless life.

He died on the cross in our place for our sins so that all of our sin was placed on him and all of his righteousness was placed on us when we receive him as our savior.

The Bible says that Jesus didn't just stay dead once he was crucified, but that he rose again from the dead three days later. And then 40 days later ascended into heaven.

The Bible says that if we believe in him, believe in his salvation and the gift that he bought for us of a restored relationship with God, of a home forever with him, if we believe in him, all of that is ours.

The Bible says it can't be purchased like here in the marketplace. It can't be something that's earned. The Bible says it's by God's grace, his loving favor and not from human works that we are saved.

Bible says if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. God is the God of salvation. Jesus' very name, Jehovah or Yahweh, saves.

God is the one who gave his life for people. And here these religious leaders, these people that were in the marketplace, they didn't have a care for the souls of those that they were interacting with. They were trying to make a buck from them.

And so we ought to reflect the goals of God, which is the salvation of people. Instead of shooing out the Gentiles and saying, hey, we've got some animals that you can purchase to be able to give your sacrifices.

And we're going to do this within the place where God is to be worshiped. They didn't care about salvation of the nations. They cared about their own comfort.

We also don't reflect God's goals of a love for people. A love for people. We want people to make our church experience better, or our life better.

We want to be served. We want the Burger King. I want to have it my way.

I want to benefit from the right attenders at my church who are my age and like what I like. I want to have an area filled with people that are just like me. Or on the other hand, I want to make people pay for what they've done to me.

And I want to benefit no matter what the consequences are to other people. We don't pursue, we don't talk, we don't act like God in having a love for other people as the goal of our life and words and actions.

God is the God of love, who is defined by his steadfast covenant love to a thousand generations.

The Book of Jonah details for us that the people that we think are the furthest from God, the last ones to repent and to turn to him, those are the people that God is after.

And the people that think they've got it all together, the prophet Jonah who says, you know, God, I don't want to go there because I knew that you were a forgiving and a compassionate God who loves people.

And frankly, that's how we act, or rather sometimes how we don't act through our lack of evangelism, through our lack of witness. We tell God, I don't care about the people that you care about. I don't love the people that you care about.

And maybe I won't tell them God doesn't love you, but through my lack of care for their eternal state and their soul, I am in essence telling them, God might love you, but I don't. We don't have God's goals.

God has a goal of discipleship, of helping people to grow every day in a relationship with him.

We might want to get people to pray a prayer, maybe get baptized, start showing up more Sundays than not, or at least that's the life that I model for others.

That God's goal for my life and the lives of others is that we would continually be more and more and more like Jesus. God's goal is to change people entirely, to make the selfish and immoral and proud into selfless, pure, humble pictures of Jesus.

How can you reflect God's goals in your religious behavior this week? You don't have religious behavior and irreligious behavior. Everything that you do, you do out of love for either the holy God or whatever gods you have set up in your life.

So, how can you reflect God's goals in your religious behavior this week? Not only do we not reflect God's goals, I don't reflect his methods. How he wants done what he wants done.

That's exactly what's happening here. It perhaps wasn't a sin to be able to bring some coinage to purchase an animal to be able to be sacrificed.

That was something that was outlined even in the book of Leviticus, because God knew sometimes it might be difficult to take a bull from all the way north in Dan or all the way south in Beersheba and to be able to bring that all the way to the temple

or the tabernacle and have it sacrificed. So he said, you can bring the equivalent in your coinage, but how the people were doing it here of extorting others, looking to make money was not in God's methods. God has methods for our lives today.

He has methods that he's even prescribed for us in his word of how we do church. He has prescribed preaching through 1 Corinthians 1. He says that God has chosen through the foolishness of preaching to save those that are lost.

God has prescribed singing that we would declare God's word to one another in Psalms and hymns and spiritual songs that as we sing holy, holy, holy, we're declaring to one another Isaiah 6 and revelation 4 and 5.

As we sing the Lord's prayer, we're singing out from Matthew 6. As we sing only a holy God, we're singing like a whole swath worth of stuff from the Old Testament prophets and the New Testament about who Jesus is and what he's accomplished.

He has prescribed for us to sing. He's prescribed for us to read the word. Paul told Timothy, a young pastor of the church in Ephesus in 1 Timothy chapter 4.

He says, till I come, give attendance to reading, public reading of scripture, to exhortation and to doctrine, what you are teaching.

God has prescribed for us to give that he says, in many places, that we are to give from a cheerful heart, to love and to care for others. Not all giving is like here, this marketplace.

There are times when from the free will of people, whatever they say, God, I want you to have this. I want to be a part of this work.

I want to take care of this individual or to be generous or to be kind hearted towards someone, that we are able to do that. And that's one of the ways that God has prescribed for us. 2 Corinthians 8 and 9 deal with that in great detail.

God has prescribed for us to pray. In 1st Timothy chapter 2, I will therefore that men pray everywhere, lifting up holy hands without anger and doubting.

God has prescribed for us to learn from other people, that we would mature in our faith, that who we were, we won't seek to always be that. You are not stuck in the life and habits that you currently have.

God wants to help you learn and grow in your faith. God tells us to go.

You can think about the great commission in Matthew 28, where Jesus tells us go there for, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe everything that I have

commanded you. We are prescribed to go, and we are prescribed even to fast, where God instructs us to have times in our life where we don't engage in maybe eating, or we don't engage in perhaps an action, or in taking media for a time to be able to

focus exclusively on the Lord. That is what God has prescribed for us. What he has said, this is what you ought to do in church. What we want is a multimedia event with flashy lights and videos, and maybe flags or something, just every type of thing.

We want programs for every circumstance of life. We maybe want a program for those that have been widowed five years, and for those that ten years ago got a dog. We want a coffee bar to be able to have, and certainly I love coffee.

It's not a bad thing. These things aren't bad things to want. But is my goal, am I reflecting God's methods, his greatest heart in what I'm doing?

Am I following what he has told me to do, or am I just doing the things that he hasn't explicitly told me to do?

Here, these people in the marketplace, there was kind of a task that they were supposed to be helping with, but they were doing it for themselves, which is why Jesus said, get this stuff out. God's house is to be a house of prayer, not a marketplace.

Why would we want things? Why would we want methods that God hasn't prescribed? Because what God has prescribed is not fast, flashy, or flesh pleasing.

Doing things God's way changes you slowly over months and years and decades. We want something that will bring us instant financial success, spontaneous marital bliss, and immediately obedient kids. But that's not how God works.

God is day by day slowly changing you, renewing you, so that you become more like Jesus. It's a process that takes time. So let's reflect his heart on his methods.

They ask you, what does God want you to do this week for you to grow as a Christian? You've not been participating in. God has all of these things that aren't just a Sunday morning action for you to take.

Part of you reading the word or singing or giving or going or praying or fasting. That's not just something that happens on Sundays from 11 to 12, 15. That's something that God wants from you every single day.

Are you pursuing that? Are you following what God has outlined for your life? So first, my religious behavior does not reflect the Holy God.

My beliefs, my goals, my methods, they don't align with his. All of us, as the writer of Come Thou Fount would say, prone to wander, Lord, I feel it. Prone to leave the God that I love.

As the psalmist would write, as Paul would quote, all of us, like sheep, have gone astray. We have turned every one of us to our own way.

So let's seek the shepherd again and again to say, God, I've been living my life, you know, Tuesday through Friday, like you don't exist. I'm not giving you my time. I'm not talking about you.

I'm not participating perhaps through my finances or my generosity in what you have for me. I'm not being kind to others and blessing others. And so God, I want to engage in the religious behavior that you have for me every single day.

Because when we engage in religious behavior, it's not as though we are now like in God's favor, in God's salvation, where before we were not. But this is what God made us for. God made you to walk with him.

God made you to know him. And as we engage in what his Spirit has told us that we ought to do with our lives, we find new restoration and purpose. And we find that just greatness of being in God's presence.

Can I encourage you?

One way that you can do that this week, tomorrow at 3.15, or sorry, tomorrow at 3.45, if you're not working during that particular time, we're going to be handing out just some small gift bags to parents that are picking up their kids from the first

day of school at Middlesex Elementary right across the street. And in there, it's got some goodies, it's got a gospel tract, it's got a personal letter from me, just letting them know that we're praying for them.

And we want them to know Jesus, and we want to be an encouragement to them in whatever way we can.

Maybe if you have time to be able to drop by, that would be one way in which we can follow the Lord, that we can say, hey, God, your goal is salvation, so I'm gonna hand out some things that have the gospel in them.

God, your goal is love for people, and no one's like contractually obligating us to give these things to them. No one said, hey, you have to give candy to them.

This is just something that we can bless someone else with, and discipleship, and encouraging people. In that letter, there's some resources to help people as they raise kids, and as they are navigating through raising kids in the mid 2020s.

Some of you raise kids not in the 2020s, and as you look at today's environment, you guys are scared. Those of us raising kids, sometimes we get scared, and we need some prayer in discipling the next generation.

So these are easy ways in which we can reflect God's goals and reflect his methods.

That the method that we're having is not like a quick fix thing to be able to give to parents, but this is something that as we proclaim the gospel to them, as we invite them into a relationship with Christ and with God's people, we want to engage in

religious behavior that does reflect our holy God. And lastly today, we can see that not only does our religious behavior not reflect our holy God, but our religious beliefs do not align with the holy God.

Here in this passage, as the Jewish leaders ask Jesus, hey, like, you don't have the right to do this. What sign of authority? Are you like, hey, you know, I'm from the Roman Empire, and so I can do this?

Or hey, I've got a halo or something, I'm an angel from God, that that's why I'm doing this. And they say, we want to see your authority. You don't have the right to tell us what to do or how to practice our religion.

And Jesus answers them basically with the gospel. He says, I cleaned out this temple complex, but I'm going to die, so that not just this temple complex can be clean, but so that the people inside of it, inside their souls, so they can be clean.

He says, destroy this temple, this sanctuary, and I'm going to build it right back up in three days. I am God. In a sense, I am immortal.

You can trust me, because I am the one that has come from everlasting. Here, even what he says of, get these things out of here, stop turning my father's house into a marketplace.

Later in John's gospel, people would hear Jesus call God his father, and they knew exactly what Jesus was saying. They said, hey, he called God his father, making himself equal with God. And so he has to be stoned, he has to be killed.

And so here, Jesus is proclaiming his divine right to be able to clean up house as God himself. And it didn't align with the beliefs of these people. This wasn't just something that happened 2000 years ago.

This is true for us today. We view as offensive and unenlightened what Jesus calls good. The Jewish leaders view Jesus' casting out of the marketplace, sellers and money changers as bad.

For us today, we can view the fact that Jesus has things that he said in his word that we are to do and not to do with our body. We can say, who is he to tell us what we can or can't do?

We can buck against God's call to forgiveness, where we would say, if I do what God wants, I'm never going to be able to stick it to that other person. We fight against what God says in generosity.

We would say, God or others haven't earned my money, and so they can't have it. But in essence, that's simply us being Adam and Eve again, taking the fruit that God said was bad and calling it good.

We excuse away sins in our life, that our gossip isn't really gossip, that our hatred is really just us being smart. We can view our degrading of other people, our slander, as simply telling the facts and a hundred different things.

But we have to realize that if we're not perfect yet, then we will sometimes think that we're doing all right, we're real holy, and we are not aligned with God. God is the definer of good and evil, not us.

We don't get to tell him that he's wrong about our behaviors and attitudes and words, just because we like our sin too much to surrender to him. Scripture would tell us, whoa, to those that call good evil and evil good.

This is the basis of our society today. That society says that the Bible is real backwards. You can't really listen to it.

We're just much more intelligent now, and people back then, they were just mistaken, or they were just maybe hateful or something, but you really need to embrace everything that we have today because we have attained perfection in what we think and

how we operate. That's not how God views it. In fact, God would view our society today just as he did back with Israel in the Book of Judges. Everyone did what was right in their own eyes.

And as the verse I mentioned earlier said, all of us have gone astray like sheep. We've all turned to our own ways, and God has laid on him all our iniquities. What do you need to reconsider about your beliefs to align with what God said?

What do you engage in or talk about or think about that you can feel the Holy Spirit every time you do knocking at that door of your heart going, hey, it shouldn't be like this. You shouldn't be participating in this.

What do you need to reconsider about your beliefs to align with God? What have you been calling bad that God calls good? And what have you been calling good that God says is bad?

So our religious beliefs don't align with the Holy God. We view as offensive and unenlightened what he calls good. And then lastly, we view as impossible.

What he knows is truth. The Jewish leaders thought that Jesus could rebuild the temple in three days. They said it took 46 years to build this temple complex.

And are you going to build it in three days after destroying it? obviously, he was talking about his own life that he would give for us. But for us, we view as impossible that God can change us.

We just think we're stuck. That's just who I am. This is just what I'm like.

I just talk that way. I just say these things. We don't believe that God can make us different to give us a new attitude and new behaviors.

We refuse to believe that God can work in our church again. We say, ah, the heydays maybe was the 80s, and that's as good as it's gonna get. We view as impossible that God can work when we're not working.

We say, I've got to do this and this and this, and our church has to accomplish this and this and this. And we don't understand that God is working behind the scenes far beyond what we could manufacture on our own.

We view as impossible that God is in control of our state of Maryland. We don't believe that God is in control of our nation. We think God really dropped the ball here, and so I need to be the one to somehow fix this.

And we don't realize that he's the one that's in control, and not just of our state or our nation, but our world at large. God knows what is true. He's spoken about it in his word.

It's knowable. We're not taking shots in the dark. We know exactly what God says about who he is and what he's done.

So let's believe him.

When he says the impossible, when he says things that we don't naturally want to believe, that it's outside of human experience, but the truth is when you act, when you are connected to a supernatural God, you are no longer subject to just the

natural things of this world. So believe in what he says is true. Believe that he can save you, that he can forgive you, and that he can make you new. Hebrews 11 would say that without faith, it is impossible to please God.

If you could see it, it wouldn't necessarily require faith. And so the impossible is frankly what it takes to be able to have a relationship with God. To say, God, I don't see it.

I've never died before. I don't know about heaven or hell. And so I have to trust you in this.

God, I wasn't there 2,000 years ago. And so I have to have faith that what you said in your word is true about Jesus and what he said and what he did.

God, I have to believe what you said about your church that the gates of hell will not prevail against it. God, I have to believe what you say, that you've got the whole world in your hands. That might be a kid's song, but it's accurate.

We ought to believe him. I think of what Jesus said, all things are possible if you believe. And he's not just saying like, hey, if I believe that yellow bubbles will show up everywhere in this room and fill this whole place, then that's possible.

No, no, no, all things that God has said are possible when we believe that as we trust in him, as we turn to him, as we call on him, that we can find him faithful and trustworthy and infallible and unable to fail time and time and time again.

He knows what you do not know. He sees what you cannot see. So trust in him.

Think of what Jesus said in John 17, 17, sanctify them through your truth. Your word is truth. You might say, I don't know how I'm going to get out of this situation.

I don't know how I'm going to find what I need for my life today. I don't know how I'm going to be able to go forward. Lean on the word of God.

Lean on the spirit of God who indwells you. If you have accepted Christ as your savior, time and time and time again to say, God, I know what you have promised and I believe it and I hold to it because I believe your word.

This is exactly what the disciples did in verse 22. So when Jesus was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this and they believed the scripture and the statement Jesus had made.

In conclusion today, we must surrender all of our behaviors and our beliefs to Jesus. I am certain that these money changers, the people with the animals, they did not think to themselves as they were selling these.

I am certain they didn't think that they were doing anything wrong.

I think they genuinely thought people need to bring sacrifices to God and people need to have the proper coinage in order to pay for these animals that can't have images of false gods or foreign emperors on them. And so it has to be temple coinage.

And so I'm just helping to facilitate that and I'm helping people worship. We whitewash our sin. Let us not do that.

As the Holy Spirit speaks to you this week, I know He spoke to me this last week that He was like, hey, I know you're preaching that on Sunday. Are you practicing that? Is that how you're thinking about that person?

Is this what you're doing in your life? And I was like, okay, Lord, got it, got it. Let's realign, let's surrender to say, God, this life, it's not mine.

This mind, it's yours to be renewed and transformed. God, this body is the temple of the Holy Spirit. God, come in with the whip, drive out the animals and the greed in my heart.

Make this temple clean and holy. If you don't know Christ today, today can be the day that Jesus comes in and saves you, cleanses you from your sin, gives you a relationship with God and a home with him forever. You don't have to wait for that.

Jesus has promised to save you. Few will turn to him. Think of how Jesus, John here, ends this portion.

He says, many people trusted in Jesus when they saw the miracles that he did. But it says Jesus didn't entrust himself to them because he knew what was inside them.

My prayer today is God, help what's inside me to be something that you can entrust your Holy Spirit with. Help who I am to be truly right with you, not just doing religious actions or believing in the Bible in general.

Help me to follow and obey you to be truly yours. As we do that, we'll glorify Jesus. He is the Lord.

He's the one that is to be in control. So let's surrender all of our behaviors and our beliefs. To him.