The world in the Church

If God’s people would take their
Bibles and turn once again to the Gospel of John, we come into
chapter 2. John chapter 2. The same men who gave us the
solas, sola fide, salvation by faith
alone, sola gratia, salvation by grace alone, sola scriptura,
scripture alone, sola gloria, to God’s glory alone. The same
reformers that gave us the solas of the Reformation gave us also
through those very means a high view of worship. One of those
reformers, John Calvin, said that worship is the highest thing
that man can do. The most important thing that
we can do is worship. And so to cultivate that and
to examine that and to make it our life’s business is a crucial
thing. It’s important. It’s important
to think about what we do and to prepare our hearts and to
examine the scriptures and to see what the scriptures have
to say about worship. We come to a passage that deals
with worship and we see different elements or episodes of worship
in this short passage. We see Christ’s heart for worship. We see Christ’s concern for proper
worship. It has been said that Scripture
has more to say about improper worship than even the proper
methods and means of worship. This certainly would be a case
where the concerns of Christ are brought to the forefront.
And we do well to take heed. We’re in John chapter two. I
want to pick up what I would title the first temple cleansing beginning in verse 12. Read along
with me if you would. After this, he went down to Capernaum,
he and his mother and his brothers and his disciples and stayed
there a few days. The Passover of the Jews was
near and Jesus went up to Jerusalem and he found in the temple those
who were selling oxen and sheep and doves and the money changers
seated at their tables. He made a scourge of cords and
drove them all out of the temple with the sheep and the oxen.
And he poured out the coins of the money changers and overturned
their tables. And to those who were selling
the doves, he said, take these things away. Stop making my father’s
house a place of business. His disciples remembered that
it was written zeal for your house will consume me. The Jews
then said to him, what sign do you show us as your authority
for doing these things? Jesus answered them, destroy
this temple and in three days I will raise it up. The Jews
then said, it took 46 years to build this temple and will you
raise it up in three days? But he was speaking of the temple
of his body. When he was raised from the dead, his disciples
remembered that he said this. They believed the scripture and
the word which Jesus had spoken. Now, you might be sitting there,
if you were here last Lord’s Day, you might think that you
missed something. Because we come to a passage that almost
couldn’t be any different from the previous. We were in this
joyful occasion, the wedding feast, the turning the water
into wine, the joyful occasion where Christ was with His mother
and His disciples. And now we come to a completely
different scene, a scene that’s heavy, a scene that must have
been just astonishing, even shocking for His own disciples to witness,
the cleansing of the temple. Here now we see a new side of
the Lord Jesus Christ. Last week we saw the generous,
the magnanimous side, the gracious guest who stepped in and worked
a miracle without even the request for
such. But here we see, here we see
Christ and we see His righteousness on display, and we see His righteous
indignation in display. This wasn’t the first time Christ
likely had witnessed this. This had been going on for years.
And Christ, as a faithful Jew raised in a solid Jewish home,
would have made this pilgrimage regularly, many times, likely
with His own Father, They had probably witnessed this same
abuse for years. And as Christ’s first official
and public ministry, he picks this setting to deal with one
of the most awful abuses of all. The abuse of worship. The abuse
of the worship of Almighty God. You’re familiar with this scene,
no doubt, if you’ve read the Gospels, read through the Gospels.
There are really two different placements for this episode. There is this placement at the
outset of Christ’s ministry where John places it here in John 2. It’s the start of his ministry.
The miracle he worked wasn’t necessarily public. Very few
people even knew that he had done it. But this was a very public thing. This is essentially the start
of Christ’s public ministry. But there’s a second record of
this incident, this cleansing of the temple. Matthew, Mark,
and Luke, all the synoptic writers record it, but they place it
Near the end of Christ’s earthly ministry, at the last Passover,
Matthew, Mark, and Luke don’t go into the same detail that
Christ provides. And in fact, as you back away,
there are very few similarities. There are a few words in common. Both accounts, that of John and
that of the synoptics, mention Jerusalem. That’s where the temple
was. They mention the temple. They
mention, both of them, those who were selling. There’s not
a whole lot more in common, other than the general event itself. In fact, there are a lot of differences. John, as I said, puts this episode,
this event at the beginning of Jesus’ ministry. The synoptics
place it at the end. Jesus addresses the practice
of selling. But in the synoptics, He addresses
the dishonesty that had gone along with it. Jesus, in John’s
account, doesn’t cite any scripture. But in the synoptic account,
he quotes from Isaiah and Jeremiah, when he said, My house shall
be called a house of prayer, but you have made it a robber’s
den. Jesus, in John’s gospel, conducts His first real public
act of ministry, but the synoptics record it as one of Jesus’ final
public deeds. There are different wording,
different descriptions, different indictments. And may I present
to you, these are two different episodes. There was a temple
cleansing at the beginning of Jesus’ ministry, and there is
a temple cleansing near the end. They are two different events
entirely. both on or near the Passover,
but one at the first Passover mentioned in John’s gospel, and
the other near the very end, at the third and final Passover
that Christ would celebrate. Turn, if you would, to verse
12. Glance down. As we begin to interact with
this passage, we see in verse 12 what seems to us to almost
be an unimportant, if you will, or transitional verse. That’s
what people really mean when they call it transitional, that
there’s really nothing here. It just is meant to kind of set
the context and set us in motion. I would beg to differ. He says that after this, after
the miracle where water was turned to wine, he went down to Capernaum,
about 20 miles. And as often has been conjectured,
this was kind of the hub, the orientation point for Christ
in his earthly ministry. This would be kind of his principal
residence, his base camp, if you will. He worked many miracles
there, so many that he indicted those in the city for not responding
appropriately to those miracles. Matthew 11 records, you, Capernaum,
will not be exalted to heaven, will you? You will descend into
Hades, for if the miracles had occurred in Sodom, which occurred
in you, it would have remained to this day. He said that in
and around Capernaum, they had been treated by God’s grace to
more than plenty in the way of works and signs and miracles.
But it says that after this, he went down to Capernaum, and
then it mentions, seemingly transitionally, he and his mother and his brothers
and his disciples, just kind of setting the, you know, the
party, who was there, We see that those natural ties are still
present. He’s still with his mother, but
in the very next verse, they virtually vanish. We don’t hear
from Mary again until the cross. We hardly ever hear of his brothers
again. But he mentions these brothers. And the astounding thing to me
was that there were actually some who said that it’s impossible
to determine whether they really are his brothers. It’s not impossible. It’s simple,
really. There are only four different
options. One option is to understand that these are children of Joseph
by a former marriage, and this is a very popular view. I’ll
tell you why in a moment. Now there’s absolutely no evidence
for this and you would think that in a presentation of Christ’s
family as they are forming if there was so much concern for
the purity of this relationship and the purity of those involved
you would think that if God wanted to inform us about Joseph’s previous
marriage history. He would have done so in Luke
one and two or in Matthew chapter one. There isn’t even the slightest
mention of such. Some said that they were adopted
children. There’s absolutely nothing there. Some said quite curiously, that
they were the Lord’s cousins, that he uses this term brethren
very loosely. Let me tell you why I believe
that the fourth option is the only option really that we can
consider. They were children of Joseph
and Mary born after the birth of Jesus. We know that Jesus
was born first. We know that Mary was a virgin
when God came to her and told her that she would bear the Messiah. And immediately she became pregnant
and ended up bringing life to Christ. Five out of the six times
these brothers are mentioned, it’s in connection with Mary.
Mary and his brothers Mary and his brothers Matthew 12 while
he was still speaking to the crowds behold his mother and
brothers were standing outside you take that in the natural
sense and you realize that Christ had earthly physical brothers
Matthew 1355 is this not the carpenter’s son is not his mother
called Mary and his brothers James and Joseph and Simon and
Judas that names them the expression occurs numerous
other occasions and it never qualifies them and never well
they were so-called brothers or they were brothers in the
Lord or they were brothers in some sense or they were distant
brothers never even a hint there’s no real good reason to
understand this as anything other than referring to Jesus’ earthly
brothers, physical brothers, brothers who were born to Joseph
and Mary after the birth of Christ. In fact, it’s interesting if
you look at the passage itself, just glance at it for a moment,
he and his mother and his brothers and his disciples. Now, if these
were just so-called brothers, much like what you and I would
refer to one another as, brother in the Lord, If these were just
so-called brothers, not literal brothers, but spiritual, why
would they not also fall under the same designation of disciples? The very reason they’re mentioned
along with the disciples is that Christ is coming to a crossroad. Christ is coming to a crossroad
where he will literally leave his family behind, and he will
press on with the disciples only in tow or primarily, The conclusion
is, once you look at the fact that Matthew 1.25 says that Joseph
kept Mary a virgin until she gave birth to a son, implying
that they had normal husband-wife relations. Luke 2.7, she gave
birth to her firstborn son, implying that quite likely she had others. Jesus, the conclusion is, had
blood brothers. And their names were James and
Joseph, Simon and Jude, and they had sisters, Mark tells us. Are not his sisters with us?
Mark 6, 3. You say to me, you just spent
10 minutes to tell us that Jesus had brothers? What does it matter? It matters a lot. And as you
look at verse 12, it’s not just a transitional verse. It’s certainly
not unimportant. Why the tendency of all these,
some of these commentators rather, to go to great lengths to explain
away this idea that Jesus had brothers? Because it utterly
destroys the Roman Catholic doctrine of the perpetual virginity of
Mary. It destroys it. We come into the consideration
of worship. Verse 13. Christ brings us into
these elements of worship. And the first thing that we see
in verse 13 is the Passover of the Jews was near. And Jesus
went up to Jerusalem. That was intentional. He was going there to celebrate
the Passover as a Jew. And as this public ministry of
Christ opens, there is a very logical place for Him to begin
this ministry. in Jerusalem to the Jews first. The amazing thing is that John won’t have him back
in Jerusalem again until the triumphal entry. This is a big
deal. This is a major event in the
life of Christ. The Passover, as you know, was
the commemoration, the memorial service of the great deliverance
of the Jews from Egypt. as recorded in Exodus 12. John,
as I mentioned a moment ago, refers to three Passovers. This
one here in John 2, a second one in John 6, 4, and a third
that is mentioned over and over again beginning in John 11. These
Passovers were always very active times in Christ’s ministry. In
this very first one, was probably the most momentous occasion that
had happened for hundreds and hundreds of years. All this traffic, all these people,
and Christ picks this? Christ picks this as the first public ministry. The Lord’s ministry would last
but three years. And it starts here. Look at the
problem he encounters. As he begins to examine the worship
current to the day, not unlike our own worship where a visitor
walking in would evaluate our attire, would evaluate the music,
would evaluate certainly the preaching of the Word. They would
take in everything. And that’s what Christ had done
for years, and now he walks in, knowing full well what is transpiring
in the temple, and he found, verse 14, in the temple, and
I sense a note of dismay in John’s voice in recording this, don’t
you? And he found in the temple those who were selling oxen and
sheep and doves. We’ve touched on this before.
You know that there were three temples in Israel’s history. Solomon’s temple, the temple
of Zerubbabel constructed at the time of the restoration.
There was a temple of rather the temple under Nehemiah. And
then the last one was Herod’s temple named really for its builder,
Herod the Great. a non-Jew, one who is spoken
of in just such distasteful terms in scripture.
But in order to curry favor with the Jews, he spent great amount
of money on this temple. The temple was just an absolute
sight to behold, one of the wonders of the world of the day, white
marble, with gold overlays and it was said that on a bright
day you couldn’t even look at the temple. It sparkled so brilliantly. Josephus records this in his
description of the temple historian Josephus said, now the outward
face of the temple in its front wanted nothing that was likely
to surprise either men’s minds or their eyes. For it was covered
over with plates of gold of great weight and at the first rising
of the sun reflected back a fiery splendor and made those who forced
themselves to look on it turn their eyes away. But this temple
appeared to strangers when they were at a distance like a mountain
covered with snow. For on those parts of it that
were not gilt, they were exceedingly white. And on its top it had
spikes with sharp points to prevent any pollution of it by birds.
Of its stones, some of them were 45 cubits in length, 5 feet height,
6 in breadth. Before this temple stood the
altar 15 cubits high, equal both in length and breadth, each which
dimension was 50 cubits. Josephus goes on to detail in
the most magnificent fashion this edifice, this structure,
this temple that caught the eye of any who looked in its general
direction. How sad that when the Lord Jesus
Christ drew near and walked in, he found inside what was putrid. He found in the temple those
who were selling oxen and sheep and doves. Let me tell you about
the temple just briefly. The temple was a series of courts.
And the temple itself, if you wanted to refer to it as such,
was the entire grounds. And as you stepped inside the
gate, you were immediately in what was called the court of
the Gentiles. The Gentiles were permitted. That was the whole mission of
Israel, remember? They were to be a light to the
nations, and they were permitted to come into the court of the
Gentiles. It was a place of ministry, or it was to be a place of ministry. inside the temple, and then inside
the court of the Gentiles, there was the court of the women, where
the Jewish women were allowed, but no further. They were allowed
in a place where the Gentiles were not allowed. Male or female
could not come in to this special place where only the Jewish women
were also allowed. And then inside even of that,
there was the court of Israel where the men, all the men, all
the Jewish men were allowed. And then inside of that enclosure,
there was the court of the priests, where all of the priests, but
only the priests were allowed to go. And then as you know,
inside of that was the sanctuary, the Holy of Holies, where only
the high priest, only he was allowed to go. and only under certain very strict
guidelines. The temple, the court of the
Gentiles, the court of the women, the court of Israel, the court
of the priests, and the holy of holies. That was the great
structure of the Jewish worship. And to anybody who came in from
a distance, they were to come in and bring
their offerings. and their offerings meant sacrifices. And so if a Jewish family were
traveling from afar and they had to bring a sacrifice, it
became just something just was all too convenient for the Jewish
hierarchy to provide. One pastor described it in these
terms, a supply of the victims required for the prescribed sacrifices
was brought People who came in to worship from a distance could
scarcely bring their offerings with them. You can almost hear
this Jewish argument. Well, they can’t bring a cow
with them. So they had to find a way. Think of all the things that
according to the Levitical law were sacrificed, sheep and rams
and goats and kids and bulls and cows and calves and all manner
of animals were sacrificed. And so the court of the Gentiles
became somewhat of a stockyard, complete with the noise and the
mess and the smell. And that’s where they would sell
these sacrificial offerings. And on the great feast days,
when the population swelled to more than a million, You can
imagine not only the traffic, the foot traffic, the noise,
the crowds, the mess, the smell. And then there’s this other little
feature derived from our fallen nature. After all, we have to
provide these cattle for these people. We have to provide these
sheep. Somebody has to feed them and water them and care for them.
and the prices for these creatures was exorbitant. J.C. Ryle said, the tendency
of this whole custom was profane. It was no doubt connived by the
priests from covetous motives. They were either connected with
those who sold animals and changed money and shared in their profits
or else they received rent for the privilege of carrying carrying
on business within its sacred walls. They were no longer sacred. This is exactly what Christ is
angling for. This is exactly what he’s intent
on exposing, is that this was a corrupt system. Everybody was
on the take, and they were fleecing the very flock of God. One faithful pastor said it so
clearly when he said, Christ surveyed the sacred temple grounds
now turned into a bazaar. Jesus was appalled and outraged. The worshipful atmosphere that
befitted the temple as the symbol of God’s presence was completely
absent. What should have been a place
of sacred reverence and adoration had become a place of abusive
commerce and nothing more. That isn’t even all that Christ
found. It gets worse. found in the temple
those who are selling oxen and sheep and doves and the money
changers seated at their tables now note this for convenience
the Jews had decided that money is not all the same that silver
is not all the same that if it has somebody else’s imprimatur
on it if it has if it’s a Roman coin or, heaven forbid, an Egyptian
coin, well, that would have to be exchanged. And can’t you just
see this? This guy looking over his bifocals,
you know, seated behind his red tape, and I’m sure this guy was
the sweetest guy ever. Oh, you know, welcome to Jerusalem,
welcome to the temple. Oh, I’m sorry, we can’t take
that coin. We don’t accept Canadian, but
if you just will go right over there. We have tables set up
that will accommodate you and will exchange your coins. How convenient. These dealers in change, it says,
the money changers, which meant they were a regular feature. They were there to change money,
to turn money into money for a price. And eventually, this whole thing
spun out of control to the point where at its low ebb, Christ
walks in. Eventually, what was supposed
to be a day of worship, the greatest and highest day of worship on
the Jewish calendar became no more than a market day. You know
what this is? This is Black Friday in the church. and the priesthood, who are clearly
on the take here, allowing all this to go on, cultivating it,
encouraging it, fomenting all this nonsense, sat back and took
it all in and ignored a massive abuse. It wasn’t just an abuse
of the temple grounds. Remember the purpose of this
place. The purpose of this place was
supposed to be what we now call outreach. They were supposed
to be there for the Gentiles. This was their place. They were
supposed to be there ministering to the Gentiles and cultivating
them and wooing them to the faith. Faith in Yahweh, faith in Almighty
God. And instead, the Gentiles would
walk in and their place was filled with manure and stench thereof. Black Friday. No wonder. You look at Christ’s response.
This is mild. Look at verse 15. He made a,
literally having made, a scourge of cords. He drove them all out
of the temple with sheep and oxen. He poured out the coins
of the money changers, overturned their tables, those who were
selling, the doves. He said, take these things away. Stop making my father’s house
a place of business. The scourge of cords likely would
have been a small handful of branches and people were all
over the map on whether he actually physically used it on animals
and on people. There’s nothing to indicate that
he didn’t. It certainly doesn’t say explicitly
that he did, but he had the whip and even raising it over his
head. This is Christ. This is our Savior. This is Almighty
God in human flesh seeing in the flesh and now willing and
able to respond to the abuse that was taking place. And look
at the verbs. He drove out. He poured out. He overturned. This is Jesus
taking His authority as God. And as I pointed out earlier,
one of the differences between this and the synoptics is here,
all that Jesus is talking about is the noise and the mess and
the fact that they’re engaging in business. He doesn’t even
address the fact that it’s crooked, dishonest. He just goes to point
out that this shouldn’t be happening. This is wrong. As one described it, the word
means the place of traffic, the market. The house is here regarded
as having become a market house. This is the mall, right? no longer
deriving its character from him to whom it was dedicated, but
from its business carried on in its courts. Here the tumult and confusion
of worldly business is set over against the still devotion which
should belong to the place of worship. But two years later, two years
later Jesus would address some of those abuses. He would address
not only the mess and the stench, but now he would turn his attention
to the additional abuses, the deceitfulness of it all, the
robbery of it all. Matthew 21.13 records it that
he said, It is written, my house shall be called a house of prayer,
but you are making it a robber’s den. He said, you are crooked
as the day is long, and you are defiling this temple, not only
by this activity, but by your greed and by your theft. It’s
the second cleansing of the temple, as I mentioned a moment ago.
You say, well, how on earth? How on earth could it be that
Jesus walks in, the most profound thing that’s happened in their
midst in hundreds of years, this man has the audacity to walk
in and cast out all their cattle, set free all their critters,
cast them out, chase them out with sticks. How is it, how could
it even be possible that they would do this again? Human nature. I’m sure that within a week That guy’s gone. They couldn’t
wait to get back. Couldn’t wait to get back on
the take of all that they were getting from these animals that
were sold. No wonder when Christ comes back
to that third and final Passover, he finds exactly the same thing.
And by now it’s even worse. Not only had it resumed, It had
taken an even worse turn. Jesus says, stop making my father’s
house a place of commerce. You’ve lowered it to a place.
You’ve lowered it to the market square. You’ve lowered it to
just a street sale. When he calls it his father’s
house, they may have missed it. Obviously, there was a lot going
on that day. as the cows are running everywhere, as the sheep
are bleeding and carrying on, as everybody’s running around
chasing their animals and fleeing Christ. There was a lot going
on. They may have missed this statement
about His Father’s house, but His disciples didn’t. Look at
verse 17. They heard what He said. They
knew that this was the Messiah functioning in His capacity.
And his disciples remembered, verse 17, that it was written,
zeal for your house will consume me. They knew. They knew this
psalm. And it doesn’t say that Christ
had to point it out. They recalled it. However many
there were, we have determined that there were at least four
or five at this point, perhaps more, but whether one or whether
a group, they got together and they recalled this psalm. It’s from Psalm 69. It just happens
to be the psalm most often quoted in the New Testament. And always
about Christ’s John 15. John 15 says they have done this
to fulfill the Kate of fulfill the word that is written in their
law. They hated me without a cause. John 1928. I am thirsty. From
Psalm 69. Acts 120. It is written in the book of
the Psalms, let his homestead be made desolate, let no one
dwell in it. Psalm 69. Romans 15.3, even Christ
did not please himself, but as it is written, the reproaches
of those who reproached you fell on me. Psalm 69. Romans 11, let
their table become a snare and a trap and a stumbling block
and a retribution to them. Let their eyes be darkened to
see not and bend their backs forever. Psalm 69. This was a
messianic psalm. They understood it as such. And
when they saw Christ functioning as God in the temple, which was
allegedly for the worship of God himself, they knew. They knew that this was not just
some ordinary man. They knew that this was not just
some guy having a bad day. This was Almighty God. This is
almighty God beholding abuse, which ought not happen. This was truly God and his indignation. This righteous indignation was
stirred by this greed that he observed this sacrilegious behavior
on the part of these so-called worshipers that had turned God’s
place of worship into a house of merchandise. And then it got worse, so much
worse that through their fraud, Jesus called it a den of robbers,
a den of thieves. But the worst abuse of all, the
worst abuse of all was that they had turned the very place of
outreach into a place of commerce, and a filthy one at that. Well, our time is up. And you
say, Pastor, what do we, what do we possibly do with this? You know, it wasn’t just in Jesus’
day that the world had a tendency to creep into the church. The
world continues to creep into the church every day. creeps
in by way of commerce, which we’ve seen here in this passage,
trading, selling, creating customer bases, lists of clients. Worse than that, it brings in
secular ideas into the church, where we begin to just embrace
secular ways, the world’s ways of doing God’s work. I get nauseated every time I
hear a so-called elder or pastor of a church that refers to himself
as the CEO of the operation. But beyond all of that, beyond
the peddling, how does it touch us? It concerns me that from time
to time we walk in with no more in our mind than a transaction. to hand off or to return Tupperware
that we borrowed two weeks ago, or to make some kind of an exchange.
And so I proposed a series of questions as I worked through
this, questions that we could put to ourselves. Number one,
as we walk into worship, is our conversation legal? And you say,
well, where are you coming from with that? Well, I wish the Jews
had thought about that. Is it legal what we’re doing?
Charging these ridiculous prices for a sheep. And one of the common
practices that one commentator alluded to is they would reject
one sheep. If you brought a sheep from afar,
hefted it on your shoulders and brought it all that way, they
would reject the sheep and recycle it and sell it to someone else.
Is it legal? Is it ethical? Is what I’m doing,
walking into church, preparing for worship, is it ethical? Is it the right time, right place?
How about this? Will it edify? Is
whatever I’m doing, whatever I’m engaged in as I walk in for
allegedly the purpose of worshiping Almighty God, will it edify my
brother? Will it build him up? Is it going
to further prepare him for worship? You want to talk about a transaction?
And I talked about a transaction today. I urged you to register
for the conference. And so I had to check myself
first and foremost. Here’s the question. Do we personally
stand to gain financially from this transaction? If that’s the
case, we should never engage in that in the church, ever. What about this? Does it promote
the immediate worship of God for others and for myself? If you walked in the doors, and
I’m talking about these doors, If you walked in the doors and
asked yourself that one question, it would put an end to a whole
lot of stuff, wouldn’t it? Years ago, we studied Don Whitney’s
book on the disciplines of a godly man, or spiritual disciplines
rather. And he said this, this is quite
astounding. Since worship is focusing on
and responding to God, regardless of what else we’re doing, listening
or singing, we are not worshiping if we’re not thinking about God.
You walk in, and maybe you weren’t thinking about God on the way
over, and you walk in and you get caught up in a conversation,
you’re not thinking about God yet, and you sit down and you’re
still worried about what happened over here, and not to mention
what’s going to happen next week, you’re not thinking about God,
you’re not worshiping. Here’s another question to pose
with whatever you’re doing when you walk in to this place. Can
it wait? That’s a simple question. Can
it wait? Can you deal with this later? In an hour? Or two? Along with that, does it need
to be said or done? Is this really necessary? Come
in and talk about who played yesterday or who’s playing today
or who’s playing tomorrow. Who cares? How about this? Is it spiritually necessary for
our own worship? If we limited, if we dialed it
down to that, do you realize how narrow the conversation becomes?
How purified it becomes? Does it prepare us to worship?
Do we come with a sense of leaving the world behind and cultivating
a heavenly mindset? Do we come with that sense? The
trouble is we so often want to bring it with us, you know, in
one giant heap and bring it with us wherever we go. I mean, we
have it all right here, right? Anything we need. I talked to
one brother one day who said that he made a bid on eBay. during
worship. Shocking. You need the junk that
bad? Have we come really and truly
to worship Almighty God? You see, a lot of people, I think
they get caught up in just kind of going through the motions.
I made my profession of faith and now for the next whatever,
how many years I’m alive on this earth, I just got to go through
this motions. It’s just once a day, a couple hours on Sunday,
and then I’m good. And we just keep going and we
just keep going through the motion. French reformer, John Dale said
this. How’s this for worship preparation?
God is clothed with unspeakable majesty. The glory of his face
shines brighter than the lights of heaven in their beauty. Before
him the angels tremble and the heavens melt. We ought not therefore
come before him with the sacrifice of fools nor tender a duty to
him without falling low upon our faces and bowing the knees
of our hearts in a token of reverence. How dare we walk in here casually? How dare we walk in here with
the burden of the world on our shoulders? Here’s another question. Am I
really prepared in my own heart to face God in worship? Or how about this? Can I possibly
know if the other person with whom I’m speaking is prepared? Are we mindful as we come in with the alleged purpose of worshiping
Almighty God? Are we mindful of the price paid
by our Savior for our sin? See, we tend to think generally,
don’t we? We tend to think, well, Jesus died for sinners, all the
sinners. I’m just one small part of that.
Christ would have died for you alone. And for your sin, the other night
I shared with the young people an illustration from Luke 7. You remember the sinful woman
who came up behind Jesus, crawled down at His feet, and poured
perfume, wept tears at His feet, and wiped His feet with her hair
as an act of worship, while the Pharisees stood smugly and proudly,
scorning her, And I shared with the young people
that there are two things that are going to affect our worship.
One is our view of God. And the other is our view of
our own sin. Do we really think that our sin is all that bad?
And do we really think that God is all that glorious? Stephen Sharnock, the Puritan
said, there must be some proportion between the object adored and
the manner in which we adored. It must not be some bodily worship,
because God is not a body. But it must rise from the center
of our soul. God is a spirit. We must not
only have a loud voice, but an elevated soul. Not only a bended
knee, but a broken heart. Not only a supplicating tone,
but a groaning spirit. Not only a ready ear for the
word, but a receiving heart. And this shall be of greater
value. This should be a greater value
with him than the most costly services rendered. Let’s go before our almighty
God. Merciful God. We come before
you. Who sent the only one in? All the universe that could have
paid for our sin. Your son, our Lord Jesus Christ. Father, we plead with you. Purify
our worship. Purify our preparation of worship. Purify our hearts for a genuine
worship. Lest we slip. And become worse
even. Than what John records here in
chapter two. It’s in Jesus’ name we plead.
Amen.