Tag Archives: John’s Gospel

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Smells, Signs, and an Indignant Savior

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Click Here to Read John 2:13-25

An Unusual Day in the Temple

I imagine that Jesus’ actions in the temple that day raised a lot of eyebrows. The rumors must’ve been flying, the comments a mixture of wonder and criticism. Who had ever come into the temple, overturned tables, and whipped merchants? Merchants in the temple courts?

Another Kind of Aroma

The habit of selling animals and changing coinage began as a convenience for worshippers to buy the animals needed for sacrifice. It started in the city, but turned profane when it moved into the temple courts. The purpose of the temple was prayer, worship, and sacrifice—not business.

Not only had the merchants turned the temple courts into a currency exchange, they had turned it into a barn. Herd animals urinate and defecate at random, attracting all manner of flies, parasites, and vermin. The floor of the temple courts was covered with filth. The pleasant aroma of incense wafting heavenward from the altar of incense (signifying prayers) was replaced with the smell of a feed lot.

Incensed (no pun intended), Jesus fashioned a whip made of several cords and drove the oxen and sheep out, along with those who were selling pigeons (with their caged pigeons). 

The disciples recognized the prophetic significance of his actions. “His disciples remembered that it was written, ‘Zeal for your house will consume me1.’”

Demand for a Sign

Jesus provoked his adversaries. They pushed back.

“What sign do you show us for doing these things?” They wanted proof his authority to regulate the temple was greater than theirs.

Significantly, this happened during Passover2, the festival commemorating the night that every home in Goshen marked with the blood of a lamb was spared the death of the firstborn of that household.

An Indignant Savior

Jesus, God incarnate, responded prophetically.

“Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” While they thought that he meant Herod’s temple, he was speaking of his body. He was referring to sacrifice, atonement, and resurrection.

While fathers were recounting the story of lamb’s blood on the lintels and doorposts in Goshen to their children, Jesus pointed them back to the words of John the Baptist: “Behold, the Lamb of God that takes away the sins of the world.” His blood would not be spread upon doorposts, but would carried into the holy places in Heaven.

“… He entered once for all into the holy places, not by means of the blood of goats and calves but by means of his own blood, thus securing an eternal redemption.”3

John reports that “many believed in his name when they saw the signs that he [Jesus] was doing.”

When I was younger I was a straight arrow. I depended upon the knowledge that if I just lived by certain principles I’d be “in”. However, in these later years, I see things a bit differently. Usually within the first few minutes after waking each day, the thought crosses my mind that if Jesus doesn’t save me, I cannot be saved. I cannot carry a sack full of merits into the Holy Place and exchange them for salvation or redemption. I must trust that Jesus himself will walk into the holy places with and by his own blood to make atonement for my sin and rebellion.

Questions for reflection:

  • Who or what do I believe will make my life whole or complete?
  • What role does prayer and worship play in my life?
  • Who do I believe Jesus to be? Does my belief correspond to what we see written in this passage?

  1. Psalm 69:9, ESV ↩︎
  2. Exodus chapter 12 ↩︎
  3. Hebrews 9:12, ESV ↩︎

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Creation—Old and New

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I have a box of family photos in the closet. Most are old Polaroids, yellowed and faded with the years. I’m always drawn to candids of my Dad. He was sort of the poster child of Welshness: jet black hair, green eyes, swarthy complexion. In the older ones he sported a flat top haircut. But as the years wore on, as the “top” became more sparse, he slicked the sides back with Brylcreem.


One particular photo fascinates me, a photo taken of Dad when he was five or six years old: enormous, sad eyes staring into the lens, soft focus, black and white. A child of the Depression and dysfunction, he knew more hunger and grief than any little boy should. That photo is a snapshot of his story.


That snapshot orients me in his story. My story is indelibly written with the ink of his experience. The want and pain he knew somehow insured that I would not go hungry or without.

Beginnings


John opens his Gospel with a snapshot, that encapsulates the story of redemption via Messiah.
“In the beginning …” writes John. One finger in John, I flip back to Genesis where I read the very same words. I open the Greek New Testament: “Εν αρχη …” I then open the Greek translation of Genesis (an ancient translation known as the Septuagint, translated from Hebrew in about 270 B.C.) and read the very same Greek words. The similarities are not coincidental.


Genesis tells us that in the beginning the earth was formless and void. Spread over that void was a great darkness. The Spirit of God is hovering over the face of the waters. The first creative act in response to the formless, dark, void was … light. “And God said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light.” As the days of creation progressed, beginning with light, God brought form to formlessness, substance to void, order from chaos.

Craftsman


John gives us, what Paul Harvey might have called “the rest of the story.” In the Genesis account, we see God and his Spirit. John reveals to us the creative agent that God used to do his work. Perhaps John was thinking of Proverbs in describing the Son (characterized as ‘wisdom’):


“When he established the heavens, I was there; when he drew a circle on the face of the deep, when he made firm the skies above, when he established the fountains of the deep, when he assigned to the sea its limit, so that the waters might not transgress his command, when he marked out the foundations of the earth, then I was beside him, like a master workman, and I was daily his delight, rejoicing before him always, rejoicing in his inhabited world and delighting in the children of man.” (Proverbs 8:27-31, ESV)

Reason

While Proverbs refers to “wisdom”, John refers to the λογος, the Word. Now, this is where the story gets interesting. Bible scholar D.A. Carson says that “the Stoics [Greek philosophers] understood logos to be the rational principle by which everything exists, and which is the essence of the rational human soul.” This idea would have been known among the educated when John was writing down his Gospel. But John takes the concept so much further than the Stoics ever would or could. John reports that this logos, this Word, became flesh and dwelt among us. The Stoics were fixed on an idea. John knew logos as a person, the Craftsman of all Creation. In the Father’s presence he was “daily his delight, rejoicing before him always, rejoicing in his inhabited world and delighting in the children of man.”
Whereas in Genesis, the Spirit hovered over the face of the deep, in John the Savior made it possible for the Spirit to dwell in us, rather than over us.

New Beginnings


“The true light, which gives light to everyone, was coming into the world. He was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world did not know him. He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him. But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor the will of man, but of God.” (John 1:9-13, ESV)

Light & Life

Just as the earth began a formless, dark void, so our lives began. Sin tarnished all of creation, casting its dark shadow across the millennia. Our foolish hearts were darkened, our passions perverse, our intentions turned inward. Into the darkness and death descended Messiah, to bring inextinguishable light, overcoming the darkness, offering spiritual light to dispel spiritual darkness. And that light brought life.


As I dig through the pages of Scripture, I see a lot of images, a lot of photos, not yellowed with age, but vibrant and colorful. I see a brother who gave himself to save me from the pure Hell of my sin. I see a Savior who overcame my darkness with his light and gave me life. I see a family who drew me in when I was an orphan, wandering in the cold, cruel world. I see reason that stands out against a background of foolishness and strife.

Conclusions


John opens his Gospel by reminding us that Jesus not only created the Heavens and the Earth, he created a new people, the believing ones, born of God. The Spirit that hovered over the chaos in the original creation is now given to this new people, to indwell, comfort, and empower them.