Hello friends and welcome again
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to this program
"Books of the Book."
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We are studying
the Gospel of John
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and today we are
picking up on Chapter 2,
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the last part of Chapter 2
and we are in verses 12-25.
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And with us is Dr. Jon Paulien,
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he is the Dean of Religion
at Loma Linda University.
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And welcome again, Dr. Paulien.
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Thank you. It's
good to be with you.
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You, I can just
imagine you must be very busy.
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You are a scholar,
you've written several books.
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Tell me what do you
do on your time off?
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That's kind of
a painful question
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because I am probably a
very boring person, really.
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I really enjoy scholarship
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and I really
enjoy studying the Bible
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and if I just have
spare time on my own,
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I happily go back there and
enjoy the time that I spent.
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But a couple of times
a month I force myself
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to go out and
play around the golf
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and I do enjoy that too.
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But I just, it's
important to be with people,
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spend some time,
exercise, fresh air,
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sunshine all of that.
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I do enjoy
exercise, do a lot of walking
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but often I am
reading when I walk
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because that's a good way to
get in some more understanding
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and I like spending
time with my family.
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I have two adult
children living with me,
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they are in their mid 20s
and finishing up education,
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getting ready for
life things like that so.
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Yeah, that's sort
of my boring life.
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I do like to travel
though in this ministry
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and to get a chance of seeing--
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So what I understand is
your idea of fun is studying?
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Well, you know, I guess there's
a difference in fun and joy.
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Fun is something that
stops whenever the fun stops,
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but joy is something
you can have all the time
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and study brings a lot of joy.
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It may be just
isn't so much fun,
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but you can enjoy
anything if you put time to it
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and really get
good added invest in it.
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And if Bible
study is a great need,
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I would encourage
people to really get into it
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and you'll find it
gets more and more--
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the kind of things I
am talking about here
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may seem right over
the top to many people,
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but they came one at a
time through careful study
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and the more you learn,
it's like a computer game
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that when you break a
couple of lower levels
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it brings you into higher levels
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that are even more interesting.
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So I do really
enjoy what I am doing.
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And it's not like you are
studying the stock market,
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you are
studying the word of God.
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And as an administrator I
am not studying for my job
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so much anymore, so
the study is something
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I turn to for that alone time
since it's very special to me.
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All right, Well,
speaking of study
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what are we studying today?
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John 2:12-25, it's the story
of Jesus cleansing the temple.
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Okay. So where shall we start.
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Why don't we read
the passage? Verse 12.
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May be up to verse 22.
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Okay, So from verses 12 to 22.
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"After this He
went down to Capernaum,
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He, His mother, His
brothers, and His disciples
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and they did not
stay there many days.
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Now the Passover of
the Jews was at hand,
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and Jesus went up to Jerusalem.
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And He found in the
temple those who sold
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oxen and sheep and doves,
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and the money
changers doing business.
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When He had
made a whip of cords,
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He drove them all
out of the temple,
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with the sheep and the oxen,
poured out the changers' money
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and overturned the tables.
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And He said to
those who sold doves,
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'Take these things away.
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Do not make My Father's
house a house of merchandise.'
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Then His disciples
remembered that it was written,
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'Zeal for Your
house has eaten Me up.'
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So when the Jews--so the
Jews answered and said to Him,
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'What sign do You show to
us, since You do these things?'
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Jesus answered and said to
them, "Destroy this temple,
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and in three days
I will raise it up."
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Then the Jews said, 'It
has taken forty six years
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to build this temple,
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and You will raise
it up in three days?'
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But He was speaking of
the temple of His body.
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Therefore, when He
had risen from the dead,
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His disciples remembered
that He had said this to them
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and they believed the Scriptures
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and the word
which Jesus had said."
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Now, to read until the
25th verse? Little bit later.
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Okay. Yeah.
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You notice it
starts out in Capernaum.
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Jesus is born and
raised in Nazareth
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which is up in the
hill country of Galilee
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and then Capernaum
is a fishing village
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right on the shore of
the Sea of Galilee itself
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and it's like 1700 feet,
600 meters between those two.
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So Nazareth is
like 400 meters high
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and the Sea of Galilee is
like 200 meters below sea level
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so it's like a 600 meter
difference between those.
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So Jesus evidently
and His family has moved
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to Capernaum which is
where Peter and John have lived
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and exercised
their life as fisherman.
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So from Capernaum like most
people would do in that day,
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they went down to Jerusalem.
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It's may be 150 kilometers
for the Passover service.
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Now tell us more
about this temple?
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This is what's
called Herod's temple
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and there's a
little detail in the story
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that mentions that it was
46 years under construction.
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And we know when
that construction began
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it was Herod's,
around 20 to 19 B.C.
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was, I think it
was Herod's 18th year
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is when the
construction started.
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And you count 46 years
from that you come to 28 A.D.
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so this is
Passover time around 28 A.D.
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in our reckoning
that this occurs.
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There were a number of
temples in Old Testament time,
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you had the tent
Tabernacle of Moses,
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you had Solomon's
temple, you had Ezekiel's temple
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which he saw in vision and
you had Zerubbabel's temple
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that was built
after return from Babylon
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and that was a very
poor copy of Solomon's.
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Herod was trying
to build a temple
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just as magnificent
as Solomon's temple.
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Interestingly enough the
construction wasn't finished
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until 63 A.D., seven
years before its destruction.
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So it's 80 years to
build this magnificent temple,
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it must have
been really something.
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It wasn't
completely finished then.
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No, evidently it was
not completely finished,
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there may have been parts
that weren't fully decorated
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and still planned and so forth,
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but the very
platform for that temple
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is some of the largest stones
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anyone has ever
found, that's amazing.
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This is an
interesting scene we read here
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that, that in the temple
there were animals in there.
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We see that verse 14 says,
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there were oxen
and sheep and doves
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but not only animals there,
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but they were
actually been sold,
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so there seems to be some
kind of business deal here,
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some kind of money transactions.
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And it says here, "The
money changers doing business."
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Jesus was not happy about that.
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What's the deal here?
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Why are they selling animals
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and why does Jesus come in
here and just drive them out?
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Well, people are
expected to bring animals
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for sacrifices to the temple
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and so that there would be some
animals there as to be expected,
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but what would often happen is,
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the priest would
reject the animals
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that the people brought.
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Maybe they would be
injured in some way,
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they weren't perfect,
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they weren't the
right color, etcetera
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and they were making
profit out of selling animals
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to the people
for their sacrifices.
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And they might
take a person's animal.
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They might exchange it for a fee
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and then sell that
animal for fee later on.
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And it was quite
a financial racket.
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The interesting
thing about it is
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you have two
parts to the temple,
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there's a temple
building and the inner courts,
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which is for the Jews only and
there was a wall around those,
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so that Gentiles couldn't go in.
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Then there's the outer courts
where the Gentiles could be,
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the court of the Gentiles
and so at least half of it
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was for the Gentiles.
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That's the only part
of the temple complex
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that Gentiles could go to,
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that's the place where all
this merchandising was going.
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So if the Gentile want to come
and pray they couldn't do it,
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it was just crazy
marketplace, you see.
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So it was really, it
was definitely hindering
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the Gentiles from
coming to the true God
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and it was also distracting
for the Jewish worshippers
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as well to hear all these
noises and chaos going on.
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Was this part of their job
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or was this more
like corruption involved?
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Definitely, corruption involved.
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The priests were using
this to make a lot of money.
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Now I tell you when
Jesus broke up that trade
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it was a knife right into
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the heart of
their financial base.
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So it was--in this case
was actually a political act
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that was threatening the
very foundation of the system
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that they had put into place.
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Jesus' goal was never political.
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Jesus didn't believe that
political change was going
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to change people's
hearts but there were times
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when political change
was needed to open the way
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for people to worship and
to have freedom of worship
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and Jesus seems to
have acted in that way here.
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So Herod builds this temple,
it's a magnificent building,
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but it's not
serving its true purpose,
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it's serving political
purposes and financial purposes
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and Jesus doesn't
hesitate to speak out.
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This helps us
understand something special
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about the Gospel of John.
00:10:23.18\00:10:25.24
This incident actually
occurred, it's a real story.
00:10:25.27\00:10:29.52
So what was going
on when Jesus did this?
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It was a prophetic protest.
00:10:33.87\00:10:35.55
As a prophet He comes
into the temple and He says,
00:10:35.58\00:10:38.93
"This is a house of prayer.
00:10:38.96\00:10:40.95
It should not be
used for merchandise."
00:10:40.98\00:10:43.07
And so He is protesting
00:10:43.10\00:10:44.90
that the religious leaders
of His day have undermined
00:10:44.93\00:10:48.08
the core of their
faith by their actions
00:10:48.11\00:10:50.49
and He's seeking to change that.
00:10:50.52\00:10:52.89
But John, remember? Yeah.
00:10:52.92\00:10:55.52
The stories are
never just stories.
00:10:55.55\00:11:00.30
It's not just well,
this happened in Jesus' life
00:11:00.33\00:11:02.32
and then that happened.
00:11:02.35\00:11:03.72
For John, these
are always parables.
00:11:03.75\00:11:05.86
They always have a
deeper spiritual meaning.
00:11:05.89\00:11:07.97
So in Jesus' day
there's a prophetic protest
00:11:08.00\00:11:12.71
against the
corruption of the temple,
00:11:12.74\00:11:16.28
but for John, it
has a deeper meaning.
00:11:16.31\00:11:20.01
Jesus is
driving out the animals,
00:11:20.04\00:11:22.87
the sacrificial animals.
00:11:22.90\00:11:24.31
He's driving
them out of the temple
00:11:24.34\00:11:26.06
and what's left in
the temple to sacrifice
00:11:26.09\00:11:30.20
when He drives the
animals out, His body.
00:11:30.23\00:11:34.98
Verse 19 to 21.
00:11:35.01\00:11:37.28
I am assuming because
Jesus is the Lamb of God.
00:11:37.31\00:11:40.93
Exactly. That's already been
told us in Chapter 1. Right.
00:11:40.96\00:11:44.39
But here it says,
the temple is His body.
00:11:44.42\00:11:48.44
We'll see verses
19-21, Jesus answered them,
00:11:48.47\00:11:51.36
"Destroy this temple, and I will
raise it again in three days."
00:11:51.39\00:11:55.80
It's another one of
His misunderstanding text.
00:11:55.83\00:11:58.29
They think
destroying these buildings
00:11:58.32\00:12:00.95
that took 46 years so far
00:12:00.98\00:12:03.17
and I will raise
them up in three days.
00:12:03.20\00:12:05.04
The Jews replied,
00:12:05.07\00:12:06.44
"It has taken forty-six
years to build this temple
00:12:06.47\00:12:08.46
and you are going to
raise it in three days?"
00:12:08.49\00:12:11.29
Misunderstanding,
they didn't get His point.
00:12:11.32\00:12:13.97
But the temple here,
the narrator breaks in,
00:12:14.00\00:12:16.69
"The temple He had
spoken of was His body."
00:12:16.72\00:12:21.64
And after He was
raised from the dead
00:12:21.67\00:12:23.47
the disciples
recalled what He had said
00:12:23.50\00:12:25.92
then they believed the scripture
00:12:25.95\00:12:27.42
and the words
that Jesus had spoken.
00:12:27.45\00:12:29.61
So Jesus signals by His words
00:12:29.64\00:12:31.83
what John is going
to make of the story.
00:12:31.86\00:12:34.28
Jesus is replacing the temple
and its services with Himself.
00:12:34.31\00:12:38.31
His sacrifice on the cross would
overturn all other sacrifices.
00:12:38.34\00:12:43.30
In other words, what the temple
00:12:43.33\00:12:44.80
was pointing to
was actually Him.
00:12:44.83\00:12:47.94
The glory of the temple
00:12:47.97\00:12:49.48
was the presence of
God inside a building.
00:12:49.51\00:12:52.22
The glory of Jesus
00:12:52.25\00:12:53.92
was the presence of
God inside of Himself.
00:12:53.95\00:12:57.43
The coming of
Jesus is all about God
00:12:57.46\00:13:00.44
and it's about
the character of God.
00:13:00.47\00:13:02.41
He has come to show us
what God is really like.
00:13:02.44\00:13:05.84
The temple was intended
to do that, but it failed.
00:13:05.87\00:13:10.24
If all the people saw
was this buying and selling,
00:13:10.27\00:13:13.13
then clearly temple is
not achieving its purpose.
00:13:13.16\00:13:17.26
And so Jesus
replaces that system
00:13:17.29\00:13:20.72
with a clearer
system, His own body.
00:13:20.75\00:13:24.12
His own self.
00:13:24.15\00:13:25.52
He came to show
us what God is like
00:13:25.55\00:13:27.67
and it's at the cross
where the body of Jesus,
00:13:27.70\00:13:31.02
and the blood of Jesus is shed.
00:13:31.05\00:13:32.42
That's the place where
it most clearly happens.
00:13:32.45\00:13:35.29
And the pride too
was in the temple,
00:13:35.32\00:13:37.98
the material, temple,
00:13:38.01\00:13:39.59
rather than the spiritual
focus on the Son of God.
00:13:39.62\00:13:43.99
That's right. That's
the way religion works.
00:13:44.02\00:13:47.55
Human beings put
together a religion to honor God
00:13:47.58\00:13:51.98
who has done something
special in their lives,
00:13:52.01\00:13:54.09
but then overtime they forget
the reason that it started
00:13:54.12\00:13:56.85
and they start preserving
the structure and the system
00:13:56.88\00:14:00.57
and so religion
often has a tendency
00:14:00.60\00:14:02.59
to wander away from
its original purpose.
00:14:02.62\00:14:05.93
Okay, well,
friends, we want to continue
00:14:05.96\00:14:08.41
to study this
gospel after this break.
00:14:08.44\00:14:10.66
So stay with us.
00:14:10.69\00:14:12.06