Sidney UMC - Third Sunday in Lent - 03/03/24 - Sermon - “Hope Through Biblical Justice!” (“Resurrection Hope” Series: Part 3 of 7)

Sunday 03/03/24 - Sidney UMC

Sermon Title:  “Hope Through Biblical Justice!”                                   (“Resurrection Hope” Series: Part 3 of 7)                                  

Old Testament Scripture: Exodus 20:1-17                                      

New Testament Scripture: 1 Corinthians 1:18-25

Gospel Lesson: John 2:13-22 

         Two weeks ago, I started a new sermon series called the “Resurrection Hope” series. When Jesus Christ was resurrected on that first Easter Sunday morning, this was the proof and the evidence that Jesus was indeed God in the flesh. With the resurrection of Jesus Christ on Easter morning being the miracle that gives the Christian faith its hope and power, is there anywhere else that we can draw hope from in this season of Lent and soon to be Easter Sunday? There is no hope quite like the “Resurrection Hope” of Jesus Christ from the dead, but having all kinds of hope through Christ is a powerful thing too.

          Sometimes in our lives we have a lot of hope, and sometimes we have very little. Due to this, every week in this the “Resurrection Hope” sermon series, I am talking about different types of hope that we can claim, relate to, and or understand a little more in this season of Lent, leading to Easter Sunday. Of these types of hope that point us to the “Resurrection Hope” that we share on Easter Sunday, all of these types of hope have come right from our weekly scripture readings.

          So far in this the “Resurrection Hope” sermon series, I have talked about the “Hope Through Baptism” that we feel and receive. Last week I talked about having “Hope In Suffering and Surrender!” as we all struggle, and as we all need to continue to surrender our lives to Christ. This morning, I am talking about “Hope Through Biblical Justice!” When I say “Biblical Justice,” I am talking about the ways that people who are not following God are corrected by God. This is a hard topic for some of us, as sometimes we feel incorrectly like something is wrong with us.  It is not that God does not love us, or that Jesus did not die for us, rather it is the idea that doing bad things is not what God wants from us.

          The God of the universe wants us to love each other, and to be good to each other. We can always be forgiven by Jesus if we turn to him, but here on earth we have for example, the Department of Justice, or the “DOJ” as some people call it. We have laws, a court system, etc. God loves us, and God’s grace is abundant, but should we be corrected if we are doing things wrong? If we are hurting people and doing things that are unkind and harmful, should we be held accountable? I realize that everything is not always perfect. For example, if someone steals food because they are hungry, should they get arrested for that? Some would say yes, and some would say no. If someone kills someone, simply because the person made them angry, should they then be arrested and imprisoned for that? I think so.

          I think that while God loves us all, and while Jesus died for us all, the question we should ask ourselves is should we still be accountable for what we do? Certainly, our legal system would say yes. I do not think that God wants to punish us, or for to us to terrified of God, but does God have expectations of us? Does God have rules? I would argue that most parents do. Further there have been times in my life where I have restrained myself, because I knew that God did not want me to do certain things. Specifically, what I was thinking about doing in a given situation, I did not do, because I knew that God did not want me to do that. Yet, if we have no faith, how do we determine what is just and what is not just. Without bird walking to far off course here, I am talking this morning, once again, about “Hope Through Biblical Justice!” If we have no faith in God, no belief that Jesus died for us, and if there is no movement of the Holy Spirit in us, how do we know what is right, and what is wrong? Some say that humans in this day in age are naturally born knowing right from wrong, and I completely disagree with this. Given that God is the great moral law giver, which I think God is, then God has expectations of us. Are we going to mess up, break some of these laws and rules, and then return to Christ for forgiveness? Yes, we all will, hopefully, which is why we have our prayer of confession this morning. We all will continue to fall short? Yes, but we can turn to Christ, we can repent, and we can then try to go forward and sin no more. This is a hard thing for many of us, and for many of us we work on this our whole life long. As I like to say, I am not who I was, and tomorrow, I hope to be better than I am today. Becoming like Christ, striving for sinlessness is often the journey of a lifetime. I know it has been for me.

          There are times in the scripture though where God enacts “Biblical Justice” or even allows suffering for a greater or a higher purpose. We tend to live in a culture however, where we never want to hurt or suffer. I mean who does, right? Yet Job suffered in the Book of Job. We have Noah and the Ark and the flooding of the earth. Some of these events in the Bible might seem harsh, and maybe we think they are. Yet how are we supposed to act and live. Does God have the right to correct us? It is interesting that we have our Old Testament or Hebrew Bible reading from Exodus 20:1-17 for this morning, where Moses is given the Ten-Commandments from God. The movie with Charlton Heston called “The Ten-Commandments,” which came out in 1956, I think is still one of the top grossing films of all time, adjusted of inflation of course. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ten_Commandments_(1956_film). According to the adjusted for inflation list that I read, “Gone With the Wind” is the highest grossing film of all time, for example.

          Since we heard the Exodus 20:1-17 reading read for this morning, I won’t re-read the whole scripture reading. Yet many people still know these commandments, and try to keep them. They of course were written well before Christ came to earth, and they were designed to be the rules to attempt to keep people living the way that God wants us to live. Have we all broken one or more of the Ten-Commandments? I’m sure we all have, and it’s not that we should feel condemned or terrible, or that God is going to hit us with a lighting bolt. Instead, we should turn to Christ and repent every time. We should also commit to doing better, and avoiding the problem or the sin.

          I think some of us grew up hearing how awful we are, how angry God is with us, and what will happen to us when we die. A better way to look at it though, I think, is to ask the question, what does God want from us? How do we live better? How do we strive to treat each other better? I mean the fact that when Moses came down from the mountain, and that he found his people worshipping a golden calf tells you, and tells me, that we need to stay focused on God! Amen. If we are not happy, not focused, and we lose our gaze on Christ, we can quickly be led into worshipping idols. I mean think about it, Moses led the Israelites out of slavery in Egypt, and then by the time they get to Mount Sinai, they have already turned to and were worshipping a golden calf. We are all prone to turn from God if we do not stay focused on him.

          In fact, this connects with what the Apostle Paul tells us this morning in 1 Corinthians 1:18-25. Starting in 1 Corinthians 1:18, it says once again:

⁸ For the message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. ¹⁹ For it is written, ‘I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart’                       (1 Cor. 1:18-19, NRSV).

          The Apostle Paul then continues on to say, picking up in 1 Corinthians 1:20 and end in 1:25, once again:

²⁰ Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? ²¹ For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, God decided, through the foolishness of our proclamation, to save those who believe. ²² For Jews demand signs and Greeks desire wisdom, ²³ but we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling-block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, ²⁴ but to those who are the called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. ²⁵ For God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength            (1 Cor.1:20-25, NRSV).

          So, if you don’t believe in Christ, if you don’t follow what God wants, then what we believe might seem foolish. Yet the Apostle Paul says it is the power of God to those “being saved”. While salvation in Christ is a free give offered to us all if we turn to him, we all still struggle to not sin. Maybe next month none of us will need our prayer of confession be Holy Communion this morning. I highly doubt it though!

          To tie this all together, the big reason that my sermon title for this morning is called “Hope Through Biblical Justice!” is because of what Jesus does this morning. Some of us think of Jesus as meek and mild, which he was, but Jesus could also be tough and direct. This morning in our gospel of John 2:13-22 reading, once again, Jesus cleanses the temple. This was not a mild prayer or a soft gesture. Instead, Jesus displayed righteous anger. Let’s look again at our gospel of John 2:13-22 reading for this morning. Picking up in John 2:13 it says:

¹³ The Passover of the Jews was near, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. ¹⁴ In the temple he found people selling cattle, sheep, and doves, and the money-changers seated at their tables. ¹⁵ Making a whip of cords, he drove all of them out of the temple, both the sheep and the cattle. He also poured out the coins of the money-changers and overturned their tables. ¹⁶ He told those who were selling the doves, ‘Take these things out of here! Stop making my Father’s house a market-place!’ ¹⁷ His disciples remembered that it was written, ‘Zeal for your house will consume me’ (Jn. 2:13-17, NRSV).

          So, Jesus and his disciples head to the city of Jerusalem, or “Zion” as it is often called in the Old Testament, the place of great Jewish Temple. Yet when Jesus and his disciples get to Jerusalem, and specifically the entrance to the great Jewish Temple, something is very wrong. Jesus saw vendors selling cattle, sheep, and doves, and the money changers were exchanging foreign currency for half-shekel coins. According to the Book of Exodus in the Old Testament or the Hebrew Bible though, “Every male over twenty years of age had to pay a half-shekel temple tax” to enter the temple. Or to put it another way, there was an entry fee to enter into the great temple in Jerusalem (Africa Bible Commentary, pg. 1283).

          The problem though was you needed a half-shekel coin to enter the great temple in Jerusalem. It was like going to ALDI to grocery store, you need a quarter, not a dime, not a nickel, not a penny, but a quarter! Further, to exchange your foreign currency for a half-shekel coin, you had to pay a hefty fee. You had to pay one penny for every half-shekel coin. One penny was a lot more money two-thousand years ago, than it is today. The average laborer at this time was pain four pennies a day (Africa Bible Commentary, pg. 1283).

          On top of this, the animals that were being sold, were sold as animal sacrifices. These animals had to be pure and spotless, and the people were being charged 5-6 times the normal rate to buy these animals (Africa Bible Commentary, pg. 1283). Or as one of my bible commentaries says, “the authorities were exploiting the worshippers” (Africa Bible Commentary, pg. 1283). Many of the worshippers would come to Jerusalem for the Passover from all over the Roman Empire, and many of these travelers were far from rich. Then what little money these travelers had was taken from them in money exchange fees, and then they were gouged in buying a sacrificial animal. Animal sacrifice was a practice at the great temple in Jerusalem.

          In seeing the reality of these vendors though, Jesus Christ, God in the flesh decided to enact “Biblical Justice”. Jesus saw God’s people being exploited at God’s house, he made a whip of cords, and he drove out the vendors with their animals. Jesus also flipped the coin tables of the money changers. Jesus was angry, but Jesus was giving us through his righteous anger, “Hope Through Biblical Justice!”. Jesus said, once again in John 2:16b:

‘Take these things out of here! Stop making my Father’s house a market-place!’  (Jn. 2:16b, NRSV). 

          If you were a Jew, you needed to come to the great temple in Jerusalem, especially during the Jewish Passover, and with money in your pockets. I mean can you just go into God’s house for free though? The answer is yes, yes you can! At three-o’clock on good Friday when Jesus died on the cross, the veil separating the holiest room in the temple, or the “Holy of Holies” was torn. The symbolism here is that the “Holy of Holies” is now accessible to everyone. Through Christ, all people are welcome to come into God’s house and hear the good news of Jesus Christ. How can that happen though friends, if there is a cover charge to come into God’s house?

          I have had people say to me before, “Pastor Paul I would come to church, but I don’t have anything to put in the collection plate”. Well like Jesus this morning in our gospel of John 2:13-22 reading, I have no intention of turning of

“my Father’s house a market-place!’ (Jn. 2:16b, NRSV).

          Does the church need financial resources to function? Of course it does, but if people don’t feel led to give, you know what happens? The church eventually closes. I want people to give, because they feel called by God to give, not because there is an entrance fee. There also will never be an entrance fee to enter this church, but the church does need resources to function.

I am sure for example, that if people were coming to the great temple in Jerusalem to pray to and to connect to God, and felt called by God to give, that Jesus would be more than ok with this. It is when you’re stealing from God’s people. When someone on television, for example, asks you to send them money to get a bottle of “blessed water,” or a special “prayer rug,” and they take your money that’s the sin. These same people fly first class or in private jets, and live a life of luxury. Jesus this morning enacts “Hope Through Biblical Justice” against this sin.

          Even so Jesus cleansing the temple, or driving out the vendors and the animals, and flipping the tables of the money changers did not go unchallenged. Looking at the rest of our scripture reading from John 2:13-22, this gospel lesson ends with John 2:18-22 saying, once again:

¹⁸ The Jews then said to him, ‘What sign can you show us for doing this?’ ¹⁹ Jesus answered them, ‘Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.’ ²⁰ The Jews then said, ‘This temple has been under construction for forty-six years, and will you raise it up in three days?’ ²¹ But he was speaking of the temple of his body. ²² After he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this; and they believed the scripture and the word that Jesus had spoken (Jn. 2:18-22, NRSV).

          “Hope Through Biblical Justice!”. The idea that God has expectations of us and how we live. The idea that God will judge us in the end if we don’t repent of our wickedness. For example, does Adolf Hitler deserve “Biblical Justice” if ne didn’t repent of his sins? Does the dictator of North Korea Kim Jong Un deserve the same? There has to be justice, “Biblical Justice,” this justice can and sometimes occurs in this life and in the life to come. If this is not true then evil reigns, and goodness is trampled by cruelty and suffering. I don’t want anyone judged badly by God, but I have “Hope Through Biblical Justice!” This reality points us to righteousness and holy living, and tell us that God has expectation of us. For we are called to live holy and righteous lives. May we have “Hope Through Biblical Justice!” Amen.