1. So, What’s So Wrong with Ritual Religion (Pt. 1)
John 2:12-3:36

2. • Jesus Clearing the Temple During the Passover Feast – John 2:12-25
• Jesus Conversing with a Prominent Jewish Teacher Named Nicodemus – John 3:1-21
• John the Baptist Correcting His Disciples about His Relationship with Jesus – John 3:22-36

3. So, before we go any further, let me explain why, I believe that, ideally, John 2:12–3:36 needs to be treated as one composite sermon text rather than being broken up into bite-sized pieces.

4. John 2:6
Nearby stood six stone water jars, the kind used by the Jews for ceremonial washing, each holding from twenty to thirty gallons.

5. John 3:25
An argument developed between some of John's disciples and a certain Jew over the matter of ceremonial washing.

6. The primary message of this passage, like the rest of John’s Gospel, is the importance of believing that Jesus is much more than an ordinary Jewish rabbi; he’s nothing less than the Christ, Son of God!

7. By including the essentially unnecessary detail that the stone water jars referred to in this passage were the kind used by the Jews in their ceremonial washing, John was saying that Jesus had come to confront the ritual religion of the Jews and to replace it with something far better.

8. Jesus has come to make it possible for people to make the journey from ritual religion to a real relationship with God!

9. To be more specific, I’m suggesting that an emphasis on a real, personal, faith-based relationship with Jesus as the Son of God over against a religion made up of rules and rituals is observable in the three sections that make up Jn. 2:12–3:36.

10. Moreover, in the process, the three stories presented in these three sections of Scripture, indicate three of the earmarks of ritual religion—earmarks that are not at all something Jesus wants his followers to evidence in their lives.

11. Real Relationship vs. Ritual Religion in John 2:12-25 – An Implied Critique of Religious Hypocrisy

12. John 2:12-25
After this he went down to Capernaum with his mother and brothers and his disciples. There they stayed for a few days.
{13} When it was almost time for the Jewish Passover, Jesus went up to Jerusalem. {14} In the temple courts he found men selling cattle, sheep and doves, and others sitting at tables exchanging money….

13. …{15} So he made a whip out of cords, and drove all from the temple area, both sheep and cattle; he scattered the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables. {16} To those who sold doves he said, "Get these out of here! How dare you turn my Father's house into a market!"…

14. …{17} His disciples remembered that it is written: "Zeal for your house will consume me." …

15. …{18} Then the Jews demanded of him, "What miraculous sign can you show us to prove your authority to do all this?"
{19} Jesus answered them, "Destroy this temple, and I will raise it again in three days." {20} The Jews replied, "It has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and you are going to raise it in three days?" …

16. … {21} But the temple he had spoken of was his body
… {21} But the temple he had spoken of was his body. {22} After he was raised from the dead, his disciples recalled what he had said. Then they believed the Scripture and the words that Jesus had spoken….

17. … {23} Now while he was in Jerusalem at the Passover Feast, many people saw the miraculous signs he was doing and believed in his name. {24} But Jesus would not entrust himself to them, for he knew all men. {25} He did not need man's testimony about man, for he knew what was in a man.

18. First, it needs to be noted that the fact that we find Jesus clearing the temple because of the marketing that was going on there—marketing that the other Gospel authors considered fraudulent as well as inappropriate—argues for the idea that Jesus wasn’t condemning, in principle, the OT practice of offering ritual sacrifices to God.

19. However, there are two kinds of OT passages we need to assume that Jesus was aware of and likely had in mind:

20. 1) There are OT passages which pretty much condemn the offering of ritual sacrifices in a rote, merely ritualistic manner that’s devoid of any sense of genuine repentance before a holy God: Psalm 50:7-23; Isaiah 1:11-17; Hosea 6:1- 6; Amos 5:21-24; Micah 6:6-8.

21. Isaiah 1:11-17
"The multitude of your sacrifices-- what are they to me?" says the LORD. "I have more than enough of burnt offerings, of rams and the fat of fattened animals; I have no pleasure in the blood of bulls and lambs and goats….

22. …{12} When you come to appear before me, who has asked this of you, this trampling of my courts? {13} Stop bringing meaningless offerings! Your incense is detestable to me. New Moons, Sabbaths and convocations-- I cannot bear your evil assemblies. {14} Your New Moon festivals and your appointed feasts my soul hates. They have become a burden to me; I am weary of bearing them….

23. … {15} When you spread out your hands in prayer, I will hide my eyes from you; even if you offer many prayers, I will not listen. Your hands are full of blood; {16} wash and make yourselves clean. Take your evil deeds out of my sight! Stop doing wrong, {17} learn to do right! Seek justice, encourage the oppressed. Defend the cause of the fatherless, plead the case of the widow.

24. 2) There’s one OT passage in particular which seems to have been a prophetic foretelling of what Jesus was doing in the Temple during the Passover festival:

25. Malachi 3:1-5
"See, I will send my messenger, who will prepare the way before me. Then suddenly the Lord you are seeking will come to his temple; the messenger of the covenant, whom you desire, will come," says the LORD Almighty….

26. … {2} But who can endure the day of his coming
… {2} But who can endure the day of his coming? Who can stand when he appears? For he will be like a refiner's fire or a launderer's soap. {3} He will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver; he will purify the Levites and refine them like gold and silver. Then the LORD will have men who will bring offerings in righteousness, {4} and the offerings of Judah and Jerusalem will be acceptable to the LORD, as in days gone by, as in former years….

27. …{5} "So I will come near to you for judgment
…{5} "So I will come near to you for judgment. I will be quick to testify against sorcerers, adulterers and perjurers, against those who defraud laborers of their wages, who oppress the widows and the fatherless, and deprive aliens of justice, but do not fear me," says the LORD Almighty.

28. Many biblical scholars are convinced that Jesus had Malachi 3:1-5 in mind as he cleansed the temple, and that he expected his Jewish contemporaries to make this connection as well!

29. Offering ritual sacrifices to God is one thing; doing so in a rote, mindless, insincere manner is something else!
Jesus’ cleansing of the temple was his way of critiquing the rank ritualism (and the religious hypocrisy it accommodates) being facilitated by the temple cultus in his day!

30. Second, we need to also consider the significance of the fact that in this passage we find Jesus suggesting that a day was coming when the literal, physical temple there in Jerusalem would be replaced in a spiritual sense by his broken, buried and then resurrected body!

31. In other words, what Jesus was hinting at here was that someday the temple cultus would become obsolete.
He, himself, would someday become the true and ultimate point of priestly contact between sinful man and a holy God!

32. This explains why we find the author of the Letter to the Hebrews explaining to his readers why Jesus is the superior high priest (Heb. 7-8), presiding over worship in a superior temple (Heb. 9), having initiated a superior covenant (Heb. 9), on the basis of a superior (once-and-for all) sacrifice for sins (Heb. 9-10).

33. My point is that there’s little doubt about what the earliest Christians understood Jesus to be saying in John 2 about the importance of a real relationship with him over against settling for ritual religion!

34. Too many churches give their members the impression that how they live their lives doesn’t matter as long as they attend church services fairly regularly.

35. For too many church-goers, attending church is about getting a religious fix or getting their “ticket” punched rather than about becoming a part of a genuine Christian community that will lovingly but tenaciously enable them to experience spiritual and moral transformation into men and women of God.

36. How can a church do better at encouraging folks to attend its services for the right reason? 
How can a church enable its members to overcome the natural tendency of fallen human beings to engage in religious hypocrisy?

37. May I humbly point out that this notion that churches need to help their members make important lifestyle decisions by hearing and then honoring the heart of God is the theme of my most recent book…

38. It can help the folks understand the radical difference between a real relationship with Christ and ritual religion.
It can do what it can to help new believers overcome their theological naiveté.
It can be careful to help these same new believers overcome their moral naiveté (to cultivate instead a high moral faithfulness quotient—a capacity and readiness to hear and honor the heart of God).

39. It can be careful to balance therapeutic sermons with ones that are lovingly prophetic (challenging) in nature.
It can encourage the folks to keep experiencing transformational experiences with God’s Spirit.
It can gently but consistently encourage folks to evolve from merely attending to actually participating in genuine Christian community.

40. It can encourage members to become engaged in genuine Christian praxis—to make the transition from consumer/spectator to empowered minister/actor on the stage of human history.
It can encourage everyone to truly believe that, with the help of Christ’s Spirit, it really is possible to render to God the moral faithfulness he desires and deserves!

41. How close are we to being the kind of Christian community that can keep attracting new adherents even as we endeavor to steer them away from the religious hypocrisy and toward a real, personal, faith-based relationship with Jesus?

42. So, What’s So Wrong with Ritual Religion (Pt. 1)
John 2:12-3:36