Audio Transcript:

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All right. Well, I guess that's a sign from God that there's no time limit on this sermon. Praise God. If you're new, welcome, and we're so glad that you came early today. The 15 minutes early to the service, it felt like a sacrificed, didn't it? A little bit? Good. Good. That's the whole point. We should just keep doing that every single week, just incrementally change the time. We have coffee in the back. We brought coffee back in. So enjoy. I don't think we have any announcements other than God is good all the time.

So let's pray. Heavenly father, we thank you so much that you are a God who loves us. And we do understand that we live in a fallen, sinful world. We have a fallen flesh that seeks satisfaction in sin. We rebel against you. We have that nature. And then we also live in a fallen world. The world is against the church. And on top of that, we have an enemy, Satan and his army of demons, vying for our souls and opposing the work of God. Therefore, we shouldn't be surprised that we lose vision of you, Jesus.

Our vision gets cluttered. I pray today, remove that clutter. Jesus, in the same way that you entered the temple with a whip and zeal for the house, we pray, make us a people who are zealous with a holy zeal to cleanse our temple of sin, our personal bodies and souls to ruthlessly fight sin and to also oppose sin in the church when it creeps in or anything that gets added onto the pure gospel of Jesus Christ. Holy spirit, we welcome you into this place. We pray that you lead us, that you equip us.

I pray that you today comfort the afflicted and also afflict the comfortable and continue to build your church here in the city. And Lord, we thank you for the privilege of getting to work with you. You don't need us, but we need the invitation. We need the work because that's what shapes us into the image of God and that's what keeps us close to you. And I pray, Lord, make us a church that is as zealous as you are about the church. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.

The title of the sermon today is Cleansing the Clutter. This is our Love Jesus Simple series. This is our DNA. It's to refocus us on who we are, our identity, and given our identity, what we do, our activity. And then with our activity, what's the vision? Where are we going? And we talk about love. That we are given the great commandment to love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, soul, strength, and mind, and love your neighbor as yourself. We're given the great commission that we are to go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the father, son, the holy spirit, and teaching them to do everything that Jesus taught us.

And we have the great compassion where Jesus says that we are to care for the least of these of the world so love. By Jesus, we talked about the living word of God as attested to in the written word of God, the second person of the Trinity that reveals God to us and that reconciles us to God. So we focused on Jesus. And today we're talking about simplicity, to simplify, to get rid of anything that gets in the way of the most important, of the most essential. So we can be a church that majors in the majors.
I drive a 2007 Highlander, and I do that on purpose because I can park. It's got three row seating. I've got four kids. I can park it in tight spots. But also, it's old and I don't care if it gets dinged up. It's tremendous. I am not attached to my car at all. Therefore, we have never had it detailed, ever. Ever not once. And then we started looking around, there's crayons from 1980. It's just nasty. I look around and I'm like, "You know what? This is one of the reasons probably why we hate driving this thing."

So I took it to a detailing place. My wife took it to a detailing place in Allston. I don't even know the name of it, but I love their little motto: it's a spa for your car. So I went there and they got it detailed and I couldn't recognize the car. It was pristine. And for some reason, I think it started driving better. I don't know if there's a connection, but you know that connection when it's clean and you want to be in that car. So there's something that happens when our houses get cluttered.

People are fascinated with hoarders, people that just keep getting... And we watch shows about it. There's a whole movement about deep cluttering and simplifying, focusing on the essentials, living in little homes, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So this is why we do this on an annual basis because in the church, there is a tendency for things to get cluttered. Question. If you're new to Mosaic, I have multiple introductions in the introduction. This is my second introduction.

Question. How much of your waking hours are spent looking at man-made things? Of your waking hours, how much percentage of that are you looking at man-made things? I'm talking about your apartment. I'm talking about the brick and mortar around us, the asphalt around us. I'm talking about the mediocre transportation. I'm talking about Storrow Drive. My brother and I and my dad were stuck in Storrow Drive traffic yesterday. And my dad looks around and he's like, "This is why I hate cities."

He lives in Jamestown, Rhode Island, on the ocean. He's like, "I hate this." I was like, "Imagine living here 12 years." And then, you know what he says? "But there's also a lot of benefits to the city." He does this thing to encourage me, like keep living here. This as important. But just think about how much of your waking hours is man-made things. And on top of that, you're at work. You're staring at a screen all day. And then when you come home, you got your phone. You don't even go to the bathroom without your phone. You're just staring at man-made things all the time. Plus, we're surrounded by unbelievers.

Most of us, the only time that we relate with Christians, fellowship with Christians is when we go to church or a community group. So there is so much to be discouraged about because everything manmade is sinful. And on top of that, we're surrounded by people who don't know God. Yes, cities are tremendous because there's so much more of the image of God per square foot and there's also more of the human flesh depravity, the reprobate nature per square foot. Not to mention the demonic oppression when there are so many concentrated souls and Satan is vying for these.

So during the week, we lose focus. We lose sight of what's most important. And this is why Sunday morning is so important. This is why community group is so important. This is how I feel about Sunday mornings: I feel like I'm your tour guide. And I pull up and I've got this massive, massive van. I'm like, "Hey, get in. Get in." And I drive you to the mountains. I take my machete and I'm like, "You know what? Grab a machete too because this sermon is going to be hard work."

And we're just climbing the mountain with machetes, climbing, climbing. And then you're tired. I'm like, "Have some more coffee, have some more water, caffeine, holy spirit hydration. Let's go." And we're slugging away, machete after machete after machete. And then finally you begin to see a little clear and then finally you get to the top. And I just point you, look to the cross, look to calvary, look to the glory of God. And that fills your soul and you're encouraged. And then we go back down the mountain and we drive you back into the mission that is the mission of God here in the city.

And you're like, "Ah, I got to do it all again." Yes. And that's why church is so important. So everything we do at Mosaic is very calculated. It's like a good coach managing the energy of the team, the momentum of the team. It's like a good CEO, who knows the data, who knows the resources at hand and how to strategically invest for the maximum benefit of the organization and everybody. And it's like a good general who knows the soldiers and knows the mission and cares for the soldiers and actually gets off his high horse and says, "I am on the mission here with you. We are on the front lines."

I shared the gospel with I think it was a random guy on the street just by saying hi. I said hi to him. He said, "What?" I was like, "I just wanted to say hi." And he's like, "Everything is messed up," and that's not the word he used. He says, "Everything's messed up." I was like, "I know. I know. Politics is messed up and the economy's messed up, everything." And he's like, "Everyone asleep." I was like, "I know. I know. I'm trying to wake them up. I'm trying to wake them up." He said, "To what?" I said, "The true reality." He said, "You know the secret?" I said, "Oh yeah." So he told me he's going to come to church today. So I'm extra pumped. So hopefully he does show up.

But this is why we're here. We have zeal for God. We have zeal for God's people and we have zeal for God's house. And we have zeal for the mission of God. This is why the sermon is so important. And I pray that we never lose sight of that. Today, we're in John 2:13-25. Jesus Christ the context is. And the beginning of chapter two, he begins his ministry because mom asked him to. He's at a wedding and they ran out of wine. And that was a major full pot.

And Jesus is like, "I know it's a major full pot. You got any water?" They had 180 gallons of water. And he made the most delicious wine that they had ever tasted, not boxed wine, not wine with an animal on it. That's when you know that's not good wine. He made the best wine that they had ever tasted. That was awesome. People know his glory. And the very next thing he does is he enters the temple and he starts cleansing it. So that's our text today in John 2:13.

The Passover of the Jews was at hand and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. In the temple, he found those who were selling oxen and sheep and pigeons and the money changer sitting there. And making a whip of cords, he drove them all out of the temple, with the sheep and oxen. And he poured out the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables. And he told those who sold the pigeons, "Take these things away. Do not make my father's house a house of trade." His disciples remembered that it was written, "Zeal for your house will consume me."

So the Jews said to him, "What sign do you show us for doing these things?" And Jesus answered them, "Destroy the temple and in three days, I will raise it up." The Jews then said, "It has taken 46 years to build this temple and will you raise it up in three days?" But he was speaking about the temple of his body. When, therefore, he was raised from the dead. His disciples remembered that he had said this. They believed the scripture, the word that Jesus had spoken.

Now, when he was in Jerusalem at the Passover feast, many believed in his name when they saw the signs that he was doing. But Jesus on his part did not entrust himself to them because he knew all people. He needed one to bear witness about man, for he himself knew what was in man. This is the reading of God, totally and authoritative word. May you write these eternal truths upon our hearts. Two points to frame up our time. First, Jesus is consumed with zeal for God's house. And second, are you consumed with zeal for God's house?

Point one begins with Jesus Christ going to Jerusalem at the Passover feast. Now, you got to remember the importance of the Passover feast. What was the Passover feast celebrating? It was celebrating the fact that God led through Moses the people of Israel out of Egypt, after captivity, bondage, oppression for four centuries. And how did God lead them out? Sign after sign, after sign, after sign. And Pharaoh kept hardening his heart, hardening his heart. And then finally God said, "The only way to get you out is through death. The only way to give you life and freedom is through death."

God sent the angel of death. The angel of death was going to pass through. And every firstborn in every single household will die, the first son will die, unless the doorframe is painted with the blood of the lamb. Now, whoever believed... This is cookie. This is crazy. They didn't even have the sacrificial system yet. But God was saying your sin, Israel, your sin, Egyptians, your sin deserves death. And the only way to save you is a substitute, a sinless substitute. Someone must die in your place if you are to live.

So the Passover feast was for them to remember God's grace. God, you saved me because someone died for me. God, I'm celebrating your love and remembering your wrath for my sin. And all the Passover feast was, it was a big, thank you. God, thank you, thank you, thank you for saving me, for saving us. So we gather annually to do that. And we see in Jerusalem, in the temple he found those who were selling oxen and sheep and pigeons and he could see the money changer the sitting there. The animals were sacrifice.

Deuteronomy, the people of God were told you need to raise the animal yourself. The animal has to grow up with you, grow up with your family. It has to basically be a pet. And then you got to take this animal and you got to take it with you to the temple, however far it takes, however much work it takes. And you need to feel the emotional pain of this animal, the one you knew dying in your place. We have emotional attachments to animals. We do. That's what God was doing. I want you to take your beloved.

It's hard to even say, like you're beloved, your dog, your cat. That's what God was doing. But then the religious people realized, okay, that doesn't make practical sense for people to bring the animals. Let's make it a little easier. And you know what? This might solve our funding issue. People aren't tithing as they should be. We've got buildings to build. We've got capital campaigns. We've got staff salaries to pay.

So you know what? Let's sell the sacrificial animals at the temple. Let's tell them there. Let's just offer it as a service, just to make it a little more convenient for those whom it's hard to go to worship. And then the people would come and they're like, "Oh, I can buy an animal. Tremendous." And the people that couldn't buy the animal because of price gouging, it's like when you go into the Red Sox, a hotdog is like $80.

They got you in there. You're in. You're in. That's it. It's supply and demand. Now, you're in. Okay. Here's the price. So the poor people couldn't do that. So the poor people are bringing their own animals. They're bringing the pigeon. And then the people are like, okay, that adds another layer of difficulty. We've got to solve that problem to continue our streams of income.

So they said, we're going to have inspectors. We're going to inspect the animal. Oh, your lamb, it's got a blemish on it. What blemish? There's no blemish. There's a blemish. It's a lemon. You brought a lemon. Well, we have another vehicle that we can sell you. Well, we'll buy this one. You can trade it in for that one. We'll give you 20 bucks for your little lemon lamb. And then we're going to sell you one for a hundred. And the person doesn't have a choice because it's the religious inspectors.

It's the first used car dealership right there at the temple. And then on top of that, they would take the little lemon lamb, they would take that lamb and then sell it to the next person. Tremendous income stream. And they're like, you know what? This is great. Let's keep doing this. And then they're like, why are we using Roman currency? Whoever controls the currency, controls everything. So let's create our own currency.

They create their own temple currency. They're like we're done with the fiat dollar. We're going to use Bitcoin. That's what we're going to do in the temple. We got our own temple coin. That's what we're going to do. And obviously, when you get there with the money, I'm sorry, your money's not accepted here. So you can trade it in. Obviously, there's a little fee on top, the Coinbase fee of whatever percentage it is. That's what's going on.

So they're making money left and right off of whom? Off of people that want to show up to the temple and say thank you to God, to know more about God. So you got extortion and you got corruption. And it's all run by the people who are tasked with the job of telling people that God wants to forgive their sins. So John 2:15, what does Jesus do? Making a whip of cords. And I want to pause here for a second to show how premeditated this was. This wasn't Jesus hot headed, seeing something he doesn't like and going and tossing tables and causing chaos.

He deliberately, methodically sits there, prayerfully making a whip, a whip of cords. And he drove them all out with a temple them, the people with the sheep and the oxen. And he poured out the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables. Does this Jesus have a place in your theology of God? Because if this Jesus isn't in your theology of God, you don't know God. I understand that some people naturally are not wired to loving this Jesus I am.

I love this Jesus. This is my favorite Jesus. This Jesus, when he comes back in Revelation with a sword coming out of his mouth, with a huge tattoo down his leg that said, "Lord of lord and king of kings." I love that Jesus, because that Jesus Christ kill me. And if you can kill me, I'm going to follow you. That's that's how I'm wired. But you need the savage Jesus in your theology. This is the start of his ministry.

What did he do for the first three decades of his life? He was a builder. He worked with his dad and he was builder. He built things. So I see, like, he swung a hammer. There were no power tools back then. So if you build stuff, you're yoked. This is yoked Jesus showing up at the temple. Well, how do I know he's yoked? Because he doesn't need two hands to turn over tables. He's got a whip in one hand and he's tossing tables with the other hand. And what is he doing? Jesus Christ, yoked carpenter, cage fighting Jesus. This Jesus is declaring war against the establishment.

He's declaring war against the priest and against the temple religious system. He's declaring war against every single person who's getting in the way of people meeting God, people in authority who are getting in the way of people meeting God. That's what sparks his zeal and he makes a whip. And what does he say in verse 16? He told those who sold the pigeons, "Take these things away. Do not make my father's house the house of trade." Jesus, what is motivating you emotionally to do this thing that might bring you to the brink of death.

The priesthood has the Roman soldiers at their disposal. They can whack you in a second. Jesus, you're risking everything to do what? What are you motivated by? He's motivated by a love for his father's house. This is my father's house. This is where God, the father, is worshiped, where the children of God gather. This is my house. When I go to my dad's house, I take off my shoes. But the only thing I do diff... Well, I take off my shoes in my house because my wife does the same thing.

But at my dad's house, I walk in and I open the fridge. What do we got? What are we eating? It's my too. Is it my house? No, but it is my house. My mom never said, :Make yourself at home." She already knows. Jesus walks into his house. He doesn't take the whip and go to someone else's house. This is my house. This is my house. So we need to clean it out, clean and declutter this house. The main issue is he says, "Why did you make my father's house, a house of trade?" If you want to do the business side and selling the animals, do it outside. Don't do it in the court of Gentiles. That's where they were doing.

So in the temple, there's the holy of holies. And there was a place where the men of Israel could enter. And then there was a court of the Gentiles. The court of the Gentiles couldn't go into where they were doing the sacrifices. This is as close to God as they could come. They didn't see how graphic the sacrificial system is. They didn't see it. That wasn't emblazed on their hearts so they understand the gravity of what's going on, that this animal was dying for you.

These people want to go to pray. They want to go connect with God. And they find themselves in the midst of bizarre, animals bellowing and bleeding, selling. It's like the New York Stock Exchange on a Friday after noon. You're trying to pray and all that people see is business. And what does that communicate to people that do not know God? What that communicates is these people don't care about God. The people in charge don't care about God. Why should I care about God?

If the people in charge have a transactional relationship with God. I give God money, he forgives me of sins. That's what we're doing here. You want your sins atoned for, forgiven? We'll take your money. That's it. Your sins are forgiven. Kind of what the Catholic church did before the reformation. It was the same thing, transaction, business. We're going to build buildings and we're going to fill up the coffers. And then we're going to fill up our own bank accounts. It was the same, same thing, people getting in the way of people worshiping God.

So Jesus, in verse 17, his disciples remembered that it was written, "Zeal for your house will consume me." Zeal for your house will consume me. And probably they remembered these words after the resurrection, from the deeper vantage point of everything they had seen. And what this is, is a quote from Psalm 69:9, "For zeal for your house has consumed me. And the reproaches of those who reproach, you have fallen on me."

Now, initially, this was written by David. David is saying he felt a reproach. He suffered reproach because of his zeal for the house of God. Now, it's fascinating, it's both from the Hebrew, Psalm 69, and the sub teigen, which is the Greek translation of the Old Testament. This is where you got to get your machete ready just for a little bit. We're still swinging. What's important there in the grammar is that tense is in the past tense. For zeal for your house has consumed me. That's a past tense.

John turns the past tense into a future. He says, zeal for your house will consume you. It will consume you. Why is that important? Because John is treating the Psalm as a messianic prophecy of the ministry of Jesus. This is the Messiah. This is the prophet who was promised that will come and he will speak God's word to God's people. He's the priest that will come and atone for the sins of God's people. He is the king. He's the anointed one who will force people to submit to his rule.

Psalm 69 is one of the six Psalms most often referred to in the New Testament, and Jesus quotes this multiple times, twice in the book of John. John 15:23-25, Jesus starts talking about the fact that people hate him. Whoever hates me hates my father also. And if I had not done among them the works that no one else did, they would not be guilty of sin, but now they have seen and hated both me and my father. But the word that is written in the law must be fulfilled. They hated me without cause."

This isn't they disliked me. This is they despised me. And then John 19:28, Jesus on the cross, "After this, Jesus, knowing that all was now finished, said, to fulfill the scripture, 'I thirst." And the jar full of sour wine stood there. So they put a sponge full of the sour wine on the hyssop branch and held it to his mouth. When Jesus received the sour wine, he said, "It is finished," and he bowed his head and gave up his spirit of prophecy, again, written in Psalm 69, fulfilled in Christ.

What happened to king David happened much more to an infinite degree more to David's great descendant, the Messiah, Jesus Christ. David wanted to build the temple. He loved the place of God, the worship of God. He loved it. He suffered a reproach for it. Jesus Christ loved it and suffered reproach for it. But ultimately, it wasn't the temple that he really cared about. It was the presence of God that people were thwarted of entering.

And then Jesus Christ ultimately to destroy that temple allows the temple of his body to be destroyed as fulfillment of the temple and replacement of rights and sacrifice. And what's so resoundingly clear from this text is that Jesus Christ was opposed. There was outright hostility from the religious people. And then at the end of the text, we see people, "Oh, we like Jesus. He's awesome."

And Jesus, it says, did not entrust himself to them because he knew what was in them. He knew how fickle people were. So you've got hostility from the representatives of God and superficial loyalty from everyone else, which is just a sugar coated hostility. And yes, in our culture, that hostility crowd is growing. You tip people's holy cows and see how zealous they become. The holy cows of gender, sexual identity. How things should be set up in the church. You tip holy cows, you tell people that what they do in their house...

I'm not coming into your house to clean it. I'm not doing that. I'm making a whip, but I am proclaiming God's word. And when you hear God's word and are offended by it, that's the point to awaken you. That's the point. I don't go into your house with a whip and I pray, dear friend, return the favor. Do not come to our house with your own whip, trying to change Jesus, change God, change God's word. You know why?

Because if we allow you or someone to do that, hypothetically, it's not anyone sitting here. Hypothetically, if we allow you to come in and change God, change God's word, change how God told us to do things, then Jesus is going to come with a whip. And who is he going to start with? Me. Me. So I don't want to do that. I don't want to mess with Jesus. I want to snuggle with Jesus like the apostle John. I want that. Don't kill me, please. Thanks. That's the Jesus that I want.

So I want to stay in his good graces. That's what's going on. So on the one side, people are growing in hostility to God. So to those people who are like, "Yeah, Jesus got a whip." So that's what we preach. And then to the other people, there's just a superficial loyalty, "I love Jesus." And I see this with a lot of young people. You show up to church and I already know why you're here. You're here because you want to marry someone. Tremendous.

So don't fake it. Don't fake being a Christian. Don't fake it. Don't ruin someone else's life. And if you're faking it, you're not going to discern if the other person is actually solid Christian. So that's what I'm saying. Like the superficial loyalty, Jesus rejected that as well. And you know what happens? As soon as Christianity gets difficult, the profession of faith just disappears. It's just gone.

And you need to be ready right now. You need to say in your heart, "Okay. If the Taliban knocks on my door and says right now, 'Bring out your daughters to me just because you're a Christian." What are you going to do? Are you ready to suffer for the faith. That's a decision you've got to make now. And Jesus Christ said, "Take up your cross and follow me daily." Meaning there will be a price to pay.

Jesus comes and he starts with his own. John 1:11, "He came to his own and his own did not receive him. They were convinced they were loving God by hating the son of God." And that's an important word. The religious elites crucified Jesus thinking they were loving God. The things humans can get away with when they think they are doing God's will. Stalin went to seminary. Stalin was a trained pastor. He thought he was doing what's best for humanity.

Be careful that in the name of something you call good, that you don't create barriers for people to meet God. And that's a word to us, to Christians. I've seen this. I grew up in a church like this. I grew up in a church I didn't want to go to. There were barriers there. Do you think boy bands were cool? Then, they were never cool. But before boy bands took off here, they took off in my Russian church.

We had four dudes show up that can't sing, but they got slicked back here. I was one of the boys. We did that one time. Dennis, remember that? We did that one time. And then I looked back and I cringe. No wonder my friends didn't want to go to that church. They didn't preach the word. They didn't explain that this is real, that Christianity impacts every single day. How real this truly is.

Because we were paying attention to the color of the carpet. That's what we talked about at member's meeting, not saving people, not bringing people to church and seeing people meet Jesus. Not once did I see someone who's an unbeliever show up and say, "You know what? I have no Christian background and I want to become a Christian." I didn't see that once. And I couldn't take my friends to church because they didn't speak Russian.

So that's what I'm saying. Christians have this tendency to add stuff to church that keeps people away from seeing the point. And the point is that you are a sinner, that God's wrath is upon you, you deserve Jesus whip and ultimately his sword. But Jesus Christ came and he was consumed with zeal so much so that the one that came with the whip allowed himself to be whipped, allowed himself to be scorched, tied to a pole, shirt taken off. Roman brutal machines of death whipped him with a cat o' nine tails and at the end of every single one of those strands was a rock or a piece of bone to get his back and flesh, to get pulled.

So he allows it so that you don't have to, so you don't have to bear his wrath, so you don't have to bear his sword of judgment. That's the point. And Jesus came and he said, that's it. That's what I'm trying to say. I am your only hope to salvation. And that's why the people who are closest to him and heard the message closest to him, most of them hated him.

A lot of us think, people, if they just knew how great Jesus was, they'd love him. This is a lie. This is a lie. And that's why people are like, "Oh, don't read that text. Don't read that text." When people really understood who Jesus was, the few, the select, the chosen, they became Christians. Everybody else despised him. They wanted to kill him outright. Why? Why would people hate Jesus?

Because the same Jesus who tenderly says, "Come onto me all of you are burdened and heavy laden and I will give you rest." The same Jesus made a whip of cords, drove people out of the temple, scattered and upset, their animals, overturned their tables, scattered all their money. And how does that make you feel? That's an important question. If you really understand, how does that make you? Did Jesus hurt their feelings? Yeah.

Wasn't there another way, Jesus? Could you not have like sat down with them and had a conversation, give them a little therapy, brokered a little deal. And like, hey, you guys are doing this wrong. Let me point you to God's word. Do a little Bible study. No, it's not what he does. Because that's not enough to awaken them. What they needed was someone to come in and to hit them where it hurts most, in the pocket book and the ego.

And to know that they don't care about the thing that he cares about most. And if they don't care about the thing that he cares about most, they will suffer consequence. So what did he care about most? In John 2:17, his disciples remembered that it was written zeal for your house will consume me. The word zeal comes from the word deboil, like boiling water. That's inside. It's boiling. His blood is boiling.

And obviously, there's lots of examples in scripture of unholy zeal. Like when Peter who just woke up from sleep and watching Jesus get arrested, he's like, "Ah, I'm zealous. I'm going to chop off this guy's head," and only gets the ear. And then Jesus is like, "What are you doing?" That's unholy zeal. And St. Paul says there's people that have zeal not according to knowledge, but Jesus' zeal was holy.

There was nothing wicked about it. His zeal is as holy as his love and his gentleness and his grace. His zeal was his love. He was zealous because he was so loving. Zeal is love made angry because the thing you love, the one you love is being hurt. That's what's going on here. Jesus loves God. He loves the house of God. And he sees that what these people are doing is pulling people away from God.
And one of the ways that they were trying to pull people away from God was trying to make it easier, trying to make the church more palatable, God more palatable. Okay. You don't have to raise the animal. We'll do it for you. We'll make it more efficient. We'll make it more timely, more convenient. What better convenience than to sell the sacrificial animals there? A one-stop-shop worship.

They took the pain out of worship. They took the pain out of worship. They began to encourage lazy worship, loveless worship, sacrificeless worship, and they catered to their consumer mentality. You come in, you pay, you receive, and creating a customer mentality. And then customers. Well, the customer is always right. If it's a business, if church is primarily a business, the customer is always right.

A lot of churches do that. The customer is always right. So that's what we're going to preach. You know how many people you can attract with a message like that? Joel Osteen fills a football stadium primarily because he has nice hair and a beautiful smile and a wonderful jawline and he serves ice cream. He just gives people ice cream. That's all he does. Pay me I give you ice cream. Pay me I gave you...

He looked at the church and he's like, "I can offer you ice cream for your soul." You go there, you're uplifted, you're encouraged. Everything is awesome. Wonderful. He doesn't call me to do any of this. This is tremendous. You show up here and I say, "Grab your machete. We're going to war. This is what we do." We pull you to work. You show up, you have a pulse, we tell you about Jesus and we'll give you a job.

That's what we do. Because that's the best thing for you. I grew up painting with my dad, who likes painting if your house looks bad. Don't get mad. Tremendous. I was six years old. He's like, "You want to work with me tomorrow?" I said, "Tremendous." I show up to work and I'm working. Was I good? No, I was terrible. He didn't need me there. I needed to be there more than he needed me to be there.

I needed the service. I needed to learn how to work hard. I needed to learn how to sacrifice. And that's why God gave us sacrificial systems. That's why, when God says, "I want to forgive your sins. And also, take up a cross and follow me." And that's why God does talk about wrath. He talks about for every instance of God's love and mercy and grace in holy scripture, there's three instances of his wrath and damnation and hell.

Why does he do that? So when he saves people, they understand what they're saved from. So they're motivated to give all of their life, all of their zeal to save those who are not yet Christians. And here, these people didn't care about it. John 2:18, the Jews said to him, "What sign do you give us for showing these things?" And what's fascinating is their demand betrays them. It betrays the fact that they know that he's not a kook, that he's not just a revolutionary.

They feel his authority and they saw it in his eyes. And what they're saying is not, "Oh, teach us how to change the worship. Teach us what we're doing wrong." No, they didn't care about that. They cared that he was tipping their holy cow of authority. And that's why he's like, "You want to sign? Here's the sign, destroy this temple. And in three days, I'll raise it up." Obviously, he's not talking about destroying the temple. that's what they used in order to arrest him after and those are the insults that were hurled at him as he's hanging on the cross. And he's not talking about this temple, he's talking about destroy this temple. That's the sign that...

A lot of people are like, "I believe in God. If there was a sign from God." There is a sign from God. A guy lived, a guy died, and a guy came back from the dead. That's the sign. And that's the sign that everybody gets. God is an all equal opportunity sign giver. Everybody gets the same sign. Tremendous. But you've got to believe in it. You got to understand why he's on the cross. You got to understand what he did for us.

What's fascinating is the same zeal with which he started his ministry, that was the same zeal with which he did his ministry. Him cleansing the temple was just a sign of everything else that's coming. Everything he taught. The Jews had 618 laws. This is what you got to obey in order to be made right with God. And Jesus is like you can't be made right with God unless you believe in me. And then the 618, let's just condense it. Let's put it in a shot glass, distill, two commands. Love God and love people. Tremendous. Go do it.

They want to sit around and have Bible studies instead of doing the stuff that is in the Bible. So Jesus starts his ministry by cleansing the temple, cleanses the people of God, and ends his ministry doing the same thing. And this is what a lot of Christians owner of Stan. This action, what Jesus did is so important to our theology. He does it twice. He does it at the beginning of his ministry, in John 2, and then he does it at the end of the ministry. And Matthew, Mark, and Luke all have that second one.

And the context says in Matthew 21, Jesus enters Jerusalem on the holy week, enters in the holy week as the king. Everyone's screaming out, "Hosanna, Hosanna, Hosanna." And then as a king, he enters the temple again to do the same thing. And that's Matthew 21:12-17. Jesus entered the temple and drove out all who sold and bought in the temple. And he overturned the tables of the money changers and seats of those who sold pigeons.

And he said to them, "It is written, my house shall be called the house of prayer, but you make it a den of robbers. And the blind and the lame came to him in the temple and he healed them. And when the chief priests and the scribes saw the wonderful things that he did, and the children crying out in the temple, 'Hosanna to the son of God,' they were indignant. And they said to him, 'Do you hear what these are saying?' And Jesus said to them, 'Yes. Have you never read, out of the mouth of infants and nursing babies you have prepared praise.' And leaving them, he went out of the city to Bethany and lodged there." He did the same thing. This time, he adds, you've made my house a house of prayer.

You've made a den of robbers. He calls it my house, and this is my house. I'm in my house. And you made it a den of robbers. And here he quotes Jeremiah 7, where God tells Jeremiah, go into the temple and preach the sermon. And in that sermon, Jeremiah accuses his contemporary as bringing into the temple all of their sins. So it's not even just about the sacrificial system. It's about the fact that you don't use it.

The sacrificial system, the whole point of it was raise a little lamb, care for it, love it, walk it all the way down to the temple and watch it's throat slit for your sins so that you go home and you remember the bleeding of that sheep that you loved and that's to motivate you to live a sinless life, a holy life, a life of zeal toward God. So Jeremiah says to these people in verse eight, "Behold, you trusted deceptive words to no avail. Will you steal, murder, commit adultery, swear false, make offerings to Baal and go after other gods that you have not known. And then come and stand before me in this house, which is called by my name and say, 'We are delivered,' only to go on doing all these abominations."

"Has this house, which is called by my name, become a den of robbers in your eyes? Behold, I myself have seen it," declares the Lord. What they were doing, but this is what's happening in so many American churches today, so so many. You go in and you're like, "Oh, Jesus is the new sacrificial system? Tremendous. I'm going to sin all week. I'm going to live a godless life." Zeal for sin instead of a zeal for the savior. And then you come in on a Sunday, oh yeah, I committed adultery. Okay. Let's repent of that. I stole. Let's repent of that. I worshiped other idols. Okay. I swore falsely, let's repent.

I murdered someone. Jesus said, if you hate someone in your heart, that's tantamount to murder, meaning they didn't care about Gods will at all. They just used God. So Jesus quotes these words to these people, den of robbers. And he inflamed their zeal. And that's what got him killed. Ultimately, his zeal did consume him. Ultimately, he did die for us. Jesus was zealous for God. And they were zealous for self power, money, status, positions. And the same battle raging in their hearts is raging in every single heart today.

Jesus wants to cleanse your heart of sin. He wants to enter your life with not a whip. Right now, in this life, while you're alive, he wants to enter your heart with mercy and love and grace and forgive you, cleanse you with his blood. This is the beauty. Jesus wants to cleanse you with his blood, not his whip. The whip comes later. But if you bow your knees to Jesus Christ, if you repent of sin in this life, while you're alive, everything is forgiven.

You talk about great business models. You could talk about great deals, you could talk about streams of income, all that. This is the greatest deal in the history of the universe. All of your sins are forgiven. So repent. But once you do, you need to know, he expects something from you. He expects you to live zealously for him. And this is point two, Jesus is consumed with zeal. Oh, wow. Point two is going to be really fast. That's why I needed the timer. Dangerous.

Okay. Are you consumed with zeal for God's house? When you see this Jesus with a whip, how does that make you feel? It should make you feel that, hey, I don't know if I'm as zealous as he is for God's house, for God. And we're all zealous for something. And you just follow your time, talent, treasure, where your skills are used, where your time is used, where your treasure is used, where it goes naturally, that's what you're most zealous about.

And we need to ask ourselves, are we zealous for God? Are we zealous for God's temple? And God's temple obviously is in Jerusalem. Now, God's temple is the church universal, lived out in the church local. And again, I have this conversation all the time. People are like, "I'm a Christian, I'm part of the universal church." That's like me going to you and saying, "Are you a human being?" And they say, "Yeah, I'm part of the human race."

Do you have a body? If not, you're Casper the Friendly Ghost. Same thing. Are you a Christian? Are you part of the universal church? Are you part of the local church? If you're not a part of a local church, you're probably not alive. That was the love sermon or the Jesus sermon. I don't know. I preach the same thing every week. Are you zealous for God's work. Are you zealous to please God?

Are you zealous to declutter your own soul and life of sin? And your answer, I want you to look at the data. I want you to look at the evidence. If you say I'm zealous for God, look at the data. Where does your time naturally go? Where does your money naturally go? Where do you thoughts naturally go? Look at the data. Study yourself. Show me the receipts that you are zealous. And also, is there anything better to consume your life than zeal for God's house? Is there anything better?

If you know me personally, when I get zealous about something, I get zealous. So when I talk about God's word, I am... If I'm not sweating profusely, like I'm at a workout, I'm a CrossFit right now, then I'm not even trying. No. When I get zealous about something, I go all in. I went vegan one time. I dropped like 40 pounds. I was yellow by the end of that. And after that, I started powerlifting. Go completely. I get zealous.

I became an amateur boxer just for fun. I get zealous. And the whole time with all of my different whatever, I'm zealous for the church of God. I love the church. I love this church. I love it. I love the scriptures. I love the church. I want to give all of myself to it. And I remember reading J.I. Packer, Knowing God. And he has this section about the zeal of God. If you know God, you have to be zealous for God.

And this little section, it's chapter 17 of Knowing God, it changed my life. He says zeal and religion of Christianity is a burning desire to please God, to do his will, to advance his glory in the world in every possible way. It is the desire which no man feels by nature, which the spirit puts in the heart of every believer when he is converted, by which some believers feel so much more strongly than others that they alone deserve to be called zealous men.

In religion, Christianity is preeminently a man of one thing. It is not enough to say that he's earnest, hearty, uncompromising, thorough going, whole-hearted, fervent in spirit. He only sees one thing, cares for one thing. He lives for one thing. He's swallowed up by one thing, and that one thing is to please God, whether he lives or whether he dies, whether he has health or whether he has sickness, whether he is rich, whether he is poor, whether he pleases man or whether he gives offense, whether he's thought wise or whether he is thought foolish, whether he gets blame or whether he gets praise, whether he gets honor, whether he gets shamed.

For all this, the zealous man cares nothing at all. He burns for one thing, and that one thing is to please God, to advance God's glory. If he is consumed in the very burning, he cares not for it. He's content. He feels like that, like a lamp. He is made to burn. And if consumed in burning, he has done the work for which God appointed him. Such a one will always find a sphere for his zeal. If he cannot preach, work, give money, he will cry inside and pray.

If he can not fight in the valley with Joshua, he will do the work with Moses and Aaron on the hill. And if he is cutoff from working himself, he will give the Lord no rest till help is raised up from another quarter. And the work is done. This is what I mean when I speak of zeal and religion. May God make us men and women of zeal. And that's going to absolutely ever change the world.

Revelation 3:15, 16, 19. "I know your works. You're neither cold nor hot. I would that you were either cold or hot. So because you were lukewarm and neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of my mouth." Those are the words of Jesus. "Those whom I love, I reprove and discipline. So be zealous and repent." Titus 2:11-14, "For the grace of God," that's our salvation, "Has appeared, bringing salvation for all people, training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions and live self-controlled upright and godly lives in the present age, waiting for our blessed hope."

"The appearing of the glory of our great God and savior Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for himself a people for his own possession who are zealous for God's work." And then practically, how does this work? As a church, we focus all of our attention on three things. And those three things are meant to fire up your zeal to the Lord.

It's not the only things that we do, but this is where we focus our energy: on our worship services, on our community groups, and our service teams. Acts 2, that's what the early church did. At my house, I live with five females. They're wonderful. They're my favorite roommates. We do three things in my house. We worship God. We talk about God all the time. We read scripture. We pray. We talk about God all the time. My daughter, Milan, is four. She was visiting her aunt and her aunt said, "Do you love God?" She said, "Yeah." And her aunt said, "Why?"

And we're expecting, "Oh, he made me. He gives me good stuff. He feeds me." She's like, "Because he told me to." Oh man, that's good. That's good. Love because he's God. That's tremendous. That's great theology. So we love each other. We love each other. We worship God. We love each other. We fellowship and we serve each other. That's every good family. Worship. God, tell each other that you love each other, spend time together, and then serve each other.

That's what we do. We worship God. We fellowship in community groups. And if you aren't in one, join one. And then we serve on a weekly basis. And why do we do this? We do this to fire up our faith. And at the center of all of that is the holy scriptures. Jesus Christ, after his resurrection, with the disciples walking the road to Emmaus, he just gave him a Bible study and their hearts burned that they were fired up for the mission of God.

So everything we do in our worship service, community groups, and service teams, we do with scripture at the center. So if you're like, "I am so zealous for God right now. I am so pumped." Now we're descending down the mountain and we're about to get back in the van and drive back into the city. I am so pumped. What can you do? Well, I've got a job for you. I've got jobs. And I've got a slide with jobs.

Oh, this is what we need. We need help. In operations, we need 10 greeting team members, 12 tear down team members, which is tear down in setup is tremendous if you like working out and you pay money for that. You can just get rid of your membership and come to church. Six security team members, six special events team members. So all of this. Production is a little harder because for production, portfolios are required.

So if you've got a photography, video, you need skills. Sorry. We believe God's perfect. So everything we try to do here, we try to do with excellence. So if you stink, don't sign up there. And then mini Mosaic, we need to nursery assistants, prayer. Crucial. We need three prayer team members and two intercessory prayer team members, in particular, men. This is requested. Why? And you're like, is that misogynistic that we want particularly men for the team? We want everybody. But right now the team is carried by women.

Gentlemen, sign up. Tremendous. You're welcome. So that's that. So if you'd like to sign up, tremendous, brookline.mosaicboston.com/serve, or you can go to the app. Conclusion. I had conversation this week with a girl from the church that got a job and she's working at this job. It's a brand new job in a city. One of the things that they do and one of the benefits that they include is they want to motivate their people.

One of the services that they had included, they invited this guy in, who was a guy who's like he created a business for himself, like gathering people in his living room, like people are working, company execs, and he would all force them to cook together. They cook a meal together. So everyone's on the same plane. The guards go down. They all eat the meal together. They sit around on a circle and the guy asked one question.

And the reason why they do this and the reason why it's so effective is because apparently they found out that companies where people are thankful to be there are so much more successful. And this is the one question that they ask and they talk about, who is the person in your life that you have never thought to say thank you to? I heard that and I was like aaah. I'm getting goosebumps now.

That's so powerful. Who's the one person in your life that you never thought to say thank you? And I knew right away. I knew exactly, second grade Mrs. Wodziak, little Polish lady. And I was still in ESL at that time. And I will never forget, it's Christmas time and we had to bring gifts. We had to do the Santa swamp thing. You had to bring a gift and then one of the other kids gets your gift and you get one of their gifts. It was tremendous. And I brought the gift. I don't remember what I brought. And I saw the biggest box under the tree.

Because all the kids got to sit there for like weeks looking at all these presents. And they scoped out the biggest one and it came up and I held it up. It was weighty. I was like, this is the one. And I stole it. Second grade. So obviously, on the day of getting the gifts, some kid is not going to have a gift. The day comes and finally they're like, it's the last person. The last person has no gift. There's no present for the little kid. I'm sitting there with my two gifts. Peace to Jenna at second grade.

And then Mrs. Wodziak pulls out a present from under her desk, same size. And the kid opens up. It was the same thing that I stole, 64 crayons. You remember those boxes? Same thing to this kid. I'm like, obviously she knew I stole it. She knew. And she gave me mercy. And then in secondary, we took a field trip to Sturbridge village and all the kids had money. I didn't know we were supposed to bring money. Also, my immigrant parents were like, "Money for what? You're lucky we feed you." So then we get to Sturbridge and all the kids are buying stuff and they bought yo-yos
And I was like, oh, man, I wish I got a yo-yo. I was scoping out one to steal. And then Mrs. Wodziak comes up to me with a green yo-yo. And I never said thank you. I think she was a believer. She's the one that taught me in one fell swoop about mercy. You don't get what you deserve. And grace. You got what you didn't deserve. That's a powerful question. And I want you to ask that question. What's the one person that you've never thought to say thank you? I want you to say thank you to them if they were alive.

I want to pause right now and say thank you to the members of this church and everyone who serves, gives time, talent, treasure for zeal. You're zealous for God. So thank you. Praise God for you. And I'll just end with this. The reason why that question is so powerful, because I've been thinking about that all week. I'm like, why is that so powerful? I know. I know. Because there's one that most people who are alive have never said thank you to. You've never even said thank you. God, thank you.

Thank you for giving me life and God, thank you for dying on the cross for my sins, not giving me the wrath that I deserve, and then giving me love and mercy and grace that I don't deserve. God, thank you. So in terms of love, Jesus, simple, and simplicity, that's what we're going to focus on, worshiping God. So let's worship him together. Heavenly father, we do come to you and we just say thank you.

We thank you that you're a great God and a holy God. And we thank you, Jesus, that though we deserve the whip, you took it for us. We deserve the cross, you took it for us. We deserve the wrath of God, you took it for us in order to forgive us and give us mercy and then also give us grace. And make us the people who are motivated with gratitude, with thanksgiving, and zealous for you, zealous for your house, zealous for your people, and zealous for the mission of God. And we pray this in Jesus’ name. Amen.