God is Good, Evil is Real, and the Devil is a Liar

David Stockton
Series: John
Chapter 2

Well, here we are again. Welcome, Living Streams! It’s good to be with you. I want to say a prayer real quick as we jump into this. It’s kind of a wild world out there. Sometimes it dan be a wild world inside our own bodies. Let’s take a little moment and pray.

Lord Jesus, we do thank you for today. Lord, we want to hear from you. We need your word. We don’t need anymore words from mankind. We just need to hear from you—truth. We need heaven’s perspective. Lord, we’re hungry for your word. We don’t live by anything but the words that come from your mouth. We want to live, Lord. We don’t want to just exist. So please come speak to us.
Thank you for your Spirit that can speak to us. Thank you for the scriptures that have so clearly laid out for us your plan and how you work within humanity. Be with us, Lord, I pray. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

Well, we’ve got 2020 still going on. In 2020 we’ve got the COVID-19, the death toll, the quarantine, the Donald Trump, the liberal, the conservative, the Black Lives Matter, the cisgender privilege. We’ve got riots, defunding police, it’s 115 degrees out there sometimes, and Disneyland is closed!

So. Yeah. All of those words probably make you kind of catch your breath a little bit, or lose a breath, or your heart pace quickens a little bit. I understand that and I want to end that kind of wildness that we’re all experiencing day in and day out.

I want to say these words. This is 2 Corinthians 10:3-6 from the Message. Just let this wash over you:

The world is unprincipled…

As my grandpa used to say, “God is good, evil is real, and the devil is a liar.” And that’s an absolute truth.

The world is unprincipled. It’s dog-eat-dog out there! The world doesn’t fight fair. But we don’t live or fight our battles that way—never have and never will. The tools of our trade aren’t for marketing or manipulation, but they are for demolishing that entire massively corrupt culture. We use our powerful God-tools for smashing warped philosophies, tearing down barriers erected against the truth of God, fitting every loose thought and emotion and impulse into the structure of life shaped by Christ. Our tools are ready at hand for clearing the ground of every obstruction and building lives of obedience into maturity.

You remember that commercial that used to just go, “Ah, the power of cheese.” When it would talk about satisfying your hunger, I just feel like reading the scriptures these days has been just like, ‘Ah, the power of God’s word to just come in and satisfy a weary, thirsty or confused soul.”

And I just love this verse. We’re going to get into a whole bunch more verses. But right now, as this message is going on, as you’re listening to this, in our Sanctuary, there is what we’re calling kind of a “worship attack” going on—a “prayer attack” going on. That sounds kind of weird. I understand that. But basically, the concept is we’ve been opening like we said in the announcements, our sanctuary for in-person, on-campus gatherings for a limited capacity of people that are coming. The whole point is they are coming to just pray. They’re coming to intercede. They’re coming to engage in spiritual warfare as the Bible teaches us. They’re coming to kind of see what we can do. Like Moses, Aaron and Hur, to lift our hands to turn the tide of the battle that’s going on in our society, and to make sure that all of the division and corruption that is in our society doesn’t find its way seeping into our church, let alone the Church of God as a whole.

So I’m so excited about what’s going on there. And with the homeless stuff that’s going on. I had some great conversations with some homeless brothers and sisters that have been coming. They’re very thankful for the relief. They’re very thankful for being able to kind of take a nap and then wake up without some startling thing where someone’s kind of hitting them, telling them they’ve got to get out of here. Or someone’s trying to steal their stuff. They can wake up in peace. They keep mentioning, “It’s just so quiet in here. So comfortable in here.”

It’s been a real blessing to be able to spend time with those men and women and to see maybe if there are some ways we can help them in a more longterm way.

We’re going to jump into John Chapter 2 here. We’re going to start in verse 13.

When it was almost time for the Jewish Passover, Jesus went up to Jerusalem. In the temple courts he found people selling cattle, sheep and doves, and others sitting at tables exchanging money. So he made a whip out of cords, and drove all from the temple courts, both sheep and cattle; he scattered the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables. To those who sold doves he said, “Get these out of here! Stop turning my Father’s house into a market!” His disciples remembered that it is written: “Zeal for your house will consume me.”
The Jews then responded to him, “What sign can you show us to prove your authority to do all this?”
Jesus answered them, “Destroy this temple, and I will raise it again in three days.”
They replied, “It has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and you are going to raise it in three days?” But the temple he had spoken of was his body. 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.
Now while he was in Jerusalem at the Passover Festival, many people saw the signs he was performing and believed in his name. But Jesus would not entrust himself to them, for he knew all people. He did not need any testimony about mankind, for he knew what was in each person.

And so here we have again this concept that God is good and evil is real. Mankind has a problem. It’s got this depraved nature within us. And then we have the devil and the deceit that comes from that regard as well.

So Jesus is here in the temple courts and he does something fascinating. He does something wild. He’s watching this gathering take place. It’s the Passover time, so there are probably close to two million Jews that have gathered in Jerusalem. So the city is just bustling. And there at the temple, which is the central focus, people are coming to make sacrifices. According to Judaism that’s what was required. A sacrifice needed to be made to kind of show penance—to get forgiven of your sins. That was the deal that God had made with the people.

So they would come to the temple courts with some sort of offering. That was to admit that they had been guilty, they had sinned. It was to admit that God is good and God is right, and they want to be right with God. And they were thankful that they could do something to actually make themselves right with God. So they would come and offer these sacrifices. And they would come with a dove. Or they would come with a cow. Or they would come with sheep, or whatever it might be.

What they experienced as they got there, though, was the people who were running the temple, the priests, all those, had realized that they could make some money off of these people. So one of the things that was required is your animal would have to be perfect. It would basically have to be inspected by the priest. And if there was any fault found in it, they would not let them sacrifice that. So what the priests did was, they came up with their own kind of priest-inspected cattle, sheep and doves. So, if you wanted to come and purchase one of those, you wouldn’t have to carry an animal from wherever you came from. You wouldn’t have to worry about the unscrupulous priests who would come and find fault. You could just come and pay for an already-approved animal to sacrifice. The only problem was, it was a lot more expensive. There was quite a service fee added to it.

So Jesus was watching this take place. And not only that, but the money changers that Jesus was dealing with, they would also say, “We as the priests, we can’t receive that money that has Caesar’s image on it because it’s not holy money.” So they actually made up their own money. So not only did you have to purchase a priest-approved sacrifice, but you would also have to exchange your money into priest-approved money so that you could purchase your priest-approved sacrifice. Basically, people were just getting totally, totally ripped off.

So Jesus has come with his family. Jesus is thirty years old. Jesus has not gone public with his ministry. We talked about two weeks ago in John 2, at the beginning, really the first kind of revelation outside of his own family structure was to his disciples and to the people at the wedding at Cana when he changed the water into wine. That’s how John introduces us to Jesus. The first miraculous, first revealing of his glory wasn’t in some grand standing way. It was a very small town.

So now, here’s this other kind of revelation that’s happening, where Jesus is revealing a little bit more of who he is and the authority that he does have. So he’s just pulling out this whip as he’s watching person after person getting ripped off. Maybe he was getting to the front of the line. Maybe he was just thinking of his own mom and what she has done as she has come and been ripped off. We don’t know what it was that finally just kind of broke free in him. But he actually went over and found a cord and made a whip. And he just started making a scene. He was wild. He was whipping…I don’t know if he was whipping people or just kind of cracking the whip. We don’t know.

We know he was throwing the tables over and he was just really attacking this whole enterprise that was going on. He was driving all the animals out, kind of causing all of that commotion. People running out watching for the stampede. He comes over to those with the doves. I guess he didn’t want to just let them go, so he just pushed them all out, got them all out. He threw the tables over, got the money changers out. He just basically went on a rampage.

Then, when it all settled, or whatever happened as he was walking out, we don’t know exactly when security came. We don’t know exactly what happened, but they said, “What authority do you have to do this?” Like, “Who do you think you are coming in here and doing this?”

Obviously they didn’t know—no one knew at that point, but Jesus just says, “You have turned my Father’s house into a den of thieves. Get out of here. Stop turning my Father’s house into a market.”

So he’s saying, “My Father’s house.” He’s starting to allude to this connection that he had with God that was very offensive to the people. What John writes here is that, he remembered later on as he’s kind of remembering the scriptures, in Psalm 69, in talking about this Messiah, it’s a messianic Psalm. It says that the zeal for his house will consume him. So they’re kind of putting these pieces together, that something is happening, that something more than meets the eye is going on with this Jesus guy. And he’s fulfilling these messianic prophecies. Zeal for his house and what takes place there. Righteous indignation and this rising up to stand against oppression. And to stand for the people of God.

I think about the times in my life where I’ve probably been most zealous, where I’ve been most enraged. As a grownup I don’t feel like I get enraged real easy. It takes me a while. But as a young boy, I had two older brothers and I don’t know if they loved picking on me, or if they loved seeing me lose it. I’m not sure which one they loved more. But they loved one of those very much. There were many times, as the smallest, and scrawniest of my clan, my brothers would pick on me and pick on me and pick on me. Ultimately, I would get to a point where I would just scream. I would just start throwing fists and they said it didn’t hurt bad, but my tiny little fists would hurt them, so they would go running as I was throwing my fists everywhere. I remember one time my brother locked himself in the bathroom. I was so mad that I got a butter knife and stabbed it through the bathroom door. I was so enraged. So enraged.

Obviously Jesus was not losing it in that regard. He was still under control. We see where he kind of comes to the birds and those people and he’s able to say, “Hey, you need to go off this way.” So he was still in control. But he was so filled with this outrage. Zeal is the word used in the Bible. Actually, in the Greek the word is zelos. It really is kind of righteous indignation. It’s jealousy, but not in the sick way, but basically like a husband and someone is coming to take his wife, or maybe even to rape his wife, and the amount of angst, the amount of rage that would be built up in a husband in that situation. It’s protective. It’s standing against. It’s this zeal that Jesus shows in this moment.

For you kids, real quick, before we go on. This is the picture that I would love to see you draw. It sounds kind of interesting to draw a picture of Jesus with a whip. But I think it’s important because I want you to understand this aspect of God. That he will fight for what’s right. He will stand against evil. So go ahead and try to draw a little temple, and maybe a picture of Jesus holding a whip. I think that would be a fun thing for me to see. So if you do that, go ahead and email it to me at david@livingstreams.org and I’d love to see that. Again, whoever kind of wins the day will get something in their mailbox. Some of you should be receiving some of those things if you haven’t already.

That’s what’s taking place. That’s the story. It’s so interesting to me because John introduces Jesus in John Chapter 2 as someone who turns water into wine, as someone who brings this conversion from water to wine. And then in the very next breath he shows Jesus as this one who cleanses.

In the commentary I was reading, they were talking about how that’s the way of the Lord. We don’t get cleaned up before conversion. First we come to Jesus and we are converted. And then as we walk with him we start to find the temple of our own lives cleansed. It’s so important to remember that.

And if you are someone that has not surrendered to Jesus, if you have not given your life to Jesus, if you have not said, “Jesus, I need you, I need you, please come and save me from myself. Wave me from my world. Save me from my family history. Save me from whatever it might be. Save me from my anger. Save me from my greed.” Whatever it might be. If you have not called out to Jesus and allowed him to come and convert you into one of his own children to transform your mind and heart, to help you be born again as Michael was talking about from John Chapter 3 last week, like Nicodemus.

It’s not enough to just try. It’s not enough to just fight, We actually need conversion. We actually need to be born again. We need the Spirit of God to come and dwell in us, to overcome our own sinful nature. It’s the only way we can go forward. As we do, as we make that pledge, as we make that pledge of allegiance to Jesus, as we put our trust in him, as we receive him into our life as Lord and surrender ourselves to him, then what happens is cleansing begins. That’s what happens in John 2, as well.

I want to talk a lot about the cleansing today. The cleansing of the temple. There are a couple of quotes here that I think are really helpful in helping us understand Jesus, which is the whole goal of every time we preach. To understand who God is. And understand a little bit of how this message can apply to us today.

But first I want to put up a quote from G. K. Chesterton. He is just someone who is really good with words. Here’s what he says about Jesus in regards to what he has heard about Jesus and what he reads in the scriptures. He says:

Instead of looking at books and pictures about the New Testament, I looked at the New Testament. There I found an account, not of a person with parted hair in the middle, or hands clasped in appeal, but of an extraordinary being with lips of thunder and acts of lurid decision, flinging down tables, casting out devils, passing with the wild secrecy of the wind from mountain isolation to a sort of dreadful demagogy; a being who often acted like an angry God—and always like a God. The diction about Christ has been, and perhaps wisely, sweet and submissive. But the diction used by Christ is quite curiously gigantesque; It is full of camels leaping through needles and mountains hurled into the sea. Morally it is equally terrific; he called himself a sword of slaughter and told men to buy swords if they sold their coats for them. … Here we must remember the difficult definition of Christianity already given; Christianity is a superhuman paradox whereby two opposite passions may blaze beside each other.

I love the song that we were singing this morning, talking about there’s nothing stronger than the love of God. There’s nothing stronger than the love of God. And it is so true. God’s love for you is the most fierce, powerful thing the world has ever known. It is absolutely true. But at the same time, God’s desire for justice rages just as strong. In God we have this razor’s edge where he is perfectly loving and kind and good; but at the same time, totally, totally given to destruction of evil. And that’s in Exodus Chapter 34. We see the image of God. He is abounding in love and faithfulness to thousands of generations, but he will not leave the guilty unpunished,

Sometimes in our gospel message, sometimes in the reading of our scriptures, and sometimes in today’s preaching, we hear about the love of God. And it’s good and it’s right and it’s wonderful, but it almost becomes in exception to the justice of God, the zealous and jealousy of God for his nature, for his righteousness, for his people. And how angry and how wrathful he becomes when evil is allowed to prosper. Or when we play flippantly with sin. It’s very upsetting to him. Exactly what’s happening here. And the zeal of God… so it’s both together.

The words here, inside God, the dualistic nature, the opposite passions are love and justice. Or, as John Chapter 1 says, Jesus came with grace and truth. He came with eternal mercy and everlasting judgment. Both are valid. Both exist. Both are real.

It’s this razor’s edge that we find in the nature of God. So please don’t ever forget about Jesus with the whip. At the same time, don’t forget about Jesus turning water into wine. AT the same time, don’t look at the cross and forget about what wrath was being poured out. What suffering Jesus was going through. That the scriptures would actually say it pleased the Father to punish the Son. Those are hard, hard verses. But it’s the justice of God saying, “I need to deal with sin. I have to punish sin.”

And that’s what’s so amazing about Jesus. He stood there and said, “Then punish me, Father. Put it all on me so that David, and so that all those people at Living Streams Church would not have to feel the full vengeance of your wrath, your righteous indignation.”

So when you look at the cross, you’ve got to know it’s the love of Christ being poured out for us, absolutely. But it’s also the wrath of God being poured out and satisfied in the sacrifice of the Son. Some very important things to remember. So don’t forget about Jesus in this regard.

Another quote here comes from a guy named Alan Scot. He is saying about this cultural moment we’re in:

There is something about this national moment that is resetting the altars of our lives. It feels poignant. Everything is stripped back. It’s like a cleansing of the temple. God is resetting worship.
The reordering of worship overturns the current popular practices of worship. It delights those who value covenant above commerce.

Which is so true of these Pharisees and these religious leaders here, these priests.

It throws off everything not aligned with the heart of the Father.

Jesus is trying to bring them back into alignment with the heart of the Father.

It moves worship from he focus upon the horizontal to the vertical.

And then he does on to talk about how:

Every platform to man removed. Every effort at popularity removed. Every idol of promotion removed. Using ministry to gain wealth removed. Using ministry to increase visibility removed. Every exploitation of people to fulfill our dreams removed. Every ignoring of the poor and seeking the friendship of the powerful removed. The cleansing of the temple has never been more necessary. The idea that Jesus would be impressed by what we have built to make him famous, or that he would leave our models of worship intact is vain, We are too timid to tear down the temple ourselves, too afraid to confront the excesses, edifices for our own importance born from our ego rather than by his Spirit.
The cleansing of our modern temples has begun. It will continue with great acceleration.

That’s what has been so interesting about this COVID 2020, especially this summer. It’s not something that the church has to watch the world have to navigate. But it has drastically and dramatically affected the way that we go about our church services, our interactions with each other, our worship times, our prayer times. And that’s why we’ve spent the last two months trying to emphasize taking ownership for your own spiritual formation. If you’re whole religious activity, if your whole Christianity was based on that one hour a week of meeting at church, there is nothing left for you.

I love it because I’m hearing story after story about Living Streams’ people and how there is a lot of meat on the bones, even though we’re not meeting that one hour a week on Sunday morning. The life groups are thriving and meeting still, and ministry is happening here and there from our interns and other people volunteering here and there. And the evangelism that’s going on. And the care. Some of our police officers are seeing so many opportunities down at the police force to share the hope that is in Jesus, because they’re feeling pretty hopeless these days. And the outreach toward the black community and the kind of pain that they’re navigating right now, and all the messages they are being filled with, and helping them and loving them and making room for them. It’s just been awesome to see. I’m so encouraged. I’m so proud of you, Living Streams Church. But we are not through this thing. We have got to ramp up even more and let the zeal of the Lord fill us for more and more, as we go forward.

I want to talk to you quickly as we’re coming to an end here. The biblical concept of zeal. If you read in the Old Testament about zeal, it and be troubling. One of the main stories is this guy Jehu in 2 Kings 10. What he does is, he uses the sword. He actually is filled with the zeal of the Lord and he goes and he attacks people with the sword and he kills people. And he tears down idols and he comes against Baal worshippers. Obviously it’s a completely cultural lens that we’re looking through versus what they were. It was a dog eat dog world, way more so in that regard. Yet, the zeal of the Lord was causing him to want to come and fight to the death against the things that were set up against God.

Then you think of David in that moment where this Philistine giant is speaking evil of the name of the God of the armies of Israel. David just can’t take it anymore so he runs after this giant. And he hurls this stone at him and takes him out. He says, “You will not be able to sit there and defy the name of my God.”

He was filled with this zeal. Even to the point when Goliath falls, he goes over and he chops off his head and he carries it back to Jerusalem. This is gruesome, heavy stuff, especially from our cultural lens. In that day and age it probably would not seem that far-fetched. But the zeal of the Lord was causing people to rise up and stand up against the evil that was trying to pervade, trying to overcome.

Realizing that what Jesus said is “The kingdom of heaven suffers violence.” The evil is not unwilling to be violent or aggressive, and those who are of God need to understand that “the violent take it by force”, that we advance by enthusiasm, by aggression.

Again, now please hear me out. Please hear me out. Because this is Old Testament context and we’re talking about the life of Christ and he pulls out a whip. He didn’t kill anybody. He didn’t hurt anybody that we know of. But he was definitely causing a scene. He was definitely inflamed and he was making people really upset and challenging what they were doing and standing against them.

But we even times like when Hitler was on the rise. There was a guy named Bonhoffer. He’s definitely worth reading and studying about. He was a Christian. He was wrestling with this same thing. What is the church’s role in the face of this evil? Millions of Jews were being killed and others. It was so clear that it was evil. And yet most of the church just kind of stood aside and was passive in the face of it. Some of them were even complicit.

And yet Bonhoffer knew this was not right. And he actually ended up putting together a plot to assassinate Hitler. It didn’t work, but he got found out and he ended up losing his life because of it. But as he wrote, it was a really hard thing to wrestle with. But he knew evil had come and he needed to stand up against it. So he did what he could. He did what he thought was right. Only history can tell whether it was right. Only heaven will reveal what was really right,

I think of Rosa Parks sitting on that bus. And she just was so filled with indignation about what was happening in the society around here. She says, “I will not give my seat up. I’m not going to just play along anymore. I’m going to stand against, no matter what it costs.” The zeal of the Lord consumed her. And something beautiful was brought about. A shift was made because of her courage. And she suffered for it. And many others did, as well.

So we have these times where God calls us to stand up. I just really feel like this is a moment where our church, we need to not be passive or complicit. When there is all of this swirling around us. Evil, I really do believe is trying to come in to America, to our society and to our church. It’s coming in the forms of deceitful divisions. It’s wanting us to vilify the other, no matter what we do, and to put ourselves in different camps that aren’t necessarily Christian. We’ve got to stand against it. We’ve got to know better.

Romans 10 talks about zeal. Paul was talking about these Pharisees, these people that he was with. He said they had so much zeal but without knowledge. They were just pledging allegiance to all kinds of things that were not of God. So we need the zeal, but we need it to be with knowledge.

Here’s what I think we need to be zealous for right now. Please hear me out. I don’t think we need to go around and kill anybody. I’m not saying anything like that.

What we need to get zealous for is real simple. It’s always the same. We need to get zealous for prayer, We need to get zealous for God’s word. We need to get zealous for morality. We need to get zealous for evangelism. Church, it’s our time. This is what we need to apply all of our energy towards.

First of all, prayer. Prayer is listening to Jesus, worshiping Jesus, letting our attention, our affection be on Jesus, and interceding for others. Please schedule it into your week. Schedule it into your day—times for this. Don’t be caught with your hands down while the battle is going on. That’s that Moses, Aaron and Hur analogy.

We need to get zealous for God’s word. This is study the Bible. Don’t have zeal without knowledge. Don’t listen to all the different things happening the media, and social media. Don’t let them tell you what the Bible says. Read the Bible for yourself. Get to know this thing. Get solid in it, because if you don’t, you will be washed away by the cunning and craftiness of the deceitful schemes that are being perpetrated in our world. You’ve got to know the Bible. It’s our anchor. It’s what’s going to keep us steady in the storm.

Recognize Jesus’ voice among all the other voices and revelation from God’s Spirit. Seek for him to speak to you. I’ve been hearing some cool visions. I shared about it in the weekly email, something that God was speaking to me.

We need to get zealous for morality. We need to uproot the compromises we’ve been making in our lives, and uphold the personal convictions God has given us. I had someone tell me, “Now, you know what? I love Jesus. I’ve been doing great. But I’ve been allowing alcohol to have too much of a place in my life. I just need to take it seriously.”

We’re not going to get away with loose compromises and loose living, playing games with sin. It’s time for us to shore up. Like John the Baptist who had such intense morality and simplicity, but it caused his word and message to have such intense authority and clarity.

We need to take ownership of our own spiritual formation, as well.

Lastly, evangelism. There is nothing that makes Jesus more proud of us than when we tell people about him. There’s nothing that fills his heart more. There’s nothing that puts a party on in heaven like when one sinner repents.

We need to engage in society’s pain. Find out who’s hurting and go be with them. Try to find a way into their lives through hospitality and kindness and generosity.

We need to defend the truth of our faith. Don’t let people come and tell us we have to prove we’re not a racist by compromising our biblical values. That’s ridiculous,

Lastly, we need to proclaim the good news of God every day. It doesn’t have to be complicated. It doesn’t have to be a message. But continue to just let people know that Jesus is the answer. Jesus has the answer. The gospel of Jesus is the power of God to actually bring about salvation. And everybody wants to be saved.

We’re going to have a time like we’ve been trying to do for you at home to take some ownership of your own spiritual formation. To practice being the priesthood of believers. Whether you’re at home by yourself or if you’re in a group, we’re going to put up a slide and we want you to just take communion in your home. If you’re in a group, have someone who’s supposed to lead, you can all just look at that person right now. And be like, “I think he’s talking about you.” And that person, you can go ahead and lead everyone in this communion time. We’re going to put up the slide and take three or four minutes for you to do that at home.

Slide:

Jesus, we pause to remember and thank you for the intensity of your love and justice towards the world.
Now we hold this bread and cup to remember the cross, when the fullness of your zeal for love and justice came together.
As we eat this bread please fill us with your zeal for love and justice. (Take and eat Jesus’ body broken for you.)
As we drink this cup, please cleanse the temple of our lives from greed and pride and deceit. (Drink the cup. This is Jesus’ blood shed for the remission of your sins.)

Unless otherwise noted, Scripture is taken from the HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®. NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide.

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