From time to time I’ll post a recent sermon, if for nothing else to make use of this site. This was preached at Cooks Point Methodist Church in Caldwell on February 9, 2025.

FOCUS:  Jesus came to minister to the least and the lost, that all might have hope.  

THE GOSPEL FROM THE GROUND UP  

From the beginning, God moves in our lives from the ground up.  In Genesis, the Lord created Adam from the dust of the ground.  In a few weeks, we will share in the powerful Ash Wednesday ceremony — ashes are placed on the forehead in the sign of the Cross, and we say, “Dust you are, and to dust you shall return, but the steadfast love of the Lord endures forever.”  

We come from dust, and we return to dust.  

Our Lord moves through salvation history, working  through the most unlikely people and in the most unlikely ways.  Except for a brief time as a kingdom, the people were subjected to rulers, and after the kingdom was conquered and the first Temple destroyed, they longed for the promised Messiah to set things right.

And to set things right as they saw it, to set things right by another kingdom, and to rule over and destroy their enemies.  

They believed God would intervene in a powerful way, and naturally it would be another kingdom, like the one they had before, it would be what they were used to, something expected and welcomed.  

But instead of all that, Jesus came.  

The Messiah was way different from expected.  

The way Jesus announced Himself in the Gospels is telling, and was infuriating to the ruling class, because he did not meet their expectations. In Luke’s account, Jesus read from Isaiah 60 in His hometown, reading the prophecy of the Messiah that:

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor.  

He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of signs to thee blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, and to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.  

Jesus read this proclamation of the ministry to the poor, the blind, the oppressed, and he left out the next line from Isaiah, the promise of vengeance.

The people tried to kill Him.

In Matthew 11 John the Baptist, imprisoned for confronting Herod, sent word asking if Jesus was indeed the Messiah, and Jesus told the messengers to tell John what they saw and heard:  

the blind receive their sight and the lame walk, lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear, and the dead are raised up, and the poor have good news preached to them.  And blessed is the one that is not offended by me.  (Matthew 11: 5-6)

Jesus did not meet their expectations, and does not meet expectations today.  For instance, there are many formulas of how to grow a church today, and to make it vibrant and alive.  I’ve been with many church leaders and we’re asked to use books written by prominent business leaders to build our church just like we would build any good business.  Make sure the sound system is perfect, the lighting and the screens are good, the multi-media needs to be like a rock concert, and the leader dynamic and  charismatic.  (Oh well!)

And God can work with all that, and through all that.  But we don’t build a church like a business.  

A business doesn’t attract people who can’t pay for the product, and we can’t pay for the grace of God.  

Jesus said, “When I am lifted up, I will draw all people near to me” in John 12:32.  

Jesus did not try to build his ministry by courting the wealthy and powerful.  He associated with those most others would not — the prostitutes, the lepers, the broken, the tax collectors, the sinners.  Jesus offered hope, and Jesus offered healing, and Jesus offered salvation and freedom from sin.  

And Jesus paid the cost of the membership Himself, paid it with His life.  

When the stories of Jesus were told, when the epistles were sent out to the early church, they were not written in the scholarly Greek of Plato and Aristotle, it was the common Koine Greek of the people.  (Thanks to Christipher Watkin, Biblical Critical Theory.) 

When Paul wrote what we call the first letter to the Corinthian Church, he told those folks — Consider your own calling, brothers and sisters, not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, nor many of noble birth.  But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame thee wise: God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong. God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are,  so that no human being might boast in the presence of God.  (1 Corinthians 1: 26-29)

THE TEMPLE NOT A BUSINESS

So now we come to this wonderful passage in John’s Gospel.   This account of the cleansing of the Temple takes place early in John.  The other Gospel writers place the cleansing late in His ministry, just before His arrest.  No one is sure why this is so, and there is much speculation, and it is possible Jesus did this twice.  

Jesus ministered to the poor, to the broken — we know that.  These folks would have come to Jerusalem for the Passover festival, and they would offer the required sacrifices — oxen, sheep or pigeons.  The animals had to be perfect, and there were perfect animals on sale on the grounds.  If the oxen, sheep or pigeons you brought had any blemish or perceived blemish, it would be rejected and you would face either buying from one of the Temple sellers or being stuck in your sin.  And if you went to exchange your money with the money changers to get the Temple dollars, you had to pay their price, too.

The rich has always preyed upon the poor.  The second chance finance groups offer money at exorbitant interest rates, playing upon the desires of everyone to find happiness in their stuff.  I worked for one month for a waterbed company in Houston, and if a customer did not qualify for the standard credit, there was a second chance lender that would be happy to help.  And the salesmen would load them up on extras — end tables, other bedroom furniture…These folks would walk out of that store owing thousands of dollars and go home to await delivery of some bedroom furniture that they would keep for about six months before it was reposted and their credit ruined.  

But the salesmen were happy.  

Jesus was poor Himself, and perhaps he remembered traveling to Jerusalem from Nazareth with his family when he was a boy, and perhaps they had to buy the Temple sacrifices, too.  Perhaps he saw his earthly father Joseph get cheated in monetary exchange rates.  

Jesus made a whip out of cords, and he drove all the sellers and the money changers out of the Temple, along with the oxen, sheep and pigeons.  He overturned the tables and emptied out the coins of the money-changers, calling them to take all that away, that His Father’s house was not to be a “house of trade”.  (Other gospel accounts report Him saying, “Den of thieves”.)

Jesus’ disciples — can you imagine what they thought? — remembered the prophecy from Psalm 69 — “zeal for your house will consume me.”  

The Greek word translated here as “zeal” is elsewhere translated as jealousy, envy, and, in one curious place, fury.

In Hebrews 10: 26-27 we read: For if we go on sinning deliberately after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, but a fearful expectation of judgment, and a fury of fire that will  consume the adversaries.  

So it is a passion, a fire:  This is what My Father’s house is about — a house of prayer, a place to meet God, a place to learn about our Lord, a place for healing and comfort and growth and stepping into real life — not a business to make money and gather other people around who don’t want to seek God as He is, and to seek out the poor, the broken, the lost, the prisoners, the mourning, the wounded.  

(Beatitudes) 

The church leaders asked Jesus for a sign, and he said, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.”  Jesus was talking about the temple of his body, he was talking about his death and resurrection, but nobody who heard Him realized that.  

The True Temple is Jesus. 

JESUS DID NOT ENTRUST HIMSELF TO MEN

And finally, Jesus did not seek counsel for His actions, or for His plans for ministry; at least He did not seek counsel among men, but only with His Father.  Our Scripture says he did not entrust himself to his followers, because he knew all people, and needed no one to bear witness about man, for he himself knew what was in man.  

Maybe some of you know more about the poor, the broken, the addicts, the homeless, the prisoners.  This is challenging work, and many folks don’t last long in that type of ministry.  If we put our trust and faith in people, we will be disappointed every time.  If we put our trust in the Lord, the rest will come about.  Jesus did not put his trust in people.  

So if we want to grow this church, or grow a ministry, we should follow the example of Jesus, who came to seek and save the lost.  

What can we do to love God and to love others today?  

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  

Amen