John 2:12-25. What is God Really Like?
What is God really like? C.S.Lewis in his book, ‘The Voyage of the Dawn Treader’ touches on this subject. Lucy and Edmund come to a large grassy expanse but in the centre is a whiter spot. At first this is difficult to see but as they approach it they see that the white spot is really a lamb. This lamb, that looks so white and pure, is cooking a fish breakfast! This is an obvious allusion to Jesus, the lamb of God who cooked a fish breakfast for his disciples by the Sea of Galilee. The two sit down and have a delicious breakfast with this Christ figure. A conversation follows on how to get to the land of Aslan. The Lamb eloquently begins an explanation on how to get there,
“There is a way into my country from all the worlds," . . . but as he spoke his snowy white flushed into tawny gold and his size changed and he was Aslan himself, towering above them and scattering light from his mane.”
What a wonderful picture, the Lamb is the Lion. In the Bible the gentle ‘Lamb who takes away the sin of the word’ is also the awesome, powerful ‘Lion of Judah’. Those lamblike qualities, the meekness and gentleness are combined with the might and power of the Lion.
The Bible speaks of the wrath of the Lamb. In John’s gospel he recounts the beautiful story of a family wedding in Cana in Galilee where wine ran out but he changed water into wine in both a real physical way but also symbolically – it was the first sign as to who Jesus really is. Jesus later described his meek nature,
“Take my yoke upon you and learn from me for I am gentle and humble in heart and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” Matthew 11:29-30
But Jesus also had a very different side to his character. A man with a paralysed hand was presented to him in a synagogue one sabbath. Some there were looking for ways to accuse him and now they thought they had him - for healing a man on a sabbath.
“He looked around at them in anger and deeply distressed at their stubborn hearts, said to the man, ‘Stretch out your hand” he stretched it out, and his hand was completely healed. Then the Pharisees went out and began to plot with the Herodians how they might kill Jesus.” Mark 3:5-6
He was not gentle when he said about Herod,
“Go, tell that fox . . .” Luke 13:32
There was nothing gentle when he said to Peter,
“Get behind me Satan . . .” Mark 8:33
Neither was there anything gentle about him when he said to some Pharisees such phrases as,
“You hypocrites, you are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but inside are full of dead men’s bones and everything unclean.” Matthew 23:27
“You brood of vipers, how can you who are evil say anything good? For out of the overflow of the heart the mouth speaks.” Matthew 12:34
The God of the Old Testament is the same as the God of the New Testament. When the Lord introduced himself to Moses on Mount Sinai, he described his character. Love is the prominent feature, but he will not be rejected or trifled with for ever.
“The LORD, the LORD, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin. Yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished; he punishes the children and their children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation.” Exodus 34:6-7
The Bible describes God’s attitude toward sin. He has strong feelings of hostility, disgust, and utter dislike. For example, sin is described as putrefying sores (Isaiah 1:6, NKJV), a heavy burden (Psalm 38:4), defiling filth (Titus 1:15; 2 Corinthians 7:1), a binding debt (Matthew 6:12-15), darkness (1 John 1:6) and a scarlet stain (Isaiah 1:18). God hates sin for the simple reason that sin separates us from Him: “But your iniquities have separated you from your God; your sins have hidden His face from you, so that He will not hear” (Isaiah 59:2; see also Isaiah 13:11; Jeremiah 5:25).
The cleansing of the Temple
This next scene in the life of Jesus demonstrates his righteous anger. He was as much God in this scene as he was as he hang, seemingly helplessly, on that cross. Here his passionate love for honesty and integrity comes to the fore.
True love is always associated with hatred. If we love the poor and suffering we will naturally hate what caused this. All great men have been determined, passionate people and Jesus was greatest of all. In Jesus we have the perfect window into the mind of the Almighty and we see that he shows his passion and indignation for the house of God.
Jesus sees the misuse of the temple for business purposes and it makes him justly angry. He made a cord or whip out of the rushes that were under the animals for that is what the Greek word implies. With this instrument he drives people from the temple who were making exorbitant profits and drives the animals with them. John gives us a telling detail that reveals this was an eye-witness account. Jesus didn’t release the doves but said to their owners,
“Get these out of here! How dare you turn my Father’s house into a market!”
If the birds had been released they would have flown away and been lost.
What was worse was that the high Priest, Annas, and his family were behind all this. They sold franchises to the stall owners. The Gentile Court was even nick-named ‘The Bazaars of Annas.’
This was hardly the best way to win friends and influence people but it confirms that Jesus was not a passive idealised figure who walked about with a sheep on his shoulders, with flowers and children around.
This angry side of Jesus is not talked about enough. God does get angry when he is sidelined, rejected or ridiculed. He, like Aslan, is not to be scoffed at. The Psalms keep reminding people of this fact, for example,
“Therefore, you kings, be wise; be warned you rulers of the earth. Serve the LORD with fear and rejoice with trembling. Kiss the Son, lest he be angry and you be destroyed in your way, for his wrath can flare up in a moment. Blessed are all who take refuge in him.” Psalm 2:10-12
“We are consumed by your anger and terrified by your indignation. . . Who knows the power of your anger? For your wrath is as great as the fear that is due to you.” Psalm 90:7
Isaac Watts’ famous hymn, ‘O God our help in ages past’ is a paraphrase of Psalm 90 but it misses the point. He omits the horror of our having to face God’s anger. The hymn says,
“Time like an ever rolling stream bore its sons away”
This gives the picture of people gently riding in a boat along a beautiful flowing stream! The psalmist is speaking more of a flood that is sweeping men to their deaths, rather like a tsunami.
Many people seem brainwashed into accepting ‘Jesus, meek and mild’ and forgetting to remember the awful judgments of God. John, following the example of the Old Testament prophets does not neglect to remind us of both sides of God’s nature. In John’s book, ‘Revelation,’ he likens the judgment day to the coming of the ‘crucified Lamb in glory’. Everyone will see the Lamb on his throne and will ask God to let rocks fall on them and hide them because they feel so ashamed and exposed. People won’t be able to face the wrath of the Lamb.
When the late J.B Phillips wrote his excellent modern translation of the New Testament epistles that he called ‘Letters to the Churches’, he asked C.S.Lewis to write a preface. In this preface, which became very famous he said,
“A most astonishing misconception has long dominated the modern mind on the subject of St Paul. It is to this effect: that Jesus preached a kindly and simple religion (found in the Gospels) and that St Paul afterwards corrupted it into a cruel and complicated religion (found in the Epistles). This is really quite untenable. All the most terrifying texts come from the mouth of Our Lord . . .”
This is true, the most terrifying words about judgment and hell come from Jesus’ own lips. Those who don’t respect his authority, who break his heart and who ruin his world, will be judged.
A false god is rejected
In the 1970’s there was a movement of some churchmen and theologians called ‘God is dead’. The aftermath of this teaching is still hanging around in some churches where the focus has become on social care and not on Jesus and what he taught. This is one of many false gods now being followed. Jeremiah warned us about serving other gods,
“Tell them this: ‘These gods, who did not make the heavens and the earth, will perish from the earth and from under heaven.’” Jeremiah 10:11
Who today worships the gods of their day, Marduk or Baal? - they have already perished. However what some of the ancient gods personified are still being hankered after today, sexual immorality (personified in Venus, Eros, Aphrodite), power (Cratos), trickery and guile (Dolus), travel and trade (Hermes), wine drunkenness and lechery (Dionysius). Augustine in his books, ‘Confessions’ and ‘City of God,’ highlights the moral depravity of the ancient Greek and Roman gods who he considered to be bloodthirsty, lustful and depraved, and their practices were being followed.
The ‘God who is dead’ movement illustrated this. The God who died was the god of the enlightenment, the god that the Victorians came to believe in. It was Nietzsche who recognised that this would happen and that this god must die. This god had no spine or principle. Justice and anger had been removed, leaving only mercy and pity. This god became so distant that he allowed people to live much as they wanted with impunity . This god didn’t interfere with people’s lives. This god was just there at birth and to give reassurance at death but largely irrelevant in between.
Consequently radical theologians looked at the cruel world around us and threw out the God they had been brought up to believe in because this god had nothing to say to the cruel, violent and unjust modern world. However they threw out a false god.
Many people lost their faith during WW2. Why was this so common? Mostly they rejected the god of nursery rhymes and Sunday School who was certainly incompatible with the horrors of war. The unfair atrocities were real, so the fictional god had to go. The benevolent, kind, Father Christmas kind of god was not real and had to go. Unfortunately people threw out the baby with the bathwater.
The God revealed in the Bible and by Jesus is very different
The real God, revealed in the Bible and in Jesus, is nothing like that false Father Christmas sort of God. Yet this false god is still being taught. Clergymen, who follow this god, will often say at the funerals of even the most unprincipled people,
“He/she has gone to a better place, into the arms of a loving Saviour!’
This is not what the prophets, the apostles or even what Jesus taught. They affirm that there really is a judgment to come because the real God hates the sin and rebellion in us. They all teach that the only way to avoid this is to have a real Saviour take over the responsibility for my sin.
He is terrifying
The God of the Bible is sometimes terrifying. He brought the horrors of the Babylonian invasion in order to destroy Israel. He brings judgment even in such horrors as war. War, famine and Covid-19 are all under his control. The God of the Bible reluctantly sends terror to bring people back to him.
On one of his visits to Jerusalem, Jesus was confronted with a double tragedy that had great political implications. A group of Galileans had come down to Jerusalem to offer sacrifices in the temple but for some reason they had upset the Roman authorities and Pilate had them killed. The political storm can only be imagined. When Jesus was told about this he could easily have entered into a political discussion about the rights and wrongs of what had happened and where the faults lay. Instead he used the tragedy to help people think about something much more important, their own relationship with God. Jesus answered
“Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans because they suffered in this way? I tell you, no! But unless you repent, you too will all perish.” Luke 13:2-3
Jesus was willing to use a very raw political situation to remind people of what really matters, their relationship with God. The other desperate problem was the collapse of the Tower of Siloam in South West Jerusalem. Eighteen were killed. Today there would be a public enquiry into the actions of the architect, the town planners, the builders and the building inspectors but Jesus avoids all this to get to what God sees as so important – an individual’s relationship with God. Jesus continued,
“Do you think they were more guilty than others living in Jerusalem? I tell you, no! But unless you repent, you too will all perish.” Luke 13:4-5
Jesus is talking about that eternal separation from God that those who refuse to repent will inevitably face.
He is righteously indignant
Is a person complete if there is no capacity for righteous indignation? Is it right to hear of massacres and not care. When Isis or other groups kill innocent bystanders to publicise their cause is it not right to feel angry?
There is within all of us this capacity for righteous indignation. We have this, the Bible teaches, because we have all been created in the image of God. In us this is tarnished by our tempers and biases but in God it is perfectly under control. He is, as Moses was told on Mount Sinai,
‘The LORD, the LORD, compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin. Yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished . . .” Exodus 34:6-7
What is it that makes God most angry? It is when his people, his church, has lost its holiness and its commitment to living for him. The world and worldliness have indeed entered churches of all denominations. In the temple of Jerusalem the leaders were making money out of selling animals for sacrifices. Such things anger God and should anger us.
The Jewish hierarchy did have some sort of belief and they even thought this was in accord with Scripture. They had all the outward appearances of being religious but their hearts were not in tune with the Lord. They had disregarded Joel, a prophet in the Old Testament, who had repeatedly said,
“‘Even now,’ declares the LORD, ‘return to me with all your hearts . . . Rend your hearts and not your garments. Return to the LORD your God, for he is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in love, and he relents from sending calamity. Who knows, he may turn and have pity and leave behind a blessing.” Joel 2:12-13
The religious leaders of Jesus’ day had all the trappings, the dress, the liturgies, the authority, the pomp and ceremony of being religious but they had completely missed the point that God wants our hearts and this again made God angry.
In John’s book of Revelation there are seven letters to churches in Asia Minor. The church at Ephesus has some good points, they had high ethical standards but Jesus was critical because they had lost their first love for him. He says that if they don’t change direction and repent,
“I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place.” Revelation 2:5
God requires holiness in his people, a devotion to his service above everything else and he is even willing to let a church die out than compromise on this. He will not allow his holy name to be tarnished indefinitely.
The church at Pergamon compromised both in financial matters and in sexual immorality even though they could not tolerate the Nicolaitans, a heretical sect that compromised with pagan worshippers. God demands,
“Repent therefore, otherwise I will come to you and will fight against them . . . “ Revelation 2:16
Now all these churches are almost extinct, having been destroyed by Islamic occupation.
Sin within God’s church is what concerns God above everything else, even more than sin in those belonging to the world. Peter wrote,
“For it is time for judgment to begin with the family of God; and if it begins with us, what will the outcome be for those who do not obey the gospel of God.” 1 Peter 4:17
Jesus died to defeat sin so how can we compromise in this area?
He is also angry with the world. There is certainly no comfort for those who have rejected God’s rule and determined to live their own way. We all need to remember what the Bible teaches,
“Just as man is destined to die once and after that to face judgment, so Christ was sacrificed once to take away the sins of many people; and he will appear a second time, not to bear sin, but to bring salvation to those who are waiting for him.” Hebrews 9:27-28
In this account of Jesus’ throwing the money-changers out from the temple, he is giving us a true picture of what he has come into the world to do, to save and to judge. Judgment of ungodliness is inevitable.
John chapter two gives us a picture of what God is really like. It gives us an astonishing balance. Jesus loved to be involved in everyday family life. He went as a private guest to a wedding of ordinary, people and met their need, saving them from embarrassment, and bringing joy and happiness. Then on a great public occasion he acts as the indignant judge who is consumed with a zeal for his Father’s house. All Jerusalem noticed this.
The godly Bishop J.C. Ryle was concerned that people of his day were inventing their own gods,
“Beware of manufacturing a God of your own: a God who is all mercy, but not just; a God who is all love, but not holy; a God who has a heaven for every body, but a hell for none; a God who can allow good and bad to be side by side in time, but will make no distinction between good and broad in eternity. Such a God is an idol of your own, as truly an idol as any snake or crocodile in an Egyptian temple. The hands of your own fancy and sentimentality have made him. He is not the God of the Bible, and beside the God of the Bible there is no God at all.”
Real Christianity
This is real, Biblical, Christ-centred Christianity. We need to get away from an imaginary, over sentimentalised Christ and discover the real Christ of the Bible. The apostles knew the real Christ and committed their lives to following him and sharing the gospel with all they could, even at great personal costs to themselves. They knew that if people did not change their ways and turn to Christ for forgiveness, their eternal fate would be even worse that any temporary suffering or discomforts they were facing. Bishop J.C.Ryle wrote,
“There is a common, worldly kind of Christianity in this day, which many have, and think they have enough - a cheap Christianity which offends nobody, and requires no sacrifice-which costs nothing, and is worth nothing.”
When the Spirit of Jesus is at work in his people, although they will face the normal problems and sufferings of life, a deep joy is also experienced. In our church was a lovely elderly Christian man, Alan, who knew he was terminally ill. He had great peace and great joy even though he was dying. His concern was that his wider family should all know what really matters in life.
A feature of a spirit-filled church will be that it contains men and women who are passionately concerned for holiness amongst God’s people. They want people to know what the true God is really like. Zeal for God and his cause is a common feature of holiness. Zeal can upset those who dislike such a faith.
John Wesley, a young ordained Anglican minister, full of zeal, was invited to preach in my old church, St. Helen’s Bishopsgate. He gave a wonderful sermon, full of passion and called for holiness in the church and repentance. In his Journal he recalls the reaction of a church warden,
“Sir, you must preach here no more!”
All but four churches in the city followed this ban even though it was his message, the message of the Bible, that they needed.
Comfortable churches never want to hear this message. They are like the Laodicean church in John’s book of Revelation who thought they were fine, but did not realise that they were really,
“. . . wretched, pitiful, poor, blind and naked. I counsel you to buy from me gold refined by fire,, so that you can become rich . . .” Revelation 3:18
Jesus did not want to judge them harshly but longed that they should repent and return to allow him to be central to their lives.
It was only later that the disciples remembered a prophecy written in the book of Psalms about the Messiah,
“Zeal for your house will consume me.” John 2:17 and Psalm 69:9
O that more Christians would have such zeal for Christ’s business so that building up their local churches for the honour of Jesus becomes their greatest priority.
The Jewish authorities were angry about the actions and popularity of Jesus. They demanded of him,
“What miraculous sign can you show us to prove the authority to do all this.” John 2:18
It is a very good question. We should all be asking what authority Jesus has, to demand of us that we commit our lives to him. He doesn’t answer directly by saying, ‘I am your God, your Messiah’ but instead he gave a veiled answer that they would only understand later.
“Destroy this temple, and I will raise it again in three days.” John 2:19
As so often happened, the Jews did not understand what he was saying. They could only think he was talking about Herod’s temple, that had taken 46 years to build. But as so often, there was a much deeper meaning. ‘Three days’ was a symbolic phrase to mean a short time. They did not think in precise scientific terms as we do today. It was only later, after Jesus rose from the dead, that the disciples recalled this conversation and realised what Jesus was talking about – his is own resurrection from death.
“Then they believed the Scripture and the words that Jesus has spoken.” John 2:22
Scripture, the Word of God, was put alongside Jesus, who was also called the Word of God. How Scripture has been demoted in significance today in many Christians’ eyes. People may say the creed, acknowledging that they belong to ‘a holy, universal, apostolic church’ but they are not that bothered about being holy. Nor do they take the apostolic Scriptures for their authority on how they should think and behave.
Pseudo-belief
In spite of the antagonism of the Jewish leaders many people at this time came to accept the claims of Jesus. At the Passover feast up to two million visitors would pour into Jerusalem. The news about Jesus must have travelled like wild-fire, particularly as he continued to perform ‘miraculous signs’. John adds,
“Many saw the miraculous signs he was doing and believed in his name.” John 2:23
However John again emphasises that what God is looking for is a real belief, a real understanding of who Jesus is, and a commitment to follow him and his rule for life. Shallow nominal faith that costs nothing is not what God is looking for. Jesus knew that a superficial faith where people followed the crowd was all to prevalent. Popularity is not what he was after, he only wants genuine disciples.
“But Jesus would not entrust himself to them, for he knew all men. He did not need man’s testimony about man, for he knew what was in a man.” John 2:24-25
Jesus knows precisely where our hearts lie. He really cares for us but he will not be trifled with. In ‘The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe,’ C.S.Lewis said of Aslan, representing Jesus,
“Aslan is a lion - the Lion, the great Lion.” “Ooh" said Susan. ‘I'd thought he was a man. Is he quite safe? . . .’Safe?’ said Mr Beaver . . .’Who said anything about safe? ‘Course he isn't safe. But he's good. He's the King, I tell you.”
BVP
