All Consuming Zeal

I am excited about the message today. A little nervous about it, though, to be honest with you. I don't know why. I don't get nervous every single week, but I did this week.

And I think it's, this is just me speaking, I think it's because the Lord might reveal to some of you something unique.

So I want you to lean in, I want to encourage you to lean in. We'll be in John Chapter 2 today. Just to give you a brief intro, because we're jumping back into John, but some of you have, only come for the past few weeks. What I like to do is, there are seasons where I want to go through maybe a topic, right?

The last month we've been doing a series called Interconnected.

The goal there is to get you connected at various levels and help you understand how everything in your life needs to be, like, connected at the fundamental levels to Jesus. And before that, we had started walking through the Gospel of John. Pastors would call this walking through a book in order, expository sermons, is what you would call it, meaning we're exposing God's Word to the people in the room. And then before that, we did a marriage series, "The Heart Is.

" Like, sometimes there's some specific topics that the Lord wants us to discuss, and we need to discuss them at the same time. One of the most important jobs for me during this time in a service is to help you develop a better acumen for this.

In fact, you guys can be inspired and encouraged every week by coming and hearing a sermon, if it's decent. But what's going to get you from Monday through Saturday effectively is a developing knowledge and understanding of this. And you might be like, well, I'm not the best reader. Listen to that.

I mean, the entire ancient world, probably less than 10% of people were literate at all.

They listened to the scrolls, they listened to the Word of God preached over them. And so I want to encourage you, in any way that I can through this new series, jumping back into the Book of John, to open God's Word and allow it to speak to you daily. So, we'll probably be in John for a minute. If we go from this to a topic, back to John, we'll be in John for a minute, and over the next four to six weeks we will be in the next couple of chapters of John.

And I hope, is my posture, to help you know more and more about God's Word.

And I'm excited about the message today because it speaks personally to me. I'm going to say something — I didn't say it till the end of the sermon last time, but I didn't like where I put it, so I'm going to do it at the beginning. Is that cool? Just shake your head, is it cool?

I'm gonna say something that I think will be a helpful thought process, or kind of question, for you to ask yourself every single day: Is it my body, or God's temple?

Is it my thought process? Is it my body? Is it my emotions? Is it my body, or is it God's temple?

This is kind of your foreshadowing to the end of the sermon: Is it my body, or God's temple?

We're going to be in John Chapter 2 today, and we're going to talk about this idea of all-consuming zeal. I'll start in verse 13. Y'all have heard this story. "When it was almost time for the Jewish Passover, Jesus went up to Jerusalem" — because Jerusalem was in the mountain, so anywhere you came from, you always 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" — in Psalm 69, y'all have to find that, but Psalm 69, I believe verse 8 — "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?

'" — you know, turning over temples, and dropping money on the ground, and driving out cattle, and causing a ruckus — "What authority do you have to do this? " And Jesus answered them, in verse 19, "'Destroy this temple, and I will raise it again in three days. ' They replied, 'It has taken 46 years to build this temple, and you're 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."

Let me pray real quick. God, I thank you for today. I thank you that you have decided, in your, infinite knowledge and wisdom, to indwell us with your presence when we trust in Jesus. I thank you so much for that.

My wisdom comes from you, every good thing that I do comes from you, and it's because you're in me.

And you're in the praises of your people, you are residing in each of us who have trusted in you. So I thank you for that closeness that you have offered us in Christ Jesus. I pray that right now that you would give me clarity to speak this word, and that you would give specific Revelation to the people in this room, that helps them not just today and this afternoon, but throughout their week. Give some people who are ready for it, something so special that they've never thought of it before.

So God, we love you and we trust you.

This, in Jesus' name, we pray. Amen. Now let me give you the context to this passage. I'm going to walk you through, this passage to expose what it means to you.

But I also think there's some real practical value that we can take from several components within this passage.

But again, I want to be clear, we say this when we're interpreting Scripture: there are some things that are prescriptive — say prescriptive — prescriptive, you know, prescriptive, like your doctor gives it to you and tells you to take it. And then there's some things that are descriptive, that is, there's something that happens in Scripture, and it's describing something, but you actually have to, seek deeper to understand what this means for you in terms of applying God's Word. And this is a story in Scripture that we really have to reach in to figure out what this means for our lifestyle and our activities. So I'm gonna walk you through it.

Let me give you the context first.

I want to give you the point of the temple. Some of you may have done all your studies about the temple in your life, maybe you are a little more churched than some of the other people in this room, but I'm going to take the approach that you don't know anything about it. I want to tell you what the temple is. The temple did not start off as a temple, it started off as a tabernacle.

The tabernacle was a big tent that the Israelite people erected as they walked out of, Egypt on dry ground.

God redeemed them from slavery, and he gave them a new set of activities and laws to follow. And one of the ways that they were going to follow God is that they would carry this tabernacle with them, and wherever they would go, they would erect this tabernacle. And this is what the text says: the presence of God would indwell this tabernacle. This tabernacle was always meant to be temporary, right?

It's a tent, we don't stay in tents, we build buildings, right?

It was meant to house the presence of God for a time, until they would build the temple. We see the first temple erected under King Solomon, who's David's son — David, King David, slayed Goliath with the stone. We see this temple erected, and it's a pretty ornate temple, under Solomon. Over time, though, this temple was destroyed by the Babylonians when they invaded.

And it wasn't until probably about the early 2nd century to early 1st century before Christ that there was a second temple erected.

And it took a long time to build this temple, such to the point when it was finally completed, they called it Herod's Temple. So you'll hear this referred to as Herod's Temple, or the second temple. Why do I tell you all that? I tell you all that because that context has a lot to do with this passage.

Now, the temple was laid out very ornately.

The way it would work is, in the middle of it, there was a place called the Holy of Holies. This is where the presence of God would reside. This is where one priest, at the time of atonement during the year, would walk in with a rope around him, just in case he died in the presence of God, they would be able to drag him out. Then outside of that, they had what they called a Holy Place.

This is where the Levitical priests would, do their temple service.

Outside of that, we had an inner court. This inner court was for the Israelites, or the ethnic Jews, and they would even separate people from male and female within this inner court. And then, this is where it's relevant, there was an outer court. They also called this the Court of the Nations, or the Court of the Gentiles.

This was the largest part of the temple complex.

And the goal of that temple was to be a place where Gentiles, right, non-Jewish people, many of whom believed in God, would be able to be in the temple, in the outer court, and they would devote themselves to prayer. So the outer court — the point of the temple was to worship God because his presence resided in this temple. There was a whole sacrificial system that I'll explain to you at some other time, when the text requires me to. But then this outer court was for the Gentiles, or the Nations, to come in and pray to Yahweh.

That was the point of it.

But here's what happens in the passage. The point of the temple was for people to pray in this outer court, but there is a problem with the way temple service is being performed. The text tells us, in verse 13 and 14 — and I'll show this — 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 I want to give you a couple context clues. It's Passover.

Now, scholars would say that Passover — everyone knows Passover is one of those times during the year where you make a pilgrimage to Jerusalem to worship and offer sacrifices. So Passover was a very crowded time in Jerusalem. Scholarly estimates would say that anywhere between 1 and 2. 2 million people would come into Jerusalem during the time of Passover.

There were a lot of people there. And what would happen is, there were some hardships attached to traveling across the known world in order to get to Jerusalem for Passover.

If you're going to offer sacrifices of doves, if you're going to offer sacrifices of cattle or of sheep, you would have to carry those cattle and sheep and doves with you. So, in order to make it easier, and to make a dime, the people in Jerusalem, the Jewish leaders, would have people selling — now, this always happened in Jerusalem during that time, because you can't carry your cattle for 2,000 miles, or a thousand miles, so let's just purchase one when we get here. And so they would go purchase it. But over time, what happened is they moved from out in the streets to this outer court, this outer court of the Gentiles, thereby displacing the people who were there to pray.

That's what's happening in this outer court.

And it talks about money changers as well. There was a temple tax required to be paid — I know I'm giving you a lot of history, but we're going to dive in, we're going to get there, I promise — there was a temple tax that was required to be paid, but just like anywhere else in the world, you have to use the currency of the nation that you're in. So they would have money changers there, 'cause they wanted to make it convenient and easy to pay that temple tax, but it couldn't be in your coin, it had to be in our coin. And so we're going to offer it, and they're going to make a dime on that too.

Anyone ever been to a foreign country and they try to exchange your dollar bills for something else?

They're making a dime off of that. This is what was happening in the outer court, and it was displacing those who were Gentiles, or from the Nations, who were coming specifically to pray. They're getting pushed out so the people in Israel can handle business and get stuff done. And so Jesus walks in, and he sees this problem in the temple, and he responds.

This is how Jesus responds, verse 15 says: "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! '"

Now I want you to picture this scene in the Bible. We don't see anything as intense as this from Jesus. The closest that I can think of is when, when he comes down off the mountain where he was transfigured, and these guys — They're trying, his disciples are trying to cast out a demon and they can't do it.

And he's like, "How much longer should I deal with this wretched generation? " That's the closest I've got. But what he's got here, he, he, he fashion a whip of cords and he starts driving out the cattle and the sheep. Now let me give you some scholarly estimates here.

Within the temple complex you are able to—this is just based on what I was reading—to potentially fit 70,000 people. That's a, that's a stadium size, you know, a big stadium size.

So there were tons of people there. Jesus walks in. Now keep in mind, this isn't the first time that Jesus walked into the temple. He's about 31 at this point.

He'd been before, we know in Luke he's been at least when he was 12 years old, and he had been to the temple.

He had been to the outer court of the Gentiles. This should not have been a surprise. But on this day, Jesus decides to go into the temple, and I'm, I'm picturing Jesus just looking at it, inspired by his Father to do something. In this time he just starts braiding together this whip of cords.

He's like, "Look at them money changers.

I bet there, I bet they're making a dime off this, overcharging, overcharging my Father's people, my people. They're just trying to worship, and now they got to pay for that bird. I got to pay for that cow. Probably takes three days' wages to pray, for that temple tax.

This is ridiculous.

This could be filled, not with money changers, but it could be filled with my people worshiping and honoring Yahweh."

He's just braiding his whip, and then he stands up. His disciples are there. They don't know what he's going to do. They're confused.

He's like, "Get this stuff out of here!

Get it out of here!"

I think there's a word in that. I'm going to bring it to it in a second. Remember what I said at first? I said, "Is it my body, or is it, is it God's temple?

" I think when Jesus walks into this temple, his posture here is very similar to the posture he relates to us with. And when he enters into our lives, when he enters into an interaction with us, he looks at our life and he says, "That's an encumbrance that's keeping you from me. " And I'm just picturing them, they're working out their salvation for fear and trembling.

"How am I going to—" he's not sitting here thinking, premeditating, like I am, but, "How am I gonna, how am I going to get this thing that is preventing or inhibiting them from coming closer to me? How am I going to get that out of here?"

And so this is what I see when he's, cleansing the temple, is what we would say. And he walks through, he gets all these cattle out of here. Why? I want to be very clear about something, because Jesus's response is confusing.

Like, "Come on, Jesus, chill out a little bit, bro. " Like, so I know y'all here thinking I'm sacrilegious 'cause I said "Jesus bro" and all this other stuff. It's, "Hey, hey, get out of your past. Let's focus on this, right?

I'm trying to teach you the Word, all right? "

So he's, he's looking at two things, because on one side, I know that Jesus sympathizes with our weaknesses, and he recognizes it. Yeah, maybe it's hard to bring cattle all the way from wherever you came from.

Yeah, it's hard to bring the birds. I mean, you got to exchange your money somewhere, and I'm sure Jesus is looking at that. He understands the heart behind it. But he also knows that the purpose of the temple is to be a place where there is a connection with God happening, and because of the excuse for convenience, the purpose is being displaced.

I'm trying to help you understand that in our own lives, often there are things in our lives, because of convenience, that actually encumber our purpose.

God wants to do something in you, but because of conveniences—I'll dial in a second, I got to get to the disciples' response first though. So the disciples look at what Jesus does. Now put yourself in this position. Jesus hadn't done this before.

I mean, yeah, he went into that synagogue that one time on the way down to Jerusalem, and, he healed that withered man's hand on a Sabbath, and yeah, that was, I was asking for some frustration from the Jewish leaders, but he hadn't done anything like this.

You got, maybe, let's just say 20,000—let's just say there's even 500 people in there—it doesn't have to be a lot of people for this to be a confusing situation. "Hold up, Jesus, we've been here before. Like, this is not your first time to the temple, sir. Why are you whipping people now?

Why you whipping these cattle out of here?

Why, why are you causing a ruckus?"

The text gives us some real clarity on how the disciples felt. Verse 17: "His disciples remembered that it is written, 'Zeal for your house will consume me. '" Now, I've done a lot of research on what this passage can mean, but my first thought, and I think this is an accurate thought, is that their minds went to that Scripture while they were trying to ponder what Jesus was doing. Right, so they go into the temple, it's a normal thing, it's Passover, they've all done this their entire life, it's just a normal day for them.

So they go into the temple, and then they see Jesus—I mean, this is my picture, it's not the Lord, just me—they see Jesus doing this, and they're watching him, because they're disciples, and that's what you do, you watch your rabbi. And they're watching him, they're probably wondering, contemplating what he's going to do.

Jesus is over here premeditating, and then he causes this huge ruckus—ruckus, I don't know how to say that—he causes this huge scene in the temple, and the disciples are like, "Why? Why did he, why did they do that? What is Jesus doing here? "

And because they had listened to, or read the scribes of old in the Old Testament, specifically the Psalms, they remembered this text. That's what conjured up when they saw what Jesus was doing. "Zeal for your house has consumed me" is what, 69, Psalm 69 says.

And then they use it here—John uses it, and he says, "Zeal for his house, " or, "Zeal for your house will consume me. " They look, look at what Jesus is doing, which is very confusing, and they try to, they try to understand it by looking at what we call now the Old Testament. So here's a side point for you: when Jesus calls you to do something crazy, when Jesus does something in your life that is uncomfortable, I want to encourage you, like, allow this, allow the Scriptures to start populating in your brain to try to understand what he's doing. Two reasons that this text is used.

The first is because when we look at what Jesus does here, we see a passion for the temple, a passion for, quote, "his Father's house. " Jesus is so passionate about the purpose of the physical temple, and that it's displacing people who are there to worship, in the current state, that he fashion his whip of cords and drives people out. This is going to cause him problems, but he's so passionate about the will of God, his Father, that he's willing to drive these things out.

And what does he say? He says, "Get this stuff out of here! " That's my paraphrase, "Get this stuff out of here. " And I want, I want you to think about what he's saying here, because if he were to come into your life and look at the things in your life, what are the things in your life that he would say, "Get this stuff out of here"?

Because again, it's, it's not just my body, it's, it's his temple. So what do you have to get out of here? The other way that this verse is utilized by scholars is they would say that not only is he passionate about God's will, but his passion for God's house is going to consume him, meaning the people who see what he's doing are going to be a problem.

Whereas, on one side, it's really cool to see someone who's passionate about God, but we fail to see what got them there. And what got most of us there is the willingness, in the midst of, persecution, in the midst of opposition, to follow God doing something that everyone else thought was crazy, that, that, that they would even make fun of what we do. I mean, when you started following Jesus, if you have, or when you tried in the past, there were people in your life who were opposed to the crazy thing that God was doing in each one of you. And I can just give you my own example.

I remember, and you might have heard this before, I've only got so many of these moments, I'm going to repeat them again.

I remember I got invited to go to a Super Bowl party when I was in public accounting, and I didn't go because I had to lead worship. And he's like, "Why would you not go with your boss to a party and promote your career? Why would you lead worship? " And there were other times where I'd invite people, when I was in high school, I'd say, "Hey, we're doing a, we're doing a youth retreat, " and they're like, "What in the world is a youth retreat, weirdo?

" And I'm like, "Yeah, well, we, we sing songs, and, to, to God, and, we hear a message from the Bible. " "Bro, that's 2,000 years old, it ain't relevant. " I felt crazy when I would invite people to do it. Sometimes, on a bad day, I'm still like—I'm talking to people out here in Buckeye, and they're like, "Why would you start a church out here?

We got enough churches. " I'm like, "That's, that's a good point, what are we doing out here? " I'm stressed out because of the opposition.

Jesus is so passionate about his Father's house that, while he knows there's going to be opposition to him fashioning a whip of cords and driving cattle out of the temple, which is going to tick off a bunch of bookies who are, who are trying to figure out what they can do with the cattle, what they can do with the sheep, what they can do with all this other stuff—I don't know if they have an Israeli mafia back in the day, but there are people who are trying to make money on people trusting in God, and he's driving them out. I mean, we know what happens for Jesus shortly after, don't we? There was opposition, as he stepped in with zeal for the Lord, such to the point where it literally consumed his life, because he was crucified. At the same time, when I look at my life, I recognize that I've got really two choices.

I can have a zeal from the Lord, or for the Lord, that consumes me, or the alternative, which is zeal for whatever else.

Make no mistake, all of you are zealous. You're filled with this all-consuming zeal in your life. And let me just prove it to you. Maybe it's not for the Lord, you super spiritual people, you're over here—maybe, maybe, I don't know—but for the rest of us, there are things that consume us that are not the Lord.

This one's relevant because of the timing in our nation right now.

Some people get really consumed in politics. Just don't get scared, don't get scared, I'm not going to say anything in one direction or the other. And what happens is you get consumed in this politics. Here's how it happens: you, you look for information to find out what's true, and then you can't find that information that would validate what you feel.

So then you keep looking for it, and you think you find it, but then you realize that that source you looked at isn't helpful, and so you keep looking for it, and then you don't find it, and then something happens that makes you feel like, "Okay, someone validated my thought process on this, " and then it turns out to be false.

It's this constant, search for validation of my own political opinion that never fulfills me. Or it never—well, goodness gracious, that doesn't stop people from looking at X or Twitter, doesn't stop people from looking at Fox News or CNN or MSNBC, it doesn't stop people from talking about it on the regular. Sometimes I fall into that on accident. It is all-consuming.

You might say, "Well, I'm not political. " Well, you got a job, don't you?

Depending on how you relate to your job, you might be a workaholic, and this is all-consuming for you, it's the only thing that you can think about. Well, you're like, "I'm really passionate about my kids. " That's a good thing, to be passionate about your kids. I was so amped after we did communion during our, volunteer rally this morning, my daughter comes up to me and she's like, "Hey, why do we, why do we drink of the grape juice from the cup, and why do we eat, the bread, and what did Jesus do exactly?

" She's asking me all the perfect questions, and I'm like, "Help me, Lord, let me develop my daughter right now. " And that's a great thing, but sometimes we're so consumed in developing someone around us without the Lord, that even that's all-consuming. How many of you have something in your life that is consuming all of your time, energy, bandwidth? We all do.

You might I didn't play anymore. It wasn't like a Lord thing, it was like, "I got stuff to do, so I'm going to move on. ", but my wife was like, "Hey, you need to get to know your brother-in-law, " like that's her brother, and he liked to play video games. I was like, "Really, sweetie, do I really need to hang out with him?

" And I hope he do watch this, or I hope you do — hey, love you, but that's great. And I remember she kept saying, "Hey, you should go play video games with him. " And it was Christmas, and he got these video games, and I sat down and I played with him. I was like, "This is stupid.

" I didn't tell him this — I was playing, I didn't like it.

And then he put on another game, and he's like, "Hey, you want to play? " And it was a one player game, and I started playing that game. And then, I don't remember what happened in between then and when my wife walked in, and she said, "What are you doing? " I said, "I'm hanging out with your brother.

" He said, "He's been gone for six hours. You've been in here since 8:00 a. m. And it's 8:00 p.

m. "

Like, regardless of whether it's some ambitious thing, some logical thing, something that you utilize as an excuse all of the time, you've got two options. One of them is to be consumed by your Creator and his love for you, and the abundant life that you can live when you revolve everything around him, or whatever else is consuming your time, energy, and bandwidth. That's the choice.

And so what we see here in the text is that Jesus is trying to help the people understand that, by his activity here —, well, he's actually just revealing to the disciples his activity here, sorry, I got off my mental train of thought when I went into that little digression —, but what's happening here is the disciples are looking at Jesus, and they're realizing, based on what Psalm 69 says, that there is a zeal that can capture you from the Lord, and that there's a zeal that can capture you from the world. And I want to communicate to you that the Bible tells us to offer our bodies as living sacrifices, wholly and acceptable to God. He says that's our reasonable act of worship. And I heard someone say recently that you're either offering your body as a living sacrifice to God, or to whatever else is consuming your time, energy, and mental bandwidth.

And so when we see here the disciples look, and they say this out of Psalm 69, "Yeah, zeal for his house — zeal for your house — will consume me. "

And then here's what I want to talk to you about.

I talked to you about the point of the temple. I talked to you about the problem in the temple. I talked to you about Jesus's response, then I talked to you about the disciples' response. I want to talk to you about something that I talked to you about at the beginning, and that is this "new temple" idea.

I'll start in verse 18 — let me read it for you so I stay on track.

It says this: "The Jews responded to him, " that is, Jesus, "'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 were going to raise it in three days? ' But the temple he had spoken of was his body.

After he was raised from the dead, only then did his disciples recall what he had said. Then they believed the Scripture and the words that Jesus had spoken. "

What do we see here? Here we see that Jesus does something — he is taking this idea of cleansing the physical temple, and in his response to the Pharisees and the Jewish leaders, he is telling them that there's a new temple coming. Let me prove it to you.

In John chapter 2, right before this passage, we see that Jesus turns water into wine. Most scholars would agree that turning water into wine was a sign that he was putting new wine into old vessels — the idea that he is putting his Spirit into the hearts of people, right? So he's doing something. Then we see this situation where Jesus cleanses the temple and says, "I'm not talking about the physical temple, I'm talking about the temple of my body.

" And then we jump to John chapter 4, where he says it's not about a physical temple — and we'll go to this over the next couple of weeks — it's about you worshiping God in spirit and in truth, that because of what Jesus is doing, the Spirit of God will dwell in a new temple. That new temple — I want to be clear with you — that new temple is not one built up.

I hear a lot of people talking about how there's going to be a new temple in Jerusalem. I don't know, when I read the Bible I don't get a whole lot of clarity on that. But what I do know is that there is a new temple Jesus is talking about, and it is the temple where his Holy Spirit resides. And when you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, he puts his Spirit in you — your body is a temple of God.

Paul tells us this.

And so let me let me do something that I don't usually do — this is why I was nervous about this message. I want to take what Jesus did with the physical temple, and I want to convert it to you thinking about the temple of your body. And I'll refer you back to what I said — it's not your body, it's God's temple. And if Jesus were to come to you right now, wherever you are in life, he would interact with you.

He knows — there's no surprises for him.

But if he were to come to you, thinking about this moment here, what would he see in his temple? What are the things in your life that you've put in place for convenience's sake that are preventing you from your main purpose? I think there's plenty of valid excuses for what's happening in the temple here. I mean, plenty.

This is a nice thing that they decided to do.

Yeah, maybe they're making bank off of it, and that's not good, but the reality is, if I'm traveling 2,000 miles and I show up, I'd rather buy a cow than bring it from there — that would take forever. And you're just like, "This is — come on, Matt, of course you would. " That's reasonable. It's also reasonable that they would make it convenient for me to exchange money, to make sure I have it in the proper currency so that I can pay my temple tax.

This makes sense. But when Jesus walks into it, he sees what it is displacing.

He sees something better, something greater, something that is more abundant than what is currently happening. And because of his zeal for God's house, he says, "I'm going to change this, get this stuff out of here."

In my life, when God comes to me — and this is a regular thing — my first response is often with the excuse of convenience. It's like, maybe someone says to me one day, like, "Matt, maybe you shouldn't use that language. " I — I don't want to hear you say — I want you hear me say, I cuss, I don't, I don't, but my language has shifted over the years because I recognize that it can impact the way people view what I say, right? And so I shift my language.

And the first time someone says, "That's not really from the Lord, is it, Matt? " And I'm like, "Yeah, whatever, bro, get over it, don't be such a legalist. " And then later is when I realized, you know what, there's not nothing inherently wrong with what I said in that moment, but God recognizes that it's displacing something that's better.

And so it's like, "Matt, get rid of this, get rid of that speech, because there's something better for you. There's edifying language on the other side of you trusting me and being obedient."

Some of you were like, "Yeah, I — it's hard to make it to church. " I know, I go there a lot — it's hard to make it to church, I get it, it's true, you had a long week, it's really difficult, and you came here, so I'm proud of you, you know what I'm saying. It's been a long week, and you're telling yourself, "Now I'm going to make it next week too. " But then you're going to get to Saturday, you're going to be like, "I'm tired, the Lord understands, I can just — I can just phone it in online if I feel like it.

", but then you're going to wake up the next morning, and you're going to feel something that says, "Go. " But then there's another thing that's like, "I got a good excuse though. " And what I'm telling you there, it's not that you're sinning or doing anything inherently wrong, it's that God sees the better, and is passionate about what you do with your temple. There are going to be — there are things that you are doing in your life that are actually sin according to God, and you've been living in this narcissistic, selfish place where you're like, "It's my life, it is my body, it is my choice.

" I'm not trying to go anywhere politically with that, it just came out — anyways, whatever, I'm not going to apologize, this is the Lord anyway — so, "It's mine. " But what I want you to know is that it's God's. Your body is meant to house the Spirit of God, it is his temple, and what he sees — what goodness I see, what the Bible reveals to all of us when we open it — is that there is something better on the other side of obedience.

And sometimes convenience is the very thing preventing you from abundance. So, I get it, you want to make it easy. People tell me all the time, "Matt, make it easier, make it easier, " and I want to make it easier for people, but sometimes making it easier actually makes it harder for them to live life in abundance. And it relates to the purpose in the physical temple.

There was a convenience preventing them from accomplishing a purpose — they were actually pushing out Gentiles and the nations in order for them to make a buck inside the temple.

All they had to do was push it out into the street and do the same thing there, but they were actually displacing the nations. What was the whole point of the temple? The whole point of the temple was the — how's the presence of God, so that the entire world would be blessed by Israel and the temple that it held. They are fundamentally disregarding the main purpose of God so that they can make an extra buck, or so they can make it a little more convenient for the people already doing what they're supposed to do.

And so, how does this apply for us in your life?

I want to encourage you: start listening to Jesus and get the stuff out of your life that is inhibiting you. It could be bad stuff that you just need to quit doing. It could be decent stuff that is preventing you from what you should be doing. Jesus said, "Get this stuff out of here, " because God loves you so much that he'll sit there and he'll premeditate — he knew you before you were ever born, he knew what you were going to do, he processed through it, he put in place a plan so that you might be redeemed, so you might be here right now.

He's processing, he's braiding it together, it's all connected, right?

He's putting together something — something that will get you to the place where you want to be. And sometimes it's going to feel like a blessing, sometimes it's going to feel like him saying, "Get this stuff out of here. " But listening to Jesus in this moment, it is so worth it. How is this going to apply in our church?

Man, I pray that we as a church never allow convenience to pull us from our purpose. It is crazy, it can look so — it can look so different sometimes.

God, because — cuz I was walking around like an OCD, like, monster — anyone see me? Anyone see me walking around like a monster? I was — I was walking around, I was like closing these, what do they call — pipe and dre? I was picking up trash off the ground, I saw a sign that was on the road, and I thought, "This is going to obstruct people coming in.

" And sometimes that feels like, "Matt, you're paying too much attention to making things convenient to people. " It's like, "Hey, we give you mints so that — I don't — you don't feel bad, you know, when you come in here and you didn't brush your teeth before you showed up, right? " We — convenience can often look like calling sometimes. So what are we doing?

We're — we're asking the question, we're saying, "Hey, what is the purpose? " Well, the purpose is to help people find peace and develop purpose by revolving everything around Jesus. So everything we do, we do it so that we can not displace people, but help people understand more and more about the character of God. And so, in your own life, I would encourage you — in this church, I want to encourage all of us, let's focus on the main thing, which is the purpose of God and Jesus's passion for each one of us.

And the people outside of this room should be the driving factor. I feel like there's a level where I'm saying things, but it's not as practical as you want it to be, so I'll leave you with this: when you recognize that your body is a temple that houses God's Holy Spirit, it changes the way that you operate.

In fact, in fact, it — it changes every decision that you make. You might actually walk through your life, and as you make normal decisions, it's just practical, maybe. Too practical for some of you, and be like, "Hey, hm, I'm about to make this basic decision, not just whether to go to church, but whether to wake up in the morning to try to read five minutes of God's word. Maybe I'm going to take 10 seconds to ask God what he thinks before I respond to my kiddo when he's yelling in my ear here, or something like that.

Maybe I'm going to ask God this.

Maybe I'm going to recognize that because I house God's Holy Spirit, I'm going to start rooting out the things that are inhibiting me from a greater purpose in this life. " That's where it can become practical for you—just the simple recognition that your body is a temple of God. I'm not just talking about physical fitness like everybody quotes that verse to talk about. Everything, every aspect of your life, God wants for his purposes, just like that temple.

He wants the same for you. But there are some people in here—your body's meant to be a temple of God's Holy Spirit, but you've not received that because you've never trusted in Jesus, confessed with your mouth that Jesus is Lord, and believed in your heart that God raised him from the dead.

So I want to encourage you right now, everyone in here, if you would bow your heads and close your eyes. I want to encourage you to trust in Jesus today. When you trust in Jesus, it actually becomes something that changes every part of your life. You got help—it's not all your own decision, it's God helping you in the process.

Sometimes he's super nice, gives you a blessing.

Sometimes he fashions a whip of cords and is like, "Come on, bro, get your stuff together. " But this is what God does as you trust in him. So you might pray a prayer together, out loud, for the benefit of those who are trusting in God for the first time. Repeat after me: "God, I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God.

Jesus Christ of God, I believe he died on the cross and rose from the grave. Forgive me of my sin, make me a new creation, and I will follow you for the rest of my life.

Amen."

Father God, drive out the things in us that inhibit us. Drive them out. We believe that today. It's not about a physical temple, it's about the fact that you reside in us and you desire great things for us.

So let us lean into you today and not cater to the conveniences of our lives.

Last thing I pray, Lord, is that you would speak specifically to each individual and begin cleansing their temple. Every one of us has a different reason we're not honoring you, so I pray that you would speak that to them—even though I can't, even though your word might not speak specifically to it right there, but you can. So God, we love you and we trust you. It's in Jesus's name that we pray, and God's people said, "Hey!

"

Let's celebrate those who just trusted in Jesus.