John…on Love

When we pray, “Lord, break my heart of those things that break Your heart,” be careful. He will do just that. We begin to see the world in a different Light. We see far more than we want to understand because the sin around us is now brought forward, in focused view and we are heartbroken that we did not notice it’s growth before praying.

The next passage of John bothers us at first reading for it reveals Jesus putting together a whip, driving people out of the courtyard of the Temple, while upsetting their carts and tables of consumerism and greed. As we go deeper and really think through this act of of a broken heart for His people and the zeal for the Temple, we find in John’s writing, the first public declaration of Jesus’s authority and reveals His identity as God in His Son come to earth. “This is MY FATHER’S house!”

John 2, The Message
Tear Down This Temple . . .
13-14 When the Passover Feast, celebrated each spring by the Jews, was about to take place, Jesus traveled up to Jerusalem. He found the Temple teeming with people selling cattle and sheep and doves. The loan sharks were also there in full strength.

15-17 Jesus put together a whip out of strips of leather and chased them out of the Temple, stampeding the sheep and cattle, upending the tables of the loan sharks, spilling coins left and right. He told the dove merchants, “Get your things out of here! Stop turning my Father’s house into a shopping mall!” That’s when his disciples remembered the Scripture, “Zeal for your house consumes me.”

18-19 But the Jews were upset. They asked, “What credentials can you present to justify this?” Jesus answered, “Tear down this Temple and in three days I’ll put it back together.”

20-22 They were indignant: “It took forty-six years to build this Temple, and you’re going to rebuild it in three days?” But Jesus was talking about his body as the Temple. Later, after he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered he had said this. They then put two and two together and believed both what was written in Scripture and what Jesus had said.

23-25 During the time he was in Jerusalem, those days of the Passover Feast, many people noticed the signs he was displaying and, seeing they pointed straight to God, entrusted their lives to him. But Jesus didn’t entrust his life to them. He knew them inside and out, knew how untrustworthy they were. He didn’t need any help in seeing right through them.

Because He is God, Jesus sees right though all of us. He sees our heart’s condition. He sees and understands our motives, both good and bad. He knows us from the inside out.

So, what is He seeing, knowing and revealing to us today? This important pause in our study is good for evaluation of our own hearts’ conditions. What is He seeing in His Father’s House today? Does He see a house of prayer…or a shopping mall…a busy place without doing the business of pointing others to Jesus? Are we helping people or hurting them?

Jesus also foretells what will happen to Him (and to us) in later days…”in three days”…the world will be saved….if we believe.

Dear Heavenly Father, Continue to help us see You more clearly, understand Your ways and love You back more deeply. The more we understand Your pure, unconditional love, the deeper we love others. Yes, break our hearts of those things that break Your’s. In Jesus Name, Amen. I believe.