The Temple of God

We were looking at Jesus coming into Jerusalem last Sunday.

And I wanted to go a step further in that journey and wanted to see what else Jesus did in that journey.

I titled today's sermon as Temple of God.

A very familiar title, Temple of God.

If you read Matthew 21, Mark 11, Luke 19, and John chapter 2, All of these four passages, Mark 21, sorry, Matthew 21, Mark 11, Luke 19, and John chapter 2, all these four Gospels, they talk about Jesus coming to the temple and cleansing it.

Only in the book of John, Gospel according to John, you will see the story of Jesus cleansing the temple in chapter 2 of John.

It's somehow... looks like it's at the beginning of his ministry.

Whereas in Matthew, Mark and Luke, if you read Matthew 21, Mark 11, Luke 19, it comes towards the end of his ministry.

Okay.

And so it may look a little bit confusing.

Why did John talk about it as if it's in the beginning of ministry? Why does the three other gospel writers talk about it at the end of Jesus' ministry? Is there a problem? Is it wrong? No.

It's just that each of the writers were addressing different crowds, different people group when they wrote each of the Gospels.

Matthew wrote to the Jewish people.

Luke wrote to his Theophilus, his friend.

Mark was the first person who wrote who wanted to make a small account of Jesus.

John was writing to another group of people, especially people who were coming to faith, wanted to present the Gospel as Jesus, a human being.

and try to explain Jesus died on the cross for you.

And so all of the writers approach the life of Jesus in a way they can present the gospel to the audience.

So you may not see every incident chronologically in order.

It will be something before this, something after this, but it doesn't matter.

One thing is clear, they have recorded what happened, not some cooked up fables or stories.

And so, we're going to look at all the four Gospels together and get the bigger picture of the story.