Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - What's the Church's Mission? | Learning to Follow Jesus | Luke 19.41-48

Episode Date: June 10, 2020

Going to church doesn't make us Christian, so what's the role of the church? And what's our role as church members? Find out from https://www.thecrossingchurch.com/staff/patrick-miller/ (Patrick Miller) as he reads through https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=luke+19.41-48&version=NIV (Luke 19.41-48) to continue our series on https://www.thecrossingchurch.com/podcast-series/how-to-follow-jesus/ (Learning to Follow Jesus). Interested in more content like this? Check out https://www.thecrossingchurch.com/podcasts/can-the-church-survive-covid-19/ (Can the Church Survive COVID-19? ) Like this content? Make sure to leave us a rating and share it with others, so others can find it too. To learn more, visit our https://www.thecrossingchurch.com/ (website) and follow us on https://www.facebook.com/TheCrossingCOMO (Facebook), https://www.instagram.com/thecrossingcomo/ (Instagram), and https://twitter.com/thecrossingcomo (Twitter) @TheCrossingCOMO.  Your support makes TMBT possible. Ten Minute Bible Talks is a crowd-funded project. Join the TMBTeam to reach more people with the Bible. Give now.

Welcome to 10-minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life and the time it takes to get to work. I'm Patrick Miller. And I'm Keith Simon. Right now, we're learning what it looks like to follow Jesus by working our way through the Gospel of Luke. In college, a few of my buddies and I decided to spend spring break doing a backpacking trip, one of my favorite things to do. And we went up to a little-known National Park, Voyager's National Park, in Minnesota. But on the way up, the car we're driving in, it starts malfunctioning. And then it just stops. I mean, just turns off smack in the middle of nowhere, Iowa.

So we end up getting a toe to the nearest Ford dealership, which is in Mason City, Iowa. And the mechanic tells us that our transmission went out. He says, it's going to be a whole day. We're going to have to stay there overnight because it's going to take a whole day before you can replace it. We're like, wait a second, replace the transmission. Can't you just repair it? He says, no, it's beyond repair. You're going to have to replace this. And isn't that always the way it goes with things? malfunction, right? You've only got two options. Repair it or replace it. Those are the two choices, and if you have to replace it, you have to replace it. The city of Jerusalem and the temple found at its heart were kind of like the engine that was propelling God's mission to the world, God's mission

through Israel. What was that mission? Well, starting all the way back with Abraham, the mission was to bless the nations by drawing them back into relationship with God. Israel's civic life, their life together, their worship. It was supposed to be taking place at the heart of Jerusalem, inside of the temple, and that was supposed to be a display case that was showing God's character to the world, the way they lived together, the way they worshipped. And when the world saw it, they were supposed to be magnetized to God and his character. In the book of Deuteronomy, Moses imagines the nation, seeing how Israel lives,

and they see this radical virtue, justice, goodness, and worship. And Moses imagines the nations marveling, and they call out, your God must be the true king, the one true God. The prophets Micah and Isaiah foretold today when the nations would stream into Jerusalem and its temple. And they do this so that they could know God. And again, the temple, it was like the engine, which was propelling God's mission to the world forward. I'll just read a passage, Isaiah 2.1. This is what Isaiah, the son of Amaz saw concerning Judah in Jerusalem. In the last days, the mountain of the Lord's Temple. So he's talking about the temple that's in Jerusalem. He says, it will be established as the highest of mountains. Now, this is metaphorical

speech. It's not saying that's going to be magically like lifted up into the sky. He's just saying it's going to be the most important place in the world. He goes on. He says, it will be exalted above the hills and all the nations will stream to it. Many peoples will come and say, come. Let us go up to the mountain of the Lord to the temple of the God of Jacob. He will teach us his way so that we may walk in his paths. The law will go out from Zion. So it's going to go out from Jerusalem. The word of the Lord from Jerusalem. He will judge between the nations and he will settle disputes for many peoples. They will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation will not take up sword against nation, nor will they train for war anymore. It's an amazing, spectacular,

worldwide vision, isn't it? Isaiah sees Israel on a journey to transform the nations, to draw the nations to God, to fill the world with God's peace and God's presence. But something went terribly wrong. On the way there, the engine, the temple, it broke down. Israel didn't draw the nations to God. Israel became like the nations. Ezekiel says that they blasphemed God's name among the nations. And finally, in Luke 19, Jesus comes a lot of God. Jesus comes a lot of the nations. And finally, in Luke 19, Jesus comes long to inspect the engine. He's going to inspect the temple, the engine that's supposed to drive this mission forward. And Jesus is faced with the choice. He can either repair the temple or replace it. Let's see what happens. Luke 1941. As he approached Jerusalem and saw the city, he wept over it and said,

if you, even you, had only known on this day what would bring you peace, but now it's hidden from your eyes. The days will come upon you when your enemies, Jerusalem, will build an embankment against you and encircle you and hem you in on every side. They will dash you to the ground. You and the children within your walls, they will not leave one stone on another because you did not recognize the time of God's coming to you. Jesus' verdict is in. God wanted to bring Jerusalem and the temple peace, and he wanted to bring the world peace through the temple. We saw that in Isaiah, but Jesus is saying the engine, Jerusalem, the temple, the engine is broken beyond repair. And so perhaps it's no surprise.

The very next thing Jesus does is he enters into the temple and he symbolically enacts its destruction. Verse 45. When Jesus entered the temple courts, he began to drive out those who were selling. It is written, he said to them. My house will be a house of prayer, but you have made it a den of robbers. Here's what I find so interesting about this story. The part that Jesus comes in and he's wrecking, he's flipping over tables, the part that he's doing that in is called the court of the Gentiles or the court of the nations.

You see, at that time, Gentiles were banned from actually entering the inner temple complex because they were uncircumcised and viewed as being unclean. And yet, there was still supposed to be a place for them to approach the temple outside of that, to approach God outside of the inner temple complex. But the temple leaders, they'd filled the area that was supposed to be for the nations, that was supposed to draw the nations to God. They'd filled that area up with money changers and merchants. The place set apart to draw the nations to God was now being used to draw cash. You see why the engine needs to be replaced, right?

Jerusalem and its temple aren't just failing to draw the nations to God. They are obstructing the nations coming to God. So what does Jesus replace the temple with? Well, we have to move outside of the Book of the Bible. Luke to find the answer. But in the gospel of John, Jesus says that he is the new temple. What's Jesus going to replace the temple with? He says, myself. He says that the new place of God's presence, the new engine of God's mission to reach the world, that's going to be me. His disciples, they really took this to heart. And that's why both Peter and Paul, they describe the body of Christ, the church,

as the new temple. They say it's not just Jesus that's the temple. It's us. We are his temple. We're like stones and blocks inside of the temple of his body. And that means that through us, God is drawing people to himself. It means that we, the church, have become the engine of God's mission to the nations. So here's the question I'd ask you. Do you see yourselves as part of that mission? Do you see yourself as part of the engine that God is using to propel the gospel out into the world, out into your community? Or have you been an obstruction? Have you used God? as a means of personal gain. Do we come to church as a place to get a little advice or to get some friends or help our kids? Do we turn to it as a place not of God's mission, but as kind of

a mall for my personal consumption, giving me services, and I can take whatever I'm interested in? This is one reason why I've always kind of hated the phrase church shopping. When Jesus saw the temple turned from a missional engine, that's what it was supposed to be, supposed to be an engine pressing God's mission out into the world. When he saw that the temple was transformed from that, into an ancient mall. He got so angry. He flipped over tables and here we are saying that we're going to go church shopping, but the church isn't a place we go shopping. It's not a place that we're going to just meet our personal needs. We don't go from church to church to decide which one has the best service provider and which one has the best product. That attitude, it totally

misunderstand what the church is. The church is the temple of God's presence, called to be the engine of God's mission to the world, drawing the world to God by our lives of justice and love and mercy. Teaching people to walk in the way of Jesus, to be disciples of his way of peace and mercy, forgiveness, love, kindness, purity, holiness, and goodness. And I hope that excites you. Because I think we all want to be a part of something bigger than ourselves. But that means we have to be about something other than ourselves. Jesus is the new temple. His church is the new temple. It's not a mall.

It's not a place to go shopping. It's an engine for God's mission to the world. I think what we have to do is repent today and every day of the ways that we are tempted to use the body of Christ and even ourselves, because we're a part of that temple too, right? The ways that we're tempted to use the body of Christ for ourselves, for our own interests, and instead ask God to empower us, to work for his mission,

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