Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - Why Does God Feel So Distant? | The Gospels | John 2:13-25

Episode Date: June 17, 2026

Why does God feel so distant sometimes? Could your attention be competing with your devotion? And what does the story of Jesus clearing the Temple have to do with this? In today's episode, Jensen shares how John 2:13-25 reveals that Jesus is the new Temple who brings us near to God and why slowing down may be the key to experiencing his presence again. Read the Bible with us! This year, we’re exploring the Gospels—Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John—and it's never too late to join! Download your reading plan now. 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. Like this content? Make sure to leave us a rating and share it so that others can find it, too. Use #asktmbt to connect with us, ask questions, and suggest topics. We'd love to hear from you! To learn more, visit our website and follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter @TenMinuteBibleTalks. Don't forget to subscribe to the TMBT Newsletter here. Passage: John 2:13-25

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 Jensen Holt McNair. Do you ever feel distant from God? Like you can't connect with him. You don't see him. You don't hear him. You just feel disconnected. It's a bad feeling.

It can be defeating and lonely. And at times it's really devastating. And that's because humans were created to live in the presence of God. In the beginning of your Bible, you will find that God walked with humanity in the Garden of Eden. He dwelt with those he loved. He communed with them. There was no separation between the dwelling place of God and that of humanity. But that beautiful reality, it didn't last forever. We rebelled against God, wanting to be like him. Although we were already made in his image, we were tempted to make our own way apart from God. And in doing so, humans were cast out of the garden.

In our disobedience we knew good and evil, and God graciously spared us from an eternity of rebellion by sending us out of Eden, the place where God and man could dwell together. Now the rest of the Bible is telling the story of God relentlessly pursuing his people, drawing near to them, protecting and providing for them, so that ultimately one day we could be made righteous and dwell with him. walk with him, commune with him in a new Eden, a new place where God and man could dwell together once again for all of eternity. That's the beginning and the end of our story. And what we find within scripture are moments of imagery and reminders of God's relentless pursuit of his people, his desire to dwell among us once again without boundaries, without rebellion, without distraction. In Exodus 25, when God is giving Moses the law to guide his people to show them how to live in the way that they were created to live, he lays out instructions for a tabernacle, a place of worship that they're to build, and this place of worship has a purpose. Exodus 258, and let them make me a sanctuary that I may dwell in their midst. See, God's presence had guided his people through the wilderness and pillars of smoke and fire, and now he is commanding his people. He is commanding his people. He is commanding his people. He is a person. He is, people to build him a house, a dwelling place for him to live within their midst. At the time,

this was a tabernacle, attempt for God to dwell in that could move with the people. And so they do that, they build it. But much later, when King Solomon took the throne of Jerusalem, he built God a temple, a permanent place of worship, a place for God to dwell among his people where they could come and worship him, commune with it. Now that specific temple that was built was destroyed and rebuilt and the rebuilt again, even grander than before, before it was ever the temple that we see in today's passage. But the purpose and the meaning of the temple was the same. The people of God knew that the temple wasn't just a place of worship or a building.

It was the place where God dwelt, where you came to commune with him. In today's passage, we learn that Jesus is coming to Jerusalem for the Passover, a yearly festival, one of many, where the Jewish people, people would return to the temple and worship and be with God, to celebrate, to draw near the place where God dwelt. But as Jesus enters the temple, something is not right. Verse 14. 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, zeal for your house will consume me. Okay, so first, we need to understand why there would be animals at the temple. And the simple answer is that as people traveled into Jerusalem for festivals, they couldn't travel with all the animals that they needed for sacrifices. They didn't always have the right kind of coin they needed that was pure enough for the temple tax. And so these markets were to help the people worship to enable those who had traveled from far off

to be able to come and draw near to God. So why is Jesus condemning their actions? Why does he drive them off? Well, the problem is not what they're doing. The problem is where they're doing it. You see, the courts in the outermost part of the temple, where they were most likely set up, was the court of Gentiles.

a place where those who were not of Jewish descent, but who feared God, could come and worship. You see, this temple where God dwelt among his people, it had boundaries, sections for worship. Only the high priest on one day of the year could actually enter the Holy of Holies, the innermost part of the temple where God's presence dwelt. And that was only after many ritual sacrifices and cleansing. This was for the protection of God's people. They were not holy as God was holy. To be fully in his presence as they were created to be wasn't possible when they were unclean. They couldn't stand in his presence. But they could enter the temple. They could come close. It wasn't exactly like Eden, but it was what they had in our fallen world. And here, Jesus comes into the place where Gentiles can come and worship, a place that should be for worship, for contemplation, a place to draw near the present. And here, Jesus comes into the place. And so, Jesus comes into the place, essence of God, to commune with him, to delight in him, to meditate, and he's confronted instead

with a market. Imagine the noise of the animals, the clinking of money, the bartering, the yelling, the noise, the distraction, distraction that's keeping Gentiles from drawing near and dwelling with God. Of course, Jesus is angry. Jesus has come, God, in human form to dwell among his people, and the place of worship is being filled with noise, thwarting pure worship, so he drives out the markets. He's making a point. But in doing so, he also fulfills Old Testament prophecies about the one to come. Malachi 3 tells us,

Then suddenly the Lord you are seeking will come to his temple. He will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver. He will purify the Levites and refine them like gold and silver. The disciples themselves in the passage recognize that Jesus is consumed with zeal for the house of the Lord. Like it says in the book of Psalms, Jesus is fulfilling scripture in his zeal for the house of the Lord. In his acts of preserving pure worship, he sets himself up as the long-awaited Messiah, the messenger of God. And the religious rulers, well, they aren't happy. So they ask him, with what authority has he done these things? And Jesus

responds not with a sign to prove his power, but with a challenge. He says, you can destroy this temple and I will raise it again in three days. Now, they know how long it takes to build a temple. That's part of their history. So they balk at him. But Jesus isn't talking about the physical temple anymore. No, John tells us after Jesus' resurrection that the disciples realized what he meant, that he was the temple. The religious leaders would destroy his body, but he would raise it up in three days. In his actions and words, Jesus is saying, I am the new temple. Jesus isn't here just to purify this physical building, but to replace it with himself. R.C. Sproul says in his commentary on the book of John, Christ is the temple, and all men are commanded to come to him in order to worship and serve

the one true God. You see, Jesus is the solution to the problem. God, God, longs to dwell among his people, we see him making ways for his people to draw near throughout scripture, but in the person of Jesus, God's presence walked among humanity once again, and through his death and resurrection, Jesus makes a way for all of humanity to stand before a holy God unscathed. This means that we don't need the physical temple anymore to commune with God. Jesus is the new temple, because he is literally God's presence. here on earth. And even more than that, the New Testament tells us that we as the church are temples for the Holy Spirit. We are Christ's representatives on earth. Our bodies filled with the

spirit become living temples, the dwelling place of God on earth. And yet we return to our guiding question. Why does God feel distant sometimes? Why don't I always feel aware of his presence if all of this is true? And I think that this passage gives us insight into one glaring obstacle that we face. when it comes to connection with God. See, Jesus was angry because of the noise, the distraction, the animals, and market dealings that were getting in the way of humans worshipping God. Maybe our hearts, our lives have become a temple full of markets, a place where God delights to dwell, where God is waiting to meet with us, but our way to his presence is blocked by noise, by stress, by all the things of this life that are yelling for our attention.

We live in a distracted age. We are bombarded by voices every day. Voices that tell you what to wear, what to buy, what to eat, what to desire, where to go, who to serve, how to live the happiest, healthiest, skinniest, most stylish, and wealthiest life. You can carry around a portal in your pocket that you can't help but turn to in moments of silence or boredom that floods your mind with these voices. The noise is never ending. The distractions, are all consuming. What if the problem isn't that God has gone away, but that your path to his presence is being blocked, drowned out by the noise? Dallas Willard was a pastor and scholar who wrote and studied spiritual disciplines during his life, and he says this about silence and solitude.

Solitude, well-practiced, will break the power of busyness, haste, isolation, and loneliness. You will see that the world is not on your shoulders after all. You will find yourself, and God will find you in new ways. Silence also brings Sabbath to you. It completes solitude, for without it you cannot be alone. Far from being a mere absence, silence allows the reality of God to stand in the midst of your life. God does not ordinarily compete for our attention. In silence, we come to attend. do you need to drive out the distractions to clear the way to communion with Jesus? He's the new temple, his spirit dwells in you, draw near to him. In silence, in solitude, allow your mind to empty out, to clear of distractions so that you can become aware of the

presence of God, so that you can commune with the spirit that lives inside of you. We still live in a fallen world, God's cosmic plan to dwell among his people, to walk among us, it's still on course, but our sinfulness, our distractibility, the noise of our world, it still gets in the way. Until Jesus returns and unites heaven and earth physically, until we dwell and walk in the perfect presence of God tangibly in His kingdom, we as the body of Christ as the church, are his representatives. How can we expect to spread the good news that God desires to dwell among his people if we've drowned out his presence in our own lives. So start small. Pick five minutes of time every day this week to sit in silence in solitude. I know it won't be easy. I have two toddlers and a newborn.

Silence does not come easy. You have to plan for it. Wake up early, stay up late, ask your spouse for help getting the time you need. But pick a time right now. Remove the distractions. take this as seriously as Jesus took clearing the temple. The spirit of God, it dwells in you. Allow yourself the time, the silence, the solitude needed to draw near, to become aware of that reality, to commune with the presence of God as a foretaste of the glory, the majesty and beauty to come when one day we can perfectly dwell alongside our God and His kingdom.

God, would you help us to become more aware of your prayer, presence this week. Amen.