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These sermons from Immanuel Anglican are as preached, recorded and transcribed. They are purposely left in the original form which was spoken.

The Holy Spirit is Moving to Purify   

Reverend Rob Grafe

(Third in a series of six sermons on the Holy Spirit is moving)

I once heard of a little boy who went back to his pew after Sunday School and his parents asked him how it was and he said it was great. Mom asked him if there was anything he wanted to tell them and he said, "Well, we did have a new Sunday School teacher." She said, "Really, who was it?" He said, "I'm not sure but I'm thinking it was Jesus' grandmother." His mother asked him why and apparently they had spent a good deal of time showing pictures and telling stories about Jesus.

The Holy Spirit is moving us. The Holy Spirit is moving us to the Cross during this Lenten season as we walk with Jesus. We press into the Father; we try to hear Him and open ourselves up for all that He has in store. We've been looking at how the Spirit moves to convict us and we know that that's not with just any run-of-the-mill conviction. It's not just with an overwhelming sense of guilt and who we are without Jesus. Sometimes that leaves us helpless and defeated and often that's not the conviction from the Holy Spirit. That's condemnation from Satan. We learned that conviction from the Holy Spirit leads us to repentance; it leads us to turning; it leads us to confessing; to making things right here and finding all that we need in Jesus. Conviction from the Holy Spirit leads us to new life.

We talked last week about the Holy Spirit moving to equip us. That's very exciting; that we don't have to come up with all the skills and all the means to be the church that Jesus has called us to be. And it's a good thing because we would have lasted maybe a month. But He equips us in the power of His Holy Spirit to be all that Jesus calls us to be. He gives us gifts, gifts for the edification of the Body that we may bring something to the table that others would be lifted up and the Kingdom would be furthered. He gives us these gifts and that's just terribly exciting; finding out who we are in Jesus; finding out that we are unique and special to the Body by what we bring.

This morning as we continue on this journey of The Holy Spirit is Moving, we are going to talk about the Spirit moving to purify us. The Spirit is moving to cleanse us. By way of reminder (I really felt led to throw this in) we worship a God who exists in Tri-unity. We worship a God who exists in Triune unity. We worship a God who exists in Trinity. One substance, three persons. One in three; three in one. We don't have to figure it out; we don't have to understand it; we just have Scripture that tells us that and shows us that and we can hang our hat on that. We cannot separate this Trinity although we know that these different persons serve different functions and they have different roles. We have God the Father, the Creator; God the Son, the Redeemer and God, the Holy Spirit, the Sanctifier, the purifier. One substance, three persons.

We know that when Jesus was preparing his disciples (we talked about this not long ago)he was preparing them for the paraclete who was to come along beside them. The Comforter, the one that's loosely translated "one that walks beside you, he's coming"; and He promised that this would be a Counselor who looked like Him; a Comforter who looked like Him. What does that tell me? It tells me that there is great comfort in the fact and that these early disciples were comforted that this presence of God was going to look like Jesus. He was going to complete the work of Jesus and equip the disciples to be who Jesus had called them to be. Nothing to be afraid of; nothing to be fearful of in the fleshly sense of it, because it was going to be like Jesus and they knew what to expect.

Now there is, I believe, hanging over the Holy Spirit a cloud of weirdness. That's a highly technical term so I'll try to explain it! This cloud of weirdness, I believe, is from the enemy to bring confusion and to bring fear. I mean, I have experienced it in my own life and I talk to people all the time who have experienced it. I think we fall into two camps basically. Those who are fearful and afraid of the Holy Spirit and it's like, "Alright, give me that God stuff; give me that Jesus stuff but keep that Holy Spirit religion away from me--don't want any part of that." We need to be aware of this; we need to call it what it is. It's a lie from the enemy sent to discourage us; to keep us from being who God is calling us to be. There is another camp of people, and this has really been on my heart maybe even more than the cloud of weirdness, and that is that there are pretenders in our midst. Some of us are often pretending, living in some kind of pretentious spiritual world.

I think that people who are drawn to St. Andrews by-the-Sea are prone to this in a dangerous way. Why? Because we have been known for years to be a lighthouse, to be a bastion of manifestations and healings and miracles and ministry in the power of the Holy Spirit. We have visitors in our midst right now some of whom did not know this, and now they do. Others who did know this; that is why they are here and that is great. I have never been to a church before where people have moved to the area not based on job but based on this community of believers. Now, that speaks to the power of God at work in this church. That speaks to people's faithfulness but it also speaks to a weakness in man. If you are excited about the work of the Holy Spirit and if you want to be a part of that but you are not willing to give all, but you still want to look like you are, you are going to come to a church like St. Andrews.

Before you all start feeling like the preacher's beating up on you, let me put it in a more personal term for me. I serve God in a profession that attracts pretenders. There is something about it that gets confused with the calling. There are lots of priests and I sometimes am one of them who love the fact that I can appear as if I am walking with Jesus pretty consistently when my spiritual life is in shambles. Why? Because I wear the collar. I can appear, especially you know working at St. Andrews, as if I am ministering in the power of the Holy Spirit, that I am open to that and well-versed in that--I'm one the guys you want to come and talk to your youth group about that or something. That may or may not be true but because of my profession there is the danger of my pretending.

Because of our Body, because of who we are and God has called us to be, there is the danger of pretending. It's the opposite of the cloud of weirdness; it's the opposite of being afraid of anything that has to do with manifestations of the Spirit. The danger is that we have never quite jumped in and we have been dancing around the edges. We are like the bug that is attracted to the light and we are kind of just there and that is a very dangerous place to be. But there are no short cuts; there are no ways to pretend when it comes to God and His goodness, fullness in Him, fullness in His Spirit; when it comes to our salvation and walking with Jesus. Things to think about.

Basically, this morning, I would like to play like Jesus' grandmother. I want to show some pictures, tell some stories and hopefully He will be lifted up. Let's pray.

Lord Jesus, we give you this time. We ask you to minister to our hearts and that you would open our eyes to see you and open our ears to hear you in a new way. Lord, we know that there are no short cuts in the faith and we ask for you to cleanse those out of us in the Name of Jesus. In His Name, Amen.

I would like to begin by looking at the Ten Commandments which we read this morning in Exodus 20, verses 1-17. We're going to move through this pretty quickly. I am not going to stay here. I just wanted to start here. The Ten Commandments are just crucial to who we are in Christ. I had a friend once, a mentor of mine I have mentioned before named Foley Beech. While I was at Suwanee he was a mentor and prayer buddy and I could just tell him anything and he would shoot straight with me. One day, he was feeling kind of penitential and he said, "We ought to go up to the chapel and get on our knees and pray through the Ten Commandments." I said, "Foley, you can go do that but I'm pretty confident that that's not going to stir up too much penitence in my heart cause when I look through the Ten Commandments, you know, I haven't committed adultery and I haven't killed anybody. We could just leave those to other folks. I don't really think I would get any benefit from that." He just kind of nodded and said, "Oh, really? Well, I tell you what, let's just do it anyway. You just come with me and we will try this out." So, we did and I was very skeptical but as we kneeled there, he challenged me. He said, "Now, this may not be for you but I just want you to pray after every Commandment that we read together. I want you to just pray for the Lord to reveal in your heart areas where you have broken that Commandment. Let the Holy Spirit convict you and break you and cleanse you of those areas where you are not right before God." So, very skeptically I said, "O.K., let's do it."

So, we went through and I prayed and I'm telling you the Lord opened up all kinds of things. Not in a nagging, shameful way but in a hope-filled way where I just saw things clearly. I saw my brokenness clearly in things that I hadn't thought to give to the Lord and I did. The Lord will use His Word and His Commandments in these ways. I offer this up to you as a Lenten exercise, something to try daily, something to try weekly or whatever the Lord places on your heart. Try this.

I am going to read through them kind of quickly and each one is it's own little sermon. "You shall have no other Gods before me." How many idols do we have; how many false gods do we build up, latch onto? "You shall not make unto yourself any graven image. You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain." No pretending there. "Remember the Sabbath Day. Keep it Holy." Do we even have a clue what that means anymore? "Honor your father and your mother. You shall not kill." Most of us have not shed someone's blood but how many of us have killed with our words? How many of us have shut somebody out of our life and for all intents and purposes we have killed them, separated them from family or separated them from something they love? "You shall not commit adultery. You shall not steal. You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor." This includes church gossip, unfortunately. "You shall not covet." Now, shall the faith of the ancient Hebrews be reduced to a set of rules? No. Can our faith be reduced to a set of rules? No.

Our faith never was nor will it ever be about rules set by God. Our faith is about knowing God; it's about fearing God and loving God. Then out of this knowledge, based in fear and love, we are then moved to worship Him; we are then moved to obey Him. We are then moved to keep his Commandments. The faith of the early Hebrews at its best and most authentic and our faith today at its most authentic is based on love. It's based on relationship and has little to do with rules and laws.

Now, the Ten Commandments are important. I just shared with you how alive they are even today. They are vitally important. They are important because they express God's mind. They are an outflowing of who He is. I maintain that you cannot separate God's perfect laws that are eternal from the God who speaks them, who is eternal. They are not random rules that He throws down just to, "well, this will at least keep them safe for a while." No, they are not abstract; they are not arbitrary. They flow from God's very existence. There is something Holy and awesome about them. But did He give us these rules to be the foundation for our faith so that we could be who He is calling us to be? No, He gave us these rules to be a foundation of our faith so that would know how radically dependent we are on Him. So that we would know how broken we are, how far we fall short.

Our God never is interested in the externals of religion, except in so much as they foster and reflect the internals of the heart. Did you get that? Our God is not interested in our religious traditions except in so much as they foster and reflect what is going on in our heart, the love, the relationship, the coming to worship and obey Him as we accept Him as Lord and Savior. There are no shortcuts. There is no room for pretending. The bottom line is our God is interested in our hearts.

We sell some t-shirts, or at least we did, at the bookstore where we bought two of them. They are wonderful little shirts with a big heart on the front and it says, "There's a big God in my little heart." My little 2-year old and 3-year old wear them and every time I see them it rings true with me. We spend time with our children in Noah's Ark repeating some things to just drive into the children's minds that this is God's house, pointing to our hearts and He is here today. He hears each song we sing and listens when we pray. That's the God we serve. He is interested in our hearts.

Let's turn to John, Chapter 2, looking at verse 13. You see, our God wants to know us and be known by us. He wants to love us and be loved by us. Our God is a God of relationship but there must also be obedience. We must be willing to act on what He calls us to do if we are going to be His people.

Now, there are two cleansing of the Temple in Scripture. I think at one point in my life I had lumped those together and vaguely knew of the cleansing of the Temple when Jesus went in and wreaked havoc, turned some tables over, ran some people out of the temple because they were doing bad stuff. Well, I believe now that there were actually two cleansings of the Temple. Some of you already knew that but it's the way Scripture tells us these stories and how they are different that leads me to that conclusion.

The first cleansing happens early in Jesus's ministry and that is the one we read for our Gospel in John 2. The other cleansing in the Synoptic Gospels appears to happen before the Garden and before the Cross and when taken as two separate events it is kind of book-marking His ministry. I think it is a powerful event and something to really consider and look into. What is this cleansing in the Temple all about?

We look at verse 13. The Passover of the Jews was at hand and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. John makes that clear and I think it was important to him. It should be important to us that this first cleansing happened during the Passover. It was a time of cleansing. It was a time where every Jew would be about the business of cleaning up their house, removing from it anything that would cause fermentation. They were removing from their houses any yeast, generally cleaning it u, and this was important because this kind of cleansing was absolutely essential if that family was going to have a Holy observance of Passover. There were no short cuts. There was no room to pretend here. You had to clean up the house and remove the yeast.

Verse 14, "In the Temple, he found those who were selling oxen and sheep and pigeons and the money changers at their business." So, this is the scene He sees as He walks into the Temple courts. Incidentally, this is the outer portion of the Temple, sadly, reserved for the Gentiles. This is where they met God; this was their Holy space that was so taken up with all the affairs of the world, money changers and animals. Why money changers? Well, once a year every Jewish male was required by law to go to the temple and pay the Temple tax and this tax could not be paid with Roman or Greek coins. It had to be paid with Temple coins and the priests were in charge of it. So, they set up a system where you could turn in your Roman or Greek money and they would give you the Temple coins to pay your tax with. The problem being that it was not a fair exchange and the convenience charge for making this exchange was probably the equivalent of half the worth of each coin exchanged. So, the Jews were losing a lot of money and the priests in the Temple were making a lot of money.

Why the animals? Can you smell it? Can you see it? Have you ever been to a livestock show? Just the dirt and the squalor and the animal smell about; people buying and trading these animals. You see, it was Passover and animals needed to be sacrificed. At one point people were able to bring their own animals as long as they were, as required by Scripture, perfect and unblemished as much as an animal can be. Well, the standards got higher and higher and pretty soon the priests wouldn't hardly accept any animal that was brought from home. There was a tear in the ear or the hide's a little off here. This animal just won't do. So, animals were kept in the Temple just for this purpose. They were all pre-sanctioned. They were all good to go for the sacrifice; they just needed to be purchased. Again, a heavy fee was levied for this convenience.

I read that a bird costing 15 cents outside the Temple would cost you $15.00 inside the Temple.

This is the scene that our Lord walks into. Money changers at their tables taking advantage of Jesus' people. Animals being sold, taking advantage of Jesus' people and what's more we know for a fact that this cheating, this racket, this mayhem, in the Temple was a recognized institution. It was accepted. It was Passover as usual. In fact, it was a tradition protected by the chief priests, protected by the known Levitical writings of the time. This what got Jesus hopping mad. We read in verse 15, "And making a whip of cords, He drove them all with the sheep and oxen out of the Temple and He poured out the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables." Our sweet, meek, accepting, loving Jesus makes a whip and starts beating people and chasing men and animals out of the Temple. He pours out the coins and turns over the tables. He's had it! There will be no compromise; there will be no attempted "get-along-ism".

Can we find some middle ground here? No, says Jesus. There is something useful as we look at the Synoptic version of this. We look at Mark 11, verse 15 and if our interpretation is correct here this is the cleansing of the Temple that took place at the end of Jesus' ministry. He's gone back for more of the same. As we read through it, the scene is the same. The same institutional hangups are still in place. He's just as angry as ever but there is something new. Look at verse 15, "On reaching Jerusalem He entered the Temple area and began driving out those who were buying and selling there. He overturned the tables of the money changers and the benches of those selling doves." Sounds familiar, but look at verse 16, "And would not allow anyone to carry merchandise through the Temple courts."

Something new; something He lists with the other things that made Him just as angry. Something that He saw certainly the first time when He was there but didn't say anything about it; something He has been mulling over and something that He was prepared to address during the second visit--these people carrying stuff through the Temple. What scholars have discovered is that it was a way of getting from the city to the Mount of Olives and they would just trek right through the Temple. It was a short cut; they were just passing through and Jesus said, "Not in my Father's house; there will be no pretending here." There are no short cuts.

We are all familiar with incrementalism. That's how things get done these days; bit by bit by bit and good men are picking their battles and they sit back and do nothing, bit by bit by bit. Bit by bit by bit animals were brought into the Temple courts. Money changers were brought in. They needed this system for making this exchange--all for the glory of the Kingdom. Bit by bit by bit people were allowed just to come and go and pass through and use this Holy place as a short cut

. So, if anything, we see today that our God is not a God of compromise. On the one hand, no matter what we have done; no matter what kind of wickedness; no matter what kind of patterns there are in our lives that we are ashamed of. No matter who we are, in our sinfulness we can come to Jesus and know that He died for us. We can be born again; we can be given new life; we can be empowered by His Holy Spirit to be the people who God has called us to be. Any of us, as long as what? As long as we are willing to listen, to turn when He calls us to turn; to drop this when He calls us to drop it . To be cleansed when He demands that it be cleansed.

Our God will not be mocked. He is a God of forgiveness; He is a God of love. He is a God of relationship but our God will not be mocked. He will not be fooled. He will not put up with our pretending. Now, some of simply do not pretend. It's not in our makeup. We are real with God and real with everybody all the time and that's great. Some of us bounce in and out. We wake up some mornings and we just can't do it but we belong to St. Andrews so nobody will know. So, we limp along as best we can and we get in a good place with God eventually. And that's O.K. I'll tell you that's me, doing the best I can. But there are others of us who have never gotten right with God. Some of us who have never given our lives to Him. We say the creeds; we go through the motions. We stay around just the periphery of life but we have never jumped in.

Some of us have given our life to Jesus. We have walked with Him faithfully but there is that cloud of weirdness hanging over the Holy Spirit and we don't want to go there. "Jesus don't make me do that. I don't want to be sold out to you to that degree. I'll look stupid, you know, what good can come of it?" And He is calling us to more. He is saying, "Don't pretend any longer. Come and participate in me. I want to know you. I want to be known by you."

Are we going through the motions? Are we satisfied with the rituals, all the externals? What short cuts are we taking? What price are we paying for the convenience? Let's cleanse the Temple. Amen.