of John together. We're back in that series after having a break for the Christmas and New Year period. We're back into John and chapter 2, and we'll be looking particularly at those verses, that passage that we read, that Israel read for us earlier. You can find that on page 887. John chapter 2, and looking particularly from verses 13 to the end of the chapter. As we've been going through this book, as we've been going through this gospel together, I'm sure you will remember and know that there is one main aim. And John's main aim for this gospel message is set out in chapter 20 and verse 30 to 31. John explains that Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples which are not written in this book. But these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and by believing you may have life in his name. John wanted to present the facts. John wanted to present the evidence to the reader so that they would not only believe in who Jesus was and is, but he wanted these people to personally be believing. That active verb there, to be believing, to be doing. And in believing, to have life in Jesus. We thought way back when we started this series that there's a difference between believe and believing. The devil believes in God, but they're not saved. You may believe in God and you may not be saved, but if you are believing, you will have life in his name. And that's what John's aim was. And the last time we were in this Gospel of John, we were in this chapter 2, and we were looking at the first miracle, or as John calls it, the first sign. And these signs are recorded. Why? These signs are recorded that we might believe and be believing. And so throughout the Gospel of John we see the evidence brought to us so that we may not only believe, but we might be believing, that we might have faith, that we might have life in the Lord Jesus Christ. And so when we got to the end of that narrative of the wedding in Cana, that first sign, that first miracle that Jesus did, John challenges his readers again with that main theme. At the end of verse 46 in chapter one, sorry, not in 46, I've got the wrong reference here. He says at the end of that discussion with verse 11 of chapter one, his disciples believed in him. They're challenged by what they see. They see the water turned into wine. They see what God does and they are believing in him. They're believing in Jesus. Now, I think that if we had been able to invite John to preach for us, if he was here this morning, the question he would be asking you is, do you believe in him? Do you believe in the Lord Jesus Christ? Are you trusting in the Lord Jesus Christ as your savior? The whole of this book is set up like that. And so as we move into this next section, this challenge of how we respond to Jesus is developed. We will still be asked this question today, who are you believing in? What are you believing in? But also that there are two other themes. And we saw that in this wedding at Cana. We saw that Jesus came to change everything. We saw those ritual cleaning jars. We realized that there were six of them and they were holding over 500 liters of water. That's a lot of water. And we realize that these jars were there for cleaning purposes, for religious purposes, for washing of feet, for ceremonial washing. And Jesus uses those very pots and produces the perfect wine, the wine that was better than everything before. And we thought, well, this signifies the old religious rituals were being replaced by something better. that have been placed by Jesus. And so Jesus has come to change everything, and we saw that very much in that passage there, the wedding of Cana. And we also saw that Jesus has come with one big job to do. Now Jesus said, and you may remember, he said to his mother, my hour has not yet come. And what he was stating was yes, miracles will happen. but they're not the big deal. These signs would happen, but they're not the main event. A little later, exactly the same phrase is used in chapter 12 and verse 23, and Jesus answered them, the hour has come. for the Son of Man to be glorified. The big deal is not the miracle. The big deal is not the turning of water into wine. The big deal is that the Lord Jesus Christ has come to this world with a job to do, and that's to be glorified. And so the miracles of Jesus are a bit like this. You may have been to a concert or you may have heard a live performance recorded. And what you have before the main act is the supporting act. Some people just to get the audience ready, in the mood. Or for some of you, it's films. And as the film starts, you may get some trailers of new films to happen, new films to go. So before the film is released, the trailer is there to give you a glimpse of what's going to happen. or if you're into your food and you've been to an expensive restaurant, the entree or the appetizer is given before the meal. It's not the meal, but it's a taster of what's to come. And these miracles are just a taster of what to come. Jesus's glory must not be looked for in his miracles, but in his glorification by the Father. And I think we need to underline this because so much time and energy is lost in the kingdom because people are obsessing about miracles rather than the glorification of Jesus. The glorification of Jesus is seen on his work on the cross. It's seen in his death and resurrection. It's seen in his giving of life to lost sinners. And sadly, so many people are caught up by wanting to see something of the supernatural, wanting to see somebody healed, wanting to see some demon cast out. And all these things in some contexts are right and proper, but they're not right and proper if they mask the glory of the Lord Jesus Christ on the cross. Friends, you don't need a miracle. You need the miracle of salvation. And the miracle of salvation is not seen in a lame man jumping up and praising God. Salvation is found and seen in the Lord Jesus Christ, glorified on the cross, dying to pay the price of the sins of his people. And sadly, so many people are satisfied by the entree. They're satisfied by the trailer. They're satisfied by the supporting act. And what we should be looking for, and what we should be expectant of, and what we should be begging to see is Christ. And that's what we need to preach. We need to preach Christ and Christ crucified. And the whole of the gospel of John is saying, don't look at this moment. Let's build it up. Let's go for it. We're taking steps to see Christ glorified. And this next section, by no surprise, builds on these same themes. We're gonna see this same theme of being challenged to believe. We're gonna see this same theme of seeing what the big event is. And we're gonna see this same theme of the old being taken over by the new. And so the title for today's sermon is Out with the Old and In with the New. If you want, it's another New Year's sermon, if you like. We're getting rid of the old, and we're bringing in the new. And with this passage, we'll be looking at it under three headings. The first will be the old, the second heading will be the new, and the last heading will be now what. So the old, the new, and then lastly, the now what. And each of these headings will have two sub-points under them. So firstly, we're looking at the old, and we're looking at this particularly from verses 13 to 17 of this chapter two. As we go through this Gospel of John, we will keep on seeing this phrase, the Jews. It's here in the start of this section, the Passover of the Jews was at hand. And in actual fact, it's used 63 times in the Gospel of John, the Jews. And so when John is using this, we need to just have a little bit of understanding. He's talking more than just about the Jewish people, but he's making particular reference to the Jewish authorities, to the ultra-religious people, because all the people at that time were the Jews, who were around and about. There would have been Gentiles for sure, but most of the Israelite people were, well, they were all Jews by virtue of what they were. But he's particularly, when he's using this phrase, making reference to the religious authorities and those that were the devotees. And so this passage starts with Jesus being obedient to the law and the traditions of the time. And that was to go up to Jerusalem to celebrate the Passover. And so under the heading, the old, the first heading that I have is the Passover remembered a great salvation. We just want to take a few moments to understand what's going on here, what this Passover is all about. And those of you that were here in good time and had the benefit and the blessing of all the readings, the first reading that we had was from Exodus and chapter 12. And in Exodus chapter 12, it was a historic account of how the Passover came to be. God's children, God's people, the Jewish nation, the Israelites, were stuck in Egypt. Not only were they stuck in Egypt, they were oppressed in Egypt. The pharaoh had them working as slaves. If you go to Egypt now and you look at some of the pyramids and some of the artifacts of history there, that was probably made by Jewish slaves, some of them. It was a real thing, that they were under bondage, they were under slavery, they couldn't do what they liked, they had no liberty, they had no freedom, they were worked hard in these slave gangs. And Moses was raised up by God to take his children of Israel, take his people out of Egypt and to bring them to the promised land. But the big barrier was Pharaoh and the military might of Egypt. And they were not gonna let the people go. And God brought about 10 plagues. And these plagues were to humble and to to make and allow God's will to be done. But initially, instead of humbling, it hardened Pharaoh's heart. Pharaoh's heart was hardened himself, and then God just left him over to his own devices. And in some ways, the severity of these plagues got greater and greater, but the 10th plague was a devastating plague. the tenth plague that meant the firstborn of every family died. Now that's a big deal, isn't it? If you're the firstborn in your family now, you should just feel a little cold chill going down the back of your spine. If it was you then, that would have been you. You'd be dead. It was a firstborn. The firstborn is generally speaking, and I hope this is the case, Father, the person that inherits the most, inherits the title. or perhaps not. But the firstborn was important in that hierarchy, in that structure, particularly back then, in those days. I'm sure our family, we'll all get things shared out equally. And if my brothers and sisters are listening online, that's what we want, isn't it, Dad? But in those days, it wasn't. In those days, the firstborn had more importance. So God was really putting his finger on something important. He was really humbling the nation of the Egyptians. But what we have to remember here is that God was going to bring his angel through the land and God was going to kill all the firstborns irrespective of whether they were Jewish or Egyptian. Every firstborn was gonna be killed. This is really important for us to note. It wasn't that God just said just the Egyptians and not the Israelites, not the Jewish people. This angel of death was gonna come through the whole of the land and kill all the firstborns. But there was special provision made for God's people. And what God's people had to do was to kill the lamb. and roast the lamb and eat the lamb together with bitter herbs and to get rid of the leaven and have unleavened bread together and to eat it with their coats on, ready to leave. But there's one thing extra that they had to do. They had to take the blood from this lamb and paint it on the door frame of the house. And so when the angel of death came through the land, he was gonna kill all the firstborns. And when he got to the door and there was blood over it, he passed over. The firstborn was saved. The children of Israel were saved out of the oppression of Egypt. God passed over. And when God did this for his people, he also instructed them to remember this great salvation. Year on year they were to be reminded of what God had done for them. In Numbers chapter nine in verses one to 14 and Deuteronomy 16 verses one to six, we have a particular instruction of how they were to celebrate, to be reminded of this great salvation. The angel of death coming to deliver them through death. And the death of the lamb delivering them from the death that was there. And ultimately they were saved from the wrath and the anger and the power of Egypt. And they were able to go free. And so this Passover remembered a great salvation. But also we see this temple, the second heading under here, under the old. The temple is where the people met God and sacrifice was made. The temple was the center of religious activity. The temple was in their eyes and their minds where God dwelt. And the reality was they were making a real hash of this. Because this place should be where the Passover was celebrated. This place should be where God was met. This place was where sacrifice should happen. And the temple was designed in a way that it would be inclusive, but exclusive. Right in the center, there was a holiest of holies, where God's presence was felt. And the high priest could only go in there once a year. And outside of that there was an area where the altars were, and the high priests could go and do their offerings. And then outside of that there was the general area. Then outside that was the area where the Gentiles could come in. The non-Jewish people could get close. They couldn't get in, they could get close. They could come and be part of it in that outside area. It was their place of worship, it was where they could come. But that place, that outer area had become, and I was chatting to someone about this just last night, and my mind sort of went back to it, and I'm sure for your minds it'll help you. I'm sure that back home you will know your local market. the hustle and the bustle of the local market, where the produce is sold, where the animals are sold, where the people are selling and bartering over things. And you know all the noise and the hubbubble of that, don't you? You can feel it in your mind's eye, can't you? The marketplace, with all that's going on, the negotiations, the deals that have been done, the haggling over the price of things. And that's what was happening in this outer court. It become like a marketplace. It wasn't a place of worship. It wasn't a place where the Gentiles could be brought into God's family. It wasn't a place where God's name was being honored and glorified. It wasn't a place where worship was being done. It become a place as a market. Jesus came in and he found those were selling oxen. Can you imagine a cow meeting you in the hallway out there? That's what it's like. A few sheep bleating. And then we'll have Near East Bank, and we'll have Limassol Bank, and we'll have them, and they'll be exchanging money for you out there. And then this is what was going on. And then this was upsetting to Jesus because he was seeing how far these religious people were from God. God had done so much for them. God had saved them. God had brought them into the promised land, the Passover feast that they were coming to celebrate, and what were they worried about? making money, doing their business. And at this point we often see Jesus as an angry Jesus because he makes this whip of cords and he drove them out of the temple, the sheep and the oxen, and then he poured over the coins for the money changers, he overturned their tables as we read in verse 15, but we also see here there's a measure of control Sometimes when you get angry, you see red, and then there's no control. Then afterwards, you step back and think, why did I do that? But what we see interestingly here is he tips over the money changers. He drives out the sheep. Now, if you tip money over, you can find it fairly easily, can't you? Might be difficult, might be embarrassing, but you can find it. And if your sheep are going off, you can go off and get them. What would happen if you throw some pigeons in the air? You'd never be able to get them back again, would you? They'd be gone. And Jesus didn't throw the pigeons out. He turned to those that sold them and said, take these things away. Now you see, we sometimes see this portrayed as an angry Jesus. There was anger because of what was going on. But there was absolute control there. Because when he sees that, he just says, get them out. He doesn't destroy their business, he doesn't steal from them, he doesn't, he just tells them to take it out. They were just told to go away. When you arrived this morning, there wasn't a market outside there. And we may look at this and think, wow, we have not turned God's house into a house of trade. In fact, we may even go and sanctimoniously say, we are far better than other churches. There are other churches in Cyprus and they're selling holy water. They're selling oil. They're doing this or doing that and doing the other and we may feel slightly proud of ourselves because we don't do what they do. But as we came to worship God today, as we come into his house today, have we come with the right attitude? How are we treating it? You see, we point our finger at what they were doing back then in the temple, and we can point our fingers at other churches around about and say, look at them. But what's our attitude today? As you came to worship here this morning, did you come out of a desire to worship God because he has saved you? Did you come out of an attitude to worship this great and awesome God, this King of kings and Lord of lords and creator of all the earth? Or did you come here just to look good? Did you come here to find your future partner? And don't tell me it doesn't happen. That is a motivation for some people. Or did you come here to make yourself feel better? Not to worship God, not to thank Him for what He's done for you, but you came here because there was some guilt in your life, and you thought that if you came to church on Sunday, it would make you feel better. Or are you here to do the religious thing? Or maybe you're here to make business contacts. There's something in your bag that you're gonna sell after the service, and the only reason you're here is because it is a meeting point, and it allows you to sell stuff, or hawk stuff, or get better opportunities. Or are you here just to please your family? Friends, as we come into God's house, we need to ask the Lord to help us to come in the right way. It's so easy to get caught up in this stuff. It's so easy for us to look down the road and say, look, they're awful. We need to look in our hearts and see the awfulness there. And so we move from the old to the new. And we're looking particularly here at verses 18 to 22. Now you see, Jesus was upset. And as the passage tells us, the disciples remembered the psalm, zeal for your house will consume me. And it did, didn't it there? There was zeal and there was a righteous anger about what was happening. But Jesus wasn't the only one that was upset. Because after his actions, after he'd upturned the money changers, after he'd sent the animals running, after he told the sellers of the pigeons to get out, the Jews, the religious people, are not liking this. They're upset. And they turn to Jesus and say, what sign do you show us for doing these things. What authority do you have to do this? Why did you do it? And they were asking for a sign for all the wrong reasons. They didn't want to know what authority he had. They didn't really want to believe him. They just were upset. and they wanted to challenge him. And this was the way of doing that. And what Jesus does, as Jesus so often does, is he turns this negative response to him and uses it as a teaching opportunity. And again, Jesus is teaching that miracles are not the big thing. And he turns around and he answers them and he says to them, this is a sign. We'll destroy this temple in three days, I will raise it up. Jesus didn't do a sign. He didn't do a sign, but he pointed to the main event. Did you get that? The big miracle, the big deal is what he was pointing to. In fact, he was showing his real authority, wasn't he? He was showing to them that the reason he did that was because he was God's son. The reason he did that was because he was God's son and he came to this world with a rescue mission. The reason he did this was because he was the answer to all the prophecy of the Old Testament. He'd come to this world to die and rise again. The Jews missed the point. Now we have to remember that we are seeing this story from 2000, yeah? We're actually seeing this story from the completion of God's word. When they heard these words, Jesus had not yet been crucified. Jesus had not yet risen from the dead. They hadn't got the benefit of seeing how it worked out. But I'm not excusing them. I'm not excusing them, I'm just saying that's where they're at. But what we have to remember, what we have to remember before we feel sorry for them thinking, well, how could they have worked out that destroying this temple in three days, I'll raise it up was what it was. Before we feel sorry for them, we have to remember that there was people who knew that that was gonna happen. who knew that Christ was more than just a man. Simeon and Anna were taught about them in the book of Luke. They were waiting for Christ. They were waiting for the Messiah. They were waiting for the one who was going to bring the big deal. And they knew. And why did they know? They'd read God's word. They prayed to God. God had opened their eyes. God had spoken to them through his spirit. And these religious people who read God's word, who claimed to pray, were blind to what was going on. That's a serious thing, isn't it? You can be full of spiritual knowledge and be blind to God. You can recite many passages of scriptures and not know what they mean to you in person. They'd missed it because they turned around and said, it's taken 46 years to build and you'll raise it up in three days, verse 20. And this really shows the heart of where these people were at, wasn't it? They were immaterial things. They were upset about the material things that are being sold and traded. And when they were challenged by the wonder of the gospel of the Messiah coming to save people from their sins, they couldn't see it. Because all they could see was a temporal, a building. material things. The only things that counted in their lives and their minds was the tangible that could be seen and could be counted. Now John didn't want his readers to miss the point. And he makes the explanation, doesn't he? In verse 20 he says, but he was speaking about the temple of his body. And what we're seeing underlined again here by John is that the signs of the sideshow. The big thing was what Jesus was going to do. The big thing was Jesus was going to become, if you like, the ultimate Passover lamb. The Passover was going to become the past. The Passover was going to be something that we can remember about in history, because the Lord Jesus Christ was coming to be the sacrificial lamb for His people. The Lord Jesus Christ was coming to lay down his life on the cross and then three days later take it up, proving that the debt had been paid. Christ died on the cross so that the punishment of the sins of his people could be paid. Christ paid it. He did it. And the fact that he rose from the dead showed that the price was paid in full. If that tomb in Jerusalem still had the bodily remains of the Lord Jesus Christ, there'd be no point for us being here today. He'd have died on the cross in vain, but he didn't. The Lord Jesus Christ died on the cross with a purpose. The temple was broken down and risen up again. The debt was paid in full. And so the disciples were told that when he was raised from the dead, it tells us about this in verse 20, his disciples remembered that he said this. And what did they do? They believed. They believed the Scriptures and they believed the word that Jesus had spoken. And again, this main emphasis here is they believed. They were faced with the facts and they believed. There's something particularly encouraging here for those of you that have got loved ones who don't yet know the Lord Jesus Christ. There's lots of you here in that situation, brothers, sisters, mums, dads, uncles, aunts, friends, and you've witnessed to them, and you've shared God's Word with them, and nothing seems to be happening. And you're praying for someone to come to faith. We'll see what happens here. Salvation doesn't come immediately, does it? Believing doesn't come immediately. Believing is something that grows. Believing is something that God does. The disciples at that moment in time didn't really understand what was going on, and then later on they saw it and they understood. We're talking to children about God's Word, weren't we? Can we understand it all? No. And there's passages that you'll read now that in five years time you'll think, oh, that's what it means. and certainly in glory we're looking, that is it. And so we need to be encouraged here to keep pressing on, to praying that those will come to faith, that God's word will open itself, that they may believe and be encouraging ourselves that things will make sense as God opens our eyes to them. But one thing that we see clearly here is that salvation comes from believing the scriptures and the words that Jesus has spoken. And so what is the new that we see here in these verses? We see that Jesus, if you like, is the new Passover. Jesus is the only way of salvation. Jesus is the perfect sacrifice. It's not because he was a miracle worker, it was because he worked a miracle of grace on the cross. That's where it happened. He is the Passover. The old is past. There's no need for us to meet around here each year and to kill a lamb and to look back on the past and thank God for it. We can look into God's Word and see Christ on the cross and thank him for his salvation. Jesus is the new Passover, the only way of salvation. And we thought about the temple being the place where they met God and where God's presence was. And we see secondly here under the new, Jesus is the new Passover and the only way of salvation. And secondly, we see that Jesus is the only way to meet God. They would go up to the temple to meet God. That's where his presence was. And friends, we can meet God through the Lord Jesus Christ. We can have a relationship with God through the Lord Jesus Christ. We don't have to go to Jerusalem, to the temple, to meet with God. We come here to meet God in a context of a service of worship, but we don't need to in some ways, because wherever we are, we can meet with God through Jesus. Now, just take a step back there, don't get me wrong. You should be here. We should be meeting together. We should be worshiping. We should be hearing him preach. But friends, when you leave here, you do not leave the presence of God. Because the Lord Jesus Christ has made a way. He is the way for us to be right with God. And friends, you don't need a pastor to pray for you. Your prayers go straight into the throne room of God through Jesus Christ, just like Pastor Andrews does. There's no difference because we can meet God through Jesus. Jesus is the only way to God. And so that's the new. The old situation was the old Passover pointed back to how they were saved. The old situation was the temples where they met God and sacrifice was made. The new that Christ was bringing in was he is the Passover, he is the way of salvation, he is the way to meet God. And so thirdly, I want to ask the question, now what? Now what? Verses 23 to 25. Now what? And the first subheading here is I want us to say that many believed in Jesus' name. Many believed in Jesus' name. Verse 23. Now when he was in Jerusalem at the Passover feast, many believed in his name when they saw the signs that he was doing. Now that may seem like a good thing. We might get excited that the people believed in his name, but there's a problem with this. We have to see the whole of the scripture. We can't just take verse 23 out of context. We have to go on and open it up because we realize from the rest of the verses there that this was a religious mindset. They believed academically, they acknowledged Jesus for who he was, but they did not have a relationship with Jesus. Why can I say that? Because God's Word says it. It's very solemn. Verse 24. But Jesus, on his part, did not entrust himself to them, because he knew all people, and indeed, no one to bear witness about a man, and needed no one to bear witness about man, for he himself knew what was in man. Or as another translation helpfully puts it, but Jesus did not trust them because he knew what people were really like. No one needed to tell him about human nature. These people consented to the fact that Jesus was special. These people consented to the fact that Jesus could do miracles and signs. These people might have even said that, yes, this is the Son of God, but they didn't know Him. Because those that know Him, He trusts. And Jesus didn't trust them. There wasn't a relationship there. It may be that you're in a similar situation this morning. It may be that you have tricked your family and your friends and your pastor into thinking that you are a Christian. You may look like someone who believes, but you don't know Jesus as your Savior. You know what God's Word says about Him, but you haven't submitted your heart to Him. You may look the part, you may take communion, you may be in service in church, but friend, you will not trick God. That's what this passage is saying. He knows you inside out. Jesus knew what was in man. And just as you are sat here this morning looking at me, looking like you're listening, looking like you're a Christian, I don't know your heart. But Jesus does. Jesus knows your heart better than you know your own heart. And he knows if you're trusting on him or if you just know about him. You see, this room is divided. It's divided for those whom Jesus does not trust. and those whom he does trust. It's divided by those who are not his real friends and those who are his friends. And the real solemn example and illustration of this was Judas Iscariot, wasn't it? He was one of the disciples, he was 12, he was probably there at that event. He saw it all. He looked the part. A little later you'd have gone out and you'd have cast out demons and made people well. But Jesus knew his heart. And Jesus knew he was going to be the one that betrayed him. Because Jesus knows everything. Jesus is looking into your heart now. And although you can trick the people around about you, you can't trick him. You need to be right with Him now, before it's too late. Because on the Day of Judgment, every knee shall bow, and every knee will fall before Him, and everyone will confess His name as Lord. But for some, that confessing will be too late. Now is the time of salvation. Now is the time to repent. You see, secondly, we see that some believe. First we saw that many believe in Jesus' name, but now we see that some believe in Jesus. The disciples were the few, and the disciples were different because their belief was in Jesus. We see this in verse 11, just going back into that chapter two. This is the first sign that Jesus did at Canaan in Galilee. And he manifests his glory. and his disciples believed in him. That's the difference. His disciples had a relationship with him. They believed in him. They were of him. Friends, this is a bottom line. Jesus came to get rid of religion and to bring about a relationship with him. And the whole of the Old Testament got brought to a point here where it became a dead religion, and God had been pushed out, and Christ had come, and he made a way for Jew and Gentile alike to be made right with God through Jesus. And so we can have a relationship with God through Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior. Because Jesus died on the cross. and rose again, proving the price was paid. And all those that believe in Him shall be saved. And thank God that many of you here this morning, you are in Him, and you believe in Him, and you are His, and you are His children, and you are growing in that relationship, and we thank God for it. And we praise God for it. But if you just have a religion, If you just have a knowledge, what you need is Christ. You don't need a little miracle this morning. You need the big miracle. You need your life changing. You need your heart opening so you see the Lord Jesus Christ as your Savior. You need to see your sin as sinful as it is and the offense to God that it is. And you need to call upon the name of the Lord and be saved. You need to be believing in Jesus as your personal Savior. And for those of us that know it, what a place we are. We're His because of what He's done for us. Amen. I would just like you to take a moment to think of the question that John is asking us this morning. Do you believe? Or are you believing? Do you have a religion? Or do you have a relationship with God through Christ? Are you saved through Jesus? Or are you trying to save yourself?