God on Display
Published by Stanley Pouw in 2020 · 2 August 2020
John’s gospel is a record of the life and ministry of Christ that focuses on one aspect, and that He is fully God. And John gives his purpose in John 20:31, “These have been written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Messiah, the Son of God and that believing you may have life in His name.” John has an apologetic purpose, and an evangelistic purpose.
Now Jesus’ deity is declared throughout the entire New Testament. John begins His gospel, “In the beginning was the Word, the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” He is both God and with God, and there you have a statement regarding the Trinity. The three members of the Trinity are God and yet they are separate. He is with God, as distinct from God, and yet He is God.
And the New Testament affirms the deity of Christ repeatedly. In Matthew 16 He is called the Son of the living God. In John 1, John 20, Hebrews 1, He is called God Himself. In Titus and Peter He is called “Our God and Savior.” He is revealed in Revelation 22:13 as, “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End, the First and the Last.”
In Colossians 2:9, Paul says. “In Him all the fullness of deity dwells in bodily form.” He is God and man. He is the Word, the eternal God made flesh. He is 100 % God and 100 % man. John wants to demonstrate that, and he does it paragraph after paragraph, incident after incident, claim after claim, word after word, work after work, all the way to the reality of His resurrection, which proves He is God.
Now in John 2:18-22, there are three incidents that happen. They’re not unplanned; they’re divinely orchestrated incidents. The first one is with the Temple forces, the masses gathered in the Temple at the Passover time. Jesus made a whip and threw everyone, including all the animals, out of the Temple. This is a powerful expression of the super human powers of Jesus Christ.
There would have been resistance from the large unruly crowd. There would have been resistance from the Temple police of at least three hundred men. There would have been immediate invasion by the forces of the Romans who were sitting next door watching all of this and ready to quell any disturbance. And yet, with all those forces set against one man, there was no resistance.
This demonstrates His divine power. No man could have pulled that off. The second incident happens when Jesus is confronted by the Jewish leaders and their queries about why He had the right, or thought He had the right to do that. And finally a third confrontation with those who believed in Him. And in each confrontation there are elements of His deity on display that we should see.
We see the divine knowledge of Jesus. He knows the future of His own life. He knows the future actions and behaviors of people, He knows the mind of men. He knows every thought in every person’s mind. He knows the thoughts that those who think don’t even understand. His divine knowledge then is on display. His divine holiness is on display. He is angry over religious corruption of the Jews.
He is zealous for the appropriate worship of God. He is passionate for reverence. He rejects superficial faith. His divine sovereignty is on display. He is Lord over the Temple. He has authority over the Temple, authority over religion, authority over worship. He has authority over death. He has authority over human lives and destiny. All of that is here in this brief section.
Now we already looked at the first confrontation, but as we come to the second two, it’s not so much His power that’s on display, as His omniscience. He has this all-inclusive knowledge. He knew what people can know and He knew what they can’t know. He knew what people discover, and He knew it without discovering it. He knows the future, and He knows the present.
And God knows the past. This we see on display in Jesus here. This is testimony to His deity. God alone knows the past, the present and the future. God alone knows every thought, every word, every action, and the collective effect of all those thoughts, words and actions from everyone that has ever lived. And only God knows, according to 1 Corinthians 4:5, the intent of your heart.
That’s His sovereignty. Nobody teaches God anything. He knows everything that can be known. He knows all the incalculable motives, all the effects. He knows them forever. He knows them perfectly. He has to gain no knowledge and He loses no knowledge. His presence and power control absolutely everything exactly the way they need to be controlled to bring about His purpose and His glory.
Psalm 139 is an insight into the omniscience of God. Psalm 139:1-4, “O Lord, You have searched me and known me. 2 You know when I sit down and when I rise up. You understand my thought from afar. 3 You comprehend my path and my lying down, and are intimately acquainted with all my ways, 4 even before there is a word on my tongue. Behold, O Lord, You know it all.”
So God can tell the future. And anyone who claims to be God then has to be able to tell the future. Let’s look at John 2:18 - 22, that’s exactly what Jesus does. Verse 18, “The Jews then said to Him,” after He had done what He had done to the Temple; they were infuriated. “What sign do you show us as Your authority for doing these things.” Who do you think you are?
This is their response to the assault of Jesus on the corruption of the Temple. This is a preview of an even greater assault from God that’s going to come at His crucifixion when the veil of the Temple is ripped from top to bottom and the Holy of Holies is exposed. That signifies that the whole sacrificial system has come to an end. And 40 years later the Romans come and dismantle the Temple and destroy Jerusalem.
Now they know Jesus is claiming to be from God because He says, “You’ve turned My Father’s house into a business.” Or as He said in the latter time that He did this at the end of His ministry in Luke 19:46, “into a den of thieves.” John the Baptist said already to the populace of Judea that He was the Lamb of God. If God is Your Father and You are the Son of God, give us a sign.
The Jews, those who hated Jesus, believed that He was a man with no authority, and that He had desecrated their Temple. No one admitted that He was right, they desecrated the place, and they needed to repent. In fact, they hated the true God and the true way of salvation by faith and grace alone which had already been ordained throughout all of Old Testament history. They only loved themselves and money.
“Hadn’t He done a lot of miracles already?” During the time of the Passover and the subsequent feast, for two weeks and on that day, Jesus had done many miracles. What do they mean ‘Show us a sign? They were never convinced by the miracles that Jesus did that didn’t fit into their category. When He healed people, when He cast out demons of people, when He did “earthly” miracles, which were insufficient for them.
What were they looking for? Well, they wanted a sign not on earth but a sign from heaven. They wanted an astronomical sign. They were looking at Jesus; He looked like a man in every sense. And the miracles that He was doing were earthly things like dealing with people’s illnesses and possessions, and they were even provided with food, and so the miracles He did were unconvincing.
In Matthew 12:8 Jesus made another claim that also outraged them. Jesus said that He was Lord of the Sabbath. He had been healing on the Sabbath and they said that’s illegal. So this is the same thing, “I’m Lord over the Temple, I’ll do what I want with it; I’m Lord over the Sabbath.” And He went right on healing the man with the withered hand on the Sabbath day.
Unbelief rejects signs that it chooses to reject, as the crucifixion proves after Jesus had done many miracles for three years; they still put Him on the cross and rejected Him. And they sort of held out their reason, “Well, He didn’t do anything heavenly. It was all sort of earthly.” Jesus says, “Okay, I’ll give you a sign.” Verse 19, “He answered and said, ‘Destroy this Temple and in three days I’ll raise it up.’”
This is best understood as a statement of future fact. It’s not a command. If you destroy this, I will raise it up. He’s not commanding them to destroy Him; He’s simply making a statement of future fact. This is the first indication from John in the record that Jesus knows the future. They don’t even know they’re going to kill Him, this is at the beginning of His ministry.
His resurrection then will be the sign from heaven that ultimately validates His claim to be the Son of God. And why would you consider it a sign from heaven? Because He will die and He will be dead, as verified by the Romans withholding the breaking of His legs because He was already dead, jamming a spear into His side, all of which the leaders of Israel knew. Blood and water came out, proving He is dead.
He is buried in the grave. The sign from heaven is that He is resurrected. And the sign from heaven further is that at His resurrection there are angels sitting in the tomb who had been sent from heaven by God. There’s ample testimony to that angelic presence. You want a sign? I’ll give you a deferred sign. “I will raise it up.” Jesus is saying, I will raise Myself from the dead.
What Jesus said literally went across Jerusalem. If it were today it would have gone viral because it did go viral. How do you know that? Because three years later when Jesus goes to His trial, in Mark 14:58, false witnesses come and they said, “We heard Him say, I will destroy this Temple made with hands and in three days, I’ll build another made without hands.” That is a misrepresentation of what Jesus said.
Well, they didn’t understand what He meant, and they misrepresented what He said. He never said “I will destroy it.” What He said was, “You will.” Verse 20, “Then the Jews said, ‘It took 46 years to build this Temple and will You raise it up in three days?’” This also is a demonstration of their spiritual blindness. This is typical of them, and you will see that as we go through John.
So they’re looking at Jesus in disbelieve. This temple took 46 years to build and you’re going to destroy it and put it back up in three days? Verse 21, “But He was speaking of the Temple of His body.” Isn’t it interesting that He didn’t explain that to them? Why? Because of Matthew 13:11, “Because it has been given to you to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it has not been given.”
Jesus wanted the disciples to understand that; He wanted you and I to understand that, because this is evidence of His deity as He predicts the details of the future. But He never said anything to them about it. Verse 22, “When He was raised from the dead, His disciples remembered that He had said this and they believed the Scripture and the word which Jesus had spoken.
So our Lord’s divine nature is revealed here in this passage in marvelous ways. He knows the future. In fact, the details of His death He lays out. Read Matthew 16, 17, and 19, and He gives us details: “I will be arrested by the chief priests and the leaders of Israel. I will be scourged, I will be spit on. I will be beaten. I will be crucified. I will be buried. I will rise again.” That’s omniscience.
Because God knows the future, Isaiah could say that He would be born of a virgin. Prophecy is non-existent if God doesn’t know the future. But He does know the future and that’s why we believe that when we hear in the Bible that there is coming a rapture of the church, and a time of tribulation, and a millennial kingdom, and a new heaven and a new earth. Omniscience has perfect knowledge of the future.
Omniscience also knows the secrets of men’s hearts. He knows the big events that will happen visibly. Verse 23, “Now when He was in Jerusalem at the Passover during the feast, many believed in His name, observing His signs, the miracles which He was doing.” Jesus stays on, the Feast of Unleavened Bread follows the Passover, and He’s performing miracles.
Verse 24, “But Jesus on His part was not entrusting Himself to them.” They were believing in Jesus but Jesus was not believing in them. We are now introduced to the presence of false, superficial faith that doesn’t save. It’s a reality. The demons believe, the devils believe and tremble. Many people who claim to believe in Jesus but their heart does not have faith. That’s a frightening reality.
True salvation shows up in a transformed life pursuing righteousness. As I know people over time I might be able to look at that life and say that I don’t see that passion for righteousness. But Jesus knows that instantaneously. Verse 25 says, “He had no need that anyone should testify of man, for He knew what was in man.” Jesus knows the hearts of all men. Nobody needed to tell Him anything.
1 John 3:20 says, “For if our heart condemns us, God is greater than our heart and knows all things.” He reads your heart and my heart like a billboard. Lord, we ask that Your Holy Spirit will tie this all together, and press it deep into all our hearts. Fill us with joy in thankful hearts for all that has been done for us in Christ. May we boldly proclaim His glorious truth until that day when we see Him in heaven. Let us pray.