Sunday started with the picture of Jesus most of us carry: gentle, smiling, holding a lamb. Then Jesus walked into the temple and turned the tables over.

The religious leaders asked what everybody watching was thinking: Who do You think You are? Prove it. Jesus answered with one sign, and it's the only sign that will matter.

This week's homework: memorize John 2:19, and tell one person why the resurrection is the reason you believe.

The question isn't whether you're impressed with Jesus. It's whether you believe Him.

Read John 2:13-16. It is Passover, the biggest week of the Jewish year. Jewish men were required to come to Jerusalem, and the city swelled to several times its size. Jesus walks the three or four days uphill from Galilee with everyone else and goes up to the temple.

What He finds there is a market. Oxen, sheep, and pigeons for sale. Money-changers at their tables, swapping foreign coins for the temple tax and taking a cut. And it is all set up in the Court of the Gentiles, the one place a non-Jew could come to pray. God had said His house would be "called a house of prayer for all peoples" (Isaiah 56:7). The nations came to pray and found a stockyard.

Jesus doesn't walk past it. He makes a whip of cords, drives them out with the sheep and oxen, pours out the coins, and overturns the tables. Then He tells the pigeon sellers, "Do not make my Father's house a house of trade."

Notice that word: my Father's house. Not "our." Everyone in that courtyard would have heard the claim. This isn't a reformer protesting bad business practices. It is the Son, walking into His Father's house.

Jesus didn't come to the temple as a visitor. He came as the Son.

Don't rush these. Give yourself a few minutes with each one before moving on.

Write your answers down. By Friday you will see where this question leads.

Come back tomorrow - tomorrow the disciples remember a psalm, and we see where Jesus' zeal would take Him.

• John 2:17 - the disciples remember
• Psalm 69:9 - zeal for your house

Read John 2:17, then Psalm 69:9. As the coins hit the floor and the animals scatter, the disciples remember a line from Scripture: "Zeal for your house will consume me."

David wrote it in Psalm 69. He was mocked and persecuted because he cared so deeply about God's house and God's honor. Zeal is a consuming passion. It isn't a bad mood. It is love for God that cannot stand to see Him dishonored.

That is why Jesus' anger was right. It wasn't a lost temper or wounded pride. He wasn't angry for Himself. He was angry for His Father.

Look closely at what John does with David's words. David wrote, "Zeal for your house has consumed me." John says it will consume Jesus. The disciples were afraid His actions would bring the same kind of persecution David faced. They were right, and it went further than they imagined. The zeal that cleared the temple would carry Jesus all the way to the cross.

Jesus' zeal for His Father's house would cost Him His life.

• John 2:18-20 - prove it
• Matthew 26:59-61 - His words at the trial

Read John 2:18-20. The religious leaders don't argue with what Jesus did. They question His right to do it. "What sign do you show us for doing these things?" In other words: Who do You think You are? Prove it.

Jesus gives them a sign, just not the kind they wanted. "Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up." No miracle on demand. A promise.

They scoff. Herod's temple had been under construction for forty-six years. Raise it up in three days? Ridiculous.

But they never forgot the words. Three years later, at His trial, witnesses twisted them into a charge: "This man said, 'I am able to destroy the temple of God, and to rebuild it in three days'" (Matthew 26:61). They heard exactly what He said, missed what He meant, and used it against Him. That can still happen when we demand that Jesus prove Himself on our terms.

Jesus answered their demand for proof with a promise: His own resurrection.

• John 2:21-22 - He spoke of His body
• John 1:14 - dwelt among us

Read John 2:21-22, then John 1:14. John lets us in on what no one standing in the courtyard understood: "he was speaking about the temple of his body."

The temple was where heaven touched earth. It was sacred not because of its marble and gold, but because it was God's house, the place where He promised to dwell with His people.

Now Jesus says the place where God dwells is Him. John told us in chapter 1 that "the Word became flesh and dwelt among us." The word means He pitched His tent among us. The God who once filled a tent in the wilderness and a temple in Jerusalem was standing in that courtyard in a human body. You don't meet God through a building, a ritual, or a sacrifice bought at a booth. You meet Him in Jesus.

Even the disciples didn't get it at first. But "when therefore he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this, and they believed." The resurrection turned remembered words into faith.

The temple was no longer the place to meet God. Jesus was.

• John 2:23-25 - He knew all people
• John 20:29 - blessed are those who believe

Read John 2:23-25. Jesus stays in Jerusalem through the feast, and people take notice. "Many believed in his name when they saw the signs that he was doing." That sounds like exactly what John's gospel is after.

Then comes a surprising line: "Jesus on his part did not entrust himself to them." John uses the same word twice. They believed in Him, but He didn't entrust Himself to them, "for he himself knew what was in man." They were impressed by what they saw. Jesus could see their faith went no deeper than that.

This sets up the next two chapters, where Jesus meets three people one at a time: a religious leader named Nicodemus, a Samaritan woman at a well, and a royal official from Cana. Each will find out what kind of faith Jesus is looking for. Years later He would tell Thomas, "Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed" (20:29).

So the week ends where Sunday did. The religious leaders demanded a sign, and Jesus promised one: His own resurrection. His disciples believed His word once He rose.

The question isn't whether you're impressed with Jesus. It's whether you believe Him.