John 2

v1-11: When we discover that our friends have a particular need, the first thing we should do for them is appeal to Christ in prayer.  "When we speak to Christ, we must not tell him what to do, but humbly spread out our case before him and then leave the matter to him to do as he pleases."

v12-17: The prophet Malachi prophesied that after the Lord has sent his messenger, the Lord will suddenly come to his temple.  Now that John the Baptist, the messenger, had come, it was now to be expected that "this was the time when, and the temple was the place where, the Messiah was to be expected."  Yet here no one comes to the Lord except a small group of people.

v18-22: The sign that Jesus gave them to prove He was the Messiah, was His own death and resurrection, which He chose to express by the image of destroying and rebuilding the temple.  Why did He chose this image?  First, "to justify himself in cleansing the temple, which they had defiled; it was as if he had said, “You who defile one temple will destroy another, and I will prove my authority to cleanse what you have defiled by raising what you will destroy.” The defiling of the temple is its destruction, and its reformation its resurrection."  But also "Because the death of Christ was truly the destruction of the Jewish temple—the main cause of that destruction—and his resurrection was the raising of another temple, the Gospel church."

v23-25: Christ did not commit himself to those who believed in Him here in Jerusalem because He knew them.  He knew that some were false and wickedness, while others were weak.  This was because He knew all men, "not only their names and faces, as it is possible for us to know many people, but also their nature, characters, attitudes, and intentions, as we do not know any person, scarcely ourselves." Not only that, He knew all men, "because his powerful hand made them all, and his piercing eye sees them all—looks into them. He knows his subtle enemies and all their secret plans, his false friends and their true characters, what they are really like, whatever they claim to be."  Christ's omniscience means that He knows who are truly His.

MH

Christ was continually moving about; he did not want to confine his usefulness to one particular place, because many people needed him. He wanted to teach his followers to look on themselves as strangers and travelers in this world, and he wanted his ministers to follow their opportunities and go where their work led them.

It is good for young ministers to get used to giving godly and edifying words in private, to prepare themselves for and acquire a greater awe for their public work.