“For our exhortation does not come from error or impurity or by way of deceit; but just as we have been approved by God to be entrusted with the gospel, so we speak, not as pleasing men, but God who examines our hearts.” 1 Thessalonians 2:3-4

I love that the Bible never gets old. No matter how many times we read it, God can show us something that we haven’t noticed before. Today I am sharing what I recently gathered from John 2:13-25, if you would like to read ahead.

Jesus had just begun his ministry. The Passover was approaching, and travelers were coming from all over to sacrifice. They did not all bring animals with them for the sacrifice; instead, many purchased them in Jerusalem. Right there in the temple, Jesus found the merchants and the money changers. Like customs on a nation’s borders, the travelers who came to worship became an opportunity for the greedy to exploit for profit. Jesus drove them all out of the temple and told them to stop making His Father’s house a place of business. He would later drive the merchants and money changers out of the temple a second time, just before His arrest and crucifixion, and He would remind them, “My house shall be called a house of prayer; but you are making it a robber’s den.” (Matthew 21:12-13)

Some were offended by the things Jesus said and did, but others saw the signs He performed during the Passover feast and they “believed” in His name. (verse 23) Regardless of what they confessed, verses 24 &25 say that Jesus did not entrust Himself to them because He knew what was really in the hearts of men. 

It’s the last two verses that really snagged my attention. I did some research to see what it meant that Jesus didn’t “entrust” himself to them. I read through the commentaries and in Strong’s Concordance, and my paraphrased understanding is that because God examines our hearts (1 Thess. 2), Jesus knew what these people truly believed. Their “belief” in His name was a way of saying that they were impressed by His miracles, which is not the same thing as saving faith. Many people “believe” that Jesus is the Son of God and that He did all that the Bible says He did, but we are expected to respond to that intellectual belief with an act of the will and “believe” in His name for salvation. That “believe” is trusting He is sufficient to save, trusting His promise to save, and entrusting our souls to His safe keeping. 

Jesus did not “entrust” himself to those people because He knew that they were not trust-worthy, but His Father was. We see how Jesus entrusted Himself to Abba, Father God through His obedience in life, in suffering for us, and in His death. He is our example!

Rather than “entrusting ourselves to men” or being concerned with pleasing them, we should “entrust ourselves” to God, who knows every heart. Jesus cleared the temple because the world was not to be brought into the place of worship. The life of worship was to be taken out into the world. We need to remember that our bodies are the temple of God and should be so steeped in prayer and worship that the world is inevitably changed through our zeal for God and His Kingdom.

Living to please God instead of men means that we can look forward to a heavenly homecoming with anticipation.

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