Christ
Church
April 10, 6pm
John
2:13-25
We have read of that dramatic moment in the Gospel of John when Jesus
first cleansed the temple. Having called his disciples to a more
permanent relationship with himself, he left with them for Jerusalem to
celebrate the first Passover as the acknowledged Messiah, the Promised
One to come.
Jesus had been in Jerusalem many times during the years before his
public ministry began. He had been to the temple and had seen many of
the sights which he saw on this occasion, but he had taken no action in
response. Now, however, he is going to Jerusalem as the Messiah, and he
will fulfill Malachi's prophecy about the Messiah, "The Lord whom you see shall suddenly
come to his temple," (Malachi 3:1b), ... "and he will purify the sons of Levi,"
(3:3b). This is the background for what our Lord did when he arrived in
Jerusalem.
John tells us what that action was.
In the temple he found those who were selling oxen and sheep and
pigeons, and the moneychangers at their business. And making a whip of
cords, he drove them all, with the sheep and oxen, out of the temple;
and he poured out the coins of the money-changers, and overturned their
tables. And he told those who sold the pigeons, "Take these things away; you shall not
make my Father's house a house of trade." (John 2:14-16)
Jesus is clearly angry at what he found in the temple. He takes drastic
action to cleanse it, not only of trafficking in money-changing and
selling animals, but also of the extortion and racketeering that went
along with it.
Here we have an account of violent action and of evident anger on
the part of Jesus at the beginning.
Note that John says this occurred at a Passover feast. Doubtless he
wants to remind us that at the Passover, every Jewish household spent
the day before the feast meticulously going through their house seeking
out any kind of yeast or substance that could cause fermentation and
cleansing every such manifestation from their home. Let there be no
confusion: God never confuses us in his Word, and leaven ALWAYS
signifies what is sin; what is unclean before a holy God.
Jesus was angry at the extortion and racketeering that was
going on. Once a year, every Jewish male had to go to the temple and
pay a temple tax. There was no escape; every male Jew was required to
pay a half-shekel tax at the Passover season. Further, that tax could
not be paid in Roman or Greek coin but had to be paid in a special
temple coin. So it was necessary to change the Roman or Greek coins
that were commonly employed into this special temple tax. That in
itself was fine; money-changers were required for that. Having them
available for the people was a convenience that was right and proper.
But what was wrong was that there was an exorbitant price being
extorted for making this exchange, so that sometimes almost as much as
half of the value of the money being exchanged was paid to the
money-changers for their service. The temple was making enormous
revenues from this practice.
Furthermore, a sacrifice offered at the Passover season had to be made
with an animal without blemish or imperfection. This meant that the
only animals that could be offered were those which were bought from
the temple herd that was kept in an open courtyard in the court of the
Gentiles. These animals had already been approved by the priests. But
again, a tremendously inflated price was demanded for those animals. In
fact, a bird could be brought outside the temple for the equivalent of
15 pence of our money, but the same bird, bought within the temple from
the authorized purveyors of animals, would cost as high as £15!
This barefaced extortion, this demand for money from even the poorest
of the poor was what aroused the flaming anger of the Lord Jesus Christ
Do not diminish or minimize the anger and the violence which Jesus
manifested at this time. This is a different Jesus to the popular
‘Gentle Jesus meek and mild’ But this action clearly
indicates that our Lord was angry. He drove these people out of the
temple. He made the point, which was clearly: do not turn a place which
is devoted to the worship of God and the cleansing of people, into a
flea market. The word John employs is, literally, "emporium," a place
where people are concerned about making a fast buck. The temple rather
was the place where human values were to be considered supreme.
The climax of his action comes in what the disciples learned from it.
Three lessons burned themselves unforgettably into the disciples' minds
as they watched our Lord. The first was an immediate impression, Verse
17.
The first lesson was about Jesus’ hatred of sin; especially
corruption in religion
Can you imagine what the disciples felt while this was going on? How
embarrassed they must have been by the actions of Jesus! They had not
been with him very long; they did not know him very well..
But as they watched him do this, there came flashing into their minds a
verse from the 69th Psalm. It is clearly evident that even at this
early date the 69th Psalm was regarded as a Messianic psalm. The psalm
describes the suffering and the agony of the One who was to be the
Messiah. There came into their minds this one verse, "The zeal of thy house has consumed me"
(Psalms 69:9) -- has burned me up, has seized hold of me and devoured
me and made me to act. There came for the first time, perhaps, the
quiet realization in these disciples' hearts of the divine refusal to
put up with inward impurities. They began to understand that God does
not compromise with evil.
This touches one of the great paradoxes of our Christian faith.
Throughout this Gospel of John we will see plainly how anyone can come
to Christ, no matter what his background, no matter how far he has gone
wrong, no matter how evil he has been -- murderers, prostitutes,
swindlers, liars, perverts, drunkards, self-righteous prigs, bitter,
hard-hearted cynics, religious hypocrites, proud self-sufficient snobs
-- anyone who realizes there is something wrong in his life, that
something has seized him, gripped him and introduced evil, hurt, pain
and heartache, anyone who wants to be free can come to Jesus. "Come unto me all you that are weary and
heavy laden, and I will give you rest," Jesus said (Matthew
11:28). Anyone can come. But now the disciples understand, perhaps for
the first time, that if you come, be assured that Jesus is not going to
leave you the way you are.
Many Christians can be like the Pharisees, make their outward actions
look good, but allow sinful habits -- pornography, a bitter,
unforgiving spirit towards another, an evil lustful habit, a private
indulgence, a compromise with expediency in business -- to be hidden in
their lives. As surely as people do that, one day they will discover
that their Lord has changed his attitude towards them. He is no longer
tolerant, understanding and patient. His eyes are aflame; and he means
business -- and their life begins to fall apart. All the evil they
thought was hidden is exposed.
Then they learned that Jesus was bringing a new meaning to the word
‘Temple’
It is amazing how blind everyone was at first to the meaning of this
event! The Jews expected the Messiah to give them certain signs, and
one of the signs the prophet Malachi prophesied was that the Messiah
would suddenly come to his temple and purify the sons of Levi. The
Messiah had just done that, but they did not recognize him. Instead,
they said to him, "What sign do you have that you are the Messiah?" Our
Lord's answer, of course, was to give them the only sign that would
have any meaning to them -- the sign of his own resurrection. Only
after the event did the penny drop.
Buildings have always been but pictures of the house of God. The real
temples are bodies -- human beings -- of body, soul, and spirit. That
is where God has created a place where he can dwell. The Apostle Paul
caught this truth. In the 6th chapter of First Corinthians he reminds
us, "Do you not know that your
body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, which you have from God? You are
not your own;" (1 Corinthians 6:19). You do not have the right
to run your life, to regulate it and make all the ultimate decisions as
to what you ought to be or where you ought to go. Paul continues, "You are not your own, you were bought
with a price. So glorify God in your body," (1 Corinthians
6:19b-20). That is where God is glorified.
There is further significance to this in the fact that John puts this
account back-to-back with the miracle of the changing of water to wine.
Jesus here says the opposite. Let human beings do their worst, let them
oppose God, let them destroy the temple of God, let them carry out
their rebellion to the utmost, and when they have done everything they
can, God will touch it and will change it; he will work and it will
still accomplish his purpose.We need to understand that the God to whom
you have come, that loving, healing Lord with the warm, accepting and
understanding eyes who touches you with forgiveness and cleansing is
nevertheless unwilling to put up with the continuance of sin; he will
cleanse his temple whether you like it or not. Hebrews tells us that if
the Father loves us he will scourge us and chasten us out of his love
until we begin to be what he designed us to be. Some get upset at God
for this. We feel he ought to settle for what we think is holy enough,
but he does not. He has in mind a temple where he can be glorified,
where our deepest human desires will find satisfaction and fulfillment,
and that requires cleansing. He will bring that about.
Then, third, they learned Jesus is not mocked by shallow belief,
founded on miracles
As the disciples watched him doing miracles; they noticed that, though
many were believing in Jesus because he was the miracle worker, Jesus
did not seem to commit himself to them. That is a strange phenomenon in
the Christian world yet. How many people come to Christ and ask him to
be their Lord, yet they do not seem to be changed; there is no reality
about their Christian living; they go right on much as they were, even,
eventually, drift away, and never come back. Why is that? John explains
it here. He says it is because Jesus knew Man, therefore he knew what a
man or woman was like
Jesus deals only with realities. He sees through the facades and
the illusions, deeper than we ourselves can see. He refuses to
compromise with it, or put up with it, and forced the issue so people
saw what God saw when he looked at the temple. This is what John wants
us to remember. We are dealing with a God of reality, a God who cannot
be fooled, a God who will always deal in loving forgiveness with anyone
who does not defend his evil. When we admit it, when we come asking to
be cleansed, and freed, he never turns us away, he never deals with us
harshly. But when we come justifying our actions, excusing them,
fooling ourselves, we find him refusing to commit himself to us.
Thus the disciples learned in this account very wonderful things about
God. They learned to fear God, to realize that though he is a God of
mercy he is also a God of majesty. They looked at our Lord with
different eyes as they walked away from this scene. They felt the full
warmth of his acceptance, but they felt the thrust of his justice and
his majesty as well. That is what being a disciple must come to mean.