Jesus Cleanses the Temple
John 2:12-25
13/06/2010
Introduction
Who has ever umpired a sporting event? Who has ever given an umpire a hard time during a sporting event?
Last weekend our family had a great time down at the State Youth Games, where I was one of our adult volunteers. On Saturday morning I refereed soccer – which is the first time I have ever watched a full match! Saturday afternoon and Sunday morning I umpired indoor beach volleyball and Sunday afternoon I umpired indoor volleyball.
I’m the sort of person who gets pretty nervous about umpiring – I find it stressful. But an umpire needs to control the game and stand by their decisions, so you don’t want to let your nerves show. On Sunday I ended up umpiring the grand finals for the indoor beach and indoor volleyball, so the stakes were a bit higher.
During the indoor volleyball final I made a decision early on that I wasn’t confident about. A decision needed to be made one way or the other and the responsibility fell to me, so I made the call to the delight of one team and the disappointment of the other. The interesting thing was that even as I continued to watch and call the game my mind was replaying that one tough call and my attention was actually divided. I had to force myself to get my head back in the game otherwise it would have been a disaster.
So while you might not have noticed anything by my outside appearance, as I refereed that game there was some stuff going on inside that could have easily prevented me from doing my job well.
That’s what life is like – as we go through life we have experiences that make strong impressions on us and leave something behind in us. What those experiences leave behind can be helpful and it can be harmful. It might not show on the outside, but it’s there on the inside and it’s affecting us.
Let me give you another example to illustrate, and I’ll stick with sports as a bit of a theme!
I had been a youth leader at South Perth Church of Christ for a couple of years, and a new youth pastor had just started ministry at the church. We were doing a mission trip up to the Kimberley
At one point of the game I was on court and I called over to the bench that we needed some big guys on court – we were getting killed in rebounding. I must have looked frustrated because the youth pastor told me to calm down – and that got me fired up! A little later I subbed myself out of the game and he came over to me and told me to remember what we were there for – it wasn’t about winning the game. My pride was really stung because I knew that, and I didn’t think I was worried about winning. Our exchange that night did not go really well, and after that our mission team split into two groups that went to different locations so we didn’t see much of each other for the rest of the trip.
I went away from that experience thinking here’s a guy who judged me prematurely and incorrectly - he’s arrogant. He probably went away thinking that I was a troublesome hothead more concerned with his ego than with spiritual ministry!
What effect do you think this was likely to have on our relationship and on how we would work together in the youth ministry?
One of the types of things that we often carry around inside us are opinions about others and feelings toward others. These can be helpful or they can be harmful.
You know when you see some people and you get a feeling straight away just by seeing them? It could be a nice feeling or a nasty one! That’s a sign that you carry around inside you something toward them.
Now at that stage what I carried inside of me toward him was not real good, and it was sure to cause problems in our relationship and in our work for the Lord.
So after we got back to Perth
So we got together and we chatted, and then we prayed. He was both gracious and firm – not arrogant but very sincere. I gained a respect for him and we began a friendship that would continue through the time I was in that church.
Now what I carry around inside me toward him is not at all negative but very positive – the way brothers in Christ should feel about each other.
Today we are going to focussing on the stuff that we often carry around inside us that gets in the way of who God has made us to be. It corrupts us and stops us from doing what we ought to do.
As we continue our journey in the Gospel of John we arrive at the story of Jesus cleansing the temple, recorded in…
John 2:12-25
12 After this he went down to Capernaum
Remember that Jesus had just performed His first miracle – turning water into wine. We learnt a couple of weeks ago just how significant that event was. It demonstrated that the new work God was doing in Jesus could not fit inside the religious practices and sensitivities of the day. I was not being abstract when I said that new growth always stretches us! We are like a wineskin that needs to be able to stretch as the wine inside ferments. Growth always produces tension – tension inside us and tension in relationships. It’s a healthy tension, because it shakes us out of our comfortable indifference and reminds us of what is really important. It forces us to choose between our own desires & preferences and the work of God. God will not entrust us with his work if we are not willing to be stretched by it. To choose to serve God is to choose to be uncomfortable.
As today’s story will illustrate, choosing to serve God also means choosing to be made pure.
13 When it was almost time for the Jewish Passover, Jesus went up to Jerusalem
Remember the significance of the Passover. It looked back to the way God rescued the Israelites from slavery in Egypt
14 In the temple courts he found men selling cattle, sheep and doves, and others sitting at tables exchanging money. 15 So he made a whip out of cords, and drove all from the temple area, both sheep and cattle; he scattered the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables. 16 To those who sold doves he said, “Get these out of here! How dare you turn my Father’s house into a market!”
17 His disciples remembered that it is written: “Zeal for your house will consume me.
There’s a number of issues that come out of this part of the story…
1. Why did Jesus drive these people and animals out of the Temple
There’s a story in the other gospels about Jesus driving people out of the temple courts, we read these words in Mark 11:17
[Jesus] said, “Is it not written:
‘My house will be called a house of prayer for all nations’?
But you have made it ‘a den of robbers.’”
In the other gospels this event occurs toward the end of Jesus’ ministry, so He may well have needed to drive these people out of the Temple courts on a second occasion, and on that occasion He took issue with the greed of these merchants and how they were exploiting the people who needed to swap their coins for the official currency used in the temple and those who needed to buy acceptable animals for use in sacrifices.
On this occasion as John records it, Jesus is not taking aim at dishonesty or greed, but at the fact that they should not be conducting a market in the Temple
As far as Jesus is concerned the Temple
Most people would have entered the temple from the staircases that led up from the Huldah gates on the southern side and into the Court of the Gentiles. This is where the moneychangers and merchants would have set up their stalls.
What’s the problem with providing access to the right money to pay your offerings and the right animals to present your sacrifices in the place where people need them?
It’s OK for the Jews – they could buy what the needed and then proceed into the other areas of the temple in order to worship God. Not so for the Gentiles. This was the only place they were allowed to enter. It was the place they could come and pray to God in participate in worship of God, and that place had been taken away from them by the very people who were supposed to be a witness and encouragement to them.
A Gentile could not go into the Court of Women or the Court of Israel to worship God because a zealous Jew could kill them. There were signs up warning Gentiles that this could happen to them if they entered those areas. But they could not stay in the Court of the Gentiles to pray and worship God because it was a marketplace with vendors loudly competing for trade!
Jesus was ticked off by this! God had established the nation of Israel
Is it possible that the same could be said for churches today?
Of course it is! When we do whatever it is that we do without considering those who are not yet part of God’s Kingdom, or those who are not yet members of our church family, or those who are not part of the inner circle – those who have power and status – if we are not considering these people we are as bad as the moneychangers and merchants in the court of the Gentiles.
God has designed the local church to have the same type of ministry as that of the temple in Jerusalem Temples
The church is to be a gathering of people where God is experienced to be present – just as God was present in a special way in the Temple
In 1 Corinthians chapter 14 Paul gives some wonderful instruction to the church at Corinth to urge them to conduct their public worship in such a way that if an unbeliever comes in, they will have every opportunity to experience the presence of God and to be challenged to come into a right relationship with God. When we worship God together, please remember that we also represent God together and participate accordingly. Honour God, experience His blessing and share that blessing with others. In their worship of God the Jews forgot to include the Gentiles and sought to hog all of God’s blessings for themselves. God was not pleased.
2. What happened to “Gentle Jesus, Meek and Mild”?
Jesus is our perfect example – everything He did was right. Yet here we see Jesus on the rampage! He’s overturning tables and scattering coins. He’s telling people to clear off. He’s made up a whip and is driving the animals out of the area, regardless of who they belong to. That’s not very gentle or mild!
We have a stereotype of the ideal Christian as someone who never gets too fired up and is never too forceful or aggressive. That doesn’t fit with Jesus who is the One we pattern ourselves after.
Sometimes it is right to be forceful. Sometimes it is right to be fired up. That’s not saying it’s right to be violent or abusive – we don’t see Jesus hurting people or even using his whip on the animals, just that he drove them out.
We need to remember that “man’s anger does not bring about the righteous life that God desires” as we read in James 1:20.
Jesus’ anger was not human anger, it was righteous anger. And quite frankly we could use some more of it. We should be angry whenever we see people being excluded from worshiping God as was happening in this situation. We should be angry when we see people being exploited. We should be angry when the name of God is defamed. We should be angry enough that we will do something to make a difference, and not just sit around wishing things were different.
I can’t stand angry religion that you often see on TV – people who hate and destroy. That’s not righteous anger at all. It’s hatred and bigotry and it doesn’t fit with the character of God. But if we share the character of Jesus we need to get angry about certain things and do something about them just as He did.
Now of course any time you challenge the status quo someone is going to challenge you and say “What right have you got to do that?”
18 Then the Jews demanded of him, “What miraculous sign can you show us to prove your authority to do all this?”
19 Jesus answered them, “Destroy this temple, and I will raise it again in three days.”
20 The Jews replied, “It has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and you are going to raise it in three days?” 21 But the temple he had spoken of was his body. 22 After he was raised from the dead, his disciples recalled what he had said. Then they believed the Scripture and the words that Jesus had spoken.
23 Now while he was in Jerusalem
So Jesus gets asked the question about His authority to cleanse the Temple
The Jews know that Jesus holds no position of authority, so the only way He could assume the right to do that is to say that He is acting on God’s direct instructions. They don’t realise that Jesus actually is God – God the Son. So to verify that Jesus is a prophet of God they ask Him to perform a miracle that shows that God is really with Him.
Jesus could have performed any number of impressive miracles at that point. Later in the story we read that He was performing them at other times and people were believing in Him. But right at this time He chooses not to.
Instead, He gives them a sign that they will only understand years later, after He has been killed and returned to life. He says something really cryptic – “Destroy this temple, and I will raise it again in three days”.
The temple and it’s surrounding buildings and courtyards was an engineering marvel. King Herod had even enlarged the plateau of the mountain range in order to make more room for it. It was a very impressive structure.
But Jesus now makes an amazing statement. As His disciples later understood, Jesus was saying the Temple
Sometime after this Jesus’ disciples were admiring the massive stones and magnificent buildings of the Temple
God demonstrated this fact when Jesus’ body had been destroyed by torture and crucifixion just has He had predicted. When Jesus died the heavy curtain inside the temple that separated the Holy of Holies from the rest of the inner temple was torn from top to bottom – torn by God Himself. It revealed that the Holy of Holies – the place where God’s glory was meant to reside, was actually devoid of His presence and no longer to be treated as a sacred space.
In fact less than 40 years later the temple area had been taken over as a headquarters for a Jewish revolutionary army. These zealots killed both Jews and Romans in their greed for power and freedom. They even tricked the Idumeans into bringing an army of 20,000 men who massacred the common Jews who opposed the zealots.
Eventually the Romans brought a force of 60,000 soldiers against Jerusalem
It’s no wonder that Jesus wept when He approached Jerusalem
“If you, even you, had only known on this day what would bring you peace—but now it is hidden from your eyes. 43 The days will come upon you when your enemies will build an embankment against you and encircle you and hem you in on every side. 44 They will dash you to the ground, you and the children within your walls. They will not leave one stone on another, because you did not recognize the time of God’s coming to you.”
Jesus came to them - even cleansing the Temple
The same thing is true in our lives. When we reject the purifying work that Jesus wants to do in us the result is always destruction in some form.
The final sentence of our passage in John 2 says this
“[Jesus]did not need man’s testimony about man, for he knew what was in a man” (v.25)
Jesus did not need anyone to tell Him about anyone else, because He knows us from the inside out.
He knows what it is that you carry around inside you.
He knows of the negative opinions you hold toward your brother or sister in Christ.
He knows of the malicious comments you’ve made, no matter how well you’ve disguised them.
He knows your hidden sins – what you’ve been looking at, thinking about, talking about and doing away from the public gaze.
What are the things that Jesus wants to drive out of your life today?
Are you aware that rejecting Him will only lead you to destruction?
I can think of so many times that I have held on to sinful habits in my life; and I bear the scars of what they have produced in my life and how they have affected others. I don’t want that anymore. I don’t want to carry around that stuff inside me.
The Bible says that I am a temple of the Holy Spirit who lives in me – I want my temple to be fit for the use that God designed it for.
The Bible also says that we together are a temple to the God who lives in us. I want us to be fit for the use that God has designed us for.
For that to be true, we must be willing to be cleansed of whatever we have allowed to corrupt us.
God is building this church, we must also allow Him to clean it!
I’m going to offer you a number of different ways that you can respond to what God is saying to you this morning.
We have some response cards that Chris has already told you about. You can write on those confidentially and we will follow up with you. You might like to talk to us about an issue that you’re currently facing. Don’t think you can go it alone, don’t let pride get in the way, let the church be the church and support you. Just fold the paper over and Chris or I will read those and respond appropriately. You can be anonymous if you like and just write something that you’d like us to be aware of, or you can put your name down so we can follow up with you. You can start filling those out now.
As well as the response cards I’m going to invite you in a few moments to come down the front for prayer. If God is stirring you that there’s something you need to resolve right now then don’t put it off. You don’t need to tell anyone everything that’s going on for you, but you can be prayed with and have an opportunity to share what you need to share. Don’t harden your heart if that’s what God is telling you to do.
It could be that God is challenging you about your own selfishness in worship, that you have forgotten to consider others and made our worship together more about your own comfort and convenience. It may be that you would like to give us some feedback about this issue for where we stand as a church.
It may be that God is challenging you to get fired up about things that He is fired up about. To get serious enough that you will actually do something about the evil that threatens to corrupt us, the evil that abuses people that we should be serving.
It may be that God is convicting you about sin in your own life or in the life of our church. There may be things that you know you must be cleansed of. You may have struggled with an issue for a long time without overcoming it, and it is now time to swallow your pride and overcome your fears and accept the support of your church family. We all struggle alone, but God has designed us to be powerful support for one another. Don’t let sin wreck your life. Don’t let it wreck the lives of others. Be clean!
[1]All Scriptures from The Holy Bible : New International Version. 1996, c1984. Grand Rapids
