Did you ever wonder how you would have reacted if you had lived in Jesus’ day? Imagine that three times a year you have to travel half-way across the country to make an animal sacrifice. You couldn’t take the animal with you, so you had to buy it at the temple at inflated prices. You know you’re being gouged but what can you do?
We like to think that we wouldn’t put up with it. Jesus didn’t. So here are four reasons most people today would have nothing to do with the temple system in Jesus’ day.
They are too quick to judge us and treat us like we’re not good enough.
My opinion doesn’t matter. They just tell everyone what to do and won’t explain it.
They’re a bunch of hypocrites. They keep the money we give and do with it as they like.
All they give is religion, a bunch of does and don’ts. All I want is God.
By the way, those reasons we wouldn’t go to the temple are the same reasons people give for not going to church today.
John 2:13-22
“When it was almost time for the Jewish Passover, Jesus went up to Jerusalem. In the temple courts he found people selling cattle, sheep and doves, and others sitting at tables exchanging money. So he made a whip out of cords, and drove all from the temple courts, both sheep and cattle; he scattered the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables. To those who sold doves he said, ‘Get these out of here! Stop turning my Father’s house into a market!’ His disciples remembered that it is written: ‘Zeal for your house will consume me.’
The Jews then responded to him, ‘What sign can you show us to prove your authority to do all this?’ Jesus answered them, ‘Destroy this temple, and I will raise it again in three days.’ They replied, ‘It has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and you are going to raise it in three days?’ But the temple he had spoken of was his body. 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.”
For thousands of years, the people of Israel had celebrated the night that death passed over the Hebrews who had lamb’s blood splashed on their doorposts.
We have celebrated our existence as a nation for just a little over 200 years. It is hard to imagine honoring a history of thousands of years.
To say that it was ingrained in the heart of the people is an understatement. Through good times and bad times, they had celebrated Passover. In their glory days and in exile they had remembered their roots.
Can you imagine the sheer weight of having to keep that tradition alive? There is no way that it is going to die on your watch.
So, we find Jesus in Jerusalem once more. Raised in a faithful family, he had been here many times before. He could vividly remember the year of his bar Mitzvah when he spent days discussing the scriptures with the best of Israel.
Now Jesus was grown, his siblings were taken care of (a responsibility of the eldest son) and he had begun to preach and teach the reason why he was here.
His message resonated with those in the Galilee who lived on three major trade routes and tasted the world that passed through there. But Jerusalem was a different story. They had four thousand years of history to maintain.
And anyway, could anything good come out of places like the Galilee? Or so they thought.
Jesus is in the first year of his ministry and enjoying the greatest attention and followings. So much so, that both the Romans and Jerusalem had their eye on this young rabbi, who some called a prophet.
The memory of John the Baptist (the cousin of Jesus) was still fresh on their minds. They remembered how he had turned Judah upside down when called out the elite for their sins and hypocrisy.
Was this Jesus going to be another John, someone who was going to stir up the people? They had thrown John into prison. Would they have to do the same with this Jesus? Could they even do so?
So, on this, their most holy day, Jesus comes walking up the southern steps to enter the court of the Temple. The crowds pressed around Him on all sides. Jerusalem was boiling and both the Romans and the Jewish authorities were worried that something might happen to ruin it all.
Would some Zealot kill the high priest on the temple steps because they felt him too slack in his duties? That would occur but not for another 50 years.
Would the crowds get out of hand and the Romans would be called in to quell the trouble? If that happened, they knew the bloodshed would be immense and the Romans would blame them.
A thousand things could happen but right now their eyes were on this prophet from Galilee, this teacher from Nazareth. Many in the temple could remember that 12-year-old boy that had unnerved them 18 years ago. What was he going to do this time?
When you entered the Temple in Jesus’ day, you did so by way of the Kidron and made your way up the hundreds of steps till you can out in the outside court of the Temple. It was called the Court of the People because Gentiles who wanted to worship God could do so there but no farther.
In fact, signs were posted in several languages warning worshipers that save the priests, any who dared to put their foot on the temple proper would be killed. It was a law that had been strictly enforced.
Two things staired Jesus in the face. They were doing business on the temple grounds and people were being extorted for trying to worship God.
Throughout the history of the Temple, the business of the temple had been kept outside its walls. Obviously, tens of thousands of people could not carry their sacrifices from home to Jerusalem. They were dependent on locals to sell them the required lamb for sacrifice.
But there was a bit of a problem. The price of the lamb or bull had reached exorbitant prices. Add to that the fact that the sacrifice could only be bought with a temple coin which they would gladly exchange for your money for a profit, of course.
Jesus could remember his parents only being able to buy a pigeon for their sacrifice. They were honest people but not wealthy. What Jesus sees make His blood boil. As He stands there in his righteous anger, He looks around to see not a temple but a carnival.
This had nothing to do with the act of worshiping God. This was price-gouging. As His blood boiled, he saw several distorted practices that had no place in the temple and the priests walking around like it was no big deal.
Had they forgotten about the priests burned alive by God because they worshiped a pagan God in His temple? Had their years in exile been so long forgotten that they didn’t believe God was capable of dealing with hypocrisy and heresy?
Here on their most holy day, Jesus had had enough. Now for a moment remember that Jesus is in the prime of physical life. He had been hardened by 30 years of carpentry and working with stone. Jesus was ripped but it was muscle he wanted to leverage here. It was justice.
When you are the son of God and you have laid down your divinity to wear a mantle of flesh, it does not mean you still aren’t divine and repelled by sin. Jesus was staring evil in the face, and he was going to have no part of it.
This was His Father’s house and he needed to do a little spring cleaning.
The disciples had been with Jesus for several months now and had seen him heal the sick and give sight to the blind. They were impressed and proud to be associated with this prophet. They knew He was something special.
But they were stunned when Jesus just stood there in the temple staring. Was He going to preach? Was He going to perform a miracle? They were at the Temple on the highest holy day. There was no better time to say a few words. Jews from every corner of the world were there.
When they entered the court of the people, you could hear them saying, “It’s Jesus. The one healing people and preaching repentance.” “Isn’t he a prophet, a rabbi?”
Then Jesus went over and picked up some leather cords from a table and began to weave them into a strand. The disciples looked at each other and wondered what Jesus was doing. Knitting?
Woah! They didn’t see it coming. Jesus used those cords like a whip and began to drive the merchants from the Court of the People back into the streets where they belonged. He drove out the animals being sold for a profit. He told them they had turned God’s house of prayer into a market. His words bit like steel when he told them to get out of His Father’s house.
Then he turned his anger on the money men who extorted poor people only trying to worship. He wasn’t content to just drive them out. He overturned their tables so that the coins went every direction and profits went out the door. More than a few coins made it into the hands of the poor.
Jesus stood there like Elijah of old and had dealt with all these prophets of Baal. Now the murmured voices rose to shout. “He is a prophet. A holy man of God. I knew he would do something.”
The temple guards looked at the priests for their orders. This rabbi was tearing the place up, but the priests did nothing. Jesus had upset the apple cart, but he had broken no law. In fact, he had enforced the law they should have obeyed.
They could hear the cries of the people and saw how they thronged after Jesus but more than that, they had seen Jesus act as no man ever had. Some hesitated because they remembered Zachariah and John. What if this man was indeed holy? Others wondered what the Romans would do if they sent the guards among the people and it went badly.
What they did not realize is that the True High Priest and King of Kings had just swept the dirt out of His house, and He was a man to be reckoned with. He acted like He owned the place, and He did.
To save some face, they approached Jesus and asked Him by what authority He did such things. They were the true authorities, or so they thought, and wanted to put Jesus in His place. So, they asked Him loud enough for everyone to hear, “What sign do you have to prove your authority?”
The priests knew the law about prophets. If they were to say something that didn’t come to pass, they could be executed on the spot. This place has stood for thousands of years. By what authority to you come in here and disrupt what we have done for years.
The disciples like everyone else leaned in to see how Jesus was going to answer them. Their master appeared on the brink of calling down a revolution and the people there would have followed Him.
But Jesus says something that sets the priests back and leaves the crowd stunned: ‘Destroy this temple, and I will raise it again in three days.’
Jesus didn’t call for a rebellion. He had leveled a challenge, a sign, that they couldn’t fathom. The temple took 46 years to build. First, how was anyone going to destroy it and then how could he build it back in just three days. They must have laughed. It sounded so ludicrous. Destroy the temple. Get serious.
Jesus was deadly serious and none of them realized it. In fact, the disciples themselves would only realize these words as prophecy when they saw Jesus hanging on the cross.
Jesus came there that Passover to make it clear that God was denouncing the hypocrisy that had corrupted the Temple and condemn the spiritual decay that it had spread throughout the land.
What they did not realize was that Jesus was bringing the Temple and the sacrificial system to end and that He was now the Temple where God resided. Yes, they would kill Him (that is, His body) but they could not stop Him. He would rise to life from the grave.
In doing that, Jesus was going to change how men related to God. No more sacrifices, no rituals, no physical Temple. Now men were going to have a one-on-one relationship with God because of Jesus.
But no one there realized what He was saying and what He would do.
Only now do we realize what He was doing on that day in the temple. He was declaring His authority and preparing to show them what true power was.
He made it clear to the disciples and those who listened that He came here to willingly lay down His life to redeem us and no man was going to take His life. He was going to give it. He could have reigned down hell on them but instead was promising them heaven.
To do so, He chose the sign of the Resurrection.
In rising from death, He would break the hold that Satan held on mankind and allow mankind to hold a living relationship with God. This was an idea that was inconceivable to the Jewish mind of the day.
God may have talked to Abraham and Moses but there was no way that a human being could consider themselves divine. It was paramount to heresy. It was like saying a man could rise from the dead.
When you and I think of a physical object that best represents our Lord, we think of the cross. It was the scene of our Lord’s deepest agonies, but Jesus preferred to demonstrate His power in an empty tomb.
The cross was the means of the day for putting men to death. But Jesus could have allowed a dozen other ways to make His sacrifice, but it all came down to the resurrection. Jesus had to beat Satan at his own game on his home turf. And He did!
The resurrection is the central pillar of our Christian faith. If there had been no resurrection of Jesus’ physical body (let’s be clear, Jesus could not be killed by any means) then you and I are lost without hope.
Jesus didn’t just turn the temple upside down that day; He was announcing that He was about to bring it to an end. Two decades after His resurrection, the Romans tore the Temple to the ground, pouring Greek fire into the stones, breaking them apart so no man would ever to this day, rebuild that temple.
You want to find a way to God in the future, it won’t be through sacrifices, or good deeds or Pharisaical obedience. You want to find a way to God, Jesus says, it will have to be through me for I am that way, that truth and that life.
The disciples loved the Lord and had dedicated their lives to Him but what He did on that day set them back. They were now complicit with what looked like the overthrow of the Judaic system and the loss of their way of faith.
All they knew right then was that Jesus was consumed with a passion and zeal that was absolute and if they were going to follow Him, the cost was going to be high.
The next two years would not be easy ones. Jesus continued His message wherever He went, and He went places a good Jew would not go. The day would come when the bloom was off the rose and Jesus was dead set to go to Jerusalem on another Passover to make this change permanent.
How did the disciples react?
In John 6:68-69, after many disciples left Jesus due to the difficulty of his teachings, Peter’s response stood out: “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and to know that you are the Holy One of God.”
This confession by Peter marked the moment the disciples’ belief in Jesus as the Holy One of God was complete. If He was going to die, they would die with Him. If the temple was to fall, so be it. There was no other way.
Know this. The Lord hasn’t changed His opinion. If you are going to have a relationship with God, it will be because of Him. He calls all men and women who come through Him His bride, the church.
In fact, He has made it possible for you and me to be a part of God’s temple in this world. He calls our bodies the very abiding place of God.
And in doing so, He declared that our bodies were not our own. They have been bought and paid for by Him. Here is where His Holy Spirit abides. Here is where He takes up residence in our lives.
Sometimes, I think He could do better, but He doesn’t.
Now we find ourselves in the same place as those priests in the temple on that fateful day.
Jesus has walked into our lives, is standing in this temple and is as passionate about this temple as He was about the Temple of that day.
It matters to Him how we treat this temple. It matters what we do with this temple for He abides within. No wonder He calls on us to avoid any defilement. No wonder the apostle Paul reminded Christians that He goes where we go and has to experience what we experience.
Are we any better than those of old at how they treated their temple?
Do not be fooled. Jesus binds His cords even as we speak. To honor this temple of God, He will take from us eye and hand to preserve it. He has even called some home early to keep them.
If we would treat Him with reverence and purity, then treat your bodies with reverence and purity.
Remember that your identity is not defined by the church you attend, the rituals you perform or even the crosses that you bear.
Your identity is found in an empty tomb where death was laid low and eternal life was offered to all.
Do not let anyone (especially yourself) question your worth and dignity. It is immeasurable. You are living temples of the living God.
Don’t take my word or it. Look in the empty tomb. That is your sign. There will be no tomb for you. Oh, your body will die as all flesh does, but you will not taste the darkness of death, you will not be lost in fear and dread.
Jesus made it clear that Passover in the Temple. He is the way, the truth and the life and the way to the Father is through Him.
So don’t mind it too much if He does a little spring cleaning in your soul.
Heavenly Father,
We thank you for the reminder in this passage of your great zeal for your house and your people. Forgive us when we have made your church about anything other than true worship of you. Give us courage to stand against the injustices and idolatries of our age, just as Jesus overturned the tables in the temple.
May your Spirit give us discernment to know when we need to take bold action for the sake of your Kingdom. Guide our church leadership according to your purposes. Set our hearts on fire to live out the gospel and share it with others.
We ask all this in the powerful name of Jesus, who cleansed the temple to make way for true worship. May our lives be living sacrifices to you. In Christ’s name we pray, Amen.
Michael