In chapter 2 John begins to show certain signs that Jesus did which illustrate or prove that He was the Messiah, the Son of God. The first sign that Jesus performed was at the wedding in Cana of Galilee, which was primarily only known to his immediate family and disciples who were there and the servants of the house. Today, we are going to examine the second sign that Jesus does, and this one is not miraculous necessarily, at least not in the way we would think of a miracle, but it nevertheless illustrates the divinity of Jesus in a very dramatic, powerful way. Jesus establishes through His actions that He is the Son of God, and Lord of the temple and as such has authority over the temple.
We pick up the story in vs. 12 which says that after the wedding in Galilee, Jesus, His brothers, His mother and His disciples went to Capernaum and stayed a few days, and then they travel on from there to Jerusalem. And then, it would seem the whole entourage headed to Jerusalem for the Passover Feast. This annual pilgrimage was obviously a tradition for the family of Jesus. I’m sure most of you are familiar with the movie “Home Alone.” My kids used to watch that every Christmas. Well that was a remake. In the original “Home Alone” Jesus was 12 years old and left alone. You will remember that in Luke 2:41 it is recorded that His parents used to go to Jerusalem every year to the Passover. And when He was 12 years old, He somehow was left behind, and His parents realized Jesus wasn’t with the caravan, and so they came back to Jerusalem and frantically looked everywhere for Him. After three days they found Him in the temple, sitting down and talking to the teachers who were amazed by His knowledge. And when His parents asked Him what He was doing, He said, “Did you not know that I had to be in My Father’s house?” And they did not understand what He meant by that statement. But we will understand it more fully today after we study this passage.
Now just a word about the Passover Feast before we go into the story. What we call communion or the Lord’s Supper is the ceremony that is the new covenant celebration of the Passover Feast. Under Jewish law, the Passover was to be celebrated once a year in Jerusalem, and every family was to slay a lamb to commemorate the deliverance of Israel from Egypt. As you recall, the Lord had said that the angel of death would pass over every house in Egypt, and those that did not have the blood of the lamb on their doorposts would suffer the death of their first born son. So all of Israel ate the Passover meal, which was unleavened bread, bitter herbs and lamb, along with wine, and they put the blood of the lamb on the doorposts of their house in order to be saved from the judgment of death.
But when Jesus celebrated the Passover on the night before His crucifixion, He ordained that from that time on we should celebrate that feast in remembrance of Him. The symbolism being that He is the Passover Lamb who provided the means to escape death for all that believed in Him.
And I find it significant that the first public sign that Jesus does is at the temple during the Passover Feast. John the Baptist had just previously introduced Him as the Son of God, and then as the Lamb of God which takes away the sins of the world. And so here comes the Lamb of God, to the feast which foretold His purpose, and yet He does not come at this time to be the sacrificial lamb, but He comes as the Son of God, coming into His house, His Father’s house, and He comes in judgment and condemnation and wrath. Not meek and riding on a donkey, but in judgement and wrath.
As a church I want to make sure that when we worship the Lord we worship Him as Jesus said we must, in spirit and in truth. And knowing the truth about God is fundamental to be able to worship Him in truth. We must recognize God as He reveals Himself in scripture. And whether or not the modern church wants to accept it, God is revealed first of all in judgment, in holiness and righteousness. God cannot be put into a little box labeled love and everything we don’t think is love we discard. But God is the great I AM. He is all He has declared Himself to be. And we must worship Him as Lord God Almighty. Exodus 34:14 says the Lord’s name is Jealous “--for you shall not worship any other god, for the LORD, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God—"
Now the most common way to look at this passage is to interpret it as a condemnation against church leadership, false teachers or apostate religious leaders. And there is certainly a lot of that in modern Christianity today. There are plenty of fake healers, and televangelists and apostate churches that are fleecing the people and taking advantage of naïve parishioners. And I may even have preached this text from that perspective myself at some time in the past. But as I studied this text once again, I believe that the proper application that should be made is to the church body, or to the individual members of the church.
The Bible makes it very clear that we are individually members of Christ’s body, and as such we are the temple of God, and that He dwells in us. In the Jewish temple, it was believed that the Spirit of God dwelled in the Holy of Holies behind the veil of the temple. But upon Christ’s crucifixion, God tore the temple veil from the top to the bottom, signifying that a new way had been opened up to God through Jesus Christ. So then in the new covenant, upon faith in Jesus Christ we are made holy and righteous by the transference of our sins to Christ and His righteousness to us, that being made holy we might become the dwelling of the Holy Spirit, the temple of God on the earth.
Eph 2:19-22 makes that relationship clear; “So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints, and are of God’s household, having been built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus Himself being the corner stone, in whom the whole building, being fitted together, is growing into a holy temple in the Lord, in whom you also are being built together into a dwelling of God in the Spirit.”
And also Peter says that we are now God’s temple in 1Peter 2:5 “you also, as living stones, are being built up as a spiritual house for a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.”
And then one more; 1Cor. 6:19 “Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and that you are not your own?” So without question, we that are Christians are the temple of God. In fact, I would suggest that this is the purpose of our salvation. Not just to be forgiven of our sins and escape hell, but to be made holy so that God may dwell in us, that the Spirit of Christ might live in us and through us. So then the temple is not just symbolic of corporate worship, but how to live as individual members of His body.
So Jesus comes into the temple during the Passover, and He looks around at what is going on. And by the way, this is the first time that Jesus cleanses the temple with a whip - the second time will be before the Passover just before His crucifixion. So He does this once at the beginning of His ministry and once at the end.
And as He comes into the temple, into what would have been called the court of the Gentiles, He sees the money changers and sellers of sheep and oxen and doves. Now there was nothing wrong with that in and of itself as not everyone would have an appropriate animal for sacrifice and would need to purchase one. But what was happening was that as people came to present their offering of a lamb or whatever was prescribed by the law, there would be an inspection to make sure that it was a lamb without blemish as the law required. But the temple priests had a racket going on with the vendors of the bazaar in the courtyard. They would tell the people that their lamb they had brought had a defect and so it could not be offered, but right over there you can buy a pre-approved lamb. And of course there was a stiff markup on the price of the animal. Additionally they would be told that the temple could not accept any pagan currency, so there were money changers sitting at tables who would exchange their money for the acceptable Jewish currency but again with a heavy percentage added to it.
Jesus of course, knows what is going on. He sees the corruption in the temple and the way they are taking advantage of naïve people in order to make a profit. They are turning the temple of God into a house of merchandise and a den of thieves. And so as Jesus watches what is going on He calmly begins to braid a bunch of cords together into a whip. I kind of liken that to the typical action movie scene where the hero is in a room with a bunch of bad guys who are threatening him, and he turns and heads for the door, presumably to try to leave quietly, but instead he locks the door and turns around and beats up all the bad guys. So I guess Jesus braiding the leather cords into a whip is the equivalent of locking the door. But what it reveals is that this is not Jesus losing His temper, but the premeditated wrath of God designed to bring about compliance with His will.
So verse 15 says, “And He made a scourge of cords, and drove them all out of the temple, with the sheep and the oxen; and He poured out the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables; and to those who were selling the doves He said, “Take these things away; stop making My Father’s house a place of business. His disciples remembered that it was written, “ZEAL FOR YOUR HOUSE WILL CONSUME ME.”
Now as I said, we are going to focus primarily on the principles in this story as they relate to us as individuals, rather than the church as an institution. Because we are the temple of God. I think even Jesus in vs.19 when He says, “destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up,” indicates that this text should be interpreted as referring to individual temples rather than institutional Christianity.
So how then are we to understand this as it applies to us? Well, first of all, note that it applies to believers, not to the unsaved. We are the temple of Christ if we have the Spirit of Christ in us. But what we see in this story is that the purpose of the temple was being prostituted. The people of Israel who were God’s chosen people, had become greedy and self serving. They had taken the things which were essentially good things in and of themselves and turned it into an opportunity to serve themselves, to make a profit, and even to take advantage of others for their own gain. Rather than worshipping and serving God they were worshipping themselves and serving themselves. And in Jesus’ eyes, the temple was in ruins. It was like an old castle which has become overgrown with briars and brambles, whose ramparts were falling down and in ruins, so He saw the temple as being in need of divine restoration so that it might once again serve and bring glory to the King.
It brings to mind when the Jews had been in exile and the temple in Jerusalem had been abandoned and the walls had been torn down and was in ruins. And God raised up a prophet, a man of God to stir up the people to go back and restore the temple of God. And you might remember that there was opposition to the restoration of the temple, from all quarters and in a multitude of ways. So much so that as they worked some also stood guard and every worker carried his sword. And so the book of Nehemiah records how they were called back to rebuild the physical walls of the temple but also to restore the ancient practices according to the law and call the people back to holy living and away from foreign gods and from idolatry and immorality with pagan tribes which had all caused it’s downfall originally.
And in the last chapter of Nehemiah, chapter 13 vs. 25, it says that Nehemiah was angry with the Jews because they did not take seriously the sanctity and sacredness of God’s law and were corrupting the temple with their flagrant sins. And so it says in vs. 25, that Nehemiah “contended with them and cursed them, and struck some of them and pulled out their hair, and made them swear by God” to stop their immorality and idolatry. The wrath of Nehemiah was a preview of what the Messiah would do when He came into the temple, but rather than pulling hair and striking them He made a whip of cords and kicked over tables and drove them out.
I think it would be fair to say about Nehemiah that the zeal for the house of God had consumed him. And I would to God that zeal for the house of God would consume Christians today. You are the temple of the holy righteous God and yet we continually serve the profane things of the world, we desire the idols of the world and lust after immoral things. Perhaps what’s needed is more prophets of God need to get riled up and make a scourge of cords or start yanking people’s hair and get them to swear their allegiance to God or drive them out of the church.
We need to examine ourselves in the light of this text. We cannot point to the iniquity of the unsaved, but we need to recognize that we are the temple of God and everything in our temple should be consecrated to His service. We have abused the good things that God has given us and used them to serve our lusts, to make a profit, to take advantage of others, to be selfish and we do not serve God with our whole hearts. We need to examine our pocketbooks and see if we are robbing God. We need to examine our motives and see if we are serving ourselves. We need to examine our doctrine and see if we are worshipping the true God or a god of our own design. To serve God is to worship God. To obey is better than sacrifice.
Listen, are we making merchandise of the grace of God? Do we say to ourselves that we can sin and God will forgive us because Jesus has paid our punishment? Do we crucify afresh Jesus Christ so we can continue to serve our selfish ends? Do we make a profit on the grace of God? Do we misuse the gifts that God has given us so that we can serve ourselves? Is the church of God and it’s ministry suffering because you have not given God every thing that is due to Him? God demands first place in your life, not just an hour a week of lip service so that you can live like the devil the rest of the week.
It’s appropriate that this story is set in the context of the Passover, what we call the Lord’s Supper. When Paul wrote to the carnal Corinthian church about the Lord’s Supper he said “Let every man examine himself” before eating of the supper. 1Cor. 11:27-32 says, “Therefore whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner, shall be guilty of the body and the blood of the Lord. But a man must examine himself, and in so doing he is to eat of the bread and drink of the cup. For he who eats and drinks, eats and drinks judgment to himself if he does not judge the body rightly. For this reason many among you are weak and sick, and a number sleep. But if we judged ourselves rightly, we would not be judged. But when we are judged, we are disciplined by the Lord so that we will not be condemned along with the world.”
We need to examine ourselves. Christ blood was not shed so that we might use it for our profit or to our advantage so that we might continue to serve ourselves while the world around us is dying in their sins. Christ’s blood was shed that we might be reconciled to God, that we might be made holy and righteous and be filled with the indwelling Spirit of God so that we might do the works of God. God said, “You shall be holy as I am holy.” And there are some principles that this story teaches which should help us to do that. That should cause us to examine ourselves and judge ourselves rightly that we may not be judged.
The first principle we need to learn is that of Christ’s Lordship. Jesus comes into the temple as the Lord of the temple. He takes charge as One with authority to drive out the merchandisers. He says this is My Father’s house. He had the right to do whatever He pleased and so He had the right to cleanse the temple of profiteers and thieves.
Listen, is Jesus the Lord of your temple? Does He not have the right to do whatever He pleases, to make whatever demands He chooses upon your time and your resources? I would suggest to you that if you lay claim to Jesus as Savior, you must also accept Him as Jesus the Lord. You cannot separate the two. You cannot believe on Jesus and be saved and not submit to Him as Lord. Rom 10:9 says, “that if you confess with your mouth Jesus [as] Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved.” The Lord comes to make us holy temples of God. We are no longer our own or to live for ourselves. 1Cor. 6:19-20, “Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and that you are not your own? For you have been bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body.” As Paul was fond of saying, we become bondslaves of Christ the Lord. We are slaves, either of sin or the Son of God. We cannot serve God and mammon. We are His now, all of us, all of our resources are His.
The 2nd principle we see illustrated in this story; He knows everything. Jesus looked around the temple and He knew what was happening in secret. He knew the plans that the priests had to defraud people. He knew the back room agreements between the vendors and the priests and the temple officials. Nothing was hidden from Him.
And we cannot hide our sins from God either. God knows our hearts. He sees everything we do in secret. A good illustration of this principle is David, who hid his sin with Bathsheba and thought he could get away with it. He thought that no one knew what he had done. But you remember that God sent his prophet Nathan to reveal David’s sin, and rebuke him for his sin. And in Psalm 51, when David confessed his sin and repented of it, he writes that God requires truth in the inward parts. James says when you pray and do not receive what you ask it’s because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend it on your sinful pleasures. Listen, there is nothing hidden from Gods’ sight. And if you are secretly and willfully withholding what is the Lord’s then He knows it and He will demand it.
Let’s imagine for a moment that I had complete insight into your private, most secret world, and came to you right now as you sit here in your seat, and overturned your chair, and called your motives into question, and exposed your corruptness. Imagine if I publicly exposed all the private things that you think no one knows about, all the ways in which you have held back from God the things which are rightfully His, all the ways in which you have committed immorality with the world, using the grace of God as a covering for sin. All of the time, money, resources and the very life that God has given you and yet you have used it for only your own profit, and I laid it all out for everyone here to see. That would be painful and embarrassing wouldn’t it? Yet one day the Lord of our temple promises to lay bare all that we do in secret and proclaim it from the rooftop. We need to examine ourselves and judge ourselves rightly so that we might not be judged.
Because our secrets will be judged according to His word. Heb. 4:12-13 says, “For the word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing as far as the division of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart. And there is no creature hidden from His sight, but all things are open and laid bare to the eyes of Him with whom we have to do.” God is looking around the temple of your soul and nothing is hidden. You may fool your pastor, you may fool your Christian friends. But God will not be mocked. God knows your secrets, your deceptions. And He wants a holy temple consecrated to serving Him and Him alone.
God desires truth in the inward parts. He doesn’t care for our ceremonies and rituals, our fake worship, while we hide iniquity in our hearts. Isaiah 1:11-18 "What are your multiplied sacrifices to Me?" Says the LORD."I have had enough of burnt offerings of rams And the fat of fed cattle; And I take no pleasure in the blood of bulls, lambs or goats. When you come to appear before Me, Who requires of you this trampling of My courts? Bring your worthless offerings no longer, Incense is an abomination to Me. New moon and sabbath, the calling of assemblies--I cannot endure iniquity and the solemn assembly. I hate your new moon festivals and your appointed feasts, They have become a burden to Me; I am weary of bearing them. So when you spread out your hands in prayer, I will hide My eyes from you; Yes, even though you multiply prayers, I will not listen. Your hands are covered with blood. Wash yourselves, make yourselves clean; Remove the evil of your deeds from My sight. Cease to do evil, Learn to do good; Seek justice, Reprove the ruthless, Defend the orphan, Plead for the widow. Come now, and let us reason together, says the LORD, Though your sins are as scarlet, They will be as white as snow; Though they are red like crimson, They will be like wool.”
3rd principle; God will not tolerate corruptness in His temple. Even as Jesus cleansed the temple with scourging, so He will cleanse His people so that they will not profane His temple. Jesus said you cannot serve God and mammon. No man can serve two masters. He demands our full commitment in our relationship with Him.
2 Cor.6:14 is commonly interpreted as speaking of marriage, but remember that His church is to be the spotless, virgin bride of Christ. So it’s actually referencing our relationship with our bridegroom. 2 Cor. 6:14-18 “Do not be bound together with unbelievers; for what partnership have righteousness and lawlessness, or what fellowship has light with darkness? Or what harmony has Christ with Belial, or what has a believer in common with an unbeliever? Or what agreement has the temple of God with idols? For we are the temple of the living God; just as God said, "I WILL DWELL IN THEM AND WALK AMONG THEM;AND I WILL BE THEIR GOD, AND THEY SHALL BE MY PEOPLE. "Therefore, COME OUT FROM THEIR MIDST AND BE SEPARATE," says the Lord." AND DO NOT TOUCH WHAT IS UNCLEAN; And I will welcome you. "And I will be a father to you, And you shall be sons and daughters to Me," Says the Lord Almighty.
Now in closing let’s note His actions and our response. Jesus said “Take these things away and stop making my Father’s house a house of merchandise.” If Jesus is Lord of your life He is going to take what is His and make rightful use of it. If you are the temple of God then the Lord of the temple will make His temple holy and useful to Him. And sometimes He does that by scourging. He makes us clean by means of discipline.
Heb. 12:5-14 "MY SON, DO NOT REGARD LIGHTLY THE DISCIPLINE OF THE LORD,NOR FAINT WHEN YOU ARE REPROVED BY HIM; FOR THOSE WHOM THE LORD LOVES HE DISCIPLINES,AND HE SCOURGES EVERY SON WHOM HE RECEIVES." It is for discipline that you endure; God deals with you as with sons; for what son is there whom his father does not discipline? But if you are without discipline, of which all have become partakers, then you are illegitimate children and not sons. Furthermore, we had earthly fathers to discipline us, and we respected them; shall we not much rather be subject to the Father of spirits, and live? For they disciplined us for a short time as seemed best to them, but He disciplines us for our good, so that we may share His holiness. All discipline for the moment seems not to be joyful, but sorrowful; yet to those who have been trained by it, afterwards it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness. Therefore, strengthen the hands that are weak and the knees that are feeble, and make straight paths for your feet, so that the limb which is lame may not be put out of joint, but rather be healed. Pursue peace with all men, and the sanctification without which no one will see the Lord.” So the discipline of God our father is to scourge His children and expose in us that which is harmful.
And our response is to cleanse ourselves from all defilement of soul and spirit and body. You know, even though God brought the children of Israel into the Promised Land, they still had to finish driving out the idolaters that were left in there. God gave them the responsibility to drive them out and not to leave any remnant of the evil nations that dwelled there. God planted them, gave them the resources and then commanded them to drive out the ungodly nations lest they fall into sin with them and ruin their nation. And God tells us to do the same thing in 2 Cor. 7:1, “Therefore, having these promises, beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all defilement of flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God.”
Let me close by asking you a question, as you are the body of Christ and Christ is the head of the body, then it shouldn’t it mean that we should have the same desires as our head who is Christ? Can we say with Jesus that zeal for the house of God has consumed you? Has the refining fire of God burned away all the impurities so that you might be a vessel sanctified and set apart for good works? Have you like Paul said that you consider all the things that were formerly gain to you, to be as loss for the sake of knowing Christ as Lord? Is Christ Lord of your life? Have you given Him all?
I encourage all of us to examine ourselves in light of this word that we might be conformed to the image of Jesus Christ in all that we do. That our life would be lived for our own glory, but for the glory of Christ. And for some here today I would ask, is the Spirit of God living in you? Or is the flesh striving against the Spirit? Are you committing adultery with the world yet claiming to be the bride of Christ? I would to God that you will pray with David in Psalm 51, “create in me a clean heart O Lord and renew a right spirit within me.” If you confess your sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness, that you may present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship.
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