Jesus: the Great Purifier (John 2:12-25)
“I’m Sarah, I’m sixteen; Last night I failed. I prayed for more strength, So why did I yield? He said he loved me, Brought me flowers and all; Then he took me upstairs And caused me to fall.
I feel so ashamed, So dirty inside. He’s taken my heart; Now I want to go hide. I let down my parents, And they trusted me so. Can God forgive me? I need to know.
Oh I see, God can forgive! It says so right here; Jesus died for my sins, So I need not fear. My past is all cleansed; I’m whiter than snow. Yet my sin is still sin; Consequences don’t go. Today I start over, My purity new! I’m God’s little girl, clean through and through!”
The title of today’s message is Jesus: the Great Purifier
1 "See, I will send my messenger, who will prepare the way before me. Then suddenly the Lord you are seeking will come to his temple; the messenger of the covenant, whom you desire, will come," says the LORD Almighty. 2 But who can endure the day of his coming? Who can stand when he appears? For he will be like a refiner’s fire or a launderer’s soap. 3 He will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver; he will purify the Levites and refine them like gold and silver. Then the LORD will have men who will bring offerings in righteousness. Mal 3:1-3 (NIV)
So this passage tells us tells us who, where and why. Who would come? the Lord. Where would He come? The Temple. Why would He come: to cleanse, to purify and to restore. This passage in Malachi is the prophecy, let’s read about its fulfillment in John 2. As a reminder, last week we saw the miracle of Jesus Christ, turning water into wine, bringing joy to the people, and the Bible says the miracle revealed His glory. Today we see the cleansing work of Jesus, and we see this work reveals His passion.
12 After this he went down to Capernaum with his mother and brothers and his disciples. There they stayed for a few days. 13 When it was almost time for the Jewish Passover, Jesus went up to Jerusalem. 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." 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 at the Passover Feast, many people saw the miraculous signs he was doing and believed in his name. 24 But Jesus would not entrust himself to them, for he knew all men. 25 He did not need man’s testimony about man, for he knew what was in a man. John 2:12-25 (NIV)
Last week we saw Jesus’ miracle of transformation as He changed water into wine, and this week we see Jesus’ work of purification, as He cleanses the temple of all defilement. So that we might say that in these two stories we have a summary of what Jesus came to this earth to do: He came to transform and purify, to change and to cleanse.
Now in the story we are examining today we see Jesus going to Jerusalem to the Temple to observe the Jewish feast of Passover. He came to the Temple to pray, to read the Scriptures, to worship, but what He found at the temple infuriated Him. He found the temple turned into a marketplace, the Synagogue had become a store where people were exchanging money, and buying and selling, etc.
Now this buying and selling, in and of itself was not wrong. People would come from all over the middle-East in order to celebrate the Passover, and they would come with their different currencies, and they would have to purchase sheep and cattle, or doves if they were poor, in order to make sacrifice. So they would come with the currency of Lebanon, for instance, and had to get it changed into the currency of Jerusalem in order to purchase their sacrificial animals. So they would first exchange their currency and then they would purchase their sacrificial animals. Nothing wrong with this.
What was wrong was where this all happened. It happened in the Temple, the place that was supposed to be set apart for worship of the living God, a place where people could come and hear the Scriptures, and pray to God and offer their sacrifices and worship in their hearts, but some greedy people had capitalized on the needs of the people and were seeking to profit from them, and so they had set up shop right in the temple.
But Jesus was filled with zeal for God’s house, He was full of passion for the Temple, He desired the temple be set apart for its designed use. So in verses 15-16 he makes this huge ruckus, turning over tables, driving out money changers, chasing out sheep and cattle and doves. Some people have estimated that there would have been literally hundreds of animals in the outer court of the temple at this time, and here Jesus is chasing them all out. I mean this whole scene looks like it could be made into a movie called the Farm Animals Great Escape; cattle and sheep racing out the door, doves flying everywhere, farmers chasing after their animals. All because of that wild Man with a whip. But see, Jesus is passionate, He is red-hot about God’s temple, He is eaten up with zeal that God’s temple be pure. So the Lord comes to His temple, He cleanses the temple, removes all that defiles, that the temple might be restored to its rightful use.
Now before we go on, I want us to go deeper, and apply what we have read so far. We’ve seen that Jesus was zealous for God’s temple; we have seen that He was passionate about God’s house, so He cleansed it, He reclaimed it, made it what it was designed to be.
So let me say this: Jesus has not changed in 2,000 years. He is still passionate about His temple. But let’s look at a truth just now that redefines the word “temple”, in 1 Corinthians chapter 3. In this chapter Paul defines the temple a little differently. He tells the Corinthians that they are God’s field, God’s building and God’s temple. Look at 1 Corinthians 3:16: “Don’t you know that you yourselves are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit lives in you?” 1 Corinthians 3:16 (NIV)
See the temple of God is no longer a building, it is His people. God no longer dwells in a temple made by hands, He lives in us, and His passion, His zeal is the same today as it was 2,000 years ago. He desires that His people be pure, He is zealous to cleanse the temple, to reclaim us that we be what we are designed to be. So let me ask just now: is there anything in our lives that defiles us? Is there any habit that is weakening us, that corrupts us, that we need to give up and turn away from?
See if we can learn anything at all from this story in John 2, it is that Jesus is passionate about God’s temple. In fact it was prophesied in the Old Testament that Jesus would be extremely zealous for the Temple. Psalm 69:9 says “zeal for your house consumes me” Psalms 69:9 (NIV) and John applies that verse to Jesus. He will do whatever it takes to cleanse and purify and restore the Temple to our original purpose, which is to be an undefiled house of worship, a house of prayer.
Then we come to verse 18 and the Jews demand of Jesus a miraculous sign to prove His authority to do what He just did. Oh what unbelieving hearts they had; demanding a sign of Jesus, requiring Him to prove Himself to them. But Jesus doesn’t take orders from atheists, He doesn’t bow to the demands of the unbelieving. Doing a miracle for them would have only hardened them in their unbelief.
When the athiest Robert G. Ingersoll was delivering some lectures against Christ and the Bible, his speaking ability usually brought him of a large crowd. One night after a speech in which he severely attacked man’s faith in Christ, he dramatically took out his watch and said, "I’ll give God a chance to prove that He exists and that He is almighty. I challenge You, God, to strike me dead within 5 minutes!" First there was silence, then people became uneasy. Some left the hall, unable to take the nervous strain of the occasion, and one woman fainted. At the end of the 5 minutes, the atheist exclaimed, "See! There is no God. I am still very much alive!" After the lecture a young man said to a Christian lady, "Well, Ingersoll certainly proved something tonight!" Her reply was so cool! "Yes he did," she said. "He proved God is not taking orders from atheists tonight."
God has never taken orders from atheists, nor has He performed signs for unbelievers. Jesus wasn’t about to pop a rabbit out of a hat in order to obey the demands of the unbelieving Jews. Jesus is not just some spiritual David Copperfield.
But Jesus would do something to prove His authority to cleanse the Temple. And it would be greater than any magic trick ever done. He tells them what the sign would be in verse 19: 19 Jesus answered them, "Destroy this temple, and I will raise it again in three days." Now that would be a sign wouldn’t it. Not even David Copperfield could do that!
But the Jews think Jesus is talking about their Temple, and in verse 20 they start talking about how long it took to build it and could Jesus raise it again in 3 days? But Jesus actually has in mind something far greater than rebuilding of the Jewish temple. He here predicted that the Jews would put Him to death, and that He would rise again in 3 days.
See verse 21 tells us Jesus is referring to the Temple of His body. The Jews would kill Him, and He would be raised to life in 3 days. Here Jesus foretells His own death by the hands of the Jews and His resurrection from the dead in 3 days.
But do you see the amazing thing that Jesus is doing here? He is connecting the gospel with His authority to cleanse the temple. He says that His death and resurrection is both His method, and His God-given right to purify, and to cleanse.
And right here is where we see that zeal for God’s house really did eat Him up. The passion of Christ consumed Him, literally. Zeal for the Temple (us) moved Jesus along and brought Him to the place where He would willingly and joyfully lay down His life for us. Now that is passion! What else would drive a man to pursue His own death, except His overwhelming, undeniable passionate love? Paul said Jesus “loved me and gave Himself for me.” And then He rose from the dead 3 days later, having reconciled and vindicated and approved all who believe.
And His death and resurrection are proof of His authority to cleanse. In other words, His great sacrifice for us bought Him the right, the authority to cleanse away our sin. I want us to see this truth clearly, so let’s look just now at Ephesians chapter 5. And in this chapter, watch for the connection between Jesus’ death and our cleansing. Ephesians 5 is the great relationship chapter, and this particular passage is addressed to husbands, and Ephesians 5:25 says:
25 Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her 26 to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, 27 and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless. Ephesians 5:25-27 (NIV)
This passage tells us that Christ sacrificed Himself on the cross for one reason: to wash and cleanse us from our sins; He died to present us as a radiant church, to wash away the stain of our sin, thereby making us holy and blameless. Isn’t it amazing that through Jesus’ death, all who believe are washed and cleansed, made holy and blameless, pure and spotless? "Purity in Gods children is not the outcome of obedience to His law, but the rather the result of the cleansing work of His grace” (Oswald Chambers).
Oh we may not feel like it or even act like it sometimes, we have struggles and failures and slips and falls. But in Christ, God has washed all that away, He has cleansed His Temple by His own death and resurrection. So Jesus declares that the authority He has to cleanse the Temple will be proved by the destruction and rebuilding of His temple, the temple of His body.
But then we come to an interesting verse, John fast-forwards about 3.5 years in verse 22 and he says:
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. John 2:22 (NIV)
So you might picture the scene in the upper room, where the disciples are gathered, Jesus has been dead for several days, doors are locked for fear of the Jews, and in walks Jesus Christ saying “peace be with you” and He shows them His hands and His side, proving that it is really Him. By the way I think it is interesting that He connects their peace with His scars. And the disciples are shocked. And you can picture one of them, maybe John, saying to another one, “hey you remember way back when He said to the Jews destroy this temple and I will raise it again in 3 days?” Well here He is alive again, just like He said. And they believed.
But note something else that they believed in verse 22. It wasn’t just Jesus’ own words that He would die and rise again, no they were now starting to recall what the Scriptures themselves said. They were now starting to think of all the Old Testament passages they had memorized but just didn’t understand. Maybe they recalled Isaiah 53:11:
After the suffering of his soul, he will see the light [of life] and be satisfied. Isaiah 53:11 (NIV)
Maybe someone would say “hey John, why didn’t we understand this before. See how it says after His suffering He would see the light of life? That’s talking about Jesus.”
And then another one would say “hey you remember when Isaac was under the death sentence on that 3 day journey, and how Abraham put the wood on his back and he carried it up the hill?” “Yeah I do.” Well then Abraham received his son back, as from the dead, on the 3rd day.” “Oh you’re right”
And maybe someone else says, “hey remember in Psalm 22 when he said, “they pierced my hands and my feet, they laid me in the dust of death?” “Yes I do” “well after the piercing and death it says, ‘I will declare your Name to my brothers, I will praise Him in the congregation.” I’ve always wondered how someone would have his hands and feet pierced and be laid in the dust and then be able to declare God’s Name and praise Him. Now I know.”
Or maybe they said, “I always wondered what David meant when he said, “Your holy one will not see decay or corruption. I mean we all know that starting on the 4th day after death the human body decays. Oh I see, Jesus rose from the dead on the 3rd day, just like it says.”
And they believed what the Scriptures said about Jesus dying for their sins and rising from the dead on the 3rd day. And in believing they found life in His Name.
And then this passage closes with one of the greatest proofs that Jesus Christ is God that was ever written. Verse 25 says:
He did not need man’s testimony about man, for he knew what was in a man. John 2:25 (NIV)
So notice with me, just from this chapter alone, John chapter 2, all the proofs of the Deity of Jesus Christ: First, He changed water into wine. He is sovereign over nature. Only God is Lord over creation. And then He predicted the future, He said that the Jews would kill Him but He would come back to life in 3 days. This is further proof that He is God. He knows the future because He controls the future. Then we notice that He actually did die and then rise again. Only God has life in Himself, He is omnipotent, all-powerful. Death can’t hold on to Him, the devil can’t hold on to Him, the grave cannot contain Him because He is God. And the last thing is that He knew what was inside of people. He knows the hearts of all people. Only God knows what is inside of us.
All of this confirms the truth that in the Beginning was the Word (Jesus) and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. God has control over nature, God can predict the future, God has life in Himself and God knows the hearts and the thoughts of all people. It was God Who came to this earth in human form. God came to this temple and cleansed it. And then God, in the Person of Jesus Christ, went to the cross where He cleansed the world of sin, washing us in His own blood.
See this temple cleansing at the very beginning of His ministry is a picture of what He would do at the end of His ministry, as He suffered and died on the cross to wash out the stains of our sin, to wash away all of our guilt and shame, and to make us to be what we were designed to be: a cleansed temple of the Living God where God is worshipped in spirit and in truth.
So my question to us just now is this: have we surrendered to this passion of Jesus Christ to cleanse? Have we opened our hearts and lives to Him, and said, “Jesus, come and cleanse me”? Have we surrendered ourselves to Him and asked Him to clothe us in robes of white? Have we said, “Come and dwell in this temple?” Have we said, “Fire of heaven, purify me.”
Can I encourage each one of us here this morning, to pray this song to God, making these words our words of prayer to God? Let’s listen to the first verse, and then we will sing together as a prayer to God.
