The Sign of Cleansing the Temple
John 2: 13-25
Religious zeal was certainly a great part of Jewish culture: We saw in John 2: 1-12 that the purification rites of the Jews were held in high esteem, but exterior washings did not provide heart cleansing. The Savior changed the water into wine at the wedding feast in Cana of Galilee, a miracle and sign pointing to the New Covenant in Jesus’ blood which would be poured out for forgiveness of sin.
The Temple and Passover
Today we look at the sign of Jesus’ cleansing of the Temple, found in John 2:13 “The Passover of the Jews was at hand, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem.” 14 In the temple (refers to the various courts surrounding the temple as well as the holy place) he found those who were selling oxen and sheep and pigeons, and the money-changers sitting there. 15 And making a whip of cords, (probably a handful of reeds) he drove them all out of the temple, with the sheep and oxen. And he poured out the coins of the money-changers and overturned their tables. 16 And he told those who sold the pigeons (or doves), “Take these things away; do not make my Father’s house a house of trade (or merchandise).” 17 His disciples remembered that it was written, “Zeal for your house will consume me.” (Ps. 69:9)
18 So the Jews (answered and) said to him, “What sign do you show us for doing these things?” 19 Jesus answered them, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” 20 The Jews then said, “It has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and will you raise it up in three days?” 21 But he was speaking about the temple of his body. 22 When therefore he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this, and they believed the Scripture and the word that Jesus had spoken.”
Not every “sign” given by Jesus in John’s Gospel includes a miraculous phenomenon. Today’s sign might be a “miracle” in the sense that to do what Jesus did in the temple courts without being arrested and without receiving immediate repercussions from the Temple Leaders is astounding. This cleansing of the temple has similarities to the cleansing of the temple recorded in the Synoptic Gospels (Mt., Mk, Lk.) during the week of Passover directly prior to Jesus’ crucifixion, but the one in John is several years before that event.(30 A.D.) In Jesus’ ministry there are two cleansings, the one recorded here in John 2 at the onset of Jesus’ ministry, and the one at the end of His Ministry prior to His death recorded in the other Gospels.
Remember that the Passover commemorated the deliverance of the Jews from slavery in Egypt; a lamb was slain and the blood was sprinkled on the doorposts of their homes so that the angel of death would pass over them when he saw the blood. The lamb which was slain pointed to the Lamb of God from God who would be slain for sinners. Because worshipers came from all across Israel and the Roman Empire during Passover, many would not bring their sacrifices with them. Merchants, seeing an opportunity to make money, set up areas in the outer temple courts in order to sell animals. Money changers also sent up businesses to exchange foreign currency into Jewish or Tyrian coins, (coins issued from the city of Tyre) which were of higher silver consistency. The money-changers and the animal dealers charged a high fee for their services, exploiting the people who had come to worship.
STOP MAKING the HOUSE OF THE FATHER OF ME a House of Trade
Jesus enters the outer Temple courts and sees people consumed with buying and selling; their very presence and practice of their trade on temple grounds causes the Righteous One to grab a handful of reeds and chase the “marketeers” out of the Temple Courts. Notice that at first, He doesn’t even speak! The presence alone of His Righteous Wrath is enough to make them ALL move out in a hurry. Tables of money are overturned and when He comes to the bird vendors and their cages He exclaims: “STOP MAKING MY FATHER’S HOUSE A HOUSE OF MERCHANDISE!”
Literally Jesus says: “STOP MAKING the HOUSE OF THE FATHER OF ME a House of Trade.” Merchandising on the temple grounds had been an ongoing act of desecration by God’s people and in His command to stop this practice, Jesus declares His Sonship and His very Deity: You have to STOP selling in the House of the Father of Me.” “Stop turning my Father’s House into a ‘shop’.” I am the One come down from Heaven to do my Father’s work; this is My Father’s House and you’ve desecrated even the Lord’s courts which should be considered HOLY. Habakkuk 2:20 declared: “The LORD is in his holy temple; let all the earth keep silence before Him.”
God’s Holiness demands a reverent approach to worship Him and God’s Holiness demands holiness in the way we worship Him. When WE come to worship we come to glory in our Redeemer, in the Christ who accepted the wrath of a Holy God against sin. Can such a God tolerate irreverence? By allowing such things to occur in the outer courts, the temple leaders were both obstructing the Gentile’s entrance to worship, as well as desecrating the privilege and purpose of worshiping the Only True and Holy God.
Isaiah 56:6 had said: And the foreigners who join themselves to the Lord, to minister to him, to love the name of the Lord, and to be his servants, everyone who keeps the Sabbath and does not profane it, and holds fast my covenant 7 these I will bring to my holy mountain, and make them joyful in my house of prayer; their burnt offerings and their sacrifices will be accepted on my altar; for my house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples.” God’s House would be a house of prayer for all people, not a warehouse for merchandise.
Jesus is reminding those present of the age-old commands for acceptable worship which had been established in the Old Testament, but He was also purifying the Temple by removing evil barriers which had been erected to the true worship of the True God. He’s not rejecting Temple worship, but pointing to the fulfillment in the new epoch of the Messiah Himself. He changed the water into wine, anticipating the arrival of the new covenant in His Own Blood, (the New Order of Things) and PURE ACCEPTABLE worship would be offered in the future because He would FIRST offer Himself as the Perfect Sacrifice, and so fulfill the old sacrificial system.
“Zeal for your house will consume me.”
In response to the actions of Jesus, verse 17 says; “His disciples remembered that it was written, “Zeal for your house will consume me.” Psalm 69:9 reads: “For zeal for your house has consumed me, and the reproaches of those who reproach you have fallen on me.” The tense used in “it was written” tells us that God’s Word was written in the past and carries with it results through the present. It shows us the continuing authoritative position of Scripture, demonstrating that in every step of Jesus’ life, Scripture is being fulfilled.
Jesus is not some rebel or revolutionary who is trying to reform things: The cleansing of the Temple is an act of the Messiah from Heaven, sent from the Father’s side and He would suffer the reproach of the people as the focal point of their rebellion against God. Only the Son sent from the Father’s side could accomplish the perfect will of the Holy God. Jesus is not a reformer but the Son from the Father’s side, who carries a consuming zeal that is due to the opposition of others and the harm inflicted by them toward a Holy God and so Jesus has a Holy jealousy for the Honor of God and for reverence to be displayed in His House. When David wrote Psalm 69 he was being persecuted for his zeal toward God’s House and God’s Honor and after Jesus would cleanse the temple the second time, He would be crucified for His zeal. Jesus, who never did anything BUT honor God in His Life on earth would have the sins of those who had dishonored God, fall on Himself.
“WHAT SIGN DO YOU SHOW US?”
1 Corinthians 1:22 says that Jews demand signs and the Greeks demand wisdom for the authenticating of authority. “Though Jesus was asked by the Jews several times to give them a sign, he never acceded to their demand. In the present case, Jesus proceeds instead to elaborate on the significance of the act that he had just performed-the clearing of the temple. True to the Jews’ spiritual blindness, they had missed the sign performed right before their very eyes. The Jews demanded a sign (in the sense of divine legitimation); Jesus had just given it, thus asserting his messianic authority. Moreover, for the evangelist, the symbolism underlying Jesus’ act anticipates Jesus’ death and resurrection and the replacement of Jewish temple worship with faith in Jesus as Messiah.” (“John”, Andreas Kostenberger, p. 108)
The action of cleansing the Temple would normally cause Jewish leadership to immediately respond, if not for the fact that a challenge had been given to their leadership and authority, they should recognize that Jesus had made a claim to having Messianic authority. The fact is, THEY RECEIVED THE SIGN, but they would continue to test Jesus in the future, while refusing to submit themselves to self-examination, conviction and correction…Listening to the words of Jesus and being corrected and obedient are impossible disciplines for the unbelieving proud heart.
Jesus’ response to them is cryptic but beautiful, isn’t it? “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” The word that Jesus uses meaning “temple” referred to the sanctuary or the Holy of Holies, where God met His people at the mercy seat over the Ark of the Covenant, NOT THE TEMPLE GROUNDS in general. Jesus was not speaking of the stone temple of Herod, but in verse 21 we understand that He was speaking of His own physical human body. Later false witnesses would testify that Jesus said that HE would destroy the Temple building, but HE never said that: He implied that if YOU (second person pl.), if You would destroy the temple, I would raise it up again in three days, which Jesus could very well accomplish by the Word of His mouth, but that isn’t what He was talking about.
Ironically, the Jews themselves ultimately brought about the fulfillment of the sign that they asked Jesus to produce because they put Jesus to death by their own sinful unbelief, providing the ultimate sacrifice for sin according to the predetermined plan of God, which would make the Temple obsolete!
John tells us that Jesus was speaking of the temple of His body: The physical body in which the WORD BECAME FLESH would be crucified after the second cleansing of the temple, and then that same body would be raised from the dead after three days in the grave. Jesus would be the final and far better, no, the BEST meeting place of God.
Later, when Jesus was raised from the dead, “his disciples remembered that he had said this, and they believed the Scripture and the word that Jesus had spoken.” It was not until Jesus actually died and rose again that the disciples believed because the events were so unlike what the 1st century disciples understood the Messiah to be.
We’ll close with verses 23-25 which is the segue way into Chapter 3: “Now when he was in Jerusalem at the Passover Feast, many believed in his name when they saw the signs that he was doing. 24 But Jesus on his part did not entrust himself to them, because he knew all people 25 and needed no one to bear witness about man, for he himself knew what was in man.”
Many believed in Jesus because of His miraculous signs, but not everyone who is impressed by the “spectacular” wholeheartedly commits and trusts in Him as Savior and Lord. Jesus demonstrated through these words that although He did not exercise divine omniscience at all times while in the Flesh, He certainly possessed the ability to look and know the very heart of man and also their very motives. Jesus did not entrust himself to them because he knew their hearts. He knew that to those who were given the right to become children of God, they would trust habitually and continually in the very person of Jesus Christ.
1 Corinthians 1:22-25: “For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, 23 but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, 24 but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. 25 For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.” Praise God for His Indescribable Gift of the Gospel of Grace in our Lord Jesus which turns hearts to God!
“STOP MAKING the HOUSE OF THE FATHER OF ME a House of Trade”
• God’s Holiness demands holiness and reverence in our approach and in our worship of Him. (Hab 2:20)
• God’s House was to be a House of Prayer FOR ALL PEOPLES. (Isa 56:6)
• PURE ACCEPTABLE worship would be offered in the future because the sacrificial system would be fulfilled in the Messiah.
“ZEAL FOR YOUR HOUSE WILL CONSUME ME.” (Ps. 69:9)
• The continuing authoritative position of Scripture is being fulfilled in every step of Jesus’ life.
• Jesus is not a rebel or revolutionary but He is the Son from the Father’s side with consuming jealousy for the Honor of God and His House.
• Jesus would have the sins of those who had dishonored God, fall on Himself.
“WHAT SIGN DO YOU SHOW US?” (1 Cor. 1:22)
• The Jews had missed the sign performed right before their very eyes.
• The Jews RECEIVED THE SIGN, but refused to submit themselves to self-examination, conviction and correction.
• Jesus would be the final and BEST meeting place of God.
• Not everyone who is impressed by the “spectacular” wholeheartedly commits and trusts in Him as Savior and Lord.
On that final day there will no longer be merchants in the house of the Lord Almighty. (Zech 14:21, Malachi 3:1 & 3)
