Picture # 2: Jesus Clears The Temple: John 2:12-25
The clearing, or the cleansing of the temple in Jerusalem, is a picture of Christ entering into the human body and cleansing the soul so the body can become a temple of Christ.
The first great cleansing in our lives is to attack the root of all evil, money (I Timothy 6:10).
"Jesus’ Disruptive Ministry"
Isn’t the account written by John, of Jesus cleansing the temple amazing?
We may think of Jesus as a gentle, soft-spoken comforter; confronting the religious establishment with divine wisdom.
But here Jesus appears with His sleeves rolled up and ready for battle.
After making His own whip out of cords of rope, Jesus charged through the heart of the great temple, striking aggressively at the religious system that had become corrupt.
Imagine Jesus opening the large and small pens and cages of sheep, oxen, and doves with one hand, while popping His homemade whip with the other hand.
Imagine Jesus throwing over tables filled with wine, oil, salt, and money used to change the Hebrew shekels into Roman currency.
He overturned tables and poured out the coins of commerce on the floor.
He drove out the moneychangers and the animals from the temple.
All of this happened at the height of the Passover season, in a city filled with people, who had gathered at the great temple in Jerusalem to commemorate God’s mercies.
This account of Jesus’ aggressive behavior doesn’t set too well with our cherished views of Jesus as a teacher, healer, comforter, and gentle shepherd.
Yet, when I look deeply into His message for us, I see clearly that Jesus is far more confrontational that we often imagine.
His work in our world proves to us that He constantly disrupts things in religious establishments as well as on the personal level of individual lives and souls.
Jesus shows us a lot of confrontation in scripture.
For example, in our first picture we studied last week, Jesus used the purification jars to hold wine instead of water at a wedding in Cana (John 2:1-11).
On another occasion, Jesus entered a home to eat with Pharisees, but He refused to wash before dinner (Luke 11:37-54).
Then, before the food was passed around the table, He called His hosts hypocrites, pronounced doom upon them, and left without eating.
Try that the next time you’re invited over to someone’s house for dinner and see if that doesn’t cause a disturbance!
In individual lives, Jesus also caused confrontation.
An affluent tax collector named Levi was coerced into walking away from a lucrative tax business with all of its security, to join and journey with One who had nowhere to lay His head (Mark 2:13-14; Matthew 8:20).
And today, Jesus is still having that same kind of influence upon people’s lives.
Our very presence here today at our church bears witness to some degree of Christ’s disruptive work in our lives.
Career choices and personal goals are often altered and reshaped because of the Great Commission and the call of Christ in our lives.
Family relationships and decisions for obedience and faithfulness are only a few costs of following our Lord Jesus.
So, the cleansing of the temple is really just one more event in Jesus’ disruptive ministry.
At the temple Jesus was disturbing a very settled and solid institution.
The temple was firmly established, and at the center of Jewish religious life.
The people believed that the temple was the place where God in heaven met people on earth.
It was a symbol of God’s relationship with His people, and it served as a constant reminder of God’s claim upon their lives.
The temple took 46 years to build, and tradition surrounded it stretched back to the reigns of King David and his son, King Solomon.
Why, the temple was even established by God’s own plan (I Kings chapters 5-8).
But something was desperately wrong.
It had become something other than what God intended it to be.
It had become corrupt!
You see, while the sacrificial practices were spelled out thoroughly in Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers; somewhere along the way, the religious leaders found a way to profit personally in their perversion of God’s commandments.
Therefore, we see that Jesus attacks the root of all evil, money (I Timothy 6:10).
No longer was it necessary for people to raise and bring their own sheep, oxen, and doves all the way to Jerusalem for a personal sacrifice.
No longer was it necessary for people to harvest their own fruit and vegetables, and bring the best they had into the temple as a gift of personal sacrifice for God.
Moneychangers in the temple now made quick cash sales on the spot.
And from the profit the moneychangers made on the sales , they had plenty of money to make change for the people.
There was convenience for the people and plenty of business for the temple.
They invented the first drive-through fast service! – a Burger King religion.
The Jewish leaders must have thought to themselves, “What a great system!”
It made the people’s temple responsibilities so much easier and more convenient.
Now the people could enjoy being religious.
The system they had developed was comfortable, secure, and accommodating.
But it was wrong, according to the commandments of God.
So Jesus, the Son of God Himself, steps in and commands change.
The people retaliate and demand a sign because they don’t understand what all the fuss is about.
Jesus answers in verse 19, "Destroy this temple, and I will raise it again in three days."
Can you imagine the responses of the religious leaders?
They said, "It has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and you are going to raise it in three days?" (Verse 20).
What they were really saying was: "Jesus, you’re crazy!"
"No temple can be built in three days."
"And even if you could build a temple in three days, you couldn’t build it by Yourself."
"And besides, things are just fine the way they are!"
"There’s no reason to change anything! We like our "Burger King" religion and theology just the way it is!"
Jesus said, "Destroy the temple, and in three days I will raise it up."
What is Jesus talking about?
He’s talking about tearing down a religious establishment that has lost its way by accommodating itself to the people.
He’s talking about pulling down systems of self-identification.
He’s talking about Himself, after being torn down from the cross.
That He would be raised on the third day, and be the point of intersection between God in heaven and the people on earth.
After Jesus’ death on the cross and His resurrection from the dead, the disciples saw this clearly.
John, who penned our text, remembered that Christ became the perfect temple sacrifice.
John knew, as we know today, that no more altar sacrifices are needed beyond the sacrifices of repentance and trust in Christ as Savior and Lord.
Galatians 1:4,5 says, that Christ "...gave of Himself for our sins to rescue us from the present evil age, according to the will or our God and Father, to whom be glory for ever and ever..."
Jesus is always the One who disrupts our lives and asks us to follow Him.
We belong to Jesus, who boldly confronts us to examine how we worship, and how we trust in Him.
May we thank Him and praise Him for disturbing our complacent lives to make us more complete in the fellowship God created us to be!
Would you make that commitment, to allow Jesus to disturb your life to the point that you’re willing to follow Him?
Praise be to God!
The clearing of the great temple in Jerusalem is our second picture and is a candid snapshot of the maturing Christian in the gospel of John.
In the Old Testament, the great temple was the dwelling place of the spirit of God in the Holy of Holies behind the great veil.
In the New Testament, the Temple of God, the Holy of Holies is in the human heart (I Corinthians 6:19-20).
Jesus Christ, the Son of God lives in me.
If you cut into me, you can’t see Him, you can’t even touch Him.
But if you look at the Christian’s life, you can see His effects.
For 30 years, Jesus had been to that great temple in Jerusalem, and He had watched the people pollute the house of God.
Now that He has come unto His own, He drove the polluters out (Malachi 3:1-3).
It’s a clear picture of Christ entering into our lives when we accept Him as Lord and Savior of our lives.
He disrupts our lives, cleansing our lives so our bodies can be made ready to become a temple of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Oh, we need to examine our lives, the holy temple of God, and see if there is anything unclean there.
If it is, then ask Jesus to cleanse it and drive it out as He did in the temple in Jerusalem.
The spirit of the living God doesn’t dwell in a dirty temple, but He is also always willing, waiting, and ready to help you pull the weeds out of your life by the roots.
Rev. Jimmy Davis
Bayview Baptist Church
5300 Two Notch Road
Columbia, SC 29204
Telephone: 803-754-8690
Email: BayviewBaptist@aol.com
