John 2:13-2213 The Passover of the Jews was at hand, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. 14 In the temple he found those who were selling oxen and sheep and pigeons, and the money-changers sitting there. 15 And making a whip of cords, 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, “Take these things away; do not make my Father's house a house of trade.” 17 His disciples remembered that it was written, “Zeal for your house will consume me.”
18 So the Jews 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.
To the casual reader of the Bible, it might seem that when Jesus “cleansed the temple”, he was stepping “out of character.” He preached patience, love, forgiveness, etc. Here we see him angry - “enraged”, seemingly out of control. Let us consider what he saw here.
Jewish law required that animals brought to the temple for sacrifice must be unblemished, “perfect”. The temple priests were to examine each animal and determine if it was acceptable. It had become the practice of the temple priests to find something wrong with each animal brought in. They would buy the “unacceptable” animal and sell the worshiper one of their “acceptable” ones. Of course the unacceptable animal was sold back to some other worshiper.
The money changers changed the “coin of the realm” to temple money - making a nice profit in the exchange.
All of this “business” was what Jesus saw going on in the temple courtyard. No wonder he was so outraged. The temple was the place one was supposed to go to commune with God. As he said, my house is to be a “house of prayer”.
But wait - before we begin to pass our judgment on those in the temple courts doing their “crooked business”, we might ought to examine another thing. The apostle Paul wrote: “Know ye not that your bodies are the temple of the Holy Spirit”. So - we need to clean up our own lives before we judge others.
Do you suppose that Jesus is as disappointed with our “unclean temple” as he was with the temple at Jerusalem!
Howard Hayre
