Why does Jesus care about what people are doing in the temple?

"My Father's House"

(John 2:13-22, Preaching: Pastor Stephen Magee, January 18, 2009)

John 2:13-22 ¹³ 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.

Has the Father's house become a house of trade? (13-16)

The most public portion of Jesus' ministry as presented in John's gospel began with a great confrontation in the temple in Jerusalem just before a Passover celebration. It ended with a similar confrontation after His triumphal entry into Jerusalem at a different Passover. Shortly after that final confrontation, Jesus would do what He came to do. He would die as the Passover Lamb, the Substitute for sinners who would turn away the wrath of God and redeem us. Jesus fulfilled everything that the Old Passover was all about, and in accomplishing this He brought an end to an Old way of tabernacle and temple worship governed by the Law of Moses. That is not at all to suggest that Jesus did not care about that old way. We see in these verses that our Lord was passionate about the temple and the Law of God.

When God came to save us, He came with a whip. The actual word used here can also be translated scourge, and it is very close to the word used to describe what happened to Jesus before He was crucified. It is amazing to consider that the whipping deserved by the Old Testament abusers of the Lord's temple area, was the very scourging that the Son of God took in our place before His death. Here Jesus had the whip in His hands, and He was clearing away from the temple courts those who were operating a sort of religious concession stand on the temple grounds, selling animals needed for sacrifice and providing a currency translation service for those who would need to have the authorized coins for their worship. He was not pleased that the guardians of worship had taken it upon themselves to change God's plans for the use of His space. Soon others would have the scourge in their hands and they would turn it against the holy Son of God. That would be later. For now, Jesus cleared the temple.

The events in John's gospel that we have seen up to now have been somewhat private, but this was about as public as could be. Jesus was not presenting Himself to Jerusalem as someone weak. He was deliberately going into a place that He claimed to be His Father's house. He came with outrage over the things that His servants had done there. He was in charge, and He implicitly insisted on His way in that place. As unlikely as these events may have seemed on a human level, could anyone have stopped Him? He was passionate, powerful, and in control.

Zeal for the Father's house consumed Him. (17)

When His disciples considered what took place that day, they would remember a quote from Psalm 69, "Zeal for your house will consume me." This psalm is worthy of our close examination. It is one of the most frequently quoted psalms in the New Testament. It contains certain verses that were clearly fulfilled by Christ. "They hated me without a cause," "The reproaches of those who reproached you fell on me," and especially "They gave me poison for food, and for my thirst they gave me sour wine to drink." (Read Psalm 69.)

The larger story of the psalm is revealing. It begins with a call for help reminiscent of the call of the prophet Jonah after being thrown into the waters, "Save me, O God! For the waters have come up to my neck. I sink in deep mire, where there is no foothold; I have come into deep waters, and the flood sweeps over me." It speaks of the attacks of the enemies of God against the psalmist, yet it also refers to God's actions against him, "They persecute him whom You have struck down, and they recount the pain of those You have wounded." God is the "You" here that the Psalmist sings to. God has somehow struck His servant. The end of the psalm speaks of the greatest vindication of the psalmist in a renewed Zion, where all of the residents love God's Name. This psalm makes most sense when we notice this one detail: There are times when the psalmist refers to himself as a singular righteous man facing trouble, and there are other places where there is a larger group of righteous ones who are facing great trial.

In the middle of the psalm is the verse that is quoted in John 2: "Zeal for your house has consumed me, and the reproaches of those who reproach you have fallen on me." The psalmist is hated by others because of his zeal for the Lord's house. People make fun of him. Drunkards make up songs to laugh at him. They give him poison for food, and they mock him in his thirst during his time of deepest distress, when he has been struck down somehow by the God whom he loves. Through his distress, he still calls out to God for salvation, a salvation that is defined by this plea: "Set me on high!" Again, we remember that there is a larger group of those who will be associated with this suffering one who has zeal for the Lord's house. The psalm ends with them being encouraged because God has heard the cries of the one righteous servant, a fact which is evident to his followers because he was set on high. "When the humble see it, they will be glad," and their hearts will be revived in the troubles that they face. They will know for certain, because of what has happened to this one righteous man, that "the Lord hears the needy."

The destiny of the man who was struck down by God and who is set on high is now clear today as the central events of the work of salvation have come to pass. The singular righteous servant who has zeal for the Lord's temple and who identifies with a larger group of sinners can be none other than Jesus Christ. Of course He was struck down by God through His death on the cross. He was set on high in His subsequent resurrection and ascension. These facts were seen by many and have become the source of great encouragement to the church. We know that resurrection is real. We know that whatever trouble we face now is temporary. We will be with Jesus Christ in a new temple land, spoken of glowingly in the last three verses of the psalm:

34 Let heaven and earth praise him, the seas and everything that moves in them. 35 For God will save Zion and build up the cities of Judah, and people shall dwell there and possess it; 36 the offspring of his servants shall inherit it, and those who love his name shall dwell in it.

He will raise a new house for God. (18-22)

One reason that the Lord was so incensed about the abuse of the temple is that He was the fullness of everything that a perfectly righteous Old Testament worshiper of God should have been. For Him to see the abuse of the temple and to shrug it off as somehow OK was simply impossible for Him and it would have been wrong. There was another reason that He cared about the temple so much. He knew what the temple was all about. It was not just a special place made by men for the purposes of men. The temple was a picture of the coming kingdom of God, when the union of Messiah and His people in the land of resurrection would be a holy temple of God forever. To mar that picture with the commercial activities of men was simply inexcusable. It was as if Moses, having seen the burning bush in the wilderness, instead of taking off his shoes on that holy ground as God commanded, decided to sell tickets to passing nomads because of the amazing spectacle of a fiery bush that will not burn. We need to fear God.

While people were unable to effectively stop the Son of God that day, they did question Him. They demanded that He show some sort of sign to justify His bold actions. He was the one who made the subtle connection between the Old Testament temple and His own resurrection body when He said, "Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up." They did not understand what He was saying. He knew their confusion and their hostility, but He did not explain the meaning of what He said, that He was talking about His body, a fact that His disciples would only understand after the resurrection. Notice that He said that He would raise up His own body. He would say this in another way later in the gospel in John 10:18 when He spoke about how He would give His life for us, "No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it up again. This charge I have received from my Father." Jesus understood at the very beginning of His ministry that in His resurrection, He would be taking His life up again, and that this resurrection would be a true rebuilding of the temple. In Him we live. Particularly in heaven we will know this and feel this, that we are in the temple of God, and that the resurrected Jesus, united to His Father and to His beloved church is the temple of the Holy Spirit. This is why John writes about the heavenly Jerusalem in Revelation 21:22, "I saw no temple in the city, for its temple is the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb." This is why He tells people to abide in Him.

Jesus knew and loved the Old Testament temple, not only because it was the place of the worship of God in His day, but also because it stood for the place of His close communion with His people forever in heaven. That was so important to Him that zeal for His Father's house consumed Him. He was willing to suffer and die so that the glory of His Father would be satisfied in the saving of lost sinners. He knew He was coming to die for us. He knew He would rise again. He even knew that His resurrection would come on the third day after His death. He knew that this was a fulfillment of the Scriptures. He understood the cries of the prophet Jonah for help from God, and that the timing of what He called in another place "the sign of Jonah" had something to do with Him. He understood from Psalm 69 that if the suffering people of God in the gospel age were to have hope of vindication, they would need to be able to consider that their Lord had cried for help, and that His cries were answered with resurrection. Do you need encouragement in your troubles? Look to this Jesus. He carried your sorrows on the cross. He cried out and He was set on high forever. His body is a resurrection temple. There is room there for you. Let heaven and earth praise him, the seas and everything that moves in them. For God will save His heavenly Zion and build up our heavenly cities, and we shall dwell there and possess those places; and His servants, the people of His holy Servant Jesus, shall inherit it, for we are joint-heirs with Christ, and those who love His name shall dwell in that place.

Questions for meditation and discussion:

1. How would people have perhaps justified the commercial activity in the temple?

2. What do we learn about Christ from these actions in light of the Old Testament citation?

3. What do you make of Jesus words about destroying and raising the temple?

4. Why did Jesus react so strongly against those selling things in the temple?