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,[c] 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.
The disciples’ response to Jesus’ cleansing the Temple is to remember what is said in Holy Scripture in the 69th psalm, the zeal of the house of God had
consumed Jesus. The house of God is where, like nowhere else, heaven and earth touch. It is in the house of worship, that God comes down, to manifest himself to his people. This is where Jesus is revealed. In the tabernacle, in the temple, over and over again,
the message is the lamb in the place of the sinner…that is what they saw, again and again, it is all about the substitute, it is all about the lamb in MY place. That is what church is about…that is what brings us together…if our churches are ever about anything
but Jesus and if our worship is not for Him, because of Him and all about Him, then may the Lord come against us!
But the Jews as a whole prove that their understanding is as dark as the court of the Gentiles is filled with beasts. They ask Jesus to vindicate his drastic actions. “What
sign do you show us, since you have done these things?” You come in here acting as though you have some kind of authority over this place, and therefore over us, prove to us by a sign that you have the right to disrupt as you have. This request proves
they just don’t get it. The temple cleansing was itself the sign! Remember the words of the prophet Malachi:
“Behold I send my messenger and he will prepare the way before me. And the Lord whom you seek, will suddenly come to his temple, even the messenger of the covenant,
in whom you delight, behold He is coming, says the Lord of Hosts…” “But who can endure the day of his coming? And who can stand when he appears? For he is like a refiners fire, and like launderers soap. He will purify the sons of Levi, and purge them as gold
and silver so that they may offer to the Lord an offering of righteousness.”
The messenger, John the Baptist, has come, he has prepared the way and now the Lord comes to his temple. The majestic manner in which Jesus performs this task, so
that no one ever dared to try and stop him, (did you notice, no resistance, no one yelling at him, no one trying to tackle him), points us to the reality, that the Messiah had entered the temple and He was purging it.
It is a wicked question they ask, because of their unwillingness to repent. They should have been shamed…The actions betray the conditions of their hearts. They go
through the motions of worship to God, but they despise Him.
Wouldn’t you agree that it is astonishing and fearful how easily, how regularly, how constantly our great faith, our Christian faith, with all of its unique emphasis
upon a personal God who loves us with an everlasting love and who saved us at such a great cost to himself, can be turned even by God’s true children, into a religion like all the others; a regular performance of outward duties mechanically repeated week after
week, that goes through the motions of commitment and love but is all together blind?
These people would not admit guilt, they refused to acknowledge what they had done to the house of God and their irreverence for all that it represents, including
God Himself. Instead of asking the question, they should have confessed their sins, and thanked Jesus for his holy indignation and for loving them enough to keep them from running down a road that leads to rebellion and even death!
Jesus answers the question and does so with what will be an unsolvable puzzle for those who have no faith. “Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it
up.”Jesus is not referring to the building itself, but is referring to himself, His body, that they will destroy, but also Jesus is telling us that the temple and He are united, He is the temple. Israel’s physical temple or tabernacle was the place
in which God’s presence was made known. It was a picture of Christ’s body; everything that went on in the temple was about Him. Every sacrifice, every offering, all blood that was shed, were not the end in themselves and that is what Jesus is saying with these
enigmatic words. Jesus is the final and fullest expression of what all of this was about, the temple was just the shadow, Jesus is the reality.
This is all the more proven to be the point when we considered the wedding at Cana a couple of days ago, when Jesus takes these water pots which represented the cleansings
and ceremonies of the old administration and fills the old with new wine…and now here, Jesus, in a sense takes on, not just the water pots but the whole temple!!!
Now you may be thinking, “Come on Pastor, Jesus IS the temple? I can follow you in this idea that the temple PICTURES him, but don’t you think you are going too
far to say that He is the temple?” In Revelation 21:22 we find a description of the New Jerusalem, heaven, the consummation in its revealed fullness we read, “But I saw no temple in it, for the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb, ARE ITS TEMPLE.”Jesus
is revealing, in this mysterious way, like he did by speaking in parables, that the kingdom is here, in Him…God has come to men…what will we do?
If you want to do an interesting study? Read through John’s gospel and see how many times Jesus says something and there is no understanding at all from those who
hear him!
To Nicodemus: “Jesus answered and said to him, most assuredly I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God. Nicodemus said to him, ‘how
can a man be born when he is old, can he enter a second time into his mother’s womb.”
To the Samaritan woman: “Whoever drinks of this water will thirst again, but whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him will never thirst…the woman said
to him, sir give me this water so that I do not thirst, nor come here to this well to draw water.”
Or Jesus with the disciples, “In the meantime His disciples urged him saying Rabbi, eat. But He said to them, I have food to eat of which you do not know. Therefore,
the disciples said to one another, has another brought him anything to eat.” (As if someone snuck him a sandwich) Jesus said to them, My food is to do the will of Him who sent me and to finish His work…”
I am the living bread which came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread he will live forever, and the bread that I shall give is my flesh which I shall
give for the life of the world. The Jews therefore quarreled among themselves saying, “how can this man give us his flesh to eat?”
These kinds of interchanges are throughout this gospel. Jesus is always confronting those who hear Him to see if they really get it…do they really see that everything,
all of life is about Him…do they understand that if you take Jesus out of the temple the temple will crumble, it will fall apart, without Jesus the temple is meaningless! And, if we take Jesus out of our worship, as the heart and soul of every prayer prayed
and every song sung, then we too will prove for all of our religiousness…we don’t get it.
I read some years ago of an aged woman who would get up early on the Sabbath day and go to her church and then she would walk a few miles to another church. However,
at the second church, the minister spoke to his congregation in a language that this older woman did not speak. She didn’t understand the sermon or participate in the singing because he couldn’t speak their language. Someone asked her why she went, if you
can’t understand the minister or the singing.
She said, “That man speaks Jesus’ name so often and they sing His name with such praise that it does my soul good, just to hear the name of Jesus!” Brothers and sisters,
that is why we worship and that is why we live: to the praise of the Lamb of God!
Prayer: Father, I humbly ask that I would be rid of all things in my life that distract me and take me away from living to the glory of my Savior. Show me such
desires and pursuits and give me the courage to remove them from my life and to replace them with holy aspirations and desires. I want that Jesus in my life, my all, but Lord, there is too much me in my life! This day, may I walk in the beauty of close fellowship
with You and bring honor to my Savior, in Jesus name, Amen.
Psalm 122 (Click ‘show more’ for lyrics)