Destroy This Temple
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Now the Passover of the Jews was at hand, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem.
And He found in the temple those who sold oxen and sheep and doves, and the money changers doing business.
When He had made a whip of cords, He drove them all out of the temple, with the sheep and the oxen, and poured out the changers’ money and overturned the tables.
And He said to those who sold doves, “Take these things away! Do not make My Father’s house a house of merchandise!”
Then His disciples remembered that it was written, “Zeal for Your house has eaten Me up.”
So the Jews answered and said to Him, “What sign do You show to us, since You do these things?”
Jesus answered and said to them, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.”
Then the Jews said, “It has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and will You raise it up in three days?”
But He was speaking of the temple of His body.
Therefore, when He had risen from the dead, His disciples remembered that He had said this to them; and they believed the Scripture and the word which Jesus had said.
There is a striking contrast from this scene to his previous scene a couple verse earlier when Jesus turn water into wine.
The previous scene Jesus was a invited guest of a marriage.
This scene Jesus was a unwelcome stranger. “Though it was His Fathers house.”
The previous scene it was a miracle of grace.
This scene a miracle of Judgement.
In the previous scene they honored Jesus .
In this scene they dishonored Him.
It reveals to honor Him is to be blessed and to dishonor Him is sure Judgement.
vs 2:14
The temple resembled more of a market then a place of worship.
It wasn’t that they where selling books or coffee, but they became a full blown enterprise.
Everything in The Lords house was to be Holy and sacred.
This is a lay out of the temple.
Antonia fortress- was military garrison adjacent to the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, constructed by Herod the Great .
More then likely the soldiers responsible for carrying out Jesus execution came from this fortress.
Also when Paul was attacked in the temple court he escaped to this fortress.
The temple was about 4 football fields in size. And the temple area can hold up to 75,000 people.
The first-century historian Josephus mentions four courts in the temple:
1. The outer court was open to all people, foreigners included; only menstruating women were refused admission.
2. The second court was open to all Jews and, when uncontaminated by any defilement, their wives.
3. The third court was limited to male Jews who were clean and purified.
4. The fourth court was limited to priests robed in their priestly vestments.
Various measures where taken to limit Gentiles access to the inner area of the temple.
There where about 14 elevated steps the separated the inner court and the outer court, as well as a stone partition that stood about 4.5 feet.
The Gentiles where not allowed to enter any place that was specially reserve for the Jews. It was punishable by death.
In stone there where signs written in Greek that read “No alien may enter within the partition around the sanctuary and the enclosure. Whoever is caught, on himself shall he put blame for the death which will ensue”
They also had signs that said warning non-Jews should enter this area.
If you brought a gentile into the inner parts of the temple it made the holy place ritually unclean. Paul was accused of this.
crying out, “Men of Israel, help! This is the man who teaches all men everywhere against the people, the law, and this place; and furthermore he also brought Greeks into the temple and has defiled this holy place.”
So the temple was a very holy place. It was suppose to be.
So in the “Court of the Gentiles this is where they would buy and sale and trade.
The buying and selling of animals in the area was probably rationalized as a convenience for the foreigners coming into Jerusalem.
But because it was so much foreign traffic, and they all needed to make sacrifices it became a major income for the city.
Just like if you go in curtain destinations around the world the foreigners are the economy. Go to Hawaii, or curtain parts of Mexico, Florida etc. etc. the foreigners rack in the bucks.
“With money to be made, worship easily became corrupted.”
“Instead of brokenness and repentance, holy adoration and prolonged petition, there is noisy commerce.”
Instead of quietness before God in prayer, and fellowship of the saints. There is business transactions, networking, socialization, comparisons, and entertainment.
Because there were so many foreigners they came with foreign currency. So they money changers would exchange money for them. This was a enterprise.
Actually in the temple they had there own Temple currency, so you couldn’t use the Roman denarii which had pagans gods on them, or images of emperors.
They had a full blown operation at this temple.
Its amazing that God calls us a temple of The Holy Spirit
Or do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and you are not your own?
We can make our temple as one of enterprise. Distort the very purpose why I’m created.
We need Jesus to come and flip over tables in our souls. Because we have defiled His temple. We have allow things to seep in, we have been deceived in many ways.
All the while justifying our actions.
Theres foreigners they need to make sacrifices.
But only Christ can cleanse the temple of your heart.
Lets go back to Jn. 2:15.
John 2:15 (NKJV)
When He had made a whip of cords, He drove them all out of the temple, with the sheep and the oxen, and poured out the changers’ money and overturned the tables.
And He said to those who sold doves, “Take these things away! Do not make My Father’s house a house of merchandise!”
Jesus actions weren’t cruel but it was forceful and necessary.
He used the whip to drive out the cattle, you aren’t easily gonna drive out cattle without a whip.
It saids that He made the whip. clubs and weapons where forbidden in the temple. So He made a whip.
So it was premeditated that he was going to do this. This incident wasn’t impulsive but He’s making this whip.
When he began to drive out the sheep, and oxen, theres no reason to believe he didn’t hit the merchants too.
Jesus was so forceful because The only placewhere Gentiles could come and pray in the temple was the court of the Gentiles, and this had been turned into a noisy market
The only place for foreigners to comes and pray and they turned it into a bustling market.
God is inviting us to worship Him from the heart without clamour and distractions .
Malachi predicted that One would come to purify the religion of the nation.
“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 refiner’s fire And like launderers’ soap.
He will sit as a refiner and a purifier of silver; He will purify the sons of Levi, And purge them as gold and silver, That they may offer to the Lord An offering in righteousness.
Bauckham is right: what he says, “Jesus demonstration in the temple was an attack on the whole of the financial arrangements for the sacrificial system, and thus an enormous threat to the priestly authorities.”
There is an allusion to Zechariah 14:21.
Zechariah 14:21 (NKJV)
Yes, every pot in Jerusalem and Judah shall be holiness to the Lord of hosts. Everyone who sacrifices shall come and take them and cook in them. In that day there shall no longer be a Canaanite in the house of the Lord of hosts.
In the NLT it says, *traders in the Temple of The Lords heavenly armies.
Essentially “Canaanites” had become symbolic of anything that is ceremonially unclean and ungodly.
John 2:17 (NKJV)
Then His disciples remembered that it was written, “Zeal for Your house has eaten Me up.”
The disciples here remembered the verse from Psalm 69:9
Psalm 69:9 (NKJV)
Because zeal for Your house has eaten me up, And the reproaches of those who reproach You have fallen on me.
Zeal is speaking about being hot, or fervent, being passionate about righteousness.
House referring to Temple.
It was the zeal for the temple that caused Christ to be this angry.
There should be a godly zeal a fervor for God, we should be passionate for God.
We should have a zeal for God but with knowledge.
There shouldn’t be stagnation in the believers life.
We shouldn’t be passive but we should have zeal.
Sometimes we can have a zeal about wrong things in the church. Or the wrong things in our lives.
Zeal has eaten Christ up.
The wrong zeal can eat away at our souls
- Some are eaten up by pride
But we know Pride comes before the fall
By false confidence in self-
Whose confidence shall be cut off, And whose trust is a spider’s web.
By lust. A lustful women can reduce a man down to a piece of bread.
Some people are eaten up by jealousy
But Christ was eaten up by the glory of God.
Paul had a zeal .
I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.
The Greek word signifies to stretch out the neck, a metaphor taken from racers that strain every limb, and reach forward to lay hold upon the prize.
I’m not asking for someone who recently got saved or who is seriously struggling with there faith to run as fast as Paul.
But regardless of you speed, you capacity, your strength, just by faith stretch your neck towards God, and He will make you stronger, faster, wiser, He will use you.
For some stretching my neck forward would be to come to church once a month.
Or for some that means praying 5 min a day. For some God is calling you to pray 1 hour a day
For some God is saying come twice a week to church instead of once a week.
So the Jews answered and said to Him, “What sign do You show to us, since You do these things?”
Jesus answered and said to them, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.”
Then the Jews said, “It has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and will You raise it up in three days?”
But He was speaking of the temple of His body.
Therefore, when He had risen from the dead, His disciples remembered that He had said this to them; and they believed the Scripture and the word which Jesus had said.
So the Jews (whether the Jewish authorities or the merchants) demanded some proof for Jesus having the right to cause all of this disturbance.
The merchants probably had some kind of permit. And they already got approval.
But Jesus didn’t give them a answer but a parable a veiled saying. Which is to provoke the hearers but also to puzzle those who opposed Him.
He wanted them to ponder the saying in order to perceive its significance.
Its incredible impactful this was statement because 3 years later when Jesus was on trial these people remembered this saying.
but found none. Even though many false witnesses came forward, they found none. But at last two false witnesses came forward
and said, “This fellow said, ‘I am able to destroy the temple of God and to build it in three days.’ ”
At the times when Jesus said this statement his disciples didn’t know what He meant. It took after the resurrection for them to understand this statement.
It took the resurrection in order for them to understand the words of Christ.
It takes the resurrection that we can have hope in this life.
Only the resurrection can give us meaning. Nothing else!
If theres no resurrection I can eat drink and be marry because tomorrow we die.
Which thats how the majority of the world lives because they don’t believe in the resurrection.
This temple cleansing that Jesus is doing is pointing directly to the death a resurrection of Jesus.
John 2:19 “Jesus answered and said to them, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.””
“We heard Him say, ‘I will destroy this temple made with hands, and within three days I will build another made without hands.’ ”
And those who passed by blasphemed Him, wagging their heads and saying, “Aha! You who destroy the temple and build it in three days,