The Cleansing of the Temple

Sermon  •  Submitted   •  Presented
0 ratings
· 2 views
Notes
Transcript
In the beginning of this passage it’s important to notice that this is Passover time. The Passover was one of the two biggest feasts on the Jewish calendar which required Jews to make a pilgrimage to Jersualem. The Passover was an event which reflected on how God provided an escape from Egyptian bondage through the blood of the Passover Lamb as the death angel came upon Egypt and slaughtered their first born. So, as Jesus makes His way into the Temple, He notices the practices which are occuring and is filled with righteous anger. This leads us up to our first point which is:

Christ’s Disdain for Impure Worship

A. The Size and State of Worship in Jerusalem
I. The area where this drama unfolds is in what is called “The Court of the Gentiles” which is a place where the God-fearing gentiles would be allowed to come and worship God near the Temple. This area would have been a whopping 35 acres and is estimated to have been able to hold 75,000 people in it. The ancient historian Josephus, when writing on the Passover, said that 255,600 lambs were slaughtered on Passover just to give you an idea as to how massive the markets would have been which filled up the Gentile Court. When Jesus walks into the Temple area and sees the merchants He is filled with anger, but why?
Well, the Court of the Gentiles was a placed which God provided to allow Gentiles who adored Him to come and worship, as a matter of fact He tells them that in Isaiah 56:6-7
Isaiah 56:6–7 NKJV
6 “Also the sons of the foreigner Who join themselves to the Lord, to serve Him, And to love the name of the Lord, to be His servants— Everyone who keeps from defiling the Sabbath, And holds fast My covenant— 7 Even them I will bring to My holy mountain, And make them joyful in My house of prayer. Their burnt offerings and their sacrifices Will be accepted on My altar; For My house shall be called a house of prayer for all nations.”
The issue we are seeing is that instead of this being a sacred and solemn place of prayer, it has become a massive money market. Now, we need to understand something about what is happening, these aren’t just random booths selling homemade quilts, but are things to do with Temple worship. You see, when you came to the Temple you were expected to pay your temple tithe, or tax, and it was unthinkable to pay tax to the glory of God with a Roman coin with an Emperor on it, so you needed to have your money exchanged. Another need was that if you were a family traveling from far off, it would be a lot easier to purchase a sacrificial animal in Jerusalem than carrying it with you all the way to Jerusalem, so there were merchants selling animals for that purpose. While it is possible that these merchants were coning people with brutal prices, the main issue here is that instead of doing business outside of the Temple on the Mt. of Olives, the Priests and merchants decided they didn’t care about Gentile God-fearers or their worship and decided they’d take over their worship space for sales purposes. By this time, the common Jewish desire was not for the Gentile court to be flooded with believing Gentiles, but for Messiah to come and empty it of all Gentiles.
So, a place dedicated to be a quiet, solemn place of humble prayer and adoration is now a bustling market full of yelling children, chattering salesmen, and animals crying out which is not at all what God intended for His Gentile worshippers. The Temple which was originally intended to be a place established to bless all nations as a house of prayer had now become a place where the nations were prohibited to worship due to it now becoming a den of thieves.
II. The Reaction of Christ
Well, as the Lord sees this He runs into the Courtyard with a wipe and drives the merchants out. By calling it “My Father’s House” Jesus makes the origin of His authority clear. He is One sent from God and is jealous for God to be worshipped in spirit and truth. The reaction of Jesus is similar to the response of God to Israel’s worship of the Golden Calf in Exodus 32:7-10
Exodus 32:7–10 NKJV
7 And the Lord said to Moses, “Go, get down! For your people whom you brought out of the land of Egypt have corrupted themselves. 8 They have turned aside quickly out of the way which I commanded them. They have made themselves a molded calf, and worshiped it and sacrificed to it, and said, ‘This is your god, O Israel, that brought you out of the land of Egypt!’ ” 9 And the Lord said to Moses, “I have seen this people, and indeed it is a stiff-necked people! 10 Now therefore, let Me alone, that My wrath may burn hot against them and I may consume them. And I will make of you a great nation.”
In Matthew 21:18-22, Jesus leaves the Temple for a moment before going in to cleanse it. While He is gone, He sees a Fig Tree with its leaves out which broadcasts that it was bearing fruit, but there was nothing there, so Jesus curses it. Now, that’s not because Jesus hates fig trees, but it’s His way of communicating to us something about the Temple. It seemed to be fruitful, it had bunches of people and tons of beautiful things going on, but there was no true fruit there. That’s why Jesus says, “Assuredly, I say to you, if you have faith and do not doubt, you will not only do what was done to the fig tree, but also if you say to this mountain, ‘Be removed and be cast into the sea,’ it will be done.” He’s not saying, “If you believe really hard, you won’t need a bulldozer ever again. The mountain He’s referring to is the Temple Mount which would be destroyed.
What we pull from this is that Jesus is passionately concerned with the worship of the people of God, we see this discussed later on with the woman at the well as Jesus directs the conversation from where the true Temple is to how God is bringing about a people who will worship Him in all places in spirit and truth. For our own purposes it would be helpful for us here at Beacon to develop a similar jealousy for the worship of God and to adopt a passionate commitment to seeing that nothing interferes with Him being worshipped as He ought to be. The Lord is not indifferent to how His people worship Him, and neither should we be.

Christ’s Direct Fulfillment of the O.T.

Earlier I mentioned Isaiah 56:7 in reference to God’s desire for the Temple to be a place which welcomed the Gentiles to worship in the Court of Gentiles. One thing I want us to consider is how Jesus fulfills Psalm 69:9 in response to the Jews violation of Isaiah 56:7. in Psalm 69, David seems to be all alone. Apparently he has taken a stand for the worship of the Lord and many have risen up against him and so he cries out out to God for help. In Ps. 69:9 he says,
Psalm 69:9 NKJV
9 Because zeal for Your house has eaten me up, And the reproaches of those who reproach You have fallen on me.
What’s interesting is that this passage is cited by John in John 2:17 to communicate that although David wrote about his own experience, the Holy Spirit was using David’s heartache to prophecy what would be experienced by David’s Son and Lord, the Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus would be consumed with zeal for the house of God and Jesus would go on to bear heartache and pain for that commitment and ultimately our redemption.
Next, I want us to see how Jesus fulfills Psalm 118:22
Psalm 118:22 NKJV
22 The stone which the builders rejected Has become the chief cornerstone.
Now, there are two ways this text is fulfilled by the Lord. First, He was certainly rejected by Israel when the crucified Him which we will discuss later. But the part I want us to think on is how the story of Jesus cleansing the Temple shows us that Jesus is seen as the cornerstone here too. In Matthew 21, we find his account of Jesus’s cleansing of the Temple and there’s a few things I want to draw out to show you how Jesus is the cornerstone.
First, Jesus cleanses the Temple which is a fulfillment of Zechariah 14:21 which says, “There shall no longer be a trader in the house of the Lord of Hosts.”
Second, Jesus receives outcasts as He heals the blind and lame in the Temple in Matthew 21:14. That is significant because it fulfills Isaiah 56:8
Isaiah 56:8 NKJV
8 The Lord God, who gathers the outcasts of Israel, says, “Yet I will gather to him Others besides those who are gathered to him.”
Third, Jesus is praised for His healing in Matthew 21:15.
Finally, Jesus assumes the role as Teacher in the Temple in Matthew 21:23-44 as he begins to teach of Himself as the Cornerstone who the builders rejected.
So, even though the don’t receive Him, even then He is seen as the foundational authority of true religion in this scene itself.

Christ Declares Himself to be the True Temple.

Last of all, I want us to see that Jesus declares Himself to be the True Temple in John 2:19. After cleaning the Temple, Jesus is approached by the Jews who want a sign to know why Jesus is behaving in this manner. To which He responds, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” John goes on to tell us that the Jews thought Jesus was talking about the physical temple itself and thought He must’ve been insane since it took them 46 years to build. However, John tells us that when Jesus rose from the dead, it all clicked in his head and made sense that Jesus was actually talking about Himself as the true Temple. This is incredibly significant.
In Genesis 3, Adam and Eve fellowshipped with God in a beautiful and unhindered sense until they sinned and were thrown out of the Garden. To ensure that they would not return, God placed an angel with a flaming sword at it’s entrance to keep them out, a symbol of how sin bars us from the presence of God and if they tried to enter back in, the sword would fall upon them. What’s remarkable is that when the Temple curtain was made in the Old Testament, it had a Cherubim, an angel sewn into it which symbolized that angel outside of the Garden. Another remarkable thing is that the veil had images of the starry heavens sewn into them. Why do these things matter?
Well, when Jesus is crucified and dies, or as the text here says, “When they destroy this Temple,” that veil is immediately torn in two. This is incredible for several reasons. First, the veil is said to have been incredibly thick and would not have torn for no reason and certainly not by a man’s strength. Second, I want us to pull two things from those images in that torn veil.
First, when Jesus dies, it’s as though the sword of the Garden angel fell on Him for our sakes so that we might enter into the presence of God. This is not just really creative thinking, in John 1:51 Jesus tells Nathanael that He is Jacob’s ladder. The reason that is awesome is because that is the place where the Temple of Bethel was placed which foreshadowed the bigger Temple. In short, Jesus is stating that He is the entry way into the worship of God. It is through Him that we have an audience before God without fear of death. John 14:6
John 14:6 NKJV
6 Jesus said to him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.
Second, that veil had the starry Heavens on them too. Now, I want to tie something together here. In Luke 1:34 the Holy Spirit hovers over Mary in a way that is only seen in the creation of the world. This hints that in Jesus there would be a new creation and when Jesus dies, the Temple Veil is ripped which had the Starry Skies on them which communicates to us that in the life and death of Jesus there is both the destruction of the cosmos and a New Creation through Him in which we who believe will be in the presence of God forever.
Related Media
See more
Related Sermons
See more
Earn an accredited degree from Redemption Seminary with Logos.