Cleaning House

Matt 21:12-17; John 2:13-17

Jesus cleanses the temple as one of his final acts of ministry. The temple market claims one-stop convenient righteousness but fills men’s pockets in the name of God’s glory. Jesus puts an end to the abuse and foreshadows the soon coming end to sacrifice, priests and temple. Jesus’ people will be the priests and the temple, holy by His sacrifice. May we be found as a “house of prayer” and not a “den of robbers.”

Hulk Jesus

I love this story.

I grew up during a kind of Christian Masculinity movement where the idea was that we had made Jesus kind of a weak and “girly” figure, and we were going to rescue the image of him, and the image of God-created manliness. Books like “Wild at Heart” were all about this, had some great stuff in it…

And this scene was always brought up. Jesus was jacked, Jesus could throw tables around, Jesus had righteous rage and when he saw something unjust or wrong he make it right by the power of his biceps.

Jesus cleaned out the temple. That’s our next story.

But why did he do it? And why now? And what was he hoping to accomplish, what did he accomplish, if anything?

Jesus is heading for the temple, and it is the week of Passover.

It is a short story, so let’s set the stage:

Hosanna!

Mark tells us there was perhaps a night between the entry and the cleansing of the temple, but Matthew just keeps the momentum of the story going. In Spirit, at least, riding the wave of folks crying “Hosanna! Hosanna! Son of David!” from the East gate, hang a left, you are walking South into the temple which stretches along the East side of Jerusalem.

Passover

Not far from the sheep gate, where we saw in our walk towards Passover and Easter: 256,500 Passover lambs. A quarter million. Each lamb serving a group of 10-20. Each of those lambs needs to be brought through the temple grounds, blessed by a priest, and then probably TONS of people carrying out the ritual killing.

That’s coming in, even as Jesus is entering. The temple is in all kinds of preparation, they have to examine everyone of the sheep to send away the blemished lambs.

Everybody is cleaning and preparing for the big feast.

Temple Tax

And, while you are in Jerusalem, this is also time to pay the temple tax. The year before, presumably, Jesus summoned a fish with a shekel in it, covering the half shekel tax for him and Peter.

This is the major time when everyone is gathering and paying the temple tax. If each person is paying a half shekel, and, as Josephus would tell us, a quarter million sheep translates to 3-5 million Jews, scholars argue about the value of the half shekel, but call it $100 perhaps… we are talking about 100s of millions of dollars expected to be collected. Even at the low end, where some estimate this tax more like $5, the temple is expecing 15-25 million dollars in shekels.

What’s more, the temple tax has to be paid in shekels. Ironically, they used Tyrian shekels with a picture of Herakles on one side and an eagle on the other. Weird.

But the common folk used all kinds of other coins. Greek drachmas, Roman talents, Herod had his own coins minted, new Caesars had their own coins minted. So you have to turn your money into their money… and get charged for the privilege.

It’s like the arcade or Boondocks, they don’t use quarters in the games anymore, it’s all tokens, or even on cards and its credits. They want you to forget the correlation of your “real money” to this “new money” and spend it all. They can charge whatever they want for a “credit.”

And money changers were famously usurious, expensive. They were even happy to arrange loans for the poor, all at a cost.

And the priests wouldn’t shut this down, because the priests were in on it all.

Temple Courts

They likely weren’t in the temple-temple itself, but on the temple mount. Most likely over here in the Gentiles court. For scale, the temple itself would have a slightly smaller footprint than our church, 90 feet long, 30 feet wide, 45 feet high. Most of the activities are happening out and around on this temple mount, built by Herod “the Great” in the two decades before Jesus’ birth.

“Herod the Great”, by the way, brought in as the ruler of the Jews through a deal with the chief priests.

Chief Priests

Jesus is going to use a phrase again we need to understand. The “chief priests.” We have mentioned the “Sadducees” and they will come in as well. The Sadducees were originally all followers of a high priest Zadok. Shortly after the return from exile, the priestly house of Zadok controlled the high priesthood, and like saying Zadokites, you would plural Zadoees, which becomes Sadducees. By this time it is all those connected to the high priests by marriage, social relations, and shared doctrine.

Sadducees were WAY more willing to adopt hellenism, the Greek way of life that Rome so admired, than the Pharisees. That is why the Pharisees were concentrated so far away up in Galilee, most of Jesus’ encounters with the Sadducees are down in Judah, especially Jerusalem. The seat of power.

There is even thought that they coordinated with Herod the Great, and then many following Herods, to recognize him as Jewish and he would support their continued power in the temple.

So the real power is in the hands of a very few priests, the chief priests, the inner circle, and that group were Sadducees. While the full Sanhedrin included others, Pharisees and the like, the real decisions got made by this inner group, the “chief priests.”

And if, as Josephus claims, they were in on the graft taking place in the temple, and using the wealth of the temple for their own pleasure and not God’s service and God’s people… it was these chief priests behind it all.

Jesus spent 3 years with the Pharisees, and they save Jesus’ life at least once, and later that of his disciples. Many come to faith, that we know of, others build towards entrapping him and wanting to kill him.

Jesus spends one week with the Sadducees and they crucify him.

Expectation vs. Reality

So here comes Jesus. In the door, on the donkey, and they are shouting “Hosanna! Hosanna! Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord. Son of David!” all the things.

We talked about this expectation vs. reality. They are expecting him to go serve Rome notice. Instead of attacking Rome, Jesus wreaks havoc in the worship center of Judaism!?

Matthew 21:12–17 ESV

12 And Jesus entered the temple and drove out all who sold and bought in the temple, and he overturned the tables of the money-changers and the seats of those who sold pigeons. 13 He said to them, “It is written, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer,’ but you make it a den of robbers.” 14 And the blind and the lame came to him in the temple, and he healed them. 15 But when the chief priests and the scribes saw the wonderful things that he did, and the children crying out in the temple, “Hosanna to the Son of David!” they were indignant, 16 and they said to him, “Do you hear what these are saying?” And Jesus said to them, “Yes; have you never read, “ ‘Out of the mouth of infants and nursing babies you have prepared praise’?” 17 And leaving them, he went out of the city to Bethany and lodged there.

Matthew 21:12–13 ESV

12 And Jesus entered the temple and drove out all who sold and bought in the temple, and he overturned the tables of the money-changers and the seats of those who sold pigeons. 13 He said to them, “It is written, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer,’ but you make it a den of robbers.”

When I pictured this I always pictured Jesus in such anger, righteous rage, at this horrible sight.

But this has been taking place for a LONG time. This has been the state of affairs e’ry time Jesus has come to town, not just for his ministry, but through his life.

And not just his earthly life:

Jesus fulfills the prophecy of Zechariah here:

Zechariah 14:21 ESV

21 And every pot in Jerusalem and Judah shall be holy to the Lord of hosts, so that all who sacrifice may come and take of them and boil the meat of the sacrifice in them. And there shall no longer be a trader in the house of the Lord of hosts on that day.

That means there was a trader in the house in Zechariah’s day, and possibly always.

Jesus explicitly quotes Isa 56:7 and Jer 7:11.

Isaiah 56:7 ESV

7 these 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 peoples.”

For all peoples! Mark, writing to a Roman audience, makes sure to point out Jesus quoting that too. This is about Gentiles as well. How??

When he calls it a “Den of Robbers” he uses the same word as for the two thief which likely has the sense of “insurrectionists.” Would that be insurrection against Rome… or against God?

He is quoting Jeremiah 7:11 because this happened before, before the Babylonian Exile, part of the reason FOR the Babylonian Exile.

When?

Did Jesus do this twice?

John 2:13–17 ESV

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.”

Is that the same event, but John transposes it to the beginning of Jesus’ ministry? Or, if separate events, what a cool frame around Jesus’ ministry. He starts with cleaning his Father’s house, he ends with cleaning his Father’s house.

In Matthew’s passage here, he drove out everyone, not just the animals, but ALL who sold AND ALL who bought!

Jesus makes at least three trips to Jerusalem in the course of his ministry, likely many more than that over the course of his life. If this was just about a blind fit of “righteous rage” he could have done it every time. All the time.

His poster is on the wall of the entry, banned for turning over too many tables!

The timing is intentional, rather. It is “zeal” for His Father’s house, rightly directed passion, but not a reactive rage. He did this right on time, at the right time.

Whether he did it twice and then waited three years, or once right at the end. I tend to think there was one temple cleansing that final week and John is organizing his gospel, as they do all, and chronology is not his primary organizing principle.

Either way: Maybe part of that is the fury of the chief priests, he is messing with their income, building towards his crucifixion.

End of Sacrifice

Here is the other piece. The whole bureaucracy of sacrifice, all this changing to get the right coins, to get the right animals, to get the right sacrifice… the Season of Sacrifice is about to end. Behold the Passover Lamp.

You can clean up and go home, all. Jesus is the sacrifice to end all sacrifice, building a new temple in and of his people, a new priesthood of all believers. You can all go home!

The temple, that 2nd temple, the 1st temple before it, the tabernacle before that, was always just a shadow of dwelling together in the Living Presence of God.

The sacrificial system, every sacrifice, was a temporary foreshadowing, a glimpse, teaching the truth: sin has a cost, a consequence, a wage, and someone pays in blood and death.

Cleaning House

The house is us. We are the temple. We the church. Y’all are a temple of the Holy Spirit.

Ephesians 2:19–22 ESV

19 So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, 20 built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, 21 in whom the whole structure, being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord. 22 In him you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit.

We are to be a temple. We together. This is not about yelling at teenagers for why they shouldn’t get bad haircuts, piercings and tattoos. “Your body is a temple!”

It is “y’all”, less individualistic, more corporate, more together, more family, more unity, which is what the whole beginning of Ephesians is all about. Unity in Christ, together in His name.

Cleaning House

The house is us. We are the temple. We the church. Y’all are a temple of the Holy Spirit.

If we are the temple, do think there are “chief priests and scribes” twisting the temple of God for their own profit and power?

If we are the temple, do you think there are “chief priests and scribes” twisting things, setting up shot, making profit, gaining power, instead of glorifying God in His church?

Yes. And absolutely.

Perhaps certain televangelists come to mind, bogus faith healers, for sure.

But the “chief priests” weren’t on the fringes. They were right at the center, VERY successfully leveraging these things for power.

I see it this week in the aftermath of the assasination of Charlie Kirk. I didn’t follow or pay a whole lot of attention while he was alive. Most of what I heard I heard through my Mom and KK. Going back through the videos, I found things that I loved, and things that I disagreed with, and things that challenged me.

But this I found for sure: a brother in Christ. A man who claimed Jesus as His Lord and Savior and was serious about walking that out.

I see online Christians condemning him as the devil because he doesn’t agree with their stances on guns, or homosexuality or trans rights.

That’s foul.

I also see people advocating for violence against “the left” or “wokism” and “you’ll get what you ask for” with a glee.

That’s foul.

Either way, in these cases, you have people trying to leverage the name of Jesus to accomplish their agenda, their political goals, and ride it to power.

That’s not who we are called to be.

What did Jesus say we would be instead? What was his vision?

A house of prayer for all peoples. For all nations.

We together, the Church, people called by the name of Christ, are to be His temple, and that temple is a House of Prayer for ALL nations.

Are we a place where our world can come and encounter God? Talk to Him? Hear from Him?

Are we a people that draw hearts and mind to the Lord, a temple that draws eyes to see His glory?

Or, at times, are we a noisy marketplace, just as noisy and divisive inside as outside, where people use the name of God to build power and wealth at any cost?

Lord, Jesus, cleanse your church! Make us a temple for your dwelling place. Make us something beautiful, something different, a house of prayer for all nations.