Protect This House
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"Protect this House” A FATHER PROTECTS
BI: A man of God takes the steps necessary to do what must be done to preserve the House of God. We look today at Jesus actions in the temple as recorded in John 2
**The divine presence manifested in the Jerusalem temple played a central role in Israel’s life and worship. The temple was built on the site of a threshing floor that King David purchased from Araunah the Jebusite (2 Sam 24:18–25). The threshing floor was located on Mount Moriah, where Abraham almost sacrificed Isaac (Gen 22:1–14; 2 Chr 3:1).1
After this he went down to Capernaum with his mother and brothers and his disciples. There they stayed for a few days. When it was almost time for the Jewish Passover, Jesus went up to Jerusalem. In the temple courts he found men selling cattle, sheep and doves, and others sitting at tables exchanging money. So he made a whip out of cords, and drove all from the temple area, both sheep and cattle; he scattered the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables. To those who sold doves he said, “Get these out of here! How dare you turn my Father’s house into a market!” His disciples remembered that it is written: “Zeal for your house will consume me.” Then the Jews demanded of him, “What miraculous sign can you show us to prove your authority to do all this?” Jesus answered them, “Destroy this temple, and I will raise it again in three days.” The Jews replied, “It has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and you are going to raise it in three days?” But the temple he had spoken of was his body. After he was raised from the dead, his disciples recalled what he had said. Then they believed the Scripture and the words that Jesus had spoken. Now while he was in Jerusalem at the Passover Feast, many people saw the miraculous signs he was doing and believed in his name. But Jesus would not entrust himself to them, for he knew all men.
WIGOH: (what is going on here?)
1: What is the issue he is attacking: Explain the circumstances and why he has an issue with this is there a historical issue?
Money is being changed due to multiple currencies in the empire
Inflation of Silver in Roman currency means that out of town guests have to “pay the exchange rate to cover the temple tax”
People have travelled some distance, and are obligated to pay the tax, and then purchase items for sacrifice, they must be unblemished and keeping them way on a long journey is complicated
They have taken what is a good thing, and made it the primary thing.
HOW Jesus Responds
Jesus Person Replaces the Structure of Temple itself:
Jesus makes this fight personal, its against his Father, but it also shows the high dependence on the structure and function of the temple while missing the point.
Jesus removes what he sees of as impurity in that Temple, and inhabits the space himself. He takes on those things that keep people from worshipping God. Its not an attack ON anyone, it is a POSITION AGAINST that which keeps men from free access to God
Jesus deals forcefully with the issues on behalf of his Father, it is HONOR he is concerned with in this instance
May those who hope in you not be disgraced because of me, O Lord, the Lord Almighty; may those who seek you not be put to shame because of me, O God of Israel. For I endure scorn for your sake, and shame covers my face. I am a stranger to my brothers, an alien to my own mother’s sons; for zeal for your house consumes me, and the insults of those who insult you fall on me.
Psalm 69 is quoted, because it is personal. His house, hid fathers house, his body feels the defilement because he is invested in the temple? How do you feel when Gods house is dishonored, desecrated, left abandoned.
Did this actions change them? Perhaps not, but it still needed to be taken. We don’t have Jesus patience. ,but the indignation should be in the heart of every man of God.
HEAL THE SICK: A FATHER HEALS HIS CHILDREN
Parallel Text in Matthews Gospel
Jesus entered the temple area and drove out all who were buying and selling there. He overturned the tables of the money changers and the benches of those selling doves. “It is written,” he said to them, “ ‘My house will be called a house of prayer,’ but you are making it a ‘den of robbers.’” The blind and the lame came to him at the temple, and he healed them. But when the chief priests and the teachers of the law saw the wonderful things he did and the children shouting in the temple area, “Hosanna to the Son of David,” they were indignant. “Do you hear what these children are saying?” they asked him. “Yes,” replied Jesus, “have you never read, “ ‘From the lips of children and infants you have ordained praise’?” And he left them and went out of the city to Bethany, where he spent the night. Early in the morning, as he was on his way back to the city, he was hungry.
Matthew 21:12 IMPORTANT NOTE: the blind and lame still felt that they could approach him.
Matthew 21:18 may be Jesus commentary on what he has seen
THE significance of this “cleansing” ritual for Jesus at this time in his ministry
Jesus cleanses the wedding feast, using cleansing jars to make wine to “go inside” a man.
Jesus cleanses the temple of impurity
Jesus cleanses the blind and the lame by healing them. The motive is about cleansing, making one acceptable again to GOD
How this is impacted by the immediate previous context of the cleansing of the water jars, they were for cleansing, so he, by law has to use them for a clean purpose.
Equally offending all, those who invented the practice and those who took advantage of it. The entire business was upset, folks had to basically stop the wagon for the better part of the day. The outer court. (Show a Map)
Jesus is not inciting violence for the sake of violence: ACESS to God has been disturbed:
Juxtaposition of Jesus body and the temple as the body. God lived in the temple, people gathered there but it was gods house on earth, before Jesus. So God comes to his own house and finds it looking like Wal Mart not like a place of worship. His Body will rise, so he is saying his risen body will replace the temple, that shall never be re-built.
“I am” the temple that cannot be destroyed. Gods house is not clean, so I will clean it, on Passover. Passover celebrates release from bondage. The temple should also be released from it bondage?
There does seem to be a connection between the TEMPLE house and Jesus body as the house
RESPECT THIS HOUSE
This is the word that came to Jeremiah from the Lord: “Stand at the gate of the Lord’s house and there proclaim this message: “ ‘Hear the word of the Lord, all you people of Judah who come through these gates to worship the Lord. This is what the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel, says: Reform your ways and your actions, and I will let you live in this place. Do not trust in deceptive words and say, “This is the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord!” If you really change your ways and your actions and deal with each other justly, if you do not oppress the alien, the fatherless or the widow and do not shed innocent blood in this place, and if you do not follow other gods to your own harm, then I will let you live in this place, in the land I gave your forefathers for ever and ever. But look, you are trusting in deceptive words that are worthless. “ ‘Will you steal and murder, commit adultery and perjury, burn incense to Baal and follow other gods you have not known, and then come and stand before me in this house, which bears my Name, and say, “We are safe”—safe to do all these detestable things? Has this house, which bears my Name, become a den of robbers to you? But I have been watching! declares the Lord.
Jesus POV, his heart, we are given his motivation by the texts he quotes AND by what the disciples translate after the fact.
PROTECT THIS HOUSE; DO WHAT IS NECESSARY, NOT JUST WHAT IS CONVENIENT.
PROTECT THE WEAK; ACT IN SUCH A WAY THAT EVERYONE CAN APPROACH GOD.