As time for the Jewish Passover was drawing near, Jesus traveled up to
Jerusalem. In the temple, when He found those merchants who sold oxen, sheep and
doves, and the moneychangers sitting, He made a whip of small ropes and drove
them all out, including the sheep and the oxen. He overturned the table of the
moneychangers and scattered all their coins. To those who were selling the doves
He said, "Take these away! Don’t make My Parent’s home a marketplace!"
His disciples remembered that it was written, "Passion for Your home has
consumed me." (Psalm 69:9)
Then the Temple authorities demanded an explanation, saying, "By what miraculous
sign will you show us that you have the authority to do these things?" Jesus
replied, "Destroy this Temple, and in three days I will raise it up again." The
authorities replied, "It has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and you
think to raise it up in three days?" But Jesus was speaking of the Temple of His
body.
So after Jesus was raised from the dead, the disciples remembered what He had
said. Then they understood the Scripture, and believed the words that Jesus had
spoken.
(John 2:13-22)
John tells us that not long after the wedding feast at Cana, after Jesus spent time visiting with His family and disciples in Capernaum, Jesus went to Jerusalem to celebrate the Passover. According to the Jewish Law, every adult male who lived within fifteen miles of Jerusalem was required to attend the celebration.
At this point, we come to what scholars call a chronological puzzle. In the synoptic gospels (Matt. 21:10-17, Mark 11:15-19, Luke 19:45-46), the incident chronicled above occurred at the end of Jesus’ earthly ministry, while in John, as shown above, it occurred at the beginning of His ministry. There are several theories:
When I was studying for the ministry, in preaching class we often were told, "Tell them what you’re going to tell them, tell them, then tell them what you told them." Another thing we were told: "Pay attention to your behavior. You may be the only Bible some folks ever get to ‘read.’"
I don’t know if Jesus invented these principles or not, but we can make an excellent case to say that He used them. By this I mean that I believe that the incident did occur twice, there is no error in the Scripture; there is, in fact, a harmony to the gospels. In this incident recorded in John, Jesus served notice to the Temple authorities that things were about to change and the status quo would not remain. Through this incident Jesus told them what He was going to tell them, then during three years of public ministry Jesus by His life told them, and at the end of His ministry, at the second cleansing of the Temple, Jesus told them what He had told them.
As evidence that there were indeed two separate incidents, different things happened in each incident. In the Synoptics, there is no mention of sheep or oxen, nor do they mention Jesus’ claim to rebuild the "Temple" in three days. The Synoptics record that Jesus quoted the prophet Isaiah, which John doesn’t mention, nor does John mention that Jesus would not allow anyone to carry merchandise through the temple courts.
Why did Jesus act the way He did? He was laying down the plan for His ministry. Jesus’ ministry was to upset the applecart. In ministry we say that a minister’s job is to "…comfort the afflicted, and afflict the comfortable." And that’s just what Jesus did. That was not just a farmer’s market in the Temple courts. It was operated under the auspices of the Temple authority for specific purposes.
Passover is the most important of all the Jewish feasts. Though attending it was mandatory only for men living within a fifteen mile range of Jerusalem, attending at least once in their lives was the hope and desire of Jews wherever they lived. They made pilgrimages from around the world to attend. But the trip was costly, made even more so by the rules of the Temple authorities. First, there was a Temple tax, which was owed by every Jew over the age of nineteen, collected in order to operate the Temple. That was all well and good, but the tax could be paid only with Jewish coins. Pilgrims from various parts of the world would not be allowed to pay the tax with coins from their places of origin. They had to be exchanged for Jewish coins. The fees charged by the moneychangers to do that were exorbitant.
Then there were the sacrificial animals–the oxen, sheep and doves. Part of the pilgrimage most would include making sacrificial offerings to God. Rather than travel great distances with their own sacrificial animals, it would have been easier and made more sense to just purchase the animal in Jerusalem. However, only perfect, unblemished animals could be sacrificed, and animals brought in to the Temple for sacrifice was subject to inspection, for which another fee was charged. The inspectors were hired by the Temple authorities, and most likely, any outside animals would be found to be blemished. So the poor pilgrim would be forced to purchase overpriced animals sold by employees of the Temple authorities. They took terrible advantage of poor pilgrims, often leaving them practically destitute. It was to these unscrupulous persons that Jesus turned His anger. Not only were poor people being victimized, they were being victimized in the name of religion.
Jesus made a strong showing that just because something is done under the guise of religious requirement, that doesn’t mean it is good or right. There should never be a price demanded or extracted or conditions placed on anyone in order to have access to God. God is available to everyone–requiring only a humble heart for access.
When Jesus identifies the Temple as His Parent’s house, the disciples remembered what the Psalmist wrote in 69:9 and understood that scripture to speak of the Messiah. The Temple authorities must have thought Jesus’ actions to be Messiah-like, too, to demand a miraculous sign from Jesus. They, too, must have remembered the scripture, and so demanded that if Jesus was indeed the Messiah, then He should be able to prove it by performing a miraculous sign.
Jesus had a penchant for speaking in kind of riddles–of not always being obvious to the uninitiated. Jesus replies, "Destroy this Temple, and in three days I will raise it up again." John explains that Jesus spoke not of the Temple, which was a building, but "…of the Temple of His body." At the time of this conversation between the Temple authorities and Jesus, Temple construction had been going on for forty-six years, and it would be another twenty years of construction before it would be complete. In reality, Jesus was nullifying the necessity of the Temple building in Jerusalem. People would come to worship God in the Temple of their hearts. In the future, all of humanity wherever they lived would have constant and immediate access to the Temple of Christ’s self at all times, and through which all of humanity would have direct access to God.
It is important to note that the words translated temple in verse 14, is different from the words used in verses 19-21. In verse 14, the word in the original language is hieron, and refers to a shrine or a holy building. In verses 19-21, the word is naos and signifies the dwelling place of deity.
John’s comment in verse 22, acknowledges that right from the beginning of Jesus’ ministry He knew the course on which He was headed, and was determined to see it through. The disciples, of course, had no comprehension of Jesus’ plans at the beginning, and indeed, seemed to be in denial of it, almost to the end. It wasn’t until after the Resurrection did they fully understand what Jesus had been telling them from the beginning and accepted His words.
This ends our study for today.
Points to Ponder