Lesson for March 4, 2021
The Life of Christ
Lesson 11
The First Temple Cleansing
John 2:13-25
There were two similar events in the life of Christ when He drove out the corrupt merchants from the Temple. This first “cleansing” occurs at the beginning of His ministry and the second at the end of His ministry (about three years apart).
It must be remembered that the Temple was a special, sacred place to the believing Jew, but especially sacred to Jesus Christ. The Temple, all its furnishings and all the rituals that took place within its walls were testimonies about Christ. They all testified to Christ’s deity, His royalty as King of kings and Lord of lords and His work: as Savior, Intercessor and Advocate. Jesus understood all of this from His study of the Scriptures.
Jesus, His family, and His disciples had set up “headquarters” in Capernaum, a city on the coast of the Sea of Galilee. At the time, Capernaum was a very important Roman city. The city was a vital trade center, many government officials were there, and Rome had a large military contingent there. One of the largest businesses was the fishing industry. This all meant that there were both Jews and Gentiles in great numbers that could be reached with the Gospel message.
Remembering that Jesus was a Jew and kept the Law perfectly will help us understand why He went to Jerusalem to observe the Passover feast. The Passover would also remind Christ of the purpose for which He was sent to earth, and it would be filled with symbolic meaning for those who had believed in Him.
Passover memorialized the time in Egypt when the angel of death passed over the house of those who put the blood of a lamb on the doorpost. The story is told to us in Exodus 12, outlining the command from God to take a lamb without spot or blemish and apply its blood to the doorposts. The death angel would be sent to destroy every first-born male child (except those with the blood on their doorpost) in response to Pharaoh’s refusal to set the Jews free.
Passover demonstrates the doctrine of Redemption, Jesus Christ being our Redeemer. The lamb was to be without spot or blemish, a type of Christ’s perfection. It was to be eaten, an illustration of faith. It was to be roasted under fire, signifying God’s judgment of Christ. And it was to be eaten with unleavened bread and bitter herbs, a picture of Christ’s sinless nature and the bitterness of His death. Christ, therefore, becomes the Passover or the perfect sacrifice for the believer. Just as the life of the innocent lamb was sacrificed for the Jews that night, so an innocent Christ was sacrificed for each one of us. Therefore, this feast was fulfilled in Christ. (I Corinthians 5:6-7; I Peter 1:18-19)
It was this feast that Jesus and His disciples were celebrating the night He was betrayed. It is the “Last Supper” of Scripture and has now become the Church Age ritual of Communion. It was Christ Himself that set the precedence in the upper room for this transition according to I Corinthians 11:23-26.
Much of the ritual of Passover took place in the Temple in Jerusalem and it would naturally be the first place that Jesus would go upon His arrival. What He found taking place in this most sacred of places was an abomination to God and an evil being perpetrated on the Jews. The Temple, which was meant for worship and teaching, had been turned into an emporium. Evil priests had set up a corrupt system to force people to buy their goods.
The Jewish Law prescribed a spotless sacrificial animal for the ritual sacrifices in the Temple. These evil priests made sure that no one had a spotless animal. They put in place a system of inspection with trained inspectors to assure no animal passed the “spotless test” except those sold in the Temple by the priests. There was also a “small” inspection fee and the so-called spotless animals that the priests sold were well overpriced. Where did all this corrupt money go? It went into the coffers of the priests themselves. If this were not enough, the priests and Temple officials also controlled the exchange of Roman currency into “temple dollars.” The rates for this exchange were quite exorbitant.
This was the scene into which Jesus walked upon His arrival in Jerusalem to observe Passover. Whether or not His disciples were with Him, we are not told. What follows is not an act of uncontrolled anger on the part of Jesus, as that would have been a sin. What occurred was an act of complete justice. Jesus was a man, but He was also God. He had every right to drive out this corruption from the house of God. He was the Son of God, the King of Israel and the rightful Chief Priest of Israel. What some may call anger was simply righteous indignation. Jesus had a physical body that was unpolluted by sin and He had worked as a carpenter all of His life. We know that He was a man of great physical strength because of what He endured at the hands of the Jews and the Romans during His trials and His crucifixion. He had no trouble in driving out livestock and men and overturning their tables.
In John 2:16 Jesus uses a very strong aorist imperative command to those who were selling doves. The Greek word He used for take (these things away) was “airo,” which means away with, remove or take it out. Because this verb was in the aorist tense, Jesus expected His command to be carried out immediately and He saw to it that this occurred.
The Greek word that Jesus used to describe the scene was “emporiou” from which we get our English word emporium. These evil priests had turned the house of God into a mass merchandising operation. This same concept is going on today in many churches, a practice that is detestable to God. The local church is to be supported financially by its members and not by some merchandizing system.
John 2:17 is a quote from Psalms 69:9 testifying to the zeal that Christ would have for the Temple. This was a good kind of zeal and reminds the reader that Jesus is indeed the Messiah (Christ), since this was a prophecy regarding the Messiah. It was natural for Jesus to have this kind of zeal for the Temple since it was representative of the entire spiritual life for the Jewish believer.
John 2:18 and following signal the beginning of an organized plot to kill or discredit Christ. The religious Jews asked Jesus was for some outward sign of His authority – a miracle to prove He was from God. It seems certain they did not believe that they would receive this sign from Jesus. Instead of performing a miracle at that moment, Jesus pointed them to a sign soon to come – the Resurrection. The truth escaped this group of unbelieving Jewish leaders because they were willfully blind to the truth. Christ implied that His body would be “destroyed” by these Jews, but that He would raise it up at the end of three days. We see their complete lack of understanding in John 2:20.
John 2:21-22 gives us the true meaning of this statement by Jesus. It was obvious that the disciples of Christ had been well taught by the Savior as to the meaning of His statement to the Jews. After the Resurrection, His disciples recalled being taught this doctrine. The illustration that Jesus used later in the Gospels is the story of Jonah and the big fish. This is most likely the story that Jesus used to teach the doctrine of the Resurrection.
Now we begin to see the ministry of Christ working, because in John 2:23, “…many believed in His name…” The name Jesus means savior or deliverer, therefore believing in His name means believing He is your Savior. And Jesus was performing miracles as a sign of His authority from God. There should have been no doubt that a person who could heal the sick and raise the dead was from God. But even these miraculous signs did not convince some.
In John 2:24 John says that Jesus did not commit Himself to them. We can understand this only by looking at the word “commit” in the Greek. The Greek word for commit is “pisteuo” and here means to entrust oneself or something to another. What Jesus is saying is that since He knows the mind of all men, His wisdom tells Him not to fully reveal Himself to them at this time. Many times in the life of Christ we see Him withdraw Himself from the crowds of people to a more private place. This seems to be the same idea here. Jesus did not need or want the accolades of men; He wanted them to believe in Him as Messiah (Savior). Furthermore, He knew from His knowledge of Scripture and from observation that He dare not trust in man, but only in God.
This same principle applies to the Church-Age believer. If we place our trust in any man, the potential for failure always exists. If, on the other hand, we place our trust in God we will never be disappointed. Man’s wisdom is always foolishness compared to God’s wisdom. Man’s wisdom is human viewpoint, but God’s wisdom is divine viewpoint. Since God’s wisdom is found only in the Bible, God’s wisdom comes only as a result of the study and application of His Word. Paul made this very clear to those believers in Corinth who thought they were of superior intellect. (I Corinthians 1:18-25)
To the Greek mind, intellect itself was a god. Many thought themselves to be wiser than the gods they worshipped. When the truth of the true God was presented to them, they had a very difficult time accepting it as divine truth. So steeped in intellectualism, empiricism, and rationalism, which depend on human wisdom and ability, the Corinthian believers even struggled with doctrinal truth. You can understand God only through understanding accurate Bible doctrine. You may have great human wisdom, be a great scientist or a great thinker, but without divine wisdom your wisdom is foolishness.
“Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not to your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him and He will direct your paths.” (Proverbs 3:5-6)