90. Beginner Bible Course: Jesus cleanses the temple (twice!)

EPISODE 90  The simple Bible overview of…JESUS GOES WILD, CLEARING THE TEMPLE – TWICE

I asked my students...

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...to tell us about a time they really lost it. I mean, somebody tripped their trigger. They came on glued their stories, focus around either something, triggering them from an unpleasant experience of the past or something that violates their most important values. Like a sister, grabbing a sweater without permission. I then take them to Isaiah chapter 42 in Isaiah 42. God gives Isaiah prophetic insight into his coming savior. One. He calls a suffering servant. Here's what it says. Here's my servant, whom I uphold my chosen one in whom I delight. I will put my spirit on him and he will bring justice to the nations.

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He will not shout out or cry out or raise his voice in the streets, a bruised Reed. He will not break and a smoldering wick. He will not snuff out in faithfulness. He will bring forth justice. I then help them try to picture a Reed. That's been over in the wind, almost ready to break or a smoldering wick. That's just about ready to go completely out. Isaiah says the suffering servant, the coming savior would have that kind of personality. Soft-spoken compassionate and encouraging, especially of the faint hearted. Then I asked them this, did Jesus fit that profile?

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Soft-spoken and Uber compassionate and tender. They shake their heads. Yes. Then I ask, was he always that way a student's hand will shoot up. What about that thing he did in the temple? Actually, it was the two things he did in the temple. It happened twice. The gospel writer, John tells us it happened right at the beginning of Jesus' ministry and the writers Matthew and Mark tell us that happened the week that he was crucified from the details. It's obvious. This happened twice at the beginning and the end of Jesus' earthly ministry. This situation in the temple where Jesus lost it, bookends his ministry as the savior, Jesus didn't lose it very often.

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He was remarkably tender kind and compassionate, especially to the bruise reeds and smoldering wicks, but certain things set him off. Lack of faith in his disciples, set him off hardness of heart of the rule. Keeping do chores for God Pharisees and maybe especially little people being abused. Some of our triggers, those things that set us off come out of our broken past, but Jesus didn't have a broken past Jesus' triggers came out of his deep, passionate priorities. They flowed out of his very nature. I'd like us to look at Jesus, two trips to the temple where he lost it.

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The first is in John chapter two. This is right at the beginning of Jesus' ministry. He's been baptized tempted by Satan in the wilderness and chosen his first few disciples. As we'll see in the next episode, he's also gone to a week long wedding and Canaan and performed his first miraculous sign. He's collected more disciples. And then John tells us he headed to Jerusalem for his first Passover celebration. As a ministering rabbi. Passover was the first national holiday of Israel that God commanded at the time of the Exodus. Passover's a really big deal. And Jerusalem was stuffed full of pilgrims there to worship God and remember how God had saved them through the blood of a lamb to spare them in the last plague of Egypt, the death of the firstborn in the temple courts, Jesus found people selling cattle, sheep, and doves and other sitting at tables, exchanging money.

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People were selling oxen, sheep and doves was actually helpful. God had commanded them to bring offerings and sacrifices at Passover, cattle, sheep, and doves. For really poor people. You couldn't travel 80 miles from one end of Israel to Jerusalem and drag along a big old cow or sheep or a cage of birds. Instead you'd come and buy them in Jerusalem and go to the temple to make sacrifice. So that was okay. That was actually important. Customer service to God's people. They had the entire city of Jerusalem to do that, but they were doing this in the court of the temple. Back after the Exodus from Egypt, God designed his tent.

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The tabernacle, the tabernacle was shockingly simple. The Holy place, representing God in one court Solomon's temple in the temple. After the exile pattern itself. After the tabernacle, it's now 1400 years later, inherits temple has four courts. The outside court is the court of the Gentiles. You didn't even have to be a Jew to come in there. The court inside that was the court of women. And inside that the court of men were only ceremonially clean Jews could enter inside that court was a court that only the priest could enter and minister before the Lord, can you picture that like rings on a target?

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The bullseye represents God, the Holy place, the ring next to him, the priests beyond that clean male Jews, beyond that women beyond that Gentiles, how do you think God would feel about that? A religious cast system, John continues what Jesus found inside that temple in the temple courts. He found people selling cattle, sheep, and doves and other sitting at tables, exchanging money, even exchanging money wasn't necessarily a problem. The coinage of the day was the Roman coin, but God had commanded in the old Testament that people should give a half sheet called temple tax when they came to this festival.

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So trying to honor God's law, the pilgrims exchange their Roman pocket coins for the Jewish half shekel that shouldn't have been done in the court of the Gentiles either. Why not do it outside? There was a problem in how they were exchanging those coins. There was a matter of the fee for exchanging their currency. When Jesus walks into the court of the Gentiles in the temple sees it looked like a cattle market with hucksters exchanging money at high exchange rates, he practically goes Bismarck. John tells us he made a whip out of cords and drove all from the temple courts, both sheep and cattle. He scattered the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables to those selling doves.

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He said, get those outta here. Stop turning my father's house into a market. Now we know that Jesus was a carpenter and he was no sissy. Rabbi carpenters were woodworkers, blacksmiths, and even stonemasons, but he is not a muscle bound superhero. This isn't just Samson's strength. He's scary, angry. And there's something about the authority with which he does it. That puts a lump in people's throats that makes them head for the exits. John tells us his disciples were watching this all one of the disciples recalls. One of David's Psalms where David says zeal for your house will consume me.

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As they're watching Jesus throw these livestock and people out of the temple court. They're thinking, wow, David never got this bent out of shape about God's house, the tabernacle that's for sure. After the initial shock, the Jewish leaders at the temple, walk up to Jesus and go, Hey, if you think you have the authority of our God to do something like this and his house, show us a sign to prove that you're from God. Again. I can almost imagine the disciples thinking, Hey, you did an amazing sign at that wedding we were at in Canaan, do a trick. Do one of them, show him what you got. Show him, rabbi Jesus, show him instead.

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Jesus turns around and says, you want to sign? I'll give you one destroy this temple. And in three days, I'll raise it up. Excuse me, huh? You might be a carpenter, even as stonemason, but you ain't building this thing in three days, it took Herod 46 years. The disciples won't understand what he means until three years later, maybe four. When Jesus dies in his risen from the dead, then they get it. Jesus was saying, this is not the house where God dwells. My body is God's house. The other thing I want you to notice is what he said about the temple. My father's house.

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Don't turn my father's house into a marketplace. Luke reported when Jesus was 12 and his parents found him in the temple. He said, I thought you knew I'd be in my father's house. Jewish people never said my father about God for anything. It was too intimate, too personal downright, arrogant to claim that kind of special relationship with God. They'd say things like our father, the one in the heavens. It's one thing for a 12 year old boy to say my father's house. It's a whole nother thing for a 30 something rabbi to claim that in doing so, rabbi Jesus is claiming a very intimate, special relationship with all mighty God.

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John then tells us Jesus went about his ministry for the next two and a half or three years. That's when we pick up the story of Matthew and Mark it's in Matthew 21 and Mark 11, both saying it happened the week of Jesus' crucifixion. The day he arrived, he gets a heroic welcome waving Palm branches, children, dancing in the streets, that sort of thing. Mark and Matthew tell us again, he enters the temple and he drives out the animal merchants and those money changing sharks. While the first time he screams don't turn my father's house into a den of merchandise. Matthew tells us this time, he cries out the scriptures, declare my temple, be called a house of prayer, but you've turned it into a den of thieves.

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Mark adds a little more detail. My temple will be called a house of prayer for all nations. I think that tells us where they're selling this livestock and changing money back in the court of the Gentiles. God had promised Abraham long ago, someone will come from you. That will bless all nations. Now those other nations, the Gentiles are being squeezed out of the temple by cattle stalls and money changers. It seems not much has changed at the temple in Jerusalem. This time the authorities don't confront him on the spot. They find them. The next day. Mark tells us the reaction of the authorities. They went out and sought for a way to murder Jesus, Matthew and Mark.

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Also tell us an interesting miracle. Jesus did related to the cleansing of the temple. Jesus comes to a fig tree, hungry and looks for figs, but there's none on the tree. So Jesus, quite out of character curses, the fig tree. May you never have fruit again, Matthew and Mark tell us the very next day that fig tree was dead wilted from the roots up. We'll look in the next episode at the purpose and types of signs, supernatural signs Jesus did, but this one is very odd. It was an unusual sign to make a strong statement just as Jesus came to a fig tree, expecting fruit figs, Jesus came to God's house expecting God's fruit, justice, mercy humility.

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What does he find animals in the court of the Gentiles? Little people who'd scraped together just enough to bring the half shekel tax being gouged by the money converters, those bruised reeds being broken off and smoldering wicks put out all under the label of worshiping God that worship in the temple would indeed wither. Within 40 years, the Romans would level Herod's temple would end the sacrifices and worship of the Jews and would disperse them across the globe for almost two millennia. The cursing of the fig tree is the first sign we've talked about in the life of Jesus.

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There were many, many more. What were those signs and why did Jesus perform them? I'm going to begin to answer those questions in our next word picture.