Zeal for God’s House
Introduction
I'm going to begin by asking you to use your sanctified imagination. Imagine that Jesus showed up here today. He walks right through this door. And he's intense. He looks around, eyes blazing and wild, his nostrils flared, his fists clenched, and he's breathing fast. I know, it sounds more like a scene from The Hulk than anything.
But imagine him yanking an amp cable out of a guitar and swinging it around and shouting for everyone to get out of his Father's house, and as if anyone needed any more motivation, he starts overturning the communion tables right in front of everyone! Needless to say, we'd all clear the room faster than the safety team could call crime-stoppers.
Our text in John's gospel today similarly stirs our imaginations and prompts us to ask in response to the Scripture reading we just heard, "What could possibly have stoked Jesus to such a temperature that he'd disrupt the Jewish feast of Passover and make such a scene at the temple in Jerusalem?"
Sermon text: John 2:13–22
Let's read v.13–16 again:
"The Passover of the Jews was at hand, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. In the temple, he found those who were selling oxen and sheep and pigeons, and the money-changers sitting there. 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. And he told those who sold the pigeons, ‘Take these things away; do not make my Father’s house a house of trade.’”
Every Jewish man was required to appear annually at the feast of Passover (Deut 16:16). So the city of Jerusalem would have been teeming with many hundreds of thousands of Jewish men that week.
Jesus Breaks Up a Profiteering Scheme
But not only were there hundreds of thousands of people, but according to the Jewish historian, Josephus, “no fewer than two hundred and fifty thousand" animals were sacrificed annually during Passover week. Can you imagine what the temple (the center of activity in Jerusalem at Passover) and the temple courtyard would have sounded like? A cacophony of bleating lambs, lowing oxen, cooing pigeons, crowds of people, vendors, priests... yelling, shouting, talking, praying, reporting, bartering? I'll tell you what the priests and temple authorities heard: "Cha-ching! Cha-ching!" You might think of Disney World during tourist season, extorting parents from out of town during their obligatory pilgrimage to Orlando, forcing them to buy $15 hotdogs and $7 non-refillable lemonades.
Similarly, the religious leaders were running a rigged, closed system to profit off of their religion and its adherents. Two ways they did this, as the text mentions, was (1) using money-changers to exchange currency for a steep fee. Since the rabbis had conveniently declared the Tyrian shekel to be the only currency acceptable in the Temple, money from other regions had to be exchanged, with a fee attached. (2) Selling animals for sacrifice at an inflated price. In the other gospels, the telling of the cleaning of the temple narrative Jesus called the temple a "Den of Thieves."
So, Jesus was having none of this, and he made a scene by driving out the money-changers and the animals off of the Temple porch.
Main Idea: Jesus cleansed the temple of those who desecrated it.
While this story seems simple enough, we're concerned with more than understanding the story in isolation from the rest of John's gospel and the rest of Scripture. In fact, it's vital that we ask why. Why did John tell this story at all, since he says later that there were far too many stories to be told, and that the world couldn't contain the volumes that could be written about Jesus. So why this story? What function did he intend this story to play in his gospel and in the lives of his readers?
Why John Told this Story
If we fail to ask this question of authorial intent, what the author intends to communicate in context, we could easily go off on any number of tangents, as many in our day have done with this text. We could view this story as evidence of "Jesus the religious zealot," as the infamous "Jesus Seminar" likes to distort it, a group of liberal and noisy theologians who deny Jesus was the Son of God. Or "Jesus the Alpha-male tough-guy from Nazareth," as many popular level Christian men's books like to co-opt it. Or perhaps an inspiring example of self-help assertiveness therapy. We might title the message based on this text, "So Loud They Can't Ignore You." Or maybe John means this narrative as a critique of social injustice and power inequalities that hurt the poor and help the rich, as one article I read this week argued.
But the problem with all of these approaches to the story is that they all grossly ignore John's stated intentions in telling it.
Whatever we know about the story, we know that everything John wrote in his Gospel was designed to bring us to trust in Jesus as the Christ, the Son of God, who alone brings salvation to a world enslaved to sin and self-destruction. He states in John 20:30–31:
"Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book; but these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name."
When we submit this cleansing of the temple passage to this larger explicitly stated objective of John, the pieces of the puzzle fall easily into place and John's aim becomes clear, even from clues in the passage itself.
Fulfilling a Psalm
Let's look for some clues surrounding the context of the story to see what John had in mind.
v.17: "His disciples remembered that it was written, 'Zeal for your house will consume me.'"
John tells this story (according to v.17) to show how Jesus' cleansing the temple embodied and fulfilled a specific aspect of what had been written long before about the Jewish Messiah who was to come.
Ps. 69:9: "For zeal for your house has consumed me, and the reproaches of those who reproach you have fallen on me."
Jesus' rampage through the temple court was motivated by fervent devotion to the honor of his Father and hatred for all that desecrates his worship.
John's intention is doubly confirmed when we look at v.22, the last verse and conclusion of our text:
"His disciples...believed the Scripture and the word that Jesus had spoken."
John intends for the cleansing of the temple to highlight Jesus' fulfillment of prophecy in order to convince us, his readers, to trust in Jesus as Christ, Savior, and Lord... which he told us in his goal for the entire book of John.
But when we zoom the camera back things get even more interesting! Not only should we see the cleansing of the Temple in its immediate context as an event that shows how Jesus fulfills prophecies about Messiah, but we must also see the event in light of the larger storyline of Scripture. When we step back and see the bigger picture, this smaller story takes on even more significance than running thieves out of the temple.
Fulfilling Malachi
For this, we turn to Malachi 3:1–4, the last book of the Old Testament, written roughly four centuries before Jesus cleansed the temple:
"Behold, I send my messenger, and he will prepare the way before me. And the Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple; and the messenger of the covenant in whom you delight, behold, he is coming, says the LORD of hosts. But who can endure the day of his coming, and who can stand when he appears? For he is like a refiner’s fire and like fullers’ soap. He will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver, and he will purify the sons of Levi and refine them like gold and silver, and they will bring offerings in righteousness to the LORD. Then the offering of Judah and Jerusalem will be pleasing to the LORD as in the days of old and as in former years."
This is clearly talking about the ministry of the long-awaited Messiah. Messiah will suddenly come to his temple and will come with the intention of cleansing: refining the gold of its dross like a goldsmith, and cleaning the garment of its grime like a fuller's soap, and none can withstand him. The trade of the fullers worked in cleansing garments and whitening them. The process of fulling or cleansing clothes consisted in treading or stamping on the garments with the feet or beating with clubs in tubs of water, in which some alkaline soap would dissolve grime and stains. And Malachi describes the ministry of Messiah as including this element of trampling out the dirt and removing all that sullied the worship of God in the temple.
And this momentary purging of the Jerusalem temple in John 2 was only a small foreshadowing of the end of time, which will see the unprecedented cleansing of all creation of everything that defiles, as Revelation 21 tells us.
This leads us to the "bad news." Because we ourselves, if we're honest, must admit that we have contributed to the dirt and grime and the desecration of the temple of God. It's our story.
Our Story: We have desecrated God's temple for selfish gain.
When we read the story of the Jewish priests corrupting the service of God for selfish ends, let us not think of this as their sin alone, but as a small picture of the story of humanity (and of our own lives). In truth, all humanity has desecrated its original charter as image-bearers of God living in God's world.
Scripture speaks of the earth with temple-like language. In Isaiah 66:1, God says, "Heaven is my throne, and the earth is my footstool." In other words, all creation is the theater in which the glory of God unfolds as we see both corrupt human history and God's redemptive works in history woven together in a breathtaking display of God's infinite wisdom, justice, mercy, goodness, and grace.
History is "his story," and creation is "his stage."
We All are Temple-Desecraters
And the role you and I have played in this story and on this stage (prior to coming to trust in Jesus) is to be among those who desecrate this cosmic temple of God. we've rejected the purpose of our very existence—to know and to love God above all and to love our neighbors as ourselves—and we've instead twisted our lives into self-centered, self-gratifying, self-promoting, God-forgetting, God-neglecting, God-dishonoring pursuits, and we've likewise relating to our fellow image-bearers around us in exceedingly selfish and sinful ways.
It is we who have entered the sanctuary of God, creation itself, and contaminated it – desecrated it - with our sacrilege. This happened in the Garden of Eden, and it happens in our hearts and our homes today. We pollute God's temple by exchanging the worship of the one true God for the worship of things God forbids and also things God gives us to enjoy in moderation and under his Lordship. We have taken good gifts like money, sex, food, beauty, power, industry, and religion and we've distorted them, abused them, worshipped them, been ungrateful for them and slavishly addicted to them, we've wielded them for selfish gain, and loved them more than God and often instead of God. Just like the money-changers of old, we have sought not the God of the temple but rather to set ourselves up as gods in the temple of creation.
We Use God’s House for Personal Industry
But such desecration isn't only the work of the irreligious, who wouldn't darken the door of a church. It's often what we've been guilty of in the church.
Jesus' main accusation against the temple authorities was that they made God’s house a house of trade. They turned religion into a profit scheme, a cash cow. And of this we are all guilty too.
Singer-songwriter, Caroline Cobb, has poetically noted,
"We’re quick to wag our fingers at the more egregious examples of greedy false teachers who exploit the vulnerable by promising health and wealth. But is there a more subtle, insidious, widespread culture of commercialism in today’s church? Have the mercenary ways that provoked Jesus’s anger crept into our churches, our hearts?
So often I catch myself relating to God like a cosmic vending machine... rather than a heavenly Father.
How many parents here would be pleased by your kids growing up and relating to you like a vending machine? They only come around when they need something. They disguise their intentions, but it becomes evident they care little for you, but they really want your stuff.
How We Wrongly Use Jesus for Selfish Gain
We do this with God often, do we not? We praise him, we pray to him, we give money to his cause, we go to church... but what we too often want is not HIM but what we hope these "righteous" actions will entitle God to do for us. We do things in the name of God, but our eyes are not set on HIM but on what we really want in life at any given moment (and it often changes moment by moment)...
We just want him to make our lives easy. Would it be so bad, God, if you just gave me just this one thing? I don't ask for much, just physical health. Just a job I enjoy. Just a spouse that love me. Just a child – that's all. Just a second child – that's all. Just a third child – that's all. Just for you to deliver my teenage child from their poor choices. Just for you to change the spouse you gave me. Just for you to give me relief from the stress of the job you gave me.
And the list is bottomless, and it's ever-morphing to meet our fickle demands, ever seeking anything but God himself, ironically, who alone can satisfy our empty hearts.
Gospel Conviction: Christ was desecrated so we would be cleansed.
The second half of our text opens up these realities like a pearl hidden in a clam shell. Verses 18 to 21 read:
"So the Jews said to him, 'What sign do you show us for doing these things?' Jesus answered them, 'Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.' The Jews then said, 'It has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and will you raise it up in three days?' But he was speaking about the temple of his body."
The Jews were incredulous. After all, what on earth could possess a man to disrupt Passover and scourge the money changers and call the temple his Father's house?! Surely, only a prophet from God could be authorized to do such a thing. And thus they demand a sign of him to prove he is authorized to act in such a bold and disruptive way.
Jesus Prophesies His Death and Resurrection
And Jesus' answer is not only powerful, it's prophetic. Verse 19: "Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up." In other words, Jesus's answer is not merely to claim authority over the temple, his answer is: "I am the temple."
Jesus is saying, “My incarnate body is the prototype of the meeting place of God with man, the reality to which this earthly temple merely points. My body is the temple! I am the true meeting place of God. I am the mediator of true worship. I am the sacrifice. I am the offering. I am the high priest. As God's Son, I am the guardian of the honor of God. This earthly temple exists for and points to me. And you want a sign of this? Kill me. Kill this body, and in three days I'll raise it up again.”
The Temple of Jesus’ Body was Desicrated for the Forgiveness of Desicraters
Do you not see in Christ's answer the very basis of our hope as those who have profaned and desecrated the worship of God for selfish gain? As the holy One, Christ came to experience the desecration we've committed. He came to be profaned like we've profaned creation. He came to be marred like we've marred all God has made. He came to be destroyed block-by-block, not a stone left upon another, because that's the judgment that awaits sinners. That's the day of the Lord, the day of the great refining, the day of the Fuller beating and trampling out the grime from God's creation. Later in John, the temple of Christ's body would be desecrated: Desecrated by Judas' kiss. Desecrated by the slap of the temple guard. Desecrated by the spit and fists of the high priest and many in the Counsel of 70. Desecrated by the purple robe of Roman mockery in Herod's court. Desecrated by the skin-filleting cat-of-nine tails in Pilate Praetorium. Desecrated by the cross and nails meant for criminals. Desecrated by my sins that were laid by the Father on his back. Desecrated by the wrecking-ball of God's holy justice that demolished the temple of Jesus' body as he hung in the place of desecrators.
But after 3 days, according to his promise, and according to OT prophecy, the true Temple of God emerged from the borrowed tomb, reconstructed, made without hands – our eternal meeting place with God! The mediator of our worship. The One who cleanses us from our sins and transforms desecrators into disciples.
Gospel Vision: May zeal for God's house consume us.
Upon seeing Jesus cleanse the temple in John 2, his disciples remembered the Psalm: "Zeal for your house has consumed me." Oh, that this would be the effect of seeing today how Jesus was destroyed and rebuilt in our place! One of our core values here at Sacred Mission is "Affection for God & Neighbor." Oh, that we the church of Jesus would be stirred, consumed by a zeal to see God get his due praise. Oh, that our love for God's house in the abstract would become tangible in the ways we look out for each other, the real "house of God," the people of God, built together by the Spirit into a dwelling of God in Mason, Ohio.
While Jesus' body is the true temple, we're also told that the church is the fullness of his body on earth, and that we ourselves are being fashioned into a temple, a dwelling place of God through the Spirit. Sometimes, I think, we need to remind ourselves that zeal is good. Lukewarm is bad. When we pray around the kitchen table, or the living room, or at bedtime, or on walks in the neighborhood, do our closest family and friends see a zeal for God and for their spiritual good? God envisions creating a people whose lives are marked by the same zeal Jesus exhibited in his time on earth. Zeal for speaking the name of Jesus to others, zeal in singing his praise, zeal as we intercede for our brothers and sisters in prayer, zeal when we plead with God, as did Moses—show me your glory!
May the zeal for God's house that consumed Christ, now consume us. ❖
