God’s Holy Temple

Jesus went into the temple and threw out all those buying and selling. He overturned the tables of the money changers and the chairs of those selling doves. He said to them, “It is written, my house will be called a house of prayer, but you are making it a den of thieves!”

The blind and the lame came to him in the temple, and he healed them. When the chief priests and the scribes saw the wonders that he did and the children shouting in the temple, “Hosanna to the Son of David!” they were indignant and said to him, “Do you hear what these children are saying?”

Jesus replied, “Yes, have you never read:

You have prepared praise
from the mouths of infants and nursing babies?”

Then he left them, went out of the city to Bethany, and spent the night there. Matthew 21:12-17 (CSB)

In yesterday’s text we saw Jesus enter by the way of the eastern gate. God was returning to his city and his temple, and he’s not happy with the state of things. 

The temple was the heart of Jewish worship. In it sins were forgiven, God was rightly worshiped, and lives restored. I’ve sometimes wondered about this text, and how it was fair. For the purposes of sacrifice, Jewish people had to come from all over Israel to rightly worship in the temple, bringing with them their ritual sacrifices of rams, bulls, and pigeons. It’s difficult to drag a bull a hundred miles, so people would bring coins and exchange it for the required animal at the temple, for a small price of convenience. 

What part of this made Jesus angry? The commercialism? The opportunism? The laziness? Or did he not really care about the sacrifices at all, and the temple was really to represent something different? 

Maybe it’s that the actions became so rote, that instead of conjuring the desired response, people thought they were accomplishing what they needed to do simply by doing their basic duty. 

We already saw that God didn’t care about sacrifices, he wanted transformed hearts. Worse that people commercialized the roteness. Religion, especially the sort that appease consciences without requiring much in return have always been good business. Most people want their life choices affirmed by God, and to be sent away with a blessing. Few love being told repentance and a change of life is in order.

I wonder how Jesus would feel if he walked into any church in America?  

The Jerusalem temple would ultimately be destroyed by the Romans, with all that’s left being the Western Wall, or the “Wailing Wall”. But Jesus had a different vision for his temple. Tear this temple down and I will raise it up in three days (John 2:18-21) Jesus cries while overturning tables in John’s gospel. The ultimate temple he’s talking about didn’t have walls. It didn’t have money changers, or pigeon sellers. It was himself. 

And this temple would be incorruptible. Its worshipers would also come to it to rightly worship, and receive forgiveness, and to have their lives restored. But this temple wouldn’t and won’t be found in a building. Rather it is in the Holy Spirit dwelling within us that draws us to Christ and allows these things to take place. Don’t you know that you are the Temple of the Lord? Paul cries to the Corinthians (1 Corinthians 3:16-17). 

Yesterday we saw the prophecy given to Ezekiel that God was indeed coming back to his temple. This temple will not be destroyed or corrupted, because God himself is forming himself in his people. His mercy seat is upon His Spirit which rests in you. Don’t subject God’s holy temple to profane or disreputable things! But allow it—you—to be the very ministry of reconciliation to those who need and don’t yet know God. For this is the very temple that Jesus came to rebuild.