Clough John Lesson 13

Sacrifices in the Bible: Cleansing of the Temple – John 2:12-17; Psalm 69

We have discussed the area of John 1:19 through John 2:11, the first week of the presentation of Jesus Christ to the nation, began with John the Baptist and terminated in Cana. We found the first miracle of the Lord Jesus Christ’s ministry last week, and saw that what He really had done was to convert the entire plumbing system of the house to wine and He did so to answer two questions that men of two different backgrounds ask. The Greeks, who were readers of this Gospel, the people who lived in Asia Minor where John lived when he wrote it, were asking how to have happiness. They were influenced by the Dionysian cult; Dionysus was the Greek god of wine, of joy, but he was also the Greek god of cruelty. And so Jesus Christ shows the Greeks that you can have your enjoyment when it’s framed by the Word of God. And you can have the wine without it turning into something cruel if it’s controlled by the standards of the Word of God. And then we found Him answering the Jewish question because He used the waterpots of purification, for the Jew He knew that happiness and joy depended on being purified enough to fellowship with God. And so Jesus Christ by turning the water into wine shows that since the wine is a symbol of blood that I will purify you entirely.

Now we come, in John 2:12, to a second era, an era that starts in John 2:12 and continues to the end of John 3. It is Jesus’ first trip to Jerusalem. In verse 12 we find Jesus leaves Cana, and “He went down to Capernaum, He, and His mother, and His brethren, and His disciples; and they continued there not many days.” Jesus Christ at this point leaves the highland area around Nazareth and goes down to the Galilean Lake, this became the base of Jesus Christ’s operations, for many reasons. Again turning to the map and looking at this area you can see why it would be very much welcome for one who lived in a land that was hot all the time. This is looking at the Sea of Galilee and looking at the area just to the northwest of that sea. Nazareth is down here; Jesus has come to Cana, this is the area where they had the wedding feast, and now He goes down, notice the land goes down as it says in your text; He went down into this area and stayed somewhere along here. This is the ruins of Capernaum. This is what it looked like around Capernaum, it’s a very flat land and there’s a lot of fishing and resort areas along that area. This is the place where Peter’s home was; it is the place where Matthew’s home was, and it is the place where Jesus Christ moved His area of operations to.

Why Jesus moved to this area instead of the area around Nazareth will be explained later except we can cite these reasons now. In Isaiah 9:2 the first area to go into captivity under the Assyrians was the area around the Sea of Galilee. And God promised in Isaiah 9:2 because that was the area conquered first by the Assyrians that that would be the area where the people would see a great light first. And therefore when Messiah began His ministry it’s no accident that Jesus chose that region as His fundamental area of operation. It is also, from what we gather from verse 12 and other passages, it became the home of Mary and Jesus’ brothers.

Jesus had many brothers and here the Gospel of John provides us with material to undermine the Romanist position. We saw last time in John 2 that Jesus put Mary down when it became necessary to put Mary down. Jesus specifically and clearly rejected Mary from any spiritual ministry of His own. Mary is not an intercessor with Jesus Christ, and that is taught clearly in John 2. Now it’s not that the Bible is deliberately trying to put someone down, the point is the Holy Spirit wrote the Scripture and He knew what kind of foolishness men would invent. And so He put this data in the text so men wouldn’t have to believe these kinds of things. And here we find another thing: Mary was not a perpetual virgin. This is another dogma of Romanism; it is not grounded on Scripture. Mary had many children because the Scriptures say Jesus was her firstborn. Well, how could you be firstborn among many if there weren’t any others to be firstborn among? It’s very obvious and later on in John you’ll see what happens to Jesus. One of His brothers wrote part of the New Testament, James. Another one of Jesus’ brothers is Jude. So two of His brothers later became believers, by the way, they became believers after Jesus died, and wrote parts of the New Testament.

So we have Mary and His brothers. Jesus’ sisters, and He had many of those too, they stayed in Nazareth by Mark 6:3, reason being they probably married and their husbands lived in Nazareth, so though the sisters stayed in Nazareth, His brothers moved with His mother to Capernaum, and that was the family base, it was the base of Peter, it was the base of Mathew, it was the base of Philip, it was the base of Andrew. So from this point forward this becomes the center of operation. However, because John is interested in showing us that the leadership of the nation had adequate data in their time, John’s Gospel, more than the other three Gospels, emphasizes not this Galilean ministry but the Jerusalem ministry. John has Jesus going to Jerusalem three times and each one of those three times is filled with tension, filled with conflict and confrontation. The evidence is all in the favor of Jesus, that Jesus Christ presented His credentials clearly, He presented them repeatedly and He presented them over and over again throughout His ministry to the national leaders. Therefore, if the nation rejected Jesus as Messiah it did so not by ignorance; it did so willfully.

So John 2:13 leads us to his shift from Capernaum to Jerusalem. “And the Jews Passover was at hand, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem.” Now when Jesus goes up to Jerusalem we want you to be acquainted with some of the terrain and some of Jerusalem as we go through the Gospel of John you’ll see more of Jerusalem. Fortunately for our sake one of the professors at Hebrew University over the years, he and his wife and some of his graduate students, have been working on a scale model of the city of Jerusalem in Jesus’ day. When you go to the city of Jerusalem today you can go see that model, walk around the model and look at it. We are going to study some of the maps, some of the terrain, and parts of that model so you’ll be able to look at it and visualize what it was, what Jerusalem looked like when Jesus went there, and what’s going to happen in this passage when He cleans out the temple.

Now for some background in the series of slides I’m going to show we’re going to come on this model from certain angles so you can place this mentally in your mind. Here is an outline of the city of Jerusalem as it existed in Jesus’ day and shortly thereafter, actually technically in Jesus time this wall way to the north was not there; that was built later on, before the fall of Jerusalem in 70 AD, but the model shows it so we’ll leave it there. You’ll also notice on this outline of the city of Jerusalem a blue dash line; that is the walls of today’s old city. Notice the old city today is a lot smaller than the entire city was in Jesus time. The central figures that we’re going to be looking at when we look at Jerusalem in Jesus day because of the incident that is about to happen, we want to look at the architecture in some of the buildings that were involved. So therefore when we get to that area of the slides, our first slide will be looking at the city from the north end, you’ll see the wall, you’ll see a residential area in this part because that was the residential area; Jerusalem is always invaded from the north, never from the east, never from the south, never from the west, always Jerusalem has been invaded from the north because of the terrain. There are valleys to the south. So even in the Six Day war Jerusalem was invaded from the northeast side.

So because of the sensitivity to a land invasion from the north, walls were built. As you can see here there are two walls to defend against these attacks. You will see the first wall from the north, we will then move around to the northeast corner, look over the northeast corner and as you look over the northeast corner you will see a four-towered building. That is the fortress of Antonia, the fortress where the Roman police stayed. It was from this fortress that Paul was saved by a group of Roman soldiers, they were able to look down from these four towers inside the temple and spot the riot. They dispatched a group of soldiers down there and evacuated Paul safely from the mob and brought him later to trial. The fortress of Antonia also may have been the place where Jesus Christ stood trial, it was a central figure of the area. Here is what the temple area looked like and in the center was the temple itself. And we’ll begin to show slides from the north, northeast and we’ll come down and look at this from the east side. That should show you a little bit about the city of Jerusalem.

Now we want to understand what’s going on with this He went up to Jerusalem. Jesus is coming with the disciples from this area, around Capernaum all the way down into the Jordan Valley; He was baptized down here, He went up the Jordan Valley, went over to Cana, now He’s come down, spend a few days here and then moved south. Now He’s coming south down the valley again and when He gets down in this area of Jerusalem He must go up. He is coming down the Jordan Valley, this is the Dead Sea and here is Jerusalem, He now must come up and He comes up this road. This area down here is very low; this is very high. So He goes up to Jerusalem and the text of John is correct.

Here is the model, here is the north wall of that model; that is what the city looked like in Jesus’ day; and coming closer here is the four towered fortress of Antonia. This model is extremely accurate, it is the best way to visualize the situation in Jesus time because the model is changed whenever any archeological fact comes to his attention that would lead to a different arrangement. So there is the fortress of Antonia; notice how in these towers soldiers could be stationed to peer down inside the temple courtyard. This is what the temple looked like in John 2 when this incident occurred. There is the temple itself; around the temple you find an inner wall; that inner wall was the area into which the Jewish males could attend. Inside this wall only Jewish Levites could attend. Outside here women and Gentiles were allowed.

Notice the approach because this is going to figure into why Jesus gets so angry in John 2. The incident in John 2 happens right inside this courtyard, not inside here where only Jewish men are available and not in here where only Levites are allowed, but out in the third tier in this area where the women and the Gentiles would be, this is as far as they could come to worship at the temple. They did not believe in women’s liberation. Here approaching closer you get an idea of the temple, the Levitical enclave, the Jewish male enclave, and then on the outside this great court. Notice how large this court is. It was this court, probably right along there where all the moneychangers were and Jesus walked all the way down, all the way through all those pillars and turned the tables over and scattered the animals. The soldiers in the fortress of Antonia must have got a ball out of watching it.

Here is coming at the center of the model, looking northwest, there’s the fortress of Antonia, soldiers would be stationed here, would look down inside. Here’s the temple, there’s the Levitical enclave, here is the enclave where only Jewish men were permitted through this door. Archeologists have found the sign on that door and that sign says “Death to any Gentile that enters these gates.” And here is the large great court which was cleaned out by the Lord Jesus Christ. You can see He had quite a bit of cleaning to do and this temple will give you an idea of what the job looked like. Here is the temple area itself looking head on; through that gate only Levites could go. Here is the courtyard closer up where probably this whole incident occurred with the money changers; here’s a close up area of the temple, notice the steps, those are the steps from the book of Psalms when in the Psalms about 120, 115, the Songs of Ascent would be chanted as the pilgrims went up the steps, they could go no further than that door. This is what the door itself looks like on the inside of Herod’s temple. It was that the disciples said look at how great that is Lord, and the Lord said not one stone shall be left. Finally, looking at the model once again to keep in perspective and prepare ourselves for John 2, that is the temple and there’s the temple itself again and the courtyard around it. These are the buildings that existed in the city at that time. That’s the setting for what we are now about to study.

John 2:13, “And the Jews Passover was at hand, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. [14] And He found in the temple those that sold oxen and sheep and doves, and the changers of money, sitting. [15] And when He had made a scourge of small cords, He drove them all out of the temple, and the sheep, and the oxen; and poured out the changers’ money, and overthrew the tables; [16] And said unto them that sold doves, Get things out of here; make no My Father’s house an house of merchandise. [17] And His disciples remembered that it was written, The zeal of thine house has eaten me up.”

Now like always with John we want to approach this first in understanding what the incident was. Let’s get firmly in mind the incident and let our imaginations dwell on the incident itself and then let us be guided by the text as John seeks to take the incident and teach us something that’s not immediately apparent but that is a key to Christ’s personal character.

John 2:14, He found these people who were selling. The background, what was going on here. Jews had been scattered all over the ancient world and would come to Jerusalem one of three times during the year. At least every Jewish male had to do this. He had to come once of these three times; technically in the Old Testament it was three times a year but it got by this time you only go once a year; if you wanted extra points you came three times a year. The thing is that there were many travelers that had to come from great distances. Now obviously if you’re coming from great distances you can’t bring your own sacrifices. So therefore you could bring money but you couldn’t bring sacrifices and therefore there would have to be provision for sacrifices locally that you could purchase with your coins. The problem was that the sacrifices that had to be purchased had to meet the specifications of the Mosaic Law, by Exodus 12:5. The poor, by the way, by Leviticus 5:7, could offer doves; the doves that Jesus treats differently are the sacrifices that poor people who couldn’t afford anything else, that’s the only thing they could afford to sacrifice, Jesus kept hold of those. And that’s another point but to understand the background, those animals all had to meet Mosaic Law specifications. Someone had to provide them locally for long distance travelers.

Now enters the problem. There were two religious rackets that were going on when this happened. Two great cartels, violations of free enterprise, incidentally, the man’s name was the high priest, Annas, and Annas had a large family. And these great high priests made deals with the people who sold the sacrifices for a closed market, and here’s how the racket went. If you went outside the city walls to purchase your sacrifice it would be known by the inspectors. The inspectors were all of the priestly family. So since the inspectors were in cahoots with the people who sold the sacrifices inside the temple, they would flunk your sacrifice. They would not pass it, so therefore if you wanted a sacrifice that would pass the inspection you had to buy from those who were “in” with the priests, because you were guaranteed acceptance if you purchased your sacrifices from these men. This racketeering was exposed in later Jewish literature and was called the bazaars of the sons of Annas, and the rabbis knew a lot about this because the rabbis fought this. But the rabbis did not have power to do anything about it and that’s one of the significant things that’s going to happen in this story. Many, many rabbis were campaigning against the bazaars of the sons of Annas and could do nothing. There were hundreds of rabbis that had tried to clean this situation up. That’s one of the backgrounds for John 2.

The Talmud says that some of these rabbis would curse these high priestly families, Annas and his sons and others. They said these high priestly families are themselves high priests, their sons are the treasurers, their sons-in-law the assistant treasurers, and their servants beat the people with sticks. So there was a complete religious racket going on over the sacrifices. It was a link between the men who sold and the priests who passed. And obviously those of you who are sensitive to Biblical economics see a violation once again of the free market principle.

The second racket that was going on had nothing to do with the sacrifices but had to do with the moneychangers. It’s not too hard to imagine pilgrims from long distances bringing many different kinds of currency, but only one kind of currency was permitted inside the temple area and so therefore if you wanted to spend money inside the temple area and you had to if you wanted to buy your sacrifices, you have to have your money changed. And ye old friendly moneychanger would change your money, plus a cut, a considerable cut; a cut that was so great that Edersheim estimates the annual take in offerings of the temple amounted to nearly one quarter of a million dollars a year and of that these moneychangers got a cut of 12%. So they were making approximately two and a half million dollars a year on this business, this religious racket. It’s that background, the racketeers of the moneychangers and the racketeers of the people that were selling the sacrifices that form the background to this thing.

Now furthermore it says in John 2:14 that Jesus found all this mess going on “in the temple,” and that’s the second big problem. The first big problem is these two racketeering operations going on and the second problem was not only are they racketeers but they’re carrying on inside that courtyard. Now let’s look at that courtyard again; here was the temple and you had this great courtyard and then you had the inner area and then the temple itself. This large court, that’s where all this is going on, probably along the south wall. It was in that court where only the women and the Gentiles could come to worship. This is what made Jesus mad and you have to understand that this infuriated Him. Why did this infuriate Christ? Because the very people who were engaged in the racketeering, namely the Jewish men in the business and the Levites could go worship God in peace and quiet inside here, but they took their foul racketeering with all the… you can imagine the noise, the stink, the distraction of people trying to pray, trying to study the Word of God, and right here… wouldn’t you love to have about four steers moving up and down the center aisle all during the time we are trying to teach the Word. And then to top it off, a few doves hanging off the fluorescent lights, and we’d pass out umbrellas. So you’d have a whole problem of these sacrifices in the place where people are trying to study the Word of God and that’s what infuriated Jesus Christ. You cannot study the Word in confusion. You cannot worship the Lord unless you have a place to concentrate in peace and quiet.

And when Christ walked in there He could have gone into the center to worship. He was a Jewish male, it would have been peace and quiet inside here. But Christ looked around, He saw thousands of women who were being denied the Word of God; He looked around and He saw thousands of Gentiles that were unable to study the Word of God. And He could have been unconcerned and walked right into His little private place with all the rest of the Jewish men, but He didn’t. He stayed outside and He cleaned out the court first and then He went in. And He accomplished something that was phenomenal in His time because the rabbis had fought this thing and fought this thing and fought this thing and not one of them was ever able to pull it off. Jesus single-handedly walked into that great courtyard and physically threw everyone out. He later did this again which we’ll discuss next week, a second time in His ministry. But He’s starting His ministry off with a bang by flushing the courtyard.

Let’s look at John 2:14 and see what it was He flushed: oxen, sheep and doves. The oxen and the sheep were in descending levels of economic price, what you would pay for sacrifices, oxen most expensive, then sheep, then doves, in descending price; and the changers of money. So they were all gathered in this court.

Now John 2:15, now if you’re one of these queasy people don’t look at verse 15 too carefully because Jesus arms Himself with a weapon and He hits people. Jesus did that? Yes, Jesus did that. That’s what the whip is for; He waving it, please boys, get out of the way. He walked in, in His humanity, remember there’s a combination of Jesus’ deity and His humanity, on this occasion Jesus walked in… in His deity He could have just snap, gone like that and there would have been no temple left, but in His humanity He used weapons. In Luke 22:36 Jesus authorizes the use of weapons in personal self defense, so don’t you be some Christian against gun legislation or something else. Jesus Christ personally authorizes the use of weapons when it comes to defending yourself. And when the government can defend us against burglars and rapists and murderers then we can turn in our guns, but to turn in guns before the government has the capability of controlling crime is ridiculous; it’s putting the cart before the horse.

So we have in verse 15 Jesus Christ arming Himself. Also Jesus had moral power; this is evident in other passages of John and it’s implied here, that these men knew they were wrong and when Christ came up to them He must have had an expression in His eyes that pierced to the very soul; these men knew they were wrong. And that that made them weak men. Men who have violated their conscience, when they are confronted by a strong moral force, cave in. It always has happened in history. This is why Christians need not be pessimistic about civilization falling apart around them; all we have to do is prepare ourselves for the moment that it collapses and we take it over. That’s what Cromwell did in England; when society had fallen apart the Christians took it over; that’s what happened in the Middle Ages; when the Roman Empire fell apart the Christians took it over, and that’s what can happen again; we don’t have to wait for the hippies to take it over.

So we have Jesus Christ hitting people and driving these people out and then in John 2:16 He does something different and it shows you the sensitivity that Christ had toward the people that were involved and who were the victims, the worst victims of this kind of racket. He “said to them that sold doves, Get these out of here.” He did not knock the dove cages over and let them lose because if He had they would have been gone and the poor would have had no sacrifices, and therefore Jesus very carefully said you just move them out. He did not touch the sacrifices of the poor; He allowed the people to still have their sacrifices but He would not permit them to have it on temple grounds.

Now when He says “Get these things out of here, and make not My Father’s house an house of merchandise,” He is announcing His Messianic claim. When He says this is “My Father’s house,” that is a claim of His Messiahship. Later on the Jews catch on to what He’s done and they’ll react to this. In fact, during His trial this incident is going to be used to crucify Christ. It will be part of the court record, it will be part of the court evidences in that judgment against Jesus Christ.

Now up to the end of John 2:16 we have a presentation of the event itself. It’s easy to imagine, you have seen the physical temple, what it looked like, you see a description here in the text, what happened in that great courtyard, now John doesn’t leave us there. John introduces us to certain things. And as we have always seen, John’s spiritual view of what happens comes into play and it comes into play with the last three words of verse 16, “You must not make My Father’s house a house of merchandise.” John has deliberately remembered Jesus’ words, words that could not have but reminded an accurate student of the Old Testament of a passage back there that spoke of the temple being cleansed of the merchandisers.

Turn to Zechariah 14:21, This in context is looking forward to the millennial temple; it is looking forward in history to the time when God establishes a free worship center for the entire human race in which every member of the human race can come into direct fellowship with God in a physical way. And so Zechariah prophesies about this future perfect fellowship with God, the time when there will be unobstructed fellowship with God; he makes this statement in verse 21. “Yea, every pot in Jerusalem and in Judah shall be holiness unto the LORD of hosts; and all they that sacrifice shall come,” notice the parallel with our incident, then people shall come and sacrifice, “and take of them, and boil in them; and in that day there shall be no more a Canaanite in the house of the LORD of hosts.” The Canaanite is the Hebrew word for businessman and Zechariah says in the day when God comes and man has unobstructed fellowship with God, there won’t be any businessman putting his little religious racket inside the temple. There will be no Canaanite in the house of the Lord.

All right, the phrase, “Canaanite in the house,” or “businessman” in the house is parallel to the phrase you just read coming off the lips of Jesus; don’t make My Father’s house a house of merchandise. Jesus is actually quoting part of Zechariah 14:21 and in so doing He is pulling something off here that He did at the wedding feast. Remember back at the wedding feast Mary kept coming up to Jesus, saying hey, they need wine, they need wine. And His quick rebuke to her was, Lady, My time has not yet come. In other words, the time for My crucifixion hasn’t come yet, I can’t give these people true, complete, full happiness but I’ll tell you what I’ll do Mary, I’ll do something here to satisfy their temporal joy for a while. And we’ll let that be a picture of what I’m going to do for men. So the conversion of the water to wine is a preview of coming attractions; it is a promissory event of Jesus’ future provision for our happiness. And so also now in the cleansing of the temple; it is a promissory event of the fact that Jesus will eventually flush all of this religious crud out of the system so we can have unobstructed fellowship with God and John sees a lot more than Jesus just physically driving those animals out. That is but a small incident of a large future time. It’s a small incident anyway because Jesus had to do it two years later. They come back, the businesses come back, it’s not a permanent reformation, it’s only a sign of a future reformation.

Now in John 2:17 John goes deeper and he says not only did Jesus say a millennial prophecy, but “His disciples remembered that it had been written,” now compare verse 17 with verse 11. Remember after the wedding feast the disciples “believed on Him,” it doesn’t mean they became Christians then, they’d become Christians before. Well what does “believed on Him” mean there? It means in a deeper way, their faith was increased, their maturity was increased because of the words and works of Jesus Christ, and because they were able to interact with this there wasn’t any hyper emotional ecstatic experience at the wedding feast. Oh, there was some ecstatic experience when people were under the table drunk, but the disciples weren’t having that ecstatic experience, they just looked on and it was that event that caused them to wake up to who Jesus Christ was. And so as they reflected upon it, they believed more. Now we come in verse 17 to exactly the same thing. The disciples see another work of the Lord Jesus Christ and reflection upon that work leads them to believe even more. And as they believe, and as they reflect upon it, their minds are drawn to Psalm 69.

Turn to Psalm 69 it’s that Psalm that they quote; they quote a passage out of this Psalm; years later maybe or maybe it was only weeks later, we don’t know; they reflected upon that day in the temple and being good students of the Old Testament they were reminded of something back in Psalm 69 which was a Davidic Psalm about the righteous sufferer. Psalm 69 is about category four suffering. Now we’ll take this slow so you can see what John is telling us. John understates his case, he would have been a good Englishman. He always understates his position and the more you reflect on this guy the more you really realize what kind of pearls he’s giving you. So you have to take it kind of slow to see all that John has for us.

In Psalm 69 we have a theme, and theme is category four suffering. Category four suffering in our LBC vernacular is suffering that is caused because we are identified with Christ in Satan’s world. So the theme of Psalm 69 is this category four suffering, identification with Christ in Satan’s world brings persecution and suffering upon me. So we read certain verses in Psalm 69 and I want to point you to some of these verses that are used by John the Apostle and other writers of the New Testament. First, John 69:4, “They that hate me without a cause are more than the hairs of my head; they that would destroy me, being my enemies wrongfully, are mighty.” Verse 4 is a plea of the righteous sufferer, it’s a looking forward to Jesus Christ and it’s saying they hate me without a cause. Do you know where verse 4 is quoted in the New Testament? John 15:25 and it’s applied to Judas Iscariot. When Judas leaves the room, Jesus says “they hate me without a cause.” Jesus dwelt much on Psalm 69. And John the Apostle dwelt long with Jesus and so therefore John too dwelt on the same Psalm that his Savior dwelt upon.

Psalm 69:8, “I have become a stranger unto my brethren, and an alien unto my mother’s children,” and John mentions this in John 7:3-5 when none of Jesus’ brothers believed on Him. There’s one for you if you get a guilt complex because you’re a Christian and there are members of your family that are not believers and somebody comes up to you with that legalistic arm-twisting device of telling you that if you were a good Christian your family would be believers. Now I’m giving you a tool to answer some idiot like that, John 7. John 7, none of Jesus’ brothers or sisters believed on Him. Did Jesus not be a good Christian? So in Psalm 69:8 we have a reference to Jesus’ attitude toward His own personal family; they rejected him.

Psalm 69:9, here’s our verse the disciples remember from this passage, “For the zeal of thine house has eaten me up; and the reproaches of those who reproached thee are fallen upon me.” “The zeal of thine house has eaten me up,” you remember the past tense because later when we get back to John I want to point something out about that, just remember the past tense, “has eaten me up,” in Psalm 69:9 here, past tense. “The zeal of thine house has eaten me up; the reproaches of them that reproached thee are fallen upon me.” Now what is Jesus saying? This is a picture unmasking the rejection of the Word of God that prevailed that day by those people who were in the religious racketeering.

Who have they really rejected? Jehovah of the Old Testament, that’s who they rejected. They rejected the Word of God that they knew, they were taking the Levitical Law to pass on sacrifices and turning it around as a tool to rip people off with. And so they had rejected God. And Jesus identifies Himself with Jehovah in this incident, as we will see in another passage, Jesus identifies Himself with Jehovah, walks in and cleans them out and He says [can’t understand word] unaware of this I have just created a tremendous hostility to Me in the city of Jerusalem and later on the key people that will crucify Jesus were people that were here that day. Part of the people that come to the trial were people who hated Jesus from this day, the day of the cleansing of the temple, that was the day that He antagonized the people that would one day kill Him, for they never recovered from His cleaning out their little religious racketeering business. From the human point of view one of the great reasons for Jesus’ crucifixion was the criminal racketeering element in the city of Jerusalem, that one of the [can’t understand word] was threatened by the man who applied the Word. [tape turns] …Christians who applied the Word of God. There’s no danger of that happening for a while. But Jesus caused people on the other side to quake in their boots because of His identification here.

Further in this Psalm, Psalm 69:21, what does that sound like: “They gave me also gall for my food, and in my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink.” That’s the crucifixion; it was quoted in Matthew 27:48. Psalm 69, what is it a picture of? Crucifixion, remember that one too. Psalm 69 is a picture of crucifixion.

Psalm 69:25, “Let their habitation be desolate, and let none dwell in their tents.” And in Acts 1:20 that’s applied to Judas. So Psalm 69 is very rich and very well known; it’s quoted in practically every Gospel account and it’s quoted in the book of Acts. Psalm 69 was a Psalm Jesus personally loved in His humanity, He meditated upon it much and John being close to Jesus also meditated upon it. Now turn back to the use John makes of Psalm 69.

John 2:17, “His disciples remembered that it had been written,” His disciples recall the Psalm of the suffering righteous servant, and they remembered a clause out of the Psalm, “The zeal of thine house has eaten me up.” Now in the original language this is future tense, not past. When it’s quoted in verse 17 it’s future; “The zeal of thine house will eat me up.” Now in Psalm 69 the past tense is what we call a prophetic perfect, that means an event future to the time of writing, here’s time present, there’s time in the future, there’s a specific event in the future, but to convey certainty about the event the author through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit goes forward in time and looks back at the event as though it’s already happened. And so in Psalm 69 when it was originally written, under the illuminating and inspiring ministry of the Holy Spirit, David said “the zeal of thine house has already eaten me up,” completed tense. Now to get the point across John says “will eat me up.” When did the disciples remember? When did John write verse 17? After the crucifixion, was it not. All right, John is looking at it from the past, he’s saying back then in John 2 the zeal hadn’t yet grown and festered and this conflict hadn’t come to its climax yet, so it was still future. And so “the zeal of thine house will eventually eat me up.” Jesus…the trend He started in John 2 eventually will lead to His death; He started something that will come back on Him like a boomerang; “The zeal of thine house will eat me up.”

Now we said that Psalm 69 was a Psalm of crucifixion. John has crucifixion on his mind as he narrates this event to us; he’s given us the actual physical historical event but he’s trying to say to us look, here’s where the seeds of the crucifixion began. Why? What happened in the event? Where was it? In the inner court or the outer court? It was in the outer court? Why did Jesus get mad when He walked through the main gate and looked off to the left, that big long area where all those people were selling; He was mad because people couldn’t get in fellowship with God. And so wasn’t Jesus’ motivation in that historic event to clear the area so people could have fellowship with God? And it was the motivation to clear the way between God and man that led to Jesus death. And John says don’t you see the same principle operating? What drove Jesus to the cross theologically? It was to establish and get rid of the clutter of sin and Satan that drove Him to the cross. And so on one historic scale it was physically getting rid of disturbing things, as those people wanted to take in the Word, the women and the Gentiles, but in a greater sense John says I observe a principle here true of the entire plan of salvation. What drives Jesus to the cross is the fact that He wants to make a way for man; the compassion He had for the women and the Gentiles is the compassion He has to all men everywhere.

And notice again, writing as a Jew but writing in a Grecian Gentile environment John is very careful to remember again, looking at that temple, he says you know, Jesus went in this area, the court; it would have been understood by the readers that it was the court; he says you know, He had compassion on you Gentiles; it was the Gentiles He had compassion for, the people of all the nations He had compassion for, that’s what infuriated the people, He didn’t have to do that; He could have said well, there’s no Jewish man here that has any problem, why should I be concerned with the Gentiles, they’re dogs, let them step on cow manure while they’re trying to study the Word, who cares. But Jesus cared because He’s concerned with all men. One of John’s themes, Jesus is Messiah but He’s the Son of man, He said to Nathanael, I’m not just the King of Israel, He said to Nathanael, I’m the Son of man, I have come as Savior of all men. The woman at the well is going to confess as she goes back upon the hill, hey, this guy is the Savior the world, not just the Savior of Israel. Again the theme of John.

Let’s go back again and be sure we pick up the train of thought: what drove Jesus to the cross? Compassion that man be restored and have fellowship to God. It set off and triggered off a series of cause and effect events that later on led to His death. That’s one theme that John picks up here.

But there’s another theme that he never states out of the Old Testament but anybody would have known it. Turn to Malachi 3:1-3, “Behold, I will send My messenger, and He shall prepare the way before Me;” that’s John, and John the Apostle has just spoken to us about John, hasn’t he? Hasn’t he just had John the Baptist as the vehicle, the literary vehicle to introduce Jesus Christ. And now what he says, “and the Lord, whom ye seek, shall suddenly come to His temple, even the messenger of the covenant, whom you delight in; behold, he shall come, saith the LORD of hosts. [2] And who may stay [abide] the day of His coming, and who shall stand when He appears? For he is like a refiner’s fire, and like fullers’ soap. [3] And he shall sit as a refiner and purifier of silver; and eh shall purify the priesthood, the sons of Levi, and purge them as gold and silver, that they may offer unto the LORD an offering in righteousness.”

Now what has John done? Do you see what John has done? He’s designed His Gospel so subtly, you have to see the overall literary structure of the Gospel to see what he’s done; this man is a genius. He’s taking those seven days, that was chapter 1, from verse 19 on to the end, and in those days he had John the Baptist, he started out; John the Baptist was the messenger or one who would prepare the way. And now the next division he has in his book, and this goes over to actually 2:11, what comes after the messenger that prepares the way? The Lord shall suddenly come to His temple. And so in John 2 Jesus suddenly comes to His temple. And if Malachi 3:1-2 is really the Word of God then it teaches the Trinity, or at least it teaches two members of the Godhead because what does it say in verse 1; read it carefully, watch carefully who’s doing the speaking: “I will send My messenger,” who’s speaking? God is speaking, “and he shall prepare the way before Me,” so the first person is God Jehovah, He is talking about John the Baptist, but then He says, “the Lord, whom ye seek… the messenger of the covenant, He shall come saith the LORD of hosts,” so the Lord of hosts is talking about another Lord. The messenger of the covenant is the angel of Jehovah, and so we have the Father and the Son present in verse 1. And what had Jesus said as He walked into the temple? Whose house was it? “My Father’s house.” “My Father’s house, and you have made it a den of merchandise.” And so here he says “the Lord of hosts,” who is the Father, and the “messenger of the covenant” will be the Son, also Jehovah; “the Lord whom ye seek,” that’s Jehovah, full deity but yet it’s not Jehovah. You’ve got “the Lord whom you seek” and “the LORD of hosts.” The “LORD of hosts” here is the Father, “the Lord whom you seek” is the Son.

Notice what happens in verse 2, He comes in judgment. Now verse 2 has a greater future fulfillment than John 2, that’s true, but again John says these were all adumbrations, previews of coming attractions and when Jesus went in there He separated evil from good, He was a refiner. And what was the central thrust of His ministry in the temple? To get rid of this messed up religious sacrifice system where the high priest who was a Levite had gotten involved in the businessmen and so what does he say in Malachi 3:3, He will purge the sons of Levi, there won’t be any Annas and his sons controlling the bazaar. And “that they may offer to the LORD an offering in righteousness,” so Jesus would clear the temple out that men might offer in righteousness. See, John knew Malachi and his readers knew Malachi. We hope that we know Malachi enough to see what John’s getting at.

Now one more little surprise from John. As John continues this episode of the temple cleansing we said that up to verse 17 the theme was crucifixion because the theme was Psalm 69 and Psalm 69 spoke of crucifixion. Now if John is teaching crucifixion and he’s given us a portrait of the Lord Jesus Christ and His work, it strikes you that somewhere in the context there ought to be truth about the other thing that parallels crucifixion, which is what? The resurrection, and what do we read in verse 19? Jesus said, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” And so what does John see in the temple cleansing incident? Crucifixion and resurrection and he teaches both by using this incident. See, John teaches the historical incident on one level and then for the mature believers who see all the other things he teaches on an upper level, not the upper level of the existentialist, he just teaches on an upper level of doctrine; believers with a framework can put it together.

Jesus, then, here has begun something because He loves us. He hit people, He drove them out because He loved people. And when something came between man and God He did not have this silly gooey love that is totally man oriented, that tolerates anything as long as it has a smile on its face. Jesus said, quite frankly, to hell with your smile unless it’s a smile looking at God; that’s all the smile Jesus is interested in. So notice He completely disassociates love from sentimentalism, it was love that caused violence when He entered the temple. It is love that causes judgment. And next week we’ll see all the reaction to His temple cleansing incident.