Jesus Clears the Temple Courts

The thing I like about the Bible is that the more you read it the more revelation you receive. It’s like putting on a new lens every time you read it.

I remember the long discussion we had about Jesus being radical when he cleared his temple courts using a whip. It showed that what was going on in the court disgusted Jesus so much, that he ‘flipped.’ We’ve all been in situations that result in sudden bursts of anger, and reactions that are uncommon to our natural behaviour.

Thinking about the season that we are in, and Jesus’ ministry is about preparing for ‘The Kingdom of God’. I want us to approach this scripture through a new lens. Jesus goes into the temple and sees people using it as a marketplace-a place to make money-rather than a place of prayer and worship.

14 And He found in the temple those who sold oxen and sheep and doves, and the money-changers [b]doing business. 15 When He had made a whip of cords, He drove them all out of the temple, with the sheep and the oxen, and poured out the changers’ money and overturned the tables. 16 And He said to those who sold doves, “Take these things away! Do not make My Father’s house a house of merchandise!”

As we have been learning, Jesus is concerned about the condition of the human heart, “ For out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies. These are the things which defile a man, but to eat with unwashed hands does not defile a man.” Matthew 15:19-20

We see that the hearts of the people in the temple court are evil and greedy. Think about it? You go to church every Sunday to go make money rather than to go worship, imagine what your Pastor would say?

Just like today, I think the people saw that the Levites (priest) were holy and that they could not reach those holy standards, so they gave up-did not even try. They even thought that God dwelt inside of the temple, and anything outside of the inner temple was not as holy. We see this today, where some people are confident to sin outside a church, but once they get into the building, they try to act holy.

However, the building/temple/church is not the holy place, because God does not live in buildings; “ …the Most High does not live in houses made by human hands,” (Acts 7:48). The temple of the Holy Spirit is in us “Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own…” (1 Corinthians 6:19), and in today’s scripture, Jesus gives them a vision of what is to come.
19 Jesus answered them, “Destroy this temple, and I will raise it again in three days.”
20 They replied, “It has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and you are going to raise it in three days?” 21 But the temple he had spoken of was his body. 22 After he was raised from the dead, his disciples recalled what he had said. Then they believed the scripture and the words that Jesus had spoken.

Now if our bodies are the temple of the Holy Spirit and we have evil actions in our heart, would it anger Jesus equally as much as when he found out about the ungodly actions in the physical temple.

Are you going through a time when you feel like you are being whipped! Maybe it’s Jesus cleansing his temple? Can Light and Dark dwell together?

Let us meditate on today’s scripture and ask God what needs cleansing in our lives today!