13 The Passover of the Jews was at hand, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. 14 In the temple He found those who were selling oxen and sheep and pigeons, and the money-changers sitting there. 15 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. 16 And He told those who sold the pigeons, “Take these things away; do not make my Father’s house a house of trade.” 17 His disciples remembered that it was written, “Zeal for your house will consume me.”
18 So the Jews said to Him, “What sign do you show us for doing these things?” 19 Jesus answered them, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” 20 The Jews then said, “It has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and will you raise it up in three days?” 21 But He was speaking about the temple of His body. 22 When therefore He was raised from the dead, His disciples remembered that He had said this, and they believed the Scripture and the word that Jesus had spoken.
23 Now when He was in Jerusalem at the Passover Feast, many believed in His name when they saw the signs that He was doing. 24 But Jesus on His part did not entrust Himself to them, because He knew all people 25 and needed no one to bear witness about man, for He Himself knew what was in man.
The synoptic gospels (Matthew, Mark and Luke) all record Jesus clearing the temple during holy week - Jesus’ final visit to Jerusalem before His death, while John places this event at the beginning of Jesus’ ministry. One of the issues historians and Biblical commentators have wrestled with over the years is trying to make sense of this. Could there have been some kind of mistake? Not if we hold to the inerrancy of Scripture. John places this event immediately after the miracle at Cana where He changed water into wine, so most Biblical scholars agree that Jesus cleared the temple on two occasions, one at the beginning of His ministry as recorded by John, and the second time at the end, as recorded by Matthew, Mark and Luke. There are some differences in the details which appear to support this theory, and as the commentator Merrill Tenney wrote, “It is not at all improbable that He may have cleansed the temple twice, two Passovers apart, and that the second so enraged the hierarchy that their animosity toward Him exploded into drastic action. Interfering with their privileges once was impudent, twice would be inexcusable.”
One of the first things we see in the text is the money-changers and those who were selling sacrificial animals, and our first reaction whenever we read this passage is to get annoyed with these people all over again, but they were actually a necessary part of the Passover week for a couple of reasons.
The Jews were required to travel to Jerusalem for the Passover, and many of them travelled long distances, so bringing animals with them on their journey was simply not practical. It would have slowed them down, and they would be vulnerable to predators and stock thieves, so it made sense to have animals available at the temple when they arrived in Jerusalem. Secondly, every Jewish male over the age of 20 had to pay an annual temple tax, but because their coinage bore the image of the Roman emperor, putting these coins in the temple treasury was considered offensive to the Jews, so a system much like a foreign exchange office was made available for the Jews to exchange their money into Jewish shekels.
So far, so good. The problem though, was that this system was abused terribly. Sacrificial animals were essential to temple worship, but as we see in verse 14, the animals were being sold in the temple courts. This was where the Gentiles were supposed to pray, but instead of selling the animals near to the temple, they were actually doing it in the temple grounds, and they were charging exorbitant prices too. And as for the money-changers who were providing a necessary service, they were also ripping people off with their exchange rates and service fees. The sale of cattle and doves and exchanging money were necessary, but under the leadership of the chief priests, the whole system had just become a money-making racket, and this was why Jesus drove the merchants and money-changers out. They had desecrated the temple.
And so Jesus makes a whip as He drives these charlatans out of the temple. We love this particular verse, because well, if Jesus got angry, then so can we, right?
Matthew 21:12, Mark 11:15, Luke 20:45 and John 2:15 are our “go to” verses whenever we feel angry with someone, and we almost always justify our anger by pointing to the righteous anger of Jesus. The problem here is that word “righteous”. How easily we forget the words of Romans 3:10. “None is righteous, no, not one.”
Human anger, because it is always tainted by sin, is nothing like the righteous indignation and holy wrath of God. They are poles apart, so we need to be very careful when we say it’s okay for us to be angry just because Jesus was. We are treading on dangerously thin ice when we pluck these verses out of their context in order to excuse our sinful anger and rage. Instead, we should listen to the words of James 1:19-20 the next time we’re about to fly off the handle because someone has dared to upset us. “Know this, my beloved brothers: let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger; for the anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God.”
The events recorded on John 2 are the exact opposite, because Jesus did not show human anger, but the righteous indignation of God. Interestingly enough, the Bible does not say that Jesus actually resorted to physical violence when He cleared the temple. Many agree that the whip He made was merely a symbol of His authority. We don’t even know for sure whether He used it on the animals. We do know that He overturned the tables, and if you think about it, there is something more than a little supernatural in just one man overcoming a large group of people who would have been determined to protect their businesses.
In his commentary, John MacArthur writes, “The moderation of His actions is seen in the fact that no riotous uproar occurred; otherwise the specially large contingent of Roman troops in Jerusalem at that time because of the Passover crowds, stationed in the Antonia Fortress overlooking the temple, would have swiftly reacted.”
So it would seem that even though the animals would have been startled and running around aimlessly with the merchants desperately scrambling around on the floor after their money, while at the same time the temple authorities demanded to know just who Jesus thought He was, there was still a sense of control and order in Jesus’ actions.
These events took place after the wedding in Cana a few days before, when Jesus began to reveal who He really was to a small number of people, but now at the temple, He revealed Himself publicly, and by referring to the temple as “my Father’s house,” He was presenting Himself as the Messiah. At the wedding, Jesus demonstrated His deity and His power, and here in the temple He showed His authority. The temple authorities missed this point entirely, but not the disciples. Verse 17 says, “His disciples remembered that it was written, ‘Zeal for your house will consume me.’” They would have made the connection between Jesus’ actions that day and the words of Psalm 69:9. “Zeal for your house has consumed me, and the reproaches of those who reproach you have fallen on me.” Having recently witnessed Jesus’ first miracle at Cana, the disciples were in no doubt: Jesus was claiming to be the Messiah, but as we’ll see, they really only understood this fully after the resurrection. They made the connection, but it yet to make perfect sense to them.
The Jews though, demanded that Jesus perform some kind of miracle in order to validate what He had just done. As Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 1:22, Jews demand signs. They missed the significance of what Jesus had done completely. The temple was a place for reverence for God and true worship. They had turned it into nothing more than a marketplace, and the fact that Jesus had just done what He did was the sign they should have seen in the first place. He had just shown them His authority, but instead they wanted Him to perform a magic trick before they would believe.
But all they heard from Jesus was, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” King Herod had begun building the temple 46 years earlier. (In fact, it would not be completed until another 37 years later in 63AD). This was all the Jews could see - a physical building, but they had no idea that Jesus was talking about His body as the true temple. Even while He hung on the cross, the people reminded Him of His words at the temple that day.
“Those who passed by derided Him, wagging their heads and saying, ‘You who would destroy the temple and rebuild it in three days, save yourself! If you are the Son of God, come down from the cross.’” (Matthew 27:39-40)
They simply did not understand the true meaning of Jesus’ words in verse 19. “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” We have the privilege of seeing the bigger picture, because we know how the story ends. And just like water turned into wine, the new would replace the old. The cleansing of the temple immediately after the miracle at Cana gives us a vital key in understanding Jesus’ earthly ministry. On both occasions we see the old being replaced by the new: Water for ritual cleansing and Herod’s temple being replaced by the wine of salvation and the risen Lamb as the new temple. This same John who wrote this gospel account would later write in Revelation 21:22, “I saw no temple in the city, for its temple is the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb.”
Because of His sacrifice on our behalf, Jesus has made it possible for us to be reconciled to the Father. We no longer need rituals and religious ceremonies in order to come to God. All we need is Christ.
As we turn to Him in repentance and faith, we receive mercy and forgiveness, and this is what makes it possible for us to be the living sacrifices to God which Paul talks about in Romans 12.
As happened so often during his earthly ministry, Jesus was misunderstood and misinterpreted. In the original Greek text, when John speaks of Jesus clearing the temple in verses 14 and 15, he uses the word hieron which refers to the temple as a whole, but when Jesus said in verse 19 that He would raise the temple in three days, the Greek word is naos which refers specifically to the inner sanctuary of the temple, the Most Holy Place.
Paul uses the same word when he writes in 1 Corinthians 6:19, “Do you not know that your body is a temple (naos) of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God?”
Also, it’s worth noting that Jesus didn’t say He would rebuild the temple in three days. He said He would raise it up in three days. He was talking about His resurrection. The irony is that the Jews demanded a sign or a miracle to prove His credentials, but when He did perform miracle after miracle they refused to believe Him, even when He fulfilled His words in verse 19 by rising from the dead on the third day.
They were more interested in material things than in spiritual truth. The only temple they could think about was Herod’s temple in Jerusalem. It had taken 46 years to build it, and it still wasn’t completed, and they could not see how any man could possibly rebuild it in three days.
But Jesus was speaking about His own body, which was the sanctuary in which all the fullness of the Godhead dwelt. Just as these men had defiled the temple in Jerusalem, so they would put Him to death some three years later. They defiled Herod’s temple, but they could not defile Jesus Christ, despite having Him executed as a blasphemer.
Verse 22 is important. “When therefore He was raised from the dead, His disciples remembered that He had said this, and they believed the Scripture and the word that Jesus had spoken.” John was speaking on behalf of the other disciples here. At the time, they didn’t quite understand the distinction Jesus was making between the physical temple and His own body, but it did make sense to them after the resurrection of Jesus.
The gospel of John can be rather cryptic at times, but we need to bear in mind that John presents Jesus to us as the risen Christ. He proclaims Jesus in the light of His resurrection, and we will refer to the words of John 20:30-31 often during this series. “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.”
John wrote this gospel some 50 years after the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, so he had seen first-hand the results of the preaching of an empty tomb for half a century. Central to the gospel of John is the resurrection of Jesus. This is the key doctrine to the Christian faith. Get the resurrection right, and then everything else falls into place. No other faith system has the historical facts of the resurrection on which to base their truth claims. All they have is speculation, but the Christian faith has revelation and historical facts.
Merrill Tenney writes, “From the first of His ministry Jesus had the end of it in view. One can hardly escape the conviction that the fourth gospel depicts the career of Jesus as a voluntary progress toward a predetermined goal. The allusions to the destruction of the temple of His body, to the elevation on a cross, to the giving of His flesh for the life of the world, to His burial, and the announcement of His betrayal and death to His disciples attest to His consciousness of the fate that awaited Him in Jerusalem. Though the disciples did not comprehend the situation during Jesus’ career, the resurrection placed the memory of His sayings in a new perspective.”
In other words, whenever we look at the earthly life of Jesus, His teachings and His miracles, when we see them through the lens of the resurrection, we will have a far better understanding of the Gospel.
And then we come to the last 3 verses of John 2. “Now when He was in Jerusalem at the Passover Feast, many believed in His name when they saw the signs that He was doing. But Jesus on His part did not entrust Himself to them, because He knew all people and needed no one to bear witness about man, for He Himself knew what was in man.”
John makes it clear that many did believe in Jesus because of the signs He performed, but what does he mean by saying Jesus did not entrust Himself to them? Again, John emphasises the message of Jesus rather than His miracles, even though miracles led people to believe in His name, but we need to understand just what this word “believe” really means.
In the New Testament the word “believe” does not always mean that a person has placed genuine faith in Jesus. The people in Jerusalem recognised that there was something about Jesus that made them sit up and take notice, but for the vast majority He was nothing more than a prophet. He certainly couldn't be the Messiah, because He didn’t get rid of the Roman oppressors as they were expecting Him to, and dying the death of a common criminal definitely didn’t help. But Jesus looked right into their hearts, and He saw their motives. Their faith had been placed in His works rather than in His person, and this is what is meant by He would not entrust himself to them.
The disciples truly believed Jesus’ words only after the resurrection, but they did believe, and that is what really mattered. The people in Jerusalem claimed to believe, but Jesus did not believe their belief, so to speak. He did not entrust Himself to them because He knew that they were coming to Him out of curiosity. They were looking for something sensational and spectacular, just as King Herod did three years later. Pilate was trying to avoid making a decision as to what to do with Jesus, so when he found out that Jesus was a Galilean, he sent Jesus to Herod. We pick up the narrative in Luke 23. “When Herod saw Jesus, he was very glad, for he had long desired to see Him, because he had heard about Him, and he was hoping to see some sign done by Him. So he questioned Him at some length, but He made no answer.”
Herod had heard all about Jesus, and he clearly believed that Jesus was capable of performing miracles, but he most certainly did not believe in Jesus. All Herod wanted from Jesus was a personal magic show.
Jesus knew the hearts of all people all the time, just as He knows our hearts and our motives today. The challenge to us today is this: Does what we claim to believe honestly reflect what is in our hearts?
We pray the prayers and we sing the hymns, but do we truly believe deep within our hearts that Jesus did die for our sins, and that He did rise again on the third day? Have we put our faith in Him, and are we truly clothed with the righteousness of Christ? Have we truly been reconciled to the Father, or are we just going through the motions?
What does it actually mean to have faith in Jesus? Basically, it means belief in Jesus as the Saviour. When we place our faith in Him, we believe in Him, and God grants His righteousness to us. To have faith in Jesus means to trust Him. When someone has faith in Jesus, it means that he or she believes who Jesus is as the Bible proclaims Him, and trusts what Jesus has done in order for that person to be saved. Faith in the person and work of Jesus Christ is what saves. It is believing in our hearts what Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 15:3-4. “That Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that He was buried, that He was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures.” 1 John 5:1 promises us, “Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God.”
Without faith in Jesus, we remain in sin and under condemnation, but as we saw a couple of weeks ago, “to all who did receive Him, who believed in His name, He gave the right to become children of God.” (John 1:12)
Also, to have faith in Jesus is to reject all other ways of salvation. We cannot trust in Jesus and something or someone else. We trust in Him alone. You will remember from our series on the five solas of the Reformation, we are saved by grace alone, through faith alone, in Jesus Christ alone, according to the Scriptures alone, all to the glory of God alone.
Homegroup Study Notes
Read John 2:12-25
The money-changers and merchants selling sacrificial animals were providing a necessary service for the Passover pilgrims, but as we well know, this system was abused terribly.
How does commercialisation affect the modern Church today?
What can we do to protect true worship from being polluted by the things of the world?
We almost always justify our anger by pointing to the fact that Jesus was angry. However, this point is so wrong on so many levels. (See Romans 3:10 and James 1:19-20)
How does human anger differ from the righteous anger and wrath of God?
How has your own anger caused heartache for others?
Discuss the deeper meaning we find in verses 19 and 20.
Read John 2:23-25 again
What is your understanding of this passage?
How can we ensure our faith is real, and not false like that of the people in Jerusalem during the Passover?