What would you say is the most important building in The United States of
America? What building symbolizes America for you? Some people might say: the White House. Now suppose you knew that the White
House was soon to be attacked by terrorists or destroyed in a natural
disaster. And suppose further that
you knew this was going to happen as a result of God’s judgment on America for
our wickedness. What might you do
to warn Americans ahead of time so that they might repent? You may say: such a situation is hard
for me to imagine. But in order to
understand the story about Jesus we are going to read today, we must imagine
just such a situation.
The most important building in Israel in the time of Jesus was the
Temple. It represented Israel’s
religious and national life. But
the Temple system had become corrupt and Jesus predicted its destruction, which
actually took place in AD 70.
Furthermore, Jesus warned his fellow Jews, in a cryptic way, of the
coming destruction of the Temple and urged their repentance by his symbolic act
of cleansing the Temple the day after his triumphal Palm Sunday entrance into
Jerusalem.
Let’s look into Mark 11:12-19 and see exactly what Jesus did and why. . .
.
12The next day as
they were leaving Bethany, Jesus was hungry. 13Seeing in the
distance a fig tree in leaf, he went to find out if it had any fruit. When he
reached it, he found nothing but leaves, because it was not the season for
figs. 14Then he said to the tree, “May no one ever eat fruit from
you again.” And his disciples heard him say it.
15On reaching
Jerusalem, Jesus entered the temple area and began driving out those who were
buying and selling there. He overturned the tables of the money changers and
the benches of those selling doves, 16and would not allow anyone to carry merchandise through the
temple courts. 17And as he taught them, he said, “Is it not written:
“ ‘My house will be called
a house of prayer for all nations’?
But you have made it ‘a den of robbers.’”
18The chief priests
and the teachers of the law heard this and began looking for a way to kill him,
for they feared him, because the whole crowd was amazed at his teaching.
19When evening came,
they went out of the city.
I want us to examine together
the various reasons why Jesus cleansed the Temple, layer by layer. First of all, I think exploitation moved Jesus to turn the
tables in the temple. I think
Jesus was angry at the exploitation of the Jewish pilgrims gathered at the
temple for the upcoming feast of Passover.
William Barclay
writes, “The Temple authorities were treating them [the pilgrims] not as
worshippers, not even as human beings, but as things to be exploited for their
own ends. Man’s exploitation of
man always provokes the wrath of God, and doubly so when it is made under the
cloak of religion.”
What do I mean by
exploitation? Perhaps a simpler
phrase, one that my boys used to use when they were young, is “rip-off.” When Jamie or Jon used to get a bad
trade in Pokemon cards they would say it was a rip-off. And that is what the temple authorities
were doing to the Jewish pilgrims.
They were ripping them off.
How? Every Jew had to pay a temple tax of
one half shekel a year; that was the equivalent of two days wages. This tax had to be paid in shekels of
the sanctuary. It was paid at
Passover time. Jews from all over
the world came to Jerusalem for the Passover with all kinds of currency. When they went to have their money
changed they had to pay a fee, and should their coin exceed the tax, they had
to pay another fee before they got their change. Those fees together amounted to about a half a day’s
wage, which for most people was a great deal of money. The money changers did big business
during Passover, getting rich off the inflated exchange rates at the expense of
the pilgrims.
As for sacrificial
animals, doves could be bought cheaply enough outside the temple. However, the temple inspectors would be
sure to find something wrong with them, and so worshipers were advised to buy
their sacrificial animals at the temple stalls. But at the temple a dove could cost as much as 25 times the
price outside the temple. This whole business of buying and selling belonged to
the family of Annas who had been High Priest. This same Annas was the first man to try Jesus after his
arrest. It was the fact that poor,
humble pilgrims were being ripped off which moved Jesus to anger. And it may have been Jesus’ action in
the temple that led Annas to have Jesus arrested.
This incident tells
us a lot about the spirit of Jesus.
Let me quote from the end of Kenneth Scott Latourette’s seven-volume
history of the expansion of Christianity. Referring to Jesus he says,
No life ever lived on this planet has been so influential
in the affairs of men as that of Christ. . . . It has protected tens of
millions from exploitation by their fellows, and it has been the most fruitful
source of movements to lessen the horrors of war and to put the relations of
men and nations on the basis of justice and peace.
This is the influence of Jesus through his followers in
society. Don’t underestimate the power and the influence that even a small
minority can exert in the community.
Here Jesus was just
one man going up against an entirely corrupt system, but he won in the
end. Oh yes, they put him to
death. But then he rose again from
the dead, and once that event took place no one could shut up his followers
again. Peter and John were
arrested after the resurrection and brought to trial before the same Annas who
owned the temple trade and who tried Jesus. When Annas and the other officials commanded them not to
speak or teach at all in the name of Jesus, Peter and John replied: “Judge for
yourselves whether it is right in God’s sight to obey you rather than God. For we cannot help speaking about what
we have seen and heard.” (Acts 4:19-20) Yes indeed, Jesus lit the fire of a
revolution that has not burned out for 2000 years.
The second thing
which I think moved Jesus to turn the tables in the temple was the desecration of the temple that he saw
taking place. As William Barclay
put it, “Men had lost the sense of the presence of God in the house of
God. By commercialising the sacred
they were violating it.”
Jesus quoted two Old
Testament passages, Isaiah 56:7 and Jeremiah 7:11 when he said, “My house will
be called a house of prayer for all nations. But you have made it a den of robbers.” What Jesus was
saying was that the chief officials of the temple had taken a place that was
supposed to be set aside for prayer and turned it into a place of business, and
a crooked business at that.
Jesus used a vivid
metaphor to describe the temple court.
The road from Jerusalem to Jericho was notorious for its robbers. It was a narrow winding road, passing
between rocky places. In the midst
of the rocks were caves where outlaws lay in wait. These places were referred to as the dens of robbers. So Jesus was saying in effect, “There
are worse robbers in the temple courts than ever there are in the caves of the
Jericho road.” (William Barclay)
How do we corrupt the
worship of God today? We corrupt
the worship of God whenever we turn the church into a purely financial or
social function. We also corrupt
the worship of God whenever we focus more on our own comfort rather than true
worship. Calvin Miller has said,
The church knows it must not violate this world’s comfort
standards and expect to have attendees.
See our fabrics, settle into our cushions, and feel our conditioned air:
Even in church we want it easy.
Like movie houses, we will pad our seats, glitz our lighting, modulate
our reverbs, and say, “Come to Christ and go on our ski retreat ...” Our huge
temples of evangelical success may only be, as Vance Havner once said, million
dollar launching pads that send up firecrackers. (Moody Monthly [Jan. l990]. Christianity
Today, Vol. 34, no. 9)
Now there is nothing
wrong with cushioned seats, air-conditioning and ski trips. But when these things take priority
over proper worship, as the buying and selling in the temple took the place of
prayer, then we are in trouble.
Another way we
corrupt the worship of God today is whenever we get away from the Bible as
guide for worship. When he was 48
years old, Johann Sebastian Bach acquired a copy of Luther’s three-volume translation
of the Bible. He pored over it as if it were a long-lost treasure. Near 1 Chronicles 25 (a listing of
Davidic musicians) he wrote, “This chapter is the true foundation of all
God-pleasing music.” At 2 Chronicles 5:13, which speaks of temple musicians
praising God, he noted, “At a reverent performance of music, God is always at
hand with his gracious presence.”
As one scholar put it, Bach the musician was indeed “a Christian who
lived with the Bible.” (Mark Galli, former editor of Christian History, now
managing editor of Christianity Today; source: 131 Christians You Should Know [Broadman & Holman])
Now this doesn’t mean
that we have to do church music like Bach did it 250 years ago. It does mean we need to get back to the
Bible as our guide to worship just as Bach did. Maybe then we won’t be desecrating the temple of God in our
worship.
All of these reasons
for Jesus turning the tables are summarized by saying that Jesus was moved to
take this action because the Jews demonstrated profession of faith without practice of faith. That is the essential message of the
enacted parable of the fig tree.
Mark tells us that
when Jesus and his disciples were on their way from Bethany to the temple in
Jerusalem, Jesus was hungry.
Seeing a fig tree in leaf, he went to it to find out if it had any
fruit. When he reached it he found
nothing but leaves, because it was not the season for figs. Then he said to the tree, “May no one
ever eat fruit from you again.”
This was not a case
of Jesus cursing something because it did not comply with his personal whim at
that moment. I believe that Jesus
was enacting a parable by this action. The fig tree is traditionally symbolic of Israel. And the fig tree, by its green leaves,
was professing that it ought to have fruit, but it did not have that
fruit. And I think Jesus was
saying by his cursing of the fig tree, and by his subsequent action in the
Temple: cursed is everyone who professes to have faith in the Lord but who produces
no fruit, no practice, in keeping with that faith.
There are many people
in the world who talk a good talk about religion but not all of them walk the
walk. Things are not always as
they appear to be with religious people.
I am reminded of the
story of the cowboy who was riding along and came upon an Indian lying flat on
the ground with his ear pressed to the earth. The Indian said, “Wait. Wagon.
Two miles off. Drawn by two horses. One black. The other grey. Four people on
board: man in a red flannel shirt, his wife, and two kids.”
The cowboy was very
impressed. He said, “It’s amazing you can tell all that just by listening to
the earth.”
The Indian said, “No.
They ran over me thirty minutes ago. Go after them!” (Bruce Thielemann, “Because,” Preaching Today, Tape No. 105)
Things are not always
as they appear to be! Some people
appear to be very religious; they talk a good talk, but underneath there is no
walk to match their talk.
That’s the way it was with some of the Jews of Jesus’ time, and it made him
mad enough to turn over the tables in the temple.
The question is: What is our response to Jesus? The chief priests and teachers of the
law saw what Jesus did in the temple and they began looking for a way to kill him,
for they feared him. They feared
what he was going to do to their business; they feared what he was going to do
to their power; they feared what he was going to do to their religion. The question is: will we too look for a
way to kill him, to remove him from our life, like the chief priests and
teachers of the law?
Or are we amazed at his
teaching like the crowd was? Even to
be amazed at Jesus’ teaching is not enough. He demands a total surrender of our life to him. We must surrender our life to him and
accept his forgiveness for sin bought by his perfect life and his death on the
cross and his resurrection from the dead.
Then we must let him come into our life, control our life, and lead us
in obedience to himself.
We need to remember
that after Palm Sunday, Jesus went into the temple to clean house. He was like a hurricane, storming
through the religious establishment of his day. He was telling people, by this symbolic action of cleansing
the Temple, that the Temple system was not only corrupt, but also redundant. He was giving people notice that the
Temple was going to be replaced.
There would no longer be a need for a place of animal sacrifice, for all
those animal sacrifices were about to be replaced with the sacrifice of his own
body.
As a result of this symbolic action, some
wanted to kill him, others were simply amazed. But Jesus wants something more of us in response. I think he wants us to pray in the
spirit of George MacDonald who once wrote:
Lord, in thy Spirit’s hurricane, I Pray,
Strip my soul naked—dress it then thy way.
(Diary of an Old Soul)
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