Cleaning House

Use these materials to go deeper into this message on your own, or with your small group. 
Passage Breakdowns, SOAPS Format & Instructions (Weeks 1-12)
Passage Breakdowns, SOAPS Format & Instructions (Weeks 13-26)

If you’d like to follow along with us using the Gospel of John Scripture Journal, you’re welcome to purchase a copy here

8:40 Service | 10:00 Service | 11:20 Service | Sermon Audio

Good morning Chapel family. We are working our way through the Gospel of John verse by verse, and today we come to a well-known scene in the life of Jesus. John chapter two, beginning in verse 13—this is God’s Word for us today…
13 When it was almost time for the Jewish Passover, Jesus went up to Jerusalem. 14 In the temple courts he found people selling cattle, sheep and doves, and others sitting at tables exchanging money. 15 So he made a whip out of cords, and drove all from the temple courts, both sheep and cattle; he scattered the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables. 16 To those who sold doves he said, “Get these out of here! Stop turning my Father’s house into a market!” 17 His disciples remembered that it is written: “Zeal for your house will consume me.”
18 The Jews then responded to him, “What sign can you show us to prove your authority to do all this?”
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. This is the Word of the Lord.
I think the reason people remember this passage is that it seems so out of character for Jesus, right? Normally he’s gentle and kind and non-violent. But here, all of a sudden, he seems angry and aggressive and loud. What are we supposed to learn from this? Sometimes I see people who struggle with their temper pointing to this passage as justification for their anger. Like, “Don’t tell me not to lose my temper! Jesus flipped over tables in the temple! WWJD!” Hmm. Maybe. But if that’s all we get from this—that it’s okay to be angry sometimes—we have missed the main point.
So what is the main point? Let me approach it like this: I want to talk about The Motive (what motivated Jesus to do what he did?). Then The Authority—why did he feel he had the right to do what he did? And then The Application—how do we apply this to our lives? The motive, the authority, and the application.
So first, let’s talk about The Motive. This event takes place in the springtime, at Passover. Passover was the commemoration of God bringing the people of Israel out of slavery in Egypt years earlier. The city of Jerusalem had about a half a million people in it most of the year. But at Passover, people came from all over the world and the population would swell to about four times its normal size—over 2 million people. So Jesus, being a faithful Jewish man, joins that great crowd and comes to Jerusalem to observe the Passover.
And he comes to the Jewish temple, which consisted of a building—where only priests could go—and a series of courtyards around the building. And in the temple courts, he’s confronted by people selling cattle, sheep and doves, and others sitting at tables exchanging money. Why? Well, because when you came to the temple at Passover, you had to bring a sacrifice. If you were traveling from a long distance away, it was inconvenient to carry an animal with you. So these merchants were selling rabbinically approved sacrificial animals. Also, every Jewish male was required to pay a temple tax each year, so the money changers would exchange your foreign currency for the right kind of money to pay your temple tax. And let’s be clear: both of those things—offering an animal and paying the temple tax—were required in the Hebrew Scriptures. Okay, so why did Jesus get so upset?
Two reasons. First, how they were doing it. Most Bible scholars believe that the merchants at those tables took advantage of the worshipers. They jacked up the price of the animals because people had no choice but to pay. They charged ridiculous exchange rates for the money (like flying to another country and exchanging your money at the airport—don’t do that). So it became less about providing a service to the worshipers, and more about making a profit. And because of the opportunity to make a profit, the place was like a circus. It was mobbed with merchants, and stalls filled with animals, and all the sounds and smells that go along with that. The former Jewish high priest was Annas, and his family controlled the temple market. So the whole scene was sometimes called “The Bazaar of Annas”—because it was like a bazaar—a noisy, chaotic marketplace.
So it wasn’t necessarily wrong that they were selling animals and exchanging money, it was how they were doing it.
But even worse was where they were doing it. They weren’t set up on the way to the temple, or 100 yards out from the temple; they were at the temple. They were in the temple courts. The purpose of the temple was for people to worship and pray and confess and commune with God. It was meant to be a place of meditation and quiet reflection. Which is really hard to do when you’re surrounded by a circus.
A couple of weeks ago, Norma Jean was given two tickets to see Mama Mia on Broadway. So she took our daughter, Sara. And I was in really nice mood, so I offered to be their chauffeur for the evening. My plan was to park the car, have dinner with them, and then while they were at the show, I would find a coffee shop to work on my sermon. Sounded good on paper. Have you ever tried looking for a quiet coffee shop around Times Square on a Friday night? It does not exist. Every coffee shop was jammed with tourists; every table was taken; it was loud and chaotic. It was not a place to prayerfully and thoughtfully focus on writing a sermon. So I got very little accomplished that night—because the atmosphere was all wrong.
And if you wanted to pray and commune with God at the temple during Passover, the atmosphere was all wrong. The very thing the temple was intended for was being blocked by the chaos of the merchants.
And that’s why Jesus gets angry. So he takes action. He flips tables; he makes a whip out of cords and chases out the merchants and the animals. And he says, “Stop turning my Father’s house into a market!” Here’s a classic painting of that moment by an Italian painter named Bernardino Mei, painted in 1655—captures the chaos and panic of the moment. If this happened today, every cell phone would be filming it, and it would be on social media within minutes. #angryjesus.
So Jesus’ disciples are watching all this, and they remember an Old Testament verse from Psalm 69, where David said, “Zeal for your house will consume me.” Jesus is zealous for the purity of God’s house, and that’s the motive for what he does.
So let’s ask the question: does this mean it’s okay for us to express anger like Jesus did? And the answer is Yes, but be very careful. Because you are not Jesus. So you should be very suspicious of your motives. The motives of Jesus were completely pure: he was defending the integrity of God’s temple. Our motives are rarely that pure. Our ego and our insecurity get mixed in really easily. Also, the anger of Jesus was not out of control. Last week, somebody in my small group said, “Man, Jesus really lost it!” And I know what he meant by that, but actually, Jesus didn’t lose it. His anger was a very self-controlled, intentional response to something that was wrong. So yes—anger can be appropriate, but be careful.
Lewis Smedes wrote this: “Healthy anger drives us to do something to change what makes us angry; anger can energize us to make things better. Hate does not want to change things for the better; it wants to make things worse.” So make sure your anger is under control, and that it’s energizing you to make positive change; not just to vent or punish someone.
You know what I think bothered Jesus the most? Every time somebody brought an animal to sacrifice—especially at Passover time—that person should have realized: “I’m not worthy to come into God’s presence! This animal I’m sacrificing should be me! I deserve this, but because of this sacrifice, I’m spared. Praise God!” That’s what they should have realized. And if they realized that, it would have prepared their hearts for what Jesus had come to do! So the temple should have provided a quiet, reflective atmosphere to meditate on that truty. And Jesus is thinking, “They’re not thinking that at all. They’re not praying. This is just a transaction taking place in a market.” That’s why he gets angry, and that’s why he acts.
You know, we’re so used to Jesus being the gentle Lamb—which he is. But when necessary, he’s also a roaring Lion.
Which leads to point number two. Let’s talk about The Authority. Not surprisingly, the religious leaders confront Jesus. Verse 18: The Jews then responded to him, “What sign can you show us to prove your authority to do all this?” In other words, “Who do you think you are? What gives you the right to act this way?” And Jesus answered them, “Destroy this temple, and I will raise it again in three days.” Verse 20: They replied, “It has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and you are going to raise it in three days?” See, 46 years earlier, King Herod the Great wanted to win some points with the Jewish people in his region, so he did a massive renovation and expansion project on the Jerusalem temple—it took thousands of workers and tons of money, and it actually still wasn’t complete at this time. So the idea that 46 years of work could get knocked down, and then Jesus could rebuild it in three days, sounded ludicrous. It sounded delusional.
So…what did he mean by that? Well, John Piper suggests that the words of Jesus here actually have two levels of meaning. When he says, “Destroy this temple,” the first meaning is, “You are destroying this temple.” Because they were abusing it with their greed and selfishness, and eventually that would lead to the actual destruction of the temple. We know from history that about 40 years later, in 70AD, the Romans came and destroyed the temple.
But at another level, Jesus is saying, “You’re going to destroy me.” And that’s the meaning that John points out—he was referring to the temple of his body. So Jesus is saying, “Just like you’re destroying worship in the temple, you’re going to kill me.” And we know the religious leadership collaborated to execute Jesus two years after this.
So are you following? Jesus is speaking on two levels: “Destroy this temple, the building; and destroy this temple, my body.”
Okay, so what about the second part, where he says, “…and in three days I will raise it up”? Well, the same two levels of meaning. First of all, he means, “I will raise up my body the third day after you kill me.” So he’s talking about his resurrection. Remember, Jesus said No one takes my life from me… I have authority to lay it down and authority to take it up again. But also, that physical temple that would be destroyed, Jesus would build that again in this sense: he would replace that temple with himself. See, it used to be that to find forgiveness and encounter God and worship God, you had to go to the temple. But now, to find forgiveness and encounter God and worship God, you just have to go to Jesus. In the first chapter of John, it says The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us, and the Greek word for “made his dwelling” is literally “tabernacled.” Because the purpose for the tabernacle or the temple was going to be ultimately accomplished by Jesus. Just like Jesus says about himself in Matthew 12:6, “I tell you, something greater than the temple is here.”
Are you following? Destroy this temple that we’re standing in right now, and I will be raised up to replace it, because I am the true and better temple. You won’t need this anymore, because you will have me.
Remember what happened last week? Jesus went to a wedding and turned water into wine. But remember what that water was stored in? Stone jars, that were used for ceremonial washing. In other words, you could only be clean and acceptable to God if you washed with that water. And Jesus transformed that—he changed it—because he was bringing a new way to be clean and acceptable to God. He replaced the old ritual with something better.
And now at the temple, same thing: it used to be that if you wanted to get to God, you had to come to this building and bring a sacrifice; Jesus says, “Now I am the building, and I am the sacrifice. Just come to me.” Jesus replaces ritual with relationship. I love that about Jesus.
So they basically ask Jesus, “Why are you acting like you own the temple?” And Jesus says, “Own it?? I am it!” I am what the temple was always meant to be, but infinitely better. And I’ll prove that because when you kill me, I’ll rise again on the third day.” That’s what gave Jesus the authority to do what he did.
For anyone else to do what Jesus did that day would have been presumptuous and arrogant and wrong. But Jesus is not anybody else. This was his Father’s house. And the only reason it was there was to get people ready for him.
So…the obvious question—that we should always ask—is, “So what? How should I align my life with this truth about Jesus?”
So let’s talk about The Application. I see three wise responses to this passage:
First, Believe in Jesus. Look at verse 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. In other words, the ultimate effect that this event had on the disciples is that it was one more thing that convinced them to believe in Jesus. The fact that he had the courage to confront the corruption of the temple, and saying that his authority came from the fact that he would rise from the dead, and then the fact that he did rise from the dead—all of that together helped convince the disciples that this man is who he says he is. They believed. Do you?
Remember what happened after Jesus turned the water into wine? John 2:11—What Jesus did here in Cana of Galilee was the first of the signs through which he revealed his glory; and his disciples (what does it say?) believed in him.
And this is all starting to make sense, because remember—at the end of this Gospel, John tells us why he wrote it. John 20, verse 30: 30 Jesus performed many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not recorded in this book. 31 But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name. So John says, “This is why I took the time to write all this down—so you’ll read it and you’ll be so overwhelmed by the weight of the evidence, that you will believe in Jesus. Do you believe?
For some of you, today’s passage triggers some painful memories. Because maybe you grew up in a religious system that had lost its heart—just like the Jerusalem temple. It was ritualistic and transactional and corrupt. And it drove you away. And you need to know that Jesus is just as disgusted and angry with that kind of religion as you are. And he’s calling you beyond ritual, into a relationship with himself.
If you hear that call, and you say, “I want to believe, but I still have questions,” I want to make a strong suggestion: come and check out Alpha. It starts three weeks from tomorrow. And it will help you understand Jesus, and what it means to have a relationship with him, really clearly. It’s a ten-week course, but I’m asking you to just come to the first one, and decide from there.
So the first, and most important application of this passage is to believe.
Here’s the second one: De-clutter your spiritual life. The reason Jesus got angry is that the religious leaders had taken something good—the temple—and they had so cluttered it with unnecessary stuff that the main point got lost. So here’s a question: What would Jesus say if he walked into our church? Maybe you say, “Well, I don’t like it when we sell Chapel sweatshirts and T-shirts in the lobby, or sometimes we sell books in the lobby—I think Jesus would flip those tables over.” I don’t think so, because that doesn’t interfere with the main purpose, which is to worship God and hear the Word preached. If our lobby ever becomes filled with vendors, and people making a profit, and all kinds of Chapel tchotchke and swag and Pastor Dave bobbleheads, then Jesus would rightfully say, “Get that out of here.”
But some of the distractions in church don’t come from what’s around us; they come from our own hearts. Kent Hughes said, “Our hearts can become like the outer court of the temple. Even while we sit in church, the bazaars of suburbia can be spinning through our heads.” So what would Jesus say if he walked into the courtyard of your mind? Is there so much commercialism, and so much on your schedule, and so much stuff to maintain, and so many distractions, and social media, that if you’re honest, you don’t really nurture a deep relationship with God? There’s no room for that!
What would Jesus look at in your life, and say, “Get this out of here! Make room for what really matters?” It’s time to de-clutter your spiritual life.
And then one last application: Let Jesus clean out your personal life. This is different from the previous point. The previous point was pushing you to take action and do some de-cluttering. But sometimes Jesus doesn’t wait for us to take action. Sometimes he steps in and rearranges the furniture, and throws things around, all on his own. He has the right to do that. And usually, he doesn’t even tell us why he’s doing it!
All of a sudden, there’s an unexpected change to your job, or your family, or your future plans. Something you did not see coming. And if you believe that God is in control and Jesus is the owner of your life, you’ll realize that whatever change is happening is part of his plan. Like Tim Keller said, “When Jesus comes into your life, sometimes he’ll fill your table with a feast; other times he will flip your table and spill everything on the ground.” Some of you, right now, are dealing with some flipped-over tables.
And here’s the question: will you allow Jesus to be Lord? Even if you don’t know why it’s happening—will you trust that he’s in control, and allow the unexpected challenge to purify you and drive you closer to him?
Let’s prepare our hearts for communion.
Communion