When the Passover Feast, celebrated each spring by the Jews, was about to take place, Jesus traveled up to Jerusalem. He found the Temple teeming with people selling cattle and sheep and doves. The loan sharks were also there in full strength.

Jesus put together a whip out of strips of leather and chased them out of the Temple, stampeding the sheep and cattle, upending the tables of the loan sharks, spilling coins left and right. He told the dove merchants, "Get your things out of here! Stop turning my Father's house into a shopping mall!" That's when his disciples remembered the Scripture, "Zeal for your house consumes me."

But the Jews were upset. They asked, "What credentials can you present to justify this?" Jesus answered, "Tear down this Temple and in three days I'll put it back together."


They were indignant: "It took forty-six years to build this Temple, and you're going to rebuild it in three days?" But Jesus was talking about his body as the Temple. Later, after he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered he had said this. They then put two and two together and believed both what was written in Scripture and what Jesus had said.


During the time he was in Jerusalem, those days of the Passover Feast, many people noticed the signs he was displaying and, seeing they pointed straight to God, entrusted their lives to him. But Jesus didn't entrust his life to them. He knew them inside and out, knew how untrustworthy they were. He didn't need any help in seeing right through them. John 2:13-25 MSG


For many years I have thought that Jesus' anger at what was happening in the temple was an outpouring of grief.
Grief, because of the way the religious leaders were treating his Father by how they were benefiting by the commerce going on in the Court of the Gentiles:

Passion for your house has consumed me,
and the insults of those who insult you have fallen on me. Psalm 69:9  NIV


Grief for how what was happening also crowded out the foreigners who wanted to worship God, because the noise, chaos and unfair dealing made worship impossible:

"I will also bless the foreigners who commit themselves to the Lord,
who serve him and love his name,
who worship him and do not desecrate the Sabbath day of rest,
and who hold fast to my covenant.

I will bring them to my holy mountain of Jerusalem
and will fill them with joy in my house of prayer.
I will accept their burnt offerings and sacrifices,
because my Temple will be called a house of prayer for all nations.

For the Sovereign Lord,
who brings back the outcasts of Israel, says:
'I will bring others, too, besides my people Israel.'"  Isaiah 56:6-8 NLT


Grief because the the religious leaders who knew what was in the scriptures wouldn't admit that they were disrespecting God's name and defiling God's temple:

Don't you yourselves admit that this Temple, which bears my name, has become a den of thieves?
Surely I see all the evil going on there. I, the Lord, have spoken! Jeremiah 7:11 NLT


Matthew 21,  Mark 11,  and Luke19 also mention the cleansing of the temple, but in each the action took place after Jesus' "Triumphal entry" into Jerusalem.  I think that perhaps John puts the memory of what happened early in his gospel so that the focus later will be on other events, as well as his relationship with his disciples at the last supper.  

As you have time, read some of these different accounts.  Also read them out loud to yourself as an extra way to enhance your memory of them.  Share and Copy


by Carolyn Schmitt