John 2:14-16

¹⁴In the temple courts [Jesus] found men selling cattle, sheep and doves, and others sitting at tables exchanging money. ¹⁵So He made a whip out of cords, and drove all from the temple area, both sheep and cattle; He scattered the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables. ¹⁶To those who sold doves He said, "Get these out of here! How dare you turn My Father's house into a market!"

Jesus drives out the merchants from the Temple in Jerusalem. Jesus heads to Jerusalem for Passover, as every law-abiding Jew would do, and He sees the merchants selling cattle, sheep, and doves, and others exchanging money right there in the Temple courts. Before going further, let’s consider the motive for bringing these practices to the Temple courts. Why were the moneychangers there? All Jewish males were required to pay a Temple tax at Passover, and the Jewish leadership did not accept Roman money, as Caesar’s likeness was engraved on the coins. So the moneychangers would take the Jews’ Roman money and give them coins that the Jewish leadership would accept for the Temple tax. And you know the exchange rates during Passover weren’t quite in the favor of the Jewish visitors to Jerusalem. Next, why were there folks selling doves, sheep, and cattle? Again, the visitors to Jerusalem were required by law to offer sacrifices according to what they could afford. Picture an influx of people to a relatively small city all hurried and forced to have animals for sacrifices. The visitors could come unprepared and get their taxes and sacrifices taken care of as they entered the Temple. What a great idea to make it easy and convenient on the visitors, right? Do you there was any price-gouging going on? Remember the animals offered for sacrifices had to be perfect – without spot or blemish. It’s tough to carry an animal for miles and miles on a long journey without something happening.

Think about it: we have a bookstore and a café just outside the sanctuary at Southeast so that people can get everything they need for their spiritual walk and physical hunger and thirst requirements. It’s seems like a good idea, right? We’re taking care of people’s needs were they are, and that’s perhaps what these Temple merchants and moneychangers were thinking. But you know as well as I do that there were other motives. Think about buying a hotdog and coke at the basketball or baseball or football game. You could buy 10 times as much at the grocery store for the same money. It was all about the money. These folks had profit on their minds. Passover was the biggest money making event of the year for these folks. It’s like Christmas time at the mall. Folks will do just about anything to rent a prime space for the holiday shopping season. The Temple court was where a God-seeker, someone who really was taken up the monotheism of Jewish religion, could come, ask questions, and hear about faith in God. But with all of this commerce and noise and banter and commotion, people were being hindered from coming to know God. It desecrated God; it was worship without reverence. Worship should always be reverent. People who see a worship service for the first time ought to think, “Surely God is in this place!”

So, with that said, some suggest that Jesus is angry about the motives of these folks – which He knows perfectly well. We’ll see how well He knows them in v23-25 of this chapter. They might say that it’s not their practices that He despises, but their attitudes. And He drives them out with a whip to show His disgust with their hearts, fulfilling Malachi 3:1-4 (We’ll talk about v17 at the end). What do you think? I’m not sure that’s it. That’s certainly part of it, but I think there’s more. Jesus drives them out with a whip, because He is disgusted with their hearts and actions. It is out of the heart that the mouth speaks (Matthew 12:34; Luke 6:45). They were not prepared in their hearts to worship God at Passover, and their actions displayed that their hearts were unprepared to worship God. “These people…honor Me with their lips, but their hearts are far from Me” (Isaiah 29:13; Matthew 15:8; Mark 7:6). They were offering sacrifices and making it easy to offer sacrifices, but their sacrifices were empty rituals. “To obey is better than sacrifice” (1 Samuel 15:22). John Calvin says, “It was proper that the Jews should be aroused by this example to expect from Christ something that was unusual and out of the ordinary course; and it was also necessary to remind them that the worship of God had been corrupted and perverted, that they might not object to the reformation of those abuses.”

Now how do we keep this in perspective? Remember that the Temple in Jerusalem was a type of Christ. It was representative of Emmanuel, God with us. It symbolizes the true Church. Our church buildings today do not reach that level of significance. Rather, we should view ourselves as temples of the Holy Spirit. Our bodies should not be corrupted like a den of robbers or a market place, but we must strive for purity, both inside and out. And so like Jesus, we drive out the sin from within and declare ourselves, “Holy – set apart for service to the Lord.”

Lastly, Jesus says, “How dare you turn My Father’s house into a market!” Matthew 21:13 is harsher, quoting Jeremiah 7:11: They had made the Temple a “den of robbers.” That speaks to their motives and to their actions. Notice that Jesus refers to Himself as the Son of God by calling the Temple His Father’s house.