THE CLEANSING OF GOD’S HOUSE

Posted by Pastor Greg Allen on September 15, 2021 under AM Bible Study |

AM Bible Study Group: September 15, 2021 from Luke 19:45-46

Theme: Our Lord insists that the sacred things of His Father be treated holy.

(All Scripture is taken from The New King James Version, unless otherwise indicated).

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In our last encounter with Luke’s Gospel, we read of how our Lord made His triumphant entry into the city of Jerusalem. And now, we read about the very first recorded thing our Lord did when He entered the temple. Luke tells us;

Then He went into the temple and began to drive out those who bought and sold in it, saying to them, “It is written, ‘My house is a house of prayer,’ but you have made it a ‘den of thieves’” (Luke 19:45-46).

It would have been a shocking thing to behold, because it would have involved a great commotion—with animals being driven out, and money tables being overturned, and lots of angry shouting. It would not be the kind of thing that we would expect to have happened when our Lord entered the holy temple of God His Father. But then, it also would have been shocking to see the kind of things that He saw going on in His Father’s house.

This has been a much-talked-about and controversial passage over the centuries. And even in recent times, people have used it for political purposes—that is, in order to justify a violent overthrow of any kind of political or economic system that they think of as unjust. But it’s not about worldly, or fleshly, or political, or temporal concerns at all. It’s about only one thing; and that is the mistreatment of God’s sacred house. And in reading this story, we learn the very important lesson about our Lord: that He insists that the sacred things of His Father be treated holy.

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Now; on this occasion, our Lord cleansed the temple just before Passover. It was a significant act; because it occurred just as He came into the city to present Himself as the long-awaited King of the Jews at the end of His earthly ministry. But did you know that this wasn’t the only time that our Lord cleansed the temple in this way? He did the very same at the beginning of His earthly ministry three years prior—and, in fact, on the Passover.

In John 2:13-16—shortly after He performed the miracle at the wedding of Cana, when He turned water into wine—we’re told;

Now the Passover of the Jews was at hand, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. And He found in the temple those who sold oxen and sheep and doves, and the money changers doing business. When He had made a whip of cords, He drove them all out of the temple, with the sheep and the oxen, and poured out the changers’ money and overturned the tables. And He said to those who sold doves, “Take these things away! Do not make My Father’s house a house of merchandise!” (John 2:13-16).

When His disciples saw this back then, it reminded them of Psalm 69:9; where it says, “zeal for Your house has eaten me up.” They would have been surprised—and perhaps astonished—at the level of passion He showed back then in the first clearing of the temple. It was made clear back then that it was because His Father’s house was being made into a house of merchandise—a place where goods were bought and sold. And now, at the end of His earthly ministry, He comes to the temple and finds again that He must perform the same act of cleansing—because the people who should have honored His Father’s house had once again treated it with disrespect and turned into a place of money-making. We can be sure that His passion was just as intense … if not more so!

And just as in that first cleansing, this second cleansing set into motion a whole long series of conflicts with the religious leaders of the Jewish people. From Luke 19:47 all the way to the end of Chapter 20, we see how the Lord Jesus encountered serious opposition from first the chief priests (19:47-20:19), then the Pharisees (20:20-26), then the Sadducees (20:27-44), and finally the scribes (20:45-47). It’s interesting, isn’t it? Our Lord’s devotion to the holiness of His Father’s house put Him into such a severe conflict with the religious leaders—who ought to have been faithful stewards of that house—that they eventually seized Him and handed Him over to death.

And it’s very significant that this was happening at the end of His earthly ministry—when He came at last to present Himself as King, but was instead rejected and crucified as a criminal. We should remember the very last thing He said to the people of Jerusalem in verse 44, as He rode in and looked upon the city: “you did not know the time of your visitation”. He had a right to find His people ready for Him, and to find His Father’s house treated with honor. Instead, He found His Father’s house treated with contempt.

Forty years later—when the Romans invaded the city in 70 A.D.—God allowed that house to be destroyed and taken from them. Our God will not put up with such irreverence for long.

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So then, let’s look at this passage in a bit more detail. Let’s begin by considering …

1. THE SITUATION (v. 45).

Luke begins by telling us, right after He made His triumphant entrance into the city, “Then He went into the temple …” He had a right to do so; and He had a right to be welcomed when He came. As it says of Him in Hebrews 3:6, He was “a Son over His own house”. It belonged to His Father; and as the Son of His Father, it truly was His.

Entering the temple, then, He had the property rights of divine Sonship over it. He had the right to expect that His Father’s will would be accomplished in it, and His Father’s honor upheld in it, and the house of His Father itself treated as sacred and holy. But instead, when He came in, He found a very unholy scene. It was filled once again—as it was before—with the sound and smells of animals being sold and of money being exchanged. It was not treated with reverence. Instead, it looked like a common marketplace. It was Passover; and pilgrims from all around the world were coming—bringing their Gentile money with them. In order to make offerings in the temple, they would have to use temple-approved sacrifices. And before they could buy such sacrifices in the temple, they first needed to exchange their pagan money for money that would be acceptable in the temple. As you can well imagine, there was quite a profitable business being made out of the Passover in the temple.

Luke tells it simply: that when He went into the temple, He “began to drive out those who bought and sold in it”. But Mark, in his Gospel, gives us a bit more detail—revealing how aggressively our Lord took action; telling us that

… Jesus went into the temple and began to drive out those who bought and sold in the temple, and overturned the tables of the money changers and the seats of those who sold doves. And He would not allow anyone to carry wares through the temple (Mark 11:15-16).

Now; we need to remember that this was a story that specifically concerned the temple of God in Jerusalem. A church building today is not the same thing as the temple in Jerusalem; and we should never make it out to be so. But nevertheless, we refer to the church building as ‘the Lord’s house’. This is to reflect that it is a sacred place, set apart for God’s holy cause; where God’s holy worship happens, and where His holy word is preached. It isn’t a common, ordinary place. Does what happens in that place please Him? Do we treat His sacred services in that place with honor? Is the gospel of Jesus preached in it—or is some other message preached that would be displeasing to Him? Is the kind of music played in it genuinely worshipful and honoring to Him—or is it the sounds and themes of this world? Are the activities, beliefs, and priorities that are found in it in keeping with His holiness—or are they the activities, beliefs, and priorities of ungodly and unredeemed people?

If our Lord walked into the Sunday service of our church, would there be some things of this world that—in honor of His Father—He would zealously grab hold of and throw out the door?

Jesus forcefully cast things out of His Father’s house. This was because they weren’t the kind of things that should have been in His Father’s house in the first place. So, notice next …

2. THE EXPECTATION (v. 46a).

Jesus Himself told us what the expectation was. In verse 46, we’re told that He was casting out those who bought and sold in it, “saying to them, “It is written, ‘My house is a house of prayer …’”

When Jesus spoke those words, He was quoting from the 56th chapter of the Old Testament book of Isaiah. In that passage, God prophetically declared that His love and grace extends even to the Gentiles who seek Him. He would shut no one out who truly turned from sin, and who sincerely sought salvation, and came to seek Him at His house. In Isaiah 56:6-7, God said;

“Also the sons of the foreigner
Who join themselves to the Lord, to serve Him,
And to love the name of the Lord, to be His servants—
Everyone who keeps from defiling the Sabbath,
And holds fast My covenant—
Even them I will bring to My holy mountain,
And make them joyful in My house of prayer.
Their burnt offerings and their sacrifices
Will be accepted on My altar;
For My house shall be called a house of prayer for all nations” (Isaiah 56:6-7).

That’s what God’s holy temple was meant to be. It was a place where the needy sinner—even the Gentile who had no natural relationship to the covenant of God—could nevertheless come and freely seek the grace of God. People ought to be able to come to God’s house and find the welcome mat of grace put out for them. As King David put it in Psalm 27;

One thing I have desired of the Lord,
That will I seek:
That I may dwell in the house of the Lord
All the days of my life,
To behold the beauty of the Lord,
And to inquire in His temple.
For in the time of trouble
He shall hide me in His pavilion;
In the secret place of His tabernacle
He shall hide me;
He shall set me high upon a rock (Psalm 27:4-5).

When needy people come to the church building today, that’s what they need to find.

Do they?

That’s not what needy people found when they came to the temple in Jesus’ day. Instead, they found that they had to pay an inflated price to exchange their money, so that they could use that approved money to buy overpriced offerings. That’s what our Lord found; and that’s when we read of …

3. THE CONDEMNATION (v. 46b).

Jesus said to the buyers and sellers, “It is written, ‘My house is a house of prayer,’ but you have made it a ‘den of thieves.’”

Again, our Lord was quoting from the Old Testament—this time from Jeremiah 7. The Jewish people in Jeremiah’s day thought that the fact that they had the temple of God in their midst meant that it didn’t matter what happened in it—or how they themselves lived. They treated the temple of God as if it were a good-luck charm—a kind of ‘insurance policy’ against divine judgment that made it possible for them to pursue their own selfish and sinful interests. In Jeremiah 7, God commanded Jeremiah to stand at the gate of the temple and declare this message:

Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: “Amend your ways and your doings, and I will cause you to dwell in this place. Do not trust in these lying words, saying, ‘The temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord are these.’ For if you thoroughly amend your ways and your doings, if you thoroughly execute judgment between a man and his neighbor, if you do not oppress the stranger, the fatherless, and the widow, and do not shed innocent blood in this place, or walk after other gods to your hurt, then I will cause you to dwell in this place, in the land that I gave to your fathers forever and ever. Behold, you trust in lying words that cannot profit. Will you steal, murder, commit adultery, swear falsely, burn incense to Baal, and walk after other gods whom you do not know, and then come and stand before Me in this house which is called by My name, and say, ‘We are delivered to do all these abominations’? Has this house, which is called by My name, become a den of thieves in your eyes? Behold, I, even I, have seen it,” says the Lord (Jeremiah 7:3-11).

Our Lord does not put up with His Father’s house being treated irreverently. Those words from Jeremiah 7 were spoken to the people of old; and because they didn’t obey, it was shortly thereafter that the temple was destroyed and left in ruins for 70 years. And now, our Lord was uttering those same words from Jeremiah to the people who were misusing God’s house in His day.

Soon, that temple would be destroyed again.

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We should only speculate about this carefully; but what would it have been like if the people in Jerusalem had welcomed the Lord Jesus into the temple? What if they had said to Him, “Welcome, King Jesus. This is Your Father’s house. Come into it, and cleanse it. Take away from it whatever displeases You. Whatever would please You—but that You do not yet see—bring it in and make it happen in Your Father’s holy house.” How different that might have been.

We can’t go very far in a speculation like that; because Jesus purposefully came to the temple of old to eventually be betrayed, arrested, and crucified for our sins. But when it comes to our church family—and to whatever goes on in ‘the Lord’s house’—couldn’t we do that today? Given what the apostle Peter wrote, it would be very appropriate to do so. He wrote;

Therefore, laying aside all malice, all deceit, hypocrisy, envy, and all evil speaking, as newborn babes, desire the pure milk of the word, that you may grow thereby, if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is gracious.

Coming to Him as to a living stone, rejected indeed by men, but chosen by God and precious, you also, as living stones, are being built up a spiritual house, a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ (1 Peter 2:1-5).

EA