Cleansing the Temple, at Passover (2:12-25)

John 2:12 actually skips over a significant time period. After the wedding, Jesus embarks on a preaching tour round the many synagogues in Galilee, ‘in the power of the Spirit’, preaching the arrival of the Kingdom of heaven. Luke says, “He was glorified by all” (Lk 4:14-30). But when he returned to Nazareth and declared "The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me", announcing His Messianic manifesto, Mary’s neighbours took offence and tried to kill Him. So Jesus relocates the family to Capernaum, a more cosmopolitan town and a fishing port on the Sea of Galilee. There, He officially ‘calls’ Peter and Andrew, and James and John, to be ‘fishers of men’: evangelists, as we would say.

He goes off on a second evangelistic crusade round Galilee, and by now His fame has grown such that crowds come from far and wide to hear Him, and to be healed. He teaches them about the Kingdom, in ‘the Sermon on the Mount’, then expands His team of disciples to twelve, and sends them out in pairs to multiply the message.

Exactly where John’s next section (2:13-4:54) interlocks with the Synoptic accounts, we can’t be 100% sure. But it seems to have been an interlude in Jesus’ Galilean ministry, in that (a) John the Baptist is still at liberty (3:24) and (b) near the end of this section, Jesus goes back to Cana in Galilee.

The other three gospels record an episode where Jesus cleansed the Temple, shortly before He was crucified.  But John here recounts a similar event early in Jesus's ministry. Were they two separate events, or one-and-the-same event?  Some of the details differ, particularly in that in John the focus is on the desecration of what should have been a holy place, whereas in the synoptics the focus is on the greed and corruption of those who trafficked the sacrificial lambs.  
Some say the Synoptics are right and John just recorded it here because it fitted the narrative he wanted to portray.  Others think John was right and the Synoptics wrong. But it seems more natural to take the accounts at face value and conclude that Jesus in fact cleansed the Temple twice - once at the beginning and once at the end of His ministry.  Though Matthew records Jesus cleansing the Temple a few days before being crucified (Mt 21:12-17), and records Jesus predicting the Temple’s destruction, he also records that it is the words He spoke at the first cleansing (recorded in Jn 2:19) which are eventually used to convict Him (Mt 26:59-65).

A month before Passover each year, money changers ('travel money bureaux') would fan out to the towns and cities across Israel, enabling people to change money in readiness to pay the Temple tax at Passover.  There were many different currencies in use at that time - Roman, Greek, Egyptian, Persian, Syrian, Tyrean and of course the Jewish shekels as well.  Even with the latter, a Galilean shekel was worth only half a Temple shekel.  The agents’ commission was 10-15% but there was much haggling done over the commission. For example, the Temple tax was half a Jerusalem shekel - so two men might jointly change other currency for a single Jerusalem shekel, which would; d then be used to pay the tax for them both, to minimise the commission paid.  Then ten days later, they’d relocate to the Temple Court for the last three weeks before the Feast, to catch the rich pickings to be had from Diaspora Jews making the pilgrimage.

Such Jews would also need to buy sheep or oxen for their sacrifices, but the priests would reject any animal they considered had the slightest blemish.  So in practice, the only reliable deal was to buy a pre-approved animal from the priests themselves!  A significant proportion of the price then went into the High Priest’s personal coffers, causing much resentment at the greed and corruption of the priesthood.  The Outer Court was supposed to be a ‘House of Prayer for all nations” - I.e. for Gentiles (Isa 56.6,7) - but instead it had been turned into a ‘a den of thieves’ (Jer 7:11).

Some see this episode as Jesus being a prototype social revolutionary.  However whilst it is true Simon the Zealot was one of the Twelve, so was Matthew the (Roman) tax-gatherer!  And Jesus is clear, when questioned by Pilate, that ‘My Kingdom is not of this world’.  The only reason a whip was necessary, was to drive the animals out.  Rather, it was zeal for His Father’s honour, that drove Him to such radical action. The OT prophets had foreseen this: Zechariah said that ‘There will no longer be a merchant in the House of the Lord’ (Zech 14:26).  And Malachi said, ‘Suddenly the LORD will come to His Temple…purify the Levites…and refine them like gold and silver’.

The disciples realised that they were seeing Psalm 69:9 being fulfilled.  Jesus’ passion for His Father’s reputation was deeply offended by the way this monetising of religion was stumbling so many Jews, never mind God-fearing Gentiles.  We must never allow the need for practical preparations for worship, to displace a focus on prayer.

It seems that at this point the Temple authorities made no attempt to stop Jesus’s actions.  Perhaps they were too ashamed by what He said.  Perhaps they knew that the crowd would back Him, out of contempt for ‘Annas’s bazaar’, as it was known.  Or maybe they were scared that the Roman garrison in the Fort Antonia, which overlooked the Temple,
would intervene if there was any sense that a riot was developing.  But they  were so incensed by Jesus’ teaching in the Temple, that they subsequently repeatedly sought to arrest or stone Him (7:30,32,44,45-46; 8:44,59; 10:31-39; 11:56-57).   On each occasion, God’s timing over-ruled man’s; the crowd protected Him; the soldiers were overawed by His words; or He simply got away safely.  But eventually Caiaphas, in his role as High Priest for that year, decided He was such a threat to national security that He must be killed, by whatever means (11:47-53).

Jesus had claimed that the Temple was ‘His Father’s house’.   As they came to realise later, this was a direct claim that He Himself was God (10:30-33).   So they challenged Him to perform a miracle to validate His authority.  Jesus’ reply rocked them on their heels: “Destroy this Temple, and in three days I will raise it up!”  You would think that the sheer craziness of this challenge would have made them think whether it was meant in some symbolic way, but no. They focussed on the fact that it had taken forty-six years of effort on Herod’s part to get this far. (They weren’t to know that it would be nearly thirty years more before it was finally completed in AD65 - and then it would be utterly destroyed only five years after that.). Even had they been willing to put His challenge to the test, the Temple had by now become such an idol to them, that it had become more important than God Himself.

At His trial three years later, these very words of His were misquoted by two false witnesses - twisted into an allegation that He would destroy the Temple (Mt 26:57-63).  But His prophetic challenge had been, “If you destroy this Temple, I will rebuild it in three days”: and that was about to be fulfilled in His crucifixion and resurrection.  It was only with hindsight and the teaching of the Holy Spirit, that the disciples realised  Jesus had been talking about His own human body as the Temple, the place where we should worship God.  The tearing of the Temple veil, at the moment of His death, indicated that through the sacrifice of His body, we would be able to enter the very Presence of God - the Holy of Holies (Heb 10:19-22).   Just as the Temple had been the place where man was reconciled to God through sacrifice, now He has ‘reconciled us to God in the body of His flesh through death, to present us holy, and blameless, and above reproach in His sight’ (Col 1:21-22). As the Temple was the dwelling place of God, so it pleased the Father that in Him (Jesus) all the fullness of God should dwell (Col 1:19).  The Father had given Him the Spirit ‘without measure’ (3:34).

When we believe in Jesus, we ourselves are built into this Temple, as ‘living stones’ (1Pet 2:4-5). We become God’s dwelling-place!  There is something sacred about the human body as God’s temple: we must keep our bodies and souls holy, staying away from everything that would defile us (2Cor 6:14-18),  if His glory is to reside in and over our lives. Otherwise we become ‘Ichabod’ - a Hebrew word meaning, 'the glory has departed'.

JESUS’ MIRACLES, AND THE PASSOVER PILGRIMS’ RESPONSES (2:23-25)

Having turned down the authorities’ demand for a sign, nevertheless Jesus went on to do many signs in Jerusalem that Passover.  We are not told what they were; but many of the Passover pilgrims ‘believed in His name’ when they saw these miracles.  However, Jesus did not commit Himself to them as He had, for example, to His disciples. Why was this?

Some see this passage as teaching the universal fallenness of mankind: ‘The human heart is desperately wicked and deceitful. Who can know it? I, the LORD, search the heart and try the mind’ (Jer 17:9-10).  Jesus knew that their acclaim would evaporate, and that one day they would be baying, “Crucify! Crucify!”.  Omniscience belongs to God alone: even Satan cannot read a man’s mind like Jesus had done with Nathanael.  

But what makes the difference between, say, Peter’s heart, which would give way and desert Jesus at the Cross, and Judas’s heart, which betrayed Him for thirty pieces of silver?  Why does Jesus pray for the one and not (as far as we know) for the other?  Perhaps the answer lies in the word, ‘commit’. Jesus commits to those who commit to Him.   We may be temporarily faithless, but He will remain faithful, because that is His inherent nature.  The disciples had not only believed, but they had left everything to follow Him.  Whereas the pilgrims, by and large, would go home at the end of the feast - their lives unchanged by their 'belief'.