Spring Cleaning

Spring Cleaning

John 2:13-17

The new phrase in the Newsome household presently is “we’ve got the time”. We suddenly have an abundance of time on our hands. We also want to make the best use of this time that God has given us. We are watching movies, playing board games and taking walks to the creek. We are also spending a decent amount of time cleaning! This is the best my garage has looked since we moved in almost 7 years ago! In tonight’s message we see Jesus do a bit of spring cleaning.

¹³ Now the Passover of the Jews was at hand, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. ¹⁴ And He found in the temple those who sold oxen and sheep and doves, and the money changers ^[b]doing business. ¹⁵ 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. ¹⁶ And He said to those who sold doves, “Take these things away! Do not make My Father’s house a house of merchandise!” ¹⁷ Then His disciples remembered that it was written, “Zeal for Your house ^[c]has eaten Me up.”

Last week we talked about the first recorded miracle of Jesus. He turned water into a wine at a wedding in the small town of cana.  It wasn’t a public miracle in view of thousands of people as we will see later. It was a private miracle. It’s also telling that his first miracle to kick off his ministry wasn’t on some grand stage. It was done at a local family wedding. This is a reminder to all of us that our first and most important ministry will always be our family.

What happening now? Sometime after the wedding Jesus and his disciples head down to Jerusalem for Passover. Passover was instituted in Exodus 12. Most of you are familiar with Moses and the 10 Plagues against Egypt. The 10^th plague was the death of the first born on all the house of Egypt. To avoid being struck by the Angel of Death the Israelites had to sacrifice a lamb and then smear its blood over there doorway. Then death, seeing the lamb’s blood, would Passover that house. In Exodus 23 God mandates that it be kept ever year. This was to serve as an ever lasting reminder of how God delivered them from Egypt and to point to the perfect Passover lamb, Jesus.

Jesus, being the perfect fulfillment of the law, would have never missed a Passover in his entire life. He’s been here every year, observing this Passover, of His entire life. We caught a glimpse of this in Luke when he was younger and found asking questions of those in authority there at the temple. Now He’s here with a completely different focus. He’s not upholding a mere tradition. He’s here for the public start of His ministry. He’s here about His Father’s business at His Father’s house.

Passover was the biggest holiday that they celebrated. Everyone came home for Passover. It’s estimated that over 1-2 million people would be in Jerusalem for Passover at this time. Almost 4 times the normal population. This is a completely different audience from the hundred or so at the wedding in Cana. When you have 4x the people you also have 4x the chance to make a profit. People need somewhere to stay, to eat, and to be entertained. A decent number of these people would not only be from out of town, but also out of country.

How many of you have ever travelled out of country? Once you were there one of the first thing you do is exchange your money. I remember our first trip to Asia. We are already jetlagged from our 12-hour flight and I’m standing at this non English ATM guessing at the buttons and then it spits out what looks like monopoly money! Then they charged a nice fee for the “convenience” of exchanging my money. These fees can run anywhere from 1-20% depending on where you are at and whom you choose to do business with. There’s nothing new about this.

In the temple there were people who sold sacrificial animals and there were people who exchanged money. To be in a good Israelite you had to pay your temple tax. You had to pay your temple tax with the official temple coin. The money changers would happily exchange your foreign money for temple coin, for a fee. Historians believe this exchange fee to easily be anywhere from 10% or higher. Without this you could not enter, you could not offer your sacrifice, you could not worship!

When the first set of restrictions came down from the governor your staff discussed various options for service. I joked we should have a velvet rope and a bouncer that only let a certain number of people in. This was the reality for these Jews, many of whom traveled for weeks if not months to get here. Once they arrived, they had to pay the fee, or they couldn’t get in.

Then there’s the matter of making the sacrifice itself. You would need a sacrificial animal. If you didn’t want to bring one with you on the long journey you could just buy one there. You know how you go to a theme park or a sporting event and after a bit you get hungry and thirsty? Then you go to the food stand and for $35 you get a hot dog, and a bottle of water? When the exact same thing cost $3 at the gas station right before the entrance? Don’t you just hate that? Everyone hates that. Except the people making money off it. Nothing new about that either folks.  The same animals would be marked up significantly in price than they were just a few weeks before.

Let’s say you did bring your own animal for the sacrifice there’s a catch! Your animal has to pass inspection. Guess what a conversation with the inspector went like.  Did you buy it from the temple shop? No? Oh well this animal doesn’t pass inspection. You can buy a high quality one though from my cousin’s temple shop! You had to buy the temple animal anyway. That’s how they did business, and business was booming.

What should have been a place for reverence, repentance and worship had become a corrupted marketplace. The leadership was taking advantage of the very people they were supposed to be serving.

Matthew 15:8 “These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me.”

Now we see a different side of Jesus. A Jesus we aren’t used to seeing and frankly don’t like to think about. We like the compassionate, patient, forgiving Jesus. This guy here, that takes a whip and starts chasing people off. We don’t know what to make of Him.

Jesus finds some lose cords, or ropes, lying around and makes a braided whip out of it. He then runs out all the businesses there in the temple. He flips over the money table, runs off all the animals, and miraculously, they all leave. I know we are used to miracles involving supernatural type things but this is one of those as well. You see there would have been 250-300 temple police there in the temple and they don’t ever get involved in this as far as the record goes. Equally, a full Roman garrison would have been in viewing distance of all of this from Fort Antonia just up the hill from the temple. Also, we have no record of anyone getting hurt. I’m sure there were some bumped elbows and bruised knees but nothing really of note. No one tried to stop Him, no one called the police, no crowd picked up rocks to stone Him. Everyone that didn’t need to be there, suddenly was gone.  As it says in the Psalms, Zeal for His Father’s house consumes Him.

Zeal, a great sense of enthusiasm and energy. As talked about last time that everything Jesus does is for God’s glory. God is not glorified when our places of worship become about people, politics, or power. God is not glorified when our lives before about ourselves instead of Him. If Jesus were to show up today what would be removed from our churches? From our own personal lives? I’m willing to bet you already thought of something.

For whatever reasons, God has put almost all of us on pause. Its time to pray, reflect, and remove those things that don’t belong. Let’s close in prayer.

Father, again we come before You fearing that our familiarity with these things keeps us from a genuine examination of heart. Show us anything that’s wrong in our lives and help us to confess and yield to everything that displeases You. Forgive us, cleanse us, wash us. May we be honest in that self-examination, honest as we repent so that we might not be in a position to be disciplined. We want Your favor and we want the joy of obedience. And You’ve put this table in the life of the church as the point at which that judgment takes place—that self-judgment, that honesty of heart that protects us from Your divine discipline. Open our hearts, show us what we need to give to You, let go of, confess that we might honor You even as we partake. Amen.