Wednesday, May 9, 2018

Spring cleaning, part II



We're talking about spring cleaning this week, and I asked for everyone to read in John 2. I'll post the pertinent verses here:
When it was almost time for the Jewish Passover, Jesus went up to Jerusalem. 14 In the temple courts he found people selling cattle, sheep and doves, and others sitting at tables exchanging money. 15 So he made a whip out of cords, and drove all from the temple courts, both sheep and cattle; he scattered the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables. 16 To those who sold doves he said, “Get these out of here! Stop turning my Father’s house into a market!” 17 His disciples remembered that it is written: “Zeal for your house will consume me.”
18 The Jews then responded to him, “What sign can you show us to prove your authority to do all this?”19 Jesus answered them, “Destroy this temple, and I will raise it again in three days.”
20 They replied, “It has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and you are going to raise it in three days?” 21 But the temple he had spoken of was his body. 22 After he was raised from the dead, his disciples recalled what he had said. Then they believed the scripture and the words that Jesus had spoken.23 Now while he was in Jerusalem at the Passover Festival, many people saw the signs he was performing and believed in his name. 24 But Jesus would not entrust himself to them, for he knew all people. 25 He did not need any testimony about mankind, for he knew what was in each person. (John 2:13-25)

I think that this passage is a pretty good example of spring cleaning, don't you? I'm not being sacrilegious.... when Jesus cleansed the temple, He purged the temple of corruption and disorder, and made the place pure and holy once more.

This says the timing was near the feast of Passover. This was one of the holiest of all the feast days on the Jewish calendar. It celebrated the night when God liberated the Jewish slaves in the country of Egypt. They'd been serving at the whim of the Pharaoh, and had been mistreated in many ways. On that night, while the Jewish people were inside their houses, the angel of death passed through the streets of Rameses,  The angel took the life of every first-born male, even the son of the Pharaoh, but passed over the homes of the Israelites, on which the blood of a lamb was daubed on the door....over the door and on the sides.

Passover was celebrated on the fourteenth day of the month of Nisan -- that was in the spring-time. Travel conditions were at their best in the Middle East at that time, so tens of thousands of faithful pilgrims would flock to the temple from all over the Mediterranean. They all wanted to make their sacrifices to God, and also pay their temple tax.

OK, let's think about this..... historians tell us that the population of Jerusalem would swell from 50,000 to 180,000 at Passover. Jewish pilgrims and proselytes to the faith would come from as far away as Persia, Egypt, Syria, Greece, and Rome. Instead of streaming into town and then leaving, like fans at a ball game, these travelers would stay for a week! That's a lot of mouths to feed, and a lot of peeps to find beds for! In addition, they are going to come to the temple to make a sacrifice..... they'll need an unblemished animal for that one. The temple tax? They'll need to exchange their home currency to the currency typical of Jerusalem. This sounds like an awesome retail season for somebody, right? (Grin)

This may be a really good example of how something that started well didn't end well. Maybe at first, the merchants had good intentions. They wanted to help the worshipers exchange a few coins, or purchase a dove or a lamb for the important yearly sacrifice. But three of the other gospels focus on the fact that some of these peeps were gouging the people. Matthew, for example:
“It is written,” he said to them, “‘My house will be called a house of prayer,’ but you are making it ‘a den of robbers.’” (Matthew 21:13)
Jesus quoted from Isaiah in the first part of that verse:
these I will bring to my holy mountain    and give them joy in my house of prayer.Their burnt offerings and sacrifices    will be accepted on my altar;for my house will be called    a house of prayer for all nations.(Isaiah 56:7)
And from Jeremiah in the second part:
Has this house, which bears my Name, become a den of robbers to you? But I have been watching! declares the Lord. (Jeremiah 7:11)
John's gospel seems to focus (verse 16) on the fact that all of this buying and selling has intruded upon the sacred space of worship.  Bleating lambs, cooing doves, conversations of people making their exchanges, and the clinking and clanking of coins..... it must have been extremely noisy. Not the reverent house of God that the temple was intended to be.

Is the modern church a victim of needing a good spring cleaning? Are we carrying on conversations as we enter and prepare to worship? I would hope that the house of God would be known as a friendly place, so we should greet each other quietly and smile. That's different from standing in the aisles and having a good, old-fashioned time of fellowship that is better suited to our fellowship hall or the parking lot!
It's easy to lose our focus on the majesty and sovereignty of God, and the central purpose for which we gather: to worship Him and be renewed in our faith.
The temple in Jesus' day had lost its sacred character....it had become a noisy marketplace.  That's not to say that all of the people there were bad. But they had, in fact, lost sight of the fact that it was a place of worship. So Jesus took a whip and drove out the merchants and the animals.

When the temple leaders asked by what authority Jesus did this, He answered:
Jesus answered them, “Destroy this temple, and I will raise it again in three days.” (verse 19)
Jesus quickly shifted the focus from the physical, stone and mortar temple to His own body, and the prophecies of His death and resurrection. This was confusing to the temple leaders; we have the benefit of looking back on things - they were in the "here and now" and didn't understand. They couldn't fathom the concept.....  if the temple is the dwelling place of God, then it's no longer only the physical structure in Jerusalem. Instead, it's the person of our Lord Jesus. And they didn't realize that after His resurrection, the dwelling place of God would be every believer!

We'll get into more of what this means for us, tomorrow.

2 comments:

  1. When we toured the National Cathedral in Washington DC several years ago, they guide you out through a gift shop. I was horrified. All I could think of were these verses. I know they have to have money for maintenance and upkeep, but I just thought this was so wrong!

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  2. I so dislike the hail fellow well met chatter and goings on in some of the more secular-like churches.

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