Day 7
If you’ve been to Washington D.C. lately, or watched the news, you’ve seen massive cranes working on the White House grounds. Starting last September, construction crews began demolition of the East Wing of the White House complex. Why? The White House is getting a new ballroom, touted to be bigger and better than ever. President Trump’s plan for a massive addition to the existing East Wing will cost $400 million dollars and take 3-4 years to complete, but will include a 22,000 square foot ballroom with capacity to seat up to 1,000 guests.
In today’s reading we watch as Jesus takes in the scene of the temple courts in Jerusalem. He is obviously displeased with how this specific space is being used, and proposes something unheard of: demolish the entire temple and He will raise it in three days! What in the world is he talking about? Is Jerusalem getting a new temple?
Read John 2:13-25
You may have noticed that John includes the story of Jesus cleaning house in the temple courts much earlier than his gospel contemporaries, who place this vignette much later, actually during the last week of His time in Jerusalem before His crucifixion. This first major confrontation with the Jewish leaders in John’s Gospel takes place on the occasion of Jesus’ entering the Jerusalem temple during the Jewish Passover. While the Synoptic Gospels record a second, later temple clearing, just prior to the crucifixion, it makes perfect sense that Jesus and His disciples would have observed the annual Passover in Jerusalem multiple times over His three-year ministry.
So Jesus walks in through the Court of the Gentiles, the area outside the temple building proper, and can’t believe what He sees. This space was created specifically for non-Jews, who desired to worship God but were prohibited from entering the formal temple. Instead of an inclusive space for Gentiles to come and worship, it was a noisy, dirty marketplace, with moneychangers and vendors selling last minute sacrifices of oxen, sheep and doves. These merchants, as well as the money-changers, rendered a service to those who had traveled to Jerusalem from afar, enabling them to buy the animals on-site rather than having to carry them for long distances. By conducting their business in the temple complex, however, these individuals disrupted the worship of non-Jewish God-fearers, and thus obstructed the very purpose for which the temple existed, foretold through the prophet isaiah:
“As for the foreigners who join themselves to the Lord
to minister to him, to love the name of the Lord,
and to become his servants—
all who keep the Sabbath without desecrating it
and who hold firmly to my covenant—
I will bring them to my holy mountain
and let them rejoice in my house of prayer.
Their burnt offerings and sacrifices
will be acceptable on my altar,
for my house will be called a house of prayer
for all nations.”
This is the declaration of the Lord God,
who gathers the dispersed of Israel:
“I will gather to them still others
besides those already gathered.”
Isaiah 56:6-8
What did He Say About Raising the Temple?
After Jesus cracks the whip He made and drives the money changers and vendors out, the Jewish leaders are shocked and appalled and ask, “Who do you think you are?” Well, that’s not exactly what they asked. It was more like, “What sign will you show us for doing these things?” (v 18) In other words, “You’d better have some authority to behave in this way.” But Jesus cryptically replies, “Destroy this temple, and I will raise it up in three days.” (v 19)
For heaven’s sake, who does this guy think he is? There is no way this temple, which took forty-six years to build and thousands of laborers, could be destroyed and then rebuilt in three days. This is crazy talk! He is ridiculous!
A New Temple, and That’s Not All!
While they didn’t make the connection until much later, after Jesus was raised from the dead, a lightbulb did go off in John’s and the other disciples’ heads. They “remembered that he had said this, and they believed the Scripture and the statement Jesus had made.” (v 22) The claim that John makes in John 1:14, of “The Word becoming flesh and dwelling among us” begins to lay the foundation of Jesus being a New Temple, the true House of the Lord where His divine glory dwells. His statement to “tear down this temple” and He’d rebuild it in three marked the shift from the physical, temporary structure of the temple and the Ark of the Covenant to Jesus’ resurrected, eternal presence.
As an extension of this, believers and the Church are considered the body of Christ, the temple of the Holy Spirit, God’s very presence living in us. The Apostle Paul writes to the Corinthian church, “Don’t you know that you yourselves are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in your midst?” (1 Corin 3:16) and later returns to this same idea but drills down even more, “Don’t you know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought at a price. So glorify God with your body. (1 Corin 6:19-20) There is a New Temple, with room for all who believe in His Name and receive His gift of salvation - by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ Alone - Sola Gratia, Sola Fide, Solus Christus.
Big Picture Questions for Today:
If you are the temple of God, how are you making room for Him during this season of Lent? How are you glorifying Him with your body?
Pray from Romans 6:3-5 “Or are you unaware that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? Therefore we were buried with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too may walk in newness of life. For if we have been united with him in the likeness of his death, we will certainly also be in the likeness of his resurrection.”
