The Lord cleanses the temple part 2

Day 2 of the Passion Week.

 

In the morning, Christ became hungry and He saw a lone fig tree from a distance. It had leaves but no fruit.

 

Christ is hungry for fruit, but for the man who went 40 days without food, the sugars of the fig are not His real hunger, rather it is the righteousness that comes by means of faith.

 

Israellacked it because of their rejection of Him.

 

The same hunger for righteousness leads the Lord to do His next event of the day which is to cleanse the temple. The temple was to be called a house of prayer. In the temple there were to be teaching. That teaching was supposed to reveal the meaning behind the rituals and the sacrifices. Believers were supposed to be praying while their noses filled with the fragrance of the incense and the sacrifices all of which should have had real meaning to them - the sacrifice of the Savior, the Messiah. But what had the temple become.

 

Money changers set up their booths in the surrounding towns a month before the Passover, but two weeks before they would pack up and move in to the outer temple court. In these two weeks the majority of pilgrims would come. The mad rush to exchange money, buy needed supplies, the adjuncts for the Passover dinner, the sacrifice, etc. There were literally over a million people trying to purchase all that they needed and so the temple wasn’t a place of teaching or prayer or quiet reflection on blood of the lamb, but rather it was like black Friday at WallMart.

 

And the chief priests and Pharisees as well as the money changers were all making huge profits off of it.

 

There is nothing wrong with making profits, but not in this way and definitely not in this place.

 

The Lord’s zeal for His house will cause Him to throw over the tables and throw all of the moneychangers out.

 

And, as it is now in the CA, the temple of God is your body, and Christ has a zeal for the spiritual condition of that body, and He will clean out unrighteousness by His word and His Spirit if you will allow Him.

 

  

Mark 11:15 And they came to Jerusalem. And He entered the temple and began to cast out those who were buying and selling in the temple, and overturned the tables of the moneychangers and the seats of those who were selling doves;

 

Mark 11:16 and He would not permit anyone to carry goods through the temple.

 

Mark 11:17 And He began to teach and say to them, "Is it not written, 'My house shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations'? But you have made it a robbers' den." 

 

Mark 11:18 And the chief priests and the scribes heard this, and began seeking how to destroy Him; for they were afraid of Him, for all the multitude was astonished at His teaching.

 

And so we have successful cleansing of the Temple by our Lord and for the second time.

 

The same symbolism of judgment upon the fig tree was to be immediately set forth still more clearly, and that in the Temple itself.

 

This cleansing is the second cleansing. Only recorded by John is the first cleansing in John 2 which was His first attendance during His 3.5 year ministry at the temple during the Passover.

 

He had attended the Passover since, but we do not see Him cleansing the temple until His last attendance at the Passover. 

 

He has proclaimed His authority by riding into Jerusalem the day before on a colt. Now He exercises that authority.

 

At the first in John 2, it had been for teaching and warning, now it was in symbolic judgment.

 

What He began, He now finished.

 

Accordingly, as we compare the words, and even some of the acts, of the first ‘cleansing’ with those accompanying and explaining the second, we find the second not in any way more severe, but bearing a different character - that of final judicial sentence.

 

And the people are no idiots. They know they’re being hosed. But what can they do about it?

 

Now. With all that you can imagine why Christ walked into this Temple and as the strongest man who ever lived, cleaned it out.

 

And you can also imagine why the people loved Him for it. I didn’t say they believed in Him for it. But they loved it. They were over taxed and someone stepped in. And yet, even though He did this, still most did not believe that He was the Messiah and assign Him His proper place.

 

While seeing this, they are without excuse.

 

By His authority the Temple was cleansed of the unholy, thievish traffic which a corrupt priesthood carried on, and so, for the time, restored to the solemn Service of God.

 

And that purified House now became the scene of Christ’s teaching, when He spoke those words of blessed truth and of comfort concerning the Father - thus truly realizing the prophetic promise of ‘a House of Prayer for all the nations.’

 

Matt 21:12-14

And Jesus entered the temple and cast out all those who were buying and selling in the temple, and overturned the tables of the moneychangers and the seats of those who were selling doves. 13 And He said to them, "It is written, 'My house shall be called a house of prayer'; but you are making it a robbers' den."  14 And the blind and the lame came to Him in the temple, and He healed them.

 

And as those traffickers were driven from the Temple, and He spoke, there flocked in from porches and Temple-Mount the poor sufferers - the blind and the lame - to get healing to body and soul.

 

It was truly spring-time in that Temple, and the boys that gathered about their fathers and looked in turn from their faces of rapt wonderment and enthusiasm to the Godlike Face of the Christ, and then on those healed sufferers, took up the echoes of the welcome at His entrance into Jerusalem - in their simplicity understanding and applying them better - as they burst into ‘Hosanna to the Son of David.’

 

 

Matt 21:15-17

But when the chief priests and the scribes saw the wonderful things that He had done, and the children who were crying out in the temple and saying, "Hosanna to the Son of David," they became indignant, 16 and said to Him, "Do You hear what these are saying?" And Jesus said to them, "Yes; have you never read, 'Out of the mouth of infants and nursing babes Thou hast prepared praise for Thyself'?"  17 And He left them and went out of the city to Bethany, and lodged there.

                 

 

Remember that your body is the holy temple of God.

 

1 Cor 6:13-20

Food is for the stomach, and the stomach is for food; but God will do away with both of them. Yet the body is not for immorality, but for the Lord; and the Lord is for the body. 14 Now God has not only raised the Lord, but will also raise us up through His power. 15 Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? Shall I then take away the members of Christ and make them members of a harlot? May it never be! 16 Or do you not know that the one who joins himself to a harlot is one body with her? For He says, "The two will become one flesh." 17 But the one who joins himself to the Lord is one spirit with Him. 18 Flee immorality. Every other sin that a man commits is outside the body, but the immoral man sins against his own body. 19 Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and that you are not your own? 20 For you have been bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body.

 

So after the cleansing we have teaching, healing, and praise from children.

 

At the moment of salvation you are completely cleansed.

 

As a cleansed believer you need teaching.

 

That teaching will heal your wrong thinking, your human viewpoint and your MAS.

 

And then you will respond back to God with child-like faith. The mature believer doesn’t act like a child, but he believes as a child would. A child will completely put his life in the hands of his parents.