Making a whip of cords, he drove them all out of the temple, with the sheep and oxen. And he poured out the coins of the money-changers and overturned their tables … His disciples remembered that it was written, “Zeal for your house will consume me.”
A father would understandably burn with a righteous anger if he saw drugs wreaking destruction in the life of his child. We wouldn’t expect him to flippantly dismiss such devastation. No, we would expect him to do everything necessary to drive that evil out and see restoration take place.
When Jesus, the Son of God, entered His Father’s house on earth—the temple in Jerusalem—and looked round at the scene, it was painful to Him. A place intended for the worship of God had become a place given over to the worship of money. A place intended to beckon the world to meet the living God had become one that kept the nations at arm’s length. He found it intolerable that the name of God, the glory of God, was being besmirched and tarnished. There is no reason for us to stand back and try to mitigate Jesus’ actions. The holy anger of Christ burned with zeal and purity. This was not the time for polite conversation.
Jesus knew exactly why the temple was there. It was the place of meeting God. It was meant to be the joy of the whole earth. What He found instead was completely opposed to its purpose—and in His words and actions, He made that abundantly clear.
Interestingly, when the Pharisees confronted Jesus afterwards, they didn’t challenge His actions; they challenged His authority. Jesus responded to this challenge with a puzzling statement: “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up” (John 2:19). The temple He referred to, John explains, was Himself (v 21). One day, Jesus would come to Jerusalem not to visit the temple complex but to give His own body and blood as the full and final sacrifice for sins, and then to rise to new life and to reign forever. It was on that authority that He was making clear the difference between what God had intended the temple to be and what it had been made to become.
Here, then, we are confronted by a Jesus who is radical—who responds with zeal and protectiveness to the issue of God’s glory. This Jesus is not meek and mild, always affirming and never challenging. He is the Great High Priest, who came not only to cleanse the temple precincts but also to cleanse our hearts and deal with our alienation. In Him, the true temple, God has built “a house of prayer for all peoples” (Isaiah 56:7).
So look afresh at Jesus, who brooked no compromise in pursuing the glory of God through enabling the nations to worship Him rightly. Look afresh at Jesus, who used His authority and perfections willingly to take our place and bear our punishment in His body so we could be restored. Look afresh at Jesus, of whose amazing grace you are a beneficiary. And let His zeal for God’s glory also be yours.
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Devotional material is taken from the Truth For Life daily devotional by Alistair Begg, published by The Good Book Company, thegoodbook.com. Used by Truth For Life with permission. Copyright © 2021, The Good Book Company.
