Jesus Cleanses the Temple. (Matthew 21: 12-17)

 Introduction.

Then Jesus went into the temple of God and drove out all those who bought and sold in the temple and overturned the tables of the money changers and the seats of those who sold doves. And He said to them, “It is written, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer,’ but you have made it a ‘den of thieves.” Then the blind and the lame came to Him in the temple, and He healed them. But when the chief priests and scribes saw the wonderful things that He did, and the children crying out in the temple and saying, “Hosanna to the Son of David!” they were indignant 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 babes and nursing infants
 You have perfected praise’?”

Then He left them and went out of the city to Bethany, and He lodged there.  (Matthew 21: 12-17)

The Scene at The Temple.

If the entry into Jerusalem had been defiant, here is further added defiance added unto open defiance. To see this scene unfolding before our eyes we need to visualize the picture of the Temple at that time. 

There are in the New Testament two words which are translated Temple, and rightly so, but there is a clear distinction between the two areas they are referring too. The Temple itself is called the Naos, It was a comparatively small building, and contained the Holy Place and within that even there was the Holy of Holies into which only the High Priest could enter, and even he only go in once a year on the great Day of Atonement. But the Naos, this inn er temple it itself was surrounded by a vast space which was occupied by successive and ascending courtyards called the Hieron. 

The outer part of the Hieron was called the Court of the Gentiles, into which anyone might come, and beyond which it was upon pain of death for any Gentile to penetrate beyond that point. Then there came the Court of the Women, entered by the Beautiful Gate of the Temple, into which any Israelite might come. Next there came the Court of the Israelites, entered by the gate called Nicanor's Gate, a great gate of Corinthian bronze which needed twenty men to open and shut it, and it was in this court that the men assembled for the Temple services. Lastly there came the Court of the Priests, into which only the priests might enter. In it there stood the great altar of the burnt-offering, the altar of the incense, the seven-branched lampstand, the table of the shewbread, and the great brazen laver; and at the back of it there stood the Naos, itself. This whole area, including all the courts, is also our modern translations called the Temple; but the Greek is Hieron and a different word was used to keep a distinction between the two words; and the two places they represented. So, there is the inner temple, Naos, and the term for the wider Temple Precincts, and the word for that was, Hieron.

The scene of this incident was the Court of the Gentiles into which anyone might come. It was always crowded and busy; but at Passover, with pilgrims coming there from all over the world, it was thronged to capacity. There would, even at any time, be many Gentiles’ visiting, for the Temple at Jerusalem was famous throughout the world. Even the Roman and the Greek writers described it as one of the world's most amazing buildings at that time. 

In this Court of the Gentiles two kinds of trading were going on. There was the business of money changing. Every Jew who visited the temple had to pay a temple tax of one half-shekel, and that tax had to be paid with temple currency close to the Passover time. A month before, booths were set up in all the towns and villages, and the money could be paid there, but after a certain date it could only be paid at the Temple itself; and it would be there that the vast majority of pilgrim Jews from other lands arrived and paid it. This tax had to be paid in certain currency, temple tax, and although for general purposes all kinds of currencies were equally valid in Palestine. Their temple fee  had to be paid in a special stamped currency; it could not be paid in coins of any inferior alloy or coins which had been clipped, but in coins of high-grade silver. It could therefore only be paid in shekels of the sanctuary, or in Galilean half-shekels, and especially in Tyrian currency which was of a very high standard.

The function of the moneychangers was to change unsuitable currency into the correct currency. That seems on the face of it to be an entirely necessary function; but the trouble was that these moneychangers charged a fee for changing the currency at all; and, if the coin was of greater value than a half-shekel, they charged another fee for giving back the surplus change. Many a pilgrim had not only to pay his sanctuary shekel, but he had another payment of about 40% or the original amount to pay. Early historical records show that the amount paid was equivalent to 1 ½ days of a working man's wage. The whole matter was not necessarily an abuse; but the trouble was that it lent itself to abuse. It lent itself to the exploitation of the pilgrims who just come to worship, and there is no doubt that the Temple moneychangers made large profits out of it.

The selling of doves was another thing and had become just as exploitative. For most visits to the Temple some kind of offering was essential. Doves, for instance, where necessary when a woman came for purification after childbirth, or when a leper came to have his cure attested and certified as per the laws of Leviticus chapters 12 and 15.

It was easy enough to buy animals for sacrifice outside the Temple; but any animal offered in sacrifice within the temple area must be without blemish, so there were official inspectors of the animals, and it was to all intents and purposes certain that they would reject an animal bought outside the temple marketplace and they would direct the worshipper to the Temple stalls and booths.

No great harm would have been done if the prices had been the same inside and outside the Temple, but a pair of doves, for example, inside the temple cost 35 times more than when bought outside the Temple.  Furthermore, these stalls where the victims were exploited were called the Bazaars of Annas and were the private property of the family of the High Priest of that name. So, nepotism at the time of Jesus was ripe. As famous Bible historian Burkitt says, "the Temple had become a meeting place of scamps, and the worst kind of commercial monopolies and vested interests. Another well-known Bible historian, Sir George Adam Smith, wrote: "In those days every priest must have been a trader." This means there was an ever-present situation of ongoing shameless exploitation. 

It is easy to use all this as a basis for a complete condemnation of the whole Temple worship situation. However, there are two things which should be kept in mind when approaching this issue. 

Firstly, it’s true that there were many traders and fraudsters in the Temple Court, but there were also many who arrived with their hearts set on God. As today any institution should not be judged solely on their worst, or their best. 

The other thing to be said is simply this, let the one without sin cast the first stone. Let any church of Christian institution without sin cast the first stone.  The traders were not all exploiters, and even those who seized the opportunity of making a quick profit were not all simply money-grabbers. The great Jewish scholar Israel Abrahams has a comment on the too common Christian treatment of this passage: "When Jesus overturned the moneychangers and ejected the sellers of doves from the Temple, he did a service to Judaism. Remember the moneychangers and the dove-sellers are not the only people visiting the Temple that day. Many who came and bought a dove or changed their money was by no means just a religious formalist. I believe this incident demonstrates to us certain things about Jesus.

Firstly, it shows us one of the deepest manifestations of his anger directed against those who exploited their fellow man, and especially against those who exploited them in the name of religion and God. It was Jeremiah who first said that men made the Temple a den of thieves (Jeremiah 7:11), and Jesus quotes Jeremiah here. To put is simply, Jesus could not bear to see simple people exploited for profit. Too often the Church has been silent in such situations; it has a duty to protect those who in a highly precarious situation cannot protect themselves.

Secondly, it shows us his anger was specifically directed against those who made it impossible for ordinary people to worship in the House of God. 

It was Isaiah who said that God's House should be a House of Prayer for all peoples (Isaiah 56:7). The Court of the Gentiles was, as we have seen was the only part of the Temple into which Gentiles might come. We should not assume that every Gentile came to sight-see. Some will have come with a spiritual longing in their souls to worship and to pray, and to seek God. But in that uproar of buying and selling and bargaining and auctioneering prayer was impossible. Those who sought God's presence were being debarred from it by the very people working at the house of God.

God will hold accountable those who make it impossible for others to worship him. It can happen today but in different ways. A spirit of bitterness, or a critical spirit, a spirit of strife and an argumentative culture can get into any Church, which makes worship impossible. Office-bearers and leaders can become so concerned with their rights and their perceived wrongs against them. Or they can get all wrapped up in their religious practices and their procedures, that in the end no one can worship God in the atmosphere which is created. Even ministers of God can become more concerned with imposing their ways of doing things on a congregation than with preaching the gospel, and the end the service is left with an atmosphere which makes true worship impossible. The worship of God and the arguments of people can never go together. Let us remember here that the wrath of Jesus is primarily directed at those who blocked the approach to God of their fellow people.

There remains one thing to note. Our passage ends with Jesus healing the blind and the lame in the Temple Court. They were still there; Jesus did not clear everyone out. Only those with guilty consciences fled before his wrath. Those who needed him clearly stayed. Those in need are never sent away by Jesus Christ. Jesus' anger was never just a negative thing; it never stopped with being just an attack on that which was wrong; it always went on to the positive call of helping of those who were in need. In the truly great faithful people righteous anger and love can go hand in hand. There is anger at those who exploit the vulnerable and block the seeker; but there is love for those whose need is great. Any display of God’s righteous must always therefore go hand in hand with the healing power of love.

The Knowledge of The Pure in Heart.

Let’s remind ourselves of the closing verses of this passage.

But when the chief priests and scribes saw the wonderful things that He did, and the children crying out in the temple and saying, “Hosanna to the Son of David!” they were indignant 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 babes and nursing infants
 You have perfected praise’?”

Then He left them and went out of the city to Bethany, and He lodged there.

The use that Jesus makes of the quotation from Psalms 8:2 makes it clear that he had real children in mind; and not the disciples as some have suggested. It was not every day that the traders and the moneychangers were sent packing; and it was not every day that the blind and the lame were healed. When we take this story just as it stands and listen afresh, and see and hear the voices of the children shouting their praises, we are faced with one great indisputable  fact. There are truths which only the pure in heart can see, truths which are hidden from the wise and the learned and the spiritually sophisticated. There are many times when heaven is nearer to the child than it is to the cleverest man or woman.

George Macdonald once said that he placed no value on the alleged Christianity of a man at garden gate, the children were afraid to play.  The goodness which can meet the innocent gaze of a child and stand the test of a simplicity is goodness indeed. It was but natural that the children should recognize Jesus was when the scholars were blind to who he was.