Why didn't Jesus get arrested for making a whip out of cords and then whipping a bunch of people and yelling at them and turning over tables and scattering money and letting animals loose and just generally completely wrecking a perfectly lawful, I assure you, assembly. You'll see all the paperwork is in order. This thing on paper, I'm sure, was completely legal. Jesus went in there and did something that probably on paper is technically completely illegal, but he doesn't get arrested. In John 2, there's not even a mention of him being arrested. It's not like the cops show up and are like, I don't know, boys. Should we haul him in? Yeah, it's hard to say. You know, there's no ambiguity. There's just no immediate or obvious consequences to this at all. Jesus made a whip out of cords, he drove all from the temple area. Seems like that would be against some sort of ordinance. You'd think both sheep and cattle, he scattered the coins of the money, and this is total chaos. He overturned their tables and he said to those who sold doves, Get these out of here. How dare you turn my father's house into a market? You'd expect the arrest to be in the next verse, but instead we get his disciples remembered that it is written, zeal for your house will consume me. Also, John, the gospel author, he certainly has no problem with what Jesus is doing here. I'm sure the disciples were mortified when this was happening. What are you doing? This is such bad PR. We're gonna get in so much trouble, dude. Maybe a couple of them were just absolutely delighting because they were pretty hardlined. Maybe this was their favorite moment of Jesus that they'd experienced with him up till this point. But their big takeaway, according to John, is in the end, they're all like, Yeah, that was a good idea. It's a zeal for his house, it's his father's house. I got no problem with it. Well, then you'd expect maybe after that the cops would show up, but they don't. Verse 18, then the Jews demanded of him, What miraculous sign can you show us to prove your authority to do all of this? Well, that's a weird thing to say, isn't it? It's kind of a soft, how dare you? I mean, Jesus threw out a how dare you turn my father's house into a market, which is a really pretty interesting remark when you think about it, because I don't think it's just a saying when Jesus says it, it's like, do you not fear God? What are you fools doing? How dare you do this? Don't you know the consequences of this kind of rebellion against? I mean, I think it's really loaded when Jesus says it, but then when the Jewish leaders say it here in verse 18, that sort of or intone it, rather, they don't literally say, How dare you? But when they say it, it's more like a social thing. Like, uh, seems like something should happen to you, but I guess we kind of have a long history of cleansing the temple. Like, how do we know you're supposed to be the temple cleanser? We're willing to listen. If you could do some magic, like we've heard rumors about like water into wine, you could do that again, or maybe some other trick. We've heard you have other tricks as well. Maybe do one for us and we could look at it, and it would kind of be like, you know, the throne room back with Pharaoh and everything, and the couple of magicians they had there, but like Moses, magician, like he was better at it. Maybe like could you just could you give us something? And it's very interesting that you know, when the Jews demanded of him, what miraculous sign can you show us to prove your authority to do all of this? It's really the second time they've acted this way in as many pages of the Gospel of John. John the Baptist went out and did stuff that they weren't sure what to make of and maybe didn't like, but maybe they did like it. Maybe this is bad for us politically, maybe this is good. Maybe a few of them were sincere, maybe this is good for us religiously, maybe this is bad. But we need to know who you are, John the Baptist. Where do you get off doing this kind of thing? Are you the Messiah? And you remember John the Baptist was like, no. Well, okay. Well, then who you got to be somebody? Are you Elijah? No. Are you the prophet? No. Well, then who you are? You have to tell us. You have to make a statement. Like, we're waiting. Give us a statement, give us an answer to take back to those who sent us. What do you say about yourself? And John's like, L O L. All right, I'll tell you who I am. I'm the voice of one calling in the desert. Make straight the way for the Lord. You guys went to seminary, you should know that one. You know, and now here we are. Uh, if this is a linear timeline, and we'll discuss later on whether or not for sure we are in linear time here in John chapter two. But if this is a linear timeline, we're only a couple weeks, yeah, maybe a month or so past that exchange on the previous page. And here probably a lot of the same people are who saw Jesus getting baptized, and probably the same people who questioned John the Baptist are like, all right, well, here's more of these religious shenanigans. What is going on around here? We got John the Baptist out here leading some sort of reform movement, and this sort of looks like a reform movement. We don't like it. This is a big mess. This is going to be a pain in the butt to clean up Buster, but we'd like to at least know what's going on. Why do they want to know what's going on? Same two reasons I threw out earlier. One, some of these people probably mean it or did at this time. Maybe Nicodemus is one of the people who's asking this question. You know, in the very next chapter, Nicodemus famously comes to Jesus and is like, what's really going on with you? What are you about? So maybe there's some very sincere religious people in the crowd. But I think what is probably also going on is there's just politicking happening here. I gotta think that if this is a recent policy, that is, to put the bazaar in the temple courtyard and to do it all in here instead of wherever it used to be located, there are probably people who didn't like it. We know that the party in power under Caiaphas would have been the one who authorized this change, and probably the out-of-power party opposed it. I mean, you know how politics are. You've if you're old enough and have been paying attention for a little while, you know that even in our country, the sides will just flip from time to time. When it's like, oh, well, is that what your team desireth? Well, then our team opposeth it. And I was like, but weren't you guys, didn't you run on that like six years ago? Is like your big platform and the big thing you cared about? Yeah, but it's different now. It's uh they're doing it. I mean, politics just make nonsense liars out of politicians, even beyond what they were to start with. So surely there's some political nonsense lying going on here. And maybe a lot of these Jews who showed up in leadership roles to question Jesus here were like, or you know, they were rivals of Caiaphas, and they're like, oh, egg on your face, you idiot. Hey, you brought this upon yourself. You forgot the lessons of a couple hundred years ago the last time the temple got cleansed, when it got all cheapened with stupid stuff like this. You thought this would be a good idea. You said in our little meeting, oh, I don't think there'll be much blowback. I think it'll just be convenient, it'll help people out. You're we know you're taking a cut on the back end of this, Caiaphas, and your whole political party. Well, we're not gonna bail you out here. Or maybe the minority party here was the one that uh had the power to arrest. And they know they kind of like Jesus showing up and causing problems. The enemy of my enemy is my friend, kind of political thinking. But also, it would sure put them in a better position if they knew where Jesus was claiming to get the authority to do this stuff. Are you like a political reformer? Are you Elijah? Are you the prophet? I I don't even want to say the word, but are you, you know, the one who was promised? Like, could you just give us like a trick or something? We need to take something back to the people who are in charge so we can deliberate about this and score some political points and whatnot. What can you give us here? Give us a quote, give us a sign. Well, Jesus is never smitten by it when people demand signs from him in the Bible. I've got a whole list over here that maybe I'll do an episode. I think I probably will. Maybe next time around I'll do an episode on all the times when people demand a sign of Jesus and how he responds. But if I don't, let me just tell you this much. Jesus is never charmed by this. When people are like, do tricks for me to prove you're the real deal, Jesus tends to be like, yeah, if what you've seen doesn't get it done. Some one more little thing, one more miracle, that ain't gonna get it done. If you can't look at what time it is and see what's going on, even bringing somebody back from the dead probably isn't gonna convince you. But that's kind of what Jesus goes with here. He answered them. Uh he doesn't say, No, I'm not gonna give you a sign this time around. Instead, he says, he basically is like, okay, I'll give you a sign. That part's a paraphrase, but this is how it goes. Jesus answered them, destroy this temple, and I will raise it again in three days. That's a pretty vivid imagery. Obviously, he just kind of roughed up the temple a little bit. So he's sort of referencing back to something they just saw. I mean, it I don't I don't think Jesus is making any kind of point about that or threatening to destroy the temple building. I don't think that's what he's saying here at all. He was accused of that. I don't think that's what he's saying, but certainly the visual imagery in the background of the shot probably still standing here in the court of the Gentiles with people scrambling around and scooping up money and trying to get their animals back in cages or whatnot, and lots of people banging out Twitter and Facebook posts about how indignant they are and how that's the wrong way to protest and everything. All that's going on in the background, and it's kind of a moment of vulnerability. Like everything seemed like it was invincible. This is just what we do here in this space. And one guy came along and really disrupted it. So that's the backdrop, the imagery that Jesus is drawing from. But he says, destroy this temple and I will raise it again in three days. Well, of course, you know where it's going next time around. The Jewish leaders are like, it takes a long time to build a temple like this, and you're gonna fix it. And that's crazy. That's not how the things go. It's kind of like in the next chapter when Nicodemus famously is like, you know, how does this all work? And Jesus is like, you got to be born again. He's like, I can't crawl back in my mom's womb and be born again. That's ridiculous. Maybe all these guys were like Drax, the destroyer, just you know, absolutely addicted to literalism and they couldn't tell when someone was using imagery. But clearly, what we're gonna see as we dig into this more is that Jesus is talking about himself. This is an illusion, uh, allusion, not illusion, to the resurrection. And that's gonna happen at a future Passover event. So back to the big question of the day. Why didn't Jesus get arrested here? All right. Well, reason number one that I would guess is politics. There just simply wasn't the political will to arrest him. Reason number two is curiosity, and people can tell that Jesus is a powerful player and a significant piece that has the potential to really move the needle politically and socially here. And probably everybody wanted to figure out if they could wield him and what side they could get him on. They don't want to burn him yet, they want to see if they can use him. But then the third reason is there's a long history of cleansing the temple. Then maybe it did need cleansing. Yeah, that's what that's what we gotta do tomorrow. We gotta go look at the long history of temple cleansings, and then after that, we can get into Jesus' answer here and what he meant by it. All right, that's plenty for now. I'm Matt. This is the 10 Minute Bible Hour Podcast. Let's do this again soon.