Jesus Cleanses the Temple at the Passover
Tom Shrader walks through John 2:12-25, examining Jesus' righteous anger at the extortion and irreverence permitted in the temple courts during Passover. He explores the difference between Christ's pure, motivated-by-holiness anger and the self-centered anger common to human nature, drawing on R.C. Sproul and Ray Steadman to show that a God of love without wrath is an idol of our own making. The teaching closes with a sobering reminder that Jesus knows the heart of every person — words, deeds, thoughts, and sins of omission — and calls listeners to drop the facade of empty religion and seek genuine repentance and transformation.
“A God of love who has no wrath is no God. He is an idol of our making as much as if we carved him out of stone.”
— Tom Shrader
Series: A Study Of The Life Of Jesus Christ (2003/2004)
Recorded: 2004 at East Valley Bible Church
Duration: 1 hr 19 min
Themes: anger, repentance, holiness, worship, religious hypocrisy, wrath of god, transformation, prayer, new believer, struggling with anger, going through the motions spiritually, questioning god's character, seeker, young adult, dealing with hypocrisy, feeling distant from god
Scripture: John 2:12-25, Exodus 12, Matthew 4:13, Matthew 13:3, Matthew 13:10-17, Matthew 13:18-23, Matthew 21, Mark 11, Luke 19, Psalm 69, Matthew 11:28, John 3, John 4:7-11, John 10:18, Matthew 12:36, Matthew 12:38-40, Luke 12:3, Romans 2:16, Hebrews 4:13, James 4:17, Galatians 6
Theological Themes: righteous anger, divine wrath, sanctification, becoming holy, christology, nature of christ, idolatry, true worship
Full Transcript
Setting the Scene: A Visit to Capernaum
Open your Bibles, if you would, to John chapter 2, and we'll look today at verses 12 through 25: Jesus cleanses the temple at the Passover time. Let me deal with something at the very beginning that could be confusing. This cleansing of the temple is recorded by John in this time frame in Jesus' ministry. It is not recorded by Matthew, Mark, or Luke. However, in Matthew chapter 21, Mark chapter 11, and Luke chapter 19, they record similar events, but those take place in a different time frame — at the very end of Jesus' life. Our sense is that there are two occasions similar to this.
As I mentioned last week, this is an exciting occasion because it offers us a somewhat unusual look at Jesus, and for some who are either new to East Valley Bible Church or even new to the faith, it is going to shatter some stereotypes. J.C. Ryle writes this: "On no occasion in our Lord's earthly ministry do we find Him acting so energetically and exhibiting such a righteous indignation as on the occasion now before us. Nothing seems to have called from Him such a marked display of holy wrath as the gross irreverence which the priests permitted in the temple." That is what we are going to look at today.
Verse 12 says, "After this Jesus went down to Capernaum." After what? After the event we looked at last week — the miracle at Cana, the changing of the water into wine. There was a man here at the first hour who mentioned that his mother and her friend had quite an argument over that very event. The friend was heavily committed to what I would describe as legalism — no drinking, none of it, none at all. His mother said, "But Jesus turned water into wine." And her friend replied, "And I've always had that against Him." So you have to deal with whatever this passage brings.
From Cana, Jesus goes down to the seashore, to Capernaum. That city becomes a base of operations to some extent when He is in Galilee. Matthew 4:13 says He left Nazareth and dwelled in Capernaum. Capernaum, by the way, was a center of wealth and was very important in Jesus' time. Those cities have since been obliterated and no longer exist.
With Him is Mary, His mother, and His brothers. Now, we need to define that just a bit. Some of you may be thinking we use the term "brother" simply to mean a fellow follower of Christ. This morning I was walking across the campus and someone said, "It's a beautiful day, brother." Well, as far as I know, we share no DNA with that man. Is that what John has in mind here? I don't think so. Matthew 13:55 records that when Jesus came to His hometown, the people said, "Is this not the carpenter's son? Is not His mother called Mary? And His brothers James and Joseph and Simon and Judas?" So these are His brothers. Also with them are the disciples — Andrew, Peter, Philip, Nathanael, and probably John. They stay there for a few days. Don't you wish you had the minutes of those meetings — what was talked about, what was discussed? We simply don't know.
The Passover and the Temple Marketplace
Verse 13 says that the Passover of the Jews was at hand, and Jesus goes up to Jerusalem. When He arrives, He found in the temple those who were selling oxen and sheep and doves, and the money changers were seated there. This is Passover time — the time when the nation would acknowledge and remember the occasion recorded in Exodus chapter 12, when the Lord passed over the houses of the Israelites, the firstborn of the Egyptians were destroyed, and the Israelites were finally released from Egypt. It is obviously a very important day and a very important festival.
The Passover was also symbolic in that it foretold of the Messiah who would come and deliver the people of Israel, who were enslaved to sin — a bondage worse than anything they had encountered in Egypt. All adult males within a twenty-mile radius were required by law to be in Jerusalem, along with many more from the broader region. Estimates suggest that as many as two million people were sometimes present in the city of Jerusalem. It was a chaotic scene.
One author writes that the city and its neighborhood became more and more crowded as the feast approached. Even the temple offered a strange sight at this season, for in parts of the outer courts a wide open space was covered with pens for sheep and goats, and cattle were being used for offerings. Sellers shouted the merits of their animals, sheep bleated, and oxen lowed. Sellers of doves also had a place set apart for them. Potters offered huge stacks of clay pots, and there were ovens for roasting and eating the Passover lamb. All of this was happening — along with the money changers.
The diagram of the temple shows that most of this activity was taking place in the outer white area — the Court of the Gentiles. As non-Jews, that is as far as you or I would have been permitted to go. We could not enter the inner court or any area beyond it. This space had become a marketplace. Jesus arrives in Jerusalem, sees all of this, and we are going to see how He responds.
The Corruption in the Temple
Jesus is responding to a couple of things here. First and most plainly, He is responding to the selling of animals and the exchanging of coinage. There is extortion and racketeering taking place. There is also, and it is a significant point, a convenience that has been accommodated to the religion.
Here is what was taking place. These Jews would have to make sacrifice, and by and large they had long since given up raising their own animals and bringing them in, for two reasons. First, it was just as easy to go buy an animal as it was to raise one. Second, a tradition had developed whereby when you brought an animal into the temple for sacrifice, it had to pass a very rigid inspection by the Jewish leaders. It had to be an unblemished lamb.
So what they would do is look at virtually any animal that came in and say, "I'm sorry, this doesn't meet with our expectations. This doesn't pass our inspection. This is not worthy." When the worshiper asked what could be done, the leaders would point to pens of pre-approved animals nearby and offer to make a deal on a sheep or a dove. As mentioned earlier, it was BYOS — bring your own sheep — but it didn't really pan out that way.
Ray Stedman writes this: "The only animals that could be offered were those that were bought from the temple herd that was kept in the open courtyard of the court of the Gentiles. These animals had already been approved by the priest. But again, a tremendously inflated price was demanded for these animals. In fact, a bird could be bought outside the temple for the equivalent of 15 cents of our money, but the same bird bought within the temple from authorized purveyors of animals would cost as high as $15. It was extortion. This demand for money from even the poorest of the poor was what was arousing the flaming anger in our Lord."
And there were the money changers as well. The temple tax had to be paid in temple currency, so Roman coinage and Greek coinage were of no value there. Worshipers needed to exchange their money, and the changers would take a profit out of that transaction — somewhere between 12% and 50% by various accounts.
The Rich Symbolism of the Moment
That is the backdrop. It is Passover, and interestingly, it is also the time when each Jewish household would scour the house looking for the smallest bit of yeast or anything that could ferment. It was a picture of sin — getting all of the sin out of the house. So these men had probably spent the day before removing every trace of yeast from their homes, and now they come to the temple, and Jesus walks in to find it filled with sin, filled with extortion, filled with racketeering. The symbolism here is rich.
So Jesus, in verse 15, made a scourge of cords and He drove them out of the temple with the sheep and the oxen, and He poured out the coins of the money changers and overturned the tables. To those who were selling doves He said, "Take these away; stop making my Father's house a house of merchandise."
Righteous Anger Versus Our Anger
My daughter Haley called on the way home from the hospital — it was late, around 8:15 or 8:30 — and she asked how the lesson for the next day was coming. I told her it was on the cleansing of the temple, and she said, "That's a tough one." She said there are a couple of questions in there that are going to have to be answered. She said, "Jesus is over there driving out the animals and throwing over the tables — how is that not sin? And yet we know He is God, so He didn't sin. What are we looking at there, and how is that different from our anger?"
That is something we do have to look at. Ray Stedman writes: "Don't diminish or minimize the anger and the violence which Jesus manifests at this time. This is a different Jesus than many people imagine Him to be. Oftentimes we think of Him as loving and understanding, that He lets you get by with anything — that seeing your evil, He puts His hand on your shoulder and says, 'It's all right, it doesn't matter.' Many people think of Him that way. But this action clearly indicates that our Lord was angry. He drove these people out of the temple. Now, this is anger under control. This is righteous indignation if ever."
What is the difference between His anger and yours? The difference is this: His heart was pure and His motive was right. Your anger typically flows from your rights being violated. It may be as simple as somebody cutting you off on the freeway — but His anger was never about that. When Susan doesn't meet my expectations, that is when my anger rises. That is the difference. His anger arose from God's house being dishonored and the poor being exploited. Our anger almost always arises from our own rights or expectations being violated.
God's Wrath and the Danger of Editing God
R.C. Sproul writes this: "If God is holy at all, if God has an ounce of justice in his character, indeed, if God exists as God, how could He possibly be anything else but angry with us? We violate His holiness. We insult His justice. We make light of His grace. These things can hardly be pleasing to Him. But a God of love who has no wrath is no God. He is an idol of our making as much as if we carved him out of stone."
There is nothing wrong with talking about God's love, unless we speak of God's love to the exclusion of God's wrath. What we do is take an attribute of God — an attribute that we would like — inflate it, and diminish all the others. That is the world we live in. When people say, "My God would never," they are actually speaking a truth they do not intend. They are acknowledging they have created a god in their own image, exactly the way they want God to be.
The Disproportion Between Sin and Punishment
Consider the story of David taking a census. That seems harmless enough. But as punishment for that census, 70,000 Israelites are killed. When you hear that, you have a reaction: how can so seemingly small an act bring so great a punishment? Yet that is always how we look at our sin and God's response to it.
Think also of Adam. God said simply, "Do not eat the fruit of this tree." How big a sin is eating a piece of fruit? And yet how big is the punishment? There are not enough words to describe how vast it is — it is everything we see around us, the broken world in its entirety. That does not seem proportionate to us, but we tend to be gracious to ourselves and fail to see sin as God sees it. He is a holy God, a righteous God.
It is like being pulled over for going eighty in a sixty-five zone. The moment the officer approaches, we say, "Why aren't you out catching real criminals?" But to the officer, we are the problem. That is exactly how we approach God — always giving ourselves the benefit of the doubt, never seeing the weight of our own sin.
The Disciples' Reaction: Remembering the Psalm
There are three reactions to this extraordinary scene in the temple, and the first belongs to the disciples. Look at verse 17: "The disciples remembered that it was written, 'Zeal for Thy house will consume Me.'"
Think about what these men were experiencing. They had signed on to follow Jesus only a couple of weeks earlier. Now, on one of the holiest days of the year, in the holiest place in their world — a system that had been in place for centuries — this man they had left everything to follow was turning the whole thing upside down. They had to be wondering what they had gotten themselves into.
But then they remembered. Andrew had already said to Peter, "We have found the Messiah." They did not yet fully comprehend what that meant, but they remembered Psalm 69, a messianic psalm describing the Messiah's suffering and agony: "Zeal for Thy house will consume Me." And suddenly, seeing Jesus in that moment, it began to come together.
The Paradox of Welcome and Holiness
This points to one of the genuine paradoxes in Jesus' life. Throughout His ministry, murderers, prostitutes, swindlers, liars, the self-righteous, drunkards, and cynics are all welcomed. Matthew 11:28 says, "Come unto Me, all you who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest." That invitation includes not only those burdened by work, but those burdened by striving to earn their own salvation. All are invited, and they are invited to come just as they are.
But here is the tension: you can come just as you are, but you cannot stay that way. Once you come, there is no tolerance for ongoing compromise and unrepentant behavior. And therein lies the struggle, because we never reach perfection, yet there remains a call to perfection.
This makes the lesson difficult, because there are two different groups of people who need to hear different things. Some move through life with an attitude of "boys will be boys" — sin does not move them deeply, or they acknowledge it only in passing.
The Jews Demand a Sign
There is a second group present in this passage. Look at them in verse 18 — the Jews. They said, "We want a sign. What sign do you show us, saying that you do these things? Where do you get this authority?" They were probably saying something even deeper than that. They were saying, in effect, "How dare you do this? Prove this to us."
So Jesus said, "Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up." We will unpack that further when we get deeper into the passage, and we will deal with it again when we get into Matthew's gospel. What He is emphasizing here is the raising — the act of resurrection. John 10:18 speaks to this directly: "I have the power to lay down my life, and I have the power to take it up."
The Jews did not understand Him. We know they did not understand because of how they responded: "It took 46 years to build this temple, and you will raise it up in three days?" But He was speaking of the temple of His body.
Jesus Speaking on a Different Plane
We see this pattern regularly in scripture. Look at John chapter three. Nicodemus comes to Jesus and says, "Rabbi, we know that you have come from God as a teacher, for no one can do the signs that you do unless you are from God." He apparently has a question in his mind, but it never gets asked — yet Jesus answers it anyway: "Truly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God." Nicodemus responds, "How can this be? When I am old, I cannot enter a second time into my mother's womb and be born, can he?" Jesus is speaking spiritually, and Nicodemus is thinking physically.
The same dynamic appears in John chapter four. There came a woman from Samaria to draw water, and Jesus said to her, "Give me a drink, for His disciples had gone into the city to buy food." The Samaritan woman said to Him, "How is it that you, being a Jew, ask me for a drink, since I am a Samaritan woman? For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans." Jesus answered and said, "If you knew the gift of God and who it was who said to you, 'Give me a drink,' you would have asked Him and He would have given you living water." She responds in verse 11, "Sir, you don't have a bucket, and the well is deep." Jesus is speaking to her about coming to Him so that she will never thirst again — an entirely different plane than the one she is thinking on.
It is the same thing with "Destroy this temple and I will rebuild it in three days." Standing there looking at the physical structure, they said, "How can that be? It took us 46 years to get it to this point." And one can understand why they thought that way. But He was speaking of His body.
The Sign of Jonah
In Matthew chapter 12, the scribes and Pharisees came to Him and said, "Teacher, we want a sign from you." He said, in effect, "You want a sign? I will give you a sign. Just as Jonah was in the belly of the fish for three days and three nights, so the Son of Man shall be in the earth three days and three nights." A great sign was coming, and they missed it entirely.
Verse 22 says, "But when He was raised from the dead, His disciples remembered this and said they believed the scripture and the word which Jesus had spoken." Here they are, some three years later, Jesus rises from the dead, and they say, "Do you remember when He said that? I remember when He said that. We did not understand it then. It did not make any sense then. Now we understand." That moment not only clarified the event — it reaffirmed their trust in scripture itself.
The Trustworthiness of Scripture
This is East Valley Bible Church. It is a Bible church because we believe this Bible is the infallible, true word of God, to be believed from cover to cover. Just yesterday, working through the channels, stopping briefly on PBS — there was Bill Moyers and Joseph Campbell. It was troubling, and our tax dollars pay for it. Campbell was speaking dismissively about what he called that old-time religion, that old stuff, arguing that we need something in a more contemporary context, something fresh, something new.
But there is nothing more fresh or more new than this. A timeless God does not produce dated material. That is what we need to understand. As you go out and talk with your friends and neighbors — talking to them about the Passion, about Christ, about Good Friday, about Easter, getting ready to take the invitations, invite them to church, and begin those conversations — that truth is exactly what you carry with you.
Superficial Belief and the Problem of the Heart
When you're in the middle of a conversation and you say something like, "Well, the Bible says…" they'll stop you right there. "I don't care what the Bible says. It doesn't matter to me what the Bible says." They'll say something like, "I'm glad you found something that works for you. I'm glad that you found something that helps you. I'm glad that you found something that gives you some answers, but that just doesn't work for me. In fact, I even tried Jesus for almost three weeks — kind of like Crest Whitener — and then I was done with it."
This is why Scripture is so confusing to so many people. You have people who are following their own point of view, their own thoughts, their own wisdom, their own insight, steeped in a world philosophy. It is getting more and more difficult, because the philosophy of the world is becoming more and more anti-biblical — no longer believing in a Creator, embracing evolution, and all the things that go with it.
Signs, Excitement, and Shallow Faith
When Jesus was in Jerusalem at Passover, verse 23 tells us: "During the feast, many believed in his name, and were beholding his signs, which he was doing." That's what the Jews were looking for — remember? The Jews were looking for a sign. Show us a sign. We want a sign. And so apparently there were many who were there, and they were all excited, going "ooh" and "ah" over what they witnessed.
When we read that, we would get excited too, wouldn't we? That sounds like a good thing. But look at verse 24: "Jesus, on his part, was not entrusting himself to them, for he knew their heart." There is something below the surface here. They were running around after Jesus, and they were believing not in Him, but in His name — in His authority. They were saying, in effect, "He certainly has some sort of power here," and they were being swept away by the signs and the miracles and the wonders. But once that excitement waned a little, they were done. All of a sudden there were life problems, work to do, people to live with, and difficulties.
The Parable of the Sower: The Two Middle Soils
Turn to Matthew chapter 13, the parable of the sower and the seed. The parable is told beginning in verse 3, verses 10 through 17 give you an explanation of what is going on, and then we get the final concluding discussion of the parable. Look at verse 18:
"Here then is the parable of the sower. When anyone hears the word of the kingdom and does not understand it, the evil one comes along and snatches it before it's been sown to her heart." That is the seed that falls by the roadside — the first type, where nothing happens.
Here is the second: "And the one on whom the seed is sown in rocky places, this is the man who hears the word and immediately receives it with joy, yet he has no firm root in himself, but it is only temporary, and when affliction or persecution arises because of the word, immediately falls away." And the third, verse 22: "And the one in whom the seed is sown among the thorns is the man who hears the word and the worry of the world and the deceitfulness of riches choke the word and it becomes unfruitful." Then the fourth is the good soil — the man who hears the word, understands it, and bears fruit: a hundred, sixty, or thirty fold.
Look at those two soils in the middle. In verse 20 it says they immediately receive the word with joy. There is an adrenaline rush — a spiritual adrenaline flowing through them. They are all excited, moving over to the bookstore and grabbing books by the armful, stacks of books, stacks of tapes. You see it three or four times a year when somebody comes in and says, "This is incredible — this is my first time here, how long have you been doing this? I didn't know there was anything like this. Let me tell you, you're going to need a bigger room because I'm going to bring all my friends. And not just my friends — you're going to see this face every week, I'm going to be here." And then you never see them again. I always wonder what happens to that person.
I don't want to be a wet blanket when someone gets excited about their faith, and I try to be very careful there and to encourage it. But a lot of times that overt excitement just gives way. Something radical took place and they said they would do anything — but then "anything" gets spelled out and they think, "I don't really think so." Or all of a sudden the worries of the world come along, or the deceitfulness of riches, and those things start to choke it out. They come to understand that this Christianity is going to cost them everything.
That connects, by the way, to the issue of people not bringing their own animals for sacrifice. There was a convenience to that — and we have to be aware of convenience. We live, as you well know…
Jesus Knows the Heart of All Men
We live in a consumer society, and we are here literally not to be served, but to serve. We want to serve and accommodate people, and hopefully everybody on staff understands that. Whether we execute that perfectly is a different story, but the intention is clear. And yet we live at a time when people are used to demanding and don't want to be inconvenienced. I was standing by Mary one day when she answered the phone: "East Valley Bible Church, Mary? Yes — 8, 9, 10, 11, 4, and 6." The person had asked what the services were, and her next comment was, "No, that's all there is." Short of stopping by with an Egg McMuffin and sticking it in your mouth, I don't know how we could make it any easier.
And yet there is a price to be paid. Isn't that what Jesus said? If a man is going to build a building, he needs to count the cost. If you are going to follow Christ, you need to count the cost — because here is the cost: deny yourself, take up your cross, and follow Me. It is going to cost you everything. Now, some things are easy to embrace. The blind man seeing — that was a big one. Or just sitting in a room with 650 people singing "How Great Thou Art" — that is an exhilarating experience. It is fairly easy in here to stay focused on what the objective is. But the minute you move out into the world, it is a whole different thing.
That is what Jesus saw. He knew their hearts. He knew they were not truly committed to Him.
What It Means That Jesus Knows Every Heart
Here is the application: Jesus knows the heart of all men. That is either going to be very scary or very comforting, depending on where you stand. It means His assessment is often going to be different from ours. When Jesus looked at the scribes and Pharisees, what did He say? "You hypocrites. You are whitewashed tombs. You look great on the outside, but on the inside you are filled with dead men's bones." The people standing around did not share that conclusion. When we hear the word "Pharisee" today, we picture a sinister villain. But in that day and age, they were the heroes — the men people looked up to, the Billy Grahams of their era, the respected religious leaders. His assessment was different from theirs because He could see what they could not.
I like to think I am a fairly good judge of character, though I know I am not perfect. About three or four years ago I went through a period where I would meet someone and tell my friends, "This guy is a great guy" — and they would say, "He is a jerk, he is awful." Or I would say, "She seems like a sweet, neat person" — and they would say, "Stay away from her, she is terrible." I kept thinking, how can I be missing this so completely? What I discovered was that people were acting one way in a meeting with me and an entirely different way when dealing with others. All I can do is look at the eye. I cannot look into the heart. God can. That is why His assessment is sometimes different from ours.
If you are a hypocrite or a false teacher, you had better look out, because all the empty religion will be discovered. That is not just true in the temple with the sacrifices — it is true here. You can walk around with a Bible, greet everyone warmly, serve faithfully, mark up your notes. But if on the inside it is dead men's bones, if you are merely going through the motions, that will be known.
Comfort for the Genuine Believer
As a genuine believer, on the other hand, you can relax. Why? Because He knows everything, and you cannot hide from Him. Look at Hebrews 4:13: "There is no creature hidden from His sight, and all things are open and laid bare to the eyes of Him with whom we have to do." The word translated "open" is the only time it is used in the New Testament. In extra-biblical Greek literature it describes the preparing of the neck — moving clothing and obstacles away so an executioner could sever the head from the body. It conveys the idea of being laid completely open to be judged.
There is a tendency to think that the pagans are the ones who will be judged. They will not be judged — they are already condemned. It is you and I as Christians who are judged. So the question becomes: what exactly does He know?
The Scope of What God Knows
God knows all things, and that includes your words. Matthew 12:36 tells us that every careless word is known by Him. Luke 12:3 says that whatever you said in the dark will be heard in the light. He knows your words — the lies, the truths, the half-truths, the discouraging words, the cynical words, the destructive words, the boasting words.
He does not stop at your words. He knows your deeds, your actions. The Son of Man is going to come and reward you according to your deeds, according to what you have done. And there is no opportunity to rectify any of that at the end of life. When life is over, it is over. The deeds done here are the deeds we are talking about.
Now it gets a little more unsettling. He knows your thoughts. Romans 2:16 tells us that God will judge the secrets of men. And 1 Corinthians 4:5 says the Lord comes who "both brings to light the things hidden in darkness and discloses the motives of your hearts." One author captures it this way: things are seldom what they seem, because most of what goes on is written in invisible ink on our thoughts, which indelibly records everything.
God Knows Our Hearts Completely
All the ducking and weaving, all the wiggling and rationalizing — our thoughts also produce what in international trading terms would be called invisible exports. In other words, I can see your words and your deeds, but I cannot see jealousy, envy, greed, pride, or arrogance. He knows those things, though. There is no cover-up.
He also knows — and this may be one of the most discouraging verses in the entire New Testament — James 4:17: "Therefore, to the one who knows the right thing to do and does not do it, to him it is sin." What James is saying is that it is not just the things we do, but all the things we fail to do. This is not the sin of commission; it is the sin of omission, and it seems endless.
Where does that end? If I see a brother who is lacking and I have the ability to meet the need and I do not meet it, there is a problem. Do I do that until I have given everything into oblivion? To feed the hungry — which hungry? This just goes on. He knows the things we should do, could do, and do not do.
Ultimately, this gets into Galatians 6 and what we sow. So to summarize: when the scripture says God knows all hearts, He was able to look at those men in the temple and say, I know what is really there. We might say, "Jesus, grab these guys, get them in the camp, give them a jersey and get them in the game." He is saying, "I don't think so" — because He knows their hearts. He knows your heart. He knows everything you have said, everything you have done, everything you have thought, the things you have failed to do, and your character.
A Warning Against Hidden Sin
In light of how displeased Jesus was with the extortion and racketeering He saw in the temple, it is safe to say He is equally jealous and angry with those who would bring sin into His house and somehow call it good — those who come in under the guise of religion with a heart that has never been converted or changed. Does that mean you need to be perfect? We know that is not the case. But it does mean that God is in the process of working in your life. The question is: are you playing a game, or is it the real deal?
When I look at this story, my first reaction is, "Jesus, go get them — look at what they are doing, drive them out." But then I wonder, if a similar standard were applied to us here, whether I would be saying the same thing about myself.
He is a God of grace and a God of mercy. If you are listening and you know you have serious issues — if your issue is unrepentant sin — then go before Him, confess that sin, acknowledge it, and repent from it. Do not try to hide it. People try to hide things from me, and I hide things from others. You may even be so deceived that you hide things from yourself. But you cannot fool Him, so give it up and let it go.
It is a waste of time, energy, and effort. Allow your heart to be broken and repentant, throw yourself before Him, and enjoy His mercy and His grace, which lasts forever.
Closing Prayer
Father, thank You for this truth. Help us look at our own lives and evaluate them on this basis. God, it is actually a comforting thought that You know all our words, deeds, thoughts, what we fail to do, and our character — comforting in that You love us in spite of all of that, in spite of who we are. What an awesome thought.
And yet, at the same time, though You say to us, "Just come as you are — come, and I will give you rest," You are also saying, "But you cannot stay that way." There has to be a change; your life has to change. As the Jew went through his home to remove the unleavened bread — the sin — God, we too want to eradicate sin from our lives. We do it by Your strength, Your grace, and Your mercy.
Let us be people who are so aware of who You are, where You are, Your presence, and Your knowledge of us, that we simply drop the facade and live transparently before You and before one another. God, we pray this to You this morning, in Jesus' name, amen.