Jesus Cleanses the Temple
According to the Gospel of Mark, Jesus entered Jerusalem on Sunday. He entered the temple in this story on Monday.
This temple is referred to as the Second Temple. The first temple was built by Solomon. The Babylonians destroyed it when they conquered and destroyed Jerusalem.
After the Persians conquered the Babylonians, Cyrus the Great allowed the Jews to return to Israel and rebuild the city and temple. It took about 20 years to build the second temple.
King Herod enlarged and aggrandized the temple during his reign. It became a magnificent structure.
He build an outer court, closed in with columns, in which Gentiles were allowed to enter. (In the picture above, the court is the area to the left of the sanctuary.) Gentiles could not go into any of the inner courts. For example, Acts 21:27 records an event where a riot occurred because Paul was accused of allowing Greeks to come into the inner courts.
This meant that the only place at the temple a Gentile could enter and pray was this outer court. But the High Priest had turned it into a place of commerce. Luke’s account is brief: he wrote only of “those who sold”. Matthew’s account is more graphic: “he overturned the tables of the money-changers and the seats of those who sold pigeons”. (Matthew 21:1)
Jews from other countries came to Jerusalem at Passover every year. They had to make sacrifices and pay the temple tax. They could only pay the temple tax in shekels from Tyre. That is because they believed Roman money to be a sacrilege with images of the emperor. The Romans would not let the Jews make their own money, so they chose the coin of Tyre for the tax.
Jews from other countries would arrive with only money from their country and that money could not be used in the temple. So, they used their foreign money to buy this shekel from the money changers. They could also buy birds for sacrifices. These vendors, therefore, served a useful purpose. Why then was Jesus angry at them?
As Jesus drove out the sellers he said “it is written, my house shall be a house of prayer, but you have made it a den of robbers”. (46) Although the vendors served a purpose, Jesus seems to have believed they had corrupted the purpose of the temple, inhibiting the prayers of the Gentiles. It could be that they overcharged or that commerce had taken over for worship and Jesus restored the temple to its real purpose.
But the words Jesus spoke give us some more clues. He referred to two Old Testament passages: Isaiah 56:7 and Jeremiah 7:11.
Isaiah 56:1-8 is a passage in which the Lord foretold salvation coming to the Gentiles. He said that those who had been excluded from the temple, foreigners and eunuchs, would come to the Lord. He would accept them. Then verse 7 ends with “for my house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples”. A time would come when God would bring Gentiles into his kingdom, into the people of God, experiencing salvation and fellowship with the Lord.
This did not happen with the 2nd temple. It only happened in the temple not made with hands, the temple which is Christ’s body, the church. The time would come when the physical temple was no longer relevant, because Christ would dwell with believers wherever they gathered. In fact, the physical temple would be destroyed.
That brings us to the second verse Jesus referred to: Jeremiah 7:11. Jeremiah 7 is a passage that has Jeremiah stand in the gate of the temple and proclaim that the temple would not save them. If they did not repent, God would destroy it.
The Jews had become corrupt. They stole, murdered and worshipped Baal. Yet they would come to the temple and declare that it would deliver them.
In verse 11, God said through Jeremiah, “has this house, which is called by my name, become a den of robbers in your eyes?” Then he told them to remember Shiloh and how he destroyed it because of the evil they committed. It was not that people were robbed in the temple, but that they were robbers in the sense that they were false worshippers. Because of this they and their temple would be destroyed.
By using these verses, Jesus meant that the priests and scribes and many other Jews were false worshippers. They were robbers. This is because they rejected Jesus as their Messiah and savior. As he destroyed their works by turning over their tables and driving them out, he would destroy the temple.
The context of the story helps us see this truth. When Jesus entered Jerusalem the day before, he said it would be destroyed because they did not know the time of their visitation. Because they did not accept his coming as the visitation of the Messiah, they would be destroyed. (44)
Next, after Jesus cleared the temple and began teaching, he told a parable of wicked tenants who killed the son sent to them by the owner of the vineyard. Jesus said the owner would come and destroy the tenants. He concluded the story by saying he was the cornerstone that would crush those who rejected him. The temple would not save them as it did not save them from destruction in the Old Testament.
After this event, Jesus began to teach in the temple daily. (47) He had claimed the temple as his. It was his place to teach, his pulpit. As you might expect, the chief priests, scribes and leaders sought to destroy him. He had, after all, accused them of corrupting the temple and foretold its destruction, meaning their whole structure of power and influence would be destroyed. They could not do anything immediately, however, for the people who had filled the temple courts at Passover were fascinated with his teaching. They were “hanging on his words”.
An Unanswered Question
20:1-8
Although the priests and scribes could not destroy him immediately, they did seek to destroy him. As he taught, the confronted him with the question of his authority. By what authority did he cleanse the temple and by whose authority did he teach there?
The question was a trap. If he said he came by his own authority, they would charge him with blasphemy and have him killed. If he came by the authority of God, they would dispute it by saying they were the authority of God.
Jesus did not fall into the trap. Instead, he turned it on them. He asked them about John’s authority (John the Baptist). He asked if John’s baptism was from man or from God.
A comical scene ensued. The priests and scribes huddled and conferred to come up with an answer. They saw the trap Jesus laid. If they said John’s baptism was from heaven (from God), Jesus would ask why they did not believe him. (5) If they were God’s representatives, why did they reject the preaching of the prophet of God.
On the other hand, if they said John’s authority came from man, the crowds might stone them, for most believed John was indeed God’s prophet and the forerunner of the Messiah.
Rather than declare themselves, they refused to answer. Jesus followed suit, saying he would not tell them by what authority he acted. (8)
After saying this to these leaders, Jesus turned back to the crowd and told a parable. The parable actually answered the question of authority.
The Parable of Wicked Tenants
20:9-18
In this parable, a man planted a vineyard and leased it to tenants while he went away. After a while, he sent servants to the tenants to receive some fruit from the vineyard. They beat the servants, treated them shameful, and sent them away. This happened three times.
After this, the owner sent his “beloved son”. The tenant’s killed him, thinking it would allow them to inherit the vineyard.
Jesus asked what the owner would do about it. He said he would destroy the tenants and give the vineyard to someone else.
The background to this story is Isaiah 5. There Isaiah told of a “beloved” who had a vineyard. But the vineyard only produced bad grapes. Therefore, the owner, the beloved, would come and destroy the vineyard. The vineyard was Israel. The Beloved was God. He would come and destroy the Israel and send it into captivity because it had become sinful and corrupt.
In Jesus’ parable, the vineyard is Israel in the sense of being God’s people. The tenants were the priests and scribes and leaders. The owner was God the Father. The servants were the prophets. Jesus was the beloved son sent to as the last messenger to the leaders to obey God. In Luke 3:22, at Jesus’ baptism, the Father had said “You are my beloved Son, with you I am well pleased”. He is also the heir of all things. (Hebrews 1:2)
This is the answer to the question of the leaders. Jesus is the beloved son of God the Father and is sent by him. HIs authority came from God the Father.
The leaders plotted to kill him to keep their power and influence. Therefore God would destroy the leaders and give the vineyard to others. He would appoint new leaders to guide God’s people and lead them to worship him.
The leaders were shocked and said “surely not”. They could not conceive of losing their positions. But Jesus confirmed it with another Old Testament reference. He said “the stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone”. This is a quote of Psalm 118:22.
Jesus referred to himself not only as the beloved son, but as the cornerstone. He said that stone would crush all upon whom it falls. Again, Jesus was foretelling his death, but also the destruction of the temple, Jerusalem, and the priesthood as judgment on them for rejecting him.
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