Gentle Jesus, Meek and Mild?
The popular conception of Jesus Christ needs a little work. It is common to see him dressed in flowing white robes, with long wavy hair, gently petting a lamb or blessing children on his lap. It's not that there's anything technically wrong with these images--they convey the gentleness and meekness of the Lord. However, those gentle images of Jesus are really significant because of who it is that is being gentle. See, Jesus is still the Son of God. And as such, he is still awe-inspiringly holy. Sin still makes him mad. And that is why, in today's reading, we see him go to work on those greedy merchants in the temple.Read Luke 19:45-48:
"And he entered the temple and began to drive out those who sold, saying to them, “It is written, ‘My house shall be a house of prayer,’ but you have made it a den of robbers.
"And he was teaching daily in the temple. The chief priests and the scribes and the principal men of the people were seeking to destroy him, but they did not find anything they could do, for all the people were hanging on his words."
The author, Luke (usually known for his detailed stories) actually presents a rather tame telling of this event. Yet this story is in all four of the biblical Gospels, and other accounts show Jesus wrapping together a whip, forcefully driving out men and animals, pouring out coins, and flipping tables (that's right, Teresa Giudice from "Real Housewives" didn't invent that move--she wishes she could flip tables like Jesus). This is definitely not the Jesus I learned about as a toddler in Sunday School.
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Why Jesus Did It
So what is going on here? Why did Jesus clear the temple? Isn't violence bad? How could Jesus do this and still be a perfect person?
In those days, people would come from all over to sacrifice to the Lord in the temple. Sometimes, people wishing to sacrifice would come expecting to purchase their animals at the temple. However, in order to do that, they would need to convert their currency into the currency accepted at the temple. And so over time a thriving marketplace began to emerge at the Temple.
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There were two problems with that. First, the market was set up in the Court of the Gentiles. This is where non-Jewish people could come and worship God. In fact, it was the only place they could do so. "Goyim" (like me) were not allowed into the inner courts of the temple; those were for Jews only. Now all throughout Scripture, the Lord had repeatedly said that he was going to open salvation up to the Gentiles. God's desire was that Gentiles and Jewish people worship him. This makes sense--there is only one God over all people. So these merchants were cluttering up the place of worship for the Gentiles, and making it impossible for them to worship God.
The second issue was that the merchants were dishonest. Since all official temple purchases had to be made through them, they could exploit exchange rates and take advantage of worshipers who had traveled from great distances. While claiming to be doing holy business, these people were fleecing the flock of God. See? Religious hypocrisy is nothing new.
Hypocrisy, greed, false worship, and denying religious freedom make God angry. Being God's Son, Jesus was likewise angry. So he made a whip and started flipping tables.
The Temple of You
There is a deeper principle in all this. Nowadays, there is no temple at Jerusalem. The Dome of the Rock stands where the temple used to, until it was destroyed in A.D. 70. Scripture, however, teaches that the temple has gone mobile. Spiritually speaking, you are a temple. But a temple to what?
God's temple is supposed to be holy, but left to ourselves we fill it with all kinds of bad stuff. Greed, hypocrisy, false worship, pride and malice are just as real within our own souls as they were in the temple courts of Jesus' day. Indeed, sins like that always originate on the inside, before they manifest on the outside.
We can try as hard as we want to clear our souls of all the badness inside them. However, because our sins are inside us, anything we do will always be motivated by our sins. This is why very "moral" people are often arrogant and judgmental of others--you can't clean a dirty dish with a filthy rag. You can't clean your own heart if you yourself are a sinner.
This is where Jesus comes in. He alone is qualified to come in and clear out all the debauchery and rot inside you. If you keep reading the story, you'll see that the hypocritical religious leaders of the day wanted to challenge Jesus' authority, but they were silenced.
Is it time to let Jesus come in and clean out your sin? If you would like to know more about how to do that, please shoot me an email at jsettecase@gracepointe.us.
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Joel Settecase is the Associate Pastor for Evangelism and Student Ministries at Grace Pointe Plainfield, located at 143rd and Route 30. Sunday service begins at 9:00AM.
