CLEANSING THE TEMPLE
LESSON FOR THE JUNIOR CLASSES
STUDY SCRIPTURE:
JOHN 2 : 13-25
Key Verse
“And to those who were selling the doves Jesus said, “Take these things away from here; stop making My Father’s house a place of business.”
John 2: 16
INTRODUCTION
How far are you willing to go to make sure activities go ON and are done the way that God wants?
Are you upset when people are doing any and everything they want even if they know they are doing things outside of the wishes of God?
That is the problem the Lord Jesus faced when He was about to start His public ministry. He had just turned a lot of water into wine so that the guests at the wedding at Cana of Galilee would not be very upset and accuse their hosts of not preparing the wedding feast properly. Jesus graciously solved the problem when the wine ran out unexpectedly so the newly married couple would not be embarrassed.
But now Jesus faced another situation where He had to criticize some powerful people who were creating a noisy marketplace in the Temple right where Gentiles were permitted to come and worship God in peace and quiet. The priests had allowed the merchants who sold animals for the sacrifices at the Temple to crowd the Temple court of the Gentiles with noisy cattle, buying and selling like in a common market. Then there were money changers converting money brought by pilgrim coming to the Passover Feast from all the world. They had to change their foreign money into Jewish money so that the priests could collect from the worshippers the required Temple tax. So this was a noisy, excitement filled, haggling over money and merchandise place, and not the kind of place where pilgrims were reverent and focussed only on God who was present in His house.
Jesus was very annoyed. He demanded why the house of God had become a noisy house of business. This was not appropriate and God did not like it. Jesus therefore made up a whip of cord, chased out the animals from the Temple, chased out the men who bought and sold the cattle, overturned the tables where the moneychangers did their money changing work and chased them all outside the temple area so that they could do their work there.
That was where the work belonged. Money business does not belong in the house of God. The house of God is a place dedicated to learning about God and His commandments, and worshipping God.
The people arranging the setup which polluted the Temple were of course upset at what Jesus had done in cleansing the Temple. They had made the Temple unclean though they knew the temple was a holy place. The disobedient priests and rulers of the Temple did not care about their God displeasing behaviour and wanted Jesus to tell them who gave Him authority to do what He had done. He calmly pointed out that they should have known better and not doing what they were doing. They had asked Him for a sign showing He had authority to cleanse the Temple the way He did. They were not Scripture believing people even though they were supposed to know who Jesus was. He had come to them as their Messiah and was their Saviour God the Father had promised. So when Jesus told them the only sign they would have was that He would destroy the Temple and build it up again in 3 days, they did not understand that He was the Temple of God and when He died on the Cross to bear their sins, He would be resurrected in 3 days.
Remember it is important to study the Bible. You will benefit a great deal if you understand who Jesus is, and that He is God. He came from heaven and was a human being as was promised in Genesis 3:15 so that He could teach us about God the Father, do a great ministry of healing, and then die on the Cross to bear our sins and allow us to be reconciled to God the Father. He would make all those who believed in Him as their Saviour to become children of God and have eternal life. So let us learn everything about Jesus and His love for us.