Cleansing of the Sanctuary - 3

Now when He was in Jerusalem at the Passover, during the feast, many believed in His name, observing His signs which He was doing. (John 2:23)

I am exploring the links between Jesus cleansing the temple and the prophecy of the cleansing of the sanctuary from Daniel 8. Since I am right now living in the time period prophesied in Daniel, I believe that it is very important that I become more aware of the deeper reasons and issues surrounding these experiences in the life of Jesus when he did the same thing on earth.

As I again look at the context surrounding this story I am reminded that the fundamental purpose for everything Jesus did was to induce and encourage belief. Repeatedly throughout this passage this is referred to so it is obvious that God is keenly interested in having us believe in Him. As I have noted before, the whole book of John is mostly about coming into a relationship of belief with God through the teachings and example of Jesus' life and how He related to people. This involved the use of signs to help people to believe the truth about God.

In this story it becomes more evident that there is a class of religious people who resist believing whatever it is that Jesus is trying to get them to believe. It would not be technically accurate to say that they did not believe in God for they were intent on displaying a belief in the existence of God possibly more than anyone else on the planet. They insisted that they were followers and even representatives of God and all of His requirements and spent much of their time and energy devoted to learning and disseminating information about Him. There was no lack of religious activity on their part and God was a constant theme of their language. They certainly believed in God when it came to head knowledge, so obviously Jesus had something very different in mind when He came to invite them to believe.

What I have been increasingly aware of over the past few years is my own need to enter into a much different and deeper kind of belief than this intellectual-heavy religion that marked the religion of the Jews and that pervades most of Christianity today. Even more emotional-oriented churches often fail to really connect the heart properly to the kind of belief that God intended for His children to have though many times they come much closer than the head religion I grew up with. I have been on a personal pursuit of discovering and experiencing the kind of belief and rest that the Bible speaks of repeatedly. I want to know what it really involves, what it looks like, to both understand it, how to enter into it and to be transformed by it.

There is no shortage of counterfeits to keep me distracted in this pursuit and so I need the guidance of the true Spirit of Jesus to find this path for my heart. I have to be reminded over and over to turn away from the grating, abrasive spirit of those who would engage me in arguing or who would lure me into emotionally attractive alternatives that will suck me back into a state of deeper deception once again. I want to find and walk the straighter path of genuine truth that engages fully both my left brain and my right brain emotions. And I want to see the truths in this story that are going to help me do this.

Because this story is couched in the context of our need to believe and the use of signs to further that objective, I realize that the same must be true of the present reality of Jesus currently cleansing the sanctuary as prophesied by Daniel. Whatever that entails, it must be viewed through the lens of our need to believe in God in ways that we are not currently doing. Christianity today largely fails to perceive the danger of perpetuating the same problems of religiosity that the Jews had. But their story is given to us as a warning and everyone who will take the time to perceive these lessons and warnings can avoid repeating those same mistakes. That is what I desire to do.

I don't think I have ever approached the study of the end-time cleansing of the sanctuary before from the angle of my need to believe the real truth about God from the heart. Of course it has usually been taught as a means of trying to get me to believe an intellectual truth as assumed by a certain group of people, but I am again talking about a much deeper level of belief that was obviously missing in the lives of many of those who gave great emphasis to this truth as a doctrine. I am not implying that this is not a factual truth as some try to do. What I am saying is that I think many have missed the much deeper reasons for a cleansing of the sanctuary because they miss those same reasons in their reading of these stories from Jesus' life. And that is precisely what I am seeking to expose and absorb for myself.

Having said all of that, I am perceiving that in whatever ways religion is carried on with a business mentality, it will tend to produce something other than the kind of belief that is needed for properly connecting with God. The main focus of the only words recorded from Jesus in this story had to do with His zeal to dismantle the business model that had taken over and distorted the worship of God in His house. So I think it would be safe to assume that this idea of business and its affect on religious worship, and the belief that Jesus wants us to experience in our relationship to Him, must be mutually exclusive if I am reading this correctly. Jesus seemed to be very intent on removing all of the apparatus that was promoting religion in ways that reflected business principles instead of reflecting the real truth about God.

The fact that His efforts to cleanse the house of God, His dwelling place, of all the business-oriented apparatus and activities met with strong resistance from the very ones who most claimed to represent God is very significant. In fact, what I see in this story is the confrontation between two asserted representatives claiming to reveal the truth about God. On the one hand are the recognized leaders and teachers of religion who claim to speak for and explain what God is really like and on the other hand a single person in direct opposition and contrast to their system who Himself is claiming to be none other that the very God whom they claim to be serving.

This leads one to see something of a tragic humor in this situation. How absurd can it get for a person claiming to represent someone else to come face to face with the person they represent and then argue that their version of what the other is thinking is more accurate than the original person themselves. Here are people claiming to have an accurate knowledge of God in direct confrontation with the God they claim to believe in and represent and yet arguing with Him that their version of what God is like is more accurate than the version being demonstrated by the Son of God who is God Himself.

While this becomes obviously ludicrous when viewed from this perspective, I sense that the same thing must be repeating in some aspect during the end-time cleansing of the sanctuary if this sand-box demonstration is a precursor as I believe it is. I want to ask the question seriously about my own relationship to God as He seeks to once again cleanse the temple during my day. Are my perceptions about God in direct conflict with the real truth about Him? Can I be found to be arguing that God is more like our version of Him than what He is trying to reveal through His Son and His Spirit? This is the unveiling of the spirit of unbelief which is the most dangerous state of mind to have. Just look at the final outcome of the unbelief of the Jews in Christ's day.

I want to come to a much clearer perception of how I may be engaging in a business mentality in my relationship with God. It is unbelief and deception that can keep me from perceiving this accurately. I already know I have far too much infection of the spirit of the Pharisee's and I want to be freed from that spirit completely. But it takes fresh revelations of the truth about God and encounters with His real presence for that light to expose the many lies still lurking in my heart and mind about Him. I want Jesus to come to the temple of my own heart and to reveal the many ways in which I still perceive religion from a business perspective. I want Him to remove the cacophony of the false gods that still carry on business in my own head and that keep me enslaved to a system or mentality that misrepresents God. I want to be free of the spirit behind the money-changers so that I can fully enjoy having Jesus relax and be the sole authority and source of life in my heart temple.

Cleansing of the Sanctuary - 2

I am fascinated by this story as I ponder what must have gone on that day. I wish that there were more details reported but that is not possible to know at this point. I wish I knew the words He said to the money-changers before He poured out their coins and upended their tables. I wonder how the coins were situated before He disrupted them. Were they stacked in neat rows on the tables or were most of them hidden away in large bags so that people would not notice how much they were being skimmed? Was Jesus' actions in pouring out the coins a means of exposing just how much more money there was involved than the public generally realized?

I do notice that it mentions the pouring out of the coins and the overturning of their tables as two separate things. That would seem to suggest that not all of the coins were sitting on the tables. But it also seems that there potentially might have been a considerable amount of resistance to this confrontation or else Jesus caught them so off guard that they did not have time to object before they found themselves totally exposed and publicly ashamed for their oppressive and offensive practices.

As I understand it, the whole concept and justification behind the very existence of money-changers was a scheme to defraud as many as possible to enrich the people in control of temple access. And since every good Jew felt spiritually obligated to come and offer sacrifices in the temple, the Jewish leaders had figured out a number of ways to exploit this sense of devotion and obligation on the part of thousands of people to skim off more and more wealth for themselves. They insisted on inspecting all the animals brought for offerings and would pretend to find something wrong with them even if there was not. They would then use this as an excuse to force the worshiper to exchange their own animal for a different one at of course a very inflated price. But then they would recycle that animal into an upcoming sale in exchange for yet another person's “imperfect” animal.

Likewise, the whole system of money-changing was also a very easy means of “taxing” people in the name of the temple service. Not only were there taxes imposed on people all throughout the country for the purpose of supporting the temple, but when one arrived at the temple to worship and found that they needed to buy an animal to sacrifice, they were forced to convert their currency into a special temple-only currency at a highly inflated rate before they were allowed to procure the necessary things with which they were required to complete their worship. Nearly everyone is aware of how easy it is for money-exchangers to confuse and take advantage of people even in today's world and how useless it is to mount objections. But for all of this to be taking place in the temple area and in the name of worship for God was nearly the height of blasphemy. For the actions and attitudes of these exploiters was directly influencing the opinions and perceptions being formed in the minds and hearts of millions of people about the character of God.

What was clearly taking place in the temple under the name of God was very damaging to God's reputation in the world. This open exploitation and oppression directly caused many people to believe deeply that God was also out to exploit them and take advantage of them just as those who claimed to represent Him were doing. Thus their hearts were becoming cold and hardened against being able to trust Him and were certainly not inclined to love Him. Religion was quickly becoming known only as a means by which to intimidate others for one's own benefit and had little or nothing to do with love. Religion and God were seen as only a means to appease a very selfish and threatening Deity who was little different from the way the pagan gods were viewed in the rest of the world. God's reputation was sinking into the miasma of being just like any other man-invented God and Jesus was very jealous to do something to correct it.

But I still wonder how we may still be indulging today in similar things and attitudes that may have the same effect on God's reputation as the shameless activities that were being carried out in the temple court long ago. It is very easy to restrict commerce in a church building and think that we have avoided the mistakes of the Jews. But is that external carefulness really what Jesus was addressing when He cleansed the temple? Was it the external symptoms of money changing hands or even the fraud and exploitation that Jesus wanted to get rid of or were there much deeper issues involved?

I believe that unless we perceive the deeper roots that Jesus wanted to expose and correct that we will always remain in danger of misrepresenting God just as badly as those people Jesus chased out of the temple were doing. We still have means of exploiting other people for our benefit but have possibly made our methods much more subtle so as to mask our real intentions better. Maybe we don't set up a tax table in the lobby of our church or force people to exchange their currency into a specialized money system before they can give their offerings. But do we have other ways of robbing those around us of their assets or gifts given to them of God? Do we have much more subtle ways of taking advantage of the weak and vulnerable? Have we so masked and concealed our forms of exploitation that even we may not be aware of how much we are insulting the reputation of our Father in Heaven?

Making God's house a place of business goes far beyond open exploitation of people financially, doesn't it? I can think of churches where a pastor amasses around him a following of people who hang on his every word and depend on him to help them make even some of the smallest decisions in their lives. Isn't this an exploitive attitude in the name of God.

I know of churches where the teachings are designed to frighten people into submission or people are manipulated in various ways to surrender more and more of their income to enrich the church. That is not to say that people should not be supportive of their local church. But when is the line crossed between willing support of the church and manipulative practices that use pleasure or fear to induce enhanced financial support? There is even a lot of misapplication of Scriptures to induce people to fork over more and more of their income in hopes of their receiving increased blessings from God. This is sometimes referred to as a prosperity gospel. But is God one who can have His blessings purchased at a price? Are we just as effective at turning God's honor and reputation into something more similar to a business transaction than an intimate family relationship?

There is another point that is very easy to miss in this story. In the temple there were several areas that were separated from each other. There were several courtyards and the outer court was the only one where women and foreigners were allowed to enter. This was actually the area that was being filled up and crowded with most of the business activities that Jesus disrupted.

The effect of filling up this courtyard that was designated for gentiles and women meant that there was less and less room for those classes of people to come and worship. The selfish and exploitive presence of all this commerce in the name of God was literally displacing the people already on the fringes making them feel even less important to God. Society already looked down on them as far less valuable than other more eligible worshipers and now they couldn't even physically get access to the only areas allowed for their presence because of the obtrusive presence of those who were merchandising religion.

I have to ponder how we today may be having the same affect on those who are on the margins. I have observed over the years how people sometimes show up at a church unexpectedly and want to worship with us because they had tasted something about God from other sources that made them curious. But after attending for a week or two they were never seen again. I suspect that the attitudes and atmosphere that they found in our church were largely responsible for their not coming back though we are usually quick to blame them for that decision. We like to believe that they were simply not devoted enough or honest enough to hang out with us more permanently. But I strongly believe that the real reason often is that though we think we are generally friendly on the outside, we are so misrepresenting of the Spirit of Jesus that they could not find a place of acceptance and love that they had hoped to discover during their visits.

Church's obsessions with keeping up appearances more than nurturing and protecting the vulnerable and wounded hearts among us is one of the greatest offenses that we commit against the reputation of God in my opinion. Is this how we make religion more like a business enterprise, how we make “doing church” more important to us than the hearts and souls of people? We seem far more interested in keeping track of membership numbers and offering figures than we are in cultivating deep and healing heart connections with people who are weak, fearful or uneducated. We are eager to spend thousands of dollars on large public evangelistic campaigns in order to increase the numbers of our church but as soon as they become members we seem to lose interest in staying connected with them and move on to looking for more inflated numbers. And in all of this we far too often fail to introduce people to a realistic, personal connection with God from their own heart.

Just in the last few months I have chosen to take time to become friends with a person who was not long ago brought into the church through public evangelism. I had noticed that he seemed to be almost lethargic during the Bible study time in church and was not really engaged in an meaningful discussion and was not asking any questions. In fact I could not even observe meaningful discussions taking place anywhere myself. This concerned me and I sensed that he was only hanging on the edge of church membership and likely did not feel very much a part of the congregation. He was showing up each week physically but it appeared to me that no one was paying any attention to listening to his heart or helping him to know God better.

I decided to join the very small class that he had been assigned to for indoctrination and to try to connect with him. Over several months I asked lots of questions about the real meaning of religion and encouraged him and others in the class to think more clearly and to question many of their assumptions. As I did so I began to notice a light beginning to appear in his eyes and he began to come alive. He started asking real questions and was startled to find out that religion was more than just subscribing to a list of doctrines. When I shared with the class the importance of having a personal and intimate relationship with God he began asking how one goes about doing that. We have spent quite some time since then in discussions about how to know God better and I am very excited to see his hunger for God increasing each week.

What really got my attention was what he told me about a week or two ago. He said that before I came to his class that he was seriously questioning why he was even coming to church at all. He said that he felt he had no reason at all to keep coming but for some reason he did anyway. Now that we have begun having serious discussions about questions that he has and have been exploring how to know God more intimately he said that he now feels he has a reason to come to church.

This made me realize that there are many more in the church who very likely have similar feelings to what he expressed. I fear that our business model approach to conducting church as so skewed people's perceptions of God that very few have any idea of the God's desire to connect with their heart. They are just showing up at church from habit or from fear of being lost or any number of other useless reasons that fail to move them into a real relationship with Him. I feel that we really do need another temple cleansing visit from Jesus. But the people asked to get out of the way this time may be even more surprising than those who were evicted two thousand years ago.

And he said to me, "For two thousand three hundred days; then the sanctuary shall be cleansed." (Daniel 8:14 NKJV)

In the temple he found people selling cattle, sheep, and doves, and the money changers seated at their tables. Making a whip of cords, he drove all of them out of the temple, both the sheep and the cattle. He also poured out the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables. He told those who were selling the doves, "Take these things out of here! Stop making my Father's house a marketplace!" His disciples remembered that it was written, "Zeal for your house will consume me." (John 2:14-17 NRSV)

Cleansing of the Sanctuary

As I have been pondering and seeking to understand this more clearly, I suddenly realized that this is very closely connected with a prophecy that has been the cornerstone of the teachings of my church for all of my life. I realize that what I am coming into may be significant insights that can help me unlock much confusion that has swirled around this prophecy for literally several hundred years and certainly during my lifetime.

And he said to me, "For two thousand three hundred days; then the sanctuary shall be cleansed." (Daniel 8:14 NKJV)

And he answered him, "For two thousand three hundred evenings and mornings; then the sanctuary shall be restored to its rightful state." (Daniel 8:14 NRSV)

And he said unto me, Until two thousand and three hundred evenings and mornings: then shall the sanctuary be vindicated. (Daniel 8:14 DBY)

This is such a familiar text that was very early on drilled into my memory repeatedly by teachers and preachers alike. It lies at the very root of my church's identity and existence and has been the basis for much of the belief system that I was raised to trust in. But as with everything else I have been taught in my past I am keen to go back and revisit my roots and the assumptions about all my beliefs to find out the real truth about them. Nearly everything I was taught I have found in need of adjustment and sometimes radical modification. And while many of the basic facts may still be found to be true, the spirit in which they were presented almost always gave them a negative spin that caused me to feel either very afraid or even angry toward God.

Now that my picture of God has undergone radical revision and is constantly being upgraded almost daily, I am finding that reexamination of all my core beliefs and assumptions is turning up surprises at nearly every turn. It is not so much that I am throwing out everything I was taught as much as it is finding the proper context and applications for all of them. The way most of the truthful facts of doctrines were applied for me by my teachers I am finding was often very skewed by their false assumptions about how God feels toward us. Now that I am getting that context corrected I am finding that the true applications and implications of all of these doctrines is radically different than anything I have ever thought about before.

This issue of the cleansing of the sanctuary has usually been closely linked with a doctrine called the investigative judgment believed to be going on right now in heaven. Unfortunately, because most people during my formative years had very dark views of God, this doctrine was most often used to strike terror into the hearts of the young and old alike in the supposition that the more afraid we were of the judgment the more motivation we would have to become perfect in preparation for end-time events and the Second Coming of Jesus.

However, I am now coming to realize that all of these assumptions are based on false premises and therefore everything has to be challenged and reexamined to find out the real truth about them. What I have been discovering is that though most of the facts themselves may still be valid, the way in which they were applied has caused them to become very discredited in the minds and hearts of millions of people who have rejected them altogether because of the false ways in which they were applied. I have chosen not to throw everything out that I was taught but at the same time I am keen to find out the real truth about all of them and place them in the correct relationship they should be placed in to each other.

What I am learning is the everything must be seen in the context of a proper view of the character of God. If I don't get my picture of God improved and aligned with the revelation of Him through the life and example of Jesus, then everything is subject to serious misapplication at best. But the more clearly I perceive the real truth about what God is really like, the easier I find it to understand everything else and how it all fits together in a beautiful mosaic of truth and attraction.

Given this context, I am keen to understand much more clearly what was really going on in the incidents in Jesus' life when He cleansed the temple. Because I am realizing that the more clearly I can understand what He was really trying to convey in those encounters with the false ideas about His Father being perpetrated in the temple, the more I will be able to unmask the false ideas about God in the teachings about the final days of investigative judgment taking place as the sanctuary is again being cleansed even as we speak. If I begin to unmask the lies about God that have filled my heart for so many years I will also be more prepared to embrace the real truth about Him that are to be found in a true understanding of those same doctrines after they have been cleaned of all the false assumptions that have marred them for so long.

I went and collected a number of texts that came to my attention as I began this journey of unpacking this more thoroughly. At this point I am simply going to list them out and then later I want to come back and revisit them much more carefully.

Cleansing #1

In the temple he found people selling cattle, sheep, and doves, and the money changers seated at their tables. Making a whip of cords, he drove all of them out of the temple, both the sheep and the cattle. He also poured out the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables. He told those who were selling the doves, "Take these things out of here! Stop making my Father's house a marketplace!" His disciples remembered that it was written, "Zeal for your house will consume me." The Jews then said to him, "What sign can you show us for doing this?" Jesus answered them, "Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up." (John 2:14-19 NRSV)

One thing I find interesting is that only in this first cleansing is it mentioned that He made a whip of cords. It is never mentioned in connection with the second cleansing. I wonder if this is a parallel to the two times that Moses was instructed to bring water from the rock in the desert and the differences that were supposed to mark those events?

Cleansing #2

Then Jesus entered the temple and drove out all who were selling and buying in the temple, and he overturned the tables of the money changers and the seats of those who sold doves. He said to them, "It is written, 'My house shall be called a house of prayer'; but you are making it a den of robbers." The blind and the lame came to him in the temple, and he cured them. But when the chief priests and the scribes saw the amazing things that he did, and heard the children crying out in the temple, "Hosanna to the Son of David," they became angry and said to him, "Do you hear what these are saying?" Jesus said to them, "Yes; have you never read, 'Out of the mouths of infants and nursing babies you have prepared praise for yourself'?" (Matthew 21:12-16 NRSV)

After these things I saw another angel coming down from heaven, having great authority, and the earth was illumined with his glory. And he cried out with a mighty voice, saying, "Fallen, fallen is Babylon the great! She has become a dwelling place of demons and a prison of every unclean spirit, and a prison of every unclean and hateful bird. For all the nations have drunk of the wine of the passion of her immorality, and the kings of the earth have committed acts of immorality with her, and the merchants of the earth have become rich by the wealth of her sensuality." (Revelation 18:1-3 NAS95)

"And the kings of the earth, who committed acts of immorality and lived sensuously with her, will weep and lament over her when they see the smoke of her burning, standing at a distance because of the fear of her torment, saying, 'Woe, woe, the great city, Babylon, the strong city! For in one hour your judgment has come.' And the merchants of the earth weep and mourn over her, because no one buys their cargoes any more-- cargoes of gold and silver and precious stones and... cattle and sheep, and cargoes of horses and chariots and slaves and human lives." (Revelation 18:9-13)

"Behold, I am going to send My messenger, and he will clear the way before Me. And the Lord, whom you seek, will suddenly come to His temple; and the messenger of the covenant, in whom you delight, behold, He is coming," says the LORD of hosts. "But who can endure the day of His coming? And who can stand when He appears? For He is like a refiner's fire and like fullers' soap. He will sit as a smelter and purifier of silver, and He will purify the sons of Levi and refine them like gold and silver, so that they may present to the LORD offerings in righteousness. Then the offering of Judah and Jerusalem will be pleasing to the LORD as in the days of old and as in former years." (Malachi 3:1-4)

Sinners in Zion are terrified; trembling has seized the godless. "Who among us can live with the consuming fire? Who among us can live with continual burning?" He who walks righteously and speaks with sincerity, he who rejects unjust gain and shakes his hands so that they hold no bribe; he who stops his ears from hearing about bloodshed and shuts his eyes from looking upon evil; he will dwell on the heights, his refuge will be the impregnable rock; his bread will be given him, his water will be sure. (Isaiah 33:14-16)

O God, you are my God, I seek you, my soul thirsts for you; my flesh faints for you, as in a dry and weary land where there is no water. So I have looked upon you in the sanctuary, beholding your power and glory. Because your steadfast love is better than life, my lips will praise you. So I will bless you as long as I live; I will lift up my hands and call on your name. My soul is satisfied as with a rich feast, and my mouth praises you with joyful lips when I think of you on my bed, and meditate on you in the watches of the night; for you have been my help, and in the shadow of your wings I sing for joy. My soul clings to you; your right hand upholds me. But those who seek to destroy my life shall go down into the depths of the earth; they shall be given over to the power of the sword, they shall be prey for jackals. But the king shall rejoice in God; all who swear by him shall exult, for the mouths of liars will be stopped. (Psalms 63:1-11 NRSV)