Cleaning House

The Passover of the Jews was near, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. And He found in the temple those who were selling oxen and sheep and doves, and the money changers seated at their tables. (John 2:13-14)

I have generally viewed this reference to the Passover as simply a side note in this story to indicate the time of year and the holiday that gave Jesus reason to go to Jerusalem at this time. And I'm sure that this is a major part of the reason this was recorded here, but not all of the reason. As with a lot of details overlooked in the Bible, I believe there may be much more packed into these few words that will expand and deepen for those who are willing to meditate and listen to what the Spirit has to say about it.

What I am starting to see in these verses is a stark contrast presented. And I suspect that if I was a good Jew that contrast would very likely be even more intense because of a much deeper understanding and appreciation for the meaning and power in the story of the original Passover. That holiday feast and the ceremonies and stories that centered around it were one of the most potent defining events in the psyche of any good Jew who knew about his heritage. It was basically viewed by most Jews as the time when their very existence as a nation or large group of people became clear as a viable presence in the world.

The first Passover occurred at the center of a whole series of earth-shaking events that starkly defined the Israelites as a people specially chosen of God to be His representatives to the world. It was the day when, through most amazing and mind-blowing miracles, God freed these people from abject slavery, abuse and ignorance out of the hands of a most ruthless, cruel and uncaring system that had depended on force and fear for many years to keep them in bondage. They were thus launched into the freedom and protection and loving care of a God that they had never dreamed might even exist in such a way. In just a few short weeks these people experienced a whirlwind of events and traumas that catapulted them from feeling totally worthless and abandoned to being the center of attention not only of the whole world but were considered the object of supreme affection by the most powerful being of the universe.

God conducted events in such a way through this mighty act of deliverance that there could never be any serious doubts by reasonable people about the nature of the Source that released them to freedom. God did not come and assist the Israelites or help them to deliver themselves. He allowed no room for confusion as to whose power it was that had freed them from bondage. It was absolutely clear to them forever that their previous condition was completely beyond their ability to solve and on top of that, when the miracles displayed by Moses and Aaron began things had even gotten worse for them.

This act of delivering a helpless group of millions of people from ruin and despair and severe abuse in such a short time and in such a remarkable way became the touchstone of identity for these people for all generations to come. Even today thousands of years later that series of events is still one of the most defining stories cherished by all Jews who value their identity and heritage. And God intended it to be exactly that way for them.

But God intended it to be far more than just a means of helping Jews remember who they were as a special people chosen by God. He originally chose them to become His representatives to the whole world with the plan of having them reveal His goodness and His ways to attract all other people's to want to come and serve Him through appreciation and love. But the Jews instead turned inward and through selfishness, pride and fear became some of the greatest examples of apostasy and legalism that this world has ever seen. Because they failed to embrace the real truths about God embedded in these events that helped to shape their identity, they ended up eventually rejecting the very One who had so graciously chosen them and delivered them and given them everything that made them who they were.

Repeatedly throughout the Bible this event is brought up again and again to remind God's people everywhere of what God is really like. This event was intended to be a constant reminder of God's immense compassion, His ability to easily overcome any difficulties no matter how hopeless they may appear humanly speaking, and to reveal His goodness and all the various aspects of His character to a world filled with lies and distortions about His real attitude and feelings toward mankind. This event was specifically given, and the feast holiday in its commemoration was supposed to keep people aware of their continued need for complete dependence on the God who had so manifestly displayed His kindness, love and great power to draw a people out of fear and bitterness into a relationship of intimacy, love and trust with Himself.

When you are in distress and all these things have come upon you, in the latter days you will return to the LORD your God and listen to His voice. For the LORD your God is a compassionate God; He will not fail you nor destroy you nor forget the covenant with your fathers which He swore to them. Indeed, ask now concerning the former days which were before you, since the day that God created man on the earth, and inquire from one end of the heavens to the other. Has anything been done like this great thing, or has anything been heard like it? Has any people heard the voice of God speaking from the midst of the fire, as you have heard it, and survived? Or has a god tried to go to take for himself a nation from within another nation by trials, by signs and wonders and by war and by a mighty hand and by an outstretched arm and by great terrors, as the LORD your God did for you in Egypt before your eyes? To you it was shown that you might know that the LORD, He is God; there is no other besides Him. (Deuteronomy 4:30-35)

The purpose of the Passover was to keep fresh in their minds the true identity of the God who loved them and the obligations and privileges of the covenant that they shared with this God as the descendants of those He had delivered from Egyptian slavery. The Passover was one of the most important focal points of the Jewish calendar designed to refresh in their hearts the reminders of His care and love, and so they would appreciate their God and would deepen their connection to His heart.

But instead the very opposite had become a reality by the time Jesus arrived on the scene. Instead of celebrating the goodness of God and remembering their intended identity as representatives to the world of a compassionate, caring Father in heaven, the Jews had turned this holiday event into another opportunity for enriching themselves through crass commercialism and exploitation. Even worse than that, they had chosen to do much of this right in the temple courts that was supposed to be the chosen spot on earth where God wanted to reveal the real truth about Himself to the world through His chosen people.

So what Jesus saw to His great dismay when He arrived in Jerusalem at the beginning of His ministry was a system of religion and a group of people who had wholly given themselves over to the deceptions of the enemy of God. They were now exploiting others in such a way as to profane the very reputation of the God they claimed was their Father. Instead of celebrating the compassion and goodness of God in their deliverance from slavery in the past by reflecting that same spirit in the present, they were conducting themselves in a way more reminiscent of the spirit by which the Egyptians had treated them instead of the way God had treated them. They were robbing the poor, taking advantage of the strangers, crowding out the weak and the gentiles and causing all around them to be repulsed by a religion that had gone so sour that no one could see much reason to want to come to this God and be saved.

This is at least part of what Jesus found when He showed up at the temple that day. This was part of what must have stirred His emotions and aroused His intense jealousy for what was happening to the reputation of His loving Father who had sent Him to correct this terrible picture of God that His people were presenting to the world. This tragic misrepresentation of what God was like had become condensed even more in the leaders of the very people whom God had chosen years before to do just the opposite. And it was because of this spectacular failure to carry out their original purpose of exposing the real truth about their God to the world that God sent His own Son to pick up the fallen banner and re-establish a beachhead of truth in the land of the enemy.

In reality, this temple itself was the house of Jesus on this earth. Jesus Himself was God and the temple professedly was dedicated to and belonged to God. So if the Jews had had any perception of reality at all about them, had been in their right mind or had allowed their hearts to listen to the Holy Spirit through the many prophesies given to their forefathers, they would have realized that Jesus was simply there to physically move into His own house.

Given this context, why should it surprise anyone in the slightest that Jesus would act like a normal homeowner in His own house? If you came home one day to find that a bunch of squatters had taken up housekeeping on your front porch or in your living room and were partying and acting wild and stupid and even threatening you as you approached, wouldn't you feel like doing something rather obvious to let them know that this was no place for them to carry on as they were? It would only make sense for you to inform them that this was the wrong place to act as they were doing, especially if you discovered that they were abusing your own children right there in your house. You would most likely have some very strong emotions about insisting that they must leave the premises and must do it immediately.

I have actually never even seen it that clear myself before. Now that I think about this as simply Jesus coming home to His own house and finding it a big mess, it makes so much more sense that He would want to launch into some major housekeeping so that He could then entertain friends and visitors in His own place. Of course that never worked out very well because the intruders did not stay away very long. They were living under the illusion that He was not really the homeowner and they mistakenly believed as so many do yet today, that might makes right. So because they were in the majority from their perspective, they refused to acknowledge His rightful position as the true homeowner and eventually ended up killing Him because He claimed to be the very person they had been waiting for for generations – their Messiah.

Father, it is so easy to see the mistakes of people in the past. But it is just as easy to make similar mistakes in our own blindness today because of our terribly mistaken assumptions about who You really are even now. We are so much like the Jews who forgot the real meaning of the Passover and became clueless about Your true identity, all because of their unbelief and selfishness. We are no different than they were except we have our own unique ways of being deceived about You.

Please show us the real truth about Yourself more clearly and sweep away the dark clouds of lies that keep us so confused about Your real feelings towards us. Show us Your heart of passionate love and grace and tenderness, but if need be do it in ways so obvious that we can't miss it. I realize that there are times when you have to pick up a whip to get our attention so we can finally become aware of how much we are misrepresenting You. I give you permission to come into Your own house right now and start cleaning it up so You can move in and feel comfortable here. Come clean house in my church and in my own heart and move in Your furniture and fixtures so that this can become a place where You can feel at home and invite others in to enjoy Your company.

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)