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.