Cleansing of the Sanctuary - 4

And He found in the temple those who were selling oxen and sheep and doves, and the money changers seated at their tables. And He made a scourge of cords, and drove them all out of the temple, with the sheep and the oxen; and He poured out the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables; and to those who were selling the doves He said, "Take these things away; stop making My Father's house a place of business." (John 2:14-16)

What was it that Jesus cleansed out of the temple?

What was the real problem with the “business” going on there?

The things that were all being sold in the temple were the very symbols that God had appointed to represent His ultimate Gift for the redemption of mankind. Therefore, what was really going on was that religious people were taking the very things that were supposed to represent God's free gift of grace to sinners and turning them into merchandise, a way to not just make money for themselves but even as a means to exploit the poor and needy – the very people that needed God's free gifts the most.

In symbolic language, these Jews had hijacked the very heart of the symbol of God's plan of salvation and distorted the picture of God that the sanctuary service and symbols were supposed to reveal to sinners. What was now being presented instead of the truth about God's free grace, mercy and love for sinners was a picture of a god who demanded ever-increasing payments before a person could satisfy His demands for sacrifice. This was creating a picture of a god more intent on appeasement of his anger, greed or other human-like emotions instead of a revealing of a loving Father deeply involved in reaching out to rebellious and confused children to draw them back to a correct view of Him through love and compassion.

So in light of this activity of God's symbols being misappropriated and held hostage for payment by religious people claiming to represent God in the world, it is no wonder that Jesus felt compelled to dismantle this system of blasphemy against God's name and reputation and to try to restore the temple to a condition closer to its original intent.

But there was still one missing element for this to be a success. Jesus did not choose to stay in the temple indefinitely after cleansing it to keep it under His guardianship. This is because the temple largely represents the heart of each individual that God is seeking to save. And when it comes to people, God is absolutely intent on always respecting their freedom to choose whom they are going to submit their lives to as the authority to govern in their heart. So although He can come in and sweep away the lies about God and introduce us to a better view of God than before, it is always up to us – the keepers of the temple grounds – as to whether He is invited to stay and fill the temple with His presence or whether we will ignore His cleansing or even resent it and thus create an atmosphere that will allow the former demons to come back in with even greater force and with darker deceptions than before.

"Now when the unclean spirit goes out of a man, it passes through waterless places seeking rest, and does not find it. Then it says, 'I will return to my house from which I came'; and when it comes, it finds it unoccupied, swept, and put in order. Then it goes and takes along with it seven other spirits more wicked than itself, and they go in and live there; and the last state of that man becomes worse than the first. That is the way it will also be with this evil generation." (Matthew 12:43-45)

Indeed, this is exactly what happened with the Jews as a unique people chosen to represent God to the world. After the repeated offers of Jesus to move in to their lives, to be embraced as their God, their

Bridegroom and their Savior were rejected and snubbed, they went on to seal their divorce from God as a nation and ultimately were recognized by God as a nation beyond hope. While any individual Jews were still free to repent and change their minds about God and turn to Him for salvation, as a chosen nation God was forced by their resistance to Him to acknowledge and confirm their rejection of His advances and His desire for the kind of relationship He had sought to cultivate for many centuries with them. Indeed, their latter condition really did end up much worse than their former.

But this is not just an interesting insight into the fate of the Jews as a chosen nation of God. It has even more significance and impact on those today who claim to be God's chosen people during the time prophesied as the great and last time of cleansing of a much more important sanctuary in the last days. Daniel 8:14 is a word of God that cannot be ignored except at the peril of our souls. The cleansing process is going on even right now and the offer is being made once again to all who claim to be God's people to enter into an intimacy with God that the Jews rejected in Jesus' day. Now the focus of attention has shifted from the Jews and their choices about how to view God, to those of us today who claim, like the Jews, to be the chosen children of God on earth.

If we think this temple cleansing experience that took place in Jesus' time has little or nothing to do with us, we are in the gravest danger of repeating their fatal mistake of resenting God's efforts to expose the lies about Him that fill the temple of our own minds and hearts. Most of us are immersed in a religion riddled with subtle and not so subtle lies about God that we do not view as lies but as fundamental truths. But just because we have believed ideas for all of our lives and our church might reinforce them with repeated assertions of sincerity does not make them gospel truth.

We are experiencing the very same problem as demonstrated in the hijacked temple of Jesus day. We are dealing with many of the truthful facts about God and religion just as they were dealing with the true symbols that God had appointed to represent the truths about Himself and His plan of salvation. These Jews were not trying to introduce new elements into the worship service – except for the presence of money and moneychangers, which was definitely bringing into God's house an evil spirit of mammon. But nevertheless, the way in which they were abusing and misapplying and distorting those symbols resulted in tragically distorting the very truths about God that those symbols were originally intended to convey.

So too, we are not immune to making the exact same mistakes today in the way in which we handle the doctrines of truth that are supposed to reveal the heart of the Father to us. In misapplying and twisting and allowing false spirits in our presentation of facts about God, we end up producing the same affect of distorting God's reputation and confusing the hearts of millions with our counterfeit ideas about God that we present in all sincerity.

Even beyond this initial problem that we find ourselves in of confusion about the real truth about God, we are also in danger of not responding properly even after God reveals the real truth about Him to our minds. As is seen in the demonstration of Jesus in the Jew's day, God can come in and expose our mistaken notions about reality and about God by showing us the real truth and sweeping away the lies about Him from our minds. But if we do not embrace those truths and allow them to permeate not only our minds but sink deeply into our hearts as well, we are in danger of attempting to keep a clean house without inviting the Holy Spirit to occupy it and prevent reentry of even worse spirits of deception to return and make us more deceived and hardened than before.

I believe that it is vitally important for us to perceive the lessons about our relationship to God in these stories of Jesus cleansing the temple. That is because it is unavoidably true that we really are living in the time of the great cleansing of the sanctuary and that we are all involved in this ongoing event. We are all faced with the choice of how we are going to relate to the cleansing process of Jesus in our lives, especially in how we choose to act and think after His initial cleanup in our minds.

Am I willing to keep on inviting Him back in to continue to clean house?

Am I willing to keep having more lies exposed and request that He not stop cleaning my heart?

Am I willing to let go of the resentment that will naturally spring up whenever I have been exposed?

Am I willing to confess and agree with Him that many things I have assumed about God are actually lies and need to be relinquished?

Am I ready to invite Jesus to be the permanent caretaker of my temple and to live in me and cleanse me from all unrighteousness?

Am I willing to agree that this temple really belongs to Him and is not my house after all?