The Purifier

Series on Luke

V The Imminence of the Kingdom

E Temple

Text: 19:45-48

Introduction

The action of Jesus in our text today is unpalatable and unacceptable to the generations of liberals for whom Jesus was neither God nor the unique and indispensable Savior. Their vision of Christ was neither lion or lamb. For them he was neither redeemer or judge, but simply another prophet, another teacher, so meek, so mild, and truly ineffectual except for his great ideas. One wonders if it really made any difference if he came or not. They could not conceive of Jesus in a righteous rage. In this they missed not only who He was but also the character of the Father who made us all. This incident is emblematic of who Christ is and what he came to do. It is near to the epicenter of His mission. This is reinforced by the fact that it occurred twice, once at the beginning as recorded in John 2, and once in the last week of his life as mentioned by the other three gospels. Luke’s account here is the briefest of all in verses 45-48 he writes, Then he entered the temple area and began driving out those who were selling. “It is written,” he said to them, ”‘My house will be a house of prayer’; but you have made it ‘a den of robbers.’” Every day he was teaching at the temple. But the chief priests, the teachers of the law and the leaders among the people were trying to kill him. Yet they could not find any way to do it, because all the people hung on his words. These events are like a parenthesis around all else reminding us that in Christ we have the great purifier. He is here to purify His temple, His people, His creation. He is here to burn away everything bad and create out of the fire a real new world order. i present to you then today the true picture of Jesus the purifier. He is the purifier because He has the mandate, the motive and the might.

I The Mandate

The outer court of the temple had become like an oriental bazaar, filled with the noise of people shouting and squabbling. Not only did the temple officials undertake to sell unblemished sacrifices of every kind to the multitudes who could not successfully bring them long distances, but at an expensive rate of exchange they provided half-shekels for foreign currency since one could only pay the temple tax in coins which bore no unacceptable imagery. Into this profane cacophony strode the Christ and he chased them out. For this he had a prophetic mandate. One need only look to the last book of the Old Testament, Malachi, 3:1-5 to read this mandate. The people of Malachi’s day were asking a question that might be in the minds of some people today. Where is the God of justice? to which the Lord replied, “See, I will send my messenger, who will prepare the way before me. Then suddenly the Lord you are seeking will come to his temple; the messenger of the covenant, whom you desire, will come,” says the LORD Almighty. But who can endure the day of his coming? Who can stand when he appears? For he will be like a refiner’s fire or a launderer’s soap. He will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver; he will purify the Levites and refine them like gold and silver. Then the LORD will have men who will bring offerings in righteousness, and the offerings of Judah and Jerusalem will be acceptable to the LORD, as in days gone by, as in former years. “So I will come near to you for judgment. I will be quick to testify against sorcerers, adulterers and perjurers, against those who defraud laborers of their wages, who oppress the widows and the fatherless, and deprive aliens of justice, but do not fear me,” says the LORD Almighty. When you think of the way God protected Israel from his holiness in the worship of the Old Testament, surrounded by barriers and appearing only in the holiest place which was entered by the high priest only once annually on the day of atonement, it is all the more remarkable that the presence of Jesus didn’t level the temple instantly. Here is the Lord, but what He was doing was showing the nature of his ministry as a purifier and that would be accomplished only through a spiritual regeneration. To the question where is the God of justice, we reply you don’t want to see him, unless you’re hidden in the rock of ages. But Jesus not only has a mandate He has a motive to purify.

II The Motive

The motive is found in the words of our Savior. Actually these are quotations from two Old Testament prophets. when he refers to the house of the lord as a den of thieves or robbers he is recalling the words of the prophet Jeremiah 7:9-11, Will you steal and murder, commit adultery and perjury, burn incense to Baal and follow other gods you have not known, and then come and stand before me in this house, which bears my Name, and say, “We are safe”—safe to do all these detestable things? Has this house, which bears my Name, become a den of robbers to you? But I have been watching! declares the LORD. Jesus intended to remind the people of the awful past of the nation Israel. Weeping Jeremiah prophesied when God raised up the Babylonians to destroy and enslave his people. The decision was irrevocable and judgment swift and certain. Their conduct now was the same as it had been in Jeremiah’s day and what happened then? Thus in cleansing the temple Jesus forecasts its destruction unless they repent, but more than that because these words are drawn from Jeremiah it is as if he were saying that they would not repent and the judgment would come. What was the real problem in Jeremiah’s day? Hypocrisy, a show of religion without lives that measured up. Jesus came to get rid of that and it ought not be tolerated in the Church. God asks in Jeremiah, Will you steal and murder, commit adultery and perjury, burn incense to Baal and then come and stand before me in this house which bears my name and say we are safe? safe to do all these detestable things? The other part of Jesus’ words comes from Isaiah the prophet, 56:6 and 7 where God says, And foreigners who bind themselves to the LORD to serve him, to love the name of the LORD, and to worship him, all who keep the Sabbath without desecrating it and who hold fast to my covenant- these I will bring to my holy mountain and give them joy in my house of prayer. Their burnt offerings and sacrifices will be accepted on my altar; for my house will be called a house of prayer for all nations.” The events of our text occurred in the outer court of the temple, or as it is commonly called, the court of the Gentiles. God’s plan and purpose is thereby betrayed. What unbeliever confronted with such a sight would want to worship the God of Israel? The same thing is true today. worshiping and living wrongly only offends people and sends them away. Jesus came to change this and He is the purifier. Dear brothers, without any advertising, without any promotion, without any 1990’s schemes for success, if we just lived the way God commands us, all of us, this building would be out of date so fast it would astound us. I say that because of the third fact about the purifier. He has the mandate the motive and the might.

III The Might

The exquisite irony of the temple cleansing is that the Jews expected a Messiah who would bless them and bring judgment on the other nations. Instead Jesus says He is come to judge Israel and bring blessing on the other nations and He has the power to do it. As already stated Luke’s account is the briefest. The apostle John only records the purification of the temple at the beginning of Jesus’ ministry but there he gives us a unique insight. On the occasion of his driving out the money changers, the Jews ask Him what miraculous sign He can give to convince them that He has the authority to do this. We read in John 2:19-22, Jesus answered them, “Destroy this temple, and I will raise it again in three days.” The Jews replied, “It has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and you are going to raise it in three days?” But the temple he had spoken of was his body. After he was raised from the dead, his disciples recalled what he had said. Then they believed the Scripture and the words that Jesus had spoken. The Jews said it took 46 years to build and you’re going to put it back in three days? That is fantastic, ridiculous, absurd. It wasn’t impossible, but that’s not the point. John tells us the point. Jesus was talking about the temple which was His body. The point is that Jesus rising from the dead is a greater work than raising the temple that Herod built. The power that is manifested in his resurrection is the power that is at work in us. It is the power that raised us from the death of sin and will raise us from the grave at the end of the world. It is therefore the power that purifies and it is at work in us. Jesus has the same mandate today,and the same motive today, and He has the might to change us as Paul reminds us in Ephesians 1:18-23, I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and his incomparably great power for us who believe. That power is like the working of his mighty strength, which he exerted in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms, far above all rule and authority, power and dominion, and every title that can be given, not only in the present age but also in the one to come. And God placed all things under his feet and appointed him to be head over everything for the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills everything in every way.