How many times did Jesus cleanse the temple? Why did He cleanse the temple?

Further, of that long prophetic discourse concerning Jerusalem (Matt. 24; Mark 13; Luke 21), spoken by the Lord in answer to a request preferred by Peter, James, John, and Andrew, not a word has John written; while of much that the Lord said on the evening before His crucifixion, when alone with His Apostles, the son of Zebedee is our only informant (13 — 17). Another fact we may mention. There were two cleansings of the Temple — the first ere John the Baptist finished his ministry, the second near the close of the Lord's life. John, and he alone, records the first of these. The other Evangelists, and they only, tell us of the last. On the first occasion Christ cleansed it as His Father's house (John 2:16). On the second occasion He cleansed it of traffickers as His own (Matt. 21:13, etc.). In John 2. He is the Son. In Matthew He is Jehovah, and there presents Himself to Jerusalem as her King, and as the Son of Man as well. He entered as King riding on the colt, the foal of an ass; He cleansed the house as Jehovah; and He accepted the tribute of praise from the children as the Son of Man (Ps. 8). In these three characters Jerusalem rejected Him. She knew not the things that belonged to her peace (Luke 19:42).

Two Cleansings. — We have said that the Lord cleansed the Temple twice. John here, and he alone, tells us of the first. Matt. 21:12-13; Mark 11:15-17; Luke 19:45-46, agree in telling us, and they only, of the second. On the first occasion, He acted as in the Father's house; on the second, as in His own. "My Father's house" He called it in John. "My house" He styled it in Matthew, etc. Further, when challenged on the first occasion, He at once gave the Jews a sign. When challenged the last time, eliciting by the question He put to them their moral incompetency to judge of His claims, He refused to comply with their request. On the first occasion, His presence as the messenger of God was new to the city, so He gave them a sign. On the second occasion, they were already in possession of proof after proof of His Divine mission, so He would not accede to their request. Clear, then, we think it will be to the reader, that two cleansings of the Temple took place, and that they can readily be distinguished.

Jesus had just presented Himself to them as King, so, having arrived in the city, He went straight to the temple, the very centre of their religion, and asserted His kingly power in cleansing it. He had done this at the very beginning of His ministry, as recorded in John 2; He did it again at the end. The trafficking and money-changing in the temple had doubtless sprung out of the kindly arrangements of the law, which Deuteronomy 14:24-26 records. Ungodly men had taken advantage of this provision to turn the temple precincts into a den of thieves. God intended His temple to be the house where men drew near to Him with their requests. Its custodians had turned it into a place where men were swindled, and so the name of God was maligned. To defile or corrupt the temple of God is a sin of tremendous gravity. 1 Corinthians 3:17 shows this, in its application to God's present temple.

The first errand of the King in His city is the temple. "And Jesus entered into the temple of God, and cast out all that sold and bought in the temple, and overthrew the tables of the money-changers and the seats of those that sold the doves. And He says to them, It is written, My house shall be called a house of prayer, but ye have made it a den of robbers" (verses 12-13). This is the second time that the Lord acted in cleansing the temple. The first is recorded in the Gospel of John 2:13, 17, and it took place at the beginning of His ministry. There it is the zeal for God's house, but here He acts in all His Kingly authority. How great and awful must have been the defilement of God's temple in those days. Money changers were undoubtedly in the foreground, for money played then in the days of the Jewish apostasy as important a role as it does in the apostasy we witness about us. "We can picture to ourselves the scene around the table of an eastern money changer -- the weighing of the coins, deductions for loss of weight, arguing, disputing, bargaining, and we realize the terrible truthfulness of our Lord's charge that they had made the Father's house a mart and a place of traffic." (Edersheim: Life of Christ, Vol. I., 369.) And besides the money changers were those who bought and sold. All that which was required for the meat and drink offering was for sale by the Temple authorities. With the sale much speculation was connected; covetousness, as Jewish talmudical writings prove, was the ruling passion in this blasphemous traffic. And the most awful fact was that the priesthood, especially the High-priestly family earned riches from it. The Bazaars and the Temple markets were controlled and owned by the sons of Annas.

Into this scene of desecration He enters. No whip of cords is in His hands; the King does not need it. The tables are turned over in wild confusion; the coins roll over the pavement, while the sacrificial animals and birds are driven out, perhaps in a wild stampede, followed by their owners and the officials of the temple. And what He uses is His own Word. "It is written my house shall be called an house of prayer; but ye have made it a den of robbers." It was His house, as well as His Father's. Of old in the first house His own Glory appeared and dwelt there. The words "mine house shall be called an house of prayer" are found in Isaiah 56:7. "For all people" which is in Isaiah, the Lord does not quote. That temple was not meant to be a house "for all people;" the temple in Is. 56:7 is the millennial temple, and that future temple will be the house to which the nations of the earth will come during the coming age, to worship the Lord of Hosts. And so the Lord came suddenly to His temple to cleanse it (Mal. 3:1-3). But this again is only a shadow of another coming and the final fulfilment of the prophecy contained in the third chapter of Malachi. Another temple will stand in Jerusalem during the great tribulation and there will be even greater defilement. In that temple one will sit who is clearly pictured in the Word. "That man of sin, the son of perdition; who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God, or that is worshipped; so that he as God sitteth in the temple of God, showing Himself that He is God" (2 Thess. 2:3, 4). Him the Lord will destroy with the brightness of His coming.

The cleansing of the Temple (verses 13-17). If the marriage at Cana tells us that man cannot secure his own happiness by the natural means that God has instituted, the second scene, at Jerusalem, demonstrates that man cannot avail himself of the religion that God has given. If God provides a religion suited to man in the flesh, to regulate his conduct and secure his earthly blessing, man immediately corrupts it into a means of making gain. The House of prayer for all nations becomes the resort of changers of money, who turn the Father's House into a house of merchandise. The Lord deals with this great evil, and justifies His judicial act by claiming His relationship with God as His Father, and asserting that the Temple is His Father's house. Thus, once again, He manifests forth His glory before His disciples as the Son acting in zeal for the glory of His Father's house, according to the Scripture, "The zeal of thine house has eaten me up" (Psalm. 69:9). This psalm, now that the Son has come, receives a fuller and deeper meaning, disclosing to us that the rejected Man, of whom the Psalmist speaks, is none less than the Son.

The next thing the Lord does is, with just indignation, to purge the temple, indeed He went out to Bethany, and returned, and did this on the morrow. But here it was the morally consequent act, the judgment pronounced of the King entered. God's house was a house of prayer; that was its moral character, not of sacrifice. It was not thus God designated His house, though that were done there, but in grace to need of those that had need. Where His presence and ear was was a house of prayer, where all wants were told to God, and He was there the Depositary of all grief and all need; and they had made it a den of thieves. Note it is the sin against the gracious character of God that the Lord notes as the sin against the temple of God. His charge is very general: "Ye have made it." For all evil thus permitted, and gone along with, is really common guilt on all, for the heart allows and concurs in it. But the spirit which lusts to envy soon showed itself. The people, who were nobody, gladly heard; they had no reputation, and externally they sought the good, but the chief priests, scribes, and principals of the people, the chiefs of religion, learning, specially religious learning, and of place or power, sought to get rid of Him. It was natural they should, for He was true, and all their state and place was false, and they traitors to what was of God in it, using the divine honour of it to their own glory. To the people, good was good, because they needed good; to the rulers, and priests and scribes not, because it displaced their pretensions, detected their hypocrisy, and wounded their pride. Yet Satan had power over all this, one and the other, for it needs an absolute and real deliverance to be out of his power, an actual deliverance of God. God working in us to set us free, by making Himself the only Object. Otherwise, the habits of religion and pre-eminence rest in force over the mind, and, though convinced in conscience that Jesus is true and the Lord, there is no power to resist what has power over the flesh, for the life which emerges from out of it all, strengthened in the Holy Ghost, is not there. The time was not yet come for Him to be offered up, and He was there in the dignity of His untouched Person till the full time of divine counsel was come, that the people might have the full witness and testimony of grace and perfectness, and the iniquity of the rulers and great men ripen to its conclusion and accomplishment. The position, and total want of conscience, and selfishness, in His rejection, of their rulers and religious authorities, is brought out in what follows.

12 And they came to Jerusalem, and He enters then into the temple. Yesterday, the full survey of their condition, and the condition of His Father's, Jehovah's house, had been made, and to-day judgment is to be executed with all the authority, the condemning authority of Jehovah's King, bearing with none of this evil now. Long had grace been patient. He had retired to a distance, to give time for repentance. He being thus manifested (in the way with them) and after John's warnings, but now, this past, with all righteous authority and indignation, at headquarters, there was no more but to get rid of them. What authority in the righteousness of God! "He began to cast out them that sold and bought in the temple, and overturned the tables of the money-changers, and the seats of them that sold doves." This den of thieves! And in Jehovah's house! How free from idolatry! How full of sin! He would sanctify it. He suffered no man to pass through, to carry anything through the temple, making it just a passage for his convenience. He maintained the holiness of God's house, and while He maintained its holiness as Jehovah's house, not the mere convenience of Jewish pride, as Jehovah's house, His Father's house, it had all its wide claim and value in His eyes - a house of prayer for all nations. The holiness of God's house gives it its extension, because it makes it properly God's house, and His claim is over all, and it is a claim of grace. But, while the Lord does this, His judgment and charge on the Jewish people is distinct and conclusive: "Ye have made it a den of thieves." His word too is from Scripture, so that the truth and guilt was plain. It had the force of God's word to them. We have also to note that the title of God, and the moral charge always has its force in the subject it applies to; thus the passage of Isaiah has its accomplishment in the latter day, when the house shall be so as God's house. Yet the claim of God was at least from its utterance by the Prophet. Yet it was then, after all, judgment, when sin had made it impossible (for all tended to the blessed end when Christ shall be there) and the charge was made in Jeremiah's time actually, but as it hung over their heads, so was it accomplished by their hands, and they are charged with it - they had done the thing, i.e., He puts it as a question: Did not their conduct amount to their considering it so? "Ye have made it a den of thieves." How plain, and bold, and unmoved in judgment is the Lord now, for He had taken the pronouncing of judgment in His own hand now. And the Lord applied the testimony of the Prophets now in judgment.

The Jews would doubtless have furnished good reasons for permitting these abominations. Did not the strangers need to change their varied monies? Were not the doves a necessity for the very poorest who could afford no larger sacrifice? But the whole thing had been debased into a money-making concern. The man who came from afar seeking God might easily be repelled when he got to the house by the rascality of those who were connected with it. A terrible state of affairs! The custodians of the house were a pack of thieves, and the Lord told them so. This roused the scribes and priests to fury, and they determined upon His death.

Exactly similar evils have long ago been manifested in Christendom. This is a terrible thing to say, but truth demands that it should be said. Again religion has been turned into a money-making concern, so much so that the would-be seeker after God has often been utterly repelled. This thing may be seen in its most extravagant forms in the great Romish system, but it may be seen elsewhere in a modified way. It is the error of Balaam, and many run after it "greedily," as Jude 11 tells us. Let us see that we carefully avoid it. The house of God on earth today is formed of saints — not dead stones but "living" ones — but we have to learn how we are to behave ourselves in it, and Paul's first letter to Timothy give us the needed instructions. In that letter such words as these are prominent: "Not covetous," "Not greedy of filthy lucre," "Destitute of the truth, supposing that gain is godliness … But godliness with contentment is great gain." If such words as these govern us, we shall be preserved from this snare.

On both occasions, without a word to any one, or seeking the concurrence of the chief priests, but acting of His own will, He proceeded to effect His purpose. That oxen, sheep, and doves should, under certain conditions, and at certain times, be brought to God's altar was an undeniable fact. But, that they should be found waiting for the offerers' requirements within the court of the Temple, had no authorisation from Divine revelation. Lev. 26:2, "Ye shall reverence My sanctuary," would rather forbid such a practice. The lowing of oxen, the bleating of sheep, the cooing of doves, as heard above the hum of human voices, must have given to the sacred court the aspect of a fair, or market, rather than the holy spot where God was to be worshipped, and which was regarded as His earthly habitation. The tables of the money-changers too, and their trade, were more out of harmony with the sacredness of that place. Man's convenience, and man's temporal gain — these were furthered. But which of the traders, or of the money-changers, cared in all that for the honour of their God?

Now the Lord would teach every one what befitted the Temple court. If the priests were contented to let such trafficking go on, He was not. So, on this occasion, making a scourge of cords, He drove out the oxen and the sheep, clearing the Temple of their presence. He poured out, too, the changers' money, and overthrew their tables. He acted with authority, and no one resisted Him. He spoke, too, with authority to those who sold doves. "Take these things hence," were the words of the eternal Son; "make not My Father's house an house of merchandise." And they carried them away. The sheep and the oxen went forth at His bidding. Were they not His creatures? The money-changers saw their coin strewed on the ground. Those who sold doves carried them away. The court, however crowded it had been, was thus cleared at once. Resistless was His word. No trader, no money-changer, refused compliance. The latter very likely gathered up their scattered coin, but ventured not to set up afresh their tables.

AT JERUSALEM CLEANSING THE TEMPLE (vv. 13-25)

From Cana He went to Capernaum, His mother and brethren being with Him, as well as His disciples, and stayed briefly there. It was here that Peter, Andrew, James and John lived (Mark 1:21-29). But as the Passover drew near He went up to Jerusalem. The Passover had been called in Leviticus 23:4-5 “a feast of Jehovah,” but it had degenerated into merely “the Passover of the Jews.” The holy character of the temple itself was desecrated by the greed of men. They may piously affirm that they had brought the oxen, sheep and doves there as a convenience for those desiring to offer sacrifices, and that money changing was for the convenience of those who had come from other countries; but the bald truth was that money-making was their object. The place for this was in the business markets. These creatures of sacrifice of course all really speak of Christ: the ox, of His devoted service toward God; the sheep, of His submission to God; the dove, of His purity before God. How revolting then that these should be sold for monetary profit!

The Lord does not hesitate in using a scourge to drive the oxen and sheep out, nor to pour out the change of the money-changers, nor to overturn their tables, and to command the sellers of doves to take them away. He claims His Father's house for His Father, where men's merchandising is to have no place.

Observe the moral and spiritual power here that finds no active opposition from the Jews. However bitter their resentment, they could not resist this honorable action on His Father's behalf. The quotation from Psalm 69:9 is at the time remembered by His disciples: for when that which was totally unbecoming to His Father's nature had dared to invade His Father's house, this could not but occasion a burning zeal in His soul. Let us take a solemn lesson from this as to what is becoming to God's house, the assembly of God, today.