Psalm 69:1-12 Ezekiel 34:1-10 John 2:13-22
Foreshadowing Judgement
Two men once robbed a jewellery store. One was a lawyer and the other was a high school dropout. Both were caught, arrested, convicted, and sentenced to imprisonment. The judge ordered the dropout to be incarcerated for three years, but the lawyer received a ten-year sentence. When questioned about the imbalanced nature of the two sentences, the judge stated that the lawyer knew what was right, and yet he deliberately chose to do what was wrong. Knowing the truth made him more responsible and therefore he deserved a stricter punishment. James said the same about church leaders and teachers…those who know the truth and yet choose to teach what is contrary to the truth will be judged with greater strictness (James 3:1).
The two cleansings (or purifications) of the Temple at the beginning and end of Jesus’ ministry, I believe, serve as boundary markers. The first cleansing is a warning, heralding a time of grace…a time during which Jesus would repeatedly call Israel back to the God revealed in the Scriptures…calling them to the abandonment of the ways of the world and to the submission to the truth of God’s Word. “Why do you call me, Lord,” Jesus asked, “and yet do not do what I tell you?”
The second cleansing marks the end of this period, closing the time frame and heralding a time of judgement. While the first cleansing alerted them of what was to come, the second signalled the beginning of the fulfilment of the warning. The first cleansing exposed the error…the second showed that nothing had changed…the warning had gone unheeded. God was about to deal with the false shepherds. Both cleansings foreshadowed the greater cleansing that would come through the cross, but both also predicted the destruction of the old corrupt order and the rise of the new holy order.
But today we are dealing with the first cleansing…the one that marks the beginning of the period of God’s gracious and merciful reaching out to his people…one which marks the beginning of the long shadow of judgement – the Lord suddenly coming to his temple to purify the sons of Levi – that will ultimately culminate in the Lord leaving the Temple handing it over for devastation and desolation.
I believe that John recorded this event using a common writing design or form called a “quadrumanous chiasm”. Isn’t that a lovely word? Quadrumanous. It just means fourfold, but it just sounds so glamorously intelligent, doesn’t it? The chiastic style was used in many places in the Old Testament, especially the Psalms, as an aid to understanding and memorisation.
What this means is that the Apostle designed the story in such a way that it would highlight the middle section where Jesus quoted from Psalm 69, because Psalm 69 holds the key to the understanding of what Jesus was demonstrating by his actions. If you examine John 2:13-22 you will find this following form:
The Old Covenant Passover (2:13)
The Old Corrupt Temple (2:14)
The Messianic Sign given (2:15-16) (The Lord suddenly coming to his temple to purify the sons
of Levi, Malachi 3) “these things” repeated in 18
The Shadow of Judgement (2:17) with a quotation from Psalm 69
The Messianic Sign demanded (2:18) “these things” from 16
The New Holy Temple (2:19-21)
The New Covenant Passover (2:22)
Now, we don’t have time to go through Psalm 69 today, so we will look at that next week (in other words, do not miss the next gripping instalment), but what we will try to do now is to set ourselves up for what Psalm 69 teaches and how that relates to what Jesus did in this passage. So, what I want us to do is to link the corresponding parts as we go through the passage.
First the Old Covenant Passover was contrasted with the New Covenant Passover in verses 13 and 22. As y’all know, in the Old Covenant Passover, the pure and spotless Passover Lamb was slaughtered, and its blood daubed on the doorposts of the houses of God’s people. The angel of death then passed over the house when he saw the blood. This festival was repeated every year to remind Israel of God’s gracious deliverance from slavery in Egypt and that this deliverance was the basis for the covenantal relationship with him.
But Paul referred to Jesus in 1 Corinthians 5:7 as “our Passover” who was “sacrificed for us”.…in other words for our deliverance from slavery to the greatest captivity of all time...from slavery to sin. The first lamb was a sign…the second the fulfilment. The first was an image…the second was the reality. Of course, the sign was not unimportant…it was necessary as it pointed forward to its greater consequence…but it was just insufficient.
However, the timing of this cleansing is significant as it is also at a Passover that the greatest cleansing of all is fulfilled. This was a time when deliverance from bondage should have been foremost on everyone’s mind. And yet here they were shackled to an empty system of rule and ritual and rite. The symbol of liberty had become a greedy burden. And so, John contrasts this with the far superior deliverance yet to come.
But this contrast leads us to yet another contrast, namely that of the Temple itself. Once again, we see the image compared with the reality. The book of Hebrews tells us that the Temple was a mere copy, a sketch, a shadow, or a replica of the true temple in heaven (Hebrews 8:5, 9:24) A pattern was revealed to Moses so that he could build a physical illustration of a spiritual truth. Everything in and of the Temple was a reflection of what is in and of heaven. So, it was a very serious matter if the priests erred in their duties and responsibilities or worse…if they made up their own rules and did their own thing (think of Hophni and Phineas, the sons of Eli)…because that would result in confusion and a misrepresentation of heaven and a misunderstanding of God and his ways.
For the Old Testament believer, the Temple was the navel of the world, as it represented the nucleus of the cosmos. It was where God had chosen to reveal himself to his people…where he chose to meet with his people. What happened at the Temple influenced all of life. So, if God’s Word was taught and upheld by the priests, then the Temple brought forth life. But the opposite is just as true. If the Word was not taught or if the Word was changed or compromised by the priests, death would flow from its doors. Jeremiah lamented that God’s people had forsaken him, the fountain of living water, and hewn out for themselves broken cisterns. (Jeremiah 2:13)
The prophets spoke of a pure river of water that would flow from the threshold of the Messianic Temple. (See Ezekiel 47:1-12; Joel 3:18; Zechariah 14:8) “On that day,” Zechariah prophesied, “a fountain will be opened to the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem, to cleanse them from sin and impurity.” In the Revelation of Jesus Christ, John described the river of life as flowing from the very throne of God and of the Lamb in the heavenly Jerusalem. Standing on the southern steps during the Festival of Tabernacles, Jesus once more indicated that he was the real Temple when he stated that out of him…from his midst or from his navel, as it were…rivers of living waters would flow.
The Temple in Jesus day was the brainchild of Herod the Great, an Edomite puppet king, who had been placed in that position of power by the Roman government. Construction had begun around 19 BC and it was not completed until the reign of Herod Agrippa in AD 63…ironically just seven years shy of the destruction of Jerusalem. Because of political involvement and interference, the Temple leadership had become corrupt (their High Priest, Caiaphas, had been appointed in AD 18 by the Roman prefect Valerius Gratus). As such the Temple leadership was as corrupt as the Medieval Church at the time of Luther…or perhaps, one might dare to say, as corrupt as some leaders in the modern Church today. When the tail wags the dog, you know you have a problem.
Now, the money changers mentioned here served as agents of exchange. Ironically, the leaders declared that the Tyrian shekel, a coin bearing the image of the Phoenician god Melqart otherwise known as Baal and yet containing at least 94 percent silver, was the only legal currency that was acceptable in the Temple. Now, can you remember someone else receiving coins of silver in the Temple? Yes, no doubt it was this same acceptable shekel taken from the Temple Treasury and given to Judas to betray the Lord Jesus…30 pieces of silver.
Do you get the tragedy of this drama? The money changers changed “unclean” money for “clean” money so that the worshippers could buy their sacrificial animals. Judas would exchange and destroy the clean sacrificial Lamb of God for what became unclean or blood money, and the leaders would exchange and destroy the true Temple to preserve their own corrupt temple! A Temple, I hasten to add, that had never been blessed with the Shekinah Glory of God as with the Tabernacle and the Temple of Solomon!
In this passage, Jesus gave the leaders two clear Messianic signs. The first was the cleansing itself. In Malachi 3 the prophet tells his readers that the Lord would suddenly come to his temple like a refiner and purifier of silver to purify the sons of Levi until they would present righteous offerings to the Lord. Seriously, you can’t make this up!
So, the very act of cleansing the Temple ought to have set their minds alight…but as with all unregenerate minds, they missed the sign by a mile. We know that because they then asked for one…they dared to ask for a sign.
And how did Jesus respond? With yet another comparison, yes! “Destroy this Temple, and in three days I will raise it up!” Of course, they don’t get that either as their eyes were so firmly focused on the copy that they simply could not see the reality.
But here’s a question. Did the leaders ever see this sign…this sign predicted by Jesus? Yes, they did. Remember after Jesus’ resurrection the terrified Roman guards reported what they had witnessed…the resurrection of Jesus in three days! And how did the leaders respond? The same as they did with all the signs. It is interesting to note here that they bribed the guards by giving them a large sum of money…perhaps the same silver Temple shekel…we don’t know.
This brings us to the centre of the chiasm…remember that wonderful word? Quadrumanous chiasm. Just saying that makes me feel super intelligent. Feel free to use it when you get together for coffee with your friends.
The centre to which John leads us by means of this chiasm is found in verse 17. To most folks this may not look like a big deal, but to the first century believer, all sorts of alarm bells would be ringing at this point. You need to remember that when anyone quoted a line from the Old Testament, the listener would quite naturally bring to mind the teaching or the message or the context, if you will, of the whole passage as well as other related passages.
This quotation is taken from Psalm 69 which we will look at in more detail next week, but for the sake of clarity, I want to quickly sketch the outline of what we will examine next week. The Psalm has to do with the unjust betrayal and rejection of the Psalmist by those closest to him. But in order to appreciate the connection between Psalm 69 and the cleansing of the Temple, we need to remember that those who should have been the closest to Jesus…the leaders, the priests, the Levites…were, in fact, the furthest. Those who taught the law, who served in the Temple, who prepared and offered the sacrifices, who daily witnessed and observed the signs of which Jesus was the reality, were those who were far from him.
The Temple was meant to be an agent of life…as we’ve already seen, Ezekiel described it as a place from where a river of life-giving water flows. It was meant to mirror Paradise…the Garden of Eden with all the rivers flowing out from it to water the world. But the serpent was once again at work and what was meant to bring life, brought death. Remember, Jesus likened the leaders to whited sepulchres full of death. He also told them that their ministry made their converts twice the children of hell as what they were. The Temple was a centre of death, not life. The waters flowing from its doors were poisoned with the false and worldly teachings of those Jesus called the children of Satan. Wormwood had fallen right into the centre of the fountain, and it turned the waters that issued from the Temple bitter, and many people died from the bitter waters. (Revelation 8:11)
So, the Temple had to be cleansed so that it could become a source of life once more. But if it resisted purification, it would be destroyed and replaced with a New Temple from which a river would flow to bring healing to the nations. I suppose it would be fair to say that this ought to be a warning to the Church as well.
Referring to Psalm 69 therefore served as a damning indictment against the sons of Levi as they spewed forth the sewage of Satan and drowned those who sank in the mire they created. It was Jesus’ zeal for God’s house that drove him to expose this candy-coated poisoned death pill for what it was…and they responded by planning to push him under their flood of filth as well.
In neglecting to be cleansed…by neglecting to caste off their compromise with the political powers…the leaders brought upon themselves the fury of the Holy God as in AD 70 he came once more to his Temple…not to cleanse, but to destroy. A modern-day application is easy to make…it doesn’t even have to be mentioned by name.
It is a serious thing indeed for the people of God to misrepresent him before the world. Like the lawyer, we ought to know better and therefore we will be judged with greater strictness. Our Lord may warn many times, but at some point, he will come to purge and to expel and to terminate. Perhaps the time has come once more for judgement to begin with the household of God…but what will be the end of those who do not obey the Gospel? (1 Peter 4:17)
The Scriptures tell us that we…you and me…collectively and individually…we are the Temple of the Holy Spirit. If Jesus were to walk into your life today, what would he cleanse? What would he overturn? What would he cast out?
Shall we pray?
© Johannes W H van der Bijl 2023
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