John 2:15-16

“¹⁵ And making a whip of cords, He drove them all out of the temple, with the sheep and oxen. And He poured out the coins of the money-changers and overturned their tables. ¹⁶ And He told those who sold the pigeons, ‘Take these things away; do not make my Father’s house a house of trade.”

            In the previous passage, John set the stage for what Jesus was going to do in this passage. This is a constant theme throughout the gospel. John sets up a scenario for Jesus to react in. This is to show us that by His words, which will be shown increasingly, but also by the actions of Jesus we can learn who He is and by extension who God is. We see what the temple, which should be a place that people humble themselves and come before God, has become a place of where sacrifices are sold and money changes hands almost like a marketplace. John revealed the heart issue at the center of the way the Jews were worshiping. It was not a focus on bringing your sacrifice to God but a focus on the obligation which they did not want to think about until they were at the temple. Instead of preparing their hearts for cleansing, they were preparing to make a transaction and in to this situation Jesus appeared.

            We see a different side of Jesus in this passage. The first thing that Jesus did was make a whip of cords and then He uses it to drive the crowd and the merchants from the temple. This changes what we have seen of Jesus the God man who was baptized by John, called His disciples, and helped his mom in Cana. John had a point in putting this here, though, as it could have happened later in His ministry. John put it here, so people understand that Jesus is not just about teaching people to love their neighbors. He is first about teaching people to love God. It is Jesus’s own love of God as a man that compelled Him to take this drastic action to drive out the people selling in His father’s house.

            As Christians, it is important for us to remember that Jesus wants us to make sure that our lives are completely in line with what God wants for them. We need to, through the power of Jesus, clean out anything that dishonors Him. This can be done through prayer. We need to make sure in our prayer lives that we are constantly requesting to make our lives to be in sync with what God wants. We need to make sure our worship is a soothing aroma to God and not a reflection of a heart that is far away from Him. We make sure this is the case by reading His words to make sure we know what He wants from us.

            To non-Christians, you have been sold a lie about who Jesus is. He is not just a good teacher or some kind of guru. Jesus is the Lord of the universe as we saw in chapter one, and He resents those who would obscure and try to confuse who He is with a caricature. Just as He overturned the tables in the temple so will He overturn any lie about His nature. He wants you to know who He truly is so that you might come to Him and He can clean out your life. Please do not misunderstand; you do not have to clean up your life to come to Jesus. He will clean it up if you will let Him in.