Day 5 - John 2:13-22
07 Jan 2017
For some people, the idea that Jesus ever got angry does not sit very well with who they think he is. Gentle Jesus meek and mild - yes. Jesus who made a whip and drove people out of the temple - surely not?
But that is what we see in this passage. The time is the celebration of the Passover, where the Jews remembered their rescue from slavery in Egypt. We already know that Jesus is the true passover lamb (remember what John the Baptist has said about Jesus in chapter 1). Everything that event pointed to, Jesus is going to fulfil. So you might hope that God’s people in God’s house at Passover time may recognise who Jesus is and worship him.
However, nothing could be further from the truth. Far from focusing on the Lord, the temple is full of business deals. People needed to be able to buy animals to give to the Lord, but not inside the temple.
Why is Jesus so angry? Because there is nothing more important than the true worship of God. God must be glorified. And nothing harms human beings more than the glory of God being obscured. If we think we are worshipping God but instead are simply going through the motions, or worse, just carrying on as if God was not present with us, we are deceiving ourselves.
Ultimately the only way that true worship can happen is if the temple is destroyed (vs 19). But Jesus is not talking about the physical temple in Jerusalem (although that will be destroyed in AD 70, never to be rebuilt). That temple was pointing to Jesus Christ himself - the ultimate meeting point between God and man (remember what John said in his introduction in 1:14, that the word has become flesh and dwelt - literally “tabernacled” - among us). Our hearts are so hard, our sin is so serious, that the only way we can truly worship is if we are united to him as he dies and rises again.
There is a further challenge to us, this side of Jesus death and resurrection. If Jesus got so angry with those in the temple here, then how much more angry must he be when those who claim to be Christian churches don’t take worshipping him seriously?