Sunday Sermon, Mar. 7, 2021; "The Temple Cleansing"

The Third Sunday in Lent: March 7, 2021

Pastor Mark Wiesenborn

St. Matthew Lutheran Church, Houston, Texas

Grace, mercy, and peace be to you from God, our almighty Father, and from our beloved Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Dear friends in Christ, the unexpected is what keeps sports fans watching games. The unexpected is what makes jokes funny. The unexpected gives us something to talk about, because “You’ll never guess what so-and-so did.” We like the unexpected… sometimes. Life would get pretty boring if you always knew what was going to happen next.

And yet we crave stability. For the most part we live like we expect things to be pretty much the same today as they were yesterday. After all, even the Bible tells us that “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.” [Hebrews 13:8] But changes are a normal part of life. For example, we know that Daylight Savings Time will go into effect one week from this morning, and it always messes with our body clocks. We expect to wake up the next morning just like we do every day, but in “springing forward” many will be trying to adjust their body clocks for several days! When bad things happen and life changes for the worse, we long for the good old days because we somehow recall that things were more predictable back then. We believe life should make sense. So should God.

And that is where today’s Gospel text comes in. None of those people in the Temple expected the chaos of that day. They expected everything to go on as it always had every Passover before. There were Jews coming in from other countries who did not have the local currency and could not afford to bring their animals on a long journey – and so there was nothing wrong with merchants changing money and selling local livestock for Temple sacrifices. It is just that the merchants should never have set up shop inside the Temple entrance area. But they did, because they had always done it that way for as long as they could remember. They never thought that some guy from out of town named Jesus would storm in to drive out the merchants and livestock like a bunch of evil spirits. That had never happened before!

And here is where things start hitting us. Because when Jesus drives the merchants out of the Temple, He does more than upset their tables – Jesus upsets us a bit too. This does not fit into the type of Jesus most people like to hear about or talk about. More than one person has thought this story does not belong in the Bible. A few wonder if Jesus looked back on this incident and regretted doing it – as if the sinless Son of God had let His temper rage out of control like you and I might do. I can tell you I am not comfortable thinking about Jesus like this either.

Yes, our Lord is angry in this text. And it is a righteous and holy anger. Zeal for God’s house consumes Jesus. His disciples remember that was written in Psalm 69:9 as they see His face turn fierce, and hear the sternness in his voice.

Search the Old Testament and you will find out that when God starts talking about His zeal, usually sinners are about to feel the heat of His wrath. For instance, in Ezekiel chapter 5, God announces that He is about to punish the people of Jerusalem with exile – and deaths from famine, plague, and warfare. After all of this is completed, God declares, “Thus shall my anger spend itself, and I will vent my fury upon them and satisfy myself. And they shall know that I am the LORD – that I have spoken in my jealousy – when I spend my fury upon them.” [Ezekiel 5:13]. Why was God so upset? Because the people’s worship had become idolatrous and false. They had defiled God’s sanctuary with detestable practices and abominations. [5:11]

Likewise, many of the other wrath and zeal passages are also aimed at sinful worship practices. In Deuteronomy chapter 29 [:18-21], Moses warns the Lord’s Exodus people, “Beware lest there be among you a man or woman or clan or tribe whose heart is turning away today from the LORD our God to go and serve the gods of those nations. Beware lest there be among you a root bearing poisonous and bitter fruit, one who, when he hears the words of this sworn covenant, blesses himself in his heart, saying, ‘I shall be safe, though I walk in the stubbornness of my heart.’ This will lead to the sweeping away of moist and dry alike. The LORD will not be willing to forgive him, but rather the anger of the LORD and his jealousy will smoke against that man, and the curses written in this book will settle upon him, and the LORD will blot out his name from under heaven. And the LORD will single him out from all the tribes of Israel for calamity, in accordance with all the curses of the covenant written in this Book of the Law.”

The Temple merchants thought they were safe, even though they persisted in going their own way apart from the Lord – and worse, their buying and selling distracted people from their own devotion to the Lord. They had been allowed to dishonor God’s House for so long that their practices began to seem good and necessary. They never expected God to show His zeal and wrath through Jesus.

A zealous and wrathful Lord Jesus makes us a bit uncomfortable – at least it does when we are honest with ourselves about our sinfulness. Just like the merchants, we expect that we will be safe, even though we persist in going our own sinful ways. God has every right to aim His zeal and wrath in our direction too. Our hearts have divided loyalties. Heaven knows that we would rather have conflict over unimportant things than over eternal things. Heaven knows we get into disagreements about the weather, about politics, about sports, rather than try to speak God’s Holy Scriptures to our neighbor – which He has given to us “for teaching, rebuking, correcting, and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.” [2ndTimothy 3:16-17]

Seeing Jesus not hiding from conflict with the wicked, but consumed with zeal for God’s house makes our devotion to the Lord look all the worse – because we have been devoted to ourselves, our possessions, our friendships in this world that is passing away. We would prefer to go back a few verses in John chapter 2, and hear about kind and gracious Jesus who changes large vessels of water into really great wine for the wedding reception at Cana. Or move ahead into John chapter 3, where Jesus talks about new birth into the Kingdom of God through Water and the Spirit. There we hear Him say that the Son of God has not come into the world to condemn it but to save it. Yet today we find Jesus violently rebuking. We would rather not see this Jesus – and yet they are two sides of the same Savior Jesus.

These are two sides of the same Jesus who will be destroyed on the Cross for you – and more than that, raised to life for you, just as He says today: “Destroy this temple, and I will raise it again in three days.” He who held a whip in the Temple will suffer the whipping of the Temple of His own body.

The Apostle Paul says, “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us, for it is written: ‘Cursed is everyone who is hung on a tree.’” [Galatians 3:13] That is something completely unexpected. Man’s mind says, “Do your best to walk the straight and narrow, and God will be pleased with you. Otherwise, lookout. You do the crime, you do the time.” Paul says we should instead be united in the same mind as Christ: “The foolishness of God is wiser than man’s wisdom and the weakness of God is stronger than man’s strength.” [1st Corinthians 1:25] Who among us has the strength to pay back to God what we owe Him? None of us. And none of us would ever have guessed that God would become weak in order to save us, even becoming a curse for us!

We deserved God’s curses for our sinful anger, for our divided loyalties, for our going our own unholy ways. Yet Christ died to free us from the curses and threats of God’s Law. In our place, He hung on the Tree and suffered under God’s zeal and wrath as if He were the criminal, the liar, the traitor, the corrupt merchant; as if He had been silent about God’s Word; as if His holy heart had turned away from the Lord. He carried all your sins in the Temple of His body to the Cross. All the curses written in the Scriptures against you fell upon Jesus. The Son of God was destroyed so that you would be rescued from destruction, and named a child of God. How foolish we would be now to follow our own foolishness again, to reject Him who raised His body again in three days for us. How foolish for us to lead ourselves and others into eternal destruction and away from Christ Crucified for us.

Dear Baptized Children of God, that is what we are – Children of God. How great is the love God the Father has lavished upon us that we should be called that. And like children, we do not understand everything while it is happening until we reach maturity. A father’s yelling upsets his daughter while she is peacefully playing outside. She does not realize her father is not yelling at her, but at the vicious-looking stray dog nearby that was threatening her safety.

Likewise, Jesus is consumed with zeal for God’s house, not for the sake of the building, but for the sake of the safety of God’s people. All those Old Testament passages about the Lord’s zeal and anger are examples of God barking His warnings at dangerous enemies who put His people in spiritual danger.

And so, today, when we hear about Jesus driving out the merchants and livestock like a bunch of evil spirits, it is because they had dared to make the Father’s house into a market. They had crowded God’s people out of the place where He came to bless and forgive them. The sacrifices, the priests, even the Temple building itself, were supposed to point to the Christ… who was to come as the Lamb of God… who came to take away the sins of the world and cleanse us with His precious blood. Souls were dying in unbelief because prices were being proclaimed more often than hope being held out in the Promised Messiah. The shepherds of Israel had abandoned their posts, leaving God’s flock to the wolves. And that made Jesus angry enough to risk being accused of disturbing the peace when He turned the tables and made the coins roll everywhere. In Christ Jesus, suddenly the Lord has come to purify His Temple [Malachi 3] and to remove all traders from His House [Zechariah 14:21] just as the Old Testament promised the Messiah would do. Once again, Jesus fulfills the Scriptures.

A zealous and wrathful Jesus is the same kind and gracious Savior who will not break a bruised reed, nor snuff out your smoldering wick of faith. When Christ comes to battle for our salvation, Isaiah says, “He puts on righteousness as His breastplate, and the helmet of salvation on His head; He puts on the garments of vengeance and wraps Himself in zeal as in a cloak.” [Isaiah 59:17]

He directs His anger against those who put your faith and salvation in danger. In other passages, Jesus rebukes those who get in the way of letting the little children come to Him. [Luke 18:16-17] His anger also shows when He speaks against false teachers who would destroy souls by leading them astray. In short, whenever the Word of God is exchanged for a lie that turns people toward darkness and eternal death, Jesus responds with righteous anger.

In last week’s Gospel reading from Mark chapter 8 we heard Jesus rebuke Peter, when Peter tried to stop Him from going to the Cross. And because of that rebuke, calling and imploring Peter to turn from his sin and live, something else in today’s text becomes clear. Jesus does not simply drive out His enemies from the Temple for the sake of His people – but also for the sake of those merchants. He wants those merchants to turn from their sins and live too, before it is too late. Jesus does not call lightning down from Heaven to destroy them on the spot so that they will face the eternal judgment. Instead He rebukes them so that they might know that “now is the time of God’s favor, now is the day of salvation.” [2 Corinthians 6:2]

Parents get angry when they find someone hurting their children. Yet we are the Children of God, and so often we are more like the daughter upset because she did not expect her father to yell. We worry that His anger might be aimed at us. We do not always realize that God is snarling at our enemies until we reach maturity. We seldom understand unexpected events at the time they occur. The disciples do not understand all that Jesus said and did on that day in the Temple either. That understanding only came with maturity – as John notes, “After Jesus was raised from the dead, His disciples recalled what He had said. Then they believed the Scriptures and the words that Jesus had spoken.”

May the Lord grant us grace to remember, believe and trust everything that is spoken by the Son of God – Jesus our Savior, and our dear friend!

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

GOSPEL LESSON – John 2:13-22 [ESV] 

13 The Passover of the Jews was at hand, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. 14In the temple he found those who were selling oxen and sheep and pigeons, and the money-changers sitting there. 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.” 17 His disciples remembered that it was written, “Zeal for your house will consume me.”

18 So the Jews said to him, “What sign do you show us for doing these things?” 19 Jesus answered them, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” 20 The Jews then said, “It has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and will you raise it up in three days?” 21 But he was speaking about the temple of his body. 22 When therefore he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this, and they believed the Scripture and the word that Jesus had spoken.