The Main Idea

Jesus, our living Savior, knows our hearts and purifies like a refiner’s fire so that His Father’s Church remains holy and acceptable to Him bringing glory to His name.

Digging Deeper

This last half of John 2 can easily be divided into three sections. Verses 13-17 talk of the zeal of Jesus for His church. Verses 18-22 talk of Jesus’ death and resurrection. Finally, verses 23-25 talk of Jesus’ sufficiency in the Father and knowledge of men’s hearts.

Notice that in each section John helps us better understand why each of these sections was written. The last verse in each section (17, 21-22, and 25) contain the summary of what was just written. Here, John is helping to focus our minds on why each of these sections was written so that we might better understand Jesus as the one true Messiah and Son of God.

John 2:13–17

13The Passover of the Jews was near, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem.

14And He found in the temple those who were selling oxen and sheep and doves, and the money changers seated at their tables.

15And He made a scourge of cords, and drove them all out of the temple, with the sheep and the oxen; and He poured out the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables;

16and to those who were selling the doves He said, “Take these things away; stop making My Father’s house a place of business.”

17His disciples remembered that it was written, “Zeal for Your house will consume me.”

The scene is set at the time when the Passover feast was nearing. Jesus went to Jerusalem as it was the custom of any Jewish male over the age of 12. You could just imagine the amount of people packed into Jerusalem at this time. Think of a crowded mall during Christmas season and then multiply that by a lot.

People came to celebrate Passover in which they remembered God’s deliverance of the Jews from Egyptian slavery. This deliverance was through the blood of a lamb. It’s no coincidence that Jesus was here to celebrate Passover as He was sent to deliver all people from the slavery of sin through His blood…the perfect Lamb of God. But immediately in verse 14 we see conflict arise. Not everyone had come to observe the Passover and give glory to God for what He had done. We are told that there were people doing business in the temple of all places. Did these people not have any shred of reverence for God’s house?!?! With all the crowds in Jerusalem, people had set up tables to exchange currency for the temple tax and to sell animals for the sacrifice. Not everyone could bring their animals for sacrifice, especially if they had to travel long distances, nor did some have the right currency to pay taxes. So enterprising people set up tables to do this business. But one thing that is missing from this story is if these businessmen were doing business ethically or unethically. Knowing this is missing from the story is important. It lets us know that we do not need to focus on that topic to understand the full meaning of this story. However, as a side note, in Mathew’s accounting of this story the idea of unethical business does come up in John 2:14:

14And He found in the temple those who were selling oxen and sheep and doves, and the money changers seated at their tables.

Now in verses 14-15 we hit the climax and resolution of this story. After seeing what these people were doing in His Father’s house (the temple), He made a whip and drove them all out of the temple. This word “all” in the Greek is strongly emphasized (due to word order), meaning that Jesus drove ALL out of the temple. John goes on to say that he even drove the animals out of the temple. Additionally, the money tables were overturned, spilling all the coins randomly onto the floor. Just think of how these businessmen felt as they saw their money spilled and mixed with other people’s coins on the floor. But even with all this, nothing is said of anyone rising up to challenge Jesus (well, yet, at least) or of restraining Jesus. No rioting was mentioned either.

If we just read this story as Jesus righting a wrong or just driving out businesses from the temple, we might miss the full point of the story (in verse 17)…that Jesus has an all consuming desire to please the Father by keeping His house holy and dedicated to the Lord! Today we can read “His house” as the church body that we learned about in our Ephesians study. The house of the Lord (a physical structure) has been replaced with His body of believers (a human structure).

The OT verse that God called to the disciples’ minds here in verse 17 was the fulfillment of Malachi 3:1–3:

1“Behold, I am going to send My messenger, and he will clear the way before Me. And the Lord, whom you seek, will suddenly come to His temple; and the messenger of the covenant, in whom you delight, behold, He is coming,” says the Lord of hosts.

2“But who can endure the day of His coming? And who can stand when He appears? For He is like a refiner’s fire and like fullers’ soap.

3“He will sit as a smelter and purifier of silver, and He will purify the sons of Levi and refine them like gold and silver, so that they may present to the Lord offerings in righteousness.

And Jesus’ zeal to present the body of believers as spotless and holy to the Father is one of the utmost importance. Essentially, Jesus’ desire for the holiness of the body is all consuming. Knowing this, we all should live in a righteous fear of the Lord. Righteous fear gives birth to wisdom and wisdom to holy living.

Keeping ourselves holy, worshipful, and free of sin is imperative. We should not look at all like this temple that had allowed businesses to pop up and crowd out the real reason for that temple to exist…the worship of our holy God who demands holiness in worship. We must also recognize that our purity (or impurity) will affect the larger body of Christ with whom we worship side-by-side. A little leven moves quickly throughout the whole mixture. Likewise, impurity or purity will also move quickly throughout the body of Christ.

Let’s begin to pray for the continued purity of worship both individually and corporately throughout our church. I for one certainly do not want Jesus to have to do the work of driving out things that adversely affect my worship of Him. For He is like a refiner’s fire and fullers’ soap (you should Google fullers’ soap). Disciplining ourselves daily is far better than Him having to discipline us as we have seen Jesus do here. This is not easy, but remember that we have the Holy Spirit (our Helper) to graciously and mercifully help us in our time of need.

John 2:18–22

18The Jews then said to Him, “What sign do You show us as your authority for doing these things?”

19Jesus answered them, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.”

20The Jews then said, “It took forty-six years to build this temple, and will You raise it up in three days?”

21But He was speaking of the temple of His body.

22So when He was raised from the dead, His disciples remembered that He said this; and they believed the Scripture and the word which Jesus had spoken.

Here it is! We knew someone was going to try to stand up to Jesus and put Him in His place. These Jews, most likely either the temple authorities or perhaps some of the Sanhedrin, approached Jesus demanding a sign to prove His authority for the act of cleansing the temple. Notice how the question was worded. The Jews didn’t humbly ask Jesus to show His authority. They essentially demanded that He present a sign of His authority to which Jesus answers that “this” temple will be destroyed and I (Jesus) will raise it up in three days.

You see, these Jews did not comprehend that the Light of the world was standing right in front of them for they chose to remain in darkness so that their deeds would not be exposed (more on that next week). To be sure, it wasn’t yet His time to reveal Himself as Messiah to the world. However, His disciples were beginning to understand.

However, if we take a step back, we do see something that would indicate Jesus’ absolute authority over all. That is, no one took the next step to lay ahold of Jesus and throw Him in jail. In fact, the only conflict we see is Jews demanding a sign and then mocking Him for thinking He will rebuild the physical temple in three days, which took 46 years to build. Certainly Jesus’ cleansing of the temple would have hurt the income of the money changers and those selling livestock. It possibly could have hurt the temple finances as well if the people could not get their money changed to the correct currency with which to pay the temple tax. And with such a large crowd in attendance surely they could have easily grabbed Jesus and brought Him to the Roman authorities to be jailed…but they didn’t.

Not only was it not Jesus’ time to publicly declare Himself Messiah but it was also not His time to be taken to the Roman authorities for punishment. Jesus had placed Himself in the hands of His Father and His Father had orchestrated everything according to His good and just will.

And in verse 21 we see the reasoning for this story. Jesus was talking of His own body, the new temple of God. But even His own disciples didn’t get His meaning at that point in time, for it took Jesus’ death and resurrection before they were reminded of this event and fully understood its significance (verse 22).

So to in our evangelistic efforts what we say to others about Christ and how we act as Christians may not always bear fruit immediately. It is possible that God will bring to mind our words and deeds to those unbelievers we witness to at a later time when they are ready to understand. All things are under Christ’s control and will happen at His appointed time in the life of the unbeliever and believer alike.

Now we don’t have to go to a physical temple in order to ask forgiveness for our sins and to worship the holy triune God. Our bodies are the new temple of God and we can worship Him in spirit and truth. We studied this throughout Ephesians when we learned of the great mysteries of what God was doing in Ephesians 2:19–22:

19So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints, and are of God’s household,

20having been built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus Himself being the corner stone,

21in whom the whole building, being fitted together, is growing into a holy temple in the Lord,

22in whom you also are being built together into a dwelling of God in the Spirit.

But are we to forsake meeting together? Of course not, for it says in 1 Corinthians 14:26:

26What then, brothers? When you come together, each one has a hymn, a lesson, a revelation, a tongue, or an interpretation. Let all things be done for building up.

“When” we meet…yes, we do not need to meet in a special temple, one built and dedicated to God as it was in the Old Testament. However, the body of Christ, His glorious temple is being woven together through us…the individual stones that are building a dwelling place for the Holy Spirit. Therefore, to glorify God and to grow as children of God we must continue to meet together as one unified body in Christ.

John 2:23–25

23Now when He was in Jerusalem at the Passover, during the feast, many believed in His name, observing His signs which He was doing.

24But Jesus, on His part, was not entrusting Himself to them, for He knew all men,

25and because He did not need anyone to testify concerning man, for He Himself knew what was in man.

Again in verse 23 John sets the scene for us. It is the time of the Passover feast. Jesus is performing miracles and people were seeing these miracles and believing in Him. In the Greek we get a better sense of what is going on here. Essentially, as Jesus was in the midst of performing signs, people were being drawn to Him. Notice that John does not say that people were drawn to Jesus prior to Him performing these signs. Rather, it was during these signs. To put it bluntly, people were drawn to Him because of these signs.

John also says that many people were believing in His name. This statement is key to understanding the next two verses 24-25. To believe in Jesus is to make Him the object of your faith. That’s what this verse is saying. Many people put their faith in Jesus because they saw the signs He performed. But is this the real saving faith? To answer this we must read on.

In verse 24 it surprisingly says that Jesus was not entrusting Himself to them. This word “entrust” in the Greek is the same word for believe (found previously in verse 23). The many believed in Him, but He did not put His trust in them. It sounds like Jesus did not believe in their belief. And this is exactly what John is saying here. But why? I thought that the many here had put their faith in Jesus. After all, haven’t I put my faith in Jesus too…and I never even saw the signs that He performed?

There’s a lot to think about here. You see, at this point the Holy Spirit had not yet been poured out (that’s later in Acts). So can we really say that these people had their hearts changed? It is possible that some may have been changed, but since Jesus was not believing in their belief overall we can infer that this was only a surface faith and not a permanent, life changing, saving faith.

But why? Well, verse 23 gives us another clue. The people believed in His name because of the signs. The signs were what drew people to Jesus, but the signs were not enough to continue their faith in Him.

Jeremiah 17:10:

10“I, the Lord, search the heart, I test the mind, Even to give to each man according to his ways, According to the results of his deeds.

Jesus knew the hearts of the people that were believing in His name. He knew that they were drawn to the signs He performed, but signs alone are not enough to keep a person’s faith alive and focused on Jesus.

Later in John 6:66 we see what happened to many of these so-called disciples of Jesus:

66After this many of His disciples turned back and no longer walked with Him.

Immediately before this Jesus taught that He was the bread of life and that all who want eternal life must feed on His flesh and drink His blood (read John 6:22-71 for the full story). His disciples started to grumble after hearing this and as we see in verse 66 that many of His disciples left Him. In the Greek we see another imperfect verb “no longer walked”, giving the sense that this was a permanent condition that began in the past and continued on without end. To be sure, many of these disciples that turned away were only following Jesus because He performed the signs at the passover feast.

Later on we will hear Jesus lay out what is necessary for a truly saving faith in John 8:30–31:

30As He spoke these things, many came to believe in Him.

31So Jesus was saying to those Jews who had believed Him, “If you continue in My word, then you are truly disciples of Mine;

Even here Jesus is not placing His trust (belief) in the Jews in this verse that believed in Him. Rather, He shows what a true saving faith looks like. Saving faith shows itself in a continued walk in the Lord. It shows itself when we humble ourselves and repent continuously. It shows itself in our continued obedience to our loving God.

I’ll end with a story. My future wife (with whom I was head-over-heels in love) and I were on a mission trip during our college days in a southern state. I think it was Louisiana. We were going out to talk to people in a poorer housing area that surrounded one of the churches we were helping. After a couple of hours, we all met back at the front of the church. A seemingly wonderful thing had happened to all of us who went out to talk to people and witness for Christ. There had been many converts that day. It seemed as if the Holy Spirit was moving throughout that area and the harvest was ripe for the picking. All of us were on a spiritual high as we started regaling each other of our stories of how many people were believing in Jesus.

But that feeling would not last. As the pastor of the church arrived to see how things had gone, we spoke of how many people had come to believe in Jesus and that surely there were many more to be saved that day. All during this time his expression did not change. Surely this was a good thing; shouldn’t he also be praising God with us? After all of us, overly excited college students, calmed down a bit the pastor set us straight. He said that the people who had accepted Christ have done so many times for him and others who had witnessed around that area in the past. What!?!? Well, the proverbial rug had just been pulled out from under all of us. Imagine going from a spiritual high to the stark reality of what had happened in less that 60 seconds.

You see, a lot of these people (I hope not all) were just there to “get something” from the church and its workers. They weren’t interested in Christ; they were interested in their next meal or collecting enough money for rent. It was at this point that I realized that you cannot be certain about a person’s spiritual state just by witnessing, praying a prayer, and then leaving to go to the next house.

Remember what Jesus plainly stated in John 8:31, “If you continue in My word, then you are truly disciples of Mine”. Unfortunately, there was (and had been) no evidence of them continuing to walk with the Lord. This was a very difficult lesson to learn, but it brings me closer to Jesus who had to deal with those that only had a surface faith.

[Verse 25 is a perfect segue into one of the most famous verses found in John 3. More on that next week.]