New Life in Jesus!

John 2:13-22 New International Version (NIV)

Jesus Clears the Temple Courts

13 When it was almost time for the Jewish Passover, Jesus went up to Jerusalem. 14 In the temple courts he found people selling cattle, sheep and doves, and others sitting at tables exchanging money. 15 So he made a whip out of cords, and drove all from the temple courts, both sheep and cattle; he scattered the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables. 16 To those who sold doves he said, “Get these out of here! Stop turning my Father’s house into a market!” 17 His disciples remembered that it is written: “Zeal for your house will consume me.”[a] 18 The Jews then responded to him, “What sign can you show us to prove your authority to do all this?” 19 Jesus answered them, “Destroy this temple, and I will raise it again in three days.” 20 They replied, “It has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and you are going to raise it in three days?” 21 But the temple he had spoken of was his body. 22 After he was raised from the dead, his disciples recalled what he had said. Then they believed the scripture and the words that Jesus had spoken. Friday, August 28 - John 2:13-22 In John’s Gospel, the “cleansing of the Temple” is similar to the episode in Matthew, but a little more explicit. John leaves out the blind, lame and children coming to Jesus and focuses on friction between Jesus and the “Jews.” John lumps all the “Jews” together, rather than singling out the Pharisees or any other specific group. He is showing how Jesus came to disrupt the entire Jewish way of thinking about their relationship with God. The Temple had been the symbolic place where God “dwelt” on earth. It was like God’s “home” away from heaven. But the Jews turned God’s “home” into a place of busy-ness. Not a business like a grocery store, but a place of busy religion where people are caught up in what they do for God rather than what God does for them! This is why Jesus says that what we do is “tear down” God’s temple, which is actually Jesus, and God rebuilds it/him through the resurrection. God’s work is raising us up in forgiveness in the new life of Jesus.