Key Verse: “After making a whip out of cords, he drove everyone out of the temple with their sheep and oxen. He also poured out the money changers’ coins and overturned the tables. 16 He told those who were selling doves, “Get these things out of here! Stop turning my Father’s house into a marketplace!” 17 And his disciples remembered that it is written: Zeal for your house will consume me.” (John 2:15-17 CSB)
When Jesus arrived in the temple in Jerusalem, He didn’t like what He found. In fact, He was very upset. It wasn’t the kind of anger that you and I typically experience. Rather, it was a pure and righteous anger at what was happening there.
The Jewish Passover was an important occasion. It was a time each year for the Jewish people to make a pilgrimage to Jerusalem to make sacrifices and to intentionally remember and reflect on God’s deliverance of His people. It was a feast of celebration and of worship. As people gathered in the temple, they were to do so for the purposes of worship and prayer.
But this is not what Jesus found in the temple. “In the temple, he found people selling oxen, sheep and doves, and he also found the money changers sitting there” (v.14). Jesus would have none of it. Making a whip out of cords, “he drove everyone out of the temple with their sheep and oxen. He also poured out the money changers’ coins and overturned the tables” (v.15). He kicked out those who were selling doves and told them, “Stop turning my Father’s house into a marketplace” (v.16). It would have been quite the scene to witness!
Why was Jesus so upset with what He had found? Why such passion demonstrated in this way? Rather than being a “house of prayer for all nations” (Mark 11:17), the temple had become a place to make a profit. Rather than a place to draw near to the Lord in reverent worship, it had become a center of trade and commerce. The sacred space set apart for worship had been corrupted and contaminated by other things. Ultimately, what drove Jesus’ passion in this way was His zeal for His Father’s house. His disciples recognized this, remembering the words of Psalm 69, “Zeal for your house will consume me.”
Take a moment for prayerful personal reflection. If Jesus were to walk into our place of worship, how would He react? What would be His response to the worship that He encounters? Would He find people pure in the devotion to the Lord, passionate in their worship of Him? Or would He find something else?
Like those He encountered in the temple, it is not hard to get off track in how we worship God. When our worship become simply an outward, passionless exercise, when it is about our personal preferences and what we get out of it, or when gathering together for worship fails to be a priority at all, then our worship has become corrupted and contaminated. We are missing the mark.
Invite God’s Spirit to help you worship Jesus today with a pure heart. Ask Him to infuse you with a fresh passion to praise and exalt Jesus above all else. This is the kind of worship that pleases God.
Prayer: Father, forgive me for making worship about myself and other things. Jesus, I want to praise and exalt you with a pure heart. Fill me with fresh passion for you. Overflow my heart with praise to you today. You are worthy of it all. Amen.
Author: Jonathan Miller has served in pastoral roles for more than 13 years in churches in Barrie, Oakville and Burlington, Ontario. He currently serves as the Chief Operating Officer at Prison Fellowship Canada, a ministry that mobilizes and equips local churches to engage in the restorative work of prisoners, ex-prisoners, their families, and victims across Canada. Jon holds degrees from McMaster University and Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. He and his wife Adrienne have been married since 2004, and live in Burlington, Ontario with their 4 children. Jon’s greatest passion is to know Jesus and to see lives transformed by Him and for Him.
