Cleaning the Temple (John 2:13-25) || 02/08/26
Sermon Manuscript
I remember when I was doing college ministry at Mississippi State University and one day we set up a table in the lobby of one of the dorms and we were just asking the students to fill out a short questionnaire. And one of the three or so questions we asked was “What do you need to do to go to heaven?” Do you know the number one answer? Obey the Ten Commandments.
This is the most churched state in the country and the top answer was the most wrong. These students had high exposure to Christian teaching, but had distorted it into something utterly unchristian. No one can keep all Ten Commandments for their whole lives. The Ten Commandments were intended to show us the character of God and point us toward our need for forgiveness. These students were taking something that was given by God for our good and turning it into something altogether bad. They had replaced an encounter with God to an exchange with God. And that is exactly what is happening in this passage.
In John 2, Jesus was not mainly angry about the buying and selling of animals themselves, but about what the temple had become. A place where worship had turned into transaction and God’s house had been co-opted by a system that obscured access to the Father. The Court of the Gentiles, the one space meant for prayer for the nations, had been overtaken by commerce. That commerce was likely exploitative and certainly distracting. The machinery of religion had replaced the heart of worship. Jesus wasn’t just confronting corruption, but a whole way of relating to God that had shifted from encounter to exchange.
Now, there has been a long debate on whether Jesus cleansed the temple once or twice. All four gospels record Jesus cleansing the temple, but the other three put it at the end of Jesus’ life and John puts it at the beginning of His ministry. I do think Jesus cleansed the temple two times. Once in the beginning and once at the end because the corruption of the temple system was so central to Jesus’ ministry. John is writing his gospel much later than the other three and I think he very intentionally wants to add this first cleansing to make that point. But, whether you hold to one or two cleansings, it doesn’t change the meaning of this passage. The point is that Jesus didn’t come to improve religion, He came to replace it with Himself.
In this passage, there are three things John wants us to see about the Temple.
- The temple was full, but God was missing 13-17
John tells us that it was Passover. John isn’t just pointing out the time of year, he’s showing the setting. People had come from all over to celebrate and worship. The temple was crowded, animals were everywhere, and everything looked alive. But, it wasn’t about worship, it had become about profit and efficiency. It wasn’t bad that animals were sold. I mean, you can’t expect a traveler from far off to bring their own animals to sacrifice. It was fine that animals were sold, but it was bad that they were sold in the temple and specifically in the place that was set apart for prayers for the nations. The focus wasn’t on worship, it was on profit.
So, the temple was full, but God was missing in their hearts. But God was missing in another way too. He had removed His presence from the Temple. People often forget or don’t know that In Ezekiel chapters ten and eleven, the prophet sees the glory of the Lord depart from the temple because of Israel’s corruption. God’s presence lifts, His Spirit leaves, but the building remains. When the second temple is rebuilt under Zerubbabel and later expanded by Herod, there is no ark of the covenant, no visible glory cloud, and no fire from heaven. The manifest power of God never returns the way it once did.
I’ll never forget being in seminary and taking Intro to Biblical Theology with DA Carson. One of the greatest scholars of our day. I did my final paper on the theme of the temple throughout Scripture and I wrote about God’s Spirit leaving the temple, but then I wrote about God’s Spirit returning to the temple. He wrote in big letters on my paper DID NOT HAPPEN! Not a mistake I’ll make again.
By the time of Jesus, you have a functioning temple, active sacrifices, priests in robes, pilgrims traveling miles, but no visible Glory of God. The machinery is running, but the presence is not dwelling like it once had…that is, until Jesus walked in. The glory that had departed in Ezekiel now returns…not to inhabit the building, but to confront what it had become. So Jesus makes a whip out of chords and overturns the tables and drives the people and animals out of there.
Jesus isn’t just angry about commerce, He’s confronting the illusion that the temple looked alive. And this is what should make this moment so sobering to us. It is possible for worship to continue after the presence has departed. We can maintain the systems, songs, and structures AND still lack the manifest nearness of God.
Largely, this happens in one of two ways. You may think you are a believer, not unlike the students I talked about, but really, you’ve just taken Christian ideas and created a new system of works based religion without any real relationship at all. Or, you can be a believer where all the machinery is going, but the relationship is waning. I’ve experienced this personally. There are seasons in my own life and ministry where I’m doing all the right things, my heart isn’t really connected to God the way He wants.
And if you are in either of those places, God’s desire is to confront you with His covenant jealousy. This is why Jesus quotes Psalm 69 saying, “Zeal for your house will consume me.” This isn’t Jesus showing His bad temper. It’s Jesus showing his jealousy for His Father’s name and for His people. Jealousy can sound like a bad thing, but it depends on what it’s protecting. Sinful jealousy flows from insecurity or ego. It fears losing status, control, or validation. But biblical jealousy is covenantal, not competitive. When God calls Himself a jealous God, He’s not insecure, He’s expressing His protective love that refuses to let what is sacred be degraded or shared with idols.
Think about a husband who is indifferent to his wife’s faithfulness. That’s not healthy, it’s detached. Healthy love guards exclusivity because covenant intimacy is precious. Jesus’ zeal in cleansing the temple is this kind of holy jealousy, not fragile anger. It’s fierce love defending His Father’s honor and the purity of worship. Jealousy is actually quite beautiful when it protects covenantal love.
Jesus will not allow His Father’s name to be attached to an empty shell. And He will not allow an empty shell to lead His people astray. His love is jealous both for the Father and for us. And here is the question this forces on us: is it possible that the machinery is running, but the glory is thin? Is it possible that the songs are being sung, the sermons are being preached, the Bible is being read, but our hearts are still distant?
Some of you may be like those students at Mississippi State. You’ve been around Christian teaching your whole life. You know the vocabulary. You know the expectations. But somewhere along the way, you replaced encounter with exchange. You’re trying to obey your way into heaven.
Others of you truly belong to Christ, but if you’re honest, the relationship feels mechanical. You’re doing all the right things, but your heart is not warm. The temple is busy, but the presence feels faint. Well, here is the good news. Jesus is not walking away from you, He’s walking toward you. He’s confronting our hearts. His jealousy is not against you, it’s for you. He overturns the tables not to destroy worship, but to restore it. He confronts hollow religion because He intends to fill the house again.
And that leads us to the second thing John wants us to see.
- The temple was temporary, but they thought it was ultimate 18-22
When Jesus overturns the tables, the Jewish leaders respond, “What sign do you show us for doing these things?” They don’t ask, “Why are you doing this?” or “Are you claiming to be the Messiah?” or “Is the system corrupt?” They ask for credentials. They ask for them because if you touch the temple, you are touching the center of Jewish life.
The temple wasn’t just a building, it was national identity, political stability, and religious security. It was the place of sacrifice and the symbol of God’s dwelling place. In their minds, it was the most permanent thing about their society. So, Jesus answers them in a way that sounds almost reckless. “Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up.” That’s not temple reform, it’s temple replacement.
They respond in a way that shows how ultimate they thought this structure was. “It has taken forty-six years to build this temple…” They were basically asking, “Do you know how much effort went into this? Do you know how central this is to our identity? Do you know how long this has stood?” They equated longevity with ultimacy.
But then John tells us that Jesus was speaking about the temple of His body. The true dwelling place of God was no longer stone, it was standing in front of them. Jesus is saying that you can tear down this building and you can even tear down this body, but in three days, the true temple will be raised again.
The temple building was actually more like scaffolding. It was never meant to be ultimate, it was meant to point forward. And only when you remove the scaffolding can you see see the new building: Jesus. Everything the temple represented (sacrifice, atonement, access, priesthood, and glory) now resides in Jesus. He is the sacrifice. He is the high priest. He is the mercy seat. He is the dwelling place of God with man. He is not cleaning up religion. He is relocating the dwelling place of God into Himself. That’s why the cleansing isn’t mainly about commerce, it’s about fulfilment. The temple was pointing forward, and now the reality has arrived
John then adds that when Jesus did actually raise from the dead, the disciples remembered and believed both the Scriptures and what Jesus had said. They didn’t understand in the moment. It only makes sense in light of the resurrection.
It’s easy to read this and think we would never do the same thing. One of my kids sent me an instagram reel this week that said, “Wow, God freed us from the rule of the Egyptians! But I am a little bit hungry, so I wish I was still enslaved.” I texted back and said, “That’s really funny until we realize all the ways we do the same thing today.” And it’s just as true here. We may not trust a stone temple, but we do trust substitutes.
We take good things like church structures, traditions, denominations, theological systems, and moral performance and we slowly begin to treat them as ultimate. When we think that we need to fix ourselves before God will love us, we are making ourselves the ultimate thing instead of going to God who loves us and letting Him fix us.
We measure our religious security by how old a building is, the depth of our tradition, or the strength of our institutions. Some churches trust in the age of their building or the longevity of their denomination. We don’t have that challenge here:) We might not trust in stained glass, but we do trust in the strength of our teaching. We might not lean on some church hierarchy, but we do lean on the clarity of our theology, the systems we’ve built, and the way we do church. And none of those things are bad, they just make terrible saviors. My point is that if our faith collapses when the structure shakes, our faith was in the structure.
The temple in Jerusalem fell in 70 AD. There was not one stone left on another. But it was never about brick and mortar, it’s about a body. That body was destroyed, but that body was raised three days later. So if our hope is ever too much in our moral effort, our religious structure, or our institutional strength, Jesus will lovingly unsettle that. And he does this because He didn’t come to improve religion. He came to become the place where heaven and earth meet. You don’t clean the old temple. You don’t polish religious scaffolding. You die with Christ. And you rise in the true temple.
It’s easy to critique stone and scaffolding. It’s much harder to realize that the temple that truly needed cleansing was never made of brick. That’s the third thing John wants us to see.
- The temple that needed cleansing was us 23-25
Verse 23 says that “many believed in his name when they saw the signs…” That might sound good, but John is careful not to let us walk away thinking that. They believed in His name because they saw the signs. They are impressed, they are fascinated, but that isn’t the same as surrender. They liked what He could do, but they did not yet yield to who He is.
John says, “But Jesus on his part did not entrust himself to them…” This is one of the most haunting lines in John’s gospel. They believed in Him, but He did not entrust Himself to them. It’s the same greek root word: believe. They believed in Him, but He did not believe in them. Why? Because He knew all people.
Jesus doesn’t need external testimony about us. He knows what is in man. The issue was not the stone temple, it was our stone hearts. The problem wasn’t just corruption in Jerusalem, it was corruption in humanity. The temple that truly needed cleansing was not this big building, it was us. We are the new temple.
In verse 21, Jesus says His body is the temple, but the New Testament goes further than that. After Jesus’ resurrection and ascension, the Spirit indwells believers. The people in the church become the temple. Paul says that we are a dwelling place for God by the Spirit. Peter says that we are living stones being built together.
The temple isn’t in Jerusalem anymore. It’s not in Rome. And it’s certainly not the metal building we are in right now. We are the temple. And if we are the temple, then cleansing isn’t just architectural, it’s relational. When Jesus swung the whip and overturned the tables, He was previewing something. He was foreshadowing God’s judgement on those who try and turn His grace into a transaction and His presence into a system they can manage rather than a Savior they must surrender to.
And that judgement is what Jesus takes for us on the cross so we can be clean. The whip does not fall on us, the judgement of hollow religion lands on Christ. And now, all who put their faith in Jesus are spared that judgement, given His perfect clean moral record, and given His Holy Spirit to clean us from the inside out. Instead of being expelled, we are indwelled.
It’s interesting how John puts Jesus’ first miracle and this passage back to back. Remember last week we looked at Jesus turning water into wine at a wedding that had run out of wine. And John connects these two stories with the words ‘after this.’ He wants us to see them together. On the surface, they look utterly different. You have Jesus the great party maker and then Jesus the great party pooper. At the party Jesus works very quietly and here He works very publicly. At the party, Jesus is adding something and here he is throwing something out. At the party Jesus is asked for help and here He gives help He is not asked for. At the party Jesus brings joy and laughter and here He brings terror. But, I think they only look different on the surface. I didn’t see that until this week. In both He is showing us who He is. In both He’s showing us what He does. In both He’s showing us what He brings. If Jesus comes into your life, He will, on one hand, sometimes fill your table with a feast and other times turn your table over and spill everything on the ground.
But, that’s what happens in the healthiest of relationships. John is showing us that the glory has returned, the True Temple has risen, and through the Spirit, God now dwells in us.
So here is the question for us. Has Jesus filled your table with a feast lately? If so, take off your shoes and enjoy Him. Don’t rush past the joy. Sit down and receive it as grace. Or does it feel like He has spilled everything onto the ground? Has something been overturned in your plans, your comfort, your expectations? If so, are you angry? Are you in despair? Or could it be that He is getting your attention, not to destroy you, but to draw you deeper? The people selling animals thought they were doing exactly what they were supposed to be doing. Everything looked right on the outside. But it was transactional. It was external. And we can do the same thing, trying to clean ourselves up, do all the “right” things, manage our image, hoping God will respond the way we want. But that isn’t life in the new temple. God does not dwell in systems we manage. He dwells in surrendered hearts. So the question is not whether the machinery is running. The question is this: Are we experiencing His presence within us? Are we living in communion with the risen Temple? Because whether He fills the table or flips it, He is doing the same thing…inviting us out of transaction and into relationship with Himself.
