What did the cleansing of the temple signify?
1. It was the fulfilment of prophesy. Malachi, the last prophet of the Old Testament, had foretold, ‘Behold, I will send my messenger, and he shall prepare the way before me’ – the messenger of course is John the Baptist – ‘and the Lord, whom ye seek’ – the Messiah – ‘shall suddenly come to his temple, even the messenger of the covenant, whom ye delight in: behold, he shall come, saith the Lord of hosts. But who may abide the day of his coming? and who shall stand when he appeareth? for he is like a refiner’s fire, and like fullers’ soap: and he shall sit as a refiner and purifier of silver: and he shall purify the sons of Levi, and purge them as gold and silver, that they may offer unto the Lord an offering in righteousness.’ The forerunner has exercised his ministry – John the Baptist – and now Messiah himself comes and purges his temple.
2. Secondly, it was a demonstration of his amazing power, but again they took no notice of it. They couldn’t stop him doing it – they were powerless – and yet they didn’t respond, they didn’t acknowledge that he was the One who came with mighty power to do these things.
3. It signified his reproof of the abuse. Regulation was required for the worship of God; it must conform to God’s rules. A great reverence was required. Joy, yes, but coupled always with reverence, and he comes as Prophet, Priest and King and reproves them by this act.
4. It was a call to repent. ‘Stop’, he said, ‘change your ways, stop making my Father’s house a house of merchandise’. But they took no notice of the call to repent – they did not change their ways; they just objected to what he had done.
5. It showed the nature of his ministry. What has Christ come to do? To suffer and die on Calvary so that our sins could be washed away so that we may be freely forgiven when we apply to him for forgiveness, for pardon, so that we may have our hearts cleansed, and be given a new nature, and a new life. The cleansing of the temple speaks of his ministry: cleansing the heart – a new start, a new beginning. That is what happens at conversion: a new life comes in and we are different people, and better people - by the grace of God - and we walk with him, and all the ugliness, and the clamour, and the noise, and the stench, is gone out of lives. Not entirely, of course, because we continue to be sinners, but the difference is immense.
6. Sixthly, it exposed the standing of the clergy and the people of those days. It demonstrated in such a dramatic way that they were largely hypocrites, or formalists, and insincere, and didn’t mean these things, and didn’t want to obey God. When the city is swollen with visitors, peak crowds at the time of the Passover, he comes and casts them, legitimately, out of the temple. Their reaction is not one of repentance, but of bitterness and hostility towards him. So the truth was revealed. The majority of the people were pilgrims and they would go home and say, ‘What happened – it was astonishing. He just somehow drove them all out. It was a judgement upon our generation, and our leaders.’
7. Then it was about Christ, of course. He demonstrated things about himself. He showed he was the Son of God. ‘Don’t you dare make my Father’s house a house an emporium’ – he speaks of himself as the Son of God. He announces himself to be the Son of God, the eternal Son.
8. He also shows that he is the perfect man. When Christ came, because he was God and man, naturally, he was perfect, and sinless, but he had to live that perfect, sinless life in his human body and personality, because he was our representative. One necessary aspect of his perfect righteousness is that he had to worship, under the Old Testament order, perfectly. You could not worship perfectly with all that clamour in the temple. Christ therefore cleansed the temple so that it was the place that it should have been for his own worship of the Father as our representative, doing what we should have done.
9. He showed himself to be our Judge. He is Messiah, he is the Son of God, but he is going to be the Judge. He casts all the hypocrites out of the temple, out of the house of God. There is no withstanding him. When the Roman forces came in AD 70 to destroy Jerusalem, because Christ had withdrawn his protection, as the Judge, Jerusalem fell. When Christ comes again, no one, who doesn’t trust him and love him, will escape his judgement, and the cleansing of the temple shows him also as Judge.