City Life Starter

Written by Nate Warren.

Scripture

And he entered the temple and began to drive out those who sold, saying to them, “It is written, ‘My house shall be a house of prayer,’ but you have made it a den of robbers.”
And he was teaching daily in the temple. The chief priests and the scribes and the principal men of the people were seeking to destroy him, but they did not find anything they could do, for all the people were hanging on his words.
Luke 19:45-48 ESV

Reflection

Hosting a festival is big business, even today. Imagine the amount of money exchanged at the Houston Rodeo. Many, many yearly fortunes are made there, to be sure. In A.D. 30, there were none bigger than the Passover in Jerusalem. Many merchants would set up shop in order to provide sacrificial animals. Others would exchange Roman coins (stamped with idolatrous images) for special “clean” coins created especially for temple offerings. The result of all of this was that the festival became an opportunity for those with material resources to cash in on their investments. This greed at the expense of the masses and the focus on profit instead of on the God who delivers drove Jesus to a kind of holy furor.

In His rebuke of these merchants, Jesus invokes two verses from the prophets:

…for my house shall be called a house of prayer
for all peoples.”

Isaiah 56:7

Has this house, which is called by my name, become a den of robbers in your eyes? Behold, I myself have seen it, declares the Lord. Go now to my place that was in Shiloh, where I made my name dwell at first, and see what I did to it because of the evil of my people Israel. And now, because you have done all these things, declares the Lord, and when I spoke to you persistently you did not listen, and when I called you, you did not answer, therefore I will do to the house that is called by my name, and in which you trust, and to the place that I gave to you and to your fathers, as I did to Shiloh. And I will cast you out of my sight, as I cast out all your kinsmen, all the offspring of Ephraim.

Jeremiah 7:11-15

The temple was meant to be the place where God’s presence dwelled and where the nations could draw near to Him. By citing Isaiah, Jesus reminds His hearers that God’s vision was always bigger than Israel alone—the temple was to be a house of prayer for every nation.

The Jeremiah passage reminds them of Shiloh, a place where the tabernacle resided during the period of the Judges. God will not spare even His own house if it becomes corrupted. In other words, the temple’s mere existence was no guarantee of God’s favor.

Application

The temple was never meant to be an end in itself. It was a signpost pointing to something greater: God’s desire to dwell with His people. By the time of Jesus, that signpost had become twisted, turned into a marketplace rather than a meeting place. In cleansing the temple, Jesus reminded Israel of its true purpose and warned of its coming judgment.

But in Christ, the story doesn’t end with a ruined temple. The New Testament tells us that the Church (ekklesia—the gathered ones) is now the temple. Paul says, “Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you?” (1 Cor. 3:16). Peter calls us “living stones” being built up into a spiritual house (1 Pet. 2:5). Each of us is a part, and together we are the dwelling place of God through the Spirit (Eph. 2:21–22).

That changes the way we hear Jesus’ words. His passion for purity in the temple is now His passion for His church. Just as He drove out what corrupted the old temple, so He calls us to guard our lives and our assemblies from greed, pride, and anything that crowds out our communion with Him.

Prayer

Father,
May You cleanse every part of this temple, from anything that will profane a dwelling of the Almighty. May You teach me daily in its courts, so that I might hang on Your every word.
Amen