The Gospel of John

The Cleansing of the Temple (2:12-25)

The following notes may or may not be used this Thursday due to account access problems raised by James. If James publishes his notes we may decide to use them instead.

This scripture is commonly misused to justify angry or hostile behavior. Well personally, I think that is a far stretch. We should be peace makers. Jesus did this, because He had the authority to clean the temple. Besides it was His Father’s home.

Now before you go and start turning over tables and gathering wipping chords to beat money changers, let’s examine this scripture from different angle. Drawing parallel to 1 Corinthians 6:19 where it states that our body is a temple of the Holy Spirit. Since our body is a temple, we should allow Jesus to clean it. We should purify our hearts with the blood that was shed by our Lord. We need to examine ourselves to see what sin(s) needs to be removed. Some sin needs to be removed violently. We need to do what ever it takes to rid ourselves of it. Note that it is not us, nor the disciples that did the cleaning. It was Jesus and only He has the authority and perfect temperament to do this. We need to let Jesus clean up our life and to restore our hearts to true worship.

Are there any stubborn habits (sins) that need to be removed from our life?

Will allowing Jesus to remove these sins be a violent commotion?

Note: Some scholars say that this was the First Cleansing of the temple. When Jesus returned for his last Passover and His passion to the cross, He needed to cleanse the temple a second time.

How can we continually allow Jesus to cleanse our temple?

Does each cleansing need to be a violent act?

Lastly, (less personal and more theological) this act was preformed to fulfill the prophecy of scripture found in Psalm 69. Read Psalm 69 and explain what was meant by verse 9 “For the zeal of thine house hath eaten me up; and the reproaches of them that reproached thee are fallen upon me.”

What did this mean to the Psalmist who wrote this passage? How was it fulfilled in our Lord’s actions?

And finally:

What is meant by verse 24 in the 2nd chapter of John’s gospel? “But Jesus did not commit himself unto them, because he knew all men”.

posted by Ray Andrade @ 6:36 AM