When Religion Forgets It’s Purpose

John 2:13 And the Jews’ Passover was at hand, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem.

This second miracle is not a private miracle. It is a miracle in which tens of thousands of people participate; and they’re not watching and they’re not innocent bystanders.

The Passover was a major religious celebration for the Jews. It was a reminder of The Exodus, when God had freed them from Egypt, and of how blood would be a temporary covering for their sin. The angel of death was a symbol of the work the Messiah would do when He put His blood on a cross and provided deliverance from divine judgment.

Somehow this religious system/ceremony had replaced true worship. It is an age-old problem of hypocrisy, false religion, and superficial worship. It infuriates Jesus, because it is irreverent and blasphemous.

Religion Fails When It Loses Sight Of the Main Thing

John 2:14 And he found in the temple courts those who were selling oxen and sheep and doves, and the money changers seated.

There was no spirit of worship or reverence, and Christ was angry. This irreverent blasphemy brought out a righteous indignation in Christ like we see nowhere else in the New Testament.

The focal point of all the activity of these crowds of people during the Passover is The Temple. Everything happens at the Temple courtyard, and the Court of the Gentiles would have to absorb this mass of humanity coming there.

Historians have recorded how much of the activity of buying animals, money exchange, etc., could have been done outside the temple, but the High Priest moved it inside, to the Court of the Gentiles. This caused the Gentiles to be pushed out of the only worship place concerning the Temple that was open to them.

Christ Can Restore The Purpose To Religion

John 2:15 And when He had made a scourge of small cords, He drove them all out of the temple, with the sheep and the oxen, and poured out the changers’ money and overthrew the tables.

This was a true miracle. There’s no lightning, or thunder. He just drove them all out; it was just an unimaginable act of power.

For a short time with all the religious distractions stopped, Christ is the center of religion. He stopped the sacrifice and temple activity for a short period, and the focus was on Him.

Jesus did the most severe action in His life in the clearing of the temple. Most of the time it was compassion and mercy, but here it was divine fury against a hypocritical system of worship.

The Jews expected the Messiah to come and attack the Gentiles. Instead, He came and attacked them.

Jesus attacked them at their best. He attacked them in the middle of their worship, at their high point, at the Passover, in the Temple. This was not an act of cruelty on people. It was an act of judgment on a faulty system of religion.

Religion Can Prevent The Individual From Seeing Christ

John2:18 So the Jews answered and said to Him, “What sign do you show to us, because you are doing these things?”

This is undoubtedly the Sanhedrin and the temple police, perhaps the Sadducees. They want to know what gives Him the right to shut down their religious activity.

Jesus did that with such unbelievable majestic authority that they were dumbfounded. They knew He did it with authority and they wanted to verify that authority.

It was obvious from the power He exercised in His actions that it was something more than human. It is ironic that they were asking for a sign, when they’ve just had a monumental sign demonstrated right in front of them.

Their question was proof that their actions were faulty. They knew that the temple needed to be cleansed, but they were not willing to face their sin. They knew that they were hypocrites and that the whole operation was merchandising on the name of God.

People who would desecrate the temple of God in this manner were blind, and so Christ treats them in a blindness.

We must always be careful not to allow religion and institutions to take the place of our worship of the one true God through the person of Jesus Christ.