When I was a kid, Jesus’ cleansing of the merchants and money-lenders in the temple was one of my favorite gospel stories. I mean, think about it. Jesus gets mad, makes a whip out of a rope, drives out livestock, and busts up a bunch of hucksters trying to turn a profit on the worship of God? It’s got everything a little boy could want: Jesus the fighter, with a zeal for justice and the MacGyver-like ability to turn a twine into a lash of righteousness.
Later on, though, I came to appreciate the text for a different reason: what it could tell me about emotions and Christianity. Far too often, being a Christian is associated with being passive, meek (in the doormat sense), and generally stifling every emotion that can’t be cleanly expressed in a G-C-D chord worship song. A whip-cracking Jesus, on the other hand, is anything but passive.
Of course, we can take anger too far—giving ourselves permission to “vent” or “let off steam” could too easily become a justification for every sort of sinful outburst—but there’s still wisdom in learning that anger can be holy. Jesus’ actions in the temple show us that, at times, anger is the righteous, human reaction to the world’s brokenness. Indeed, as the God-man, Jesus not only shows us a virtuous, human response, but also reveals to us the triune God’s own heart toward sin and rebellion.
Of course, this raises the question: “What got Jesus angry enough to flip tables in the first place?”
A Holy Place Made Corrupt
The Feast of Tabernacles—which culminated in the Passover celebration—was approaching, so like most good Jews, Jesus and his disciples had come to Jerusalem to observe it. They stayed outside the city proper, however, in the nearby town of Bethany.
Mark tells us that on the way into the city, Jesus was hungry and saw a fig tree with green leaves. He went to it looking for fruit, but when he got there, he found none. So he cursed it: “May no one ever eat fruit from you again” (Mark 11:14). The tree was sending false signals—its leaves promised life and fruit, but it failed to produce anything that could nourish or feed the hungry.
Here was a picture of the problem Jesus saw when he arrived at the temple: a great outward show of life, but no fruit.
When Jesus and the disciples arrived at the temple, they found the great financial apparatus surrounding the festival set up in the outer courts. People came from all over Israel to celebrate the Passover, but they often only came with enough money to purchase the required sacrifices; it would have been too long of a journey to bring their own livestock with them. Showing up at the temple, seeing a great bustle of people buying livestock with which to worship God and celebrate his liberation in the Exodus—this could seem like a great sign of life.
The Lord saw something else at work, though. Jesus’ teaching at the time gives us the key: “Is it not written: ‘My house will be called a house of prayer for all nations’? But you have made it ‘a den of robbers’” (Mark 11:17).
People often think Jesus was mad over the sellers and money-changers turning a profit in God’s house. But while that may have been part of the problem, there was more to it than that.
One of the Scriptures Jesus quotes is Isaiah 56:7, which prophesies about the coming day when the nations would come to worship God on Mount Zion. While the temple was indeed that of the Jews, as Paul says, it was not for the Jews only—it was also for the Gentiles (Rom. 3:29).
Yet Jesus finds the financial apparatus had been set up in the Court of the Gentiles—the place designated for non-Jews to come and pray to God, to see what the worship of the true God by God’s own people looked like. It was now crowded full of livestock, money-changers, haggling, and the sounds of trade. God’s holy purposes for worship were being trampled upon. The sacred, set-apart space was being profaned, and the Gentiles were—by default—being excluded from God’s presence.
Jesus’ second quotation from Jeremiah 7:11 adds a further dimension. He says the house intended for prayer had now become a “den of robbers,” a phrase which comes from Jeremiah’s sermon against the temple. In the prophet’s day, many had taken the temple, originally intended as a symbol of God’s favor, and turned it into a token or talisman of protection, thinking they could get away with idolatry, theft, adultery, and murder simply by hiding out inside it (Jer. 7:1-11).
Recent scholars have noted that by the time of Jesus, the term translated as “robbers” had the connotation of something more like “bandits” or “insurrectionists,” which adds another layer to the picture. After years of Greek and (especially) Roman oppression, the theology of election and covenant had become an ideology supporting nationalism, ethnic superiority, and revolt, and it would eventually lead to the rebellions we find in 70 A.D.
Thus, instead of finding a holy house set apart for the true worship of the living God, Jesus found a symbol of ethnic and religious pride and idolatry. Jesus’ cursing of the tree pointed to what was wrong with the temple: it was outwardly redolent of signs of spiritual health, but inside, it was full of the corruption of spiritual death.
Hope in Flipped Tables
This is what motivates Jesus’ table-flipping in the temple. In John’s account, we learn that Jesus’ disciples recalled the psalmist’s words when they reflected on the incident: “Zeal for your house consumes me” (Ps. 69:9). In that text, David cries out that he has endured reproach and the scorn of his enemies for the sake of God’s name. It is God’s glory, God’s honor, and God’s goodness, as displayed in the temple, that provoke David’s zeal. He is intensely jealous to protect God’s name against defilement.
Centuries later, then, Jesus—David’s greater Son, the Messiah of Israel, and the Son of God—comes to the temple and is also outraged that God’s glory is being covered over, profaned in the sight of the nations. And so, like the prophets of old, he enacts a symbolic cleansing and destruction of the temple by bringing all of its operations to a standstill.
Jesus said, “Destroy this temple, and I will raise it again in three days” (John 2:19). At the time, of course, his listeners didn’t realize he meant his own body.
Following Jesus’ death and resurrection, however, God did not continue to dwell in a temple built by human hands. Instead, by the Spirit, he has taken up residence in the lives of his people, who are united with Jesus. Peter tells us that Jews and Gentiles are now being built up into a spiritual house (1 Pet. 2:5). Paul tells us that since we have been united with Christ, we are the new temple built upon the foundation of the apostles’ teaching and upon Christ, the cornerstone (Eph. 2:20).
There’s something of a surprise warning here for the local church. It’s all too easy to think of ways our local church gatherings, our Bible studies, and our youth groups can fall into the trap of turning signs of God’s grace into symbols of exclusion. Instead of using the Bible as a witness to the redeeming work of Christ for all, we can turn it into a bludgeon to keep people locked out, pulling out proof-texts like switchblades. Or we turn prayer into an exercise of public righteousness that sends a performative message—a message proclaiming that only the truly, expertly spiritual are wanted or welcome. In these and countless other ways, we can turn the house of the Lord into a den of graceless robbers instead of a haven of mercy for the nations. We besmirch God’s name when we turn the gifts of grace into symbols of spiritual privilege. We end up sending out signals of spiritual life, where there is really spiritual corruption.
Jesus, however, still has zeal for God’s house and God’s name today. That’s part of the warning in his letters to the seven churches of Asia in Revelation. Yes, he has a word of encouragement for them—but he also threatens to remove the lampstands of those who will not turn from infidelity or return to their first love (Rev. 2:5).
That’s why there’s something so valuable about courageous pastors like Paul, who follows Jesus in that holy zeal for the church when he confesses to the Corinthians, “I am jealous for you with a godly jealousy” (2 Cor. 11:2). Much of Paul’s ministry was fueled by that zeal to cut off reproach against God’s name: reproaches that arose through false teachings like legalism, Gnosticism, antinomianism, and just plain idolatry that threatened to despoil the purity of God’s new house. Zeal is what drove Paul to build up God’s church with the pure gold, silver, and precious stones of the gospel of Jesus Christ (1 Cor. 3:12).
Of course, Jesus’ zeal for his house is not only a warning, but also our great hope. Zeal for God’s house caused Jesus to flip tables, but it’s also what drove him to the cross. It was precisely his desire to see the Lord’s house rebuilt in glory that compelled him to suffer reproach for God’s name, for us and for our salvation. We can trust in Christ as the builder of God’s house: he will be faithful to maintain it (Heb. 3:4, 6).
