Reflective Bible Study

While several of the other gospel writers include an event like this much later in Jesus’ ministry, John shares with us a time very early on in Jesus’ ministry when He goes to the temple and clears out the commerce. However, while John’s gospel includes this event, what fascinates me more than Jesus kicking the merchants and moneychangers out of the temple is what John tells us happened next.

Our passage is found in John’s gospel, chapter 2, and we will read it from the New International Reader’s Version. Starting in verse 13, John sets the stage saying:

¹³ It was almost time for the Jewish Passover Feast. So Jesus went up to Jerusalem. ¹⁴ In the temple courtyard he found people selling cattle, sheep and doves. Others were sitting at tables exchanging money. ¹⁵ So Jesus made a whip out of ropes. He chased all the sheep and cattle from the temple courtyard. He scattered the coins of the people exchanging money. And he turned over their tables. ¹⁶ He told those who were selling doves, “Get these out of here! Stop turning my Father’s house into a market!” ¹⁷ His disciples remembered what had been written. It says, “My great love for your house will destroy me.”

Pausing briefly, while we might think Jesus challenged those in the temple because they were cheating people and being dishonest, nothing in John’s description of this event suggests dishonesty. Instead, John frames Jesus’ actions as being against cheapening God’s house and making it like any other marketplace. This challenge is one that says God’s house should be a place where the focus is on God and not on anything else.

This challenge also strongly suggests that God’s house shouldn’t be a place where money is exchanged. Giving money as tithe or offering is different. The big issue I see in Jesus’ actions and words is against exchanging money for goods or services in God’s house because treating where we worship as a marketplace cheapens the holiness of where we come to God to worship Him.

However, Jesus’ actions don’t sit well with the Jewish leaders. Continuing in verse 18, John tells us:

¹⁸ Then the Jewish leaders asked him, “What sign can you show us to prove your authority to do this?”

¹⁹ Jesus answered them, “When you destroy this temple, I will raise it up again in three days.”

²⁰ They replied, “It has taken 46 years to build this temple. Are you going to raise it up in three days?” ²¹ But the temple Jesus had spoken about was his body. ²² His disciples later remembered what he had said. That was after he had been raised from the dead. Then they believed the Scripture. They also believed the words that Jesus had spoken.

Pausing again, whenever I read this brief discussion Jesus has with the Jewish leaders, I chuckle a little because I am confident Jesus answered the way He did in order to be truthful but misunderstood. Jesus intended the Jewish leaders to misunderstand Him.

I suspect that Jesus did this intentionally because if He had spoken in a way that was more clear, they probably would have tried to kill Him on that spot.

Also very interesting to me is exactly what Jesus says in His response. In verse 19, Jesus tells these religious leaders, “When you destroy this temple, I will raise it up again in three days.”

When I casually read this, and John’s explanation that Jesus was referring to His body and to Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection, I might be tempted to understand it instead as “When you destroy this temple, [God] will raise it up again in three days.”

However, Jesus does not tell us that the Father would resurrect Him, but that He would resurrect Himself. John, chapter 10, verses 17 and 18 also emphasizes this point when Jesus tells the religious leaders and those present that, “The reason my Father loves me is that I give up my life. But I will take it back again. No one takes it from me. I give it up myself. I have the authority to give it up. And I have the authority to take it back again.”

While I don’t believe we can understand the full nuances present in Jesus’ statements about His power to restore Himself, and while we cannot understand exactly how He was able to do this, we do know from all the gospel records that Jesus was crucified and that He returned to life on the third day!

However, our passage isn’t finished yet. John has one more thing to tell us about this event. Continuing reading in verse 23, John tells us that:

²³ Meanwhile, he was in Jerusalem at the Passover Feast. Many people saw the signs he was doing. And they believed in his name. ²⁴ But Jesus did not fully trust them. He knew what people are like. ²⁵ He didn’t need anyone to tell him what people are like. He already knew why people do what they do.

In this final portion of our passage, John emphasizes how Jesus gave the people signs from God and that this prompted people to believe in Him. However, John quickly follows up with an interesting framing of Jesus’ response. John tells us that Jesus did not fully trust people. Jesus did not fully trust sinners. This is significant because as followers of Jesus, we should clearly and wholeheartedly trust God, but we shouldn’t blindly trust sinners.

At the same time, we shouldn’t distance ourselves from sinners, because we would live a lonely life, and because we might even go crazy trying to get away from ourselves. Whether we like admitting it or not, we all are sinners.

Jesus came to redeem a world full of sinners living in active sin. He came to fulfill God’s plan for the redemption of His people. Jesus triumphed over sin and over Satan. Jesus succeeded God’s mission for His life because He didn’t push sinners away and because He didn’t blindly trust them either. Either option is a trap that could have derailed Jesus off of His mission, and we face the same two traps if we let people’s opinions take precedence over God’s plan for our lives.

As we move forward through life, remember to keep God’s plan first and to trust God exponentially more than sinners in every area of our lives.

As we come to the end of another podcast episode, here are the challenges I will leave you with:

As I always challenge you to do, intentionally seek God first and place your faith, hope, trust, and belief in Him. Choose to trust God, have faith in Jesus, and move forward leaning on the Holy Spirit for strength and guidance. Choose to protect the places where you worship God and keep them special and free from distraction.

Also, continue praying and studying the Bible for yourself to learn, grow, and step into the person God has created you to be. Through prayer and Bible study, discover how much God loves you and how much He has given to show you His love. Jesus came for you, and God wants to redeem you personally out of sin.

And as I end every set of challenges by saying in one way or another, never stop short of, back away from, chicken out of, or fall away from where God wants to lead you to in your life with Him!

Moving further into Mark’s gospel, we come to two events that at first seem to be unrelated, but as we will soon discover, these events begin the transition from Jesus being looked up to by the religious leaders to being looked down on and disliked by these same leaders. While these two events have questions included in them, within Jesus’ response to both of these events, we discover the foundation being laid for the religious leaders’ rejection of God’s Messiah.

Our passage is found in Mark’s gospel, chapter 2, and we will read from the New Century Version. Starting in verse 18, Mark tells us that:

¹⁸ Now the followers of John and the Pharisees often fasted for a certain time. Some people came to Jesus and said, “Why do John’s followers and the followers of the Pharisees often fast, but your followers don’t?”

¹⁹ Jesus answered, “The friends of the bridegroom do not fast while the bridegroom is still with them. As long as the bridegroom is with them, they cannot fast. ²⁰ But the time will come when the bridegroom will be taken from them, and then they will fast.

²¹ “No one sews a patch of unshrunk cloth over a hole in an old coat. Otherwise, the patch will shrink and pull away—the new patch will pull away from the old coat. Then the hole will be worse. ²² Also, no one ever pours new wine into old leather bags. Otherwise, the new wine will break the bags, and the wine will be ruined along with the bags. But new wine should be put into new leather bags.”

Let’s pause reading briefly because I want to draw our attention onto this first event. When Jesus is asked about why His disciples don’t fast like John’s disciples and the Pharisees did, Jesus draws their attention onto the perspective that while He is present, it is a time for celebrating. When Jesus is present, there is no reason to fast. However, after Jesus has returned to heaven, then fasting becomes appropriate. At the very beginning of Jesus’ ministry, we see Jesus subtly foreshadow His death on the cross, and His return to heaven.

However, also worth noting is that Jesus then follows up with a statement that seems disconnected from the previous topic. After talking about His disciples eventually fasting, Jesus then talks about sewing unshrunk cloth over a hole in an old coat and pouring new wine into old leader bags. At first glance, this doesn’t make much sense, but I wonder if Jesus is subtly telling us why He picked the disciples He did. Instead of choosing disciples from the religious schools, or from even John’s disciples, Jesus chooses regular people who may have believed themselves to be unworthy of a chance.

Jesus chooses a group of young men to start a new understanding of the scriptures, because this group of young men had less to unlearn than if they were older or more religiously educated.

While these disciples had plenty that they needed to unlearn, we get the picture that it might have been harder for Jesus if He had picked a different group of people to be disciples. It is also possible that someone trained at the religious schools of the day would have been more closed off to new ways of understanding the Old Testament prophecies, or that someone trained at these schools would be less willing to ask questions or think about spirituality differently.

Because of this, Jesus shares an illustration suggesting that He intentionally chose a new group of disciples unlike anything typically seen up to this point, and this decision likely stood out in the minds of the religious leaders.

However, in the next event, we have the foundation for the biggest issue the religious leaders had with Jesus in His entire ministry. Continuing reading from verse 23, Mark tells us:

²³ One Sabbath day, as Jesus was walking through some fields of grain, his followers began to pick some grain to eat. ²⁴ The Pharisees said to Jesus, “Why are your followers doing what is not lawful on the Sabbath day?”

²⁵ Jesus answered, “Have you never read what David did when he and those with him were hungry and needed food? ²⁶ During the time of Abiathar the high priest, David went into God’s house and ate the holy bread, which is lawful only for priests to eat. And David also gave some of the bread to those who were with him.”

²⁷ Then Jesus said to the Pharisees, “The Sabbath day was made to help people; they were not made to be ruled by the Sabbath day. ²⁸ So then, the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath day.”

In this event, we discover that how Jesus treated the Sabbath angered the religious leaders. When we understand a little bit of Jewish history, we can begin to understand why this was the case. Several centuries prior to Jesus walking on the earth, we see God punishing the nations of Israel and Judah and exiling them from the land He had promised them. While there were numerous prophets sent in an attempt to call the people to return to God, God’s messages and warnings fell on spiritually deaf ears.

One particular issue God had with Israel and Judah was how they had disregarded and rejected the Sabbath included in the Ten Commandments. There is evidence that the Jews rejection of the Sabbath was a key piece of God exiling them from their land.

When the Jewish people were allowed to move back, they were reminded of God’s laws, including the Sabbath law, and they determined to keep the Sabbath of God holy and set apart. Moving to the opposite extreme as their ancestors, by the time Jesus came to earth in the first century, the Jews has set the Sabbath so far apart from the rest of the week that it was a day of avoiding anything that could even be considered close to work. This was in part because these Jews wanted to avoid any potential reason for God to reject them as a people and exile them again.

However, it is interesting that Jesus does not counter-challenge the Pharisees in this event by defending His disciples’ actions. Instead, Jesus points out that a highly respected person from Israel’s history did something significantly worse. From my memory, I don’t recall king David being punished by God or anyone else for taking and eating the holy bread that was set apart for the priests.

Jesus’ defense regarding His disciples’ actions wasn’t a rejection of the Sabbath. Jesus didn’t even defend their actions as not being work. Jesus instead elevated the Sabbath as a day for helping people and a day we should look forward to rather than a day we should fear.

From Jesus’ perspective, the Sabbath was important, significant, and a day of rest and blessings. The Jews in the first century had turned the Sabbath into a legalistic nightmare, while the Jews many centuries earlier resemble the broad culture today of completely rejecting the Sabbath, ultimately bringing God’s judgment on themselves.

Jesus saw the Sabbath day as a special day that God set apart. In Jesus’ eyes, the Sabbath is a specific day of the week, it is a day of the week that doesn’t change with times or cultures, and it is a day set aside for resting, helping and/or blessing others, and remembering what God has done for each of us!

As we come to the end of another podcast episode, here are the challenges I will leave you with:

As I always challenge you to do, intentionally seek God first and choose to take each Sabbath day to rest and remember what He has blessed you with and spend time helping others. Helping each other is the best way to honor God and to say thank You to Him for everything He has done for us.

Also, be sure to pray and study the Bible for yourself to learn and grow closer to God. While the Bible has a lot to say about the Sabbath, choose to study this significant subject for yourself because it is too important to let your beliefs about God’s day be based on traditions or other people’s opinions.

And as I end every set of challenges by saying in one way or another, never stop short of, back away from, chicken out of, or walk away from where God wants to lead you to in your life with Him!