THE PLACE TO WHICH OFFERINGS AND SACRIFICES ARE TO BE BROUGHT IS NOT A PHYSICAL TEMPLE/BUILDING
Neither Jews nor Christians, past or present, realize that God never commanded that a physical temple be built. They are also ignorant of the fact that God was never really interested in material sacrifices or offerings (animals, grain, wine).
AUTHORS’ NOTE: Read more about what God commanded in Tabernacles, Temples, Altars, High Places and Pilgrimages and in Sacrifices, Tithes and Offerings and Tithes.
The only sacrifice that God has ever wanted is sacrifices of the heart as revealed in Psalm 51:16-19. And the truth is that neither an altar or nor a building (i.e. temple, church, synagogue) is necessary to make a sacrifice of the heart.
Jesus’ actions and message about what goes on in the temple should not have been surprising to the Jews. After years of vain sacrifices, God told Israel clearly in Isaiah 1:7-17 that He did not want any more blood or burnt offerings. This attitude is repeated in Jeremiah 6:19-20 and reinforced dramatically in Jeremiah 7:1-26 where God announces his intent to destroy the temple (i.e. the house that is called by his name) as a prophetic anticipation of Jesus’ encounter with the money changers.
Despite these warnings, Israel continued with its empty traditions of offering blood sacrifices and offerings while failing to obey God’s commandments. Christians do not bring blood sacrifices, but they do continue to bring offerings of money. Neither religion understands that God wants spiritual offerings and sacrifices — not material offerings and sacrifices.
What God is looking for are spiritual — not physical — offerings that are accompanied by a broken spirit and a broken and contrite heart. But if the broken spirit and a broken and contrite heart are not present, he will reject the offering. God’s attitudes about the heart are further confirmed in Proverbs 15:8, Isaiah 66:1-8, Malachi 1:1-11 and Haggai 2:4-14.
Despite all these warnings not to bring vain, insincere offerings, the priests and the people continued to do business as usual in the temple. For several hundred years they made their daily, weekly, monthly and annual sacrifices according to their traditions, but they did not make any changes in their heart attitudes. This is the greater context of Jesus’ encounter with the money-changers. For the sake of their traditions, they had set aside God’s spiritual commandment which is to bring sacrifices with the right heart attitude). The money means nothing to God. All he cares about is what is in the hearts of his people.
To put it another way, in practicing their traditions in the temple, they were honoring God with their lips and actions, but their hearts were far from God Their traditions were more important than God’s commandments. Of course this hypocrisy was an abomination that deserved a violent response that would bring it to an end sometime. Jesus’ encounter with the money-changers was the prophetic action that anticipated the siege of Jerusalem in 70 AD that effectively dismantled the entire temple system. Jewish religious leaders did not heed the warning of the prophets or Jesus, so God intervened and used Rome to end religious practices associated with the temple.
AUTHORS’ NOTE: It needs to be said here that the warnings of the prophets and Jesus about religious practices in synagogues and churches still apply in these modern times. If God destroyed the temple in Jerusalem, he will also be willing to destroy all the other so-called houses of worship in which Jews and Christians practice their religious traditions. They should not be so proud to believe that they are any more righteous than the Jews of Bible days. They still honor God with their lips and actions, but their hearts were far from him. We know this to be true because they practice Defiled Religion and they bring their various kinds of religious merchandise into their physical temples.
The way we see it, it can also be said that in slow, small ways God is destroying the temple systems of modern times. it is not happening in one catastrophic event like the siege of Jerusalem, but it is happening one church and one synagogue at at time throughout the world.
Except for the crucifixion, the picture of Jesus making a whip and thrashing about the temple overturning tables stands in stark contrast with all other images of Jesus’ ministry. While He is otherwise represented as meek and unshakable, here He acts with premeditated violence. The violence suggests extreme anger over what was going on regarding buying and selling in the temple. Lest we assume that He had a momentary lapse of humanness, we need to understand the story behind the story to understand why He did what He did when He did it.
Passover is one of those appointed feasts for which Israel continued to do business in the temple according to its traditions in defiance of God’s command that Israel not bring any more vain offerings. Indeed God had also appointed times for feasts which included blood sacrifices, but He had also made clear that these were valid only if they were done with the right heart attitude (i.e. a broken heart and a contrite spirit). This principle is made abundantly clear in the following scripture:
Romans 12:1-2: I appeal to you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. 2 Do not be conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that you may prove what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.
COMMENTARY: These verses clarify that spiritual worship is what God accepts. By inference, they also say that physical sacrifices (e.g. animals, food, drink, rituals etc.) of any kind are not acceptable. We have discussed these kinds of sacrifices which all require some kind of physical activity in detail in this link.
Mention of the “mercies of God” is a clue that the New Covenant is a condition for spiritual worship because “mercy” is one of the code words that identifies the New Covenant. Thus, we conclude that only New Covenant disciples are spiritually equipped to offer themselves wholly to God. But this is not referring to some kind of mystical sacrifice of the physical body as a substitute for an animal sacrifice.
While it is true that a kind of death must occur, God has a particular death in mind: Old/First Covenant religious practices that are present in Defiled Religion. These must cease, or die, before true spiritual worship can be present in Pure Religion. This sharp distinction is made clear in the parable of two masters. It is impossible to be an Old/First Covenant religionist and a New Covenant disciple at the same time.
In other words, the kind of death that God wants is the end of using physical bodies and religious artifacts for any kind of physical worship. That is why he gave the fourth commandment. Religious people admire physical worship in others and take pride in doing it themselves. But such worship is an abomination to God who wants worship in spirit.
What the New Covenant disciple sacrifices is conformance to the religious practices found in the World of Religion. These may not seem like a big sacrifice to anyone except those who have broken ties with their religious families and traditions. Those who have severed such relationships and ended such practices knows that it is very much like death to do so.
Because the temple event occurs in all four gospels, it must be considered to have an important message. Looking at the language of the scripture surrounding the four different accounts it is possible to determine that the John 2 version happened at the beginning of Jesus ministry right after the wedding in Cana. And the report of events in the other three gospels clearly indicates that it occurred at the end of Jesus ministry before His crucifixion. Thus the two events are like bookends that frame Jesus’ entire ministry. These strong clues that we need to understand the significance of the events.
More about that significance and the application of it to our lives is found in later in this series of pages. As a general observation, however, we offer here the conclusion that Jesus’ encounters with the money-changers in the temple characterize an important feature of His ministry and help explain why the temple priests schemed as they did to kill him. It is no overstatement to say that every encounter Jesus had with temple leaders was acrimonious. It appears that He criticized them and rebuked them whenever He had an opportunity.
To establish a proper framework for understanding the temple incidents, it is critical to understand that temple leaders (Pharisees, scribes, Chief Priests, Sanhedrin) did not fear Jesus without cause. But their disputes were not just about scripture interpretation and application. Everything Jesus said to them and everything He did outside the temple posed serious threats to their status, power and income.
In the next page you will find a sample of scriptures with encounters Jesus had with Pharisees. They create the context for what Jesus did in the temple and the threat Jesus posed to temple leaders: