It Is Refreshing To See The Zeal Of Jesus

II. For our salvation

Earlier I painted politicians as being wishy washy. This isn’t always the case. There are occasions where politicians take a very strong and clear stand against something. This isn’t always the case, but sometimes - maybe he is getting paid by a special interest group to have a certain law pass. So he has a secret purpose for doing something - which is then called a “hidden agenda.” Jesus said what he said and did what he did because He had a great zeal for His Father’s honor. But this wasn’t the only reason he lashed out at the money changers and cattle salesmen. Jesus had what we might call a “hidden agenda” in cleaning out the temple. But it wasn’t for a devious or self centered purpose - it was for a saving purpose.

This becomes obvious when we look at what Jesus did. When you begin a new job - you usually try to be on your best behavior. You wouldn’t think of insulting the boss. Your first day in school you wouldn’t have thought of spitting on the carpet. When candidates run for office - the last thing they try to do is insult the voters. Here we see Jesus at the very beginning of his ministry, and he certainly seemed to break all the rules for how to win friends and influence people. Instead of schmoozing the religious leaders of his day - Jesus stepped on their toes. When Jesus chased out the money changers, He was stepping on the religious leaders’ toes - doing something that they should have done. So they demanded of him, “What miraculous sign can you show us to prove your authority to do all this?”

By this point in Jesus’ ministry, the Jews should have known what gave Jesus the authority to do this. John the Baptist had been steadily telling the people, “Jesus is the Christ.” If Jesus would have performed some miracle at this point, it would have been like throwing pearls before the swine - they just would have denied the miracle anyway and claimed that Jesus was doing it by the power of Satan. So Jesus just said to them, “Destroy this temple, and I will raise it again in three days.” Obviously, they weren’t going to tear down the temple, so this answer only made them more angry. But that was Jesus’ hidden agenda! Jesus could use the anger of the chief priests to eventually lead the people to cry, “crucify him!” If Jesus could end up at the cross - then He could be the scapegoat of God’s wrath and die for the sins of the people!

You can see Jesus’ master plan unfold the closer Jesus’ drew to his crucifixion. In Mark 14:55-59 it says, The chief priests and the whole Sanhedrin were looking for evidence against Jesus so that they could put him to death, but they did not find any. Then some stood up and gave this false testimony against him: 58 “We heard him say, ‘I will destroy this man-made temple and in three days will build another, not made by man.’” Eventually, the Jews used these very words to send Jesus to the cross! Isn’t that amazing? On the surface, this looks like a very unloving thing that Jesus did - to upend these tables and chase the cattle salesmen out of the temple. But in the end, you can see what a loving thing it was! Jesus did it so that He could end up at the cross and die for our sins - so He could be punished for the times that we didn’t stand up for the truth! Jesus did it so that he could take our sins of self centered worship on his shoulders! It was this crucifixion that ended up in the ultimate cleansing. When Jesus died on the cross - it eliminated the need to have any more sheep or cattle slaughtered. As Hebrews 7:27 says, He sacrificed for their sins once for all when he offered himself. When Jesus was crucified - it cleansed our temples of any sin that we had every thought, spoken, or committed. So Jesus cleansed the temple for our salvation!