Magnify Jesus: #023 - Merchants Driven from Temple by Jesus (John 2:13-25) - Life of Christ = Week 05

Merchants Driven from Temple (Jerusalem) (April A.D. 27) First Passover
John 2:13-25

Jesus’ First Cleansing of the Temple

John 2:13–25

¹³The Jewish Passover was near, so Jesus went up to Jerusalem. ¹⁴In the temple complex He found people selling oxen, sheep, and doves^†, and He also found the money changers sitting there. ¹⁵After making a whip out of cords, He drove everyone out of the temple complex with their sheep and oxen. He also poured out the money changers’ coins and overturned the tables. ¹⁶He told those who were selling doves, “Get these things out of here! Stop turning My Father’s house into a marketplace!^†”

¹⁷And His disciples remembered that it is written: “Zeal for Your house will consume Me.”

¹⁸So the Jews replied to Him, “What sign of authority will You show us for doing these things?”

¹⁹Jesus answered, “Destroy this sanctuary, and I will raise it up in three days^†.”

²⁰Therefore the Jews said, “This sanctuary took forty-six years to build, and will You raise it up in three days?”

²¹But He was speaking about the sanctuary of His body. ²²So when He was raised from the dead, His disciples remembered that He had said this. And they believed the Scripture and the statement Jesus had made.

²³While He was in Jerusalem at the Passover Festival, many trusted in His name when they saw the signs He was doing. ²⁴Jesus, however, would not entrust Himself to them, since He knew them all ²⁵and because He did not need anyone to testify about man; for He Himself knew what was in man.^{^[1]}

^{^[1]} Knight, G. W. (2001). A simplified harmony of the Gospels (pp. 36–37). Holman Bible Publishers.

Two Cleansings of the Temple?

John places Jesus’ cleansing of the temple at the beginning of His public ministry. But the other Gospel writers report that He cleansed the temple as His ministry drew to a close about three and one-half years later (see segment 158, “Jesus Curses a Fig Tree and Cleanses the Temple,” p. 185).

Were there two separate cleansings of the temple or only one? Scholars disagree on this issue. Some believe that Jesus cleansed the temple only one time. They theorize that John placed this event early in Jesus’ ministry to show that He clashed with the Jewish religious leaders from the very beginning, while the writers of Matthew, Mark, and Luke wanted to show that this event sealed Jesus’ doom.

Other scholars point out that two separate cleansings of the temple are a distinct possibility. For example, A. T. Robertson in his A Harmony of the Gospels declares: “There is no inherent difficulty in the repetition of such an act when one reflects on the national indignation of Jesus at the desecration of the temple on his visits during his ministry and considers that Jesus may have wished to make one last protest at the close of his ministry. Certainty, of course, is not possible in such an argument one way or the other” (p. 25).

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