Reading: John 2:13-22.
It
is doubtless known to you that on two
occasions the Lord cleansed the Temple in Jerusalem. The first occasion was that of
which we read in this passage in John's Gospel. The second, and the
last occasion, is mentioned
by the other writers of the Gospels, Matthew, Mark and Luke. John does
not
repeat in his record that occasion, and they do not touch upon the
first
occasion. John wrote so long after the other three that doubtless he
knew what
they had written, and therefore much of what he wrote was
supplementary. He
knew what they had left out, and puts in a very great deal that they
had not
recorded. This is one of those things peculiar to John's Gospel.
There
is a significance about the fact
that the Lord Jesus cleansed the Temple twice. Perhaps the significance
attaches, in the first place at least, to His having done it at the
commencement of His ministry, and at the close, for John puts this
cleansing
very early in His public life. The record of the second instance comes
right at
the end, amongst the final scenes of His life in Jerusalem; and that He
should
have made it one of His first activities in Jerusalem, and one of His
last,
carries with it a meaning which is not far to seek, and the
significance of
which lies very near the surface.
It
would say to us that the Lord had His
Father's House very much in view from the beginning, and that all His
life
activities were in that direction. We may say that foundationally His
life and
ministry had to do with the House of God, and that He never departed
from that early position
which He had adopted. Right at the end He came back to it. We are told
that He
was moving to and fro between Jerusalem and Bethany, and in that final
week of
His life, one evening He went into Jerusalem and into the Temple and
looked
round on all things, and then went out to Bethany without doing
anything. But
the next morning He went in and evidently put into a very definite and
strong
form of expression the results of His having taken account of the
situation,
and purged the Temple once more.
His
life here on earth, then, was
bounded, we may say, by His relationship with and attitude towards His
Father's House. If it be true that the Father's House was set in His
vision in a very definite relationship in His life from start to
finish, and that His life at both ends
is found in relation to that House, then it is important to notice what
His attitude towards His Father's House was as to His spirit. He was
consumed by a great devotion and passion for the House of God. His
life, as
represented by this twofold activity, from beginning to end was a life
bounded
by zeal for God's House, intense and fervent, so that it could be said
that it
consumed Him.
For
what did that zeal exist? What was
it in relation to the Father's House that was consuming Him? What was
the
nature of His devotion? Clearly it was the holiness of His Father's
House; its
absolute sanctity, its perfect cleanness, its complete separation from
the influences and orders of this world, and from all personal
interests and elements. Those
things are represented by what was taking place here on both of these
occasions. A worldly system had crept in, and it was being pursued for
personal
ends. All such things in His mind were unholy and vile. It was the
holiness of His Father's House which was the character of His consuming
zeal.
Then
one more thing is seen in this
attitude towards His Father's House, and that is His assuming authority
over
it. There is here a foreshadowing of that word in the letter to the
Hebrews:
"But Christ as a Son over God's house...". He is speaking of this Temple as: "My Father's house". He is the
Son of the Father. What is His place
in it as the Son of the Father? It is
the place of absolute authority: "A Son over God's house...". And here
He
assumes His authority in the House of His Father, and His authority is
to deal
with everything that is out of harmony with that House. That is the
position
with which we meet immediately as we read of these instances.
Then,
as it always is with John, the
thing is never left there in the realm of earthly, temporal history.
John never
leaves things with the illustration or the type, because John is not on
the earth. The other three may
be giving us historic records, but John is not just doing that. John
always
gets out of the merely historical, earthly, and carries things through
into the
realm of the universal, the spiritual. He shows us what is not shown
elsewhere,
and gives us a meaning related to this thing which we do not find
elsewhere.
We
could imagine John perhaps reading
the narrative of one of the other apostles, or through the oral Gospel
(as it
was called) having the whole thing repeated to him, and he would say: I
wonder
why they missed out that first cleansing of the Temple! I wonder why they did not put that
in! They have overlooked that, and it is very important; I must put
that in!
And so he would put it in, and in his mind there would be this far
greater
connection, and he would put down what the Lord Jesus said, not only
what He
did, as the larger significance of His act. He follows through, as you
notice
with this: "The Jews therefore answered and said unto him, What sign
showest
thou unto us, seeing that thou doest these things? Jesus answered and
said unto
them, Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up." We
are not
sure whether the Lord Jesus was purposely throwing dust in their eyes,
speaking
enigmatically. They took Him up as speaking of the Temple which He had just cleansed, but He
was not meaning that, and this is where John gives a comment of such
tremendous
importance: they thought that He spoke of the Temple at Jerusalem, "but he spake of the temple of his
body". What has happened with the follow-through? Everything has been
transferred to Himself. He has taken it all over in His own Person. The
Temple is not this Temple outwardly, about which they were
thinking. The Temple of God was Himself.
You
notice how all the way through the
Gospel of John things are transferred to Christ. It does not matter
where you
touch a thing that belongs to the Jewish system, it is transferred to
Christ every time. In chapter
4 the Temples in Samaria and in Jerusalem are mentioned, and John adds:
"Neither in this mountain nor in Jerusalem...". You see He has come, and so
here everything is transferred to Christ. He takes the place of the Temple; He possesses the whole thing in
His own Person. Of course they could never understand, because they
would not
accept Him. He speaks of the Temple of His body and says: "Destroy this
temple,
and in three days I will raise it up."
That
is the value of John's record, and,
remembering that that stands right at the beginning of His life, it is
of
tremendous importance that the Lord Jesus has come, and has come in
relation to
the House of God, and the zeal for His Father's House is consuming Him.
He is
the embodiment of all that that House means. It is all gathered up into
Himself. It is transferred to Christ.
We
now have a fuller revelation of that
truth, and with our fuller revelation in the Epistles we know two
things.
We
know now fully how Christ is God's Temple. We have come to see the full
meaning and value of the fact that God was in Christ making
reconciliation of
the world unto Himself, and that all that that Temple in type stood for was Christ. In
Him is all the value of shed and sprinkled Blood. In Him is all the
value of
Mediatorship, Priesthood. In Him is all the value of the provision for
the
Lord's people. In Him is every thing that was in that Temple in type. He is that to the full.
God is only found by us in Christ.
Then
we have another aspect also of the
one revelation, and that is that Christ has constituted the House of
God by
uniting with Himself a company called His Body; "the church, which is
his
body"; "Whose house are we", says the writer of the Hebrew letter. The
Body of
Christ is now constituted corporately the House of God, God's Temple.
That
truth is familiar to us, and we
only mention it on the way to the thing which is central to this
consideration.
Note
now these other factors as they are
in John's Gospel.
In
the first place, when you recognise
Christ and His members as constituting God's House, you see that this
House —
Christ and His members — is constituted upon the basis of resurrection,
that
sonship relates thereto. "Christ as a Son over God's house". "What sign
showest
thou unto us, seeing that thou doest these things?" In other words: By
what authority are you taking this position over the Temple? You virtually establish yourself
as Master of the House of God! On what ground? The answer is: "Destroy
this
temple, and in three days I will raise it up." He is saying: My
authority is a
spiritual authority, and it is on the ground of resurrection. Sonship
and
authority are here closely related to resurrection from the dead.
Do
you catch the suggestion in His
declaration: "Destroy this temple and... I
will raise it up"? He is speaking
of Himself as though He were two: His body, and His power over His own
body to
raise it up! It is Christ within a Temple, in the power of resurrection. Paul
gives us the larger explanation when He says: "The exceeding greatness
of his
power to us-ward who believe, according to that working of the strength
of his
might which he wrought in Christ, when he raised him from the dead...".
The Temple which we are is brought into being
as the dwelling place of the Lord of life, by reason of our spiritual
resurrection from the dead.
What
does all this amount to? It means
this, that authority in Christ, and the very constitution of His House,
the Temple, the Body of Christ, is upon the basis of
Christ having met all His enemies, and all their destructive power, and
all the power of death, having overcome them, and brought into being
something which they had sought to wipe out of existence.
In other words, as Mark says about this thing: "The chief priests and
the
scribes sought how they might destroy him." He says: "In three days I
will
raise it up." What does that mean? That destruction is destroyed, that
death is
vanquished, and that if there is something raised upon that basis, if
that is
the nature of the existence of the very thing, it in its very existence
testifies to the absolute supremacy of the Lord Jesus over all powers
to
destroy, and over all workings of death.
Gathering
that all up together for an
immediate application to us, it means this, that if we are really,
livingly,
spiritually joined to the Lord Jesus as a part of His Body, we are of
that
Temple of which He said: "I will raise it up"; that is, we are with Him
on the
ground where nothing can destroy, and where death has been itself
robbed of its
power to overcome this thing. We stand (and we must learn how to stand
in the
good of this great spiritual reality) by our very risen union with the
Lord
Jesus, on the ground of authority over death, of power over
destruction. That
is one of the great factors, if it is not the greatest of the factors,
of which
faith has to lay hold. Day by day we are called into the conflict which
rages
by reason of the challenge to that position, the challenge to our
position in
union with Christ in absolute victory over death.
We
are not referring merely to physical
death, but death as a power; and the Temple, the House, exists because Christ
has conquered death, and because the power of destruction has been
broken. Our
attitude has to be, in solid faith, continually: Death for us is vanquished, and destruction is
destroyed. In many ways every day we shall be confronted with the
necessity for
affirming our position on that ground. But that is, after all, by the
way.
The
point which is especially in our
heart is this: This House of God is the place, the sphere, in which
Christ, in
His authority as Son over God's House, confronts everything that is not
in
keeping with that House. This is something which we must continually
bear in
mind. That House demands that everything shall be in keeping with it.
"Holiness
becometh thy house." The Lord Jesus has assumed the authority in the
House of
God, to deal with everything unholy. He is no less zealous now than He
was when
He was on the earth. There is no less zeal about Him for the House of
God now than there was then. Surely we can say there is infinitely
more. At least we can say this, that His relationship to the Temple in Jerusalem is only an illustration. He knew
quite well that that no longer represented the House of God. He knew
quite well
that it had passed out of that sphere where it truly was the House of
God. The
very words with which John introduces this fragment are: "The Passover
of the
Jews was at hand." That was always called "Jehovah's Passover" in the
days when
the thing was right. It was the Lord's Passover, but here John says
"The
Passover of the Jews...". In the same way this Temple was no longer the Lord's House in
reality.
The
Lord is acting towards this Temple in representation of His attitude towards that spiritual
House which was coming in with His own Person, and His attitude towards
the spiritual House is with no less consuming
zeal. It can be said of Him now: "The zeal of thine house hath eaten me
up"; as He assumed the authority as a Son of the Father's House
to deal with everything out of keeping with that House. That is His
position
now. Christ's authority, Christ's very position as the Son over God's
House is
in the first place to deal with everything out of keeping with that
House. Just
as He confronted all the flesh, and arrested all the traffic of the
world in
that Temple, so He stands in the way of that in the
spiritual House.
The
point is this: It is one thing to
have a teaching and a doctrine, and a system of truth about the House
of God,
and get off scot-free. It is quite another thing to come spiritually in
a real
and living way into that truth; and if you do you will never get off
scot-free.
These are two realms.
One
realm is, after all (although it may
not be in the architecture of marble stone, in material things), a
structure of
teaching, a structure of truth, of doctrine about the House of God, and
that
may all be still outside of the Spirit. It may be thought a lot of, and
its
holiness may be talked about, just as much as ever Jews talked about
the Temple in Jerusalem. It might even be grieved over,
just as the Jews go to the Wailing Place now and wail over the departed
glory;
and still it may be an objective system of truth, and there may be no
impact,
no challenge, and all manner of inconsistencies be got away with in
that
system, so that there are terrible contradictions.
But
there is another realm. It is the
realm where every bit of this truth lives, and if we come into the
living
reality of the House of God we are going to find that there is One
established there in authority, Who challenges and meets everything
that is out of keeping with the House. Mark
says: "And he would not suffer that any man should carry a vessel
through...". I
can see Him; not only capsizing those tables, and scattering that
money, but
arresting a man carrying something to do with that merchandise, and
saying:
"Take that outside!" and the man, under the compulsion of that divine
authority, slinking away. Wherever He saw a man carrying something to
do with
this thing He said, in effect: Take it out! It does not belong here!
The
Lord Jesus will confront us, if we
come into this livingly. It is a terrible thing to come into spiritual
truth.
The glory is another side; it is a great privilege; but
it is a terrible
thing to touch anything in God's House with the hands of flesh; to
bring in
what does not belong there as of this world, as of ourselves. He stands
there
to meet it. The Corinthians met it: "For this cause many among you are
weak and
sickly, and not a few sleep." "Holiness becometh thy house." It is good
that it
should be so. It is very blessed that the Lord Jesus should have this
matter in
His own hands, to deal with these things.
Perhaps
you ask the question: Why are
you saying all this? It means this, that you and I want to have the
testimony
maintained in life. It is not worth having something that is only a
system of
truth and does not work. We want to be at the place where the thing
lives, but,
oh! what that involves! We cannot gather round this and say: This is
beautiful truth! No!
This is awful; this is terrible for the flesh! We cannot be in anything
of that
kind and any bit of our flesh get off free. We are simply going to be
ground to
the last fragment in the realm of our flesh if we come into that which
is
wholly of God. We must be prepared for that. It is a part of the very
living
character of this thing.
Then
it prepares a way for so much more.
It brings us into the place of authority in Christ. If He is there as
the Son
over God's House, and we are sons in God's House, by that very
relationship we
come into that authority of Christ. What is our authority? That no
power of
Satan can work on us, because there is no ground for him to take.
Authority is
not a phraseology, a tone of voice, an assertive manner. Authority is a
state
of heart, a state of life. Authority is that the testimony is living,
because the
ground of death has been destroyed. Resurrection in Christ means that
the death
ground has been put away.
When
you seek to have things like that,
what do you expect? You will get (whatever you expect) what He got!
"Then the
chief priests and the scribes sought how they might destroy him." If we
give
ourselves to the matter of the holiness of God's House, the purity, the
cleanness of God's House, the absolute consistency of everything for
the
testimony, to have things living, what shall we meet? We shall meet an
attempt
from the devil to destroy us! If we have touched something that is
evil, something
that is out of keeping with the House, and we have sought to put that
right, we
shall get a kick back from the devil every time; and we shall find that
every
effort to clean things up in the House of God is a thing which is set
against
our very life. You cannot be devoted to this, and have the zeal of
God's House
eating you up, without having a great determined purpose of the enemy
to
destroy you.
In
some place there may be something
that is evil which has come into the House of God, and you seek to have
that
thing cleaned up. It is not long before you meet something as the
return of
that upon yourself, and you feel that you are a marked man, or a marked
woman.
It is not easy to try and get things according to God's mind. The enemy
hates
that.
The
Lord give us grace to receive this
word. "Holiness becometh thy house." How are we going to be an
instrument, a
voice for the Lord? It is this: "If thou take... the precious from the
vile,
thou shalt be as my mouth." If you cut clean in between what is of the
Lord and
what is not, and have things in complete separation unto the Lord:
"Thou shalt
be as my mouth." It is worth anything to be the Lord's mouth in this
world to
His people. That requires that there shall be an uncompromising
attitude toward
anything that is not in keeping with the Lord's House spiritually. The
Lord
bring us into the place where everything is holy. "Holiness becometh
thy house."
Is
your home a holy place? Is your meal
table a holy place? Is the conversation a holy thing? Could hungry,
needy
children of God come to your home and get spiritual help? Or are you
discussing
things that are not helpful, not building up; things which may be real,
may be
actual, but there is nothing to be gained by discussing them? Are you
only
talking about all the generalities of daily life? Is your home a house
of
Bread, or is it a house of criticism, a house of scandal, a house of
gossip?
"Holiness becometh thy house"; and that relates as much to our domestic
life as
the Lord's children, as it does to our being in the assembly.
You
will have a testimony if you look
after the Lord's things. You will be the Lord's mouth if you seek the
things
which are according to the Lord's mind. Your testimony will only be
destroyed
if things are out of keeping with the truth which you teach or accept.
The Lord
bring things into a very living state with us.
First published in the Golden Candlestick magazine, Volume 129 from previously unpublished manuscripts.