THIRTEEN

THE TEMPLE

As they approached Jerusalem and came to Bethphage and Bethany at the Mount of Olives, Jesus sent two of his disciples, saying to them, “Go to the village ahead of you, and just as you enter it, you will find a colt tied there, which no one has ever ridden. Untie it and bring it here. If anyone asks you, ‘Why are you doing this?’ tell him, ‘The Lord needs it and will send it back here shortly.’” They went and found a colt outside in the street, tied at a doorway. As they untied it, some people standing there asked, “What are you doing, untying that colt?” They answered as Jesus had told them to, and the people let them go. When they brought the colt to Jesus and threw their cloaks over it, he sat on it. Many people spread their cloaks on the road, while others spread branches they had cut in the fields. Those who went ahead and those who followed shouted, 
“Hosanna!” “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!” 
“Blessed is the coming kingdom of our father David!” “Hosanna in the highest!”

(Mark 11:1–10)

When Jesus rode into Jerusalem, people laid down their cloaks on the road in front of him and hailed him as a king coming in the name of the house of David. This type of parade was culturally appropriate in that era: A king would ride into town publicly and be hailed by cheering crowds. But Jesus deliberately departed from the script and did something very different. He didn’t ride in on a powerful war horse the way a king would; he was mounted on a polos, that is, a colt or a small donkey. Here was Jesus Christ, the King of authoritative, miraculous power, riding into town on a steed fit for a child or a hobbit. In this way, Jesus let it be known that he was the One prophesied in Zechariah, the great Messiah to come:

Rejoice greatly, O Daughter of Zion! Shout, Daughter of Jerusalem! See, your King comes to you, righteous and having salvation, gentle and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey.

(Zechariah 9:9)

This odd juxtaposition demonstrates that Jesus was King, but that he didn’t fit into the world’s categories of kingship. He brought together majesty and meekness. One of the greatest sermons ever was written and preached in 1738 by Jonathan Edwards, titled “The Excellency of Christ.” Edwards’s imagination was captured by the prophetic vision of Jesus’s disciple John in Revelation 5:5–6: “Then one of the elders said to me, ‘Do not weep! See, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has triumphed. He is able to open the scroll and its seven seals.’ Then I saw a Lamb, looking as if it had been slain, standing in the center of the throne.” John is told to look for a lion, but there in the midst of the throne is a lamb. Edwards meditates on this:

The lion excels in strength and in the majesty of his appearance and voice. The lamb excels in meekness and patience . . . is [sacrificed] for food . . . and . . . clothing. But we see that Christ is in the text compared to both, because the diverse excellencies of both wonderfully meet in him. . . . There is in Jesus Christ . . . a conjunction of such really diverse excellencies as otherwise would have seemed to us utterly incompatible in the same subject. . . .55

Edwards goes on to list in detail all the ways that Jesus combines character traits that we would consider mutually exclusive. In Jesus we find infinite majesty yet complete humility, perfect justice yet boundless grace, absolute sovereignty yet utter submission, all-sufficiency in himself yet entire trust and dependence on God.

But in Jesus the result of these extremes of character is not mental and emotional breakdown. Jesus’s personality is a complete and beautiful whole. Watch this mighty King ride a little donkey into Jerusalem and deal with what he finds there.

Opening the Temple

When Jesus arrived at Jerusalem, he went to the temple, and things got a little bit more complicated. Mark writes:

Jesus entered Jerusalem and went to the temple. He looked around at everything, but since it was already late, he went out to Bethany with the Twelve. The next day . . . on reaching Jerusalem, Jesus entered the temple area and began driving out those who were buying and selling there. He overturned the tables of the money changers and the benches of those selling doves, and would not allow anyone to carry merchandise through the temple courts. And as he taught them, he said, “Is it not written: ‘My house will be called a house of prayer for all nations’? But you have made it a den of robbers.” The chief priests and the teachers of the law heard this and began looking for a way to kill him, for they feared him, because the whole crowd was amazed at his teaching.

(Mark 11:11–12, 15–18)

Mark mentions that Jesus “entered the temple area.” Why is that significant? When you stepped inside the temple door, the first area you got to was the court of the Gentiles—the ethne or “nations.” This was the only part where non-Jews were allowed. It was the biggest section of the temple, and you had to go through it to get to the rest. All the business operations of the temple were set up there. And what an operation it was! When Jesus walked in, he would immediately have seen great throngs of people buying and selling animals at dozens of stalls and exchanging foreign currencies at money changers’ tables. Thousands of people flooded into Jerusalem bringing and buying tens of thousands of animals to be sacrificed. The ancient historian Josephus tells us that in Passover week one year, 255,000 lambs were bought, sold, and sacrificed in the temple courts.56 Think of how tumultuous, loud, and confusing our financial trading floors are—and then add livestock. And this was the place where the Gentiles were supposed to find God through quiet reflection and prayer.

Jesus’s reaction to all this was to start throwing the furniture over. Imagine the leaders hurrying to him in panic: “What’s going on? Why are you doing this?” He quoted from the prophet Isaiah in reply: “My house will be called a house of prayer for all nations”—that is, for the Gentiles. We are told this amazed those who heard him. Why? For one thing, it was popularly believed that when the Messiah showed up he would purge the temple of foreigners. Instead, here is Jesus clearing the temple for the Gentiles—acting as their advocate.57 In our multicultural society it’s easy to like that about Jesus. But what he was doing was even more subversive. Jesus was challenging the sacrificial system altogether and saying that the Gentiles—the pagan, unwashed Gentiles—could now go directly to God in prayer. This was amazing because the people knew the history of the tabernacle and the temple.

The story of the temple starts all the way back in the Garden of Eden. That primal garden was a sanctuary; it was the place where the presence of God dwelled. It was a paradise, because death, deformity, evil, and imperfection cannot coexist with God’s presence. In the presence of God there is shalom, absolute flourishing, fulfillment, joy, and bliss. But when the first human beings decided to build their lives on other things besides God, to let other things besides God give them their ultimate meaning and significance, paradise was lost. As Adam and Eve were banished from the sanctuary of God, they turned around and saw “a flaming sword flashing back and forth” (Genesis 3:24). No one could ever get past this flaming sword that barred the way back into the presence of God.

Turning from God has had dreadful consequences. Building our lives on other things—on power, status, acclaim, family, race, nationality—has caused conflicts, wars, violence, poverty, disease, and death. We’ve trampled one another; we’ve trampled on this earth. That means it’s not enough just to say, “Sorry, may I please get back into the presence of God?” If you’ve been the victim of a heinous crime, if you have suffered violence, and the perpetrator (or even the judge) says, “Sorry, can’t we just let it go?” you would say, “No, that would be an injustice.” Your refusal would rightly have nothing to do with bitterness or vengeance. If you have been badly wronged, you know that saying sorry is not enough. Something else is required—some kind of costly payment must be made to put things right.

The flaming sword is the sword of eternal justice, and it will not fail to exact payment. Nobody can get back into the presence of God unless they go under the sword, unless they pay for the wrong that has been done. But who could survive the sword? No one. And if no one can survive the sword, then how will we ever get back into the presence of God?

These questions remained in spite of the fact that God established a provisional solution for his chosen people, the Israelites: first through the tabernacle and then the temple.58 In the middle of the temple was the holy of holies. It was a small space, covered by a thick veil to shield people from the shekinah presence of God. Remember, God’s immediate presence was fatal to human beings. Just once a year, on Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, the high priest could go inside briefly, but only if he carried a blood sacrifice. Why? Because there was no way back into the presence of God without going under the sword. Even then the blood sacrifice was only inadequately symbolic of the true atoning work that had to happen. What’s more, it didn’t extend access to the rest of us—those not part of the Jewish people. The tabernacle, the temple, and the whole sacrificial system—the only solution to the problem of the sword and the only access, however limited, to the presence of God—were only for the Israelites. So when Jesus quoted Isaiah to imply that the Gentiles could get access to the presence of God, the people were amazed.

Yet the prophets kept promising that someday the glory of God would cover the earth as the waters fill the sea—in other words, the whole world would become a holy of holies. The whole earth would be filled with the glory and presence of God again. And people from all nations, races, backgrounds, and social classes would be welcome in that presence.

Beautiful prophecies. But still: How would they get past the sword?

The answer had been in the book of Isaiah, though most people didn’t see it. Isaiah 53:8 says about the Messiah: “He will be cut off from the land of the living.” And in Revelation, when John looks at the throne, the place of ultimate power in the universe, why does he see a slaughtered lamb? Because the death of Jesus Christ—the Lamb of God—is the greatest royal triumph in the history of the cosmos. When Jesus went under the sword, it broke his body, but it also broke itself. This was what one author famously called “the death of Death in the death of Christ.”59 Jesus took the sword for you and me. That’s why at the moment Jesus died, the veil that covered the holy of holies was ripped from top to bottom (Mark 15:38). It wasn’t just ruined; it was made obsolete, so that now we all have access to the presence of God. The flaming sword claimed its victim; the veil was parted; and the way back into the garden was permanently reopened.

The people may have been startled by Jesus’s display of controlled, authoritative, righteous anger in overturning the tables in the temple. But what absolutely shocked them is that he was overturning the sacrificial system of the temple and opening the way into the presence of God for everyone.

Clearing the Temple

Jesus actually visited the temple twice. He went there briefly upon his arrival in Jerusalem, then stayed that night with his disciples in Bethany, a couple of miles outside the city. The next day they came back into Jerusalem to visit the temple again (this is when Jesus overturned the tables), and on their way into the city, Mark records the following story:

The next day as they were leaving Bethany, Jesus was hungry. Seeing in the distance a fig tree in leaf, he went to find out if it had any fruit. When he reached it, he found nothing but leaves, because it was not the season for figs. Then he said to the tree, “May no one ever eat fruit from you again.” And his disciples heard him say it.

(Mark 11:12–14)

I must say, on the surface it looks very bad for Jesus. A lot of people have had trouble with Jesus’s reaction to the fig tree. Putting a curse on a tree because it was not bearing fruit, and out of season, no less? It seems petulant and mean. But let’s look at this closely. This is no fit of temper.

Middle Eastern fig trees bore two kinds of fruit. As the leaves were starting to come in the spring, before the figs came, the branches bore little nodules, which were abundant and very good to eat. Travelers liked to pick them off and eat them as they made their journey. If you found a fig tree that had begun to sprout leaves but had none of these delicious nodules, you would know that something was wrong. It might look okay from a distance because the leaves had emerged, but if it had no nodules it was diseased or maybe even dying inside. Growth without fruit was a sign of decay. Jesus is simply pronouncing that such is the case here. Remember that this happens between his first arrival at the temple and his return to the temple the next day. Jesus seizes the opportunity to provide a private, memorable object lesson, a parable against hollow religiosity, with the fig tree as a visual aid.

So what is the lesson about? Jesus finds the fig tree not doing its appointed job. The tree became a perfect metaphor for Israel, and beyond that, for those claiming to be God’s people but who do not bear fruit for him. Jesus was returning to a place that was religiously very busy, just like most churches are: tasks, committees, noise, people coming and going, lots of transactions. But the busyness contained no spirituality. Nobody was actually praying. There are many things we do that can appear to be signs of real belief but can grow without real heart change. Evidently we can be very busy in church activities without real heart change and without real compassionate involvement with others.

Later that day, Jesus would clear the temple of all that fruitless activity. He would take the private object lesson of the fig tree and turn it into a necessary public spectacle. Jesus is saying that he wants more than busyness; he wants the kind of character change that only comes from realizing that you have been ransomed. If you’re an anxious or impatient person, is it clear to everybody around that you are overcoming that? Do you have the power to wait through Jesus’s delays? If you’re an angry or unforgiving person, have you clearly begun to conquer anger? Are you learning to absorb the cost of forgiveness? If you’re a fearful person, a self-hating person, or a self-aggrandizing person, is it very clear to the people who know you best that your character is undergoing radical regeneration? Or are you just very busy with religious activities?

At the end of Jonathan Edwards’s sermon on the paradoxical character of Jesus, he says that these same radically different traits that are normally never combined in any one person will be reproduced in you because you are in the presence of Jesus Christ. You’re not just becoming a nicer person or a more disciplined person or a more moral person. The life and character of Jesus—the King who ambles into Jerusalem on a donkey, then storms into the temple with the audacity to say “This is my house”—are being reproduced in you. You’re becoming a more complete person, the person you were designed to be. The person you were ransomed to be.

There is a final irony to all of this. Jesus, who unites such apparent extremes of character into such an integrated and balanced whole, demands an extreme response from every one of us. He forces our hand at every turn in the story. This man who throws open the gates of his kingdom to everyone, then warns the most devout insiders that their standing in the kingdom is in jeopardy without fruitfulness, is forever closing down our options. This man who can be weakened by a touch in a crowd on his way to bring a little girl back from the dead is a man you dare not tear your eyes from. (And we haven’t even yet witnessed the true depths of his restraint or the heights of his power.)

He is both the rest and the storm, both the victim and the wielder of the flaming sword, and you must accept him or reject him on the basis of both. Either you’ll have to kill him or you’ll have to crown him. The one thing you can’t do is just say, “What an interesting guy.” Those teachers of the law who began plotting to kill Jesus at the end of this episode in the temple—they may have been dead wrong about him, but their reaction makes perfect sense.

Please don’t try to keep Jesus on the periphery of your life. He cannot remain there. Give yourself to him—center your entire life on him—and let his power reproduce his character in you.