Hey Andy, why did Jesus antagonize Jewish clergy by whipping the money changers; all the while proclaiming toleration and love of all human beings?
Hi, this event with the money changers was brought up in several of the Gospels, but today, I’m going to take it from Matthew 21:
Jesus entered the temple courts and drove out all who were buying and selling there. He overturned the tables of the money changers and the benches of those selling doves. “It is written,” He said to them, “‘My house will be called a house of prayer,’ but you are making it ‘a den of robbers.’”
The Sacrificial Animals
First off, the religious leaders were allowing sacrifices to be sold in the Temple. Granted, it was a long way to walk with a big animal, but the Temple was only selling doves (not large animals), which were often alternative sacrifices for people who couldn’t afford larger animals, so each person’s sacrifice had become more of a “good enough” sacrifice, which isn’t really a sacrifice at all. Plus, the sacrifice of an animal was supposed to be taken from your own collection (herd, flock, etc.). So buying one at the Temple, which was not from anything original of yours, again, wasn’t much of a sacrifice.
What Is a Sacrifice?
A sacrifice is an act of giving up something valued for the sake of something else regarded as more important or worthy. In other words, giving up or offering something that has value to you. For instance, in Marvel Avengers’ End Game (spoiler alert!), Thanos sacrificed Gamora for the soul stone. He gave up something (someone) of great worth to him for the sake of something else of greater or equal value. It was hard for him to do it, and he didn’t want to, but if he was to obtain the stone, then he needed to make that sacrifice. Likewise, God set up a sacrificial system where His people could atone for their sins against Him, or against others (which theologically-speaking, was also against Him) by sacrificing something else of great value, whether a particular animal or a valuable grain. And if people couldn’t afford such animals or grains, He gave them alternatives that they could use instead. For a poor person who couldn’t afford the larger animals, even the smallest of animals was still a sacrifice.
The Crime
So now, let’s look at the money changers in the Temple. All they were selling were doves — the alternative animal. So if a rich person came in, somebody who COULD afford a bull or goat, paying for a dove was nothing to them. So was it really a sacrifice to them? Also, as I mentioned, they didn’t bring the dove up, they didn’t choose it from their own flock, they didn’t have any emotional connection to it. It was just something they bought, as if buying a rotisserie chicken in a grocery store. It wasn’t a sacrifice, it was “good enough”, and the Temple was cashing in on this (dis)service.
Idols In the Temple
In addition to this, people were bringing idols into the Temple. Gentile currency had the image of Caesar on them. The Romans insisted that when an Emperor (Caesar) dies, they’re to be worshiped as a god, which is idolatry (hence, the reason for Christian persecution in the first 3 centuries). So by this time, Gentile money (with Caesar’s image) had become “acceptable” in the Temple. But the Temple is a place for prayer and giving devotion to God. And this brings us into the part about Jesus and the fig tree. Jesus cursed the fig tree, not because it didn’t have figs on it, but because it wasn’t existing for its purpose of existence. Likewise, neither was the Temple—instead it had become more of a money-making scheme.
So when Jesus ran out the moneychangers, He was doing more than making a scene, He was rebuking the religious officials for misleading the people in their worship, even cheating God with their sacrifices, and for not existing for the purpose in which He had originally established them.
Today’s Temple
But now, for those of us who have accepted and come to know Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord, the Temple is our bodies – holy temples, houses of prayer – they now house the Lord’s Spirit. So we too need to examine ourselves regularly to be sure that we’re not allowing any outside “images” (bodies, minds, beliefs, etc.) inside, and to be sure that we too are existing for the reason that God established us.
I’ve been thinking about just this thing in regard to sacrifice. Say, whatever it is that one does to accumulate money, it happens that the value of money gained by fair (Lawful) dealing with fellows is determined not by God, but by men. Then at best, one offering a purchased sacrifice has sort-of spread the burden thereof among those he deals with in exchange of what is both valuable and belonging to him, (presume an appropriate exchange where what is sacrificed unto the man’s fellow returns a sum of money equally-valuable in the Lord’s sight), and at worst is the case of he whose monetary sacrifice for a sacrificial bird truly represents a drop in the bucket – like a 5-star restaurant offering table-scraps while over-charging for foods of quality good enough for men.
I guess it’s why every society who practiced any form of involuntary human sacrifice suffered God’s just response- those doing so outright with stolen people being destroyed and those subtly tricking people into idolatry being painfully corrupted – and the societies wherein people made genuine sacrifices on behalf of themselves and their fellows received from Him blessings a’plenty, and saw them spread in kind among same fellows.
It’s pretty obvious that all that is new can only come from God – no man or woman has ever performed any act of ‘creativity’ that wasn’t simply some inspired use of stuff already created and given-unto. So there seems to be indelibly-consistent criteria to warrant God’s approval of a person’s sacrifice, which Jesus saw and instructed with regard to, and as we see today among us in the various means by which we both falsely and truly acquire whatever it is we sacrifice in pursuit of God’s grace. It’s gotten to be so it’s usually mostly time, money, and fellowship that we sacrifice, as we accumulate money by profitably dealing among our fellows… the chances of monetary sacrifice truly representing ill-gotten property given in hopes to deceive God have multiplied as have the chances of the average person truly understanding the fact been diminished in confusion. As we sacrifice our time, in devoted work-for-purpose, we do so in pursuit of money we hope will be acceptably sacrificed for, at best, the ability to accomplish God’s will without undue interference or, at worst, a sort of previously-merited paradise-on-earth: the guy who’s done enough to see God Himself bless the rest of his living days without trouble. Looks like that could be the reason so many lottery-jackpot winners end up suicidally remorseful after trying to trade wealth for a blessed life, and why the ultra-rare meritous billionaires who effectively sacrifice what is good in God’s sight for a company of fellows he genuinely accounts himself for finds himself living both an exhaustively-busy and invigoratingly-blessed life – accomplishing God’s will truly and on behalf of those truly represented in warranting such blessing.
Of course, when we sacrifice fellowship in pursuit of stuff we can offer unto God for his blessing, then we had better take the sacrifice’s burden on ourselves rather than upon others if we are to accomplish anything worthy in His sight thereby. In any such case, of course, His blessing will be a great return of fellowship, and an apparent ‘profit’ that fails to include fellowship is surely the Devil’s lie.
Nowadays, every one of us is descended from a long line of men and women who’ve done both well and poorly; perfectly and damnably, in God’s sight. And wherever-from in our Great Family’s part we each have sprung, we are inheritors of all that came before us.
We must acknowledge what is ours, and all that is Caesar’s we must render unto him rather than unto the Lord. Those blessed with the ability are called-upon, also, by virtue of being inheritors of our common and respective history, to make unto God what sacrifice most-truly accounts for his fellows, if he is to warrant God’s blessing here and now among and on behalf of those fellows. By this time, by virtue of said inheritance, very few are those whose beneficial sacrifice needn’t be on behalf of their fellows, because things have gotten so bad that nearly all of us living are doing so according to the great grace God persistently grants to our sinning forebears.
So, anyway, Jesus was perfectly enacting God’s will, at the time of His incarnation, by angrily throwing out the usurpers of His temple, on behalf of all the Israelites, according to the covenant. Now, we must throw out our habit of seeking profitable transaction among our fellows without the merit of personal sacrifice; we must only profit monetarily by laboriously increasing the value of what we exchange for money, so making valid the monetary value of our holdings in God’s sight, and we must do so in acknowledgement and on behalf of those of our forebears who either deserve or owe to Him, before we make any sacrifice to Him of what we therefore own, in exchange of His blessing according to His will for us.
It looks to me like any of us very-successfully performing such a sacrifice are still gonna be blessed with tremendous challenges to accomplish the same sorts of blessings in the living-lives of our represented fellows, in such a way that conveys to our fellows their perfect way – a thing (thankfully) the details of which to leave between God and our respective fellow to wrestle with.