Mark 11:15-18

And Jesus went into the Temple, and began to cast out them that sold.

The Temple cleansed: or, Christ the purifier of religion

When we are told that this took place “in the temple” we are not to suppose that the Holiest of all is meant, but the Court of the Gentiles. It was this portion of the sacred enclosure that was converted into a market. It was doubtless a convenient arrangement, and a profitable one; but it was a bold offence, and drew down the severe condemnation of Christ. Men may buy and sell in the temple, so to speak, without the presence of the articles and actual proceedings of commerce. How many of you are busy, in God’s house, with the secularities of everyday life! Many do in spirit what these men did in fact. There is no need to call in the aid of miracle to account for the consequences of Christ’s interference. Holy will is strong, especially when dealing with sinful consciences which are weak. Wrong felt the presence of Divine right, and departed. Strange to say, this action of Christ has been objected to. There are periods when logical arguments and gentle persuasions are out of place, and reason and righteousness assume their right of direct appeal, in word and act, to the inmost sense and conscience of men. Christ was thus severe only with corruption: He had nothing but tenderness for simply evil; He poured His hot displeasure only on the hardened wretches that covered their real sin with seeming sanctity. We see an under meaning in this incident: Christ standing in thy temple of universal humanity, and by His word of power redeeming it from the desecrations of sinful corruption and abuse, rescuing it to the honour of its slighted Lord.

I. The temple of God is desecrated and defiled.

1. Look at the heathen world; behold there the strength of the corruption. The religious sentiment strong amongst them is abused; at least it operates through fear, distrust, and hate, instead of love, hope, and faith; at worst it is the tool of craft and lust. Thus the highest endowments bring about the lowest degradation.

2. Thus has it been with every mode of revealed religion. Thus it was with Judaism. The life-giving spirit had perished; its very form had become corrupt. Does Christianity present an exception to this desecration? What is the religion of many of you but a buying and selling in the temple! Self-interest has its office in religion, but it is not an element of religion itself. Indeed, there is no juster distinction between true and false religion than this: In true religion, self-interest is made the means of what is spiritual; in false religion, what is spiritual is made the means of self-interest. When religion appears as a ladder set up between heaven and earth for all God’s angels to descend and minister to man, but not for aspirations and holy communions to ascend from man to God; when Christianity is contemplated as a scheme of political economy, and the Lord of all is regarded chiefly as the most useful being in existence, we make our hearts the scenes of degrading traffic.

II. This desecration and defilement of the temple of God should create holy and vehement indignation. What is there in the scene we have surveyed to call for holy wrath?

1. It involves the abuse of what is best and highest-“My house,” etc. His Father’s house was polluted. The highest view to take of sin is always that it dishonours God; the man who dishonours God also dishonours himself. When is God more dishonoured than when the many gifts by which He may be felt, known, served, frustrate His purposes and misrepresent His being? As when faculties, whose sphere is spirit, feed and flatter the flesh.

2. It involves the promotion of the worst and lowest things-“A den of thieves.” They who rob God can scarcely be expected to be very scrupulous in their dealings with men. The best things when abused become the worse; there is no devil like a fallen angel. The reasons are not far to seek. The best things are the strongest. The best things when abused have a natural tendency to exceed in evil. Still further, good when it is abused hardens the moral feeling.

III. Jesus Christ appears before us as the cleanser of the temple of God. How does He effect it?

1. He comes into the temple of God as the living representative of Divine things. He appears as the Son of God in His “Father’s house.”

2. He makes an effective appeal to men on the true character and design of Divine things-“Is it not written, My house shall be called,” etc. He draws attention to the nature and object of the sacred place. He forbids what is auxiliary to the condemned abuse. He “would not suffer that any man should carry any vessel through the temple.” The purification of humanity is slow, but sure. (A. J. Morris.)

Pickpockets in the synagogue

Our Paris correspondent telegraphs:-Complaints having been made to the police that the synagogue of the Rue de la Victoire had become a house of call for pickpockets, several detectives were set there on watch, who last Saturday caught a man in the act of stealing a purse from one of the congregation. Henceforth a couple of inspectors will be on duty during the service and, it is to be hoped, will render personal property secure in the synagogue. The name of the man arrested is Jules Henrilien. He refuses to name his accomplices. (Daily News.)

The expulsion of the money changers from the temple

It would appear from a comparison of the different evangelists, that there were two occasions upon which Christ displayed His indignation at the traffic by which His Father’s house was defiled. Those who yielded to the supernatural power with which our Lord acted, returned to their unlawful practices when that power was withdrawn. It was one thing to drive the wicked from the temple, but quite another to drive wickedness from their heart. This was a miracle upon mind.

I. The place where the market was held. It was not the temple properly so called; the Jews were scrupulous about their temple. Where, then, was the market? We will endeavour to explain this to you. In the time of our Saviour, the temple, properly so called, had three courts, each surrounding one another. These courts, with the building they encompassed, made up what was known under the general name of the temple. In the first of these courts stood the altar of burnt offering, and to this came none but the priests and Levites. The second, surrounding that of the priests, was the great hall which, though the Jews assembled to worship, was also open to those proselytes who had been circumcised, and had thus taken upon themselves the whole ritual of Moses. But the outer court of the three was called the court of the Gentiles, and was appropriated to such proselytes as had renounced idolatry, but who, not having been circumcised, were still accounted unclean by the Jews. The two first of these courts were accounted holy, but no sanctity appears to have been attached to the third; it was considered a part of the temple, but had no share in that sacredness which belonged to all the rest. And in this outer court-the court of the Gentiles-it was, that the sheep, and oxen, and doves were sold, and the money changers had their tables. As the Jews did not regard this court as possessing any legal sanctity, they permitted to be used as a market the temple of those who came thither to worship. If you have followed me in this there is good reason for supposing that it was on purpose to show their contempt for the Gentiles, that the Jews allowed the traffic which Christ interrupted. When Christ entered the court of the Gentiles, and found in place of the solemnity which should have pervaded a scene dedicated to worship, all the noise and tumult of a market, He had before Him the most striking exhibition of that fatal resolve on the part of His countrymen, and which His apostles strove in vain to counteract-the resolve of considering themselves as God’s peculiar people, to the exclusion of all besides; and the refusing to unite themselves with converts from heathenism in the formation of one visible Church. Was not this, then, an occasion upon which to exercise the prophetic office? Was there not here an opportunity of inculcating a truth which, however unpalatable to the Jews, required, of all others, to be set forth with clearness, and maintained with constancy-the truth, that though God for a time had seemed neglectful of the great body of men, and bestowed all His carefulness upon a solitary tribe; yet were the Gentiles watched over by Him in their long alienation, and about to be gathered within the borders of His Church. And this truth we suppose it to have been which Christ set Himself to teach by the significant act of driving from the court of the Gentiles the merchants with their merchandise. He declared, as emphatically as He could have done in words, that the place where the strangers worshipped was to be accounted as sacred as that in which the Israelites assembled, and that what would have been held as a profanation of the one, was to be held a profanation of the other. By thus vindicating the sanctity of the spot appropriated to the Gentiles, as worthy of as much veneration as that appropriated to the Jews, when He expelled the merchants and money changers, He went far towards putting Jew and Gentile on the same level, and announcing the abolition of ceremonial distinctions. The Jews had allowed the desecration of the court of the Gentiles, because they regarded the Gentiles as immeasurably inferior to themselves, and defiled through the want of circumcision; and, therefore, unable to offer to God any acceptable worship. What, then, was meant by the resistance, on Christ’s part, to this desecration of the court of the Gentiles, except that the Jews had fallen into the grossest of errors, in so supposing that the Gentile had been overlooked by God, or excluded from His mercies? The ground on which he stood to pray was as hallowed as that on which the sanctuary rose, and, therefore, he might himself be as much approved and accepted as anyone of that family which seemed for centuries to engross the notice of heaven. And when this has been determined, it is scarcely possible but to feel that the prophecy may glance on to future occurrences. We need not point out to you how little progress has yet been made, notwithstanding the struggles and the advancings of Christianity, towards the announced consummation that God’s “house shall be a house of prayer for all people.” “All people” have not yet flocked to its courts; but, on the contrary, the great mass of the human population bow down in the temple of idols. True, indeed, that the doors of the sanctuary have been thrown open, and the men of every land been invited to enter; but the prophecies in question speak of more than a universal offer of admission; they speak of what shall yet take place-the general acceptance of the offer; the pressing of all nations into the Church of the Redeemer. Consider, then, whether the expulsion of the buyers and sellers, as figuring the first accomplishment of the prophecy, when the Gentiles were admitted into the visible Church, may not also be significative of what shall occur at the close of the dispensation when Christianity shall be diffused throughout the earth. We have succeeded to the place of the Jews; for Christians are now the peculiar people of God, and what the Gentiles were to the Jews, that are the heathen to us-a race divided from us by external privileges, and not admitted into the same covenant with the Almighty. And what is it that Christian nations have done and are doing for the heathen? In our intercourse with lands where idolatry and superstition still hold the ascendency, has it been our main endeavour to introduce the pure gospel of Christ? or have we striven, where there was no room for direct assault upon the fabric of error, to exhibit Christianity in its purity, and beauty, and majesty? Alas, might it not be said, we have planted our markets rather than our churches in the court of the Gentiles; that we have crowded that court with our merchandise, but taken little pains to gain room within its area for the solemnities of truth; that even when the voice of the preacher has been heard, it has been overborne by the din of commerce, or contradicted by the lives of those professing Christianity? Indeed, we much think that putting, as we are bound to do, the Christian into the place of the Jew, there is little or no difference between the present aspect of the court of the Gentiles, and that which it wore when Christ was on earth-the same, at least, in a great degree; for what portion do our efforts bear either to our ability or the urgency of the case? The same inattention to those not born to our privileges; the same persecution; the same neglect or disregard of the interests of religion; the same supercilious notion of superiority in the midst of the non-improvement of our many advantages; and if Christ were now to return to the earth, as we believe He shall at the close of the dispensation, what measure could Christendom expect at His hands but that awarded to the Jews? It is in exact accordance with those delineations of Scripture which relate to the second coming of Christ, that we should consider the expulsion of the traffickers from the temple figurative of what will be done with the great mass of nominal Christians. We could almost think that in this, and other respects, the transaction represented how Christ would proceed in cleansing the temple of the heart. He comes into the courts of this temple-the heart of any amongst ourselves whom He desires to consecrate to Himself; and He finds it occupied by worldly things-carnal passions, ambitious projects, the affections all fastening on the creature, to the exclusion of the Creator. And there must be an expulsion from the temple of whatsoever defiles it, that it may indeed become a sanctuary fit for the indwelling of the Lord of the whole earth. But the purifying process is gradual. Nothing unclean can be suffered to remain; but it is not all at once that what pollutes is removed. The first assault, as it were, is on the oxen, and the sheep, and the tables of the money changers, as the more prominent of the occasions and causes of profanation. And with these He is vehement and forcible. Sensuality, covetousness, pride-these are for the scourge and the indignant expostulation; and no quarter can be allowed, no, not for an instant. But it is not only the oxen, and the sheep, and the tables of the money changers, which desecrate the temple of the heart. There are the doves-the gentler and kindlier affections of our nature; and these-even these-contaminate when God is not their first object, but their fervour and their freshness given to the creature. But it is in gentleness, rather than in harshness, that the Lord of the temple proceeds with us in effecting this part of the purification. It is not with the doves, as with the sheep, and the oxen, and the tables of the money changers-the scourging and the overthrowing, but rather by the mild expostulation-“Take these things hence,” that He attempts the removal of what He cannot suffer to remain. Harshness might injure or destroy the affections themselves, just as the driving out the doves would have caused their being lost; but by continually setting before us the goodness of God, whether as manifested in creation or redemption, by teaching us how much more precious becomes every object of love when we love it not so much for its own sake as for the sake of the Giver-this cleanses the heart, and gradually inclines us to the substituting for affections chained to the finite, affections centering on the infinite; and thus persuades us to take away the dove on whose plumage is the dust of the earth, but only that its place may be occupied by one such as the Psalmist describes-“whose wings are covered with silver, and her feathers with yellow gold.” The cleansing of the heart is not complete till God is supreme in its affections. It is not enough to mortify corrupt passions, and resist imperious lusts: this is but expelling the sheep and the oxen. We must give God the heart, delighting in Him as the “chief good;” ay, my brethren, we must act on the consciousness, and God grant that we all may!-we must act on the consciousness that the gentle dove may profane God’s house, as well as the flocks whose pastures are of the earth; and that if the one-the sheep and the oxen-must be altogether ejected, the other-the dove-must be trained to the soaring upwards, and bathing in the free light of heaven. (H. Melvill, B. D.)

Profanation of holy places

Who will venture to deny the exceeding enormity of that offence which a prince deems it right to punish with his own hand? God drove our guilty first parents from the garden; but it was done by the intervention of an angel. He chased the Canaanites from their land; but He did it by an army of hornets. By the hand of an angel He struck down the army of the Assyrians, and brought low the pride of Herod when he assumed Divine honour to himself. Only in the case of those who profane sacred places do I see Christ-Him, that is, who on all other occasions was so mild and gentle-coming forth and taking the rod in His own hand. What a monstrous, what an intolerable crime must this be-the profanation of holy places! (Segneri.)

Desecration of the temple

The circumstances which led to the profanation were these. The Jews who came up to the Feasts from a distance would obviously find it more convenient to purchase their sacrificial victims on the spot, and cattle markets were held in the city; but in lapse of time, when the authorities of the temple began to grow mercenary, they determined to have such a large source of profit in their own hands. The Court of the Gentiles was always held in little respect by the Jews, and it seemed to them quite justifiable to utilize it for their purpose. For about twenty days before the Feast the corridors and arcades and outer walls of the sacred enclosure were commonly occupied by cattle pens; and the solemn stillness of the precincts was broken by the unseemly confusion of the lowing of herds, and the wrangling of drovers and pilgrims bargaining for their price. Besides these there were the money changers. After the captivity the Jews of the dispersion, when they came up to the Feasts, in common with those who dwelt in Palestine, made each their offering for the temple service. There was only one coin in which this offering might be paid into the treasury-the half-shekel piece. It was intended as a safeguard to prevent the Korban being desecrated by the introduction of pieces of money upon which heathen emblems were stamped. Those pilgrims, therefore, who came from countries where non-Jewish money was current, as Babylon, Alexandria, Greece, or Rome, were compelled to procure the half-shekel by exchange. It was not only a fruitful source of gain to the bankers, who demanded an exorbitant discount; their extortion kindled the indignation of our Lord, and His ears were pained by the clinking of money and weights and balances, and the strife of words and angry recriminations, mingling with the prayers and praises of the sanctuary. But this was not all. Even the offerings of poor women, and others, whose very poverty might have exempted them from fraudulent imposition, were included in the market. The whole scene was such as would raise the righteous anger of anyone who was jealous for the honour of God’s house. It was almost a worse profanation than that which made our cathedrals and churches scenes of riot and desecration in the times of Edward VI, when St. Paul’s was turned into a stock exchange for merchants, and its aisles were used as common thoroughfares for both man and beast. (H. M. Luckock, D. D.)

Cleansing of the Temple

I. God has many temples;

(1) Temple of Israel;

(2) Temple of nature;

(3) Christian church;

(4) Saved souls.

II. We are too ready to defile them. We mix self-interest with religion, or trade with religion, for our own profit.

1. Preaching in order to get money.

2. Sale of livings.

3. Going to certain churches because it may be good for business.

III. However the Saviour may seem to ignore such pollution, a time will come when He will resent and purge it away. (R. Glover.)

Thieves in the Temple

Religion must not be exploited for money. The church is not a shop. The kind of spiritual outrage attacked by Christ is one that repeats itself. There was nothing wrong in selling outside the temple, or any other church, things which were necessary for the temple service. We sell hymn books in our vestries; abroad they sell candles and breviaries and crosses at the doors of the cathedrals. It is a question of degree and intention. But I have seen, at the time of a church celebration abroad, the whole street blocked with booths. Noisy sellers of sweetmeats, toys, and provisions, pushing their bargains, and touting even in the church porch, and on the threshold of the sanctuary. There was the den of thieves. Your miracle mongers, who set up their winking statues and healing saints’ bones with the one view of fleecing the people-are thieves. Your idle clergy, especially certain Roman cathedral clergy, who fatten on the sins of the faithful, never preach, seldom hear confessions, never visit the sick; simply do nothing but mumble mass on saints’ days-they are thieves. Your English clergy, who are hale and hearty non-residents on £500 a year, and put in a man at £80 to look after their parishes-are thieves. Wherever or whenever God’s church and service is made the pretext first and foremost for getting money, then and there the spiritual outrage chastised by Christ with whip and expulsion is committed afresh: the house of prayer has been made a den of thieves; and at such an hour as they wet not of, the Lord will suddenly come to His temple and purify it. (H. R. Haweis, M. A.)

Right looking upon wrong

As it is said that ferocious animals are disarmed by the eye of man if he but steadily look at them, so it is when right looks upon wrong. Resist the devil and he will flee from you; offer him a bold front and he runs away. (Dr. Bushnell.)