Season 4 Podcast 169 The Stories of the New Testament, Matthew Ch 21:12-17, Pt 2 A, “Cleansing of the Temple.”Twice the Lord cleansed the temple. In John 2 the apostle John describes the first cleansing.13 And the Jews’ passover was at hand, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem,14 And found in the temple those that sold oxen and sheep and doves, and the changers of money sitting:15 And when he had made a scourge of small cords, he drove them all out of the temple, and the sheep, and the oxen; and poured out the changers’ money, and overthrew the tables;16 And said unto them that sold doves, Take these things hence; make not my Father’s house an house of merchandise.In Matthew 21 Matthew describes the 2nd cleansing.12 And Jesus went into the temple of God, and cast out all them that sold and bought in the temple, and overthrew the tables of the moneychangers, and the seats of them that sold doves,13 And said unto them, It is written, My house shall be called the house of prayer; but ye have made it a den of thieves.Temples have always been at the heart of Jewish culture and an important part of Christianity. The prophets would go upon the mountain. It was upon Mount Sinai that Moses saw God. It was also upon the mount that Moses received the Ten Commandments. It was upon a mount that Abraham was commanded to offer his son Isaac. It is the same mount upon which Jerusalem, including Solomon’s Temple, was built. But temple worship dates back thousands of years. If you look up the word Ziggurat in Wikipedia, you find the following:“The word ziggurat comes from ziqqurratum (height, pinnacle), in ancient Assyrian. From zaqārum, to be high up….The Sumerians believed that the gods lived in the temple at the top of the ziggurats, so only priests and other highly respected individuals could enter.” Before the Temple of Solomon was built, the Israelites put the Ark of the Covenant in a tent and carried it across the dessert. The tent symbolized the temple. The temple was considered the house of the Lord. In 2 Samuel 7 we read.4 And it came to pass that night, that the word of the Lord came unto Nathan, saying,5 Go and tell my servant David, Thus saith the Lord, Shalt thou build me an house for me to dwell in?6 Whereas I have not dwelt in any house since the time that I brought up the children of Israel out of Egypt, even to this day, but have walked in a tent and in a tabernacle.12 And when thy days be fulfilled, and thou shalt sleep with thy fathers, I will set up thy seed after thee, which shall proceed out of thy bowels, and I will establish his kingdom.13 He shall build an house for my name, and I will stablish the throne of his kingdom for ever.Notice the Lord said he had, “walked in a tent and in a tabernacle.” A temple is the Lord’s house. We can understand why Jesus cleansed the temple because its practices had become corrupted. He said they should not make his Father’s house an house of merchandise. Then he defines one of the purposes of the temple, “My house shall be called the house of prayer; but ye have made it a den of thieves.” Notice that the Savior used the definite article ‘the’ rather than the indefinite article ‘a’ or ‘an.’ He called it ‘the house of prayer.’  That elevates temples above churches or cathedrals or chapels or other houses of worship. It has a unique place in religious worship. King Solomon elaborately describes some of the purposes of the temple when he dedicated the temple he had built. It is found in 1 Kings 8. I shall only present excerpts. We Learn that the temple is dedicated to the Lord and set apart as a House of the Lord.

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