type: Sermon Manuscript\
related_to: "[[Cleansing the Temple - June 14, 2026]]"
_organized: true
Manuscript - Cleansing the Temple - June 14, 2026
Introduction - Not just gentle and lowly
Take your Bibles with you and turn to Luke chapter 19.
There's a book that came out a couple years ago that is extremely popular called Gentle and Lowly by Dane Ortlund. I haven't read that book so Please don't take what I'm about to say as a criticism of that particular book.
There's this idea that has become extremely popular about Jesus: that he was a weak, milquetoast, pushover kind of man who never showed any anger and never said anything harsh. He was always gentle. Meek as a little lamb.
There is this mistaken idea that strength and violence are always problematic. That is always wrong to use force or to initiate conflict. That the strong man is always the bad guy. And a lot of people have co-opted Jesus as the symbol of that idea.
While it's true that Jesus was gentle and meek, that's just one side of Jesus. Jesus was also strong. Jesus was also a conqueror, a king, a judge. Jesus had no problem confronting, in the harshest way possible, those who deserved it.
In our text today we are going to look at just a couple of verses where Jesus does exactly that. It is Jesus at His most violent. It’s the story we know as the cleansing of the Temple.
This is not the popular Jesus that a lot of you are used to. It's not milquetoast pushover Jesus here. But I’m convinced that if you understand what Jesus did here, it will make you love him more not less.
This story takes place in all four of the Gospels. It probably happened two separate times. Matthew, Mark, and Luke all tell the story the week of the crucifixion, but John tells it as happening at the very beginning of Jesus' ministry. The likely explanation is that Jesus actually did this twice.
Today we are going to read the account in Luke 19:45-48. Let’s go ahead and read those verses:
[45] And he went into the temple, and began to cast out them that sold therein, and them that bought;
[46] Saying unto them, It is written, My house is the house of prayer: but ye have made it a den of thieves.
[47] And he taught daily in the temple. But the chief priests and the scribes and the chief of the people sought to destroy him,
[48] And could not find what they might do: for all the people were very attentive to hear him.
Luke 19:45-48 (KJV)
If you were here last week, we talked about the triumphal entry. In the verses right before this, Jesus enters the city of Jerusalem on a donkey, with people shouting, "Hosanna, which means 'save us now.'" People are saying, "The Son of David, the King, has come." This is the only time to this point that Jesus has allowed people to make a big deal about him. He's allowed some kind of royal, kingly attention. Things are really coming to a head in Jerusalem.
And what we're going to see in this story is that Jesus comes into the temple as a king and starts acting like it's His.
Now there are three parts to this that I want to draw your attention to today. I want to talk about how Jesus cleansed the temple, how Jesus confronted the temple leadership, and how Jesus completed the temple.
Let's pray and we'll get started.
Pastoral prayer
The first point thing we see Jesus doing in this story today is...
1. Jesus cleansed the Temple by exposing its corruption
When you piece together Matthew, Mark, Luke and John - it paints a fuller picture of what was going on here. After the Triumphal Entry, Jesus spent the night in Bethany (Probably with Mary, Martha and Lazarus) and then in the morning He went into the Temple and started cleaning house.
You see, by the time of Christ, the Temple had become a very corrupt place. There were at least three things going on that Jesus wanted to stop:
First, the High Priests were taking advantage of Levitical laws to make a bunch of money on offerings. People usually came to the Temple to offer a sheep or a lamb. In that society, most people had these animals at home.
But that lamb had to be a pure lamb, without spot or blemish. That meant the priest could inspect the lamb that you brought as an offering and reject that offering. They figured out: what if we reject all of these lambs and all of these sheep and then sell our own pure lambs at a higher price inside the temple?
These people had traveled, some of them from other countries, to give an offering and they were literally a captive customer. The priest could charge them whatever they want.
If you've ever bought food at an amusement park or at a pro sports game - you know what this is like. Hot dogs that cost $20. A cup of Coke. That costs $6. It's highway robbery but what can you do?
This is how exploitive it got. The poorest of the people that couldn't afford a lamb could bring a dove or a pigeon as an offering. Barclay says that outside the temple you could buy a pigeon for four pence but inside the temple that same pigeon cost 75 pence - literally twenty times as expensive.
Instead of praying for the people, the priests were praying on the people and by selling doves like this they were even preying on the poorest of the people.
The second thing they were doing in the Temple that Jesus wanted them to stop involved exchanging money.
You see, selling approved offerings were not the only way that the High Priests made money. There was also an annual temple tax that was supposed to be given to the temple. And by the time of Jesus most of the people were spending Roman currency. The High Priests took advantage of this and they said, "Roman currency is impure. It's got Caesar's face on it. We can't have that in the temple. You have to give your offering in temple currency.” The only place that you could make that exchange was in the temple itself, and of course they had very, very high exchange rates.
It was another way that they were ripping people off.
But where would this happen? Where in the temple did they have space to sell expensive animals and make these expensive money exchanges? Obviously when God gave the plans for the temple, this was not included. So they had to co-opt another space and the space that they co-opted was a space called the Court of the Gentiles.
There was a big courtyard on the outside of the temple that was intended by God to be a place of evangelism, where non-Jewish people could come and pray and be taught about God. That was not happening. What was happening was this place had become a place where this exploitive commerce was happening.
The Jewish people were also using it as a shortcut. To get across town more quickly.
And so the third thing that Jesus wanted the people to stop doing in the temple was to stop misusing this court of the Gentiles. They've literally taken this place that was supposed to be a house of prayer for the nations and turned it into a den of thieves, into a place of commerce. And Jesus wanted them to cut it out.
But listen, Jesus didn't come out there and be like, "Cut it out guys." “Y’all should stop it.” No, Jesus came in and took charge. Jesus came in and flipped tables over.
Have you ever seen somebody flip over a table before? It is a violent, messy act.
Everybody knew what the priests were doing. I'm sure people talked about it, but what could they do? Jesus came in, exercising his kingly authority, exercising His Strength and exposed what these wicked men were doing. He made them stop. And that put them on a collision course with the people running this whole thing.
Now before I move on to the second point, I want to say this: some people think strength, authority, action are bad. Those people want to hold up Jesus as the avatar of this kind of purposeful weakness. That is not biblically accurate.
The problem is not strength, authority, and capacity for violence. The problem is the wrong people using strength, the wrong people holding authority, and people wielding their capacity for violence in a wrong way. This kind of masculine strength and authority is a gift of God. And it can be, as we see here in this story, a very godly thing to confront wrongdoing. A very godly thing to take over a situation by force.
Romans 13 talks about the civil government and says that God gave them the sword and that they do not bear the sword in vain. They're intended to be a terror to wicked doers. So this idea that strength is always bad and that Jesus is our great example of weakness doesn't really hold up.
Jesus went in there and cleaned house. That brings us to our second point.
2. Jesus confronted the Temple leadership, deliberately provoking the cross
Jesus went into the temple and destroyed and cast out the people that were making money, called them thieves. He started acting like he owned the place.
And who was making money off of this system? It was the Sadducees. It was the high priestly class. It was the economic elites of Israel.
Notice this isn't a one-day thing. Jesus starts teaching every day in the temple. It's got massive crowds of people there listening to him, saying he's the Son of David (which again is a kingly reference), saying "Hosanna," which means "Save us now." Jesus basically took over the temple for the week.
And it wasn't just any week. It was Passover week. It was the busiest week of the whole year. It was the week where the most lambs were sold. Jesus came in and just took over the temple.
Now I want you to imagine this with me. Imagine Easter Sunday at Bible Baptist Church, the biggest crowd we have all year. I've worked for weeks, prayed for weeks over the right message to preach. Somebody just comes in and basically ignores me and starts acting like they're the pastor of the church. Do you think I would take that lying down? Do you think I would just let that happen? Of course I wouldn’t. That's a direct challenge to my rightful authority as the pastor.
So when Jesus took over the temple and confronted these temple leaders, it was a direct challenge to their leadership and to their position and they had to act. They couldn't just let that stand. Jesus was forcing their hand.
Now there's already been a lot of confrontation in the Gospels. But that confrontation has mostly been between Jesus and the Pharisees. The Pharisees were kind of like the conservative small-town leaders. They were the leaders of the synagogue system. Synagogues were a lot like our local churches.
Jesus hasn't done a lot in his ministry to confront the Sadducees. The Sadducees were the high priestly class. They controlled the temple and were the elites. The Sadducees and the Pharisees were actually enemies, like Republicans and Democrats in Congress.
But here in this instance Jesus is doing something that the Sadducees and the high priests cannot let stand. He is striking at the heart of their authority. By the end of this week, by Thursday (it's Sunday here), they would have an illegal trial of Christ and put him on a cross. That trial would include the whole Sanhedrin, so the Pharisees and the Sadducees.
The point I'm trying to make is that Jesus was doing this on purpose. Jesus was being deliberate here. Jesus was forcing their hand, forcing them to do something.
There's this idea that Jesus got caught in the gears of politics. That he was just some humble teacher that accidentally stepped on the wrong toes and the people killed him for it.
Jesus didn't get caught in the gears of politics. Jesus threw himself into them. He didn't accidentally step on the wrong toes. He went looking for the toes to stomp on.
Which means He was trying to go to the cross this whole time. The entire thing was Jesus headed to the cross because that was always God's plan.
So let’s talk about that plan with our third point:
3. Jesus completed the Temple, becoming everything it ever did or pointed to
In the related story in John 2, Jesus said something that would be used against Him in His trial that week. He said “Destroy this temple, and I will build it again in three days.”
Of course, Jesus wasn’t referring to the ornate building where the priests offered sacrifices for the people. He was referring to himself.
You see, Jesus was the temple. Another way to say this is that everything that God wanted to happen in that building was just a picture of what Jesus would do on the cross and what Jesus does for us today.
Think about what the Temple was supposed to do? Think about what was supposed to happen there?
First and foremost - it was supposed to be God’s house right? That’s where the presence of God was supposed to live. Well, the New Testament tells us:
[9] For in him (that’s Christ) dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily.
Colossians 2:9 (KJV)
We don’t go to the Temple anymore to find the presence of God - we go to Jesus to find the presence of God.
A second thing that was supposed to be happening in the Temple was it was a place of access to God. People thought that you had to go to God through the Temple, through the priests.
But for us, Jesus is our access to God.
[6] Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.
John 14:6 (KJV)
We don’t have to go to a building anymore to get access to God, we come to God through Jesus.
A third thing that was supposed to happen in the Temple was the sacrifices atoning for sins. People came to the Temple to make blood sacrifices on an altar that God would look at and forgive their sins.
But that was always a picture of Jesus. The animal blood sacrifice never really took away sins - it was always intended to point people to Jesus.
Hebrews says this:
[4] For it is not possible that the blood of bulls and of goats should take away sins.
Hebrews 10:4 (KJV)
It has always been Jesus and only Jesus who can take away our sins. As Peter says:
[24] Who his own self bare our sins in his own body on the tree, that we, being dead to sins, should live unto righteousness: by whose stripes ye were healed.
1 Peter 2:24 (KJV)
The Temple was always just pointing people to Jesus.
A fourth thing that was supposed to happen in the Temple was priests mediating for the people.. The priests were supposed to go into the Temple and pray to God on behalf of the people of Israel.
But that too was just a picture of Christ. Who Hebrews tells us is at the right hand of God - acting as our great high priest, our great advocate, ever making intercession for us.
Listen, you don’t need Mary to pray for you. You don’t need a priest to pray for you. You have Jesus Himself praying for you.
Everything that legitimately happened in that Temple was just one big arrow pointing at what Jesus would do for us. Because He is our Temple.
My favorite song, the song that more than any helped me understand the gospel, the song that helped me have assurance of my salvation as a young man is “Before the Throne of God Above”
Listen to these words:
Before the throne of GOd above, I have a strong and perfect plea the great high priest whose name is love, there ever lives and pleads for me. My name is written on his hands, my name is graven on his heart and while I know in heaven he stands, no tongue can bid me thence depart.
When satan tempts me to despair and tells me of the guilt within, Upward I look and see him there, who made an end to all my sin. Because the sinless savior died, my sinful soul is counted free and God the just is satisfied, to look at Him and pardon me.
That’s what Jesus does for us. He is our Temple.
Listen people thought they could come to the temple and if they just got their offering right, that God would accept them. The high priest exploited this and played on the people's fear and used it to make money for themselves.
That's religion. That is what every religion does in a nutshell. It says, "If you want to make it to God, you must do," and then people say, "You're not doing it right," and they find a way to make money off it. That's religion.
But that's not our Jesus. Jesus does not say, "Come to the temple and get your offering right." Jesus says, "I am the temple and I am your perfect offering." I stand before a holy God.
If you are a saved person today, it's not because you got it right. It's because he got it right. It's not because of your righteousness but his righteousness.
God has chosen to look at Him and pardon you.
Are you still trying to save yourself? As I close today I want to challenge you to look to Jesus. Religion will not get you there. Jesus came and confronted religion. Jesus paid it all. Put your trust in Him.
Let's stand together and pray.
