'Take these things hence; make not My Father's house an house of
merchandise.'—JOHN ii. 16.
The other Evangelists do not record this cleansing of the Temple at the
beginning of Christ's ministry, but, as we all know, tell of a similar
act at its very close. John, on the other hand, has no notice of the
latter incident. The question, then, naturally arises, are these
diverse narratives accounts of the same event? The answer seems to me
to be in the negative, because John's Gospel is evidently intended to
supplement the other three, and to record incidents either unknown to,
or unnoticed by, them, and, as a matter of fact, the whole of this
initial visit of our Lord to Jerusalem is omitted by the three
Evangelists. Then the two incidents are distinctly different in tone,
in setting, and in the words with which our Lord accompanies them. They
are both appropriate in the place in which they stand, the one as the
initial and the other as all but the final act of His Messiahship. So
we may learn from the repetition of this cleansing the solemn lesson:
that outward reformation of religious corruptions is of small and
transient worth. For in three years—perhaps in as many weeks—the abuse
that He corrected returned in full force.
Now, this narrative has many points of interest, but I think I shall
best bring out its meaning if I remind you, by way of introduction,
that the Temple of Jerusalem was succeeded by the Temple of the
Christian Church, and that each individual Christian man is a temple.
So there are three things that I want to set before you: what Christ
did in the Temple; what He does in the Church; what He will do to each
of us if we will let Him.