Matthew 21:12-22

12 And Jesus entered the temple and drove out all who sold and bought in the temple, and he overturned the tables of the money-changers and the seats of those who sold pigeons. 13 He said to them, “It is written, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer,’ but you make it a den of robbers.”

14 And the blind and the lame came to him in the temple, and he healed them. 15 But when the chief priests and the scribes saw the wonderful things that he did, and the children crying out in the temple, “Hosanna to the Son of David!” they were indignant, 16 and they said to him, “Do you hear what these are saying?” And Jesus said to them, “Yes; have you never read,

                        “‘Out of the mouth of infants and nursing babies you have prepared praise’?”

17 And leaving them, he went out of the city to Bethany and lodged there.

18 In the morning, as he was returning to the city, he became hungry. 19 And seeing a fig tree by the wayside, he went to it and found nothing on it but only leaves. And he said to it, “May no fruit ever come from you again!” And the fig tree withered at once.

20 When the disciples saw it, they marveled, saying, “How did the fig tree wither at once?” 21 And Jesus answered them, “Truly, I say to you, if you have faith and do not doubt, you will not only do what has been done to the fig tree, but even if you say to this mountain, ‘Be taken up and thrown into the sea,’ it will happen. 22 And whatever you ask in prayer, you will receive, if you have faith.” [1]

If you’ve ever been in a grand building, such as a lavish concert hall or a medieval cathedral, then you have likely experienced an inexplicable architectural euphoria. Great spaces have a way of drawing you outside of yourself and into the spiritual feeling of experiencing something far larger in your individual life than you ordinarily would. It gives you a sense of being connected to something greater than yourself.

For most 1st century Jews, especially those country bumpkins from Galilee we have been following for some time now, entering Herod’s temple in the holy city produced that same sense of euphoria. The temple was one of the world’s most magnificent structures. For example, its outer walls were comprised of huge double colonnades, made with hundreds of pillars of pure white marble, covered with roofs adorned with cedar painstakingly engraved and painted. Most of these columns were 30 feet high, and some of them were 100 feet high. They were so massive that it would have taken three or four adults with hands joined together to surround one of them at the base. Those were just the boundary walls of this immense and extravagant complex, a building that took 10,000 carpenters and masons, laboring over four decades, to build.

At the heart of the temple was the Holy of Holies. Then came the Holy Place, with its doors between 60 and 100 feet high. Then came the Court of the Priests where the altar was located, and the sacrifices were made. Next was the Court of Israel for Jewish men. Then came the Court of the Women for Jewish women. Surrounding these center structures, last and certainly least, was the Court of the Gentiles, the place for non-Jewish converts to Judaism. The Court of the Gentiles is important to our passage, for it is here in that 35-acre, open air courtyard where Jesus would have made, as everyone did, his entrance into the temple.

TEMPLE WORSHIP

With some sense of the architecture of the complex in mind, we read in verse 12, “And Jesus entered the temple,” But we do not have any sense that Jesus experienced any architectural euphoria. Certainly, his disciples were impressed as we learn in Mark 13:1, “What Wonderful stones and what wonderful buildings!” Or, if you were a student of the Old Testament, you might expect something supernatural was about to happen, such as the shekinah glory of the Lord filling the temple as it did in the days of Solomon. Jesus has already taught that he is “one greater than Solomon” (12:42), that he is the “Son of David” who is able to “save us now.”

But as we read in this passage, any such expectations we might have had are not met. Instead, Jesus did something shockingly unexpected: he “drove out all who sold and bought in the temple, and he overturned the tables of the money changers and the seats of those who sold pigeons” (21:12).

When Jesus entered the Court of the Gentiles, he witnessed a giant religious circus. In Deuteronomy 12:5-7, God instructed his people to bring sacrifices from their own flocks. But religious authorities disregarded that specific law and instituted a convenient and profitable marketplace where travelers could purchase an overpriced animal which had already been pre-approved by the priests as an acceptable to sacrifice. All of this commerce was taking place in the immense Court of the Gentiles.

That was the only location where gentile converts to Judaism could worship. Jesus saw that these gentiles, some of whom would have traveled long distances, entered the temple only to find their place of worship crammed with livestock and loose change, that their sanctuary had become a mix between a county fair and the pit of a stock exchange. Jesus took two very symbolic actions: he drove out, and he overturned. He was overturning these new, unlawful, unmerciful, and anti-Abrahamic-covenant temple traditions. And he was driving out the spiritual swindlers, the currency exchange racketeers and the “used pigeon salesman.”[2]

In place of those people who turned the sacrificial system into a mere business exchange, in came the blind and lame And Jesus healed them free of charge (21:14). In effect, Jesus opens wide the gates of the temple to those religious tradition excluded from entrance (2 Samuel 5:8). Those left to eke out their existence as beggars outside the city gates were carried or led into the temple to the shock and disgust of the religious authorities. This is yet another indication that Jesus is the true temple, Emmanuel, God with us.

Matthew 21:12 is an important verse. “Nearly 2,000 years ago the Lamb of God (the ultimate and final sacrifice for sin, who would bring healing to the hopeless) who is also the Lion of Judah (the king who came to judge Israel and soon all the world in righteousness) walked into the temple. He walked into the temple to save the poor in spirit but also to judge those who are rich in religious hypocrisy.”[3]

This is where the acted-out parable of the fig tree adds to our plot. We’re going to skip over verses 15, 16 for now (we’ll get back to them) and look at verses 17-19:

17 And leaving them, he went out of the city to Bethany and lodged there. 18 In the morning, as he was returning to the city, he became hungry. 19 And seeing a fig tree by the wayside, he went to it and found nothing on it but only leaves. And he said to it, “May no fruit ever come from you again!” And the fig tree withered at once.

The fact that Jesus was hungry certainly points to his humanity. The divine Lord could get hungry and need food. But that is not the point of this parabolic act. His behavior seems irrational and irritable. Many free thinkers have criticized Christ for pitching a hissy fit at a fig tree. That may be the natural reading, but it is uninformed.

To understand this action, it helps to know about both scripture and botany. Jesus is not exercising supernatural spite on a plant. We know he could do without food. He went without food for 40 days in the wilderness, resisting the temptation to turn stones into bread. We also know that he could produce fruit on the tree by the word of his power. But if Jesus is not acting like a spoiled child endowed with supernatural abilities, what was he doing?

First, we should know that fig trees in Israel, during the month of March, produce small edible green buds called paggim. In April large green leaves sprout. Then in May these buds fall off and are replaced by figs. Since Passover occurred in April, this fig tree from a distance showed the green leaves. One would naturally expect to find paggim.

But this particular tree was deceptive. With all its beautiful green foliage, there should have been fruit. But there was nothing. This fruit tree was entirely fruitless. So Jesus didn’t curse this tree because he was mad about its lack of food. He cursed it to provide a parable to his disciples of what was happening to Israel, as Israel was often compared to a fig tree in the Old Testament (Micah 7:1-6; Jeremiah 8:13).

Like the green tree, Israel was fruitful in appearance. Spiritually they were barren. From a distance the temple looked inspiring, but on close examination it was fruitless. Inside, the activities that surrounded the Passover sacrifice were only hollow rituals offered neither in spirit nor in truth. Entering the temple, one would expect to see prayers and praises offered up to God, along with the necessary fruits of righteousness (humility, kindness, and justice).

Instead he discovered merciless injustices as the gentiles were pushed out and the poor were extorted. This is why Jesus cites Isaiah 56:7, “My house shall be called a house of prayer.” That is all the verse that Matthew quotes, perhaps because he knows his readers would know the final line that Mark 11:17 makes explicit, “for all the nations.” Popular rabbinic thought during Jesus’ day held that when Messiah came, he would purge Jerusalem and the temple of gentiles and foreigners, as well as the physically disadvantaged. Jesus’ attitude and action, however, was exactly the reverse of their expectations.

Jesus does not clear the temple of gentiles. He clears the temple for the gentiles. He clears the temple so that they might worship God! So Jesus quotes from Isaiah 56 because that is where the prophet speaks of the extension of God’s salvation to people who were formerly excluded from it. There Isaiah speaks of how the temple is not the sole property of Israel but is meant as a witness for the nations.

As Jesus turns over tables, he turns Israel’s attention to their prophets, first to Isaiah and second to Jeremiah. The phrase in verse 13 where Jesus says the religious leaders have made the temple “a den of robbers” is a quote from Jeremiah 7:1-11. It is highly likely Jesus had the entire text in mind when he quoted this phrase. Listen to the text:

The word that came to Jeremiah from the Lord: 2 “Stand in the gate of the Lord’s house, and proclaim there this word, and say, Hear the word of the Lord, all you men of Judah who enter these gates to worship the Lord. 3 Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: Amend your ways and your deeds, and I will let you dwell in this place. 4 Do not trust in these deceptive words: ‘This is the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord.’

5 “For if you truly amend your ways and your deeds, if you truly execute justice one with another, 6 if you do not oppress the sojourner, the fatherless, or the widow, or shed innocent blood in this place, and if you do not go after other gods to your own harm, 7 then I will let you dwell in this place, in the land that I gave of old to your fathers forever.

8 “Behold, you trust in deceptive words to no avail. 9 Will you steal, murder, commit adultery, swear falsely, make offerings to Baal, and go after other gods that you have not known, 10 and then come and stand before me in this house, which is called by my name, and say, ‘We are delivered!’—only to go on doing all these abominations? 11 Has this house, which is called by my name, become a den of robbers in your eyes? Behold, I myself have seen it, declares the Lord.[4]

Understand what Jesus is saying. Thieves don’t do their robbing in their den. Their den is their safe hideout. So here Jesus is not merely denouncing the buying and selling. Rather he’s denouncing the false security of those who come into the temple to offer a sacrifice for sin without the fruits of repentance. The temple has degenerated into a hideout where people think they can find God’s fellowship and forgiveness simply by going through the motions, no matter how they live. In Jeremiah’s prophecy, the people repeat the phrase “the temple of the Lord” three times as a kind of magical incantation, just like the pagans worship their demon gods.

The Jews had a shrunken sense of God’s holiness and a shrunken sense of the depth of their own sin. Many faithless Jews, who stole, murdered, committed adultery, and lied under oath, and worshipped other gods nevertheless came once a year to Jerusalem, bought their proper animal, had it sacrificed, and stood before God in the temple and declared “We are delivered!”

They thought they could just walk into this oversized confessional booth, go through the motions, and walk out completely absolved of their sins, regardless of their lack of true repentance and sorrow over their condition. They did this year after year after year. Can you see what Jesus saw now? Can you see the hypocrisy? Their so-called worship was just as demonic as visiting the high places and bowing before a statue of Baal.

The green leaves of mere outward religious practices cannot cover a fruitless life. The leaf of baptism or the leaf of church membership or the leaf of praying a prayer cannot hide your nakedness for the eye of an all-seeing God. Only Jesus can bring forth true fruit in your life. Only dying to self and trusting into him brings true repentance and the other fruits of the Holy Spirit. If you have no fruit at all, stop fooling yourself. Repent and trust into the perfect person and work of Christ!

Jesus has no interest in play acting piety. People in the temple on that Passover can shout that they are delivered or saved. Like thieves after their looting, they can return to their hideout, and they can stand within the temple and chant their powerless incantation, “the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord.” The Lord Jesus comes into his temple and, standing in the midst of their hideout, tells them the game is over.

By overturning the tables and driving out those who sold the animals necessary for sacrifice, our Lord was doing something revolutionary. He was making a prophetic protest and pronouncement. He was not cleansing the temple! He was cursing it! He was withering Israel’s fig tree. Remember the significance of verses 19, 20. Jesus has done more than merely condemn the tree. He has killed it.

19 And seeing a fig tree by the wayside, he went to it and found nothing on it but only leaves. And he said to it, “May no fruit ever come from you again!” And the fig tree withered at once.

20 When the disciples saw it, they marveled, saying, “How did the fig tree wither at once?”

The disciples may not have understood the symbolic significance of this day, but we are able to fill in the theological gaps. Throughout his ministry we are able to see that Jesus has been subtly taking the place of the temple. He announces forgiveness. He heals the sick. He brings sinners into a saving relationship with God. He makes those unfit to enter the temple perfectly fit to be there. He is the very presence of God in the world. With that in mind, let’s go back to verses 15, 16:

15 But when the chief priests and the scribes saw the wonderful things that he did, and the children crying out in the temple, “Hosanna to the Son of David!” they were indignant, 16 and they said to him, “Do you hear what these are saying?” And Jesus said to them, “Yes; have you never read, “‘Out of the mouth of infants and nursing babies you have prepared praise’?”

If the religious authorities of the temple thought that Jesus’ healing the blind and the lame was beyond belief, what he just said is even more beyond belief. He quotes from Psalm 8:2 (8:3 LXX). Depending on your point of view, this is either absolutely wonderful or completely blasphemous. Jesus is saying that the praising of YHWH is inseparable from the praise of Jesus. Jesus applauds the children’s acclamation. He accepts the title Son of David and the praise, “Hosanna” (“Save us now!”).

No wonder the chief priests and scribes are “indignant” (21:15). Mark adds they were plotting “a way to destroy Jesus” (Mark 11:18). In other words, they don’t simply want to kill him, they want to wipe him and the memory of him off the face of the planet. How ironic for us to know that this very destruction, his death on the cross, will bring destruction to their temple. But the high priests are also doing their priestly duty, they are preparing the Lamb of God for sacrifice.

Because John puts the cursing of the temple at the beginning of his Gospel, many scholars believe Jesus cursed the temple twice. But the Gospel accounts are not intended to be read chronologically. They are arranged thematically. I personally believe that John’s account and the Synoptic Gospel accounts cover the same incident.

In John’s account, “the Jews said to him, ‘What sign do you show us for doing these things?’” (John 2:18) And Jesus replied, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up” (John 2:19). The Jews, of course, were quite baffled by this response, so they said, “It has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and will you raise it up in three days?” (John 2:20). Thankfully, John helps us by inserting his commentary, “But [Jesus] was speaking about the temple of his body” (John 2:21).

That same theology is at work here at the end of Matthew’s Gospel (21-28). When the temple of Christ’s body is killed, at that very moment the temple in Jerusalem (the building that will be destroyed literally in just a few decades) is symbolically destroyed. Theologically speaking, it goes out of business. As we will see in 27:51, at the moment Christ died, the curtain of the temple that separated the Holy Place from the Most Holy Place was torn in two from top to bottom to symbolize that all who trust into the perfect life and sacrificial blood shedding death of Christ Jesus as the Lamb of God might be sewn together into one body, the church (slave and free, male and female, Jew and gentile. Galatians 3:28).

To emphasize that point, Matthew includes this picture in 27:54. We read there: “54 When the centurion and those who were with him, keeping watch over Jesus, saw the earthquake and what took place, they were filled with awe and said, ‘Truly this was the Son of God!’”

What we have seen has been the fruitless worship of Israelites in their cursed temple. But Jesus leaves us with some idea of true worship of him as the new and true temple. When the disciples notice the withered fig tree, Jesus replies to them:

21 … “Truly, I say to you, if you have faith and do not doubt, you will not only do what has been done to the fig tree, but even if you say to this mountain, ‘Be taken up and thrown into the sea,’ it will happen. 22 And whatever you ask in prayer, you will receive, if you have faith.”

We know from Mark’s account that Matthew has compressed the timeline. Jesus cursed the fig tree one morning on their way into Jerusalem. The next morning, walking back to Jerusalem the disciples noticed the dead tree and Jesus gave this reply. Remember the geography here. The group is topping over the Mount of Olives and the glorious architecture of the temple mount is directly in their line of sight.

The idea of uprooting the temple and throwing it into the sea would be sacrilegious if that temple, with its priesthood and sacrifices, was still the place of God’s presence, the one and only place where a person meets God and where sins are forgiven. But if this earthly temple on Mount Zion has been thrown into the sea by the person and work of Christ, then he is the new and everlasting temple. This is a promise of the power of Christ’s Kingdom, not a blank check that promises me personal health and wealth!

When his apostles faithfully proclaim the freedom Christ offers through his perfectly lived life and sacrificial death and glorious resurrection, they are not only uprooting the old temple and Mount Zion, but they are also proclaiming Christ as the cornerstone of an eternal temple composed of Jesus and his brothers and sisters who trust into him by the re-creative power of the Holy Spirit. In other words, our great Triune God is the architect of an even greater and more glorious and eternal temple.

11 Therefore remember that at one time you Gentiles in the flesh, called “the uncircumcision” by what is called the circumcision, which is made in the flesh by hands— 12 remember that you were at that time separated from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. 13 But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. 14 For he himself is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility 15 by abolishing the law of commandments expressed in ordinances, that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace, 16 and might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby killing the hostility. 17 And he came and preached peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near. 18 For through him we both have access in one Spirit to the Father. 19 So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, 20 built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, 21 in whom the whole structure, being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord. 22 In him you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit. [5]

 

[1] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Mt 21:12–22.

[2] O’Donnell, 600. Crossway. Kindle Edition.

[3] Id., 601.

[4] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Je 7:1–11.

[5] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Eph 2:11–22.