Religious people sometimes let their religion serve as a kind of hideout, a place of safety from accountability, maybe even a place to hide from God. But, even as Jesus once came to Jerusalem to cleanse the temple, so he comes into our lives. If we open our hearts to Jesus, asking Him to forgive and cleanse us, he will purge the rottenness from our lives, allowing us to live openly in freedom and joy.
In the first century A.D., if you came to the temple of Jerusalem from another region, you could exchange your money for the currency required to buy sacrifices. Then you could purchase whatever you needed for your personal sacrifice: a dove, perhaps, or even a larger animal. Since most temple visitors had traveled from a distance, money-changing and sacrifice-selling were essential to the temple’s main purpose.
Thus, what Jesus did upon entering the temple was both shocking and highly disruptive. Luke puts it this way, “Then he entered the temple and began to drive out those who were selling things there” (19:45). Effectively, Jesus was shutting down the sacrificial system of the temple.
Why did he do this? We get clues to his motivation from what he said, “It is written, ‘My house shall be a house of prayer, but you have made it a den of robbers” (Luke 19:46). At first glance, this seems to be an indictment of the temple’s economic system, and there is surely a sense in which that’s true. But more was going on here. Jesus was intentionally quoting from two Old Testament prophets. The “house of prayer” line comes from Isaiah 56:7. The “den of robbers” phrase can be found in Jeremiah 7:11. A careful reading of this whole chapter of Jeremiah gives us deeper insight into Jesus’s criticism of the temple and its leaders.
Through Jeremiah, God warned Israel and its leaders concerning their acts of injustice. They had been oppressing “the alien, the orphan, and the widow,” shedding innocent blood through their evil deeds (Jeremiah 7:5). But they felt protected from the consequences of their actions. Why? Because they had the temple of God in their midst. They were trusting in “these deceptive words: ‘This is the temple of the LORD, the temple of the LORD, the temple of the LORD'” (Jeremiah 7:4). Because they had the temple, they would say “We are safe” even though their actions were worthy of God’s judgment. But God confronted them, saying, “Has this house, which is called by my name, become a den of robbers in your sight?” (Jeremiah 7:11). Then God reminded them about what he did to the temple at Shiloh when he destroyed it because of the “wickedness of my people Israel” (Jeremiah 7:12). Therefore, God says he will once again destroy “the house that is called by my name, in which you trust” (Jeremiah 7:14).
By quoting the “den of robbers” passage from Jeremiah, Jesus was, first of all, associating the Jewish leaders in his own day with those from the time of Jeremiah. They too were acting unjustly in a way that deserved God’s wrath. Moreover, they were also assuming that the temple was a kind of hideout, a place of safety from God’s judgment. Thus, the temple, which was to be a place of prayerful intimacy with God, had become a barrier between people and God. The temple leaders and even the temple itself would experience the same fate as in the time of Jeremiah: death and devastation. There was no safety in their “den of robbers.”
When we understand the background of Jesus’s use of the phrase “den of robbers,” we can see more clearly why the Jewish leaders in Jerusalem wanted to get rid of Jesus. He was condemning them and, even more perniciously in their view, the temple of God.
If Christians of prominence can use their faith as a hideout, surely I’m not immune from this temptation. And neither are you.
Jesus’s so-called “cleansing of the temple” challenges us to take a good, long look at our own lives. We can ask the Lord to show us where we might be hiding out from him.
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