Jesus Routs The Temple Money-Cheats (J9)

Of all the brave things our Savior did,
The bravest was routing the money-cheats,
A plague of whom the temple ought be rid;
Likely, all the priests shared in the receipts!
The guards stood fixed in place, as if in shock;
Jesus upturned tables; coins scattered round;
Owners shrieked and scampered, to retrieve stock;
Doves cooed and flew away, new freedom found!
He used a makeshift coil of ropes as whip,
Stampeded away freed cattle and sheep;
The temple market He meant to unship,
Showing how holy His Father’s house keep!
I wonder why the guards let Him do it;
Did divine pow’r blind their senses to it?

“When it was almost time for the Jewish Passover, Jesus went up to Jerusalem. In the temple courts he found men selling cattle, sheep and doves, and others sitting at tables exchanging money. So he made a whip out of cords and drove all from the temple area, both sheep and cattle; he scattered the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables. To those who sold doves he said, ‘Get these out of here! How dare you turn my Father’s house into a market?’ “ (John 2:13-16)

Continuing in John’s gospel, the next event he selected to describe in the life of Jesus is on a trip to Jerusalem to celebris Father’s house; He was willing to risk arrest and possible punishment in order to demonstrate how holy the temple should be maintained. No other man had demonstrated such zealousness for the temple in the hundreds of years it (or its predecessor) had existed. For some very strange reason, though, the temple guards, always on duty, had not intervened in the havoc, nor did they afterward. Jesus had divine power; He was able to make Himself invisible among crowds, as He showed several times. Divine power or not, on this particular day, Jesus acted like God would be expected to behave at the sight of such profanation of His house!

“That if you confess with your mouth, ‘Jesus is Lord’, and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.” (Romans 10:9)