Jessica Levy Books

My dog, Timber, is a 150-pound Anatolian Shepherd Dog who has turned out to be quite destructive. He doesn’t mean to be, but between his gigantic body and his whip of a tail, he alone creates most of the messes in my house. So very many times I have panic-rushed to catch a glass or a bowl or a vase before his tail takes it to the floor!

There are two motivations I have for panicking over Timber’s tail-whip victims. The first is that I like a clean house and I prefer not to have the order of it upturned. The second is that I value my purchased belongings, particularly the fragile ones, and I prefer not to see them destroyed. Sounds legitimate, right?

I can imagine the chief priests and teachers of the law in full-blown panic when Jesus tore through the temple in Jerusalem, flipping tables, spilling money, freeing animals, and whipping his cords around, costing them customers, dollars, and reputation. For the full story, see John 2:13-22, Matthew 21:12-15, and Mark 11:15-19. Why did Jesus, a man with such a reputation for peace and a gentle spirit, go all Chuck Norris on the temple?

While tables at the temple had first been established to convert foreign money to local currency for payment of the temple tax, they soon expanded to livestock exchange for the sake of sacrificial slaughter. Then, much like the impulse shelves in the grocery checkout line, enterprising money changers capitalized on this opportunity to sell small items (at first) in their booths so people could purchase them while they exchanged. You know, like a pack of gum or jerky, or a small candy bar, or whatever small tokens they enjoyed in the day.

As Jesus entered the temple, this probably initially broke his heart. Here was the place established centuries before as holy ground. The place where God himself would meet with his people, where people could come to honor him. Here in this sacred meeting space, there was now greed and malice, undercutting and the love of money, personal gain in a very different way than intended. The “house of prayer” had become a “den of robbers.” God’s conference room had been desecrated. Jesus’ heart break turned immediately to anger. “Zeal for his house consumed him” and he would stop at nothing to return the temple to its purpose. The purpose he had established long before it had been tarnished by the world.

Jesus overturned the tables because they had no place in the temple. I can’t imagine Jesus panicking, but he certainly observed no delay in restoring the temple to its purpose. Because God too-highly valued the connections with his people at the temple to let the greed of corrupt leaders allow it to break apart all over the floor.

Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your bodies.

1 CORINTHIANS 6:19-20

Our bodies, our lives, being temples of God’s spirit, he places immense value in us. When the world, through its fallen ways, sets up life-sucking tables of rejection, loneliness, hatred, fear, mistrust, abuse in your heart, God looks around and at first he is heartbroken. Here, in the beautiful soul of his child, life has corrupted the heart and perverted the purpose. Where he intended for love to thrive, there is everything but. This just won’t do.

Suddenly, the look on his face changes from sadness to ferocity. Zeal for his spirit’s house consumes him and he takes out his whip, flippin’ table after table, until everything bent on your destruction is, itself, destroyed. He will stop at nothing to restore you to your purpose, to rid your temple of darkness and return you to the love-thriving, peaceful, hope-filled, complete person he created you to be.

See, he purchased you at a high price. You might fall, but he won’t allow you to break.