The Money Changers

There are those who call themselves Christians who seem to be angry all the time.  They fuss and fume about every little thing, whether they have any control over it or not.  Some of them will protest certain things.  I am not necessarily against protests, sometimes that seems to be the only way to get people’s attention, and let them know that you disagree, but sometimes people protest and it seems like they are looking for a way to vent their anger.

Christianity isn’t supposed to be a religion of anger or hatred, it should be about love.  “For God so loved the world…”  “He that loveth not, knoweth not God…”  People sometimes remind me that Jesus got angry in the Temple, and drove out the money changers, and those that sold animals for sacrifice, and that’s true, He did.  It occurs to me, though, that most people aren’t really aware of what their activities were.

By Jewish law, every male was supposed to pay an annual Temple tax of one-half shekel.  Unfortunately, at the time of Jesus’ visit to the Temple, Israel was under Roman occupation.  You may remember that, when asked about paying tribute, Jesus asked whose image was on a penny.  Believe me, you wouldn’t have found Caesar’s image on any Jewish coins; but the Temple tax had to be paid in Jewish currency.  So, when people came to pay their Temple tax, the money changers exchanged their Roman currency for Jewish currency.  Sometimes they had to exchange currency from other countries, as well, because many Jews left Israel to avoid the Roman occupation, but still came to pay their tax and celebrate Passover.  The irony here is that most of what the Temple priests needed, they required Roman currency in order to be able to make the purchase.  So the money changers charged the people a fee to change their Roman or foreign money into half-shekels, but then also charged the priests a fee to change it back, so that the priests could buy from merchants in occupied Jerusalem.

Now, the livestock salesmen (who, I suspect, in many cases, were the same people anyway) were there to sell the necessary animals to people that had not brought their own animals for sacrifice.  Accordingly to Mosaic Law, these animals were supposed to be without blemish.  Sometimes, the animals that people brought for sacrifice didn’t really meet the standard, in which case, these sellers of doves would exchange animals, for a fee, of course.  Sometimes these crafty salesmen would point out spots on an animal being brought in for sacrifice, just so that they could make a little money off of an exchange.  That might not be so bad, except that, many times they would, for example, point out an area of discoloration on one animals hoof, trade it for one that had just as bad a blemish on an ear (while carefully directing the customer’s attention to the hooves of the new animal), and then turn around and trade the one with the ‘bad’ hoof for one with a mark on its neck.  In other words, these guys had learned how to make a living off of their ability to notice flaws in other people’s sacrifices, while at the same time, directing attention away from the flaws of their own sacrifices.  Let’s face it, none of us are perfect, and there are very few animals, appropriate for sacrifice, which appear to be perfect, either.  God does want us to bring our best, however.

Realistically, there are a lot of people today that are good at pointing fingers and placing blame who aren’t really getting much done themselves.  It’s easy to sit back and criticize others, when you aren’t making the effort yourself.  There are also some that are making the effort, but still find time to disparage others anyway.  Now the Bible says that if we see a brother “overtaken in a fault,” that we should approach him with meekness to try to restore him.  Now, if he resists that treatment, somewhere down the road, anger may be called for.  I don’t mean to suggest that if someone in the body of Christ continues to sin and refuses to repent, that you just let him do it, because “I have to be meek.”  The first admonition should be done meekly, though.  That’s talking about someone who has already made their commitment to follow the Lord, though.  Someone outside the church doesn’t need to be harangued about their activities, they need to have the love of Christ shared with them.  If they accept Christ, then they will start living right, but if they don’t want to live for God, then all the lectures in the world will be about as useful trying to teach a pig to sing:  It wastes your time and annoys the pig.

As Christians, we are supposed to follow the leading of our example; notice that He got upset only very rarely, and usually at people that should have known better than to be doing what they were doing.  He did occasionally point out faults, but, again, only those of people that really should have known better, the religious leaders of the day.  So many people today want to call themselves Christians, but instead of acting like Jesus, they act like the people that Jesus was upset with in the Temple.