Teaching the Bible in Shorthand, a House of God or a Den of Thieves? Part 3
- Pastor Jay Christianson
- Jul 25
- 10 min read
“He said to them, ‘It is written, my house will be called a house of prayer, but you are making it a den of thieves!’” (Matthew 21:13)
“As for the foreigners who join themselves to the Lord to minister to him, to love the name of the Lord, and to become his servants—all who keep the Sabbath without desecrating it and who hold firmly to my covenant—I will bring them to my holy mountain and let them rejoice in my house of prayer. Their burnt offerings and sacrifices will be acceptable on my altar, for my house will be called a house of prayer for all nations.” (Isaiah 56:6-7)
“Has this house, which bears my name, become a den of robbers in your view? Yes, I too have seen it. This is the Lord’s declaration.” (Jeremiah 7:11)
As I wrote previously, Jesus sometimes taught in a manner of shorthand, using a rabbinic technique known as remez, which means “alluding to.” By referring to a single verse, a rabbi could touch upon the entire context surrounding his reference, letting the student “fill in the blanks,” often resulting in a spectacular “Aha!” moment of self-realization.
Just as shorthand can convey large amounts of information in a small number of pen strokes, so Jesus conveyed a wealth of scriptural information that the everyday Jew would know by simply referring to a sentence, word, topic, or picture contained in the passage He alluded to.
Much to our contemporary Christian shame, the first-century Jew was familiar with vast portions of the Hebrew Scriptures (the Old Testament). Many Jews had large sections memorized because they had been hearing and committing to memory God’s word since childhood. After all, Jews couldn’t carry around hand-written Torah scrolls, which were rare, heavy, and extremely valuable. Neither could they pull up the TorahAnytime app on their non-existent smartphones. Therefore, they had to memorize God’s word so that it would be with them at all times.
In the previous two parts, we first saw how Jesus quoted Psalm 22:1 during His crucifixion to reveal to His fellow Jews that Psalm 22 was a thousand-year prophetic declaration about His death on a cross. Next, we saw how Matthew used the word “servant” to show how Jesus fulfilled Isaiah’s four Servant Songs as the Father’s faithful Servant. In this third part, I want to show you how Jesus used remez during the cleansing of the Temple incident at the beginning of Holy Week.
To set the stage, Jesus had just arrived in Jerusalem on the Sunday before Passover. The days leading up to Passover are “cleansing days,” a time when a Jewish home must be cleansed of all leavening agents, primarily yeast. Leaven is often used in scripture as a picture of sin. Therefore, the cleansing days have both a physical and spiritual aspect to them as the faithful Jew prepares to celebrate Passover with family, friends, and the Yehovah.
According to Matthew, after Jesus arrived in Jerusalem, He went immediately to the Temple to “cleanse” His Father’s House of the sin and corruption that had infected its operation. He furiously tore into the marketplace in which money-changers changed foreign coinage into the acceptable Temple coinage and where “ritually acceptable” animals could be purchased for sacrifice, especially by Jews who had to travel great distances (Matthew 21:12). It’s easier to transport coins than a live animal.
Jesus overturned the money-changers’ tables with ferocity. He did so because the merchants within the Temple’s holy precincts had a reputation for cheating those at their mercy. The money changers were accused of charging exorbitant exchange rates. Also, a corrupt Temple authority could declare an animal unfit for sacrifice, which would force the worshiper to buy another animal, one supplied by the Temple establishment, perhaps at an inflated price.
The Temple had become a corrupt enterprise, staining God’s House. Quite the unholy operation within a holy place. However, it’s not just the corruption that was running an abusive system. Jesus’ point was that empty ritual without genuine repentance, backed by good deeds, was also repulsive to God.
It was at this moment, between whippings, that Jesus yelled, “It is written, my house will be called a house of prayer, but you are making it a den of thieves!” (Matthew 21:13).
In one sentence, Jesus unleashed a double-barreled remez from Isaiah 56 and Jeremiah 7, announcing that God’s way of salvation was nearing, proclaiming His Father’s love, mercy, and grace, indicting the nations’ corrupt leadership, and warning the authorities of the Temple’s future destruction if they did not repent. How He did that is exciting to see. Before going further, please read Isaiah 56:1-12.
A House of Prayer For All Nations (Isaiah 56)
Announcing the approach of salvation and righteousness while affirming the Father’s love, mercy, and grace.
You’ll find the phrase “my house will be called a house of prayer for all nations” in Isaiah 56:7. Isaiah 56 speaks about the Father’s love, mercy, and grace, but also carries a sharp indictment against the prophets and leaders of Isaiah’s day (around 700 B.C.).
The Father’s call to His people through Isaiah was clear. “Preserve justice and do what is right.” Why? “For my salvation is coming soon, and my righteousness will be revealed.” Fast forward to Jesus, whose name means salvation, who had just arrived, and His sacrificial death on the cross would soon reveal the new way of becoming right with the Father.
Isaiah declared that the person who “keeps the Sabbath without desecrating it, and keeps his hand from doing any evil” is blessed (Isaiah 56:1-2). Keeping the Sabbath was (and is) regarded as summing up obedience to all of God’s commands. Embracing the Father and devoting oneself to obey His commands was so important to Him that even those who were regarded as excluded from Israel’s assembly were welcomed by the Father with open arms.
Jews knew that they were welcome in the Lord’s Temple, even though there were God-ordained limits about how close a person could approach His presence (Women – outer court, Men – inner court, priests – Holy Place, High Priest – Holy of Holies once a year). Some people, those with physical deformities such as eunuchs, and non-Israelites (“foreigners,” Gentiles) were banned from the Lord’s assembly (Deuteronomy 23:1).
However, Yehovah never intended His Temple to be His people’s exclusive property. During the First Temple’s dedication, King Solomon asked the Lord to listen to a Gentile’s prayer when they came to the Temple to seek the Lord. “Even for the foreigner who is not of your people Israel but has come from a distant land because of your name—for they will hear of your great name, strong hand, and outstretched arm, and will come and pray toward this temple—may you hear in heaven, your dwelling place, and do according to all the foreigner asks. Then all peoples of earth will know your name, to fear you as your people Israel do and to know that this temple I have built bears your name” (1 Kings 8:41-43, italics author).
What’s astounding about Isaiah’s message is that the Lord wants everyone to come to Him, even if they don’t know Him (Isaiah 56:6-7), or, like the eunuchs, are banned from entering the courts of the Lord. The Father is willing to lift His ban if the eunuch keeps His commands, does what pleases the Father, and keeps the covenant (Isaiah 56:4-5).
As the Holman Christian Study Bible puts it, “God will not turn away anyone who desires to worship Him, even foreigners and eunuchs. His house, the Temple, will be a place where everyone can come to pray” (Isaiah 56:6-7, HCSB). Thus, the Father’s House was to be “a house of prayer for all nations.”
However, as it was in Isaiah’s day, the Jewish leaders of Jesus’ day had allowed sin and disobedience to stain the holy Temple. Communion with the Father had become commerce tainted by corruption. God required all Jews to come to Jerusalem for Passover. The galling part is the leadership and the money-changers used that requirement as a means for enrichment at the expense of vulnerable Passover pilgrims. Their fellow Jews, no less! By referring to Isaiah 56, Jesus levels a stinging indictment of the corrupt leaders.
Indicting The Nation’s Corrupt Leadership
Isaiah called the corrupt leaders of his day blind watchmen who know nothing, worthless watchdogs that are lazy and love to sleep, with ravenous, insatiable appetites, shepherds with no discernment, concerned only for themselves, profits, and getting drunk (Isaiah 56:9-11). The leadership had failed to guard God’s sheep (NIV Study Bible), leaving them defenseless (NKJV Study Bible). The useless watchdogs, with their heads in their food bowls, let the wolves (the money-changers) consume the flock. Isaiah called the leaders crooked and self-indulgent, likening them to shepherds bent on exploiting their sheep. Jesus also vehemently called out the leadership in the same way, simply by referring to six words from Isaiah 56: “house of prayer for all nations.”
What was supposed to be a holy house of prayer became an unholy enterprise.
Yup. Isaiah didn’t pull any punches. Neither did Jesus. By referring to this section of Isaiah, Jesus was implying that the current leadership was as corrupt as the leaders of Isaiah’s day.
Jesus had come to His Father’s House and saw how Israel’s leaders had failed and apparently didn’t care. They were more incensed by the upstart rabbi from Galilee calling out their sin than their sin itself. It appears they were more concerned about the Temple of God than the God of the Temple. But the worst rebuke was in Jesus’ second allusion. Before proceeding, please read Jeremiah 7:1-34.
A Den Of Thieves (Jeremiah 7)
Presuming on God’s Protection: A Warning of the Temple’s Destruction
Jeremiah stood in the main gate of Yehovah’s Temple. With prophetic clarity, he began.
“This is what the Lord of Armies, the God of Israel, says: Correct your ways and your actions, and I will allow you to live in this place. Do not trust deceitful words, chanting, ‘This is the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord.’ Instead, if you really correct your ways and your actions, if you act justly toward one another, if you no longer oppress the resident alien, the fatherless, and the widow and no longer shed innocent blood in this place or follow other gods, bringing harm on yourselves, I will allow you to live in this place, the land I gave to your ancestors long ago and forever. But look, you keep trusting in deceitful words that cannot help.”
God’s people had fallen into delusion, thinking they could live in selfish, self-serving ways. Having turned from God and His ways, they made their desires their god, taking advantage of the vulnerable, and hurting their lives. This was not how their King and Lord had commanded them to live in His presence.
Yehovah’s rebuke smashed against their hearts. “How dare you break My commands, and then run into My courts, thinking that you would be safe from your enemies in My palace?”
“My palace is not your refuge, you criminals.”
“Do you think I care more about a building than having people who obey Me lovingly and willingly? Take a look at Shiloh, the place where I first lived with you in this new land. What’s that, you say? It’s destroyed? Exactly! I did that to punish your ancestors who thought, like you, that they could rebel against Me and then hide within the confines of My dwelling, the home of the very King they spurned. Do you think your gifts to Me are a substitute for obedience? Think again!”
“I have called to you repeatedly to straighten up and do what I showed you was right—to obey My laws—and you ignored Me. Keep it up, and I’ll not only tear down My glorious palace that you’ve turned into a thief’s refuge, I’ll throw you off My land, the very land upon which I graciously allowed you to live under My care. I’ll do the same to you as I did to your ancestors.”
“Do you think you’re safe in My house, you law-breakers? No. It’s the most dangerous place you could be.”
This is Jeremiah, chapter 7. The chapter Jesus “quoted” when He said to the law-breakers within His Father’s holy Temple, “you are making it a den of thieves!” (Matthew 21:13)
But the leaders refused to listen. They rose up against their future king and killed Him.
Within forty years, a generation, the Temple stood in ruins, and all but a remnant of the Jewish people had been thrown off the King’s land via the Roman exile.
Jesus knew these things would happen even as He spoke Jeremiah’s words. “When you speak all these things to them, they will not listen to you. When you call to them, they will not answer you. Therefore, declare to them, ‘This is the nation that would not listen to the Lord their God and would not accept discipline. Truth has perished—it has disappeared from their mouths… Raise up a dirge on the barren heights, for the Lord has rejected and abandoned the generation under his wrath… The corpses of these people will become food for the birds of the sky and for the wild animals of the land, with no one to scare them away. I will remove from the cities of Judah and the streets of Jerusalem the sound of joy and gladness and the voices of the groom and the bride, for the land will become a desolate waste” (Jeremiah 7:27-29, 33-34).
As it happened in Shiloh, and happened in Jeremiah’s day, so it happened not long after Jesus spoke. With four words, Jesus alluded to an entire prophecy that would soon come to pass for His generation.
Did the people understand what their King was alluding to with His remez? Some did. Most didn’t.
I believe that these exact words aptly describe many churches in the United States today that are caught up in “Churchtainment,” where holy gatherings have devolved into stage productions aimed at attracting the masses and massaging their guilty consciences, while distorting an experience with the Living God into a money-making, pride-puffing enterprise. Are we guilty of making our congregations a “den of thieves,” “a place where criminals feel safe” (The Annotated New Testament, NRSV)?
God cares about obedience, not empty, soulish rituals backed by rebellious hearts. Are we also deluded into thinking we can live selfish, self-serving lives as we take advantage of those around us or defy the King’s commands while having a false sense of security within His house?
It didn’t work for the people in Jeremiah’s or Jesus’ day. Why would we ever think it would work for us today? Are some churches today under the King’s sentence of destruction and exile? It’s incredible to me how many large ministries are in turmoil right now, following the exposure of their leaders’ sins.
Jesus is cleaning His house, and rightly so. We must remove sin in our lives and “preserve justice and do what is right, for My salvation is coming soon, and My righteousness will be revealed,” says the Lord (Isaiah 56:1).
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Shining the Light of God’s Truth on the Road Ahead
Pastor Jay Christianson
The Truth Barista, Frothy Thoughts