As the people were wise in trusting in Jesus because of what He did and Who these signs pointed to, so was Jesus wise in not trusting in the people, who would have made Him their earthly king.  His knowledge of what was inside people was again an indication of His deity.

Barclay notes that Jesus always wants men to follow Him based on an understanding of the cost and what accepting Him fully means. He never wants men to act upon a moment of emotion because they will later back out when they discover what their decision really means.

Jesus did not commit Himself to them; “He looked for genuine conversion, not enthusiasm for the spectacular.” (Morris 207)

Compare this chapter with the temptation of Jesus in the wilderness.  Lloyd states, “(i) He will not turn stones into bread to satisfy His own hunger; but He turns water into wine to meet the needs of others.  (ii) He will not leap from the pinnacle of the Temple in order to capture the popular imagination; but He does the unpopular thing of cleansing the Temple.  (iii) He will not fall down and worship Satan in order to gain worldly power; but insists upon the need of individual conversion.” (qt’d in Morris 207)

As we follow Him, we should try, with His help, to be more like Him.

The people believed because they saw the signs Jesus did. This is only a first attraction to the Lord and not a deep faith, but it is certainly a wise decision on the part of the believers to put their trust in Him because of what He did.  They put their trust in him because He was doing great things nobody else could do and these things all pointed to God.

“the scripture” probably refers to Psalm 16:10 which is interpreted in Acts 2:31, 13:35 as indicating the resurrection, but it could refer to Isa 53:12 which apparently speaks of activity of the Servant after his death.

Psalms 16:10  because you will not abandon me to the grave, nor will you let your Holy One see decay.

Acts 2:31  Seeing what was ahead, he spoke of the resurrection of the Christ, that he was not abandoned to the grave, nor did his body see decay.

Acts 13:35  So it is stated elsewhere: “‘You will not let your Holy One see decay.’

Isaiah 53:12  Therefore I will give him a portion among the great, and he will divide the spoils with the strong, because he poured out his life unto death, and was numbered with the transgressors. For he bore the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors.

It was said of the disciples of Pythagoras that his precepts seemed to freeze in them till they were forty years old, and then they began to thaw. (Matthew Henry) The same appears to have also happened here in the memories of Christ’s disciples. Why did they not remember until after His resurrection? Probably for two reasons: first, because it was then fulfilled and would be easier to see, and second, because then the Holy Spirit was poured out, One Who’s job was to remind them and teach them (John 14:26).

John 14:26  But the Counsellor, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you.

At the moment of the death of Christ, the Temple and its services died, even though it wasn’t physically destroyed until 40 years later. This was verified by God when He tore the curtain in two from the top to the bottom at the instant Jesus died (Matt 27:50-51). No longer could man go to God through the Temple and its sacrifices. The old ways were dead and the Temple was no longer sacred. For three long days the relationship between God and man hung in limbo. Nature itself must have been holding its breath. And then on the third day — that bright and glorious day — Jesus burst forth from the grave and took His sacrificial blood to heaven to be sprinkled on the true mercy seat there.

Matt 27:50-51 And when Jesus had cried out again in a loud voice, he gave up his spirit. At that moment the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. The earth shook and the rocks split.

The church is not built upon the death of Christ, but upon His resurrection. He came to not only die and thus pay the price for our sins, but to rise from that death so that we, too, may live a new life.

In another sense, man is a temple of God (1Cor 6:19). He has destroyed his temple with sin, but Christ wants to raise him from the dead and build him into the temple that God wants him to be. 

1 Co 6:19  Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own;

What this means is that it doesn’t matter how far you have fallen. What man can destroy is no big deal for Jesus to rebuild. He built the world in 6 days; how much more can He do with you if you give Him the rest of your life?

The Temple was just a figure of the true Temple that was to come, which is Jesus Himself. He is greater than the Temple (Matt 12:6). The Temple was where the Presence of God dwelt, but only as the shekinah glory between the wings of the seraphim. In Christ dwelt the fullness of God (Col 2:19). The Temple was originally called the tabernacle of the congregation which means the tent of meeting. It was where God and man met. Jesus was fully man and yet fully God and is thus where man and God completely and fully meet. That is why He is the best possible mediator.

Matt 12:6  I tell you that one greater than the temple is here.

Col 2:19  He has lost connection with the Head, from whom the whole body, supported and held together by its ligaments and sinews, grows as God causes it to grow.

According to Josephus, Herod had started the rebuilding of the Temple in the eighteenth year of his reign, which was about 20-19 B.C.  Work continued on it until its completion in 64 A.D.  The Jews here state that the work has been proceeding for 46 years, which would indicate that the year was 27 or 28 A.D.

The Jews are very obviously sneering at the abilities of this peasant (not a member of the Sanhedrin nor even an architect) to rebuild a destroyed Temple at all, much less in 3 days.  The irony was that the task they thought to be impossible was much easier than the one to which He was referring. They misunderstood His words and His power. Actually, Messiah was prophesied to build the Temple (Zech 6:12) which Christ did by building the church (Eph 2:22, 1Peter 2:5, 1Cor 3:16). As to his power, He built everything that exists in 6 days, how big a deal would it be for him to rebuild the Temple in 3 days?

Zech 6:12  Tell him this is what the LORD Almighty says: ‘Here is the man whose name is the Branch, and he will branch out from his place and build the temple of the LORD.

Eph 2:22  And in him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit.

1 Peter 2:5  you also, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.

1 Cor 3:16  Don’t you know that you yourselves are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit lives in you?

Jesus usually refused to give a sign to those who requested one, or He would point to His coming resurrection as the only sign they would get. Here, He gives the sign of his resurrection, but said in a parable (Matt 13:13-14). This He did to those who were, as Matthew Henry states it, “willingly ignorant.” “Those who will not see shall not see.” If they had but asked, He would have explained, but they never did and thus never understood. They even falsely tried to use this statement against Him at His trial (Matt 26:60-61).

Matt 13:13-14  This is why I speak to them in parables: “Though seeing, they do not see; though hearing, they do not hear or understand.  In them is fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah: “‘You will be ever hearing but never understanding; you will be ever seeing but never perceiving.

Matt 26:60-61  But they did not find any, though many false witnesses came forward. Finally two came forward and declared, “This fellow said, ‘I am able to destroy the temple of God and rebuild it in three days.’”

The words of a prophet are verified by whether they come about or not (Deut 18:21-22). The Messiah was to die (Isa 53:5, Dan 9:26) and yet not remain in the grave (Psa 16:10). The purpose Jesus came was to die and He knew it from the beginning and yet willingly did it. Isaac was a type of Jesus except that as he was climbing the mountain, he didn’t know why. Jesus did.

Deut 18:21  You may say to yourselves, “How can we know when a message has not been spoken by the LORD?” If what a prophet proclaims in the name of the LORD does not take place or come true, that is a message the LORD has not spoken. That prophet has spoken presumptuously. Do not be afraid of him.

Isa 53:5  But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed.

Dan 9:26  After the sixty-two ‘sevens’, the Anointed One will be cut off and will have nothing. The people of the ruler who will come will destroy the city and the sanctuary. The end will come like a flood: War will continue until the end, and desolations have been decreed.

Psalms 16:10  because you will not abandon me to the grave, nor will you let your Holy One see decay.

There is a great deal of irony in that the Jews will ultimately bring about the very sign for which they petitioned Jesus and that by putting Jesus to death they will destroy the very sacrificial system they were trying to defend.

Notice that the Jews do not dispute the rightness of Jesus’ actions, but they do demand a sign to prove His Messianic claim which they fully understood.

Jesus had already given them 2 signs: the action itself and the fact that there was no opposition to His deeds even though He acted alone.

Speaking of which, where were the Temple guards? Why didn’t the vendors defend themselves or their merchandise? Jesus was vastly outnumbered and yet nobody opposed Him. Nobody stands before the wrath of God (Psa 114:5-7). We often think of Jesus as being meek and mild but we need to have our knowledge of Him stretched until we realize that He gets angry when His Father is maligned or His people are kept from coming into a relationship with Him.

Psalms 114:5-7  Why was it, O sea, that you fled, O Jordan, that you turned back, you mountains, that you skipped like rams, you hills, like lambs? Tremble, O earth, at the presence of the Lord, at the presence of the God of Jacob,

Psalm 69:9 is a Messianic passage.  The action of Jesus was not as a reformer but as the Messiah.

Psalms 69:9  for zeal for your house consumes me, and the insults of those who insult you fall on me.

“remembered” = God’s Word explains God’s Works and God’s Works verify God’s Words. To remember something, we need to know it in the first place. It is very important to be in the Word, reading, studying, and memorizing it. If we don’t have God’s Word in us, we cannot use it to verify His deeds. 

“my Father’s house” = a messianic claim by Jesus.  In the Old Testament the Temple is often called the “house of God” and Jesus referred to the owner of the Temple as being His Father, a claim to deity.  Also, the Messianic prophecy in Zech 14:21 refers to there being no more Canaanites in the house of the LORD, but the Hebrew word translated as “Canaanite” may also be translated as “merchant” or “trader.”

Zech 14:21  Every pot in Jerusalem and Judah will be holy to the LORD Almighty, and all who come to sacrifice will take some of the pots and cook in them. And on that day there will no longer be a Canaanite in the house of the LORD Almighty.

Note that Jesus called the Temple “my Father’s house” and not “our Father’s house.”  He never indicates that His Sonship is anything like ours.

Jesus drove out the sheep because their owners would follow, and He overturned the moneychanger’s tables, but they could pick up their coins. However, with the doves, which were the sacrifice of the poor, He told their owners to get them out, because if he had let them go, they would have flown away and caused economic loss to their owners. We must never let our zeal hurt others.

What is the motive of Jesus?  As Strachan points out, “His motive was one of reverence for ‘my Father’s house,’ and of deep concern that the spirit of worship should thus be dissipated at its very door.”  The Court of the Gentiles, where all of this activity was taking place was the only court on the Temple grounds where the Gentiles could go to pray and meditate and there was certainly no peace for them there to worship.  As Wright says, “A place that should have stood as a symbol for the freedom of access of all nations in prayer to God, had become a place associated with sordid pecuniary interests.” (qt’d in Morris 195) Not only that, but the sacrifices themselves were defiled by the motives of the offenders. See (Mal 3:1-4). Jesus was concerned with making offerings which were pleasing to God and not with wealth-seeking religion.

Mal 3:1-4 “See, I will send my messenger, who will prepare the way before me. Then suddenly the Lord you are seeking will come to his temple; the messenger of the covenant, whom you desire, will come,” says the LORD Almighty. But who can endure the day of his coming? Who can stand when he appears? For he will be like a refiner’s fire or a launderer’s soap. He will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver; he will purify the Levites and refine them like gold and silver. Then the LORD will have men who will bring offerings in righteousness, and the offerings of Judah and Jerusalem will be acceptable to the LORD, as in days gone by, as in former years.

Today the Temple no longer stands; the church has taken its place. And with that substitution, comes the possibility of falling into the same temptation which took hold of the Temple of God in the day of Jesus. In fact, it has happened many times over the centuries, but the church bounces back from its sin and reforms. Why? Because Jesus comes again and again to cleanse the House of God. Maclaren notes that “if Jesus Christ had not thus come, over and over again, to His Church, Christian men would have killed Christianity long ago.” Jesus still comes to cleanse His Temple.