Amen, and please be seated. If you have a bottle of me, invite you to turn with me to Matthew chapter 21 verses 12 through 13. We continue to work our way through the Gospel according to Matthew here. We come to a passage that's well known.
It's called the cleansing of the temple. It's Passover week in Jerusalem, the week of Jesus' Passion, the week that is, that the Lord Jesus goes to Jerusalem to suffer and to die for our sins. Last week we looked at Palm Sunday, as it's called, when Jesus rode into Jerusalem on the Cult of Adonky, as King, even the King of Peace. Now today in our passage it takes place in the temple on Monday, as the Gospel of Mark tells us, the next day.
Jesus comes to the temple where the Passover lambs will be slain, but before He provides Himself as the one sacrifice that can truly take away sins. In order to bring us cleansing from the pollution of our sins, well He enters the temple, and He cleanses it of the corruption of commerce and the pollution of impiety. And so once again let me invite you to admire our Lord Jesus. From Matthew chapter 21 verses 12 through 13, here now the holy and inspired Word of God.
And Jesus entered the temple and drove out all He sold and bought in the temple. And He overturned the tables of the money changers and the seats of those who sold pigeons. He said to them, it is written, My house shall be called a house of prayer, but you make it a den of robbers. Amen.
This is God's Word. May He cut our hearts with it. Let's look to Him in prayer. Father, do so.
Take this Word drive it home to our hearts by the Holy Spirit and lift Jesus before our eyes. Grant us to see Him as He truly is, and I need for Him. In His name I pray. Amen.
Isn't it interesting how very public and, well let's say it, violent. Jesus acts in this cleansing of the temple, driving out people who bought and people who sold, flipping over the tables of the money changers, knocking over the chairs. Knocking over the chairs of those who sat and sold pigeons. It's not exactly, I think, for a lot of us that Jesus were used to.
He doesn't present Himself as the dearest Jesus Meek and mild that my mom taught me to pray to every night at bedtime. He's here, certainly, I think, aggressive and violent. I don't think He punched anybody, but He drove them out and they fled before Him. And it sort of, I think, shocks our sensibilities a bit.
Why is He doing this? What's going on here? Let's think about these things. Let's think about what is Jesus showing us about Himself and where is He doing this and what is He doing and why and what does that mean for us today?
Well, let's start with what's going on here. Well, for one thing, He is definitely and purposefully drawing attention to Himself. And this is a bit unusual. I mean, in this way, so often in the gospels, Jesus will do some miraculous thing or say something that reveals He's the Messiah and He'll tell the beneficiaries of it.
Now, don't tell anybody else. You see this in Matthew chapter 16 after Peter confesses, you are the Christ, the Son of the Living God. And in chapter 16 verse 20, Jesus responds to Him, strictly charges the disciples to tell no one that He was the Christ. Keep it quiet.
In chapter 17, as Jesus, Peter, James and John come down off the mountain of transfiguration, remember where Jesus' face shone like the Son and its brilliance and his clothes become, well, why? Why did anyone could bleach and the voice of the Father is heard in the cloud? This is my beloved Son. With Him, I am well pleased.
Listen to Him. They come up that mountain and Jesus says, don't tell anyone this vision until after the resurrection. Often it is that Jesus, obviously, in doing miraculous things was noticed. But so often it was quiet.
It was hidden or He would move on from there. But here at the start of Passover week, the last week of His life, He very dramatically draws attention to Himself. He rides into Jerusalem as we saw last week on a donkey with people throwing palm branches on the ground before Him and the crowds crying out, Hosanna, blessed be the one who comes in the name of the Lord. I mean, it was unmistakable.
The whole city, it says, was stirred up by that. And then He goes into the temple and creates a scene of chaos. I mean, forcing people to flee, spilling money all over the ground, tipping furniture upside down. Why is He doing this?
Well, because now His time has come. Now He wants everyone to be aware of His presence. He wants them all talking about Himself, not arrogantly, but because He knows what He's about to do for them and He doesn't want anybody to miss it. And He knows that He, well, He wants because it's His plan that the chief priests and the Pharisees and the Sadducees and the scribes would all conspire together against Him to arrest Him and to crucify Him.
And He is deciding the timing of that event. It's been in their hearts now for years. They've hated Him. They've been jealous of Him.
They've been envious of the crowds. They've disliked this upstart as they view Him. And of course, He said things about them that are unflattering, but true. And they want Him killed and Jesus says, here I am, out in the open.
Look what I'm doing. Come and get me. His hour has finally come to place Himself into their hands that they might crucify the Lord of glory. That's one of the things Jesus is doing here, because He knows He's the Lamb of God who will take away the Son of the world.
But notice also He's presenting Himself in such a public way and revealing Himself as He does so to be the Messiah. That is the anointed one. That is the long-promised prophet, priest, and king of God's people. You remember in the Old Testament, those three offices of prophet, priest, and king were anointed offices.
Those who entered those offices were anointed with oil, and that were anointed. The anointed one is the word Messiah, because there was one coming who was the prophet, the priest, and the king. And Jesus is very clearly in these stories, and Matthew, in putting them here, is pointing out very clearly, loudly and clearly, that He is prophet, priest and king. Last week, of course, as we mentioned, He's on the cold, the full of a donkey in fulfillment of Zechariah 9, which said, Behold, your king is coming to you, and He's hailed as the king.
Next week, Lord willing, we'll be back at verse 14 through 18, where Jesus will show Himself to be the true prophet, rightly interpreting the word of God, as the children cry out about Him. Hosanna to the Son of David, and the chief priests and scribes say to Jesus, don't you hear what they're saying? As if to say, you've got to stop them. I mean, you're misleading the children.
And Jesus says to them, Yes, yes, I hear them. And have you not read out of the mouth of infants and nursing babies? You have prepared praise. He's saying to them, they are rightly praising me.
And what a review. Have you not read in the scripture? He's showing Himself to be the true interpreter of the word of God, the right prophet of God that they ought to listen to. So He's the king.
Next week, we'll see He's the prophet. Today, He goes to the temple as the priest, the true priest, to do what the priests in His day were not doing. That is caring for the honor of God and the proper worship of God. And that's exactly what they had not done.
Do you remember though that the last book of the Old Testament, Malachi, promised that this one was going to come in Malachi chapter 2? There's this lengthy indictment of the priests and their negligence, their lack of respect for God. In Malachi chapter 2, the priests are polluted, they're offering polluted, unworthy offerings to God. Meanwhile, all kinds of dishonorable things are going on, and they take no notice or take no action.
And Malachi chapter 3 turns the corner and foretells that the Lord will suddenly come to His temple. But then it says, but who can endure the day of His coming and who can stand when He appears? For He is like a refiner's fire and like Fuller's soap. Malachi promised the Lord will come to His temple and He will bring purification.
He will cleanse away impurity as by fire. He will scrub away filth as with soap. And Jesus suddenly comes to the temple. To do so.
That's why He's here. That's what He's doing. He's proclaiming, I am the Messiah. And so what is it He's doing?
And where is this taking place in the temple? And what does it all mean? Well, notice verse 12, Jesus says, entered the temple and drove out, all them sold and bought in the temple. And He overturned the tables of the money changers and the seats of those who sold pigeons.
Now, where is this taking place and who are these people? Well, this is the temple complex, which was a massive thing in its day. This is actually the third temple of the people of God of Israel. You remember the first temple of course, Solomon's temple.
It was destroyed though. And then along about in the days of Haggai and around 500 years before all of this, another temple was built. It wasn't nearly as glorious, but it was sometimes called the Zarubah temple. But in the time before Jesus was born, it was really kind of in a state of disrepair.
And then along came Herod the Great. So, curry favor with the people. He died in four B.C. So just before Jesus came along, he engaged in this massive building project of constructing a bigger and better temple like no one else was born.
It was a better temple like no one had ever seen. And this temple, then this third temple was that temple. And it was made up of five distinct parts, you might say. Here's a description of it.
There was this outer part called the Court of the Gentiles. And it measured about 500 yards by 325 yards. It's 35 acres of land. And it was surrounded by columns, 35 feet high.
And according to the historian Josephus, who was born just after Jesus died, it would take three men holding hands to wrap their hands around the diameter of the house. And the diameter of those columns. And then standing freely within that massive 35 acre complex called the Court of the Gentiles. There was another court and it was called the Court of Women where Gentiles could not go, but Jewish women could go.
And then within that court, there was the Court of Israel in which only circumcised males could go. And then within that there was the holy place itself where only the priests could go. But within that holy place, there was the most holy place or the holy of holies into which only one priest could go. The great, the high priest and only one day a year on the day of its own.
So you had all these different places. And the Gentiles were kept back from the Jewish only places, but they had a place. They had a massive place where they could come and be in the house of God, the house of prayer, that as Jesus notes. And this scene here is taking place on that 35 acre Court of the Gentiles, that expansive area where crowds could gather.
And if Joseph, Josephus is to believe, and he's not always to believe, he's known for exaggerating some, but he said that there may have been somewhere in the region of 2 million people or more coming into the city of Jerusalem for Passover Week. We know that this was one of the three great festivals for which people traveled days and even weeks to come to the city to celebrate. We know that the men of at least 20 years old were to come and participate. And so you have this massive crowd of people, whatever really at size.
And Josephus says in AD 66, so much later of course that 255,000 lambs were slaughtered for the Passover. And I don't know if we can even imagine what the smell of that would have been like or what the sight of the rivers of running blood would have been like as they float off the temple mount and on down into the Kidron Valley. It must have been an amazing architectural design to move all the flow of that blood away from the people and away from the city. But in any case, what you've got going on of course is that there are just an enormous crowd of people coming, streaming into Jerusalem, bursting Jerusalem in population.
And well, frankly many of them would not have been able to bring their own animals for sacrifice. And especially if you're traveling a week or so, much easier than hauling along the animal would be to show up in town and buy an animal for sacrifice. Derek Thomas calls it the American Express version of Passover. You come into the court of the Gentiles, you swipe your card and you get your lamb.
Well, I mean, I think you get the picture, but can you imagine the price gouging? I mean merchants charging whatever they wanted because well, there was a religious obligation upon these people to offer something. So they have to buy something and they're all in competition for getting the ones that are better and leaving the scrawny and subpar ones behind. And if you couldn't afford a lamb in the Old Testament, it says you could offer pigeons.
And actually if you couldn't even offer pigeons, you could offer flour. But with all of these offerings, of course, not only did you need the animals, but you needed the wood for the fires in the temple. You needed oil and you needed salt and all of those commodities needed to be available. It's not wrong inherently that someone would pick up their animal for use in the temple in that way.
But where they're doing it is wrong and how they're being fleeced by it was certainly wrong. I mean, it's like being stuck at an airport. We were dropped to Sarah Catherine at the airport yesterday morning, super early. And the kiosk that allows guests, a guest pass for the day to go actually to the gate of departure to say they're goodbyes.
It wasn't working. And it's a new thing. I don't know if you've been there in a long time. You can actually go through if you have the guest pass.
And it wasn't working in, oh boy, Sarah got through security and we hadn't really set up proper goodbye. And we were in a panic. We asked for help and nobody knew what to do. And the lady that counter unplugged it and plugged it back in.
That didn't quite do it. And then eventually we got around to my abigail and plugging it and plugging it in along with the ethernet cord too. And that eventually worked. And so we ran.
Because time was short. We ran then from that all the way through the terminal to security and then from security to the last gate. The last gate, 810 at the end. And by the time we all did that and then the stress of it all and I had coffee but no water as we're walking out, I was just so parched.
But I refused to buy water at the airport. Man is it overpriced. Captive audience. I was really pleased last night.
I took William, you know, I went to the toilet paper roll game at JBU for the first time. We make the first basket and everybody throws paper on the floor. But we went there. It's a six o'clock game and we hadn't had dinner.
And we thought, well, we'll pick something up at concessions. And I was like, thinking to myself, this is going to be terrible. And it wasn't. It was fantastic.
We both got a hot dog and popcorn, three bucks each. At one point, I mean, I just couldn't believe it. And then at one point we were discussing maybe going to a Razorback basketball game. And my head started clicking.
I don't think either of us could eat for six bucks. Let alone the both of us. If we went there, you have a captive audience. Well, this is what's going on.
These people are captive to the need to make offerings. And so these sellers are there making bank. And people are paying through the nose. And then of course, there's also a half-shekel fee that had to be paid by every male.
Over the age of 20, according to the Old Testament. And that half-shekel couldn't be paid in Roman currency, which many people had. It had to be paid in the temple currency that was acceptable. And so you've got money changers there.
And they're getting a little fee for changing the money. Is any money changer is? But you know how easy it would be again to rip people off at the exchange rate. And then to gouge them with the merchandise.
And so, as Al-Storbaix says, where there should be dignity, there was dishonesty. And where there should be honor, there is hypocrisy. And Jesus sees it all. He observes it all.
It sickens him. All the buying and selling, the noise in the crowd. And you can imagine the bickering and the bartering and the profiteering on the court of the Gentiles in God's house of prayer. Which, as Jesus notes in verse 13, the Bible says it is written, my house shall be called a house of prayer.
But you make it a den of robbers. Now here he's actually referencing two Old Testament prophets, Isaiah 56 and Jeremiah 7. Let me just invite you to hear the prophets to better understand the criticism Jesus is lodging. In Isaiah 56, verses 6 through 8, it says this, and the foreigners who join themselves to the Lord, to minister to him, to love the name of the Lord, and to be his servants.
Everyone who keeps the Sabbath and does not profane it and holds fast my covenant. These I will bring to my holy mountain and make them joyful in my house of prayer. Their burn offerings and their sacrifices will be accepted on my altar. For my house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples.
The Lord God who gathers the outcasts of Israel declares, I will gather yet others to him besides these already gathered. Did you hear what Isaiah was saying? God wants the outcasts of Israel to be gathered in his house. And he wants the foreigners.
That is the Gentiles who have a place in his house at his temple. And all the foreigners who joined themselves to the Lord to minister to him and to love his name would be his servants and be welcomed in his house. He even made joyful, says Isaiah, in his house, a house of prayer for all peoples, and the chief priests. The scribes and the religious leaders of Israel hadn't preserved the court of the Gentiles as a place of reverence, a place of joy, or a place of prayer.
But they polluted it and corrupted it and turned it into a den of robbers. That's Jesus' assessment and it's true. And he calls it a den of robbers because of Jeremiah chapter 7 verse 11. Now again, for context sake, let me pick up the reading at verse 9.
Jeremiah 7 verse 9. God asks, will you steal, murder, commit adultery, swear falsely, make offerings to bail, and go after other gods that you have not known? And then come and stand before me in this house, which is called by my name, and say, we are delivered. Only to go on doing all these abominations has this house, which is called by my name, become a den of robbers in your eyes.
Behold, I myself have seen it, declares the Lord. Jesus says, you know what? What's happening in Jeremiah's day is happening right here today. The people were coming into the house of God and acting like they cared about God and acting like they had reverence for God.
All while their lives were full of breaking the 10 commandments in the most extreme ways, stealing and murdering and committing adultery and lying in court, and the idolatrous worship of other gods. And Jesus is saying as Jeremiah was, y'all are hypocrites. You gather for public worship at the temple and you go through the motions of worshiping the living God, but you don't live at all in a way that suggests you actually do worship the living God. And you say, we're delivered.
You say, God will protect us. He's our God. He'll do what we need him to do for us. And God says, you don't care about me at all.
Why do you have such confidence for you who don't care about me at all that I will show myself strong on your behalf? You aren't my people. Jeremiah called him a den of robbers, like a bunch of robes running wild and coming back to the safety of their hideout in the temple. And so says Ralph Davis, they made it a cave of thugs.
So Jesus saw that, the house of prayer for all nations turned into a den of robbers and he goes after them. He drives them out. He flips their tables and he kicks their furniture out from under them. And what we're seeing, of course, with Jesus here is an expression of the righteous indignation of our loving Savior Jesus and his anger, his righteous anger.
And the expression of God's righteous wrath. These people shouldn't be there doing what they're doing. And he intervenes to restore the temple to its purpose in order to honor the Lord. So that the place would be a blessing to sinners so that the outcasts and the foreigners and the needy could come and be ministered to by the ordinances of God.
So that those with guilt, so that those who know they've done wrong could come and have an atonement provided for them and give them hope in the Lamb of God who takes away the Son of the world and for people everywhere to come and draw near to God in prayer. And he sees all this and he says, get out. I want none of this here. Perhaps we can think of it in terms of the radical intervention of a cancer surgeon who longs to see their patient restored.
Well, they in light of circumstances, act radically. The objective being, of course, in cutting with the knife is the well-being by intervention of the patient. Jesus here intervenes for the well-being of all the needy who need the Lord. So it takes dramatic action here.
What does all this have to do with us today? Well, would people say of us here at Redeemer, you know, y'all gather on Sunday morning and you say, we worship the living God, but you don't live like that the other six days of the week, do you? Do people say of us? We should ask the question.
Would they say of us, you're just pretending you're actually a hypocrite. I mean, a true hypocrite. May it not be so. But of course, there's another question here as well.
The question is not just what others might say of us, but what does God see when he sees our worship of him? What's his estimation of our worship? Do you see that at the end of Jeremiah 7-11? Do you hear it?
Behold, I myself have seen it. Declares the Lord. I know exactly what's going on. And that's as true today as in Jesus' day in Jeremiah's.
He reads your heart. He knows your mind. There's nothing hidden from his sight. Are we just going through the motions?
Merely giving lip service to him. Well, he knows when we're really living as if he's not our Lord. And let's be honest, that religious hypocrisy was great in Jesus' day. It's great in our day and it's a constant temptation and a constant problem in the Church of the Lord Jesus.
It will be until that great final day when we are made perfect in glory. And it will be a constant problem for all who are genuine believers. That we say we trust the Lord to deliver us from sin, but we don't live consistently in light of the Lordship of the Lord in our fight against sin. I mean, we all struggle another way to say this.
We all struggle to be with being inconsistent and prone to temptation and weaken our efforts. And we stumble and fall. That's true of every believer. We're not self-righteously looking down at knows that people who struggle with sin here.
Pastor and people alike at redeemer struggle with sin. But it's possible that there are some here who aren't trying at all. By that, I mean, you don't have the Spirit of God in you with a heart to actually fight sin and you haven't repented of any sin. You're not genuine.
You're not sincere. Jesus sees it all. He knows if you're faking. Well, what's the good news, Pastor?
Well, the good news is that Jesus is the greatest reformer of his Church in the history of Reformation. He has a zeal for the Lord's honor that no one else can match. He does the work of a priest that no other priest could do. He welcomes the foreigner and the outcast, the stranger in the sinner that no one else would ever welcome.
He brings cleansing from sin that no animal sacrifice could ever bring by the sacrifice of himself. By the shedding of his own blood, he provided purification for sin. Once and for all Christ loved us and gave himself for us a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God. And so he has become the true temple of God, the true dwelling place of God with man.
We're having an earth meet. We're God and man meet. And he indwels his people by his Spirit. And the good news is this, because he's the true temple and he lives in his people by his Spirit.
His people are the true temple of God now. We're not talking about church buildings here, folks. This isn't a version of the temple building around us. But we, the people, the believers in Jesus, we are the Bibles says, the temple of God.
1 Corinthians 3 16, do you not know that you are God's temple and that God's Spirit dwells in you? And so what's the good news? Though we Christians find in our hearts a war going on, even as we seek by the Spirit to live for the Lord and even as we seek to worship the Lord and pray to the Lord, we find this war at work in us, the flesh warring against the Spirit and the Holy Spirit warring against the flesh. We are assured, we are assured that those who genuinely and sincerely and however imperfectly trust in Jesus, Peter tells us in 1 Peter 2, you yourselves like living stones are being built up as a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.
Every believer Peter says has become part of the spiritual household of God together where a holy priesthood and we offer, he says, spiritual sacrifices to God, not sacrifices of atonement for the forgiveness of our sins, for the acceptance of ourselves before the Holy God, not those kinds. That's what Jesus offered. But we do offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus, Romans 12, 1. We present our bodies to God as a living sacrifice which is our spiritual worship.
Here I am, Lord. Let me worship you, and not just in public but in life. Philippians 4, 18 says, we offer our money as gifts to the Lord's work and it is Paul says a fragrant offering a sacrifice acceptable and pleasing to God. Hebrews 13, 15 says, we offer up a sacrifice of praise to God, the fruit of lips that acknowledge his name and Hebrews 13, 16 says, when we do not neglect to do good and we share what we have, such sacrifices are pleasing to God.
And so as we look at ourselves as genuine Christians, there's much imperfection to be noted, much imperfection in our living and worshiping and giving and praising and praying and doing good and sharing what we have. And yet Peter, as yoursless, these spiritual sacrifices are acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. That is, they're offered to God through Jesus. They're acceptable through Jesus.
He makes them better than they are. And they are received in heaven and are pleasing to God through Him. He's the offering, the lamb who takes away your sin. And in Him, through Him, He's the one by whom you come and are acceptable in all, your service of God.
Put your hope in Him. Let's pray. Father, we pray for a heart to do so. Help us to receive and rest upon our Lord Jesus Christ alone for our salvation.
And then grant that we would by the Spirit, seek to live in a way that becomes a follower of Christ. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Let's pray together and sing.