In your Bible, if you would join me in Matthew's Gospel, Chapter 21, Matthew's Gospel, Chapter 21 today. If you are a guest, I'd love to be able to shake your hand after the service. I'll be out at the entry there, and stop by.
Let them know you're a first-time visitor. We have a nice lighthouse shirt for you as a gift. Matthew 21, we're going to read verse 12 down to verse number 17 today. The Bible says, And Jesus went into the temple of God and cast out all them that sold and bought in the temple, and he overthrew the tables of the money changers and the seats of them that sold doves, and said unto them, It is written, My house shall be called the house of prayer, but you have made it a den of thieves. And the blind and the lame came to him in the temple, and he healed them. When the chief priests and scribes saw the wonderful things that he did, and the children crying in the temple, and saying, Hosanna to the son of David, they were sore displeased or very indignant, and said unto him, Hearest thou what these say? And Jesus said unto them, Yea, have you never read out of the mouth of babes and sucklings? Thou has perfected praise.
And he left them and went out of the city into Bethany, and he lodged there. Father, what a joy to gather and sing praise to the King who is above all kings. Let our hearts be fastened on the things above, how much of life gets consumed with lesser things. I pray that our hearts would be caught up in wonder, love, and praise of your glory. I pray that you would capture the attention of our hearts. I pray that we would cast off the busyness that a Martha mentality would be produced from this world, and we would be like a Mary who would sit at your feet and hear your word. Let the word of God be planted into the soil of our heart, that it may bring forth fruit of salvation to the lost and sanctification to the saved. Be glorified in how we listen and respond to the glorious truth of your word, that we may leave here more like Christ and less like ourself, that we may know Christ and leave here making Him known. We ask this for your glory in the name of Jesus, and God's people said, Amen.
You may be seated today. Well, the Gospel of Matthew is one wonderful gospel record. Chapter 1 and 2 gives us the birth of Christ. Chapter 3, the forerunner of Christ, John the Baptist, and then the baptism of Jesus at the end of that chapter. And then Chapter 4 through Chapter 20 is the short three-year ministry of the Lord Jesus Christ.
And Chapter 21 through 27 are the end of that chapter. And then Chapter 21 through 27 is the last week of His life, the chapters 27 being the crucifixion, Chapter 28, the resurrection. So as we step into Matthew 21, we are moving into this last week, this passion week of Christ, this such a vital season of study through this incredible gospel record.
Jesus's short 33-year life would end this week that we're reading, and it's such a setting time as we are moving up to our time of Easter here just a few weeks away. Now last week we saw that Jesus entered in Jerusalem, a city that normally had 80 to 100,000 people, would now be swelling with masses of people. It is estimated by the great Jewish historian Alfred Etersheim that the population could have increased upwards of three million people during this time. It was absolutely jam-packed in Jerusalem. This Passover week, it commemorated the deliverance of the children of Israel out of Egypt, and you remember the tenth plague where God said, put the blood upon the doorpost and on the lintel, and when the death angel came, if the blood had been applied, the judgment of God would pass over you. And so this became a time of remembrance of that, and it was a time for them to reflect upon the sacrifice that was needed to have their sins atoned for. Now the Bible tells us very clearly that the blood of animals cannot take away sin. Hebrews 10 4 says it is not possible that the blood of goats and lambs and such would take away sin, but that year the estimates of 250 plus thousand animals would have been sacrificed according to Flavius Josephus, chief Jewish historian.
That was the number of animals that were sacrificed in many of those years. It would be the sacrifice of God's own son who was, in the words of John the Baptist, the Lamb of God who came to take away the sin of the world, as John 1 29 says. In 1 John 1 7 we read that the blood of Jesus Christ cleanses us from all sin, and so without shedding of blood there is no forgiveness. Man cannot atone for his own sin.
It is not our good works that take away sin, it is the grace of God. And we even see that in the Garden of Eden, don't we? Remember when Adam and Eve sinned, they got some fig leaves and they tried to cover up their shame of their sin and their nakedness, and that was not sufficient. God ended up making coats of skins for them, and by implication if they had a coat of skin placed upon them that meant the death of that animal. And so God was the one who killed the first animals to cover their sin because their covering was not sufficient, and that gave us that clear picture. Today it is not your goodness, it is not your righteousness, it is not your church attendance, it is not your baptism, your reading, no sacraments or ordinances that will save you. It is only through the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ who reaches down and saves unworthy sinners and makes rebels into children.
That is the only way of salvation. Now you need to understand that Jerusalem was absolutely flooded with massive crowds of people. The city was over-capacitated, people would stay everywhere, tents would be set up all over the city, anywhere and everywhere. The events we looked at last week happened on Monday as Jesus had his triumphal entry on the 10th of Nice in A.D. 33 is the estimated time. This would have been the third Passover that Jesus came to during his earthly ministry. Up to this point, whenever he came to Jerusalem, he would not allow massive crowds to gather around him. In fact, sometimes he would go up secretly to the Passover because he did not want a throng of people to journey there.
But not this time. This final time he allowed the crowds to swell and estimates of up to 200,000 people could have been journeying with him as they went through Jericho up to Jerusalem. This crowd of people was massive. They were overwhelmed with excitement, they were singing and praising God, they began to put their clothing down in front of him as a display of worship.
They were crying out, Hosanna blessed to the one who comes in the name of the Lord, Hosanna in the highest, the Son of David, and that was a pronouncement of his Messiahship, the Son of David. But Jesus Christ enters in Jerusalem on the foal of a donkey. He comes in such a humble manner.
And as I think about this, it's so incredible. We, in our sin, according to Romans 5 verse 9 and 10, are enemies with God. We have become enemies of God because of our sin. We have sinned against God.
We are rebels against God because of our sin and depravity. And God comes and offers us peace with himself through the blood of his own Son. And so Jesus comes to Jerusalem offering peace, and riding on a donkey by a king was a symbol of peace in the ancient world. If they came riding on a great steed or a stallion, that was a sign of triumph or being in a battle mode, and that's why when you read Revelation 19, Jesus doesn't come on a donkey. He comes riding on a white stallion. And so Jesus is coming to offer peace.
He is the Prince of Peace. He is giving us peace, and the peace would come through the sacrifice of himself. And it's interesting when you parallel this story in Matthew 21 with Luke's record of this story in Luke 19, that when Jesus came to the city, he began to weep over the city. His heart was broken for Jerusalem, because though they were worshiping on Monday, they would be crucifying him by Friday.
Those same voices that cried out, Hosanna in the highest, were going to be crying out, away with this man. That Monday evening, after Jesus's triumphal entry into Jerusalem, he would return to Bethany, according to the other Gospel records. And Bethany was the house of Lazarus, where Mary and Martha, his sisters, were, and those three would invite Jesus in, and the disciples, and they would stay there. It was a small town, just a few hundred people, and it was a place of refuge for them.
They were loved there, they were cared for there, they were fed and sheltered. The next day, he enters into Jerusalem, and he shocks the city. Jesus shocks the city.
They were expecting him to come and confront Rome. But instead, he confronts not the injustices that were happening in Herod's jurisdiction, not the injustices that were happening in society, and those injustices being oppressed upon them from Rome. Rather, Jesus makes a direct v-line for the temple. There were many problems that Jesus could have dealt with, military oppression. He could have confronted evil King Herod, social injustices. But what does Jesus do here? What was the greatest evil that he saw that needed to be dealt with?
The most destructive and detrimental sin going on in the city. He doesn't attack Rome. He doesn't attack the government. He doesn't march on the government.
He doesn't go after social issues. Rather, he attacks the temple. For Jesus, the problem wasn't the house of Caesar. The problem for Jesus was the house of God. And 1 Peter 4 17 says, For the time has come that judgment must begin at the house of God, and if it first begin at us, what shall be the end of them that obey not the gospel? When you see in Revelation 2 and 3, Jesus did not come back focusing on the corruption that was going on in governmental institutions. He came back and he marched on the church in Revelation 2 and 3.
And I can tell you today, friends, if that was true 2,000 years ago, it's still true today. Jesus is concerned about the purity of God's house. And so we see some things here in this passage that are very important for us today. And the first is Jesus removes corruption in the temple in verse 12. We know the love that Jesus had for the temple of God. He calls it my house in verse 13. He refers to it as his father's house in John 2. When he was 12 years old, his family came up to Jerusalem to worship at the Passover. And do you remember when they left, they forgot Jesus.
It's not a good thing. I mean, if you're a parent and you have several kids, it's like you don't want to leave Jesus behind, right? You know, James, hey, James, we'll get you later, but we don't want to leave Jesus. They, and they're journeying with a big group of people back to Nazareth. Nazareth about a 75 mile journey, so there's a group of them that would have been coming together.
Again, massive crowds of people. So Jesus hung behind. They come back into the city. They search for him for, remember how many days? Three days. I can tell you, dad's worried when his son's gone, but mama's having a fit. Y'all with me?
Yeah. I remember growing up, we'd go to the fair. I always loved going to the fair when I was a kid. We'd go to the fair and I'd run around do rides and stuff.
This happened to me, I think, for about three or four years in a row. I would get lost because I would go with dad and my brothers and I would get run around doing some stuff, and I tell you, by like year three when I got lost, it wasn't me getting in trouble. My dad was in trouble.
I was just a little guy, you know. But mamas, they keep their eye on their kids a little bit better sometimes. They'll show you pictures sometimes, you know, dad's throwing their kid up in the air, little boys throwing him up in the air, and the girl, they're over there holding them, you know, making sure they're all taken care of and safe. And so Jesus is in the temple. They find him after three days, and the Bible says in Luke 2 verse 46 that he was sitting in the midst of the doctors, both hearing them, asking them questions, and all that heard were astonished at his understanding and answers. And so you see the love of Christ to be in the temple even as a youth, and he says, don't you know I must be about my father's business?
His heart was to be there. In Matthew 21 12, Jesus went into the temple of God and it says that he cast out all them that sold and bought in the temple, and he overthrew the tables of the money changers and the seats of them that sold doves. You think that was a little confrontational? If you're throwing somebody's chair over, what does that mean you're doing to the person? There's people falling on the ground, there's money getting scattered everywhere, there's birds fluttering around.
The scene is absolute chaos. Do you think Jesus may have offended somebody? It is without question that no one has displayed more humility and love than the Lord Jesus Christ, and those are things that we love to highlight and I would not be here if it were not for the grace of God. But Jesus is not only loving, but he's also holy, and he is passionate about purity, and we find his passion for purity here, and we see how Jesus feels when people take his holiness lightly. This passage puts the passion of Christ for holiness on display. How does he feel about corrupt worship? What happens when the house of God is polluted with sin?
How does Jesus feel about that? It's interesting when you read Mark's account of this, in Mark 11 16 it says, and he would not suffer or allow that any man should carry any vessel through the temple. What happened was people were using the temple as a shortcut through different places around the city, and they would be carrying containers and merchandise and different things, and they would cut through the temple square on the outside of the main temple. It was a large area.
I'll show you some pictures here in a moment. It's about the size of 11 soccer fields that temple mount was. It's huge, and they would cut through there. He would not allow them to do that. They were treating the house and temple of God irreverently, and it angered him, and he came in and literally took the place over. We don't understand, sitting in this small room that we're in today that conceits 600 people, we don't understand the magnitude of a place where tens of thousands could have gathered, and he literally just took over the place. He owned the temple. He came in with, I mean, how much authority did your voice have to carry to change that place? What kind of mannerisms did you have to, what kind of a man would you had to have been to absolutely come in and dominate a temple square that's the size of 11 soccer fields? This is Jesus on display, not as a little quiet lamb, but as a lion, and he comes in and absolutely takes control.
And why does he do this? Well, let me give you some background to what's going on. At the Feast of the Passover that would have been held that Friday, there would have been thousands, literally tens of thousands, of animals sacrificed between three and six p.m. on that Friday. Jesus was crucified that Friday. Because many came from far away, it was not practical for them to bring an animal from their home places of origin, and so they would come to the temple and they would buy an animal there. And they also would bring different coinage from all parts of the Roman Empire. And there were many different types of coins in those days, but Roman coinage would have Caesar's image on it, it would have statements of honor to Rome, and that Rome was a dominating power. And so to use that coinage inside the temple was seen as blasphemous, it was very aggravating to the Jewish people, so you would have to exchange your currency to a more acceptable currency like Tyrian coins, coins from Tyre, and so they would have an exchange there. So what started as a service to the worshippers turned into a system of greed and extortion. They were basically taking advantage of the people. I just want to give you maybe a couple pictures here that give you an idea of what the temple looked like.
Do we have those pictures? Yeah, so this here is what Moses's temple was. Do you remember when they were journeying out in the wilderness and they set up the temple and there was three tribes on each side? To give you an idea, this is 15 feet wide and this is 45 feet long. So it's 9 cubits by like 30 cubits. Now this is 75 feet wide and 150 foot long, so that's only about, you know, that's like a 50-yard range. So it's 50 feet, this is 75 feet, this is the size of what that temple area looked like.
Let's go to that next picture. This is Solomon's temple. Solomon's temple was so huge. Do you remember when they went to rebuild that some of the elders mourned because it wasn't big enough? This is Solomon's temple complex. This is what Herod built. This is where Jesus came.
This place was absolutely massive. You can see that the size and dimensions, this is the scale of what that would be like. Do we have another picture that kind of gives you an idea?
So there's a rendering. If you go to Jerusalem, they have a rendering of this. It's physical and you could see it, but now when you read the Bible and it talks about like the court of the Gentiles, and I have another picture, just a moment, don't change it yet, but this wall here was like the Gentiles could stay out. There was a large court here and over here and they could go around, but that temple complex, this is 11 soccer fields big. This area in here was where the priests would come into worship, but only the Jewish people were allowed into this area.
We got that next picture. So this is that Jewish court and it was on the outside, and then this is the Gentile court, I'm sorry. This is where the Jews would come in, and so this was massive. Today where this is located is the Dome of the Rock, that golden top dome, which one day Jesus Christ is definitely going to remove that. And so, but this is where Solomon's temple is, massive, massive area.
These little specks are like people. Now, the Jews probably figured if Gentiles, which they referred to even as dogs, were allowed to be out here, then we could have animals out here too. So they brought animals in to where they would sell them to the people, and this was where the money changers were. So Jesus comes in and there would have been masses of thousands of people in all this area, and he comes in and absolutely takes the place over, cleans out the temple, and would not let anybody come through. And so Annas was the high priest at the time.
This became known as the Bazaar of Annas, because he was selling things there, and the high priest was banking money from the people and using religion to make himself wealthy. Alfred Edersheim, again one of the chief and greatest Christian Jewish historians, said that people would pay about 10 times more for the animals from the temple than it would cost them anywhere else. So basically you would bring an animal, and if it did not pass the inspection, you had to pay an inspection fee for your animal that you would sacrifice to God, they would not accept it. So you would have to buy an animal from them, and so there were fees for the inspection, there were fees for their animals, but it was really about the only animal you could use, because that's the only animal that the priests would accept. So do you see what would happen? You would come to Jerusalem, like, excited to worship, get there, and they're like, yeah, your animal don't pass, and you're like, what's wrong, it fits all, then now it doesn't.
Now you're gonna have to pay for this, it's 10 times more. So what happens when you come to worship God and you feel like you're being financially taken advantage of, extortions happening, you're being cheated? Do you see why Jesus is upset? People can't even worship because the roadblock are the religious leaders.
They're literally turning, and then when you go to change currency, they're putting a 25% fee on money exchanges, just absolutely robbing the people, and so this is what that turned into. It's interesting, Jesus cleansed the temple three years prior. John 2, when he came to the temple, he ran all them out. It even says in John 2 that he made a quart of whips. I mean, he made a quart of whips. I don't know if he smacked anybody with him or not, but he set down and thought it through. It wasn't like an emotional response.
He sat down and he thought it through, put together a quart of whips, he ran them out. It just gives you an idea of how God feels about impurity and worship. The temple, which was to be a place of worship to God, became a place of exploiting God's people, and Jesus became very, very angry. And as long as Israel's worship was wrong, nothing else could be made right.
And I want you to get this. With God, spiritual purity is the issue. All problems in society, government, or our lives stem from being wrong with God. Everything in our lives are centered on being right and worshiping God correct.
This week I got to spend three days speaking at Legacy and talking about worship to their student body, their junior high school student body, which was wonderful and I really enjoyed that. But we talked about worship, and worship comes from the old Anglo-Saxon word worth-ship, and it's the idea that you're giving worth to something that is valuable, that is worthy. It's ascribing praise to something that is worthy. Now, man was designed and engineered by God to respond to greatness. That's what worship is. Worship is our response to greatness, and human beings are the only ones engineered like this.
Angels are engineered like this as well, but animals don't have that in them. They don't line up and celebrate the eagle that can fly the fastest. They don't celebrate the cheetah that can run the fastest. But all of us know who Usain Bolt is. All of us know who all of us know who Ronaldo and Messi and some of these other great athletes and Jordan, we don't know who Lebron is, or like Tom Brady, but we know Joe Burrow, right? But we know who these great athletes are.
We know who those Michelangelo, Leonardo, Picasso, Van Gogh, we know Beethoven. We know these people because humans lift up the greatest. We respond to that. We clothe ourselves in their gar.
We keep statistics of them. We boast of their achievements to other people. And it's important to understand that mankind is a worshiper, and worship is the reverence that you pay to greatness. We see a sky that's lit up in a beautiful way, and we respond and worship, and the Bible says the heavens declare the glory of God. Now the word glory in worship is really the glory that we give to God, and glory comes from the Hebrew word kabod, and the word kabod means heavy. It doesn't mean that God's physically heavy. It means that you give Him weightiness. And so to give God worship is to give God weightiness in your life.
It's to say, God, you carry the weight in my life. Because we are engineered to worship, we will always worship something. We can't keep it.
We can't keep ourselves from that. The question is, what are we going to worship? That's why God's first statement in Exodus 20 on his list of 10 Commandments is, have no other gods before me. It's why Jesus said, love me with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, because that will be the challenge.
It will seek to be drawn to other things. And according to Ezekiel 14 2 and 3, the Bible tells us, and the word of the Lord came to me, Son of man, these men have taken their idols into their hearts. Idolatry is not some primitive form of paganism that's done by carving a piece of wood into an idol and worshiping it. Rather, the Bible speaks about idolatry as men creating idols in their heart and replacing the worth that is to be given to God has now been replaced by the worth that is given to a thing. There are reasons that God says don't have any other God. Now I would ask this, is there anything in your life that you love more than Jesus Christ?
Anything that you give more weight to? And the idea is this, a life of worship is not someone who walks around singing all the time. Singing is only one way to worship God. Worshiping God is to say, God, in my life you carry the greatest weight and the greatest influence in my life. Whether I eat or I drink or whatever I do, it's to be done for your glory.
I love you most. How I treat my wife, my kids, my co-workers, how I respond to things in life, how I respond to my own heart in life, how I live is defined by God. That is what worship is. The problem is we become lovers of pleasure more than lovers of God, or we love the praise of men more than the praise of God. In Romans 1 25 it says, they change the truth of God into a lie, and they worship the creature or the creation more than the Creator.
That's why people will love Mother Earth over Father God, and they're more worried about a clean environment than a clean soul. But if you can quote your favorite athlete, not miss a game, wear their jerseys and tell others how great they are, but you can't quote the Bible, you don't put on the Lord Jesus Christ, you gladly or comfortably miss church and don't tell others how great Jesus is. Just ask yourself, who do you think you're worshiping?
Don't deceive yourself. Worship is evidenced by our life. Jesus kind of felt like words were kind of weak, didn't he? What did Peter say? Lord, I'll die for you. I love you most. Really? Let's see how you act.
Let's see how you live. And remember when they said on the shore, after the resurrection, he says, Simon, son of Barjona, do you love me more than these? And he said, you know I love you, Lord. He said, then he didn't say, then tell me you love me.
He didn't say sing to me. He said, feed my sheep. Feed my sheep. Feed my sheep. Feed my sheep.
Bring the word of God to them. Do the work I've called you to do. I don't need your words.
I'm calling for your life. And I ask you today, what does your life show that you give the most weight to? Because most of us, every day, will battle with idolatry, and we don't even know it. Every day, we all are challenged with idolatry. This isn't like, ah, five years ago I struggled.
No, you're struggling every day. Most of the time, itself, we get on the throne of our own heart. That's why pride comes in, right? That's why selfishness and greed and covetousness and lust and every other sin that comes to creep into our heart. And what made Jesus angry was when he came into the temple, corruption was there.
And guess what? When you come to the New Testament, the temple is not some facility. The temple is your very body. That's what the Bible tells us here in 1 Corinthians chapter 6. It says your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost. And do you know what he says in 1 Corinthians 6 18? Flee sexual immorality or flee fornication. For every sin that a man does is without the body, but he that committed fornication sins against his own body.
He says, what? Do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost, which is in you, which you have of God? You're not your own.
For you're bought with the price. Therefore, give weight to God in your body, is how you could say it. Give the greatest weight to God.
And do you know what? You know what repentance is? It's saying, God, I give more weight to you than my sin. And do you know what it means not to repent? It's to say, I give more weight and influence to my sin than I do to God. That's why Joshua chapter 7 verse 19, he told Achan, he says, confess your sin and give glory to God, Achan. Confessing our sin, when you do that, if you got some sin in your heart, listen, God's not like, you did what? When you confess your sin. He's not shocked by it.
That's good. You ever had to tell your parents something? You're like, I don't want to tell them. I mean, you tell them it's like, ah, you know, but with God, it's not like that. God's not like, get on your knees, you filthy rag. You know, he doesn't do that. When you come and confess your sin, you are glorifying him.
He already knows that sin's there. And for you to confess that you're saying, God, I love you more than this sin. I count you more valuable. I count you more weighty. I count you more influential.
And I want you to sit on the throne. Now we need to look at the sin in our heart and seek to eradicate it with the same fervency that Jesus did with the temple. He wasn't casual about getting it out, was he?
He wasn't like, Hey, let's have a conversation, guys. I know you're over here doing this money changer thing, and I'm sure some of you guys have good hearts in this. You're really wanting to help the people.
I know you're wanting them to have some animals. You're trying to, this is a process of getting people to worship. But you know what?
He didn't do any of that. He just came in. Imagine the first table that got flipped. You ever have somebody who does something and everybody gets quiet because you're like, Oh my. In heaven, I'm like, Jesus, Jesus, do you have like a rerun of that?
I just want to see that. Like, you know, there are some things in the Bible I would just like to, because everybody, all the disciples were probably like quiet. Like, Oh man, he's, we don't remember him acting like this. Like usually he's really gracious and kind and merciful and all these things. He comes in and just cleans house.
Live it. This is why Hinduism says they don't believe Jesus is a God because he got angry. I can tell you holiness and anger can come together because it defends purity.
If your little three-year-old got violated, you would be angry. And God's holiness is more pure than even a three-year-old child. And when somebody violates it, it angers God. And it should stir something up in us.
It should stir something up in us. And so he comes in and he cleans the temple. So the first thing we see here is Jesus removes corruption.
Secondly, look how he rebukes it. Verse 13, how does he rebuke corruption? And he said and said unto them, it is said by the elders and the rabbis in their traditions. It is written in the Shema, or it is written in the Gomorrah, or is written in some other writing. No, he takes them to the Scriptures.
It is written, my house shall be called the house of prayer you have made at the den of thieves. So Jesus rebukes corruption with the Word of God, with Scripture. Everything Jesus did was in agreement with the Word of God. Jesus rebukes greed, sin, and irreverence in the temple, and literally Jesus is the Logos made flesh, right? So whatever Jesus does is what the Word does. Whatever Jesus Christ displays is the Word of God put on display. When the Word enters the temple, it kicks sin out of the temple. And isn't that true in our life? When you have the Word of God come into you, it should kick some sin out of you.
You hear that? As my preacher used to tell me growing up, either the sin will keep you from this book, or this book will keep you from sin. Fact. You know why some people don't want to read the Bible? Because they don't want to deal with their sin. Show me someone who doesn't have a love for the Word, and I can tell you somebody who's committing idolatry somewhere. Listen to me, if you haven't been in your Word this week, you're going to tell me you love Jesus most? Really?
There's always two problems. Either we don't really know Him like we think we do, or we have some sin in our life. What happens to everybody who really knows Jesus? They always fell down in worship, right? What do they do in Revelation 4? They all fall down in worship.
They all get it, right? What's going to happen to every knee one day in Philippians 2? Every knee will bow, every tongue confess Jesus is Lord.
The reason we don't bend and bow now is we don't really know Him like we think we do. What happened to Isaiah? He bowed in worship. What happened to Ezekiel?
What happened to John? All of them do this. The only reason that we are kept upright in not bowing in worship, actually the word worship comes from the Greek word proskuneo. It literally means to face plant, like before God, bowing before Him in reverence. And the reason we don't bow is we don't really know Him.
We think we do. It's intellectual. It's no different than the Pharisees. And you know what Jesus said in John 7, John 8, John 17, John 15, 16?
All through the Gospels. He's like, I know God. You say you know Him, but you don't know Him.
You say you know Him, but you don't know Him. And the reason that we allow idols to sit on our heart and we go through the temple mount thinking everything's okay and our temple is okay, we have all this junk inside of there that needs riveted out and ripped out is because we just don't love God like we should and we hold on to our idols. When the word comes in, it will wreck the sin.
It will remove it. That's why you coming to a church that preaches like this will help cleanse your heart. And if you've got a lot of sin in your life, you're probably not going to last very long. Like you should come to church and if you're living in sin, you shouldn't feel okay by the time you leave. You should leave feeling like, man, I feel worse than before I came. I've had people tell me that before.
I don't want to make people feel bad. But I do know this, if I got sin in my heart and I can leave God's house feeling okay with it, have I really encountered the truth? If He would do this to the temple, what would He do to me?
He wants me to be clean. And you know, when you're really filled with joy is when you're clean, right? The joy of the Lord's our strength. When we're filled with the Holy Spirit, we have love, joy, peace, all those things.
And I know you're here because you love Christ and you want His word and that's awesome. And you know what the Bible says in Psalms 119, 9 through 11? That wherewithal shall a young man cleanse his ways is this by taking heed thereto according to Thy word. With my whole heart have I sought Thee, O let me not wonder from Thy commandments.
Thy word have I hid in my heart that I might not sin against Thee. Scripture memorization is a cleansing effect. Study of the Scripture is a cleansing effect. Jesus said in John 15 3, you are clean through the word that I've spoken unto you.
Ephesians 5 26 and 7, you're washed, the church is washed and sanctified by the word of God. Now Jesus quotes two Old Testament passages in this one verse. He said, it is written, my house is a house of prayer. It's a quote out of Isaiah 56 7. He said, my house in Isaiah 56 7, my house shall be called a house of prayer, it says, for all people.
Temple is where all people should come to pray and worship. And instead of a place of worship, prayer, and communion, it turned into a place filled with corruption and extortion by the religious leaders. Now the second quote that he ties together with this is in verse 13 is from Jeremiah 7 11. In Jeremiah 7 11 it says, has this house which is called by my name become a den of thieves in your eyes?
Behold I even I have seen it, says the Lord. And so God sends judgment upon the nation of Israel because they allowed evil to come into the house of God and they would not repent at his warning. Listen to Jeremiah 7 13, he goes on and says, and now because you have done all these works, says the Lord, and I spoke to you rising up early and speaking but you would not hear and I called you and you did not answer, they treated God lightly, they did not take his word heavy. Verse 15 he goes on and says, I will cast you out of my sight. In other words, I'll cast the sin out but if you want to hold on to the sin then I'll cast you out. That's what the word is telling us, that's how serious God is about sin.
If you're married and your husband's committed adultery and you say, unless you repent and turn away from that we cannot be in a relationship, and if he held on to that woman and he kept living in a sexual evil way with her, would you hold on to him? In the same way God's not going to hold on to the person who continues to commit adultery on him with their sin. If you're saved you are kept by the power of God and if you are saved he will renovate your life. You're not going to be comfortable with sin.
He will disturb you. My house will be called a house of prayer. Prayer is communion with God, it's worshiping God.
Prayer is an act of dependency, it is weakness leaning on omnipotence as he in bounds would say. And so our bodies collectively as a church needs to be a place where we commune with God and so we need to have a clean house. Thirdly, Jesus removes, not only does he remove corruption, he rebukes it with Scripture, but he replaces corruption with Scripture. He removes it with Scripture and then he replaces it with Scripture. Verse 13, he says, it is written. Verse 16, have you never read? The word of God comes in, after everything's moved out it begins to come in, and the word of God is proclaimed. In Luke's account of this same story, in Luke 19 46, he said, it is written, my house shall be called a house of prayer, you made it a den of thieves. The next verse says, and he taught daily in the temple.
Did you notice what had to happen? Before he taught daily in the temple, sin had to be removed. He wasn't going to come in with the money changers.
He wasn't going to come in with the animals bleating. He wasn't going to come in with all the all the noise and distraction of sin. And I just wonder how much, how many Christians today have the earplugs of sin spiritually speaking, and they're not able to hear the word of God because of that. Sin deadens our spiritual senses.
Just absolutely deadens it. Christ comes in and he cleans the temple before the word of God is taught. Many Christians can be defined by those who really elevate the things of the world, but they just don't seem to elevate the things of God. I would say this, if Jesus every day was teaching in the temple, for most Christians they would only show up about one time. Because it's like, yeah, you know, I mean if I stayed for, you know, if Jesus has some kind of class after the main speaking, you know, I got, I just got too much going on. 168 of these little segments called hours in the week, and if I give God one of those, then that's my worship to Him. Listen, I know some people have busy lives and different things go on, but when we give weight to God, we should give weight to the things of God. God is not defined by my desires, He's defined by His truth.
And I don't want to be legalistic, you can love Jesus and it doesn't mean you come to everything in a church, but there should be a love for the Word. Unless you know everything about the parables, you should go to the class we teach on parables. Unless you've, if you've not been saved and baptized, you need to come to my class right after this and our foundations.
If you're not a member, you need to plug in and join and be a part of that. Unless you know everything about the book of Proverbs, we're going through the book of Proverbs. I'll be teaching on Proverbs 6 this week, such an important section of Scripture. We had almost 400 people here Wednesday.
I hope you were one of those, and if you're working, I understand that. I'm not upset with anybody that's not able to come, but I would encourage you, make him a priority. If a coach requires five to six, sometimes seven days a week, what happens when God gets one hour a week?
Do we see our priorities? And then we get mad at the preacher for touching, sometimes, our idol. I used to hate when the preacher would say stuff like that. I'm like, he's just a terrible athlete, that's why he says that. I used to think that. A guy don't know how to play basketball or football, he's a...
I would think that. I mean, there'd be like 500 people in the crowd, and he starts busting on like the priority of putting God over sports, and I'm like, ah. You know why I got mad? Because he touched what became the idol of my heart. And I think God allowed my ankle to get ruined in life, so for the rest of my life, like Jacob halted upon his, I can never play basketball again. I can never sprint anymore.
I'm 44 years old and those days are over for me forever. And it's a blessing because it reminds me, don't make idols. I needed it cleansed. I think sometimes our reading, our praying, our Scripture memorization, it's like, it just makes me sad for God. God's Word is so worthy. I would ask, when's the last time you memorized something in the Bible? Not because you were told to, but because you loved to.
You prayed not because of some requirement, because you could not go without being with Him. And I think that's true for a great majority of the people in this place, but I pray that it would be consistently true. You know, if you're around, if you love Christ most, you will talk of Him. Everybody this year found out who's an Eagles fan. I didn't know any Eagles fans until this year, right? Now the Chiefs fans are hiding. If Notre Dame won, everybody would have known who Notre Dame fans were.
See? But what happened? Ohio State came out and had fun.
And we all got our Ohio State jerseys on, and we wore them around. Nothing wrong with that. Nothing wrong with that stuff. There's nothing wrong with enjoying things in life. The Bible says God's given us all things really to enjoy.
It's okay to enjoy those things. Our danger, the thing that I've always found difficult, is to keep them from taking over, because we get excited about greatness, and it's hard to not turn the greatness that we have toward God to other things. And so we begin to worship lesser things.
I can tell you, one day we'll get to heaven and be like, how did I miss that? He's so good. He thrills me as Philippians 6 11 says, forever in his presence is fullness of joy. Augustine was right when he said, our hearts are restless till they find their rest in him.
Have you forgotten how good he is? The church at Ephesus, didn't they? They left their first love. The work of the Word is a cleansing work. Number four, Jesus replaces corruption with compassion very quickly.
Always have to very quickly at the end because I go too long at the beginning. Verse 14, I love this, after corruption's removed, compassion comes in. Verse 14, and the blind and lame came to him in the temple and he healed them.
You know, corruption and compassion don't coexist. And I can tell you who was getting crushed the most in the temple, it was those most impoverished. The Jewish people did not see those lame and blind with compassion like they should have, because they saw them as as being judged by God. Remember even in John 9 2 they said, who sinned?
This man or his parents that he's born blind. So they would view it that way, but Jesus had such compassion and the same passion he had to remove corruption was also now given to compassion to those who were the weakest and lowest and those among them that needed the most. You know, there are many ways that Jesus could have showed his deity, his glory. He could have ascended into the air and said, Behold! He could have taken a mountain and cast it into the sea.
He could have done all kinds of things. But the way that Jesus Christ, God in flesh, designed to reveal compassion was through miracles that would heal the broken. His power was displayed through the avenue of compassion. What a great God we have.
He chose that avenue. Are you a compassionate person? You know one thing that makes us compassionate is suffering? If you suffer, you become more compassionate. Anybody found that to be true in life?
It does. You go through a very difficult time, I'm telling you, you find out somebody else gone through it. There's some of you that have such great compassion. Thank you for that. Thank you for the kindness that you show people, the prayers you give, the letters you write, the people you, I mean your hearts, you feel it.
You join in with them. It was so good. We have a lady's grief ministry on Wednesday night and a precious widow came in. She just lost her husband about five months ago.
And right when she came in, I was talking with her, oh thank you so much for coming. And I was talking to her about it and one of the dear precious widows in our church was right there and she just came up and you could see the kindness. It's almost a kindness that I can't even express, that this dear lady in our church, when her eyes met the other lady, she knew exactly the pain of a marriage that had been 50 plus years. It's like cutting off a part of your body.
And how do I now live with half of me gone? And just the kindness and the grace and the warmth of the embrace and bringing them back, and just the love that surrounds that, that's the kind of compassion that the grace of God allows God's people to have. That's what we should have for one another. Don't have a cold, sterile spirit where you come and you sit down in a chair without shaking anybody's hands and hit your car and never have really found out anything about anybody else.
Come in and greet one another, shake one another's hands, ask people how you do. And I was talking to somebody before the service even this morning, and with tears in their eyes they said, you know, I needed to be here because their spouse is going through some cancer surgeries this past week. It's been a heavy week. I can tell you, there are people who come in here and they are weighted down with so much, and it's an amazing thing. What a hug, what a handshake, what just slowing down and saying, hey, how are you doing and really meaning it, and being willing to listen to them and minister into their life and care for them. It's an incredible thing. We need to be known as a people of compassion.
And let me give you one last point and we'll be done. Jesus refutes the corruptors of the temple in verse 15 through 17. This is just an amazing little section here. It says, when the chief priests and scribes saw the wonderful things that he did, and the children crying in the temple. The word children there is actually a Hebrew word for boys.
It's probably the boys who just finished their bar mitzvah. They came up for the first time to worship in the temple after finishing that. And it says that these children, these young boys, were crying out, Hosanna to the Son of David. The religious leaders, again, after they saw, verse 14, the lame and blind healed, all these people healed, the wonderful things he did, and children praising God, it made the religious leaders extremely upset, sore, displeased. I mean, if ever Matthew 7 15 were true, isn't it here? He said, beware of wolves in sheep's clothing. Boy, they know how to dress the part. They come in and devour God's people.
It's an incredible thing. I love verse 15, the children were crying in the temple. You know, John said in 3 John, verse 4, he says, I have no greater joy than to see my children walking in the truth. Parents, nothing in your life is greater than your children living for Christ.
Are you raising them for that? Also, what is interesting, the prior day the crowds were crying out. In verse 9, the whole multitude, men, women, children, everybody's crying out, Hosanna to the Son of David.
Blessed is he that comes in the name of the Lord. Now it says the children were crying out. There's a couple things from that. First of all, the song of the parents became the song of the children. What you elevate, they'll elevate.
What song, I would ask, is coming from your life? One man said, if you did not come from a godly family, make sure a godly family comes from you. Second, the text does not say, but you have to ask, where are the parents and why are they not crying out? Why is it only the children singing?
Is it perhaps that the pilgrims who were singing out praise to Jesus and hail Son of David when they entered into Jerusalem, they found out that all the Jewish religious leaders opposed Jesus? And one thing parents could probably pick up on is the consequence if they were to offend the religious leaders, but sometimes children don't always understand the consequences like their parents would understand them. Maybe they weren't aware of that, so now the children fearlessly are singing this out. Why only the children?
Why is their song still carrying on? And the religious leader, you know, sometimes children can put parents to shame in their boldness, can't they? I've had my children before, I remember checking out one time at Walmart, one of my daughters sitting on the front row over here, I remember, she's probably five years old, she's like, hey daddy, tell her about Jesus! It's like, all right, like, it just, I mean, there's people packed around, it was like a quick checkout, I mean, everybody, why don't you tell her about Jesus?
I'm like, oh, I can't fail my daughter now! I gotta talk to this person right now, better bring this up, you know, let's have a little Jesus conversation as you check out those ramen noodles or whatever else I had in that pile of stuff for my kids. Now, I had the stakes for me with the kids, but children, they're bold, bold witnesses. Now, how do religious leaders, again, they respond with anger. They come to Jesus and say, don't you hear what these say? And Jesus says, have you never read?
Boy, that's kind of a sharp statement. Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings, you have perfected praise. Now, babes and sucklings here, in the Hebrew, refers to children under the age of three, and he's quoting Psalms 8, 2, but these were not children under three that are crying out, they were children of that bar mitzvah age range.
And so, what he's saying here is that if children can perfect praise, even three and under, they honor God with the purity of their life and lips, how much more could these children that understand these realities give praise to God? And verse 17 is a weighty statement, and it says, and he left them. They rejected Christ, and Christ would reject them.
John 7 says, you shall seek me and shall not find me, and where I am, there you cannot come. And so he refutes their corruption, and he does so with the Word of God once again. As I close, I just want to say this, that Jesus would not tolerate sin in the temple, he threw it out.
Is there anything in your life that you're tolerating, that you know God would not be pleased with? If Jesus met you today, what would he say needs to be removed? Before the Word of God can really be taught to the heart, the soil of the heart needs to be cleansed of the sin, needs to be removed.
We have to put off the old man before we can put on the new man, don't we? God's Word is a transforming power. Either sin will keep you from the Word, or the Word will keep you from sin. And how will you respond to this truth this morning? God's Word will do one of two things. Either God's Word will anger you, and frustrate you, and harden you, or it will humble you. And I pray today that our hearts would be humbled by God's Word. And all of us today will leave as worshipers.
We'll all leave worshiping something. And what I mean by that, all of us will leave here today with something that has the most weight in our life, and carries the most influence in our life. If I would ask the 10 closest people to you, what is the most influential thing or person in their life? What would they say about you? There's times in my life people would say, you know, Jesus is number one, and there would have been times throughout my life people would say, well, there's something else.
Because what I talked about, what I laughed about, what I got excited about, what I cared about, what I shared with others about, what I elevated was something else. I can tell you, when you fall in love with Jesus and you really know Him, He's what you proclaim with your life and with your lips. And let us today say, God, is there any idols? Because you know what, when we have those idols in our heart, we're the last person to see it sometimes.
They'll creep in, and it's slight, and it's silent, and it's deadly, and we overlook them, and we get culturally accustomed to things. I can tell you, if my love for Jesus is not supreme, if He doesn't own my day, my morning, my decisions, if He's not 1 Corinthians 10 31 and Matthew 22 38 lived out in me that I love Him most and I seek to glorify Him, it's because something else is taking my attention. And so let's get rid of that stuff, right? Not through appeasement, but through removal, and let's do it in the way that Jesus Christ describes here in this passage. Your body's the temple, and let it be clean so that His work can dwell there. Amen. Let's all stand this morning.
