Jesus Temple Cleansing
Jesus clears Temple
She was in bitterness of soul. She prayed to the Lord. She wept bitterly. She vowed a vow. Now, that’s what the temple was for. It was for a person to go and find some quiet. The court was where a Jew or a Gentile could go and seek God. A place of silence, a place of meditation, a place to vow a vow to God. And she was there – you remember? – and Eli saw her lips moving. And she found there the face of God that she sought. God wonderfully heard her prayer and gave her a child.
And here come the blind and the lame, who always hung around the temple anyway, because that’s where God was, and that’s where the people were, and they needed to beg from the people, and they needed to beg from God. So, that was the best place to be. And they no doubt filled the Court of the Gentiles, begging God and men for help.
*early temple cleansing (John 2:13-22).
*the later cleansing
(Mt 21:12-13; Mark 11:15-18; Lk 19:45-48).
Q: Didnt Jesus fight pimps and bankers in the temple to support workers rights ?
A: No. That must be some unbiblical liberal twisting of Scripture. What He actually did is pretty amazing tho....
How God deals with the evils of sin. Holy Anger.
His righteous indignation reinforced the main theme that He was the promised Messiah and Son of God.
Here highlighted three attributes of Jesus that confirm His deity: (1) His passion for reverence (vv. 13–17); (2) His power of resurrection (vv. 18–22); and (3) His perception of reality (vv. 23–25).
We see His divine mission; His divine authority. His passion for reverence, His commitment to the divine Word, divine compassion, His divine power, & divine worship.
It is a polemic purpose to prove that Jesus is the Son of God, the Messiah. And he has an evangelistic purpose.
TLDR:
For short read, Jump to the bold parts.
To listen to the messages, instead, along or after reading the short points (called out in bold).
let’s look at the story; it’ll unfold easily. First, the confrontation: “As He was walking in the temple,” – have to stop there in a minute. You’ve got to get the picture, folks. The temple is massive, acres and acres and acres, massive, massive courtyard. This is a very rabbinic way to teach; you kind of move around. He’s walking through, milling around with huge crowds that have come back into the temple, certainly with an amazing amount of excitement, having experienced what they did the day before. He’s moving through the temple. Theres 1 - 2.7 million people there.
This is really important. I’m glad Mark told us this; the other writers don’t tell us. He was walking everywhere, through the colonnades and the porches, all throughout the courtyards. For one day, this was His temple. For one day, it belonged to Him. It was His classroom, His pulpit; it was God’s house for one day. And for one day the truth would ring in the courtyards of that temple where they hadn’t rang for hundreds of years. One day. Luke 20, the parallel passage to this – Luke has a parallel account, Matthew has a parallel account, Matthew 21. Luke says, “He was teaching the people and preaching the gospel.” The truth reigned for one day.
Jesus took center stage in the temple courtyard, and He preached the gospel; and the truth came for one day. He must have preached the truth about sin, the wretchedness of it, and the folly of hypocritical religion. He must have preached about judgment, the inevitability of hell for those who refused to believe in Him, and to come to God by faith and not works. He must have preached righteousness, the hopelessness of trying to achieve and attain your own righteousness. He must have talked about humility, the need for brokenness and meekness, and a sense of one’s spiritual bankruptcy, and crying out for something you do not have and cannot earn. He must have spoken of the great compassionate love of God for sinners.
He must have spoken out about the forgiveness of sin, and peace, and grace, and eternal life. He must have warned them about false prayers, vain repetition, hypocritical giving, doing religious deeds to be seen by men, false humility, spiritual pride. He must have talked to them about the true Word of the true and living God, about honesty. He must have talked to them about the price of discipleship, about denying yourself, taking up your cross, following Him. He must have talked to them about eternal glory, the kingdom, heaven. He must have warned them that this was a narrow way, and that the temple was the broad way that leads to hell. All this as He was walking, literally in command of His Father’s house for one day, for one day.
It was, no doubt, the most compelling day in the lives of the people who happened to be there. Listen to what it says in Luke 19:47, “He was teaching daily in the temple”; – that would be Tuesday and Wednesday – “but the chief priests and the scribes and the leading men among the people were trying to destroy Him, and they couldn’t find anything that they might do, for all the people were hanging on to every word He said.” Now if ever there was a teacher on whom you should hang with every word, it’s Him.
Compelling teachers captivate me. Can you imagine how captivating Christ’s teaching would be? They were paralyzed to act, because He had captivated the people.
verse 27: “While He’s walking in the temple, the chief priests and the scribes and the elders came to Him,” – those are the three groups that make up the Sanhedrin, and those are the three groups that are sorted out and have individual conversations with Jesus in chapter 12, and are therefore indicted and upon whom judgment is pronounced. They come to Him.
Luke’s parallel account says, “They came,” but he uses a different word. He uses ephistēmi which can mean “to attack,” and that’s a better understanding. They came to attack Him, they came after Him, obviously.
Well, that was not a good thing to do, because they were no match. But they couldn’t hold back. “They began saying to Him, ‘By what authority are You doing these things, or who gave You this authority to do these things?’” That’s what it’s all about. “You can’t just do this. Where’d You get the authority to do this? You can’t just walk into the temple and do what You did.”
Listen to the audio message to hear what happened in this confrontation.
They’re self-indicted. And that leads to the final point, from the confrontation, to the counter, to the condemnation, “Jesus said to them, ‘Nor will I tell you by what authority I do these things.’”
You don’t ever want to be in that position where Jesus says, “I’m through communicating with you....you’re not entitled to any further information.” He would not cast His pearls before swine to have the truth trampled.
God’s grace does have its limits, does have its limits. This is the most tragic situation that could have ever happened, to have God in your presence, to have trailed Him and tracked Him for three years only for the purpose of killing Him. And in the very end, this sentence falls:
“I have nothing more to say to you.”
Pt2
Zeal for my Father's House
John 2:12-17
Jesus confronts the wickedness
So as we know, the Passover of the Jews was near and Jesus went up to Jerusalem and He found in the temple opportunistic merchants who were selling oxen and sheep and doves and the money changers (change firign $ to local $) seated at their tables. And He made a scourge of cords and drove them all out of the temple with the sheep and the oxen and He poured out the coins of the moneychangers and overturned their tables. And to those who were selling the doves, He said, ‘Take these things away, stop making My Father’s house a place of business.’ His disciples remembered that it was written, zeal for your house will consume Me.”
Now remember, the overarching purpose of John’s entire gospel is stated in 20:31, “These have been written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in His name.” So he has a...an apologetic purpose, a polemic purpose to prove that Jesus is the Son of God, the Messiah. And then he has an evangelistic purpose, so that you will believe that and in believing that have eternal life. Everything in this gospel then is driven in the direction of proving the deity of Jesus Christ, proving that He is divine, that He is the Word made flesh, that He is God who was with God by whom everything that exists was created. All the way through by the action of Jesus, by the miracles of Jesus, by the works of Jesus, by the words of Jesus there is evidence of His deity.
Now when we come to the miracle that we just read, on the surface it may not appear as a miracle because nothing really obviously supernatural takes place as it does in a resurrection or a healing, or the casting out of demons, or the creation of wine as we saw in the first miracle in the prior passage. But this is nonetheless a miracle. It is a miracle of mammoth proportions, and I will try to help you to understand that. It is a miracle driven not by compassion, but driven by anger. The first miracle that John records and the beginning of miracles that Jesus did was a private miracle. It happened among family and friends; it happened in the little town of Cana nine miles out of Nazareth with people they knew and grew up with. Mary was there and the family of Jesus and the extended family, and this was a...this was the first miracle and it was sort of His embarkation point as He left thirty years of obscurity and did a miracle for family and friends.
The second miracle is not a private miracle; it’s not a family and friends miracle—this is a miracle in which tens of thousands of people participate, and they’re not watching and they’re not innocent bystanders. They’re in the middle of the drama and the power and the divine energy of this miracle. It is a miracle, as I said, not driven by compassion which is why Jesus made wine and why He casts out demons and why He heals sick people and why He raises dead people. Those are miracles of kindness and compassion. But at the beginning of His ministry and the end of His ministry, He did two miracles, essentially the same thing—He threw the entire mass of humanity at Passover out of the temple. He did it at the beginning and did it at the end. Those were not miracles of compassion, those were miracles of holy anger and they were previews of future judgment, a judgment that would come in the destruction of Jerusalem temporarily and a judgment that will become a reality forever before the throne of God at the Great White Throne.
And what causes Jesus to do what He does here is an age-old problem and one that we must address as well. If you go back to Isaiah chapter 1, all the way back before the Babylonian captivity, way back into the era of Isaiah, you read this, coming from the mouth of the Lord, Isaiah 1:11, “What are your multiplied sacrifices to Me?” Josephus says there would have been as many as a quarter of a million animal sacrifices offered at a Passover. Isaiah asks hundreds of years before, “‘What are your multiplied sacrifices to Me,’ says the Lord, ‘I’ve had enough of burnt offering of rams and the fat of fed cattle. I take no pleasure in the blood of bulls and lambs and goats. When you come to appear before Me, who requires of you this trampling of My courts? Bring your worthless offerings no longer. Incense is an abomination to me. New moon and Sabbath, the calling of assemblies, I cannot endure iniquity and the solemn assembly. I hate your new moon festivals and your appointed feasts. They have become a burden to Me. I’m weary of bearing them. So when you spread out your hands in prayer, I will hide My eyes from you. Yes, even though you multiply prayers, I will not listen. Your hands are covered with blood. Wash yourselves, make yourselves clean, remove the evil of your deeds from My sight. Cease to do evil, learn to do good, seek justice, reprove the ruthless, defend the orphan, plead for the widow. Come now and let us reason together,’ says the Lord, ‘though your sins are as scarlet they will be as white as snow. Though they are red like crimson, they will be like wool. If you consent and obey, you will eat the best of the lamb. But if you refuse and rebel, you will be devoured by the sword. Truly the mouth of the Lord has spoken.’”
That message could have been given by Jesus on the day He cleaned out the temple. It’s the exact same issue. It is an age-old problem of hypocrisy in Israel, false religion, superficial worship. And it infuriates Jesus because it is irreverent and it is blasphemous. In Amos the Lord says, “Stop your songs; I don’t want to hear your songs.” It’s a very appropriate passage for us as we come to the Lord’s Table because the Lord feels today and here and now exactly the way He did in Isaiah’s day and in our Lord Jesus’ day about false worship, about superficial worship, about hypocrisy.
So let’s look at this story and how it applies to us. Verse 12 says, “He went down to Capernaum”; that’s 16 miles from Nazareth. He went and His mother went and His brothers, John tells us later in chapter 7. They were not believers in Him. The family goes, and then His disciples—Andrew, Peter, Philip, Nathanael, James and John—so far are following Jesus. They all head down to Capernaum, that little village on the north shore of the Sea of Galilee. That little village, by the way, was a place where Jesus did so many miracles that their unbelief is worse than Sodom and Gomorrah. Jesus said in Matthew 11 that if it had been done in Sodom and Gomorrah what was done in Capernaum, they would have repented. Jesus spent a few days there this time and later in His ministry—many many months there doing miracles.
On this occasion they stay only a few days because they’re headed to Jerusalem for the Passover. They go toward Capernaum and then, verse 13, they arrive at the Passover because it’s near and Jesus then comes with the entourage and everybody else to Jerusalem. The Passover of the Jews, that’s an annual feast followed by another feast of seven days of unleavened bread that God mandated. You remember when Israel was delivered from Egypt—Exodus chapter 12—they were told the last plague is going to be the death of the firstborn. The angel of death is going to come and kill all the firstborn. And if you want the angel of death to pass over your house, then sacrifice a lamb, sprinkle its blood on the doorposts and the crosspiece, eat a meal together and have unleavened bread, get ready to go. The angel of death will pass over you and deliver you from judgment if the blood is on the door. That was a symbol of the work that Messiah would do when He put His blood on a cross and provided deliverance from divine judgment. So the Passover is instituted in Exodus 12. In Exodus 23 God mandates that they keep that Passover every year along with a couple of other feasts as well.
Jesus, always obedient to the Word of God, always obedient through everything in the Old Testament, fulfilled all righteousness, Scripture says. He obeyed everything that was moral in the Law of God, everything that was religious in the Law of God, and everything that was ceremonial in the Law of God, everything that was practical, whatever it was that was written by God and prescribed for the people of Israel, Jesus did it. And so, as He always did, He comes to the Passover. In fact, His ministry begins at a Passover, and it ends at a Passover. And at both of those Passovers, the first and the last, He does the same action against the Temple. At the first Passover, He cleanses the Temple to publicly begin His ministry. At the last, He cleanses the Temple to publicly end His ministry; then becomes the Passover Lamb. And in between during His ministry, there will be two other Passovers. John tells us about one in chapter 6, and another in chapter 11. He always kept the Passover, always.
This time as He enters into the Temple to begin His ministry, and by the way, He had been there every year of His life. But this time He had engaged in His ministry, and so He comes with a different mindset. We have a glimpse of Him coming there, don’t we, when He was twelve. And at that point He’s only asking questions, trying to get answers out of the leaders in the Temple. But this time He’s entered upon His messianic ministry and He’s going to do His Father’s business. This is the first act of His Father’s business. They have turned His Father’s house into a place of business, but He’s going to do His Father’s business.
He goes in. He found, verse 14, in the Temple those who were selling oxen and sheep and doves, and the moneychangers seated at their tables. And you have to understand a little bit about this. I don’t know if I can paint the whole picture in the brief time that I have. The number as to the population of Jerusalem at the time of Jesus, a little bit hard to identify. But if you look hard enough and sort of put everything together, it appears as if the city of Jerusalem could have had a hundred to three hundred thousand inhabitants normally, we don’t know exactly. Several hundred thousand seems to be a safe number. However, at Passover that number would be expanded to read a million. Josephus goes so far as to say 2.7 million, but that’s because he multiplies the number of sacrifices by ten. I don’t know how legitimate that would be, but let’s say for the sake of being conservative there are a million people—and I think that’s pretty safe—that have literally descended upon the city of Jerusalem for the Passover and the subsequent feast. That means that every room in every inn and every room that wasn’t a room for occupancy was turned into a room for occupancy. Every...every extra room in every single home was filled and people were packed into rooms in multiples to get this mass of people in. The population fourfold what it normally would be, let’s say.
And a focal point of all the activity of these million people is the Temple, and the Temple courtyard, the outside courtyard, the Court of the Gentiles as it was called, would be only acres, only some number of acres at that time, and it would have to absorb this mass of humanity coming there. How many animals did they slaughter? Was Josephus right in saying 250,000? The slaughter of the animals officially took place at three o’clock, between three o’clock and six o’clock on the afternoon of the Passover. But if there were that many animals, they might have started slaughtering them even earlier, and there would be people coming and going for the purpose of bringing their sacrifice to be offered.
But there was more than that going on. Apparently by this time and there’s some historical indications of this, the people who used to buy and sell outside the Temple have now moved inside the Courtyard. This may well be because the High Priest has now taken over this business for his own aggrandizement. In fact, they were called the Bazars of Annas. So when you get inside, you not only have this crush of humanity of people coming and going and some people coming ostensibly to talk to God, to praise God, to worship God, to see the Temple as pilgrims from other places. We can’t even estimate how many people were there. It would be well into the tens or twenties of thousands of people at any given point in time.
In the middle of this there are people selling oxen, sheep and doves which means there are oxen, sheep and doves there. And there are moneychangers seated at their tables. The reason they were selling sacrifices is because people coming from long distances would find it inconvenient and cumbersome to take animals with them, and so they would purchase an animal when they arrived there. And experience told them that if they brought an animal, it would probably be rejected by the folks that checked out the suitability of the animal and if the animal was refused, they would have to buy one of the temple animals anyway. That’s kind of how they did their business. They rejected the ones that were brought so they could make money on exorbitant prices on the ones they sold.
Also, by the way, everybody had to pay for the animal and the temple fee in the currency that was accepted in Israel. And these people would be from other countries, have different currency, would have to be changed. Some historians say the exchange rate went over ten percent, twelve percent of the coin exchange. So there was business going on there in the temple. Extortion, really, Matthew 21, when Jesus does this again, He says, “You’ve turned My Father’s house into a den of thieves, robbers.”
So into this crushing place with tens of thousands of people and animals, buyers and sellers, under the control of about three hundred Temple police, if you add all the folks who were responsible to keep the peace in there and to manage the crowd control and to make sure that they took care of any incidents and disruptions, you’d get about three hundred, maybe a little less, maybe two hundred and seventy. Fort Antonia was next to the Temple and the Romans had built it high so they could sit on the top and watch what was going on. If needed, they could dispatch a Roman garrison to go down there and put down any kind of action that was threatening. So it was a well secured place and, after all, it was a temple and people were supposed to be worshiping there. So they were supposed to maintain a proper attitude.
Jesus sees all of this, selling sacrificial animals, money changing, and He sees that they have totally polluted His Father’s house. Their hearts are the same as the hearts of the people to whom Isaiah wrote, to whom Amos wrote. Their hearts are like Psalm 51:16 to 19, you can read that at your own leisure. They’re irreverent. Should have been a place of repentance, a place of reverence, a place of humility, a place of worship, a place of praise; it’s a chaotic marketplace—abusive commerce and corruption marked that place. Nothing...say that advisedly...nothing enraged Jesus with holy anger and fury like irreverence. And He did His most severe action in these two incidents in His life. All the rest of the time it was compassion and mercy. Here it was divine fury, divine fury. These are the most severe things Jesus did in His entire life and they were done against hypocritical worship.
The Jews expected the Messiah to come and attack the Gentiles. Instead, the Messiah came and attacked them. And He attacked them at their best. He attacked them in the middle of their worship, at their high point, the Passover, in the Temple. They expected a conquering warrior for sure, but who would come after the nations that had abused them, mistreated them and were currently occupying them. But instead He sends an unmistakable message that judgment is coming on them, not their enemies. In fact, at the end of His ministry after doing the same thing again, He sat and looked at the Temple and told His disciples that this thing is coming down and not one stone will be left on another, 70 A. D. It happened and it is no more to this day.
Well, Jesus saw all of this and in holy fury He acted. Verse 15, “He made a scourge of cords.” Cords would be lying all over the place because there were animals everywhere and the animals were always tied to ropes and they would be also tied to crates, to keep the crates closed or to carry the crates that the birds were in. And He was picking up some of these cords and braiding them into a scourge. It doesn’t seem much of a weapon against tens of thousands of people who were all going to have plenty of reason to resist what you’re doing. Now remember, this is an unknown man, this is the beginning of His ministry…this is the beginning. They don’t have any history of Jesus to expect anything. They don’t know who He is. He is just a man; He’s just a man at the Passover, perhaps recognizable as a Galilean by the way He dressed. Put some little ropes together, makes a little whip. And then He unleashes miracle power. There is no human explanation for what happened. The miracle is in these words, “And drove them all out of the Temple.”
Again I remind you how understated the miracles of Scripture are. There’s no lightning, there’s no thunder, there’s no angelic fanfare, no trumpets blow. He just drove them all out. Just an unimaginable act of power.
How did He do it? Well it’s sort of the reverse of what happened in Galilee when they tried to kill Him and He disappeared. You remember that? He was in the middle of a crowd; they wanted to stone Him and He left.
This time He’s in the middle and they leave. At His command, all the animals leave, all the people with the doves grab their crates and leave. He flips over all the tables of the moneychangers. They scramble to get whatever they can and they evacuate the place to such...in such an orderly fashion, (there was no riotous uproar), that we don’t even have any word that the Romans turned a garrison loose on the crowd, (if there was a riot the army would have reacted swiftly).
We have no instruction in Scripture to indicate that anybody was injured, anybody was hurt. I’m sure some people bumped into counters and tripped over tables and bumped into animals and bruised their knees and all of that kind of thing. This forefulness was not an act of cruelty on people. This was an act of judgment on a system of religion.
I know the Roman Catholic religion uses this as a justification in the Middle Ages for the Inquisition and torture and imprisonment and execution. But Jesus did no harm to people. He attacked the system. The merchants would want to stop Him. The Temple police would feel completely responsible to stop Him. The crowd would want to stop. All it would take was one big burly guy to wrap his arms around Him and say, “Whoa, whoa, what are you trying to do, buddy?” And a few other people would grab Him and they’d take the same cords that He had made His little whip from and they’d tie His hands up and say, “We’ve got to deal with this guy. That doesn’t happen. This is miraculous power. This is crowd control, the likes of which has no human explanation. He goes from this very private family miracle to this massive public miracle in which tens of thousands of people participate and no one can do anything. Unparalled display of divine force creates an evacuation as the merchants frantically chase their beasts, as the money changers scramble to grab what they can and everybody’s completely obedient. This is a preview of the power that Jesus has to judge—the inescapable power of His judgment. “You have polluted,” He says, “My Father’s house.” You have corrupted My Father’s house. This is the loyal Son of God and He is, first of all, loyal to His Father, loyal to His Father. He will do this on a massive scale at His Second Coming. At a massive scale He will do this, only there at His Second Coming there will be death, there will be death. Revelation says a sword will come out of His mouth and there will be a slaughter, the likes of which the world has never seen.
“My Father is being dishonored by what you are doing.” “My Father”—what a statement. The Jews didn’t say that about God. That would be presumptuous. John 5:18, “For this reason the Jews were seeking to kill Him because He not only was breaking the Sabbath but was calling God His own Father. And they said, “If You call God Your Father, You make Yourself equal with God.” That’s My authority for doing this, He says. “I’m one with God, and You’re desecrating God.”
Did things like this ever happen in the Temple? Yes they did. There’s a book called The Jews at the Time of Jesus. It’s written by a man named Wylen, and he says in there, and this is a quote, “Such incidents were not unusual as trouble in the Temple.” And he gives one very interesting one. The high priest was in the Temple at one of these events and the Jews were very unhappy with the high priest. And so they started throwing lemons at Him, blasting the high priest with lemons. He unleashed His private mercenaries, His mercenary army, and according to the record, slaughtered the people in the courtyard in the multiple thousands for throwing lemons at the high priest. That’s a far cry from what our Lord does here. He doesn’t kill anybody, but He does more than throw lemons at the high priest because He doesn’t like the high priest. He pronounces judgment on the entire religious system, priests and people.
Verse 17 then says, “His disciples remembered that it was written.” Now you’ve got to remember, these six men were really true Old Testament believers. They were followers of John the Baptist, preparing for the Messiah. And John it was, you remember, who said, “Follow Christ,” and they had followed Him. They have been with Him now for a while, a week at least between when they first started following Him and had the wedding at Cana and now a few days more. They know their Old Testament. And when they see Jesus do this, they remember a verse; it’s Psalm 69:9. This is the verse they remembered: “Zeal for Your house will consume me.” They know that passage. Psalm 69 was written by David. And David was calling the people to true worship, that’s the scene. David was calling the people to true worship and what He was getting back was resistance and hatred and hostility. The people were in the same condition then that they are in Jesus’ time. But David is doing his best to call them back to faithfulness. And David says they’re mistreating me, they’re hating me; and then he says in verse 9 of Psalm 69, “But zeal for Your house has consumed me and the reproaches of those who reproach You are fallen on me.”
I have to do what I do because I feel the pain when You’re dishonored. That’s what that means: my passion for Your house consumes me. The reproaches that fall on You, fall on me. When somebody criticizes You, when somebody dishonors You, I feel the pain. And by the way, that’s when you know you’re spiritually mature; when God is dishonored and you feel the pain. When God is dishonored and you feel the pain. And they think of David. Wow! When he saw God dishonored, he felt the pain. And they see Jesus doing the same thing. That psalm is messianic in that sense. Here is Jesus acting like David, the same devotion to the glory of God and the honor of His house and reverence. And Jesus felt the pain far more than David. And David couldn’t seem to do anything about it, not like this. Jesus is consumed with this same truth—God is to be glorified. God is to be glorified. And He was not being glorified there and Jesus basically declares the whole thing irreverent, blasphemous.
So what does that have to do with us? There’s no Temple anymore. Oh, at least there’s no building that is the Temple, but there is a temple. We are the Temple, aren’t we? Turn to 1 Peter 4 and we’ll wrap up there, and then we’ll share in the Lord’s Table together. First Peter 4, verse 17, “For it is time for judgment to begin with the household of God and it begins with us first.” Time for judgment to begin with the household of God. Who...who is that; what is that? Listen to Ephesians 2:19, “You are fellow citizens with the saints and you are God’s household.” The judgment begins with the house of God. We are the Temple of the living God, He indwells His church. And it is time for judgment to begin here and this is where we come to grips with that, right at this table. And I’ll show you that. Turn to 1 Corinthians 11. This is where Paul institutes the Lord’s Table, repeating what our Lord did in the night of the Passover. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 11:27, “Whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup in an unworthy manner shall be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord.” That’s a frightening thing if you come to this table in an unworthy manner, that is celebrating the death of Christ for sin while holding on to sin, if you come in a hypocritical manner, you’re guilty of the body and blood of the Lord. “So let a man examine himself and in so doing eat the bread and drink the cup, do some heart examination, for he who eats and drinks eat and drinks judgment to himself.”
And then verse 31, “If we judge ourselves rightly, we will not be judged.” So judgment begins in the church, in the household of God, and here is where it starts. If we judge ourselves, we won’t be judged. That’s what it’s saying. The Lord’s Table then becomes the point of our initial self-judgment. When we are judged, Paul says, we are disciplined by the Lord, not condemned with the world. There’s no condemnation to those who are in Christ. But judgment begins here so that we don’t become disciplined by the Lord. And this is where the judgment starts. If we examine ourselves and come in a worthy manner, then there’s no further judgment—that judgment stands as the final judgment. If we don’t judge ourselves rightly and discern our condition and come in a pure way, then we are exposed to the judgment of God in forms of discipline. And that’s why we come to the Lord’s Table. We come to be judged if we do not judge ourselves. So when you come to this table you are saying to the Lord, “I’m exposed at this point, to Your judgment if I don’t examine my own heart and honestly confess my own sin.”
What would happen if the Lord showed up here? Would He do something like He did then? I think there might be many churches where He would. He is here and He will judge those who will not examine themselves and repent. So we invite you to do that. Let’s pray.
Father, again we come before You fearing that our familiarity with these things keeps us from a genuine examination of heart. Show us anything that’s wrong in our lives and help us to confess and yield to everything that displeases You. Forgive us, cleanse us, wash us. May we be honest in that self-examination, honest as we repent so that we might not be in a position to be disciplined. We want Your favor and we want the joy of obedience. And You’ve put this table in the life of the church as the point at which that judgment takes place—that self-judgment, that honesty of heart that protects us from Your divine discipline. Open our hearts, show us what we need to give to You, let go of, confess that we might honor You even as we partake. Amen.
Pt3
Second Temple clensing 😱👀
Purging the Perverted Temple
Matthew 21:12–17
The week in which He was crucified. The final week of our Lord’s earthly life and ministry.
It is Tuesday, the day after His triumphal entry into Jerusalem; His inauguration, His coronation. On Monday, He had entered into the city of Jerusalem to the cries of, “Hosanna to the son of David. Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord; Hosanna in the highest,” as tens of thousands of people hailed Him as the King, the Messiah, the Deliverer, the Savior.
It was a wonderful day. He was receiving praise that is due His name. The procession Monday had really begun outside the eastern gate, as Jesus, coming from Bethany, had already gathered a large group of people with Him, and another large mass of people inside the city were coming to meet Him. So, the two groups surged together outside the eastern gate, and then the procession began, and it went through that gate into the city. And the hosannas rang out; for how long a period, we don’t know, but the procession finally ended at the temple.
In Mark 11:11, Mark tells us that Jesus came, in that procession, to the Temple. And the procession ended there, then He returned to Bethany, to spend the night with Mary, Martha, Lazarus, and the 12 disciples.
It’s now Tuesday morning; another day has dawned. He goes right back to the same place He had left Monday night, back to the Temple. And in verses 12 to 17, we find out what happened when He arrived there.
Now, before we look at the text, let me just give you a little bit of a setting. At this particular time of Passover, as I mentioned last time, Jerusalem is literally teeming with people. Listen to this section on the audio message. Jerusalem is teeming with people.
Pilgrims are coming in, mass numbers of people are bringing their animals ; coming with sacrifices and offerings of all kinds to give to God, to seek cleansing from their sin, to deal with other kinds of issues as well. The temple was the center of everything.
And it is to the temple that Jesus comes and introduces us to one of the most amazing and marvelous scenes.
Now, as we approach the temple encounter, we see a very special perspective - the presentation of Jesus’ messianic credentials. He gives the populace of Jerusalem, and most specifically the chief priests and scribes, a very clear testimony as to the nature of his kingliness, and the nature of his kingdom. He makes a statement here that could never be misunderstood.
Now, remember that from the first demonstration that really ever happened around Jesus in Galilee, when He revealed His great power, His miracle ability, the people had tried to take Him and make Him a king by force so that He would overthrow Rome and provide all that they needed socially and economically and militarily and so forth. And all through His ministry, He had resisted those attempts. Whenever they tried to make Him a king, He resisted that.
And on Monday, as we saw last time, in a great statement about the nature of His kingship, He had ridden into the city for His coronation on the foal of a donkey, sitting on a used robe thrown over that donkey by one of the disciples, while principal threw tree branches and old clothes in His path. He was weaponless, and His retinue was a group of common nobodies. And He was saying, in effect, “The nature of My kingdom is not as the kingdoms of this world.” You see no pomp and glory; you see no earthly majesty; you see no military might. But still, in their hearts they hoped that He would do that, that He would overthrow the Roman yoke, that He would break the bands of the Roman oppressor, that He would free them to the nobility they themself believed, as Jews, that they should have, the nobility that comes only to free people.
And just to be sure that they haven’t missed His message, He enters into the Temple and demonstrates to them again the nature of His kingliness and the nature of His kingdom. And it is a far broader, a far greater demonstration even than was His lowly inauguration.
Now, I want you to look at these verses and mark the kingly credentials of Christ. First of all, He showed He was on a divine mission. And that is simply pointed out in the first statement of verse 12, “And Jesus went into the temple of God.”
Lenski the Christian commentator who’s so excellent in His understanding of the New Testament explains, “The temple of God is never used in the New Testament as a phrase anywhere but here" so, you understand what Jesus is about to do, it makes all the sense in the world that this was the temple of God & He’s about to describe the utter ungodliness of its activities.
So, Jesus went into the temple of God. He went to God’s temple. He was on a divine mission. I mean that was His turf. Do you understand that? I mean if He had of done what the people wanted Him to do, He would have gone to Fort Antonia, because Fort Antonia housed the Roman army, the Roman garrison. Or we would have gone to the abode of Pilate, and He would have started the military coup. He would have overthrown Pilate and all of His retinue, or He would have eliminated the Roman army and liberated the land and the people.
But He didn’t go there. He didn’t go there at all. He went to the temple of God. That was where He wanted to be. You see, the Temple is the issue, not Rome. You see, what is going on militarily, politically, socially, economically is not the major issue. And the Messiah did not come initially in His "first coming" (to earth) to solve those problems, although, believe me, beloved, He will, in His "second coming", solve those problems. All of them.
But before He comes as King of Kings and Lord of Lords to establish His own glorious and eternal kingdom (in the future), and to solve all problems that exist in the earth today.... He first of all must come and be received by men in their own hearts. And so, His first coming was as Savior before He could come as full and final glorious King in His kingdom. And so, His business is with worship now, not with society, not with politics. The Temple is not the issue – or the Temple is the issue, not Rome. Our Lord is not concerned with the people’s relation to Rome; He’s concerned with the people’s relation to God. That’s His focus.
>> Read why Jesus 1st coming was important and why God waited till the Roman Empire before coming to earth
He’s concerned with the people’s relation to God. That’s His focus. This ought to be abundantly clear to any student of the New Testament, because when Jesus came the first time to Jerusalem, this is exactly where He went also. And if you go back to John 2:13 -17, you will find there how He began His ministry at a Passover.
“And the Jews’ Passover was at hand. Jesus went to Jerusalem, found in the temple those that sold oxen and sheep and doves, and the changers of money sitting. And when He made a whip of small cords, He drove them all out of the temple, and the sheep, and the oxen; and poured out the changers’ money, and overthrew the tables.
“And said to them that sold dove, ‘Take these things from here; make not My Father’s house a house of merchandise.’” So, when He started His ministry, He started it at the temple; and when He ends it, He ends it at the temple.
Now, I submit to you that He’s seen a lot of things in the years intervening. He has seen social injustice. He has seen economic inequalites. He has seen oppression by the Romans. He has seen deprivation. He has seen the poor suffering abuse. He has seen a lot of things, but His mission never changes His whole ministry here is given very clear perspective. He was concerned with how people worshipped. With how people worshipped. He was concerned with their relationship to God, not their relationship to earthly kingdoms. It wasn’t so important to Him how it was with men and men as it was with men and God. Do you understand that?
And so, by going to the temple as the first official act after His inauguration, He is identifying for us clearly the turf or the territory of His mission. Three years had not changed that purpose. He goes right back to the temple.
Even though He had passed and seen many things inconsistent with God’s design and God’s will, as it was between men and men, the priority thing was between men and God. For only when Men are right with God can men be right with men. Many things needed a soldier. Many things needed an army. Many things needed a social reformer. But more than that, men needed God, and they needed true worship, and they needed to know God’s standard and God’s will, God’s purpose for their relationship to Him.
Peter picked it up from the Lord and said it this way, in 1 Peter 4:17, “Judgment must begin at the house of God.” It begins at the house of God. As long as things were wrong in the house of God, they would be wrong in the nation. You see, the measure of any society is the relation it has to God. Worship is the issue. Read Romans 1; worship is always the issue.
The problem with society is not that it has bad laws. The problem with society is not that it has human inequities. The problem with society is that it has abandoned God. And some would accuse us of being indifferent to the national political issues, indifferent to the social issues and the social scene. That is not true. We are not indifferent to those things, but we know what Jesus knew and what Peter reiterated, that judgment must begin at the house of God.
Christ came to cleanse the temple. And today we should pray, “Oh, Christ, cleanse the Church. Cleanse the Church.” Because that and that alone is the hope of the country, the hope of the nation, the hope of the world.
What did Jesus find when He came to the temple? What did He find? You know something? He had cleansed it once, and it had gone back and reverted to exactly what it was the first time He came.
You say, “Then why bother?”
Because He came to the Temple – listen carefully – to vindicate the holiness of God. The issue wasn’t whether they reacted rightly; the issue was that they should see the holiness of God. It was the revelation of God’s holy will and purpose. It demonstrated His vengeance against sin, and desecration, and blasphemy, and false religion.
When Jesus cleansed the temple, we realized there was no revival really. There was no real reform. There was no real renewal. They’re right back, three years later, doing the very same thing they did when He came the first time. But that doesn’t mean He shouldn’t come. He should come, because God must reveal how He feels about false religion. He must reveal how He feels about blasphemy. He must say, very clearly and unforgettably, how He feels about them who treat Him in an unholy way.
And this was something God must have been used to, because He sent the prophet so many times to call the people of Israel back from idolatry, and often they had a rather immediate reform which degenerated ultimately into an even worse idolatry. But God never stopped doing that because God always must speak the truth and reveal Himself as holy and reveal His hatred against sin. And so, He comes to the temple again, and His purpose is to show again how God feels about the evils of men.
Now, I want to help you to understand what went on. I want you to stand with Jesus in this scene. Now, imagine the city of Jerusalem packed with people. Chaos. Milling everywhere. And the temple is the focal point of all of it. Masses of people there. And as Jesus comes to that place, this is what He faces. A great outer wall of colonnades and columns that surrounds the whole temple precinct as Barclay calls it. The temple area. That is known as the hieron, the temple in the large sense.
Through that main opening, He enters into the Court of the Gentiles. And once into the Court of the Gentiles, you would notice a gate, and that gate was called the Gate Beautiful. And inside that gate was the Court of the Women, and that was a place where the Jewish women and the Jewish men could go, but no Gentiles. In fact, there was a sign by the Gate Beautiful that said if a Gentile went in there, he lost his life.
And so, into the Gate Beautiful you’d go, and you’d come into the Court of the Women with the trumpet-shaped receptacles for the receiving of the money that was to be given for certain reasons of cleansing and offering and so forth. And in the Court of the Women, the Jews would be gathered. There was a gate in the Court of the Women called the Nicanor Gate. It was a gate made out of Corinthian bronze that took 20 men to open and close. Massive thing.
And if you went through that gate, you came into what was known as the Court of the Israelites; the men could go in there. And the Court of the Israelites is where they would get ready to give their offerings. The men would take the sheep, or the turtledove, or the pigeon – whatever - or whether it was a grain offering or whatever kind, and they would get it all prepared in the Court of the Israelites, and they would take it to another gate which went into the Court of the Priests.
And in the Court of the Priests was the offering – the burnt offering altar, the altar of incense – and they could look through that opening, as they handed the priest their sacrifice, as he took it in and slaughtered it, or took it in and offered it.
And so, they would stand in that court of the Israelites and watch as their offering was being made. From the Court of the Priests, there was another little door. It entered into a 600 square foot courtyard. At the back of which was what was called the naos, the Holy Place. It was a small, little building which included in it the Holy Place and the Holy of Holies, where the Ark of the Covenant was, separated by a veil into which the high priest could enter only once a year on the Day of Atonement.
The interesting thing about the temple was that it starts at a low point, and all of this ascends until the naos crowns Mount Moriah so that there is a sequence of steps, apparently, going from court to court.
Now, Jesus walks in the outer wall and stands in the Court of the Gentiles. And since it was the Court of the Gentiles, I guess the Jews felt if Gentiles could be there, so could anything else. And so, they had filled it with just about everything else.
It was known in those days as the Bazaar of Annas – Annas being the high priest, a corrupt and vile man, who saw the temple as a way to get power and wealth. He had a great idea. He and his priests sold concessions. In other words, you could buy space in the Court of the Gentiles, and there you could come and sell sheep, lambs, doves, pigeons; make money exchanges; sell oil, wine, salt, and other requisites that go along with sacrifices.
And you paid dearly for those concessions, because here’s how the system worked. Every offering had to be approved by the priests. Right? When you finally got into the Court of the Israelites, and you brought what you were going to give, it had to be approved. And maybe they had approving stations even before you got that far in. But the priests had to say, “You sacrifice is okay,” and the odds were that if you bought it outside the temple, it was not going to be approved. If you had raised a lamb way out where you lived and brought that little lamb in to be offered, they’d say, “That lamb is not acceptable. You must have a lamb purchased in the Court of the Gentiles. Go see so-and-so.” And so, you’d go to buy a lamb from him. Only according to Edersheim, the great Jewish historian, you would pay ten times the value of that lamb. So, you were extorted; you were fleeced - to reverse the picture a little. You were taken by robbers.
Poor people, according to the Levitical law, didn’t have to bring a lamb because they couldn’t afford lambs. So, they were allowed to have a dove or a pigeon in the place of a lamb. And most historians feel that in today’s currency, a couple of birds might be worth a nickel or a dime, but you would have paid four or five dollars for them there. And if you wanted to exchange your money because you had to have exactly a half-shekel, so you had to have the right change – and if you came from a foreign country with foreign currency, and it had to be changed, you would pay 25 percent fee just to make small change.
And so, you can see that they would pay dearly for concessions inside the temple. Right? Because they would work along with the priests to extort the people, to cheat the people. All this in the name of religion, if you can imagine. All this in the name of religion.
Jesus walks in. His eyes, His ears, and His nostrils are filled with the sights and sounds and smells. The stench of a stockyard, the wrangling and haggling and haranguing of people bargaining over the price of animals. The noise the animals make. All the chaos of the crying animals being slaughtered. Blood. It is a scene that’s unbelievable.
This is Jesus’ turf, because this is the house of God, and it has been turned into a cave for robbers. And so, He comes and sees this horrifying but familiar scene. And it says to us something so important; it says that Christ came, first of all, to deal with men on a spiritual level. You understand that? That’s the point. He came to throw out corrupt worship and to bring in true worship. He is on a divine mission.
Second point, He has divine authority. He as divine authority. If we can’t see that He’s the Messiah because of His mission, boy, we ought to see that He’s the Messiah because of His authority. Now listen, the most powerful thing going on in that country was the Temple. I mean the high priest was a powerful man. And the man who is next to the high priest was equally powerful. And the one who was the head of the temple police was powerful.
And then you had all the orders of priests. And I mean there were myriads of them. There was an organizational structure there that was very strong. And I mean if you walked past the Gate Beautiful, for example, and you were a Gentile, the Romans had given them the right to kill you. They had plenty of power. They had great authority within the walls of that temple precinct area.
But they were about to meet somebody over whom they had absolutely no power. It says in verse 12, “Jesus went into the temple of God and” - follow – “cast out all them that sold and bought in the temple, overthrew the tables of the moneychangers and the seats of them that sold doves.”
Now, if you think Jesus is just always some meek and lowly, gentle person, maybe you ought to study this a little more deeply. I don’t know how many thousands of people were in there. I do know how those kinds of people, those kinds of extortionists, those kinds of money-grubbing, money-hungry people want to hang onto their money. I know how they want to hang onto their prosperity. I know how they wanted to hang onto their business there. I know how much the priest didn’t want to be shamed and showed up in the face of the whole population. I know how much they didn’t want their power challenged. I know how they would have thought themselves – the last thing that could have happened to themselves would have been to made – to be made shameful in the eyes of the population of the city by some Galilean, would-be Messiah, but that’s exactly what happened.
Against all of what you would think would happen, it happened. It simply says, “He cast out all them that sold and bought.” Just threw them all out. Not only the sellers, but the buyers, too. He just threw everybody out of there that was involved in that enterprise. And the leaders? They couldn’t stop Him. There was no way.
You say, “How did He do it?”
I don’t know; it doesn’t say. It does say He threw them out. That’s rather vivid.
You say, “Well, maybe it was just His word, ‘Out.’”
That could do it. That got Lazarus out of the grave. That also spoke the worlds into existence when creation occurred. So, He could have done it with His word, but there was more than that, because it also says He overthrew the tables of the moneychangers. He went through the place and started flipping tables and kicking them over. I believe He demonstrates not only His vocal authority, but His physical presence as well.
You remember back in John 2, He made a whip, and He threw them out by use of a whip. Maybe He made a whip again. Or maybe He had the same whip. What authority. He overthrew the table of the moneychangers. The word “moneychangers” in Greek is interesting – makers of small change. They were sitting at their little stools, with their little stacks of coins, and He just started flipping them. Can you imagine those people hustling to collect every coin?
And then He threw over the seats of those who sold doves. Guys sitting on a seat with a crate full of birds. And He just started kicking over crates and knocking over stools, and flipping tables, and throwing people out of there. He cleared the place.
And then Mark adds a wonderful note. He says in Mark 11:16 that He wouldn’t allow anybody to carry any vessel through the temple. And what was going on was probably pretty simply understood. The eastern gate of the city was where they would come in. And just to the left of the eastern gate is the temple area, and if you were coming in the eastern gate, let’s say you wanted to go to Zion, and you had something you wanted to deliver, or something you wanted to bring through there, the easiest way was not to go all the way around the temple, but just to go through one of the side entrances to the general courtyard and go right straight through and just use it like a street. And they apparently were using the temple area just like a thoroughfare or a street like any other public street. And He just stopped that immediately, and nobody carried anything through there.
It may also imply that nobody carried anything out of there, that they had to get thrown out and left all their debris there. Now, if you can get all those people to split and run and leave their stuff behind, they’re scared. Now, this is the same Jesus, riding on the colt, the foal of an ass, meek and lowly and humble.
What is the difference? Well, He came meek and lowly. He came as one who was to die in humility. But at the same time, He also gave a glorious demonstration of the reason for which he came, and that is to change men from false worshippers to true worshippers. And so, He went to the temple.
He never used the same power He had to overthrow Rome. The only thing He wanted to do was clean up their corrupt worship. What power; I just wish I could have been there to see it. He kicked over everything, created chaos, and they fled.
You say, “Well, why didn’t they stop Him?”
Why didn’t they stop Him? They couldn’t. They couldn’t. I mean they were pressed, the chief priests. They were really pressed, because the crowd was hailing Him as the Messiah, for one thing. Secondly, the people hated the bazaars of Annas. By the way, they themselves started an insurrection that put them out of business even before 70 A.D., when the temple was destroyed. So, the people were with Him. Plus, they couldn’t handle Him.
And for one moment – for one brief moment, the place was clean. No, I didn’t say it was tidy. It wouldn’t be very tidy. Animals all over the place; birds all over the place; crates, stools, tables, money – it wasn’t tidy; it was clean.
And later on in verse 23, the chief priest said, “By what authority doest Thou these things? And who gave Thee this authority?” Such a dumb question. As if He needed any other authority.
As if He had to say, “Well, I’ve been sent by so-and-so, and here are my papers. Get out!”
They should have known by what authority, shouldn’t they? So blind were they. And it makes us cry, “Oh, God, send Christ again to cleanse the Church. Send Christ again to cleanse the Church.” Because we have moneychangers in our temple. Luther had them, and the Reformation was born out of His terrible anxiety over the indulgences of the Roman Catholic Church.
We have moneychangers today, even in the Protestant Church, hucksters, corrupters of the Word of God who are in it for filthy lucre. And we cry out for Christ to cleanse today as He did then.
There’s a third credential that I want you to see in verse 13. He not only showed He was on a divine mission and demonstrated divine authority, but he revealed a commitment to divine Scripture. He revealed a commitment to divine Scripture. You see, He vindicates what He does by this in verse 13, “He said unto them, ‘It is written,’” and then He quotes Isaiah 56:7, “My house shall be called the house of prayer” - and Isaiah adds, and Mark also includes - “of all nations.” Matthew leaves it out because His audience is primarily Jewish.
But the Lord says, “I vindicate what I do, because I’m doing something consistent with the Word of God.” Oh, that’s so great. As Messiah, He was always hooked to the Word of God. In John He says, “I never do anything that the Father doesn’t show Me to do. I never do anything that the Father doesn’t tell Me to do.” Everything He ever did was consistent with the Word of God. He vindicates His anger by basing it on Scripture.
He says, “Isaiah said it. God said through him, ‘My house shall be called the house of prayer.’” See, the Temple was to be a place of prayer. It was to be a quiet place, a place of worship, a place of devotion, a place of meditation, a place of contemplation, a place of confession, a place of prayer, a place of praise; a place where people went to commune with God, to seek God, to open their hearts to God; not a stockyard, not a crooked bank, not a thoroughfare for people carrying on their worldly business.
I’m reminded of 1 Samuel 1, Hannah. She went to the temple, and Eli the priest sat on a seat by the post of the temple of the Lord. She went there to seek God.
And do you remember when the Temple was dedicated in 1 Kings chapter 8: 29 and 30, and Solomon offered his prayer to God? And he said, “I pray that this place may be a place where your people can come and confess and find forgiveness.” A place of quiet, a place of confession.
And I’m reminded, too, of the psalmist in Psalm 27 who identifies the usefulness of the temple with these words, “One thing have I desired of the Lord, that that will I seek; that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all they days of my life, to behold the beauty of the Lord, and enquire in His Temple.”
It’s a place where we can see the beauty of the Lord in worship, and where we can beseech Him, inquiring of Him there in His holy place. And they had turned it into a crooked bank, a stockyard, a thoroughfare. Blasphemous.
And He says to them in verse 13, “But you have made it a den of thieves” – or a cave of robbers. And that’s another Old Testament quote from Jeremiah 7:11. “You’ve made it: – and He borrows the phrase from Jeremiah, “a cave of robbers,” where robbers hole up. Instead of being a place for true worshippers, it’s a place where people can rob and be protected in doing it. You have made it a cave of robbers. They can come here and they’re safe. Robbers used to hide in the caves. Jeremiah alludes to that in chapter 7, verses 4 to 11, where the robbers were hiding in the caves, and they were safe there, out of the way, unfound, secure.
And He says, “You’ve provided a cave for robbers to hide in in the temple of God.” And they can do their robbery right in the place they’re hiding. Such protection of extortioners is blasphemous. Yahweh’s house, God’s house, to be a temple to worship and pray and commune with Him. What a prostitution you’ve made of this.
There’s a fourth thing I want you to see. He not only shows His divine mission, His divine authority, and His commitment to the divine word, but we see Him as the Messiah because of His divine compassion.
As I said, for a moment, the place was clean. And in that moment, verse 14, comes so beautifully to us, “And the blind and the lame came to Him in the Temple, and He healed them.” He’s still there. He’s standing there amidst all the debris, and it’s clean for a moment.
And when Jesus did that, you would have thought that they would have also gotten out of there one way or another. I mean if the fury of Jesus was enough to dispense all the able-bodied people, I mean if they ran for their lives under His authority, we would think that these people would be cowering in some dark corner, scared to death. But not so, because ever and always in Jesus Christ is the perfect exhibited balance of holy vengeance and compassion.
And so, those who were guilty see His anger, and those who are true seekers see His compassion. It’s marvelous. And He stands in the temple, and they come to Him. I love that. I love that. You see, if you want to see the compassion of God in Christ, you see it in His healing ministry. That’s where you see it. That’s where you see it.
You see, one of the reasons there are ill people and disabled people is so that God, in His mercy, can dispense to them His compassion and thus reveal that element of His person. If there were no ill people, if there were no crippled principal, if there were no suffering people, we would not see a dimension of God’s character which is revealed to us. And keep in mind, for those that love Christ, all those disabilities are very, very temporary, aren’t they? But they give God occasion to reveal to the world His compassion. Do you think the Pharisees cared about those people? Do you think they cared that they were blind and lame? Listen, if the poor people came and were overcharged hundreds of times for a couple of pigeons, do you think they cared about the poor? They were making money off the poor. They were making money, if they could, off anybody that possibly could come within the grasp; they didn’t care.
They were like Israel of old in many ways. They abused the poor, despised those who were infirm. But not Christ. Oh, what credentials. God is compassionate. Do you remember Matthew 11, when a disciple of John the Baptist comes and says to Jesus, “Are you the Messiah? John wants to know.”
Jesus says, “You go tell John that the blind see, the deaf hear, and the lame walk. He’ll know. He’ll know.”
And as I told you then, you see, the Lord didn’t heal just to display His power. It did do that, but that wasn’t the only reason. He could have displayed His power a lot of ways. The reason He healed was to display his compassion, that God is a God of great compassion.
And what beautiful balance. We’re not afraid of Christ. I know Jesus Christ someday is going to come to this world in great and devastating eternal judgment. I know Jesus Christ holds in His hand the keys to hell and death. I know Jesus Christ is the judge, given judgment by the Father. I know that He is the one who controls the eternal destiny of every soul. I know He has the right to send men and women to hell forever, and I know He can breathe out any judgment He wants anytime on anybody. And yet I come to Him in absolute trust and confidence and love because I know that He loves me. Because in balance to that is His divine and merciful compassion.
And so, we see them come, and in compassion, He heals them. And may I suggest to you that that’s the truest kind of worship? True worship is in the name of the Lord meeting the need of someone. That is a far greater worship than a sacrifice, is it not? Sacrifices, sacrifices, sacrifices by the millions. But where was the worship of love to one in need?
And then another mark, a divine credential, if you will. We see His divine mission; His divine authority; His commitment to the divine Word; divine compassion, and also His divine power. And we can ignore that.
Verse 14 says that He healed them. I mean that is a display of divine power. He just healed them all: the blind, the lame – and they’re probably only representative of the deaf and the dumb and whoever else was ill and begging. And He healed them in front of everybody that was left. And everybody else would have known very soon, when they started running around town saying, “Hey, it’s us, only now we see, and hear, and speak, and walk.”
“And even the chief priests” - in verse 15 – “and saw the wonderful thing that He did.” Wonderful? What’s that? Wonderful things, thaumasia, the marvels, the miracles, the astonishing, amazing, wonders that only God could do. Only God can create eyes; only God can create legs; only God can create eardrums where none exist; only God can do that. Powerful testimony.
We see the compassion of God, the power of God in His healing. He healed them. And this maybe is the most important of all. Notice the end of verse 15. “The chief priests” – it says at the beginning – “and the scribes saw the wonderful things He did.” Then at the it says, “They were very displeased.”
Well, how could they be displeased? First of all, they could care less about the crippled people and the blind. Hey didn’t care about those people. They had no thought for them at all. Of course we know they had no thought for them. There was no compassion in them. And a compassionate person intimidates an uncompassionate person. And a powerful person intimidates an impotent person. You understand that? So, they’re so intimidated; they are so angry; they are so resentful. They are so jealous.
The word used here “very displeased” is translated in chapter 20, verse 24, “indignation.” It means fury. They were full of wrath. They were angry. They could have cared less about the healing of those people. The only thing they were mad about was Jesus Christ was putting Himself on display, and they couldn’t handle Him. They were such hardhearted rejecters.
I mean if they’d of just remembered Malachi, they would have remembered that He would suddenly come to His Temple. But they wouldn’t have Him as their Messiah. No way. He didn’t check in with them. He didn’t check in with them; He didn’t ask their advice on anything. He came from Galilee, to add to that, and He kept confronting their sin as if they were sinners. He wouldn’t recognize their righteousness. He wouldn’t recognize their self-styled holiness. He blasted them with the fact that they were sinners and in need of something they did not possess and couldn’t earn on their own. And they rejected that; they were so locked into their self-righteousness. And all they could come up with was being jealous. He didn’t fit their picture.
Later on, they cried, “We’ll not have this man to reign over us; we don’t care what He can do.” They were just angry. So, He gives Himself: demonstrates His kingliness, demonstrates the nature of His kingdom. And all they do is get mad.
But there’s one other thing that’s so marvelous, and this is the coup de grâce. This is the high point. One other credential that I see in a positive sense, He accepted divine worship.
He accepted divine worship. Look at verse 15, right in the middle, “And the children” – and the word there is “boys” in the Greek, boys. Boys old enough to come to the Passover. The boys that were there. Some were likely boys getting instructed in their first Passover. The boys were “crying in the temple, and saying, ‘Hosanna to the son of David.’” I mean they got the message. Right?
I mean the astute, erudite leaders of Israel may not have known who He was, but it was pretty clear to the kids. You ever met an atheist kid? I never met one. Very simple for them to believe. I mean the evidence was overwhelming. They had just seen somebody who healed people. They had just seen somebody throw out all of the corrupt and evil people in the temple. It was pretty clear to them who this was.
Tissot, the French painter, has a magnificent painting of this in which he portrays all these boys with their arms locked like this, marching back and forth through the temple, shouting in unison at the top of their voice, “Hosanna to the son of David,” which just makes the chief priests livid. But that’s true worship, see? All the garbage stops, and some children worship the King.
Well, they said to Him, in verse 16, “‘Hearest Thou what these say? Are You listening to those children? Are You hearing what they say?’” You see, they wanted those children to stop. “That’s blasphemy. You can’t worship this man in the temple of God.” I mean, can you believe that? You could sell cattle at an exorbitant price, cheat people out of their money, do all the rest of the stuff, but you couldn’t worship the Messiah there? That’ll show you where they were. I mean any true worship had to be stopped. The worship of the true God in the true form just could not occur in that place.
So, they said, “Do You hear what they say?” And what they mean is, “Are You going to allow this?”
And I love His answer, “And Jesus said unto them, ‘Yes.’” I like that “Yes, I hear. Yes, I’m going to allow it. Yes.” I imagine He smiled a little to think of the incongruity of this whole amazing event. You see, if the Lord can’t get the praise out of the mature people, He gets it out of the immature.
You say, “Well, how could these kids be so perceptive?”
Oh, we don’t know, really, how perceptive they were. I’m sure they were perceptive enough to see that He had healed people, and that’s pretty overwhelming.
You say, “But where did they get the idea that He was a son of David?”
Hey, what had been going all day and the day before? And kids learn from their parents. They were just echoing what they heard the day before, only it was no problem for them, boy; it seemed really clear now. Mom and Dad yesterday had been shouting, “Hosanna to the son of David, the one coming in the name of the Lord; hosanna in the highest.” They’d been praising Him as the King, and as far as these kids could see, it was pretty clear that that’s who He was.
Now, you remember in Luke’s account of the coronation day, the triumphal entry, the chief priests came and said, “You better tell these people to stop.”
And Jesus said to them, “If they don’t sing My praises or praise Me, the stones will” – what? – “cry out.” Here He says the same thing. He quotes Psalm 8:2.
“They say to Him, ‘Do you hear this?’
“And Jesus says, ‘Have you heard this? Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings’” – two Hebrew words used in Psalm 8:2 to refer to infants under the age of three, because Hebrew mothers suckled their babies until they were about three - “‘Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings thou hast perfected praise.’”
In other words, even little babies can simply, and in an uncluttered way, praise God. Now, I don’t know that we need to get into all of the implications of that statement in its context in the Psalms; time doesn’t allow us to do that. But for this text, I think what He’s simply saying is this; He’s using that Psalm as an illustration of what is going on. If God will not be praised out of the mouths of the mature, He will be praised out of the mouths of the immature. God is going to get His praise to His Son, “even if the stones have to cry out,” as Luke 19:40 said.
Like the stones, Christ is to be praised. Like the children, Christ is to be praised. Like people, they are to praise Him as well. He will get the praise either from mature people or infants or rocks if need be. He just alludes to that Psalm as an illustration of what is happening.
And I say that so that you’ll understand it isn’t to say that these were zero to three-year-old babies all chanting together, “Hosanna to the son of David,” but rather an allusion to that principle there. What a glorious event. And the fury of those leaders simply because of their unbelief. All the evidence was in; even little children could see it.
There’s one other thing. He gives His credentials: divine mission, divine authority, divine word, divine compassion, divine power, divine worship, and one other thing. One other thing that proves He was the Messiah. It’s this: He was rejected. He was rejected.
Verse 17, haunting words, “And He left them.” You see it there? “And He left them.” And in that simple, physical act, there was a volume of truth. “He left them, went out of the city to Bethany, and He lodged there.” He really left them, because the next day, in verse 23, they come and say, “By what authority do You do these things, and who gave You this authority?” And in verse 27, He gets around finally to saying, “Neither tell I you by what authority I do these things.” He left them. He had nothing more to say.
It’s reminiscent of Genesis 6, where the Bible says, “God’s Spirit will not always strive with man.” There comes a time when He leaves.
Let’s bow in prayer.
It may be that in our life Christ has revealed Himself, showing Himself to be a divine Savior on a divine and spiritual mission to clean your life and bring about true worship. It may have been that He comes with divine authority, based on the Word of God, demonstrating compassion and power - all of these things that we’ve seen.
It may have been that He has revealed Himself to be worthy of worship. What’s your verdict? Are you like the little children, who in the wonderful simplicity of their youth, taking into their little hearts what they saw, could cry out, “Hosanna, save now, O son of David”? It was proof enough for them.
Or are you like the hardhearted religious leaders who are only angry because He’s making such claims on your life, because He’s calling you to accountability, because He’s confronting your sin? It’s either one or the other; no middle ground. “He that is not with Me is against Me; he that gathereth not together scattereth abroad.” You either embrace the Lord Jesus Christ as Savior or you refuse Him. You either stand with, as it were, in the symbolic sense the children singing His praises or the religious leaders whom He leaves and to whom He has nothing more to say.
So, our prayer, as we close the service this morning, is that you might hear the voice of the Spirit of God calling you to see and know and understand and embrace the Savior, and that you might respond. Open your heart to Him even now, who came to die for you, to rise again for your salvation.
Related topics:
Sanctification
Further reading on the Temple cleansings and related Scriptures can be found at The Macarthur Bible Commentary pg 1353-1356, digital or print. NKJV 2005
Money changers
They were purposely overcharging for exchanging currency, to make a evil gain.
These same money changers were associated with others who engaged in shady business practices in the temple courts. Some sold sacrificial animals, overcharging people who did not bring their own. Others were in charge of examining the animals to be sacrificed, and it was a simple matter to declare an animal “unapproved” and force the worshiper to buy another animal—at an inflated price—from the temple vendors. Such goings-on, exploiting the poor and the foreigner, angered the Lord Jesus and was strictly forbidden in the Mosaic Law (Exodus 22:21; Leviticus 19:34).
About the animals sold
God gave them instructions way back for sacrifices, 1. In Eden, 2. In Exodus (Exodus 12:5 "Your lamb shall be unblemished").
They were disqualifying animals to make deceptive profit, and selling defective ones.
The lambs and animals had to have no defects. This pointed to the sacrifice of the sinless Christ on the cross, and it is relevant. Both the deceiving devious money changers and the deceiving devious sellers of blemished animals was the issue there. They had altered and made evil of what God had commanded, and it distorted the gospel, for deceptive monetary gain. God required that nation to obey His commands, and they perverted them, for their own gain. Both for 1. profit over truth, money over God, and 2. sinful behavior over righteous obedience, and deception over truth.
Both the sellers and buyers of sacrificial animals had a history of using blemished animals. It is easy fir the priests sellers to get away with it under tgeir cirrupt leadership, and probably also some of the ones buyi g sacrifices bartered a bit for cheaper more blemished ones, as it had been 400 years since Israel was actuallt obedient and followed God. In Jesus era they had been paganized by the people before the Romans and by the Romans. They were a apostate religion who were mostly not true followers of God.
In Malachi 1:8, the Lord accuses Israel of bringing Him blemished offerings: “‘When you bring blind animals for sacrifice, is that not wrong? When you sacrifice crippled or diseased animals, is that not wrong? Try offering them to your governor! Would he be pleased with you? Would he accept you?’ says the Lord Almighty.”
Bringing animal sacrifices to the temple that were blind, disfigured, or sick was a direct violation of the Mosaic Law (Leviticus 22:22; Deuteronomy 15:21). The reason for this command was that such sacrifices dishonored the Lord. “Do not profane my holy name” (Leviticus 22:32). They were sacrifices in name only.
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