Matthew 21:12-17 | "When God Arrives"

This sermon was recorded at Faith Evangelical Free Church in Grand Forks, North Dakota.

We're returning to Matthew 21 today.

A few weeks ago, we read several Old Testament texts about how Matthew presented the triumphal entry into Jerusalem.

So we know that our next section follows Jesus' kingly and prophetic entry into the royal city, to the shouts and cheers of people celebrating the return of the Son of David to the city of the great king.

Sorry, I'm trying to, there we go, trying to find a remote.

It's most likely then, early on Monday morning, that the events of Matthew 21, verses 12 through 17, begin to take place.

Matthew 21:12–17

If you would follow along in your Bible with me, as we read Matthew 21, beginning in verse 12, it says, Jesus entered the temple, and he drove out all who sold and bought in the temple, and he overturned the tables of money changers and the seats of those who sold pigeons.

He said to them, It is written, My house shall be called a house of prayer, but you have made it a den of robbers.

And the blind and the lame came to him in the temple, and he healed them.

But when the chief priest and the scribes saw the wonderful things that he did, and the children crying out in the temple, Hosanna to the son of David, they were indignant.

And they said to him, Do you hear what these children are saying?

Jesus said to them, Yes, have you never read, out of the mouths of infants and nursing babies you have prepared praise?

And leaving them, he went out of the city to Bethany and lodged there.

Amen.

We live in a time when authority is increasingly despised and rejected.

That means if we have a problem with authority as individuals, we're going to have a problem with this passage.

Because Jesus claims ultimate authority.

Matthew describes a situation here in which it is too late to change.

You can imagine a person with a habit that leads generally to disease.

A doctor strongly advises, encourages change.

Stop whatever, smoking, stop drinking alcohol.

It's going to lead to lung cancer, it's going to lead to cirrhosis of the liver.

But the patient dismisses those repeated warnings again and again and again, just ignores them.

And then suddenly the diagnosis arrives.

And it's too late to avoid severe health problems.

The Jewish people should have listened to their prophets.

They should have listened to John the Baptist, urging them repeatedly to repent and turn to Jesus.

They should have recognized Jesus.

They should have listened to Jesus and followed Jesus, but they refused to acknowledge his identity.

They shut their ears to his teaching.

Now God wants all people everywhere to repent and to trust in Jesus.

And that would have led to changes in Israel's worship.

But it didn't.

The flipping of tables, the driving out of money changers and animals, was not a challenge to change worship patterns.

It was too late for that.

This is God's judgment.

It's God's judgment for their rejection of Him displayed in their sinful worship.

And ultimately, their failure to change was fatal.

Within four decades, their temple would be destroyed.

And this announcement of judgment was also fatal for the Lord Jesus because it set him at odds finally, for in a few days he would hang upon a Roman cross.

The religious establishment refused to consider that Jesus might just be right.

He might be right about whom he claimed to be.

He might be right about his fulfillment of Scripture and his understanding of the Scriptures.

You see, for two to three weeks before Passover, money changers set up tables in the outer section of the temple.

Every Jewish male was required to pay a yearly tax to support the temple.

But that tax could only be paid in Jewish currency.

And so money changers were set up around the temple to make it easy for all of the Jewish males to exchange their currency for Jewish currency to easily pay the temple tax.

And additionally, stalls were set up all the way around to contain animals for the temple sacrifices.

It wasn't easy to make a trip to Jerusalem with your unblemished sacrifice.

So we can imagine the mooing of cows, the cries of lambs, the cooing of doves and pigeons echoing amongst the bustling noise of people.

As you entered the temple for worship, the stalls and stalls of animals were among the first things you would encounter.

All for sale, all for sacrifice to God, and also the money changers and their tables for the temple tax.

So imagine coming to church on Sunday morning for prayer and for worship.

Parking your car in the parking lot.

But before you could reach the front doors, you were being accosted by sales of Bibles of all kinds, notebooks and pens to take your notes, maybe even by a bake sale or a car wash to raise money for the mission trip.

Now, legitimacy was not a question.

The Bible doesn't speak to selling Bibles or pens or notebooks or pies or cookies.

Nowhere does Matthew address whether it is right for temple authorities to sell animals to people for their worship.

Nowhere does he say that the money changers couldn't exchange Roman currency or Tyrian currency for Jewish currency.

This is not about those things.

This is about Jesus.

This is about Jesus, not animals or money changers.

For three times Jesus makes claims about his authority or his identity.

He enters the temple and he says, Do you recognize me?

Go with me on a little bit of a walk, if you will.

We're going to start in the garden.

We're going to start in the garden with God.

Adam and Eve were there in the temple.

They walked and they talked with God.

That was their pattern.

God would come and speak with them.

Of course, we know the rest of the story, right?

They sinned.

God clothed them when they recognized that they were naked, and then God booted them from the garden.

And suddenly they were no longer in the garden with God.

They were now outside of the garden, guarded from God.

No longer able to have access to Him.

Guarded by cherubim wielding a flaming sword.

God said, Your sin keeps you from me.

No longer can you come to me.

You can no longer walk with me in the cool of the garden.

You are now guarded from me.

For your sin stirs up my holiness.

Then we move on from there.

We go to the book of Exodus and where Israel is camped around Mount Sinai.

Deuteronomy describes this for us more clearly.

God spoke to the whole nation of Israel.

And it says that they heard the voice of God, and there were thunderings and there were fire, and they were terrified.

And they told Moses, please, whatever it takes, don't let us hear God speak again because we might die.

They're terrified.

When God speaks to them, they're afraid they might die.

So different than it began in the garden.

God walked with them and God talked with Adam and Eve with no fear, with no judgment, no sin in between them.

But once sin enters, they are barred from God.

They are guarded from God because God might destroy them.

And the next time we hear God speaking to the nation of his people, they are saying, Stop, we don't want to hear this because we might be destroyed.

And God says, Well, I'm still going to come and be with you.

I'm going to make a way.

My people need me.

So I'm going to come and I'm going to tent among them.

I'm going to have you build a tent, a tabernacle.

And in that tabernacle, you're going to build it exactly as I say, and my presence is going to come and dwell in the innermost part of that tabernacle, of that tent.

But there's going to be a curtain.

And that curtain is going to separate me from you.

Don't you ever come behind that curtain?

If you come behind that curtain, it's like coming into the garden.

It's like coming into the cherubim with the flaming sword.

So there's going to be a curtain that's going to protect you.

I'm going to make things better than they were.

You no longer are going to be terrified by my glory because I'm going to come in a cloud that keeps you from seeing my glory.

And I'm going to keep you from coming too close by setting a curtain in place.

But I'm going to come.

And I'm going to be close to you again.

What grace and what mercy God provides for his people.

Well, that temple, that tabernacle became permanent.

Became settled in a single place when Solomon created a temple.

And God was with his people, once again, permanently.

No longer moving around as a tent moves around from place to place, but in a solid, singular location.

God is with his people in the temple.

And not only with his people, but God began to say, you know what, it's not just my people.

I'm extending my grace and my provision for anyone who desires to come to me by faith.

And the prophet Isaiah spoke of this in Isaiah chapter 56.

Isaiah 56 · chapter mention

In Isaiah 56, God said, And the foreigners who join themselves to Yahweh to minister to him, to love his name, to be his servants, everyone who keeps the Sabbath and does not profane it, and holds fast to my covenant, these I will bring to my holy mountain.

That's the place where the temple is.

I will make them joyful in my house of prayer.

Their burnt offerings and their sacrifices.

I'm going to accept them.

Why?

Because my house will be a house of prayer for all peoples.

What an amazing transition.

We go from walking and talking with God to being barred from God to being in the presence of God, but still separated, and it's just his people.

And now God begins to expand, and he says, Whoever loves me and comes to me by faith is now accepted.

They can come to my house, my temple, because it's a house of prayer for all nations, whatever peoples there might be.

For the Lord God, who gathers the outcasts of Israel, declares, I have others.

There are others that I'm gathering together besides those who are already here.

What an amazing statement.

We go on from here.

So we have God's temple with his people.

Isaiah says, foreigners are going to be welcomed, outcasts are going to be a part of God's people.

But then things start to shift a little bit.

In Jeremiah, Jeremiah is the prophet who is speaking to God's people before God sent the Babylonians to destroy the peoples, to carry them off into captivity.

Well, why would God do such a thing?

Well, part of the example, part of the explanation for that is in Jeremiah chapter 7.

Jeremiah 7 · chapter mention

He says, My house, my house, my dwelling place, has been defiled by your sin.

It's sort of echoing what we saw in the garden.

God created everything very good, and Adam and Eve said, No, we need sin here.

Really?

And that happens all over again.

Jeremiah says, Will God is speaking here in Jeremiah chapter 7.

Jeremiah 7 · chapter mention

Will you steal, murder, commit adultery, swear falsely, make offerings to Baal, and go after other gods that you have not known?

And then come and stand before me in my house that's called by my name, and then proclaim we're delivered, we're saved, only to go on doing all these abominations.

God says through Jeremiah, you have the gall to sin all week long and to think I'm just gonna be okay with it.

And you come in and you say, everything's good.

God's our God.

Well, so is Baal, but what's wrong with having more than one God?

Goes on.

Has this house, my house, my dwelling place, it's called by my name?

Has it become a den of robbers in your eyes?

Behold, I myself have seen it.

It declares the Lord.

At the end of Jeremiah, that temple's destroyed.

And God's presence leaves.

God says there's enough.

I've had enough of this.

You brought sin into my house, you defiled it.

So I'm going to destroy it.

And I'm going to leave.

So this is sort of the opposite of Garden of Eden.

In the Garden of Eden, God protected it.

He said, I'm going to keep it, I'm going to protect it, but you're going to leave.

Now with the temple, God says, I'm wiping it out, and I'm leaving.

Symbolically saying, I'm leaving you, I'm leaving my creation.

And friends, that's how the Old Testament ends.

It ends with this sad situation where there's Solomon's temple, this house of God, destroyed.

But there's hope.

A little bit of hope, because that temple is then rebuilt.

After 70 years of captivity, the people come back, they begin to rebuild it.

Sometimes they falter, sometimes they restart, sometimes they get going again, and finally it gets built.

And it's just a shell of its former glory.

And part of that shell of its former glory is because God's presence never comes back.

They have a temple, they have a building, they have a house, but nobody lives in it.

It's empty.

And you find in some of the minor prophets at the end of the Old Testament that there are people who grieve because they remember what it used to be.

And it no longer is.

And so God's people are back living in their land and they have this house, but it's empty, and there are no prophets, there's nobody speaking, there's nobody leading, but there's just this emptiness.

And then we turn our pages and we get to a New Testament.

And John tells us in John chapter 1 that the word who is God became flesh.

John 1 · chapter mention

And what did he do?

He tented among us.

God tented among his people.

It's a very specific word choice that reminds us of the tabernacle where God tented among his people.

He said, All things are wrong here.

I am separated from you.

Let's make that right.

I'm going to tent among you, but not in a tent now, now in a body.

The word of God became flesh and tented among us, and we have seen his glory.

Now, what happened the last time that they saw his glory?

They were terrified.

They were terrified and they said, Don't let us ever see his glory again, Moses.

We can't even hear his voice.

But God says, I'm coming again, and I'm going to tent among you, and you're going to see my glory.

But a tent moves around, doesn't it?

When God tented in the tabernacle, he moved from place to place with the people of Israel.

So Jesus comes and he dwells among the people and he moves from place to place, the glory of God tenting among his people.

Now what will happen?

What do we find when God comes to his house?

What happens when God no longer tents among his people but comes to his house?

Remember, the house has been empty.

There's no God in it.

It's just a shell with no presence.

Because God is tenting among his people, not in Jerusalem.

What happens now when God, who's tenting among his people, comes to his house?

What will he find?

Well, he comes the week of Passover.

And as Jesus enters the temple and he hears the bleeding of the sheep and the mooing of the cows and the cooing of the pigeons, the bartering of the people, and the clinking of the coins ringing in his ears as he leads his disciples into his house, he instantly compares what he's seeing, what he's hearing, what he's experiencing to what God had declared long before.

His house, his temple, intended to be a place of prayer, was filled with noisy business.

The temple had once again become a place for all kinds of riffraff to do business.

The status of worship in Jerusalem had become a business affair without genuine repentance and trust in God.

Now, the Temple Mount was still under construction when Jesus entered his house.

Because Herod came along and decided to make a name for himself instead of a name for God, and so he began to expand it.

The original building was no larger than Solomon's sanctuary, that core building that you see in this image, it stands up higher than the rest.

That's the sanctuary.

That's the core place, the holy place, and then the holy of holies in the back of it.

Still under construction, much bigger than what you see here.

What you see here is that main sanctuary place that was then cordoned off, restricted, segregated for certain groups of people.

The Holy of Holies was a place that only one person could go and only once a year.

The high priest could only enter that Holy of Holies, only the high priest, and only once a year.

Outside of that, only the priests could come to do the business of worship, the sacrificing, the offering of offerings.

Radiating out from that building were segregated areas of worship.

Beyond the sanctuary itself and the area for sacrifice was a courtyard.

The priests could enter that courtyard.

Further out from that was the court of men.

Even further out from that is the court of women.

And what is not displayed on this image is that surrounding all of this is the court of Gentiles.

And around that courtyard is a colonnade.

A large colonnade.

God intended the temple to be a place of prayer for all nations, and the only location in the temple where the nations had were permitted to come and to worship had been changed from a serene spot of prayer to a cacophony of noises produced by the business of worship.

So to rephrase that, Gentiles couldn't even come into this location.

They had to stay outside of that.

And somewhere outside of that, whether in the court of the Gentiles or in the colonnade, it was all of the business going on.

Their pattern of worship had been greatly tarnished.

And so, in the vein of Jeremiah's rebuking and preaching, Jesus will not allow the stained status of worship to continue.

But Jesus is no mere preaching prophet.

He acts with authority.

He acts as the God of the temple.

This is his house.

He is the Lord of the temple.

He is the one who established its intent, and he is the one who will judge its sinful use.

And that means that Jesus claims authority over you and over me if we are his temple.

It's a staggering claim for the modern church.

You are not your own, for you were bought with a price.

And he has now come to dwell within you.

There's no temple.

Jesus claimed authority over the temple in Matthew chapter 21.

Matthew 21 · chapter mention

That's why he says, You've made this just like you made it 600 years earlier.

A den of robbers, place of thieves.

It's nothing what it was intended to be.

I'm claiming authority over it, I'm driving them out.

And in the same way, the Lord Jesus in the New Testament says, You are my temple.

I live within you.

And he claims authority over us.

But Matthew shows that Jesus is suddenly surrounded by another group of people.

If you have your Bible in Matthew again, you can look and see that Jesus is suddenly surrounded in the temple, Matthew says in verse 14, by the blind and the lame.

This is astounding.

This is astounding.

Time and time again, Jesus healed the blind and the lame.

We've seen it all throughout the Gospel of Matthew.

But by the time of Jesus, the temple was segregated even more than just the court of the priests and the court of the men and the court of the women and the court of the Gentiles.

You see, there were restrictions for those who were thought to be under God's judgment.

So, for example, lepers.

Lepers had their own small building, not on the Temple Mount, but on the side of the Temple Mount, where they were allowed to come to worship.

The blind and the lame were also not allowed into the temple proper.

Perhaps they were allowed into the court of the Gentiles surrounding the main building.

Perhaps they were allowed into the portico, we don't know, but they were not allowed to come into God's holy presence.

They were excluded.

Matthew shows us that Jesus is claiming authority over the worship at the temple.

Not just the temple building, but what goes on there.

Because he's the one who is worshipped, he's the one who gets to decide what goes on.

You see, the temple authorities and the chief priests recognized that sacrifices and offerings were important.

They were the primary means of worshiping God.

And so they ensured that people had unblemished sacrifices.

They provided opportunities to pay the temple tax that was grounded in Scripture.

Well, if some happened to make an extra profit by charging a little more, that was okay.

As long as the sacrifices and the temple activities continued.

Because people needed to pay their tax to the temple and people needed to make sacrifices to be right with God.

And it wouldn't be right to interrupt proper worship with the difficulties generated by the presence of blind and lame people now, would it?

Hope you get the sarcasm in my voice.

And Jesus comes along and says, God desires mercy rather than sacrifice.

Jesus offered mercy to those who were rejected.

Rather than avoid them in their uncleanness, he cleansed them.

Do you see what that means?

The blind and the lame could not come near God in worship.

But the kingdom of God, Jesus said, belongs to those who are poor in spirit.

And so in response to their faith, Jesus cleansed them so that they might come near to God.

He enabled them to worship with pure hearts.

The Sadducees likely believed that they were protecting the temple in proper worship.

They were making sure that the carpets stayed clean, that the building was pristine.

But by interrupting the nation's worship and excluding the blind and the lame, they did not love justice and mercy.

But as the one who has authority, Jesus comes in and says, Oh, you will exercise mercy.

And if you don't, I will drive you out and I will show mercy.

As the one who has authority over us as his temple, Jesus also is the one with authority over how we worship.

And then Matthew moves from one neglected group to another.

There were children in the temple seeing Jesus' miracles, responding with praise to him.

This is the Son of David, and so they're shouting, Hosanna, save us now, Son of David.

The chief priests and the scribes saw the wonderful things that Jesus did, and they heard the children crying out.

Matthew calls Jesus' miracles wonderful things.

This is the only time in the New Testament that this word is used.

But it's a very familiar term in the Old Testament.

In the Old Testament, it is most often used to describe God's miraculous, powerful workings to deliver his people, such as delivering Israel from Egypt.

And in that, when they notice, when those chief priests and those scribes, those religious leaders recognize these miraculous, wonderful things, they are identifying unknowingly Jesus as Yahweh, the God of Israel.

God has arrived.

His presence has come back to his house.

And he's found his house unworthy as a place to worship.

But the children in the temple see these things and cry out, Hosanna to the sons, to the son of David.

They're asking Jesus, save us.

But when the chief priests and the scribes saw the wonderful things that he did, and the children crying out in the temple, they're indignant.

They can't believe what's going on.

Let's get this straight.

The leading priests of the time had no problem with the cacophony of noise in the building.

They had no problems with the bleeding of sheep, the bawling of cows, pigeons flying all over the place, coins rolling around on the marble floor of the temple.

They didn't mind if the noises of bartering, selling, and money changing hands bothered the Gentiles who had come in to pray.

In a similar way, the modern church doesn't mind if it leads people away from genuine worship by means of man-centered preaching accompanied by entertainment.

Oh, but watch out when the kids start singing.

Matthew says that the religious leaders saw the wonderful things that only God does, and they heard the children praising Jesus as the expected Messiah.

And they say to Jesus, Do you hear what these are saying?

Jesus, you're a teacher.

You understand language, you understand the content of what these children are saying.

Aren't you going to do something?

See, according to the chief priests and the scribes, Jesus is either lacking intelligence or he himself is deaf because he doesn't hear them.

He would do something if he heard what these children were saying.

They have no trouble making worship impossible for non-Jews.

They have no problem making worship impossible for the unclean and the sinful.

They have no problem with sinfully stealing from people in the temple courtyard, but there is simply no place in their thinking for a Galilean teacher to be a savior of Israel and of the world.

They have no place for God to return to his house.com to show his lineage from King David.

That wouldn't have done any good anyway.

Because they rejected the power revealed in his miracles, and they refused to accept his authority over their temple and its worship.

These are the leaders of Israel's worship.

Their scribes are the religious attorneys of the day.

They knew their Old Testament frontwards and backwards, inside and out.

And Jesus says, Yeah, I hear the children.

I hear them.

Tell me, you experts, have you ever read your Bible?

That's a slap in the face.

It's like telling a judge, have you ever read the law?

You claim to be experts in the scriptures.

Well, let's test your knowledge then.

Haven't you ever read, out of the mouths of infants and nursing babies, you have prepared praise?

Jesus quotes Psalm 8, verse 2, where David is describing the majesty of God.

Psalms 8:2

He's so majestic, God says, so so glorious, the psalmist says, that even nursing babies bring him praise.

In fact, God has prepared, he specifically worked and prepared praise to be given to him from young children.

So Jesus says to the chief priest, look, you ought to know from your own Bible that God prepares praise even from babies.

But that's really not what Jesus is saying.

If you look closely, you'll see that in Psalm 8, the children are praising God.

Yahweh, because of his majesty.

Now the children are praising Jesus because of his majesty.

So who is Matthew telling us that Jesus is?

Jesus is their God who has come to his house.

Unlike the religious people who rejected him, the blind, the lame, and the children had eyes of faith to see the divine majesty of Jesus Christ.

Jesus has authority over the temple.

He has authority over worship, and he has the right to receive praise and worship because he is the God who came to tent among his people to ultimately cleanse sinful people with forgiveness that reconciles people to himself.

And then astonishingly, Jesus leaves the temple, walks up the Mount of Olives to a little village called Bethany, as if to say to everyone, think about that for a while.

How do you process that?

It makes you wonder about us, doesn't it?

We don't worship in the temple, the temple is destroyed.

But we're not surprised by that because Jesus told another kind of outcast of an adulterous woman at a well outside of Samaria.

That the Father is seeking worshippers who worship him in spirit and in truth, not at any particular kind of location.

Those with faith in Jesus are indwelt by his spirit, making us the temple.

But that should cause us to stop and think about how we function as God's house, don't you think?

For example, do we ever impede worship?

In our bodies, our minds, our hearts?

It's often said that worship on Sunday morning begins on Saturday night.

Are you preparing your heart to be ready to come?

Are we sinning all throughout the week without confession and repentance to make sure that we are right before God?

Do we abuse our worship in any way?

Do we, even in our genuineness, because these people were genuine, they had hearts that wanted to follow God?

Are we in our genuineness keeping certain groups or types of people from coming to Christ?

Or are we saying, no, you're not welcome here?

Are we willing to make way for sinful people?

Are we willing to make way for the wretched, the poor, the lonely, the seeking to come and seek forgiveness in Jesus?

Most of all, do we display the truth about Jesus in our lives?

The Apostle Paul told the Corinthians, you are the temple of God.

Why?

Because they weren't living as it.

Do we think as those whose minds are set on Christ?

Do we work and play with the Spirit of God living within?

Like the Samaritan woman at the well, we have the privilege of bringing people to faith in Jesus.

Think about this.

There is no temple, and therefore there is no house to bring people to meet God.

Well, Jesus fixed that, didn't he?

He said, People don't no longer have to come to me.

They don't have to come to me in a house to find me, because I am now coming to live within you, and I am sending you to go out to them.

You are my people.

I live within you.

You take my temple, my presence, and you go and take it to them.

Take it to the nations.

Do we proclaim Jesus as the God of the Bible?

When Jesus comes again as he will, will he find us, his temple, in good order as a place of proper worship?

Is Jesus our all?

Is Jesus our all?

Let's pray together.

Lord Jesus, we come and we lift you up.

We give praise to you.

We give thanks to you as the one who made a way for us to be right with you.

We give you thanks that you took upon yourself our curse, our sin.

So that not only could we come to you, but that you would come to live with us, to be in us.

What a privilege it is to make you the focus of all that we are, of all that we do, as individuals who follow you, and as a body of believers, a fellowship of believers who gather together to sing your praises.

May you be pleased by what we say, by what we do, by the thoughts and intents of our heart, because we love you.

Amen.

That concludes this sermon from Faith Evangelical Free Church.

Our mission is to declare the Word of God and disciple believers into mature, devoted followers of Jesus.

You can learn more by visiting our website at faithfree.com.