"The House That Jesus Built" Matthew 21:12-17 Sunday Morning Worship Service

Matthew chapter 21, verse 12.

Matthew 21:12

Jesus entered the temple and drove out all who sold and bought in the temple.

He overturned the tables of the money changers and the seats of those who sold pigeons.

He said to them, It is written, My house shall be called a house of prayer.

But you make it into a den of robbers.

And the blind and the lame came to him in the temple.

And Jesus said to them, Yes.

Have you never read, out of the mouths of infants and nursing babies, you have prepared praise.

This is the word of God, and I do pray that he would seal it into your hearts.

Jesus entered the temple on this Monday of Passover week, and it is such a change from Sunday, from yesterday.

We studied the passage last week where he's entering Jerusalem for the first time in Matthew's gospel.

He's been doing ministry in Galilee and in Lebanon and Syria.

This is his first time entering Jerusalem.

Jerusalem is the city that the Lord chose to place his name, where the Lord said that he would meet with people.

Now we know he's been to Jerusalem other times in his life.

John records those, but in Matthew's gospel, this is in a sense his grand entrance.

Jerusalem was the place where God said he would meet with mankind, where Abraham walked three days away and went up onto the mountain and was about to sacrifice his son Isaac, and God stopped the knife and said that he would one day provide a substitute at that same place.

That is the place that David bought as the threshing floor to build the temple.

That is the place where Solomon built the temple and said, the nations will come and will meet with God here in this place.

That is the place where the Spirit of God filled the temple.

And so for hundreds of years, God dwelt on earth with mankind through his spirit in the temple.

And if anyone from any nation anywhere in the world wanted to have an encounter with the living God, they could go to Jerusalem and they could worship God in his temple where his spirit dwelt with man.

This is Jerusalem.

That didn't last forever.

Eventually the temple was torn down about 500 years before Jesus' life, 600 years.

It was torn stone by stone.

The Israelites were taken into exile.

Then they come back and they rebuild the shell of a temple.

This is under Ezra and Nehemiah, Haggai.

And then Herod comes and makes the temple bigger and better and stronger, massive, so that God could meet with his people there.

That's what's going on.

What takes place in the temple is the sacrificial system.

What takes place there is people offer a lamb.

God says that without the shedding of blood, there can be no forgiveness of sin.

This goes back to the Garden of Eden, when Adam and Eve sinned against God.

They were thrown out of the garden.

But God immediately killed an animal and covered their sin and told them that they can approach him through sacrifice.

They are now stained with sin, but their sin can be atoned for, covered by God through the shedding of blood.

He told Cain and Abel that.

Remember, Cain chose to approach God by bringing a grain offering instead.

Then God rejected his offering.

Abel brought an animal sacrifice.

God received his offering.

Cain was angry.

God told Cain, I've told you what's required of you.

A sacrifice for sin, a sin offering.

It's crouching next to you.

Take it and offer it.

And of course, Cain rejected that.

And instead offered his brother, murdering his brother.

This is the place that God designed for people to bring their sacrifices to him to approach him in worship.

The sacrificial demand is before the Torah.

It's before the law.

It's not only for Jews, it is for Jew and Gentile.

Before the law was given, Noah offered sacrifices.

But long before Noah, Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel knew that to approach God it had to be through sacrifices.

That's what's happening here.

And of course, the biggest week of the year is the Passover week.

This is the week that Jesus arrives in Jerusalem.

Now last week we looked at him coming onto the top of the Mount of Olives, where he weeps over Jerusalem for their unbelief.

He then walks down the Mount of Olives, which is, you know, not that long of a walk, 30 minutes max.

It is lined with people who are cheering for him and waving the palm branches and shouting, Hosanna in the highest, Hosanna is the son of David, which just means God saves us.

They're recognizing Jesus is the Messiah.

But then it had a very anticlimatic twist at the end, didn't it?

That Jesus goes down and enters the temple.

But it's closing time.

People are packing up and going home.

It's like walking into Target right at closing time.

Everyone looks at you like, what no, you can't buy anything.

And Jesus goes two miles away to Bethany, where he's staying all passionately.

So all that pomp and circumstance, all the ceremony, all the cheering and shouting, the grand triumphal entry.

He walks in and looks around and goes home.

This passage picks up on Monday.

The next morning.

This time Jesus gets up early before the crowds are up and walks back to Jerusalem.

Mark tells us he only brought the twelve with him.

So he has his disciples in tow.

He makes a two-mile walk back.

There's no roads lined with palm branches today.

He walks into the temple at probably the busiest day of the year in the temple.

The crowds from outside are not up, but Jerusalem is alive and buzzing.

Jerusalem's population this week grows from 35,000 to close to a million people, historians tell us.

This week are in Jerusalem or the surrounding area.

It's such a small town, 35,000, booming to a million people.

Josephus, the early church historian, says in Passion Week, they would often sacrifice 260,000 lambs that week.

One per family.

Again, this place is insanely crowded and alive with people.

The Passover lamb comes back from the time the Israelites were in Egypt, where God was going to deliver from Egypt, and he sends the angel of death who kills the firstborn in every household, but passes over the Jewish households.

If they sacrificed a lamb and rub the blood of the lamb on the doorpost, the angel of death passed by.

So it becomes inscribed in the Torah, the Jewish law, that every year they will offer a lamb to remember how God passed over them.

The lamb would come into their house and spend a couple months in the house with the family.

The kids would know the lamb.

They would name the lamb.

Oftentimes the lamb would be sacrificed at home.

They would do this every year.

And the father would bring the kids around and explain to the kids the Passover story how they deserve to die for their sin, but God does not kill the family.

He does not kill the kids in the family.

He passes over their sin through the blood of this lamb.

The innocent lamb that had not sinned against God will have his throat slit.

The father would then slit the throat of the lamb, bleed it out in front of the kids.

I mean, this is horrific.

That happens every year.

But many Jews will travel to Jerusalem and offer their lamb in the temple instead of in their home.

They didn't have to do it.

But most do.

Maybe they don't do it every year, but as often as they can, and they travel from around the empire.

From Rome and Asia Minor, Turkey, from Egypt.

They funnel into Jerusalem to offer their sacrifices.

But over time, this is what developed.

The law also commands that the lamb that is sacrificed be an unblemished lamb.

There be no defect with it.

Now I'm sure you understand this.

The category of unblemished is a little bit subjective.

It's a little bit arbitrary.

Who decides if the lamb that you just drug with you from Egypt is indeed an unblemished lamb?

Well, the priests.

And this creates some conflict.

Maybe the lamb was unblemished when it left Egypt, but now maybe its ear got bit in transit and it's missing a piece of its ear.

Maybe it hurt its leg.

Who knows?

And so it was common for the priest to reject a sacrifice and say no.

Fortunately, to help you out, they have certified unblemished lambs right here for sale.

They'll do a little trade, even.

There's a fee, of course, for the trade, a transaction fee.

It's a convenience fee, they would call it.

Probably hundreds of dollars.

The other catch is you had to pay that fee in a specific coin, the tire shekel, which is a Roman coin.

It's not a uniquely Jewish coin.

It's a coin in circulation in the Roman Empire.

It's the only coin in the Roman system that doesn't have an image on it.

There's no image of a king or a leader on it.

The Jews would only use that in the temple because the Jews understood any coin with an image, an image on the coin was a violation of the second commandment, not to make an image of anything in heaven or on earth.

So they would use the normal coins for grocery shopping and to pay their taxes and all of that.

But when it came to offering something in the temple, especially during Passion Week, they would only use the tire currency.

You wouldn't have that.

It would be like the American equivalent of saying, you know, to buy something at this store, you have to only use a$2 bill.

Alright?

That's legal currency, but it takes a little work to get it.

And so people would bring their sheep from wherever in the world they're coming from, and they would bring their money and they would exchange the sheep at the temple for the certified, unblemished sheep.

And to pay for that, they would first need to exchange their money into the tire shekel.

There's a transaction fee for that, of course, also.

And so it's massive amounts of money changing, massive amounts of animal changing.

And of course, the Old Testament does not require everybody to do a lamb.

If you cannot afford a lamb, you can offer a pigeon, a turtle dove.

Which are free.

I mean, you just have to catch them.

They're everywhere.

And some of those birds are fat, they're not hard to catch.

The Jews were pretty good at catching them.

They have nets, and you can toss them on top of these chubby pigeons, and boom, there you have your offering.

And you would bring that to the temple.

But the pigeon you offer also has to be unblemished.

And I don't know what can be wrong with the pigeon.

His wing is bent from the net you used to catch it or whatever.

And so they would mandate that you only use the pigeons that you purchase in the temple.

So again, you would trade your pigeon or buy your pigeon.

And so the temple area is filled with people exchanging livestock.

This week, 200,000 plus lambs.

Birds everywhere in cages for sale.

Money changing happening all over the place.

This is taking place in the court of the Gentiles.

The Court of the Gentiles is the largest part of the temple.

It was huge.

35 acres is what I read.

I don't know what an acre is, so let me translate it into English.

You could fit the entire RFK stadium in the court of the Gentiles.

Not just the grass, the whole stadium structure would fit there.

It's huge.

Huge.

So don't picture a few food trucks lined up and people, you know, swapping out pigeons with change.

Picture a massive bazaar with a hundred thousand people crammed in it at one time, buying and selling, and animals everywhere, and all of that.

That's the scene.

The court of the Gentiles filled with this.

So on Monday, Jesus walks in to that court.

He's not pleased.

Verse 12, he entered the temple and drove out everyone who sold and bought in the temple.

He overturned the tables of the money changers.

They didn't have cash registers, they had these tables with coins stacked up on them, massive amounts of currency.

It was secure.

There was a tunnel from the court of the Gentiles over to the Roman barracks.

Soldiers can be there in an instant.

Nobody's going to go in there and steal money, and so the tables are covered with money.

Jesus comes in and starts flipping the tables over.

Coins everywhere.

Why didn't the police come for him?

Well, we're going to find out in a few weeks.

Matthew lets you know why they don't, but we'll save that for a few weeks from now.

He then is turning out the people who are buying and selling the doves, turning over the seats of them.

It's an image of him unlocking the cages and the birds going everywhere.

The birds can still fly.

Maybe you're a bird that got caught like three days ago and find yourself boxing in the temple court.

You're out of there.

The first chance you get.

That bird is flying back to Egypt.

So that's what takes place.

Jesus walks in, he's got the whip with him, of course, the other gospels tell us, driving out the animals.

And he's not.

Jesus, lowly, gentle, meek and mild Jesus, did not wake up this morning in Bethany.

The Jesus with the whip woke up this morning.

He knows how to drive animals, not like kids at a petting zoo, like with grain and hair sheep trying to get them over to you.

More like the owner of the petting zoo who just kicks them into the truck.

That's Jesus with the whip, driving the animals out one gate, letting all the birds free, knocking over all the tables with money on it, change everywhere, birds everywhere, animals everywhere.

It's an insane scene.

You misunderstand what is wrong with the temple of Jesus' lifetime if you think the issue was the exchange rate.

I've heard people say things like Jesus was upset over the interest charge on the transaction, as if it would be okay if it was an even change bird for bird.

It's not that.

Certainly they were corrupt, of course.

I've been in an airport where you send your stuff to the security in a clear plastic bag, but they tell you no, not the secure plastic bag that Americans bring from home, not the Ziploc bag.

You have to buy one of their plastic bags for a low price of$9.99, and that can go through the X-ray machine.

That's lame.

It's not that that's what was happening here.

It's not just that the price of the pigeons was too high.

It's that the whole system is broken.

The system was designed to allow the nations of the world to come to God.

It's been exchanged with controlling access to God for money.

For controlling access to God for their structure.

Jesus is as mad at the sellers as he is at the buyers.

Notice what verse 12 says.

So you misunderstand this if you think the people who are buying are the victims here.

They may be being victimized, but they're not innocent victims.

The same thing will be true two days from now.

When the woman comes, the widow comes and puts her last mite in.

Sometimes people think, oh, she is the innocent victim who's being exploited.

Well, she is a victim and she is being exploited, but she stands condemned as well as the whole system.

It's not that she is innocent and the system is bad.

It's the whole thing is condemned, including the participants in it.

Yes, it is sad, the widows are being fleeced.

Yes, it is sad, the Gentiles are being turned away.

But the hard issue is that the whole system is corrupt.

The idea that you can buy access to God, forget the exchange rate, the idea that you need to pay to get access to God, that's what Jesus rebukes, including those who think that they can buy it.

The buyers and sellers are all condemned.

And he drives them all out.

And then he responds with this verse 13.

It is written, my house shall be called a house of prayer.

This is the question that's raised.

Whose house is this?

And Jesus says, it is written, my house.

Now, he's not speaking just as like a Jew with a noble stake in what's happening in the temple.

I've read those who have argued that.

I mean, this week there's been all kinds of lawsuits in DC between people suing Trump over the reflecting pond and somebody sued over the UFC fighting cage that apparently is in the White House lawn.

I haven't seen it, but I've heard about it.

And the basis of the lawsuit is they these people claim aesthetic suffering, aesthetic damage.

Like they uh one guy goes for walks along the monument, and it's aesthetically harming to him to see the water go from bluish green to greenish blue or whichever way the change went, I don't know.

Or it's disrupting the skyline view with the, you know.

Is that what he's claiming, Jesus, here?

That as a member of the Israelite society, what's happening in the temple is not aesthetically pleasing to him?

No.

It's more than that.

He's not driving them out as a member of the line of the tribe of Judah, born in Bethlehem, lived in Nazareth from Galilee here for Passover week, so he has a right to object to it.

That's not his basis here.

He is objecting to it because he says it is his house.

He says, it is my house.

He doesn't say, have you not read where God says this is his house?

No, he says, have you not read it, this is my house.

My house shall be called a house of prayer.

It's his.

It predates the law.

It predates the law.

It's supposed to be a place where the Gentiles can come in and worship God.

When Solomon built the temple and dedicated it, he prayed and he said, One day the nations will come.

Those who are called by my name will come and turn their face towards this place when they pray.

That's why Daniel opens the window and prays towards Jerusalem.

And those who are not of my people Israel, they too can come to this place, Solomon says, and have an encounter with God right here.

That's the court of the Gentiles.

It's that court that is filled with the money changers.

It's that court Jesus goes to.

The idea that you could approach God through sacrifice from anywhere in the world was true, as I mentioned, the command to sacrifice goes back to Adam and Eve.

It predates the law.

When they get kicked out of the garden, people grope around in the dark trying to find a way back to God, and God builds a giant temple in Jerusalem and invites them all to come there.

He gives them a court, a Gentile court.

Isaiah describes this, Isaiah chapter 56.

Isaiah 56 · chapter mention

I know it's small font, I'll read it for you.

Isaiah 56, verse 3.

Isaiah 56:3

No foreigner who is converted to Yahweh should ever say, Yahweh will exclude me from his people.

The eunuch should never say, Look, I'm a dried-up tree, which is a word play in Hebrew that actually works pretty well in English.

Because Yahweh says this, for the eunuchs who keep my Sabbath and choose what pleases me and hold firmly to my covenant, I will give them in my house and within my walls a memorial and a name better than sons and daughters.

I will give each of them an everlasting name that will never be cut off.

That phrase, I'm going to give them a place to come to me better than the one given to Israel.

The idea is that Gentiles big, Israel small, court of the Gentiles huge, Israel's court small.

He says, I will give them access and this outer court through an everlasting name that will never be cut off.

By the way, that phrase is repeated in Revelation as a reward for those who endure in faith through Christ.

They'll be given a new name that will never be taken away.

Verse 6, the foreigners who convert to Yahweh minister to him, who love Yahweh's name and are his servants, who keep the Sabbath without desecrating it, who hold firmly to my covenant.

This is the crux of the passage Jesus quotes from.

I will bring them to my holy mountain.

That's Mount Zion.

That's the temple.

I will let them rejoice in my house of prayer.

Their burnt offerings and sacrifices will be acceptable on my altar.

My house will be called a prayer for all nations.

That's the promise.

People from every tribe, every nation, every tongue, every language group can go to Israel and worship God right at the place that He chose where His Spirit would dwell.

They would have access to Him.

And what does Jesus find when He shows up?

No access for Gentiles, no room for Gentiles.

It is not a place of prayer.

It is the staging ground for the Jewish sacrifices, completely reversing the whole system.

The system they have was very financially lucrative, of course.

It was a pillar of Jewish society.

As I mentioned, the temple towered over all of Jerusalem.

Herod, the so-called great, the butcher of Bethlehem, when he expanded the shell of a temple that Ezra and Nehemiah built, when Herod expanded it, he made it massive and he entered into a kind of a tacit agreement with the Jewish leaders.

You can have this temple, do your whole system, it's fine.

If you submit to Roman rule everywhere else.

It worked out great.

The Jews got rich and had their temple.

I've told you this before, a few years ago.

I may have shared in the sermon, but the neighbors where Deidre and I live, the house next to us was occupied basically by squatters, people who moved into it.

But they had signed a lease to pay rent, and they paid rent every month, but to somebody who didn't own the house.

And so that guy was getting money, and it was a low rent.

It was, you know, a couple hundred bucks or eight hundred bucks a month for a house that was worth way more than that.

So it was kind of a good deal all around.

Like this family gets a great deal.

Family, not really a family, this group of people, gets a great deal on the house they're renting.

The guy who's renting it to them gets money.

And this goes on, I think, for eight years.

What a great system.

The only thing that could possibly go wrong is if the rightful owner of the house shows up.

Which eventually came in the form of the sheriff's department.

This is sort of what you have going on in Israel.

The temple is alive and buzzing, massive activity.

What a wonderful system.

Everybody's getting rich, and all the Jews get the right animals.

The only thing that could ever possibly go wrong with this is if the rightful owner shows up.

Well, that's what happens.

Jesus walks in and claims that it's his house.

It is his house.

He calls it, instead of a house, it's become his a den of robbers here.

You've made it a den of robbers.

Notice this is a rebuke of both the buyers and the sellers.

You don't go to a den of robbers in order to get robbed, right?

If you walked into a store and had a sign on the wall that said, den of robbers, you would just out.

No, a den is where the robbers go to live.

That's what he's saying.

The buyers and the sellers both have made their home, religiously at least, in this place.

They've turned it into a den of robbers.

And Jesus clears it out.

Whose house is it?

Well, the answer to that question, Jesus proclaims, is even more radical than claiming to be God.

The answer is our house.

Whose house is it?

It is our house.

Notice he drives them all out.

Verse 14, they're replaced.

So I picture the animals going out one gate, and now, verse 14, the blind and the lame are streaming into the temple.

Streaming into the court of the Gentiles, and he's healing them.

So Jesus has already driven illness essentially out of Capernaum, out of Galilee, out of Jericho, out of Tyre and Sidon, out of Lebanon and Syria, Damascus area.

He's gone all around that area with his healing ministry already.

All those who've been brought to him have been healed.

But do you know what?

He has never done that in Jerusalem.

Don't miss the fact that Jesus has healed, in a sense, healed the world before he's healed Jerusalem.

He has done a few healings in Jerusalem before, both of which got everybody in trouble.

Remember, he healed the blind guy by spitting and making mud.

The blind guy gets in trouble.

For because the mud was made on the Sabbath.

He heals the lame guy who was next to the fountain.

That fountain, by the way, is right next to the temple.

Surrounded with lame beggars.

They can't move.

They're hoping somebody sets them in the water when an angel touches the water, or whatever the story was.

That was the idea.

Jesus healed one guy there, one.

And they arrested him because he carried his mat on the Sabbath.

Now there's untold numbers of the blind, untold numbers of the lame people being carried streaming into the temple court.

And he's healing all of them.

This is very different than the first time he cleansed the temple.

Remember the first time in John 2 he cleansed the temple, people didn't know who he was.

Nicodemus came in tonight and was like, who are you?

Not this time.

This time he cleanses the temple, and the blind and the lame and the children are flooding in.

Thousands, if not tens of thousands, of people pouring in to see Jesus.

They all know who he is.

They're chanting what they chanted yesterday.

Hosanna, Hosanna, Hosanna is the son of David.

Lord, save us, save us now, save us, son of David.

That's the chant.

Notice in verse 15, it says they're crying out.

It's this imperfect tense over and over and over again.

It's more of a chant.

Hosanna, Hosanna, Hosanna, as he's healing everybody.

What a rauco scene.

Animals everywhere, birds everywhere, money everywhere.

Blind and lame and children would chant Hosanna, Hosanna, Hosanna.

Nothing like this has ever happened before.

Son of David, the crowd is chanting of.

That's the messianic title.

That is the promise given to David in 2 Samuel 7, repeated in Psalm 89, that a descendant of David would build God's house.

But not only, if you look carefully, would he build God's house, he would also be God's house.

He would build it and be it.

How can he both build it and be it?

It's a great mystery until you get to Christ.

And so here he is, and the crowds recognizing it.

This is the Son of David.

The house of David had fallen when the temple was destroyed, and now it is being built up in Jesus Christ.

The first time Jesus did this to the temple, he said, I can tear down the whole thing, and three days later it'll be built back up again.

And he was speaking about his own body.

They didn't get that.

Tear it down and he will build it back up.

He is the temple.

Now, I love this.

This massive chanting, the massive singing.

It says in verse 15, the scribes and the chief priests were indignant.

Notice, I love how Matthew wrote this.

Notice Matthew in verse 15 says, They saw the wonderful things Jesus did and the children worshiping, and they were indignant.

You never want that said after you're like, that guy was doing amazing things, and these other people were so mad at it.

Jesus was healing everyone, and the Pharisees were super mad.

Big mad.

And Jesus responded to that.

Well, look at the first of all, their question is hilarious in verse 16.

The chanting and the cheering and the whole scene.

And they say to Jesus, Do you hear what they're saying?

That's funny.

A crowd of tens of thousands chanting to Jesus.

And the question is, Do you hear that?

What do you want Jesus to say?

Yeah, he hears it.

Jesus responds with a question, and there's a whole genre of this question.

They're my favorite Jesus questions, where he asks the scribes and Pharisees a question about their law that he starts with, Have you never read?

These scribes have the law memorized.

They know how many words are in every scroll of the Old Testament, okay?

They know the law.

They know how many words are in the line of every scroll.

They know the law.

And so when Jesus asks, have you never read, and follows it, not with some obscure passage somewhere, but from a monumental passage, it's it's meant sarcastic.

It's funny.

Nice religious degree you have.

Have you never read Psalm 8?

Psalm 8 is not an obscure psalm.

I mean, maybe it is to some of us, but it is one of the most important Old Testament Psalms.

If you were to rank the Old Testament Psalms by importance, I would put Psalm 8 in the top five for sure.

It is not an obscure passage.

This would be like going up to a preacher, a Christian preacher after he preaches and saying, nice sermon.

Have you ever heard of John 3.16?

That's what Jesus is doing here with the scribes.

Jesus, do you hear what they're saying?

Have you, forget hearing, have you even read Psalm 8?

Now this is Psalm 8.

What is man that you're mindful of him?

What is a son of man that you take notice of him?

People are so small.

People are so sick and frail and finite.

Why does God even take notice of us?

We're so far beneath him.

I would understand angels.

Angels go to and fro in front of God's presence all the time.

They do his will.

They're right in front of him.

They're worshiping at his throne.

Of course, God sees the angels.

Why would God stoop to look at mankind?

I read a book recently by an astronaut who spent more time in space than any other person on the space station, and just this passage I can't get out of my mind.

He describes one day in the space station going around and Africa was totally cloudless.

In front of him, he could see all of Africa at once.

The whole continent.

And he just let his mind go and he imagined how many countries are at war.

How many families are at war?

How many interpersonal conflict?

Families fighting families, and people die unexpectedly, people betray, like all of the interpersonal conflict and the national conflict in this continent, and it's in front of him in a moment.

And then a minute later it's gone.

The whole continent is just gone.

He's over the ocean.

It's in front of him all at once, and then He says, if you haven't had that experience, you don't understand how it messes with your mind.

How important people are to themselves, and how small and insignificant they are.

And Psalm 8 says, What is man that you're mindful of him, that God would care about us at all, and then he makes us lower than the angels, and then it says he puts the oxen and sheep under our feet so we can rule them, which I take as an image of sacrifice.

There's ten reasons Psalm 8 says that, but one of them is so that it could be quoted by Jesus in the temple while all the animals are running this way and that.

And then he says, Yet you have crowned man with dignity and praise.

You have decreed.

This is the passage that he quotes right here, out of the mouths of infants and nursing babies you prepared praise.

It's all of the weak people that are there.

This is what it means when the scripture says Jesus is gentle and lowly.

He comes to those who are weak and low.

He comes to the children who are lost.

He comes to the people who are losing their fights against cancer.

He comes to the people whose marriages are a wreck, whose kids won't talk to them, whose spouse won't talk to them.

He comes to the people that are lame and forgotten, been piled up by a fountain for years waiting for some kind of healing.

That's who he's coming to.

We sometimes switch it and think that the those who are strong and powerful and successful and get the promotion and all that have the happy family.

Those are the people that are closer to the Lord.

But the scripture says the Lord is near to the brokenhearted.

He is closer in a sense to the lame and the blind and the children and the broken and the lost than he is to the centurion and the generals and the governor.

When the scripture says he's gentle and lowly, it doesn't mean he doesn't take a whip.

It doesn't mean he doesn't turn over tables and yell at people and let all the birds go.

When the scripture says he's gentle and lowly, it means he comes to the brokenhearted.

Children were made in God's image, and the Lord is near to them.

And he is near to us in our failures and in our suffering and in our trials.

That is when we have the closest and most rich experience to the Lord.

That is being acted out in the temple of the court of the Gentiles, right here.

And of course, they don't perceive this at all.

They're gonna kill him four days later.

Largely for this.

He shut down the temple court on the busiest day of the year, like closing a shopping mall on Black Friday.

He does it in judgment on them.

Two days from now, he's gonna stand and overlook the temple when the widow puts in her coin and say, Every one of these bricks is coming down.

God is going to judge this place and tear it stone from stone.

And that happens.

They kill Jesus, put him in a grave, he resurrects three days later, 30 or 40 years later, they tear the temple down brick by brick out of God's judgment.

You can go to Jerusalem today, and you can go on what they call a temple mount tour.

You go in a tunnel underground along the mount that the temple was built on, and the temple, the tunnel winds to and fro, and eventually you get to one stone, and they used to say, this is the stone, this is a stone that was used in the temple.

They still won here.

Now they've updated the sign, and it says historians are divided if the stone was used in the temple, or maybe it was rejected by the builders.

We don't know.

Which makes it even funnier.

That's what's left.

One stone, you buy a ticket to go in a tunnel underground for 30 minutes to see all that is left of what the temple used to be.

That's how severely God judged this place.

He ripped the place down brick by brick.

But is the promise that the people of the world can still meet with God alive and well?

And the answer is yes.

You still go to his temple, but how?

It's not in Jerusalem anymore.

The body of Christ is the temple.

He resurrected from the grave on the third day.

All the nations come in Acts chapter 2.

Acts 2 · chapter mention

A few months after his resurrection, all the nations come to in Acts 2 to worship at the temple.

Only now they don't need to buy their sacrifice.

Now they put their faith in Christ as a sacrifice.

People from every tribe, every language place their faith in Jesus Christ, and they are baptized into his body.

Through faith, you have a spiritual union with Christ.

Through baptism, you are joined to his body.

From every nation, every tribe, every language group, every people group, there is one body.

There's no court of the Gentiles.

The church now is the body of Christ where everyone is invited.

The blind are welcome, the lame are welcome, the children are welcome, Gentiles are welcome, most of all, sinners are welcome.

Because the house that Jesus builds is not a renewed temple.

The house that he builds is his own body, his church.

The temple Jesus cleansed here, like I said, 40 years it's gone.

But the promise remains that you have access to God through the sacrifice of Christ being joined to him in the body of Christ.

What remains is the church.

This is the gathering place of God's people.

When everything is stripped away, all the ministries, all the staff, the parking, the pews, the coffee, the ABFs, everything about church is stripped away.

But what's left is this command.

The body of Christ would be a place of prayer, a place of worship.

God, we're grateful that you've given us access to heaven through your Son.

He is a sacrifice.

We worship from Him, to Him, through Him, for Him.

He gave His life so that we can approach you.

He is the temple of God.

Torn down, three days later, resurrected.

We are joined to Him through faith and baptism.

Thankful for the promise of worship and prayer that transcends the centuries.

Your house is indeed open to all people.

I pray for anyone here today that has never come to you in faith.

I pray it'd say that their hearts would be softened, that the truth of the gospel would penetrate them.

And they would join themselves to your people through faith.

It's in his name we pray.

Amen.

And now, for a parting word for Pastor Jesse Johnson.

If you have any questions about what you heard today, or if you want to learn more about what it means to follow Christ, please visit our church website, ibc.church.

If you want more information about the Master Seminary or our location here in Washington, D.C., please go to tms.edu.

Now, if you're not a member of a local church and you live in the Washington, D.C.

area, we'd love to have you worship with us here at Emmanuel.

I hope to personally meet you this Sunday after our service.

But no matter where you live, it's our hope that everyone who uses this resource is involved in their own local church.

Now may God bless you this week as you seek Jesus constantly, serve the Lord faithfully, and share the gospel boldly.