Cleanse the Temple

Thank you all for being here to worship the Lord on this Palm Sunday.

Um Palm Sunday was the day that Jesus famously entered Jerusalem on a donkey, and he was lowly and he was contrite and he was uh seen as not very significant and very mild.

But today we're gonna be looking at a different event.

In fact, the very next day on a Monday, they caught it, call it Mahdi Monday traditionally, where Jesus does something uh very different, in fact, standing in great contrast to the lowly, meek, and mild Messiah he was on Sunday.

We want to thank you for being here and for coming to worship the Lord.

I wonder how many of you have started spring cleaning yet?

Show of hands, any spring cleaning yet?

One, two, three.

Clear minority.

Okay, I I can identify with that.

Um I uh I kind of start twitching a little bit when I start remembering the spring cleaning days back when I was a kid.

Um my mom would throw away so much stuff and give away so much stuff, I always worried I was next.

And uh so I would try to, you know, look busy, avoid eye contact, try to demonstrate my continued value to the family, and hopefully survive another year.

The events of Matthew chapter 21, verses 12 through 17 uh happened on a spring morning in Jerusalem, some 2,000 years ago.

Matthew 21:12–17

And we'll be exploring this text together this morning, in which Jesus does one of the most famous events of his entire ministry, a spring cleaning of sorts, where he cleanses the temple at Jerusalem.

Passover week in Jerusalem was an incredibly busy time of year for the Jews.

Whereas there was only about 25,000 people in the time of Jesus that lived in Jerusalem and made it their home.

Um, during Passover week, uh, Passover week was sort of like a Mecca for the Jews.

They would all go to Jerusalem.

Between 200,000 and 1 million Jews would descend upon Jerusalem to celebrate the Passover.

And so when Jesus uh came into Jerusalem on a donkey, it talked about the crowds.

There were some crowds.

Between 200,000 and a million people in Jerusalem, shoulder to shoulder, walking through the streets and experiencing all that Judaism had to offer during Passover week.

And they would cry out, Hosanna to the son of David.

But it was still just that busy at the temple.

The temple was the centerpiece of Passover, and Jesus on Monday morning makes a beeline from Bethany where he was staying, into the city of Jerusalem, to the temple, up the mount, into the temple, and there he begins cleaning house.

We read in chapter 21 of Matthew in verses 12 and 13 this.

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

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

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

We should ask, what made Jesus so incensed in his soul that he would go into the temple and make such a scene, such a spectacle at this hallowed time of year for the Jews and for Jesus himself?

And the answer is in Jesus' critique of them.

He said that they had taken what was supposed to be holy and what was supposed to be an act of worship to God, and they had made all the rituals around this Passover basically like a den of robbers.

Can you imagine like the getaway car goes and it pulls up some nondescript house and that's where all the thieves are hanging out?

That's what they had turned the temple into by their false worship.

Several points in this passage kind of let us know why Jesus was so angry at what they were doing.

The term money changers stands out.

The money changers were those who were hired by the temple to take currency.

There was lots of different types of currency at the time, and they would exchange currency into the temple currency, which was the Tyrian shekel fabricated in uh the port city of Tyre.

It was what they had adopted as their official currency, and they wouldn't accept temple tax, they wouldn't accept gifts of money unless it was exchanged.

And of course, when they exchanged it, the exchange rate was very high, and they capitalized on making money off of all these worshipers that had come to Jerusalem.

They had turned worship into a sort of profiteering racket.

Another clue in these verses that we read is the word pigeons.

He was, they were selling pigeons.

He went to the booths where they were selling pigeons and he threw the crates and he overturned the chairs.

You see, the pigeon sellers were people who sold to the poor.

Because during Passover, it was the custom, according to God's command, that you would bring a lamb without spot and blemish to sacrifice for your family.

A lamb.

Because that's what they did during the Passover in Exodus chapter 12.

Exodus 12 · chapter mention

But those who were so poor they couldn't afford a lamb, God allowed a provision in the book of Leviticus that they could offer pigeons or doves.

And these pigeon sellers were marking up the price, some would estimate up to 15 times the cost that they could have got them outside the temple.

Now they were allowed to bring in their pigeons in from the outside, but of course there were temple inspectors that would look the birds over and say, Ah, nope, this isn't good enough.

Not here.

But we can direct you over here to these pigeon booths and you can go buy a pigeon that we will accept.

And they were so they were monkey making money coming and going.

And so Jesus was indignant at the commercialization of worship and of the price gouging injustice.

And so if we were to summarize our passage this morning, it would be this the main idea is that when Jesus cleansed the temple, he was cleansing it of false worshipers so that he could fill it with true.

He was cleansing the temple of false worshipers in order to fill it with true worshippers.

And there are three verses in our passage that tells us that this is the case.

The first is verse 13, we'll read it again.

And he said to them, It is written, My house shall be called a house of prayer, but you make it a den of robbers.

In other words, Jesus was removing those who were corrupting temple worship in order to make room for those who would uh want to participate in what the house of God was really for, namely a place of prayer, a place of worship.

He was restoring the priority and purity of prayer in the temple of God.

The next verse is verse 14, where he displaces the false worshippers to make room for the true.

Verse 14 says this, and the blind and the lame came to him, and don't miss this, in the temple, and he healed them.

Those who had not been allowed in the temple as of yet, those who couldn't make it in anyways, because of all the crowds, those who weren't allowed in ceremonially, now could come in the temple because Jesus had cleared the way.

It's significant that whenever Jesus clears out the false worshippers, clears out the propheters, the blind and the lame, the lowly of society are now granted entrance into the temple.

A third uh third part of this passage, verses 15 and 16, also underline this thing that Jesus is not merely cleansing the temple, he's not merely in some kind of angry tirade, he is cleansing the temple of false worshipers to make room for true.

Look in verse 15.

But when the chief priests and scribes saw the wonderful things that he did, that is healing the lame and the blind, and the children crying out, In the temple, there's children there too.

What are they crying out?

Hosanna, the son of David, they, the scribes and priests, were indignant.

And they said to him, Do you not hear what these are saying?

And Jesus said to them, Yes, but have you never read, out of the mouth of infants and nursing babes, you have prepared praise.

So not only were the lame and the blind approaching Jesus, but another group of society that wasn't really typically allowed in the temple, children were now entering the temple and were worshiping Jesus for what he was doing, crying out, Hosanna, which means Lord save, Hosanna to the Son of David.

They were ascribing to Jesus the messianic, that is, he was Messiah, the son of David, the promised one who had come and was avenging the poor and the true worshippers.

In fact, so loud and public were the children's praise that the scribes and the priests were demanding of Jesus that he silence them.

Because apparently they couldn't.

I'm sure they were trying, shoeing the kids away, and it wasn't working.

So they were like, Jesus, do something about this.

He says, No, they're fulfilling scripture.

Matthew paints two contrasts in our passage here today that I don't want us to miss.

And maybe you already noticed.

He paints first a contrast between two types of anger.

There's righteous anger and there's unrighteous anger.

You see the anger of Jesus, right?

Jesus went into the temple and we read a similar account, but it was likely a different occasion in John chapter 2, the Gospel of John, at the beginning of Jesus' ministry, where he cleanses the temple there as well, at the beginning and then at the end.

John 2 · chapter mention

And there it specifically says that the zeal for God's house had eaten him up.

He was infuriated that God's house was being perverted.

And so, of course, if Jesus has taken whip in hand and he is scourging probably the animals, not the people, getting the rams and the bulls and all these things that are being sold inside the courtyard of the temple, getting them out of the courtyard to cleanse it, he was doing so in righteous anger.

It wasn't like he was all casual, flip-flops, what up, dudes?

Actually, he probably wasn't wearing flip-flops, but he was angry.

He was yelling, he was screaming out, You have made this place a den of thieves.

But that is contrasted with the anger of the Pharisees or of the scribes and the priests, that it specifically says in Matthew 21, were indignant at the praise of the children, and indignant that Jesus was allowing them to do this, and probably indignant that Jesus had come and overturned the barrel of apples.

But he paints a contrast as well, not just between righteous and unrighteous anger, that is what makes us angry.

Most often our anger is not very righteous.

Our anger is very selfish.

It's when someone touches one of our nerves.

Not whenever people are being harmed or something like that.

We can have righteous anger, but often we have unrighteous anger.

But that's not what this sermon is about.

The true worshipers and the false worshipers.

You see, the false worshipers, the money changers who were just there, hey, 200,000, a million people passing through here.

Yeah, well, we're happy to exchange your money.

We're happy to sell you our wares that have to be approved by our inspectors, but we're gonna make money off you worshipers.

Contrasted with three groups of people the blind, the lame, and the children.

Contrasted between these marginalized groups, we find the religious leaders whom Jesus was rejecting and displacing from the temple.

True versus false worship.

And honestly, if if we're being honest with ourselves, this is our story as well, way too often.

Our story is that our pride prevents our praise.

What you don't find in the chapter is the religious leaders, the most religious of them all, the most devout, if you want to think about it, of them all, you don't find them worshiping Jesus.

You find them angry at Jesus disrupting their traditions, you find them angry at the children worshiping Jesus, you find them angry at the lame and the blind, maybe even getting access into the temple.

Our pride prevents praise.

Prideful anger at Jesus, prideful disdain for the social outcasts worshiping in the temple.

And I wonder with which of these two groups do you identify most this morning?

Is it the blind, the lame, the children, or is it those whose hearts, for whatever reason, had grown cold and hard?

The temple for the priests and the scribes, it had become a means for selfish ends.

They wore their religion like a tattoo.

Looks good on the outside, but it's only skin deep.

It wasn't a matter of their hearts.

Their lips said all the right things, but their hearts weren't sold on God.

They weren't sold on Christ.

They were sold on all the trappings of religion.

And Pastor Justin said this numerous times to us elders.

He said, if there's ever an easy time for someone to set up their own kingdom, it's being a pastor.

You have a little bit of influence, you have some leadership, and if you're ever going to be in the flesh and try to set up your own kingdom, pastoring is the way to go, right?

Unless you fear the Lord.

The fact is, religion, it's innate to religion for us to fall in love with all the trappings.

Think about how beautiful it is when people get together around a common cause.

They do that at football games too.

Think about how beautiful it is when we get together and we serve our communities and we serve one another.

The local Kiwanic club does the same thing.

The local non-Christians, the local Muslim club does the same thing for their people.

There's so many beautiful things that are innate to religion that we can fall in love with without being in love with God.

And without being in love with our Savior Jesus Christ.

And Jesus says in Matthew chapter 15, a couple chapters earlier, he specifically addresses these very religious leaders and he exposes the hardness of their hearts.

Matthew 15 · chapter mention

He says, Well did Isaiah prophesy of you when he said, This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me.

And the consequence is, in vain do they worship me.

And in Luke chapter 19, Luke's version of it, which is extremely similar to Matthew's, he points out a similar contrast.

Luke 19 · chapter mention

And he says explicitly that while the religious leaders were, and I quote, seeking to destroy Jesus after he cleansed the temple, the people, and I quote again, were all hanging on his words.

What a contrast between the religious elite and then the common people coming to worship.

One was seeking to kill Messiah, the other was hanging on his every word.

You may say, you know, I really I'm not one of the religious elite, certainly.

I'm not proud, not even that crazy religious, but I also can't relate to the lame and the blind and even to the children in the text either.

And so by asking earlier which one you identify with, maybe I'm just setting up a false dichotomy.

Maybe there's a third option.

Maybe just sort of lukewarm in the middle, right?

No, I want to insist on this dichotomy.

Because the true people of God in every age are a remnant of people not who have it all together, not who have all their ducks in a row and are proud in their hearts, but those who are rather humble and who hang on God's every word.

God's people are a people who are not blind to their own darkness, who are not ignorant of their own limp, who know their past, who haven't forgot where God delivered them from, who haven't forgotten the pit, we might use some biblical imagery from which God has raised us out of.

A people who still smell the remaining uh stench upon their flesh of their sins and they abhor it.

A people who do not see themselves only as being forgiven and in Christ, but a people who constantly see themselves in continual need for Christ.

A people who feel the frailty of their own forms of weakness in and of themselves, and who are constantly approaching Jesus, as it were, in the temple for more healing and to worship him in response.

Maybe you think I'm over-emphasizing this point.

But I want you to think about the way Matthew is emphasizing it.

Because in Matthew chapter 5, which Matthew records the very first sermon Jesus ever preached, the Sermon on the Mount.

Matthew 5 · chapter mention

Almost the very first words out of Jesus' mouth in the entire New Testament.

Now he did say a few things when he was responding to Satan in temptation, but that was at the beginning of his public ministry.

The very first message Jesus ever gave, recorded by the pen of Matthew, were these words.

Matthew chapter 5 and verse 2.

Matthew 5 · chapter mention

And Jesus opened his mouth and he taught them.

And what is Messiah going to teach us?

Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.

Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.

That's the first half of the famous Eight Beatitudes.

The poor in spirit.

What does that even mean?

I'll tell you one thing it doesn't mean.

It means not proud.

A poverty of spirit where we see ourselves as bankrupt before God, and all we have to offer is our emptiness so he can fill it, and then our praise in response.

What does it mean to mourn?

I'll tell you what it doesn't mean.

It doesn't mean to think little of the sins that we've committed as God.

It means for us to grieve over the ways we sin so that it stimulates our repentance and our coming to Jesus for healing and forgiveness.

What does it mean to be meek?

It means that you're not a braggart.

It means that you don't walk through life, taking life by the horns and saying, I've got this thing, I don't really need God.

Yeah, I might get involved in the trappings of religion because every good, respecting person goes to church occasionally.

No, the meek are the people that fall on their face before God and say, God, I can't do it without you.

What about those who hunger and thirst?

They're thirsting for righteousness.

Oh God, would you make me righteous?

Would you help me to live out what you've required of us?

Would you help me to live out the designs for being a man that you created us for?

Or if I'm a woman, a woman or a child, or the design of heaven for our family and for our marriage and for our church.

Oh God, I hunger for your ways.

But when you see the scribes, the Pharisees, the priests, they were quite the opposite.

You see, the scribes, the reason why they're called scribes is because they wrote for a living.

They wrote manuscript copies of the Old Testament.

They were professional, professional manuscript uh writers.

And uh Xerox, of course, did them out of business a few years ago.

They were known for their exceedingly technical knowledge and commitment to the precise letters and words and grammar and syntax of the Old Testament scriptures.

They would literally, when they would, let's say, if they're writing the book of Isaiah, they would write out the book of Isaiah by hand, and when they got done, they would have some approof read it, they would find the exact middle letter that they had written compared to the text they were copying from.

And if it wasn't the same letter, they would toss it out.

Absolute rigorous detail when it came to the law of God.

And yet God was not impressed with their knowledge of the Bible.

He said, In vain do you worship me, because your hearts are far from me.

The Pharisees, whose very name meant separate ones, were a sect of Jews.

They were the highest of the high in the in the in the echelon of Jewish religion.

And they were known and they were revered for their meticulous attention to the ceremonial laws God had given Israel in the Old Testament.

But God wasn't impressed with them being squeaky clean on the outside.

And what Jesus said later in Matthew 22, the next chapter, he said, inside they were like a grave full of rotting and decaying bones.

He was not impressed with them because their hearts were far from him.

The priests mentioned in our text were respected in society because they mediated the worship of God, of God's people to God.

They sacrificed and offered animals and incense before God, but God was not impressed with the priests because their hearts were far from him.

And so we begin to see a pattern emerge.

And so I ask us today: how close are our hearts to the Lord?

The Old Testament prophets had long before proclaimed that what moves the heart of God is not all the outward trappings of religion.

And let's be clear, God did prescribe the way the Jews were supposed to worship.

We're not throwing the way the Jews were worshiping under the bus because they were doing it because God told them to do it.

What had happened is they had grown content with the trappings, with the specific nuts and bolts of how he wanted to worship them in the Old Testament, and they'd forgotten their first love for God Himself.

Their hearts were cold.

And the Old Testament prophets tell us that God delights in someone who worships from the heart, the humble and the contrite person.

And we see this in Isaiah chapter 66, and there's so many passages we could have looked at.

Isaiah 66 · chapter mention

This is just one of my favorites.

He says, But this is the one to whom I will lick.

This is look, this is God speaking.

He who is humble and contrite in spirit and trembles at my word.

If you want to know where your heart is this morning, do you tremble before the word of God?

Personal testimony.

Sometimes I open my Bible in the morning or evening or whatever, and I open it up and I read, and it's just like words, and I'm thinking about something else, and I read through it, and it's like I didn't get really much out of that.

Close it, go on my way.

Zero trembling.

Where is my heart at that moment?

It's not good, is it?

Jesus told us in Matthew chapter 6 about the heart.

Matthew 6 · chapter mention

He said, Do you want to know where your heart is?

It's where your treasure is.

What's your treasure?

It's what you want most.

Your treasure is what you value most.

And if you're a smart person, your treasure is what you seek the most.

You want to accrue a lot, a lot of treasure, whatever that is.

Time with the grandkids, whether it's finding that spouse, whether it's having children, whether it's building up your social media platform, whether it's money at work, whether it's the pat on the back from the boss, who knows what it is.

Your treasure is what you value the most, what you seek the most, what you want to amass the most.

And Jesus says, where your treasure is, that's where your heart is.

And when Tim Harris's heart is not with God, is not valuing Christ, I open the Bible and it's just empty words to me.

But he says, those who are contrite in spirit and tremble at my word are the ones that God will invite you into his presence.

God will dwell with.

And he says here, he will look.

Don't you want God to look at you?

Remember as a kid, you just wanted your mom or dad to look at you, you'd say, Mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom.

If you have kids, you're living there, right?

Your kid just wants you to look at them, to pay them attention, to smile at them, to hear what's going on, especially if they're hurting with a skin knee.

If you just didn't even look at your kid, that would devastate them.

Oh God, would you look upon me?

Would you look upon me in favor?

Would you look upon me and smile upon my life?

And God says, here's the person I'll look at.

Those who tremble at my word.

So we see that pride prevents praise.

We cannot simultaneously be proud in our hearts and be humble before God in praise.

Another side of our story, we like to do these dichotomies here at Sacred Mission because I might have just hit half of you, right?

Well, I'm gonna hit the rest of you.

Secondly, our story is that fear forfeits faith.

Some of us aren't walking around in all this pride necessarily.

We're kind of on the other end of the spectrum.

We see this in verse 14 with the reference to the blind and the lame that came to him in the temple.

Because don't you see a stark contrast between those who had it all together?

I mean, everyone was looking up to these Pharisees and these scribes and these priests.

They were the God's people, right?

They were God's men.

But they really weren't.

But the commoners and then the lowest of the low, the blind and the lame, who you know what they did for a living?

They begged alms.

We see them in verse 14 coming to Jesus in the temple, other end of the spectrum.

There's a backstory to the story of the blind and the lame that I think that I think Matthew is tapping into.

Jerusalem was known as the city of David, right?

Well, what was Jerusalem before David?

It was a city in Israel that was ruled by a people group called the Jebuzites.

And whenever David had been ruling in Hebron for I think seven years, he loved the city of Jerusalem because it was kind of a high, exalted place.

It was sort of a fortress in and of its own in its own right because it was on a hill.

And he was like, I want that city.

And the Jebuzites apparently weren't uh weren't playing ball with him.

And so he goes up against it and he besieges the city, and the Jebuzites mock him and they say, You're not getting in here.

I'll read the passage for you.

This is what they say to him.

David the king and his men went to Jerusalem against the Jebusites, and they said to David, Ha, you will not come up in here, but the blind and the lame will ward you off.

Thinking, David's not gonna be able to make it in here.

Nevertheless, David took the stronghold of Zion, and David said on that day to his own men, Whoever would strike the Jebusites, let him get up the watershaft, which may have been the only weak and vulnerable part of the city, to attack, and he quotes, the lame and the blind, who are hated by David's soul.

Now was David really talking about the David, the lame and the blind?

No.

He was responding to their insult.

They said, You guys are so weak, even the lame and the blind could defend this place.

And so David says, Okay, we're gonna go kill some lame and blind people.

But his little off-the-cuff remark had continued ramification socially, and so we read this Therefore it is said, the blind and the lame shall not come into the house.

From that day forward, there was a stigma on the blind and the lame in Jerusalem.

This was also a carryover from Levitical Laws the blind and the lame, and those who had an obvious physical abnormality weren't allowed into the tabernacle, they weren't allowed into the temple.

And David's scenario here at the onset of the capture of Jerusalem reinforced that stigma.

But what do we see Matthew talking about?

After Jesus cleanses the temple, cleanses the temple that sits on top of Mount Zion, you find the lame and the blind coming to Jesus.

So whenever Jesus accepts the lame and the blind into the temple, it is signaling for us, as Matthew does numerous times throughout his gospel, a pivoting of redemptive history of how God relates to humankind through his son Jesus, who is the true and better King David, who doesn't hate the blind and the lame, but who loves them, who invites them into his presence, and who mediates the presence of God for them as they approach him in worship and faith.

Now, in contrast to the proud religious types in our text, some of you may actually this morning be living under a cloud of guilt and shame.

And instead of your sins being something that maybe the religious leaders would overlook them and say, Yeah, I'm such a good guy.

Yeah, I did that, but who cares?

I'm forgiven.

The other end of the spectrum are your sins consume you.

And you can't stop thinking about how horrible a person you are.

So much so that it's hard for you even to relate to God because you feel like he's always angry at you.

Maybe you come to work to come to church and all you can think of is how you're just not worshiping enough, how your heart's just not feeling enough, how other people seem to be so much further along than you.

That's like the lame and the blind, isn't it?

What a relief it is to see in the Old Testament scriptures that they anticipated Messiah coming and being the avenger of those who were so weakened of themselves, who weren't on the side of the spectrum where they were arrogant and self-willed.

They were those who felt themselves too weak, too inadequate, too deformed to even come into God's presence.

We read in Isaiah chapter 35, say to those who have an anxious heart, be strong.

Isaiah 35 · chapter mention

Do not fear.

Behold, your God will come with vengeance, with the recompense of God.

He will come and he will save you.

That's Hosanna.

When then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped, then shall the lame man leap like a deer, and the tongue of the mute will sing for joy.

You see, Matthew is weaving in this beautiful literary tapestry that this promise and fulfillment of all these prophecies pointing to Jesus, and here in this single act of cleansing the temple, of proclaiming deliverance to the captives, of healing the lame and the blind, all these things are coming to fruition.

Jesus, the avenger of the fearful, the healer of the broken, who welcomes those who were downtrodden.

Now, before we move on, we need to not forget the children.

The children in this passage are a huge part of Matthew's narrative, and which is not uncommon for Matthew.

Numerous times in Matthew's gospel, he mentions the children.

On one occasion, when Jesus was teaching and all these children started coming to Jesus and they were kind of flocking around him, and it was causing a commotion because kids are kind of loud and uh boisterous.

Maybe they were knocking over little old ladies or something.

The disciples were like, get out of here.

Jesus, tell the kids to leave.

Get these parents to send the kids out.

And Jesus says, No, no, no, no.

I will not send them out.

He says in Matthew 19, 14, let the little children come to me and do not hinder them, for to such belongs the kingdom of God.

We at Sacred Mission, we we love children.

We really do.

Because most of them are our children, right?

You know, you have to love your own kids.

We have uh we have a pretty robust children's ministry, Mission Kids.

We're so excited about, so thankful for it's busting in the seams.

Wonderful things are happening there.

Every week, children are hearing the gospel of Jesus Christ, are getting to pray together.

It's just incredible.

I love serving in mission kids.

We want to disciple our kids from Monday through Saturday and then show up at church on Sunday, and other people get to join in the process.

It's a beautiful, beautiful thing.

But the same was true in Jesus' ministry.

He loved the children.

Matthew had numerous verses that I could have mentioned this morning about the children.

But what we want us to see is that Jesus does not merely allow children into the kingdom.

He doesn't merely allow the lame and the blind into his kingdom.

The lame, the blind, the children, if we're going to speak metaphorically here, they're the only kinds of people in his kingdom.

That is, until a person, until you, until I become morally bankrupt before God, I can't enter the kingdom.

There was a rich, young ruler, had everything.

He was rich, he was young, he had power, he was a ruler.

He had everything you could ever want.

He came to Jesus and said, Jesus, I'm a really religious guy, but but can you just guarantee from me what it would take for me to get into the kingdom, to inherit eternal life?

And Jesus says, Well, what are the commandments?

And he quoted him, and um Jesus said, Well, sure, uh that sounds good.

And he says, Well, I've done all these.

So is there anything else I need to do?

Because I want to guarantee that I'm there.

He had everything else going for him.

He had it all.

Now he just needed eternal life.

And Jesus says, There's only one thing you're lacking.

Sell everything you have and give it to the poor.

Now, some of us think that that's like a universal command.

This is a specific conversation.

Jesus knew this was this guy's weak point.

This was his Achilles' heel.

He was rich, he was young, and he was uh a ruler of the Jews.

And Jesus knew he was in love with his money.

He wasn't just wealthy, he loved his wealth.

He found great security in his wealth and he wouldn't give it away.

And so Jesus says, if you want to have eternal life, and he just touches that nerf, give everything away.

And you know what that young man did?

He turned around sad and he walked away.

Because when he was forced with the choice by Jesus to give up everything you love in this life, in order to have me, he chose his stuff.

Jesus exposed his covetous heart.

Until we ourselves come to see ourselves as bankrupt, surrendering it all to God, we can enter the kingdom.

Here's how.

He's a rich young ruler.

Peter's like, I want to be that guy.

And Jesus just turned him away.

And they said, Who can be saved?

This guy can't be saved.

And Jesus says, I tell you what, it's easier for a camel, this huge camel, to fit through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom.

Why'd he say that?

And when he says rich man, he's talking about someone in love with their wealth.

You can't love God in money, Jesus told us in the Sermon on the Mount.

You can't enter the kingdom until you become bankrupt before God, until you surrender it all.

That might require you selling things.

It certainly requires you surrendering it all to God.

You can't enter the kingdom until you become like a child.

You can't enter the kingdom until you see your blind, until you see your lame.

Micah chapter 4 says this In that day declares the Lord, I will assemble the lame and gather those who have driven, who've been driven away, and those whom I've afflicted, and the lame I will make the remnant.

Micah 4 · chapter mention

Not just I'll add to the remnant, the remnant will be made up of lame people, and those who were cast off, I'll make them a strong nation, and the Lord will reign over them in Mount Zion from this time forth and forevermore.

You see, until we become the lame in our own sight, which is how God sees us, utterly incapable of mounting those steps and getting into the temple without the aid of another, until we see that we're blind and need of healing, we can't enter Christ's kingdom.

Jesus said it another time in Matthew 9 and verse 12 Those who are well don't need a physician.

Do you know you're sick this morning?

If I had the cure for every type of cancer possible in a vial this morning, and I offered it to you, but you thought you didn't have any cancer, would you take it?

You would have no need of it.

You'd be like, that's pretty cool.

You might take it and run with it and go sell it, but I'm talking about something different here.

I'm talking about would you drink it?

Unless you know you have cancer, you don't even go to the doctor, right?

You don't go to the cancer doctor unless you get diagnosed with cancer.

I'm telling you, every single one of us must come to the point where we know we're sick before we can come to the great physician.

Jesus says he's gonna make a strong kingdom of the lame.

Are you lame today, in and of yourself?

Our gospel conviction this morning is that Jesus cleanses us and opens access to God.

He cleanses us and opens access to God.

The cleansing of the temple was a scene of judgment.

This is the final week of Jesus' life.

He's about to go to the cross, just a couple days hence.

And he enters Jerusalem, and one of the last things he wants to do is clean house of all the false worshippers making a mockery of God's word.

It's a scene of judgment.

It predicts, a lot of people would say it predicts 70 AD, which is about 40 years later, when the Romans would besiege Jerusalem and eventually tear down the walls and tear down the temple and kill uh multiple thousands and thousands of Jews.

Because the Jews had had uh they were trying to throw off the yoke of Rome.

Jesus would warn in Matthew chapter 24 about that day.

Matthew 24 · chapter mention

He would say, Everyone was looking at the temple.

Wow, look at the temple.

I think it was 40 years that it took Herod to build the temple.

It's amazing.

It was the pride and joy of the Jews, that temple.

And Jesus says, I tell you what, um, there's people, there are people here right now, hearing my voice, this is what Jesus said, who won't die before they see this place without one stone resting upon another.

Jesus predicted the destruction of the Jewish temple.

40 years before it happened.

But what he was, so whenever he came in the temple and cleansed it, it was a preview of that, but even more so is a preview of the end of the age.

The end of time when all of humanity will be judged, when the avenger of the righteous comes in and cleans house, when the chaos will be driven out, when creation will be renewed and all the people of God will be healed of all that afflicts them.

Here we have, in a very microcosmic kind of way, the money changers and the racketeers and the high and mighty priests and Pharisees and scribes being driven out while the blind, the lame, and the children are brought in.

But in that day, all those who've not come to God by faith, limping on their way, will be driven out.

This is the great coming reversal that Matthew illustrates numerous times in his gospel over and over again, where Jesus said, The last shall be first, and the first shall be last.

Only a few days after Jesus had cleansed the temple on a Monday, the same crowds that had cried out, Hosanna to the Son of David.

He's the prophet of God.

The same crowds would be stirred up, fickle social opinion, right?

Popular opinion is a fickle thing.

You live by it and you die by it.

Jesus didn't live by it, but he did die by it.

Later in that week, Jesus would become a victim of the religious elite, stirring up the people, accusing him of sedition, of blasphemy, telling him he's coming, he's he's the false prophet, he's coming to corrupt the ways that God has given us.

And they stirred the people up so much so that the people would cry out to Pilate, crucify him, crucify him.

And Matthew was an eyewitness of that crucifixion.

There Jesus hung on the cross, suspended with Roman spikes that had impaled his hands and his feet.

And there on the cross, his flesh ribboned by the famous or infamous cat of nine tails, a whip that had been modified to rip flesh off bones.

And after suffering for three hours on the cross, Jesus would cry out to the Father, Into your hands I commend my spirit.

He would breathe his last and yield up his spirit.

And Matthew's going to tell us and point out something in Matthew chapter 27 that we must not overlook.

Matthew 27 · chapter mention

There was something that happened at the same moment Jesus died in the temple.

Matthew 27, 50.

And Jesus cried out again with a loud voice, and he yielded up his spirit.

And behold, the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom, and the earth shook, and the rocks were split, all of creation revolting at the injustice and the death of their creator.

But in that temple, in the western wing of that temple in Jerusalem, that Jesus had just cleansed a couple days before, this curtain in the temple that separated the holiest of all from the main sanctuary, this curtain was 60 feet tall.

This curtain was 30 feet wide, and it was four inches thick, woven.

It could not be torn by humans.

A team of horses could not tear this curtain.

And when Jesus breathed his last, God reached down and he ripped it in half.

Proving for us, signifying that Jesus in his death had granted entrance into the very holy of holies, where in ancient Israel God's presence was fully known.

Access.

It's one of the major themes of Jesus cleansing the temple because as he dispels some, he invites others.

He invites those who formerly were not in there into the temple.

In John's version of this account, in John chapter 2, we read that at the same time Jesus cleansed the temple, he likens the temple to his own body.

John 2 · chapter mention

He says, Destroy this temple and I'll rebuild it in three days.

And they said, It took 40 years to rebuild it.

How are you going to build it in three days?

And John comments, but he spoke this about his body.

Jesus is the new temple that the people of God meet God in.

And as Jesus casts out those out of the Jewish temple, he becomes the temple for us and invites us to access God, tearing the curtain in two.

Our gospel vision this morning, how we can live in light of this in just a simple way is this.

We draw near to God with a true heart.

I certainly can't say it better than the writer of the two the Hebrews in Hebrews chapter 10 said it.

Hebrews 10 · chapter mention

And so I'm just going to read that, make a brief comment, and we'll conclude.

In Hebrews chapter 10 and verse 19, we read this.

Hebrews 10 · chapter mention

And this kind of passage really underscores how all of Scripture is one book.

It's beautiful how it all intertwines.

Therefore, brothers, since we have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus, by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain.

That is through his flesh.

Remember, his body is the real temple.

And since we have a great priest over the house of God, that is the real temple these days, the people of God assembled in Christ in our midst.

Let us draw near with a true heart, in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience, and our bodies washed with pure water.

Notice how this writer weaves like 15 of those themes all together in just a couple verses.

The cleansing, the new access, the body of Jesus, the meeting with God, us coming boldly into his presence, we who before were on the outside.

Oh, we come boldly now, and he calls us to come boldly with faith.

Our guilty conscience is being washed and purged by the blood of Jesus Christ, knowing that apart from Jesus' blood, we could never be righteous enough.

But through his blood, we've been plunged beneath that crimson flood, and all our guilty stains have been washed away.

And so this Holy Week, I trust that we as individuals and in our homes and as we gather on Friday, that we would follow the directives of Matthew and of the writer of Hebrews, and that we would draw near with true hearts, with great confidence, casting our pride and our fear aside, looking to Jesus for unlimited access into the presence of our Holy Father.

If you're here today and you feel like you have never come to see yourself as a lame person, never really seen yourself from God's perspective as a blind person, in need of healing, in need of real forgiveness.

You've always maybe been content with your religious trappings.

You've always been a pretty good person.

Or maybe you're on the other end of the spectrum and you've always seen yourself as being so low that God possibly couldn't have any use for you.

Your struggles are so real, they're so persistent that it's too much for Jesus even to heal.

Wherever you are on that spectrum, I would really invite you and ask you to come and talk to one of the elders afterwards.

We'd love to chat with you, we'd love to pray with you.

We'd love to direct you to Jesus Christ, our Savior.

At this time, let's let's bow in a word of prayer.