A Place to Meet
Notes
Transcript
Introduction:
Where is your place that you go to unwind and relax?
All of us have our favorite vacation spots and our favorite places to get away by ourselves and recharge.
But, how many of us have a place that we get away to so that we can be alone with God.
Jesus did tell His Disciples that they should go into their closet and pray to their Father in heaven in secret.
There was a movie that was put out by the Kendrick Brothers called War Room that took off in Christian circles about the power of prayer to change lives and the need to get away with God. I wonder how many closet renovations happened after that movie.
The point of all of this is that time alone with God in a special meeting place is an important part of a growing Christian walk with the Lord. We all need a meeting place, whether it is in a closet or a favorite chair in the living room when you can get away from distractions and noise and meet with God.
That is why Jesus got so upset after coming into the Temple and seeing the things taking place in Jerusalem.
Let’s take a look.
12 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.
13 He said to them, “It is written, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer,’ but you make it a den of robbers.”
14 And the blind and the lame came to him in the temple, and he healed them.
15 But when the chief priests 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,
16 and they said to him, “Do you hear what these are saying?” And Jesus said to them, “Yes; have you never read, “ ‘Out of the mouth of infants and nursing babies you have prepared praise’?”
17 And leaving them, he went out of the city to Bethany and lodged there.
Pray
I’m going to say this now and again at the end, but what we see here is that the Lord Himself comes into the House that is called by His name and the people there have become so distracted with their own religious practices that they fail to notice or give Him praise.
He did this in the Person of Jesus Christ.
There are 3 truths we can apply to our lives as we look at what happened when Jesus cleansed the Temple.
1. We Must Value Relationship with God
1. We Must Value Relationship with God
The core issue here is that the Temple had become a place of business and was no longer functioning the way it should as a place for Got to meet with His people.
There was a Jewish practice of cleansing out the leaven from their homes during the week of Unleavened Bread that coincides with Passover. Passover was the day before the first day of the Feast of Unleavened Bread.
The cleansing process was also extended to the Temple.
The leaven represented sin (and corruption) and it was to be cleansed out. Jesus is cleansing His Father's House of the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees.
Paul wrote to the Corinthians that they were to clean out the leaven from the church and their lives as well
7 Cleanse out the old leaven that you may be a new lump, as you really are unleavened. For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed.
8 Let us therefore celebrate the festival, not with the old leaven, the leaven of malice and evil, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.
Application
Since we are the temple of the Holy Spirit, that means we should take care of our bodies
We should honor and sanctify the place of worship
We should value above everything else our time in relationship with God
We might be prone to think that desecrating the Temple like this was a horrible thing, but do you avail yourself of time with God, or do you to fill your life with business and distractions?
2. We Must Not Hinder Others from Coming to Christ (v.12-13)
2. We Must Not Hinder Others from Coming to Christ (v.12-13)
12 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.
13 He said to them, “It is written, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer,’ but you make it a den of robbers.”
Not only was this Temple system getting in the way of personal worship, it was hurting others who sought to worship God as well.
They had taken a practical system that was needed for long distance pilgrims to trade their money into a sacrifice that would be acceptable and used it for profit.
They had to use the money of the Temple which meant high exchange rates.
They had to have a spotless animal to sacrifice (which is not bad in itself) and this meant that they would likely need to purchase an animal, giving another chance for an up-charge by the priests.
The whole system had perverted the purpose of the sacrifice.
It had also perverted the place of the sacrifice by keeping the nations from being able to worship God since this business was conducted in the only place the Gentiles could worship God.
7 these I will bring to my holy mountain, and make them joyful in my house of prayer; their burnt offerings and their sacrifices will be accepted on my altar; for my house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples.”
Jesus also quoted from Jeremiah 7:11
9 Will you steal, murder, commit adultery, swear falsely, make offerings to Baal, and go after other gods that you have not known,
10 and then come and stand before me in this house, which is called by my name, and say, ‘We are delivered!’—only to go on doing all these abominations?
11 Has this house, which is called by my name, become a den of robbers in your eyes? Behold, I myself have seen it, declares the Lord.
The leaders would have been familiar that this was a condemnation of the religious leaders of Jeremiah’s day because they too had perverted the worship of God with their idolatry.
Daniel Doriani writes in the ESV Expository Commentary on this passage:
In Jeremiah’s day, people sinned then shouted, “the temple of the LORD,” treating it as a talisman, as if it guaranteed God’s protection and favor (Jer. 7:4–7). Jeremiah and Jesus compare the Israelites to brigands who rob, kill, and follow idols, then retreat to the temple as if it were a safe cave or hideout.
Daniel M. Doriani, “Matthew,” in Matthew–Luke, ed. Iain M. Duguid, James M. Hamilton Jr., and Jay Sklar, vol. VIII, ESV Expository Commentary (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2021), 319.
How often have we treated church this same way! We go out into the world and play the world’s games and act like the world on Monday through Saturday, only to retreat to the church on Sunday and try to act like Christians - like we have genuine fellowship with God.
Doriani goes on to point out that the terms Jesus uses are terms for insurrectionists or rebels and that the temple had become a nationalistic stronghold.
Again we could say the same thing about people who claim to worship God because it’s the American way, but don’t live lives that are changed by the gospel.
We cause people to stumble in their faith when they see our behavior and prevent them from ever wanting to draw near to God.
Illustration
Imagine being only able to go in the vestibule of the church and worship, but people are out there selling merchandise and having conversations that distract you from hearing from God. You also have people using this courtyard to cut through and making it a shortcut.
The Greek word for driving out also means to throw out with force. Jesus was upset over this perversion of worship.
The church is not to be a place where we keep out the groups of people we don’t like. It is to be a place where anyone and everyone can meet God and have the gospel presented before their eyes in the services and the ordinances like Baptism and the Lord’s Supper. It is a place to find refuge in God alone.
This means that racism and our predjudices have no place in the church. It means that any idol that would steal the worship of God must be cut down.
Idols come in different forms. We still have those pesky things around competing for the rightful worship of our heart.
Application
Do you actively seek to bring people to Jesus or are you keeping them from Him?
Paul wrote to the Corinthians that we were not to use our freedom to put a stumbling block in the path of others.
There are enough obstacles that make it difficult to humble ourselves and come to Christ. We certainly do not need to add to them.
3. We must glorify the Lord with a Heart of Genuine Praise (vv.14-17)
3. We must glorify the Lord with a Heart of Genuine Praise (vv.14-17)
14 And the blind and the lame came to him in the temple, and he healed them.
15 But when the chief priests 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,
16 and they said to him, “Do you hear what these are saying?” And Jesus said to them, “Yes; have you never read, “ ‘Out of the mouth of infants and nursing babies you have prepared praise’?”
17 And leaving them, he went out of the city to Bethany and lodged there.
One of the things that you have to love about children is that they can be brutally honest and they can often see things we can’t
We can over-analyze things and come up with explanations, but often kids see things like they are.
There are two groups of people that saw who Jesus really was:
The blind and lame
Children
Both of these groups praised Jesus and recognized who He was, but the Pharisees and religious leaders get bothered by Jesus.
Jesus brings to their attention Psalm 8:2 which says,
2 Out of the mouth of babies and infants, you have established strength because of your foes, to still the enemy and the avenger.
This is a Psalm that is specifically attributed to God the Creator. In essence Jesus is claiming divinity here.
No other spiritual being besides Satan and demons will receive worship besides God.
Application
How should we glorify the Lord?
In our praise for what Jesus has done
In our lifestyle as walking temples of God
In our relationship of daily dependence and fellowship with the Lord
Conclusion
When Jesus came into Jerusalem on the donkey, He came in as her King. He then walked into the Temple and inspected the House as her great High Priest.
What He found caused Him to judge the Temple as insufficient to meet the needs of the people. Truthfully, even if it had not had the perverted worship going on there that had become mainstream, it would still be sufficient to meet the needs of the people to worship God. We needed a Temple that didn’t require us to go to Jerusalem. We needed a mobile temple.
Jesus was that new temple while He was on earth, but when He ascended to Heaven, He sent the Holy Spirit to live within the hearts of every believer, making them the new temple - the dwelling place of God with man.
Being a temple means meeting with God. It is where worship takes place. It is where intercession takes place. It is to be a person of prayer, since the temple was supposed to be a House of Prayer - a meeting place of God with man.
Prayer is one of the most overlooked and often neglected spiritual disciplines. A prayerless life is an insult to God. It screams that we want God’s stuff but not to talk with God or commune with Him. God is a personal God that has always sought to reveal Himself and fellowship with His creatures.
Jesus is not only the perfect sacrifice needed to restore that fellowship with God and man, but is the perfection of the revelation of Who God is to us.
