When Jesus Walks Out of the Church

Matt. 21:12-22 JESUS WALKS OUT OF THE CHURCH

Senior sermons at Knox.  I have often wondered what the student would do if in the middle of the sermon I simply stood up and walked out, shaking my head.

I have people walk out almost every Sunday here at CRPC.  I am never quite sure what that is about.  Sometimes I want to stop the sermon and ask them.  Where are you going?

The greatest fear for any church should be that Jesus would walk out.

The passage turns on v. 17 where Jesus walks out of the temple

What Causes Jesus to walk out of the church?  Hypocrisy and Hopelessness.

Every person here today should ask themselves:  Is Jesus in my life or am I just playing games like the chief priests and scribes?

How important was the temple?  More than we can imagine.  Independence day when the UFO beams the White House

1. Hypocrisy in the Temple  vv.12-13
1. Hypocrisy is caused by the demand for the wrong things

                                                               i.      Love of money-Special coins for the temple tax (cf. Mat 17:24-27)  Mishna  m Ker. 1.7 speaks of going up in price 100x  Replacing worship with commerce is a constant temptation of God’s people

                                                             ii.      Love of the Building- the building is not the church.  The temple was not the source of forgiveness.  The turning over of tables and chairs is an acted parable. Lestes (Thieves) indicates that the temple was a nationalistic stronghold. Remember 12:6 One greater than the temple is here

                                                            iii.      Love of power and prestige  vv.14-15  (they were indignant)

A bright, ambitious young student at Stanford was given a summer trip to the Far East by his parents, and while he was there he came under the influence of a group of Buddhists. They criticized his ambitious ways, telling him that he studied so hard, not to learn, but to get a better grade than his friend. He worked so hard, not to better society, but to purchase more than his peers. He dated the most beautiful girls, not to find true love, but to be seen with the most admired women. The young man admitted that it was true, and from Tokyo he called his parents and told them he was dropping out of school and entering a Buddhist monastery.

Six months later, his parents received this letter: Dear dad and mom. I know you weren’t happy with my decision to stay here, but I want to tell you how happy I now am. I am at peace for the first time in my life, living in an environment without competition or envy. Here we all share and life is equal. This way of life is so much in harmony with the inner essence of my soul that in only six months I’ve become the Number Two disciple in the monastery, and I think I can be Number One by June!

1. Hypocrisy is caused by the dismissal of the right things

                                                               i.      Prayer  v. 13

                                                             ii.      Powerless -the blind and lame were not allowed in the temple because of what had happened to David in 2 Sam. 5:6-10.  Jesus is changing the nature of the temple.  The outsiders are being let in and the insiders are being ushered out.  V. 14  This is the only mention of Jesus’ healing in Jerusalem in the Synoptics

                                                            iii.      Praise- The Children  v. 16- Jesus quotes here from the LXX of Ps. 8:3  “Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings I will bring forth praise”  the vs. continues “for the sake of your enemies”

The story turns on v. 17 as Jesus walks out of the temple.

1. Hopelessness in the Tree
1. Hopeless because there is no fruit.-Spurgeon Sermon “nothing but leaves” #. Hopeless because it failed to meet expectations
2. Only answer to hopelessness in prayer

Theodore Wedel tells "The Story of the Lifesaving Station." He calls it a modern parable 

On a dangerous sea coast where shipwrecks often occur, there was once a crude little life-saving station. The building was just a hut, and there was only one boat, but the few devoted members kept a constant watch over the sea and with no thought for themselves went out day and night tirelessly searching for the lost. Some of those who were saved, and various others in the surrounding area, wanted to become associated with the station and give of their time and money and effort for the support of its work. New boats were bought and new crews trained. The little lifesaving station grew.

Some members of the lifesaving station were unhappy that the building was so crude and poorly equipped. They felt that a more comfortable place should be provided as the first refuge of those saved from the sea. They replaced the emergency cots with beds and put better furniture in the enlarged building. Now the lifesaving station became a popular gathering place for its members, and they decorated it beautifully and furnished it exquisitely, because they used it as sort of a club.

Fewer members were now interested in going to sea on lifesaving missions, so they hired lifeboat crews to do this work. The lifesaving motif still prevailed in this club’s decorations, and there was a miniature lifeboat in the room where the club initiations were held.

About this time a large ship was wrecked off the coast, and the hired crews brought in boatloads of cold, wet, and half-drowned people. They were dirty and sick, and some of them had black skin and some had yellow skin. The beautiful new club was in chaos. So the property committee immediately had a shower house built outside the club where victims of shipwreck could be cleaned up before coming inside.

At the next meeting, there was a split in the club membership. Most of the members wanted to stop the club’s lifesaving activities, since they were unpleasant and a hindrance to the normal social life of the club. Some members insisted upon lifesaving as their primary purpose and pointed out that they were still called a lifesaving station. But they were finally voted down and told that if they wanted to save the lives of all the various kinds of people who were shipwrecked in those waters, they could begin their own lifesaving station down the coast. They did.

As the years went by, the new station experienced the same changes that had occurred in the old. It evolved into a club, and yet another lifesaving station was founded. History continued to repeat itself, and if you visit that sea coast today you will find a number of exclusive clubs along the shore. Shipwrecks are frequent in those waters, but most of the people drown.

He who has ears to hear, let him hear.