Jesus Cleanses the Temple

All right, let's turn to Matthew chapter 21. Matthew chapter 21, we're gonna read verses 12 through 17.

This is the account of Jesus cleansing the temple. So that's the subject of this morning's message,

Jesus cleansing the temple. This will be the second time that he has done this.

We learned from the gospel of John that Jesus did this at the beginning of his ministry.

He cleansed the temple and now he's going to do it at the very end of his ministry. So his ministry is about ready to come to an end.

And how does Jesus cleanse the temple? Well, basically he does it by running out the crooks.

God's house had been taken over by corrupt men and they were turning a house of prayer, essentially into a business, into a house of merchandise.

So since Jesus, as God's son, he has authority in the father's house, so Jesus takes it upon himself to go in and drive them out.

And he flips over the tables. And you can just imagine if something happened like that today, how scandalous would it have, or would it be?

And it was scandalous back then. So let's read the story and we'll get into why he did that and maybe how it applies to the church today.

Matthew 20, starting in verse 12 says, "'Then Jesus went into the temple of God and drove out all those who bought and sold in the temple and overturned the tables of the money changers and the seats of those who sold doves.

And he said to them, it is written, "'My house shall be called a house of prayer, but you have made it a den of thieves.'

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

But when the chief priests and scribes saw the wonderful things that he did and the children crying out in the temple and saying, "'Hosanna to the son of David,' they were indignant and 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 babes and nursing infants, "'you,

O Lord, have perfected praise.' Then he left and went out of the city to Bethany and he lodged there.'"

And may the Lord add a blessing upon the reading of his word. You know, I laughed in verse 14 when

Matthew writes the chief priests and the scribes when they saw the wonderful things that he did.

It makes it sound like, you know, him cleansing the temple and flipping over the tables was the wonderful thing that he, that's probably not what that verse is referring to.

That's almost certainly a reference to Jesus healing the blind and the lame.

So even though that's not what that is referring to, still what Jesus did was wonderful.

Do you realize that? Yes, it was scandalous. It was shocking probably to witness, but God's house had been corrupted.

So for Jesus to cleanse the temple of God, this really was a wonderful thing.

Cleaning up corruption is good, amen? Amen. There's a lot of corruption out there.

There's, you know, this is one of those things, there's nothing new under the sun. There's always corruption in religion.

There's always corruption in government. There's always corruption everywhere because, you know, people are people.

People are sinful. People are corrupt. So cleaning up corruption is good.

And there comes a point even today when churches and denominations need to be cleaned up from corruption and unbiblical teaching and practices.

Because here's the thing, wherever you find people, you will find corruption. You will find cheaters.

You will find liars. You will find dishonest, greedy people. And considering how holy this site was, this was the temple of God.

This was the most holy site on earth, the physical temple.

So to turn the temple into a money -making operation where you're basically fleecing the flock, this was an abomination to God.

And I don't think we ever see Jesus more angry than he is right here.

But be clear, Jesus isn't, he didn't lose his temper. One account, it says he sat there and he fashioned a whip.

So he knew what he was going to do. He was calm, he made the whip. You know, he didn't just fly off the handle.

Jesus doesn't do that. But he was angry. And based on what he did, I think that's pretty clear.

So Jesus takes it upon himself to, yeah, take action to cleanse

God's house. So in this sermon, I'll try to make application later on to the church because I'm already tempted to talk about all the things going on in modern times because we need cleansing in modern day churches.

We need cleansing in Christianity. We need cleansing across the board. Because like I said, there's just corruption everywhere.

Usually it's more obvious with the larger ministries where pastors are acting more like CEOs than shepherds.

The church is run like a business. And eventually it all becomes about the bottom line.

You know, all about how much money we're bringing in all the while behind the scenes, God's word is being ignored.

And see, I told you, I was tempted to just go off on that already, but I'll wait, I'll wait until the end.

But this is what scripture says. The apostle Peter warned about those. He said, through covetousness, they shall with feigned words make merchandise of you.

The apostle Paul wrote how some peddle the word of God and they teach things which they ought not for the sake of dishonest gain.

So before we get into all of that though, before we try to discover the personal application for us, let's cover the original context.

All right, verse 12 says, Jesus went into the temple of God and drove out all those who bought and sold in the temple.

So what is the temple? It's the second temple. So it's also known as Herod's temple.

It was constructed around 516 BC. And this was the chief place of worship for the

Jewish people. So the fact that Jesus did this, this tells us what they were doing inside the temple, buying and selling in God's house.

This is wrong. Okay, what they're doing is wrong. I think people must have known that something wrong was happening, but this is one of those issues where, you know, who's gonna speak up?

Who's gonna take action? And would it matter? You know, nobody dared certainly do something like this.

What Jesus did was drastic. No Jewish man or woman would do what

Jesus did because it was a matter of authority. The chief priest who ran the temple and the complex,

I mean, they were mostly corrupt. They're not gonna do the right thing. So what could anyone else do?

You know, sort of like corruption in Washington DC, right? Everyone knows it's there.

It exists. We're all aware of it, but what can you do? I mean, really, what can you do? You can vote, but if a group of people or if an individual decides to take matters into their own hand, they're gonna be treated like criminals, right?

And of course, I mean, that happened. So I only bring that up because that's how the

Jewish leaders view Jesus. We know Christ has authority to do that.

They don't believe that though. They think that Jesus is acting like a criminal. This is disorderly conduct.

It's vandalism, something. They view Jesus as acting in a lawless manner here.

So it says that Jesus drove out. And if you look at the Greek, the term drove out speaks of doing it forcefully.

I think it's obvious if you just read the story, but it says Jesus drove out all those who bought and sold in the temple.

So to drive them out speaks of doing it by, or doing it with force.

You know, Jesus didn't go in and be like, hey, everybody, you know, can you guys not do this here?

Can you bring this somewhere else? Thanks, I appreciate that. Like, that's not what he did. One account says he used a whip.

So this really was kind of like a violent act and flipping over the tables, coins going everywhere.

I mean, this really must have been a total scene, as you can imagine. So there's really two ways to look at this.

Either Jesus is acting as God's ordained prophet and the rulers of Israel all need to shape up and repent and start doing things right or else.

Or the other way to look at it, Jesus is totally out of line. And this is just more proof he needs to be arrested and dealt with once and for all.

So people are gonna look at it, you know, one way or the other. On top of that, verse 16,

Jesus quotes from the Psalms, Psalm chapter eight, which speaks of praise belonging only to God.

So if you look at the context of the Psalm, Jesus is basically taking that praise that belongs only to God and he's applying it to himself.

So in a sense, this is a claim of deity, which makes the Jewish leaders that much more angry because again, they don't believe that.

They consider this blasphemy. In verse 13, he quotes another

Old Testament passage. That's Isaiah 56, verse seven. So Jesus speaks of the temple, which is

God's house. Jesus speaks of it as though it's what? He's my house.

So again, another claim to deity. He says, it is written, my house shall be called the house of prayer, but you have made it a den of thieves.

And he's quoting it as though it's, yes, applying to Jesus personally. So what would happen every year?

Cause you say, why are there money changers in the temple? Why are they conducting business in the temple?

Basically every year for the Passover, people would travel long distances all over the land.

They would come to Jerusalem and they would offer sacrifices. This was part of the Jewish religion.

And since the sacrifices were animals, it's very inconvenient to travel with a bunch of birds or lambs or whatever they're going to offer.

So instead of traveling with the animals, people just decided to go on their own.

And then when they got there, they would buy the animals for the sacrifices on site.

And maybe for convenience, maybe somebody thought this was a good idea.

They decided to set up shop in the temple. So people would come from far and wide to Jerusalem, and then they would have to exchange money.

So if you've ever gone to another country, oftentimes when you exchange money, there's a fee. So the people are making, which is understandable to a degree, but then they can overcharge.

So they had to change money and then they would get this other currency. And then with that, they would buy the animals for the sacrifices.

Well, here's the problem. The leaders of Judaism had set it up in such a way that the exchange rate on the currency, the money changers were turning not just a profit.

They weren't just covering costs. They were turning a profit, but actually they're turning a very large profit.

And most of the people in Israel were, we would consider them poor by modern standards.

So they're turning a profit there. The Jewish leaders are getting a cut of that.

And that's why they're allowing it. Also, there's reason to believe that the leaders had investments in raising the animals and growing up the lambs and the doves.

So it's like they're making money on both ends. And they're charging these exorbitant fees.

So what it amounts to is the people are just getting ripped off. They're just getting ripped off.

It really is like a scam and they had no other choice. So they kind of had to do this to fulfill their religious duties.

They had to go through this corrupt system. So the leaders of Judaism were using the religion to take advantage of the common people, to take advantage of the poor, which really just went totally at odds against the law of Moses.

And it wasn't just that. A lot of people believe, and this is my personal view, that the money changers should never, even if they were charging the bare minimum and there weren't any extra costs, they shouldn't have been there to begin with because God's house is a place of worship, not for money changing, not for buying and selling.

So a lot of people believe that they should never have been there one way or another. God's house is not a place to set up shop, is it?

For example, let's just use an example. Who has heard of Amway? I mean, this was a popular thing way back.

I've heard stories that some people would, they would go to church just so they could get more clients or whatever for their

Amway products. They would use the church and target people at church on Sunday morning just to make more money.

Well, that's not a perfect analogy, but you don't target Christians. You don't go to church just to try to make a few extra bucks.

I mean, listen, if you wanna sell things, talk to people during the week, I mean, that's what you do during the week is your business, but that type of thing has no place in God's house, certainly not on a

Sunday morning. And so that's essentially what they're doing with the temple. They're just totally taking advantage of people.

And in the process, God's house is being desecrated. So it says that Jesus drives out the thieves.

And again, this is the second time that he's done this. Now, one question that comes up, you would think that people would resist

Jesus, right? Here he is one man, who knows how many people he's driving out.

Dozens, who knows? You would think that Jesus might get some pushback.

So one question is how did Jesus do this? Why didn't he meet more resistance?

A few things have been suggested. Number one, they may have been awestruck by his commanding presence, which manifested a sense of authority.

Number two, second idea, their own consciences reproved them.

Like they knew they were doing something wrong. So they dared make no resistance.

Number three, the people, the common people, were generally on Jesus' side, believing he was the

Messiah. So that may be a reason why he didn't face a lot of resistance. And then number four, it had always been the belief in Israel that a prophet had a right to change and to regulate and order the various affairs concerning external worship.

So they believed Jesus was a prophet, so they dared not resist him. By opposing

Jesus, they were afraid, maybe if he's right, then we're opposing God. So these are some reasons why people didn't push back.

But we know for a fact that behind the scenes, the religious leaders, the Pharisees, the chief priests, the

Sadducees, they were definitely resisting Jesus in private. So they were plotting at this moment to do what to Jesus?

Oh, they were plotting his death. They had been plotting his death for quite some time, and it was soon approaching.

And of course, they're the ones truly responsible for the corruption. See, a religion cannot become corrupted unless the leaders of that religion allow it to be corrupted, or that they're part of the corruption, and that's exactly what happened here.

Jesus, remember, he's already cleansed the temple once, and that was maybe three years prior.

So what does that tell you? Well, he's already done this, and nothing changed. There were no long -lasting reforms.

So the people went right back to their practices, and I'm sure after Jesus did it this time, maybe later that afternoon, who knows, but shortly afterwards, they just went back to doing what they were doing.

But you know what? God is not gonna let this go. Look at verse 14. "'Then the blind and the lame came to him in the temple,' and it says, "'He healed them.'"

It said a few weeks ago that the miracles of Christ, they're all done to prove that he is the

Messiah, that he is who he says he was. But verse 15, "'When the chief priests and scribes saw it,' that is, the healings and the wonderful things that he did, "'and the children crying out in the temple, "'saying, "'Hosanna to the

Son of David!' "'What's their response?' It says indignant in my translation.

Displeased. I think displeased is an understatement. Outraged probably is more the word.

They're furious. I mean, here's what happened. Jesus basically called them a bunch of thieves, right?

You're a bunch of crooks. And then the kids are now chiming in. Jesus, yeah, he's right.

That's what they're saying. Jesus, bring deliverance now. It's almost as if they're telling Jesus, okay, you just drove out the money changers.

Keep going. Let's keep this going. So hearing the children saying this, I mean, they are out of their minds.

And you figure if Jesus wanted to lead a revolution, I mean, I think at this point, he probably could have if he wanted to.

He could have taken power from the chief priests, but we know that isn't why he came.

So what's the title of the message? Jesus Cleanses the Temple. The temple was

God's house. Now let's turn to 1 Timothy chapter three, and we'll get into some of the application.

But like I said, cleaning out corruption, cleaning up corruption, this is a very, very good thing.

So how do we make application to this? Jesus cleansed the house of God. You say, well, we don't have a temple today.

That's true, we don't have a temple, but we do have churches.

You realize the church is the house of God. You're gonna see that here in 1

Timothy chapter three. So the house of God today is the church.

Let me ask you, does the church, or do churches need cleansing? Is there corruption within Christianity?

Yes. Oh yeah, big time. Now we have to be careful, number one, in saying that that doesn't mean that every church is corrupt, number one.

Number two, even if many are, that does not nullify the truth claims of Christianity.

Just because the Pharisees had twisted the religion of the Old Testament, that doesn't make it false.

They had made it false by blending truth and error. And you see that same thing today. There's people who, maybe they preach the truth, but they do things that are corrupt, or what they're teaching is corrupt.

See, whatever good thing there is out there, Satan is always trying to infiltrate it and corrupt it.

That's why after the Protestant Reformation, when they tried to cleanse the church in the 1500s from Rome and the papacy, after that, an expression developed, and the expression is semper reformanda, which means always reforming.

So it's just the nature of religion. It's the nature of everything, really, that over time, things are going to become corrupted.

So we always need to make reforms, and there are many reforms that need to be made today.

We need another reformation today. But look at 1 Timothy 3, 14 and 15, just to prove that the church is the house of God.

Paul says, these things I write to you, though I hope to come to you shortly, but if I am delayed,

I write so that you may know how you ought to conduct yourself in the house of God, which is the church of the living

God, the pillar and ground of the truth. So you see that, in black and white, the church is

God's house. Amen? Amen. Now, we know this, that the church technically is the people, not the building.

We get that. Some people get hung up on that. Well, the church isn't the building. Right, but we assemble in this building, so since this is the place where we congregate, we can say this is

God's house, and that's not wrong to say that. In the verses prior here in 1

Timothy 3, the Lord lays out clear, you know,

God giving this to Paul, lays out clear qualifications for pastors and deacons.

Just to summarize, they need, leaders in the church need to be honest men. They need to be of good character.

They can't be covetous. They can't be greedy, right? Because the love of money is what?

A root of all kinds of evil. So in the Old Testament system, you had the priesthood, and the priesthood, usually people were born into it.

So, you know, the best people were not chosen for the priesthood, you were born into it.

That's not the way it's supposed to be in the church. I know a lot of churches are like this. The father retires, and he hands the church over to the son.

Well, I wanna be clear on this. If God has called the man, and the people are okay with it, and he's been called, fine, but that can look like nepotism, and you need to be careful about that, because that happens with many of the large megachurch ministries, where these, it happens with small ministries, but it's more common and obvious with the larger ministries, where the church itself acts more like a personal business for this family, and when the father steps down, the son just steps right into the role.

So the husband is the lead pastor, and the wife and kids are all made co -pastor, and these large complexes, if you go there, they have an

ATM machine, they have a store, you can buy products. Listen, I don't see how you can read this story about Jesus cleansing the temple, and think that that's okay, but yet it happens almost everywhere with most of the large churches.

Then you have those ministries where it's clearly all about the money, right?

This is just a trope at this point, like with the TV preachers just laying guilt trips, preaching about money nonstop, then you have the prosperity preachers.

Some of them even threaten people that if you don't sow into their ministry, if you don't tithe and keep up and give even more and sacrifice and give more and more, then they say you won't be blessed by God.

I saw one commercial where a TV preacher was selling a

Jewish prayer shawl for 50 bucks a pop, and he claimed that this prayer shawl was anointed.

This is why you were gonna pay $50, it's anointed. I'm thinking, did someone pour olive oil on it?

Like, what does he mean by anointed? But he said, if you prayed, I don't know,

God may not answer your prayer, but if you get this prayer shawl and rub the tassels while you pray, the way he talked, it's like there's some magical power there.

You know what that is? That is a scam, that's what that is. I'm sorry to say, when

I was, I was going through a difficult time in my life, probably 20 years ago, and I got something in the mail about a prayer rug.

You just send in $50 for this prayer rug, and they made all these promises, and foolish me,

I sent in 50 bucks, can you believe I did that? I never admitted it publicly.

You know what, I never even got a prayer rug. You know what I got? I got a piece of paper photocopied with a rug, picture of a rug on it.

50 bucks. So you're a flying carpet. Now, that would never happen today, okay?

I was, yes. But you know, why do people do that?

Why are all these scams, why do the prosperity preachers have the largest ministries? Because there's a, well,

I hate to say it, I mean, there's a sucker born every minute, I was foolish. I was naive, yes, that was on me.

But at the same time, you have to feel bad for many of these people, because they're taking advantage of those who are vulnerable, those who are poor, those who are sick.

And maybe in the back, I knew better, in the back of my mind, I knew better. But why did I do it?

Because I was desperate. And that's what they do, they prey on people. Some of the worst people in the world are pastors.

They prey on the sick and elderly. And this is what Jesus said to the Pharisees. They devour widows' households.

They would find a woman, her husband died, and they would target her, and I don't know what things they said, but she would just end up giving all her money to these crooks.

And you see this today, and it's not just that, with the issues of money, which is so obvious.

You can spot these guys a mile away, usually. But then there's the personal scandals within Christianity.

If you follow Christian news, just in this past year, there have been so many scandals, pastors removed from ministry, cheating, adultery, embezzlement, all of these things.

You know what it looks like to me? The Lord is doing a little housekeeping. Just as Jesus cleansed the temple 1 ,900 years ago, spiritually speaking, he continues to do that today.

And to the extent that he can use you, to the extent that he can use me, we want to be on the right side of this.

We want to be helping in these reforms. There's some things that we just can't change.

Just for Morris Corner Church, we won't even hold a bake sale. This is a common thing for churches. And I'm not condemning anybody for stuff like this, tag sales, bake sales, churches that try to raise money by selling apple pies or whatever.

I'm not passing judgment. I'm just saying, we don't even want to go one step in that direction.

Why? Because God has always provided for all of our needs. So we don't even believe anything should be sold here in the house of God.

But this is a big problem today. So just trying to wrap this up, Christians should not stand for corruption.

If you see something, say something. Not talking about nitpicking every little thing, but if you see something that's obviously wrong, you should say something and we should pray that the

Lord would continue to cleanse his church and that we could be part of a new reformation.

That's really my prayer. A lot of pastors are praying for a revival. I wanna pray for a reformation because that's what's needed today.

One last thing, 1 Corinthians 6, 19. We said the church is the house of God. Well, the

Bible says that our body is the temple of the living God. So in conclusion, let's try to see what spiritual applications we can take from this.

If your body is a temple, because if we believe the gospel, what happens?

We are regenerated. God's Holy Spirit regenerates our dead spirit.

We are brought to life spiritually, born again. And now the Holy Spirit dwells within us.

If you have the Holy Spirit dwelling within your body, your body is the temple of God.

So therefore, if your body is the temple of God, we could ask, how am

I treating the temple of God? Is there anything that I can do to clean it up a little bit?

So just as Jesus drove out the money changers from the temple, may we allow him to drive out some of those things in our lives that should not be there.

And may God use this message to speak to each heart. Let's pray. And Father, we thank you for your word.

We thank you that Jesus did cleanse the temple. We thank you that he continues to do this.

We want pure hearts. We want a pure mind. And Lord, we thank you that even though we continue to make mistakes,

Lord, we sin, but still you are faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

Lord, help us to do the right thing. Help us to build a church that honors you and never takes advantage of those in need.

Help us to recognize those things and to warn people so that they wouldn't be conned or scammed.

And finally, Lord, if there's anyone here who has never placed their faith in Jesus as their

Lord and Savior, I just ask that your Holy Spirit would change their heart and that they would receive

Christ even today and that they would begin their new life in Christ. And we ask it all in his name, amen.