Jesus as Judge, Cleansing the Temple

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I invite you to open up your Bibles with me to the 11th chapter of the Gospel of Mark.
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We are now in our second in our lesson series on Holy Week, which we've entitled Revisiting Holy Week.
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You'll remember that I mentioned that Holy Week is the week that changed the world.
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It's the week between the triumphal entry of Jesus into Jerusalem on the back of a donkey, and it culminates in His crucifixion, burial, and resurrection.
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We noted last week the prophetic significance of His triumphal entry, how it symbolized His coronation as King of Israel.
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We also noted that at the beginning of the week, there was a crowd that was shouting, Hosanna to the King, and then only five days later, many who were crying, Hosanna to the King, were crying, Crucify Him.
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So, what was it that caused the change? What was it that brought about this shift in popular support for Christ? Well, we see in today's text some of what brought the anger of the people and the leadership against Christ in this last week of His earthly life.
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And it is here in what we call the cleansing of the temple.
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So, I want to invite you to stand.
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We're going to read the story, and then we will begin with our exposition of the text.
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I'm going to be reading Mark 11, 15 through verse 18.
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And they came to Jerusalem, and He entered the temple and began to drive out those who sold and those who bought in the temple.
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And He overturned the tables of the money changers and the seats of those who sold pigeons.
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And He would not allow anyone to carry anything through the temple.
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And He was teaching them and saying to them, Is it not written, My house shall be called the house of prayer for all the nations? But you have made it a den of robbers.
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And the chief priests and the scribes heard it and were seeking a way to destroy Him, for they feared Him, because all the crowd was astonished at His teaching.
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Our Father and our God, we thank You for this opportunity again to study Your Word.
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I pray, O Lord, first, that You would keep me from error as I seek to bring an exposition of Your text.
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I pray it would be in accord with the truth.
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I pray that it would be encouraging for Your people and that it would help us to live for Christ more closely in accordance with the walk which You have called us to.
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And we pray today, O Lord, that You would glorify Yourself in all that is said.
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And Lord, if there are those here who have never heard the gospel, we pray that they would hear about the saving gospel of Christ in this message.
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As we see Christ here as the Holy One, the Judge, who is bringing judgment on against those who are sinning against the temple and against God.
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The Lord God, help us to see Christ as both Judge and Savior of those who repent and call upon Him.
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And it's in His name we pray, Amen.
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This event in the life of the Lord Jesus Christ is recorded in all three of the Synoptic Gospels.
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Remember, the Synoptic Gospels are Matthew, Mark, and Luke.
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It's one of the most memorable scenes in His life.
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Most of us have probably at some point in our life, having read the Bible through and through, have had a mental image of what Jesus would have looked like defending the honor of His Father's house by overturning the tables of the greedy people who had gone in to use it as a marketplace.
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And that picture is ingrained in our mind.
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Something that we don't often realize, though, is that it is likely that this event actually happened twice in the life of the Lord Jesus Christ.
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It's not uncommon that Jesus would do things two times.
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In fact, most of us know about the feeding of the five thousand, but did you know that that event did not happen only once? He fed five thousand on one occasion, and He fed four thousand on an entirely different occasion.
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But often we don't think about the fact that it actually happened more than once.
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He taught similar lessons more than once to different crowds and different people.
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Well, likewise, if we look at the second chapter of the Gospel of John, you will see that early in the ministry of Christ, there was a time when He also went in to cleanse the temple.
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So we have once that happened early in His ministry and once that happened here towards the end of His ministry.
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And there is some debate, because we know that John is not absolutely chronological in his ordering of Christ's life events, there's some debate that that was actually the one time John just talking about it at a different time.
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However, if you read both accounts, it seems as if one happened early in His ministry, one happened late in His ministry.
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So it's just interesting to note that the synoptic Gospels all point to this last cleansing, this final cleansing, this one great event that brought about the great hatred from the Jewish elite, the great hatred from the people around Jesus right before His crucifixion.
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So we know that it's three years has passed since the beginning of Jesus's ministry.
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And if we are correct to say that there was a cleansing of the temple, it had been three years prior to this event.
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He had cleansed it once and now He is cleansing it again.
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He enters into the temple to purge the temple of its sinfulness.
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We begin in chapter 11 of Mark and verse 15 and we read the story.
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It says, And they came to Jerusalem and He entered into the temple.
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Now, what temple is this referring to? The temple is actually the third temple which was built in Jerusalem.
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Many of you who have gone through Old Testament studies with me know about the temples and the fact that there was actually more than one.
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We talk about the temple in Jerusalem.
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There's not one there now.
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All that we have now is what is called the Wailing Wall or the Last Western Wall, which is left after the destruction of the temple, which happened in 8070.
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That's all that's left.
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Since 8070, there has been no temple.
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But there were actually three temples in Jerusalem.
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The first one was built by King Solomon.
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You remember David wanted to build the temple, but God said, No, I'm not going to let you build the temple because you have blood on your hands.
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You remember how did he have blood on his hands? David had had the wife or the husband of Uriah killed.
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He still bore the guilt of that sin.
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God said, Because you have blood on your hands, you will not build my temple, but your son Solomon will build the temple.
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And it was the most glorious piece of architecture in all of antiquity.
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People would come from all around to see this glorious temple of God.
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But then, of course, that temple was destroyed by King Nebuchadnezzar in 586 B.C.
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After that temple was destroyed, the people of Israel came back after their exile and they tried to rebuild it.
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And there was a second temple and this temple was a far cry from the first.
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If you read the scriptures, it says those people who saw the second temple cried because they remembered the first one.
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When it was built, they look at it and they literally wept because they knew it didn't compare at all in glory to what the first one had been.
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Well, that temple eventually was not used anymore.
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Actually, it became a fighting fort during the battles of the Maccabees, which occurred between the time of Malachi and the time of Matthew, and the fights of the Maccabees became a fortress to fight out of.
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Well, anyway, later there came a man named Herod.
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Herod was a political appointee as king of Israel, and Herod decided to create a new temple, to build a new temple.
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And when we see the temple in the New Testament, it's often called Herod's Temple or the Temple of Herod because it was Herod who commissioned its rebuilding.
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And this temple that King Herod built had many courts.
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There were the interior courts and there were the exterior courts, as well as many porches on these courts.
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And they had what was called the Court of the Gentiles.
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This was the only place that a Gentile could go in the temple or to the temple.
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A Gentile could not enter in past because he wasn't a Jew.
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He could not enter in past to go in and worship.
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He had to stay outside in the Court of the Gentiles.
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And it's likely, according to biblical scholars and people who study antiquity, it's likely that it's the Court of the Gentiles that Jesus has entered into.
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It's likely that this is the marketplace.
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This is the place that they've set up, sort of like a flea market, if you want to take sort of a modern day thought of what it might have looked like.
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There was a flea market style setup where people were selling objects which were used for worship.
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They were selling the pigeons, which were used by poor people to offer up as offerings.
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Because poor people, if they didn't have enough money to purchase a lamb for an offering, they would purchase a pigeon.
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The Old Testament gives them that option.
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If you don't have enough money to purchase the larger animal, you can purchase a smaller animal.
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So they had pigeon salesmen.
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They had other kinds of people who were selling different animals that were used to take into the temple for worship.
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So we see that is where Jesus has entered into, it says in verse 15.
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And they came to Jerusalem and he entered into the temple and began to drive out those who sold and those who bought in the temple.
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And he overturned the tables of the money changers and the seats of those who sold pigeons.
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Jesus made the object of his attack on this occasion, the sellers in the temple.
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He approached tables of the sellers and he overturned the tables.
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He likely poured the money from their receptacles and set the animals free from their cages.
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Within minutes, the place would have been a sea of feathers, coins and people all clamoring for their lost goods.
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But why were these people there to begin with? Well, as I said already, animals were needed to be brought into the temple for worship, and it was most convenient to purchase these animals rather than to bring them from home.
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It was likely that if you brought an animal from home, that it would not pass the high priest's inspection because it had to go through an inspection process.
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Well, these animals had already met the inspection of the high priest.
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And there is some speculation that there was actually a cahoots going on, that the priest would get a kickback because they would inspect these animals.
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If you brought something from home, it wouldn't pass inspection.
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But if you purchased this animal, which was many times more than it was worth, but hey, it's already passed the inspection.
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So it's sort of almost to the point of a mafia style workout there.
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You've got the guy getting his kickback because he's already given approval for that which is coming in.
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An estimation was made by one scholar that says a bird that could be bought outside of the temple would have cost the equivalent of like 15 cent in our modern money.
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That same bird would have cost $15 in the temple.
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This is the type of markup that you were dealing with there.
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Of course, that's one scholar's estimation looking back at records and how records were kept.
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So you see this, the idea of the type of thing that was going on in the temple.
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And not only were the animals being sold as a scheme, but there were other dishonest exchanges going on.
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The people were having to pay a temple tax.
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Those who brought Roman or Greek money had to exchange it for Jewish or Tyrian currency.
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These people would take a 10 to 12 percent markup on their exchanging for the money and the people would have to pay it or be unable to pay their temple taxes.
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You can't bring in Greek money or Roman money.
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You'd have to go and change that money out and get the temple money, get the Jewish currency and people would have to pay for that.
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Special mention is made of the pigeons.
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Again, what were the pigeons for? Well, the pigeons from Leviticus chapter five, it tells us that pigeons were poor people.
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So not only are they milking everyone out of money, they're intentionally going after the poor people.
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So Jesus steps onto the scene and he attacks them for making his father's house a marketplace.
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And he goes in his rebuke.
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He says not only were they trading in the temple, but they were also doing so for unjust gain.
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If you were to look at John chapter two and see his account of this, Jesus's first attempt to cleanse the temple, he actually says they're robbing people.
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But Jesus did not only attack the sellers of the goods within the temple, he also did something else in verse 16.
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We're here in Mark 11, verse 16.
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And he would not allow anyone to carry anything through the temple.
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Apparently, people were traversing the temple grounds without considering or respecting where they were.
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Maybe these people were carrying in animals to set up shop and sell, or possibly they were simply rather than going around the temple, they were just walking straight through the corridors.
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They were walking straight through and passing through the outer gates Basically, the temple had become a shortcut for people who were passing through without consideration of what the temple represented or what it was.
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And Jesus was standing, prohibiting their entrance.
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He wanted people to have a respect for the place for which they were standing.
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He would not stand for the utter disrespect that was being shown for his father's house.
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He would not allow them to trifle with the holy temple.
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And what did he say in verse 17? I like the fact that the word teaching is there.
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And he was teaching them.
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This is a teaching moment for Christ.
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And he was teaching them, Is it not written? My house shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations.
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But you have made it a den of what? Of robbers.
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Notice he says, it is written.
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Or is it not written? He's denoting the fact that he's actually quoting from the Old Testament.
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He's quoting from Isaiah's prophecy.
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Isaiah 56 and verse 7.
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These I will bring to my holy mountain and make them joyful in my house of prayer.
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Their burnt offerings and their sacrifices will be accepted on my altar.
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For my house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples.
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By the way, it's interesting.
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Only Mark's gospel.
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Only Mark's gospel records that Jesus makes the point.
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Because most of us are familiar.
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My father's house will be called a house of prayer.
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But Mark's gospel records the entire statement of Jesus, which is my father's house will be a house of prayer for all the nations.
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Will be a house of prayer for all peoples.
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Actually, he quoted the full verse from Isaiah 56 and verse 7.
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And then he quoted from Jeremiah 7 11.
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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.
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It should be noted that not only does Jesus quote scripture in this passage, but he also symbolically fulfills scripture.
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The cleansing of the temple was a sign that he was the Messiah.
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The Messiah was supposed to come and remove the sinfulness that had entered into God's house.
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Zechariah 14 and verse 21.
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And there shall no longer be a traitor in the house of the Lord of hosts on that day.
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Malachi chapter three and verse one.
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Behold, I send my messenger and he will prepare the way before me.
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And the Lord whom you will seek will suddenly come to his temple and the messenger of the covenant in whom you delight.
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Behold, he is coming, says the Lord of hosts.
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But who can endure the day of his coming and who can stand when he appears? For he is like a refiner's fire and like fuller's soap.
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He will sit as a refiner and a purifier of silver.
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And he will purify the sons of Levi and refine them like gold and silver.
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And they will bring offerings in righteousness to the Lord.
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Then the offering of Judah and Jerusalem will be pleasing to the Lord.
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That is, as in the days of old, as in former years.
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Then I will draw near to you for judgment.
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I will be a swift witness against sorcerers, against adulterers, against those who swear falsely, against those who oppress the hired worker in his wages, the widow, the fatherless, against those who thrust aside the sojourner.
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And do not fear me, says the Lord of hosts.
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You see, this is a picture.
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What Jesus is doing here is a picture of His judgment against the sin of the nation.
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Christ has already come in as King.
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Remember last week what we talked about when He rode into town on the donkey? He was riding in as King.
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This is the coronation.
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This is the picture of what He is that He is.
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But remember, Christ does not fulfill only one role in the economy of God.
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Christ fulfills the role of King.
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Christ fulfills the role of Savior.
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But Christ also fulfills the role of Judge.
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And thus, when He walks into the temple to cleanse the temple of its sin, He is coming in as the Judge.
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And He is fulfilling both Zechariah and Malachi's prophecies that when He came, He would come and forever cleanse the house of God and set up His glorious kingdom.
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Now, one day that will be fully and completely realized in His return.
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But that, again, was a picture, just like His coronation when He went into Jerusalem on the back of the donkey.
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That was a picture of what will one day be a final reality when the Lord descends from heaven and He is King of all.
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And every knee shall bow and every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord of glory.
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That day is yet to come.
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But the picture was there on the back of that donkey.
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The judgment which He will bring when He separates the sheep from the goats and He sends them into eternal damnation and lake of fire.
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Well, that was pictured in the temple.
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When He went in with that cord wrapped whip, when He went in and He overturned those tables, when He went in and He took the pigeon sellers out of their seat and He stood at the door and He said, no one shall pass.
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He stood as judge.
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And see, we don't like that picture of Christ.
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We want the picture of Jesus where He's standing next to the knobless door, unwilling to barge in.
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We want the picture of Jesus where He's holding the soft little lamb and He looks like a mid 15th century Englishman instead of a first century Jew.
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We want the picture of Jesus where He's passive.
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We don't want the warrior Christ.
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But when we read Revelation, what do we see? He comes in judgment and He comes to bring judgment to bear.
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And beloved, that's the part of God that has been so lost on our modern world.
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Everybody wants the God of love, but no one wants the God of judgment.
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Everybody wants the Palm Sunday Jesus riding on the back of the donkey, willing to receive the hosannas.
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No one wants the Monday morning Jesus who walks into the temple, fashions a corded whip and drives the sinners from his father's house.
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But you see, to understand and love Christ for who He is, we have to understand Christ for all that He is.
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He is King and Judge.
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He is Savior and Lord.
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One time, I think it was, and I may misquote, I think Gandhi or one of the other religious men made a statement and said something to the effect, well, I like Jesus, but I don't like Christians.
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And a lot of people take that.
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Well, that's such a wonderful thing that he said, you know, because Christians, we don't always act like we're supposed to.
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And such an insightful thing was that.
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You know what? He doesn't really like Jesus.
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He really doesn't, because he likes the Jesus that he's created in his own mind.
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The passive Jesus, the Jesus that says everybody join hands and sing kumbaya.
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If he really believed what Jesus said about heaven and hell, if he really believed that at the end of this life, you will have either received Christ and received forgiveness from your sins, or you will see the just punishment of your sins in a place called hell.
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And you will be cast in a lake of fire forever and for all eternity.
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If he really believed that, he probably wouldn't like Jesus very much.
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Because unbelievers do not like that truth.
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I know this because when I tell unbelievers this truth, one of two things happen.
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Either their heart breaks under the weight of their sin or their heart turns to a glazed stone, unwilling to hear it.
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What do they say? I wouldn't believe in a God who was so mean.
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I wouldn't believe in a God who would send someone to hell.
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You know why you don't believe in a God who would send someone to hell? Because you're not holy and you don't understand what holiness is.
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Jesus knew what holiness was.
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And when Jesus walked into his father's house that was supposed to be holy, it was made unholy, defiled.
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And what did he do? He brought judgment against the defilers.
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We have such a misappropriated view of Jesus.
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We miss him coming as judge.
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We miss the picture of him as judge.
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Now, it says in verse 18, And the chief priests and scribes heard it and were seeking a way to destroy him, for they feared him because all the crowd was astonished at his teaching.
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Now, remember, we're talking about Holy Week and the narrative of Holy Week.
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And this one verse, verse 18, really helps fit the narrative together.
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Jesus is coming to Jerusalem.
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As he's coming in, everyone's shouting, Hosanna.
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Now, Mark didn't tell us about what happened.
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But in another gospel, when Jesus is coming on the back of the donkey, what do the Pharisees say? Quiet your followers.
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Shut your followers up.
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They're too loud.
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They're creating racket.
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And what did Jesus say? If they were to be quiet, even the stones themselves would shout.
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All right.
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That's a good archaeologist.
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I had a friend who's an archaeologist.
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And he said that's the archaeologist's favorite verse, because today the stones shout about the truth of the scriptures.
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Every time they go and put a spade in the ground in Israel, they find something else that confirms the truth of the Bible.
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He said, so today the stones shout.
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I always thought it was kind of neat.
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But my point, though, in that is that when you look at the story, the Pharisees are not happy on Palm Sunday.
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They're wanting Jesus' supporters to shut up then.
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The next day, Jesus comes in, cleanses the temple.
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If in fact it were true that any of the high priests or any of those men were receiving kickbacks, he's affecting them monetarily.
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Oh, now he's got to go.
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You want to really angry anyone, you mess with their pocketbook and you got to go.
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And what does it say? The chief priests and scribes heard it and were seeking a way to destroy them.
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Monday morning, they begin to plot.
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Monday morning, they begin to plan.
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And so I say verse 18 is very important in the narrative of Holy Week because it begins this process, which is ultimately going to culminate in the defection of Judas Iscariot and then the arrest of Christ.
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He will go through seven different trials.
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We always think about just two trials, but if you actually read the story, he goes through seven specific trials from the time he is picked up.
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He goes to the house of Caiaphas.
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He goes to the house of Annas.
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He goes to Pilate.
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He goes to Herod.
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He comes back to Pilate.
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It ends up being a total of seven if you read it all.
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So all this happens in the life of Jesus and then he's crucified, buried and resurrects on Sunday.
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But it all begins here.
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They're ready for him to be gone.
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He's caused enough trouble.
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We've got to get rid of this man.
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So they begin to find a way.
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Now, let's move to an application from this text.
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We understand what it's saying.
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We understand what's been said.
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Let's move now to an application.
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Well, as an application today, I want to deal with two misunderstandings from this text, which I have often heard people say.
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And I want to deal with two misunderstandings from this text.
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The first one, I have heard people say that Jesus was wrong in his anger.
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Now, I recognize it's a minority view, particularly among Bible-believing conservatives like us.
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We don't believe Jesus was wrong at all, ever.
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But it is held by some.
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There are some who say Jesus went overboard here.
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There are some that say Jesus lost his temper here in this event.
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These people might argue that all anger is sin.
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And because of this, Jesus was wrong in his display of anger here.
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In fact, some have even said Jesus got angry.
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And he himself said that anyone who gets angry, Matthew 5.22, but I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment.
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You guys remember that verse from Matthew 5? And they said, well, here Jesus got angry.
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So here Jesus violated his own rule and demonstrated that he couldn't possibly be the Messiah.
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Because he violated his own rule.
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He said if you get angry, then you're sinning.
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He got angry, so he sinned, so he's not the Messiah.
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I like the face you just made.
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Really? Somebody made that argument? People will do everything they can to bring an assault against the character of Christ.
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And this is one of those times when people have tried to bring an assault against the character of Christ.
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Certain people levy this charge of sin against Jesus because they want Jesus to be a sinner.
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They want to believe that Jesus committed a sin.
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So they try to ascribe this work to Jesus as a work of sin.
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So how do we understand it? If Matthew 5.22 tells us from the words of Jesus, any man who is angry with his brother is liable to judgment.
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And yet, we see his anger displayed in Mark 11.
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How do we understand the two? Well, it's very simple.
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I think some of you probably already know the answer.
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But just to make sure that everyone understands.
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In Matthew 5.22, Jesus is talking about unjust or unwarranted anger.
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In fact, in the King James Version, it makes it clear.
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Matthew 5.22 in the King James says, But I say unto you, whoever is angry with his brother without cause is in danger of judgment.
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It makes that point.
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It says without cause.
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What we must remember is there are legitimate reasons for us to get angry.
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Christian psychologist David Siemens has a helpful comment.
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He says, The person who cannot feel anger over evil is a person who lacks enthusiasm for good.
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I really like that.
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If you can't feel anger over evil, then you lack enthusiasm for good.
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If you cannot hate wrong, it is very questionable whether or not you love righteousness.
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This is affirmed in other places in Scripture.
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Ephesians 4 verse 26.
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Be angry.
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And what? And do not sin.
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So the Apostle Paul tells us it's possible that we can be angry and yet not sin.
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It's really simple.
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We will get angry.
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Because there is evil in the world.
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But there are guidelines for dealing with anger.
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We are not to become unjustly angry for this in itself is a sin.
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And we should not allow any anger that we feel to cause us to sin.
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And anyone who studies this passage in regards to Christ's attitude and actions will quickly realize that he did not breach either one of those in his behavior.
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He was justly angry because his father's house, the house of prayer, had been desecrated.
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And he did not sin when he cleansed the temple because that was his righteous and holy duty.
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In quoting the scripture, he shows that it was in his inherent scriptural authority to cleanse the temple.
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It was not the rant of an angry, sinful man, but a stance of a righteous, indignant man.
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So we know by the virtue of his very nature, Christ was not wrong, but absolutely right in his indignation in cleansing the temple.
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So anyone who might say, well, Jesus was wrong.
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Well, not according to scripture, he wasn't.
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But the second one I hear more often from Christians.
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I don't want to deal with this.
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And I hear this sometimes people will say, well, Jesus got angry, so I get to get angry over anything.
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They don't say it that way, but I'll deal with people and they're angry over something.
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And I'll say something to them about their anger being a sinful attitude.
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Well, hey, man, Jesus cleansed the temple.
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Hey, man, Jesus got mad.
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I can get mad.
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Trust me, I've talked to a lot of people over the years and I've heard that more than once when someone was inappropriately angry, but they cite the temple cleansing as, hey, this is an example of Jesus being mad.
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I'm mad.
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If so, facto, I'm fine.
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Here's the problem.
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And more often than not, our anger comes not from righteous motives, but from unrighteous motives and desires.
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If there was ever a time that I should get an amen, that was that was it.
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So let me try it again.
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More often than not, our anger comes from unrighteous motives and desires.
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Thank you.
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All right.
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Yes, because we have a sin nature and we fight the battle of the flesh daily, we have a tendency to be angry without cause much more than our righteous indignation flares up.
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I've seen people get angry over the most trivial things and blame it on their righteous indignation.
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The thing is, we must be diligent if we become angry to see that the anger is just or not.
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Are we angry? Are we angry out of jealousy? Are we angry out of greed? Are we angry because someone has said something out of the way towards us? Are we angry because we didn't get the respect, admiration, position? That we feel we should have gotten.
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These would all be examples of unrighteous anger, and when we allow that anger to flare up over inconsequential things, we are engaging in sin.
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We cannot use Jesus as the example for our anger at that point.
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In fact, our men's group is studying a book on humility.
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And in our study yesterday, as I was going through the pages, as we were doing our Bible study there, I was looking and I noticed that one of the things that Mr.
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Mahaney, who wrote the book, talks about is he talks about how our pride can lead to anger.
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And that's really if you think about that's where all anger comes from, that's unrighteous is it comes from a pride.
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Either I didn't get what I deserve, I didn't get the respect I deserve, I didn't get the position I deserve, I didn't get the money I deserve, I didn't get the whatever.
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It always comes back to me.
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It always comes back to an issue of pride.
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And one of the things I thought was so insightful in the book that Mahaney wrote, he says that God's hatred for pride is a holy hatred.
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God hates pride.
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Remember the Bible says there are six things I hate.
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Day seven are an abomination.
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What is the first thing? A proud face and as angry as whatever something causes us to be angry about.
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If it is a sinful anger, our anger is nothing compared to God's anger with us because he hates pride.
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But then again, we must never forget.
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We must never forget.
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That there are times when righteous indignation is appropriate and we have to ask ourselves a question.
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I literally think that if we don't get somewhat angry over the fact that thirty three hundred abortions happen every day, I do think there's an issue with our heart.
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Because that should cause a righteous indignation in our heart.
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That should cause an anger.
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That we live in a nation that supports the murder of children.
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Yeah, yeah, I can see that.
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When we see someone do something deplorable, such as murder or rape or anything, kidnapping.
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We have a righteous indignation that flares up a hatred for that sin that's supposed to be there.
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But then again, ask yourself this question.
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Are there other things that we allow in our lives that should get our righteous indignation up that we just let go? Do we get angry when we hear God's name blasphemed? But we watch movies and listen to songs and watch television shows where it's just common.
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And the blaspheming of the name of God is just doesn't even matter.
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Shouldn't that cause us to have our righteous indignation level raised a little? Beloved, it's not wrong to have that righteous indignation.
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It's wrong for our anger to come from pride.
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But it's not wrong to stand for truth and it's not wrong to be angry over evil.
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As Paul said, we are to be angry, yet do not sin.
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Sometimes I wonder what would happen if Jesus came into the church in America today.
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I wonder if the way that many churches are run and the way many preachers preach and the way many ministries are handled, if Jesus wouldn't begin purging the house of God again.
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Ladies and gentlemen, I am a firm believer that just as Jesus cleansed the house of God in his day, we have a responsibility to continue to purge the house of God in our day.
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And I don't mean that we're to fashion a whip and run between the pews and whip each other.
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But I do mean that we need this.
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I like the looks I just got.
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What I do mean is we need to take a long, hard look at ourselves.
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And be honest with ourselves.
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We have the reason, the responsibility to continually be willing to examine our works, our motives and our actions to see if they're in line with God's words, God's word rather.
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The psalmist made this plea in a prayer and I think it should be the prayer, not only of the individual Christian, but it should be the prayer of the church.
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And it's in Psalm 139.
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I want you to go there with me.
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I want you to look at this prayer.
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And I want this prayer to move on our heart.
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Psalm 139, verses 23 and 24.
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I'll give everyone a second to get there.
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I want you to see this in different translations.
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It's going to read differently, but it all says essentially the same.
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Psalm 139 and verse 23.
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Search me, O God, and know my heart.
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Try me and know my thoughts.
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And see if there be any wicked way in me and lead me in the way everlasting.
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Lord, cleanse my temple.
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Individually, we should ask ourselves, is my life pleasing to God? Am I living a sinful lifestyle, devoid of repentance? Am I profaning the Lord's name with my behavior? And corporately, we need to ask ourselves, is the church reaching out with the gospel message like we ought? Are we following God's prescription for our ministries, our leadership and our ordinances? And do we desperately seek to please God with all of our church traditions? The question is easy.
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Would Jesus be pleased if he walked into our courts today? Would he be pleased if he came into our worship service? Today, or would our church light the fire of his righteous indignation? Let's pray.
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Our Father and our God, we are confronted by the truth of your scripture.
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And I pray that this passage would be a reminder that every single day that we need to examine ourselves in the light of scripture.
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And Lord, though we will fail, we pray that you will continue to pick us up, cleanse us, dust us and push us forward.
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That we would seek righteousness and seek after you, both individually and as a congregation.
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I pray, O Lord, if there are those here who have never heard the gospel, I pray that they have heard today that our sin deserves judgment.
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But Christ is not only judge.
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He is also Savior.
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He is not only Lord, but he's also the Savior of our souls.
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And I pray, O Lord, that they have heard the message of reconciliation, that the only way to come to you is through your Son, Jesus Christ.
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Lord, I pray you would move on hearts this morning.
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And I pray, O Lord, for the believers, that you would move on our hearts to draw closer to you with all that we do.
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To glorify you with our worship, both corporately and individually.
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That you would search us and know our hearts.
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See if there's any wicked way within us.
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And lead us out of that.
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And lead us into the way everlasting.
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In Jesus' name we pray.
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Amen.