Hey everybody, it's Matt. This is the 10-minute Bible hour podcast, and I'm going to employ an example from sports and sporting and making sport. Today, if you don't like sport and sporting and making sport, this I mean, maybe you won't like this part very much, but you should just stick with me because it's all going to make a ton of sense. Okay, here we go. Are you familiar with the rules of shoot around? Some of you are like, Yeah, of course I am. Others of you are like, What is shoot around? Well, it's real simple. It's when you go out with a basketball and a friend to a hoop or a court or something, and you're not playing one-on-one, you're not playing 21, you're not playing a pickup game. You're just, you know, shooting around. Thus the name. Shoot around. And if you watch people do this, you might think, well, you know, they just they just somehow know who gets to shoot next and how many times. But there's actually a whole flow to it. There's a rule to set of rules to shoot around. It works like this: one person is a shooter, the other person is a rebounder. The shooter has to go out to a reasonable distance. You know, it can't be easy shots, somewhat challenging, and they take jump shots. And if they make the jump shot, the rebounder's job is to collect the ball after it goes through the net and return it, and the shooter gets to keep shooting until they miss. After the shooter misses, the rebounder collects the ball and feeds one last pass to the shooter who drives in and takes a layup. So you're practicing layups, and now they have switched positions. The one who was shooting but missed is now the rebounder, and the one who's rebounding is now the shooter, and you just keep doing this forever. It's really fun, but you don't break the rhythm. However, there are a couple little bonus rules that go along with this. Number one is if you shoot a jump shot, but it comes right back to you, that it's still your ball. You get to shoot as much as you want. The other person has to collect the rebound in order for it to switch. And rule number two, this is very relevant to our conversation today, is that if you're gonna use the backboard, there's you gotta call it in advance. It has that has to be done with forethought and intentionality. Everybody has to know that that's what you meant to do, and you did it with clear mind and sound judgment. And do you know what the word is that you have to call if you're gonna do that? Do you know what it is? I bet you know what it is. It's bank. You gotta call bank because it's a bank shot, you see? And so the rule goes that if you take a shot and you accidentally bank it in, even if it goes in, that's hot garbage. It's the same as missing. You gotta switch sides, take your layup, and now you're the rebounder. Those are the rules. The intentionality of it, that's the interesting point of that aspect of the rules of shoot around to me. And likewise, the intentionality and forethought and clear-mindedness of the scene in John chapter two, where Jesus wrecks the vendors and the temple and the money changers, is maybe my favorite part of this whole thing. We've been talking about this for like a week and a half, and I still haven't got to my favorite thing, which is the fact that Jesus basically calls bank before he goes and wrecks the money changers and the livestock auction. He doesn't just fly off the handle and break things. He demonstrates tremendous forethought and intentionality. Here's what I mean. After this, John 2, 12, he, Jesus, went down to Capernaum with his mother and brothers and disciples, and they stayed there for a few days. When it was almost time for the Jewish Passover, Jesus went up to Jerusalem. In the temple courts, he found men selling cattle, sheep, and doves, and others sitting at tables exchanging money. All right, let's picture this scene. Jesus has been to Jerusalem plenty of times before, but this time he's traveling with a different crew than he's ever been there before. I mean, we know that he went with his parents when he was young. A lot of people think Joseph died somewhere in there, maybe after he trained Jesus a little bit in the art of carpentry, but it looks like Joseph is out of the picture, is probably passed on by the time we get to the adult ministry of Jesus. So that means that in the interim, he's probably made this trip several times with his mom, his brothers, maybe another big caravan down from Nazareth. And maybe this is the very first time that the whole bazaar and everything has been moved into the temple area. I mentioned a historical rumor yesterday, I think, that some people think that it was a relatively recent thing that Caiaphas had made this move. Maybe it was brand new as Jesus is walking in here for the first time. Maybe, as I've been speculating as we've been talking about this, it's just sort of been frog in the boiling pot. There's been a little more of this activity going on in the temple, in the court of the Gentiles, every year. Either way, picture this scene with me. Jesus makes this long trip. He's been traveling hard for a long time. I mean, weeks of just pounding pavement. He's picked up some disciples along the way. This is the first time he would have been here with his disciples ever. We have at least five of them with him now. Maybe he's picked up a few more in the meantime. John doesn't spell out when each and every specific one arrives in Jesus' travels, but he's got at least a partial complement of what will ultimately be his crew of disciples. And he rolls into Jerusalem. And the closer you get, the more you can look at the temple. And what do you see coming out of the temple? Well, normally you'd expect to see the smoke of sacrifices and incense. There'd be a just constant cloud burning as the rhythm, the religious heartbeat of these people is just pulsing with the sacrificial system and everything else. But instead, you walk up this time and from a long way off. It's like when you're out in the country on a dirt road and there's nobody around forever, but you can tell where somebody's driving hard with a truck just because there's this plume of dust getting kicked up a couple county roads over. It's like that. All these animals kicking up dust and muck and dirt and everything else. And instead of seeing the aroma of the sacrifices rising up to the heavens, Jesus and the disciples can see from miles and miles and miles away that there's just a bunch of dust and crap getting kicked up, and this cloud of ick is coming right from the temple. Then they get closer, they get within the walls of the city, and as they make their way toward the temple, there's like this weird, you know, how cities are they're like arteries. It's like a, you know, again, a pulsing heartbeat, and all of the traffic is moving in the wrong direction. Everybody's going to the court of the Gentiles, but they're not wearing the right clothes. It's not like how people would present themselves to go to the temple. It's all merchants, it's people dressed up, it's like, you know, festival goers and stuff. What are we doing? And that feels weird and that feels off. And then the closer they get, wending and weaving around through the little streets and intricate corners of old Jerusalem, you know, they get there to the gates of the court of the Gentiles and they walk in, and it looks nothing like a temple. It's a clown show, it's a joke, it's greedy, awful people doing greedy, awful things. Maybe there were some nice people who ran some of these stands as well, but still, like they're selling animals inside the boundary of the temple. Maybe some of them, you know, maybe Jesus and the disciples went up to a couple of them and they were like, What are you, what are you doing here? Oh, yeah, I hear it in your tone, friend. Uh, I'm a little conflicted about it as well. But you know, since we've kind of added the core to the Gentiles, and as we're still in the process of the renovations on the temple here, it just kind of feels like it's a new era. This area kind of doesn't count. So it seemed like a good place to do this, you know, for everybody's convenience. And maybe Jesus and the disciples are like, huh. Okay. And they wander deeper into this bizarre, and it gets smellier and worse and seedier. And you know what it's like when you go to something that just has a film of ek to it, of kind of sacrilege and gross and exploitation, and you start to feel your stomach turn at it a little bit. I think that's what's going on as they walk through here and size it up. I mean, it's possible that maybe just Jesus walked in the door, he already knew what he was gonna do, and he just did what he was gonna do. But I I suspect that if he went in, the king in disguise motif and sized the whole thing up first with his disciples. I would expect that he would want them to see what was wrong before he purged this thing. And maybe after a lap or two through all the booths of this little festival, the the court of the Gentiles has been turned into the expo hall. Maybe Jesus is like, cool. Uh I think we've seen enough here. And he goes and basically he calls Bank. He he takes his time and coolly, calmly telegraphs what he is going to do before he does it. In the temple courts, he found men selling cattles, sheep, and doves and others sitting at tables exchanging money. So he made a whip out of cords and drove them all from the temple area. You ever made a whip? I've never made a whip. I don't know how long it takes to make a whip. But it seems like an act of great intentionality, doesn't it? I mean, uh is a whip like a normal braid? Like when I braid my daughter's hair for him? Is it like that? Or is there an extra technique to making a whip? I don't know. But I'm a pretty clumsy braider, it takes me a long time to do that. A whole whip? Those things are long. Was it a multi-tailed whip? Like one of those little handheld whips that only you know droop down to like your shins when you hold it, or was it like an Indiana Jones whip? I have absolutely no idea, but I know it took a minute. So imagine the scene. Jesus walks in, talks to a bunch of people, and it's like, mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. What do you what are you doing here? Ah, okay. Then what would you you feel pretty good about your your money table here and what you're doing? Ah, okay. Okay. Mm-hmm. And then he just goes over and he sits down and grabs some rope from wherever, maybe it was thatched that was used to bed some of the animals. And he's like, And the rabbit goes over the hill and under then through the hole, and then the other rabbit goes over the other hill and through the tree, and up the other, and then the other rabbit goes over. Then just what are you doing, man? I'm just I'm making a whip. I'm I'm making a whip. I'm gonna whip all of you and drive you all out of here as soon as this is done. I don't want to rush it. I want it to be a good whip. Carry on. I'll be over there in just a minute. And then you got the other rabbit and goes around that. That should be just about good. We'll leave a little taper here at the end. So we get the cracking sound for effect and whoops. Yeah, I feel like we're pretty much ready to go. Okie dokie, bank, and then he just goes nuclear on people. Look, my friends, it is so easy when we picture things from the distant past to do this thing with our brain where we're like, well, it was it was different then. I'd probably do that back then too. No, you wouldn't. Stop it. Socialization is a super powerful thing. We don't like to stand out in weird ways. And when we do, it's because usually something has gone wrong, or we've got some weird needy thing. We you would get socialized. I would get socialized so quickly if we warped back in time. We don't even have the language, we're a complete outsider. That sense of like, I'd be a time traveling tourist and I would just do things with my 21st century knowledge. No, you would not. The intimidation of having a whole bunch of people looking at you disapprovingly, the intimidation of having a whole giant thing that has a rhythm to it and rules spoken and unspoken to it, and transgressing those rules publicly in a big way that draw attention to you, you wouldn't do it. Going to a festival that has a few hundred thousand attendees and going into the place where all of the business is getting done and slowly, patiently fashioning a whip while making eye contact, probably with the people you're gonna whip. And then when it's all done and you test it out, you just go start whipping people. And you grab their little display booth tables and you flip them over, and they got all their money things, and you flip them over, and coins fly everywhere, and it makes all kinds of noise and it draws all kinds of attention to yourself. And people are saying stuff like, Well, oh, oh, okay, like maybe you have a point here, but there's a way to go about it, and that is not it. That is not appropriate. Like propriety needs to be can we can have a discussion about this, but that is far too much. No, no, no, no, no. You and I would go real small. That would work on us. We'd be like, okay, that's fair. I wouldn't like it if people came in and started whipping my sheep and money party. Okay, yeah, I'm sorry. Not Jesus. He is acting like he completely owns the place and is the organizer of the vent and is the one in charge of the whole thing. And he's decided that it's whipping and flipping time, and he just does exactly that. And the synoptics handle this a little bit differently. They give us, they zoom in on different things that Jesus says and emphasizes. But specifically, John says to those who sold doves, he said, get these out of here. How dare you turn my father's house into a market? Jesus probably said a lot of things to a lot of people, but John would seem to be highlighting Jesus' specific irritation with those who were exploiting the poor. The whole point of the doves is that poor people could do this in lieu of sacrificing larger livestock. It's an allowance by God to allow the poor and the marginalized to fully participate in the sacrificial system and rhythm of the Jewish people and of the calendar. It's not too hard to read between the lines here and say, okay, those who were selling doves, who would they be interacting with? The poor people, the simple people. And Jesus looks at them and specifically singles them out. I see what you are doing. You get out of here. So what an incredible scene this is. One guy runs them all off. He just nukes this entire festival, this entire economy. And what would you expect to happen next? I mean, picture yourself in this kind of environment. Let's say you decide to just go and do this at a festival at the expo center, whatever. I mean, you're getting arrested, right? The cops are gonna show up if you're like, nah, you know, put down the whip, man. No, I'm never gonna put I mean, you're gonna get tased, then you're gonna spend at least a night in jail. Maybe you make bond the next day, but you're probably gonna get convicted of something here. Well, Jesus doesn't. Nobody arrests him. But the people who were in a position to do some arresting, they do have questions of him. And that's where we get into the next phase of this moment. The dust has not yet, the literally the dust has not yet settled. People are shrieking and screaming. There's chaos all over the place, money laying all over the ground. Like I assume people are making like little aprons out of their shirts and stuff and just chucking coins in there. This is chaos. But the brute squad doesn't show up. Jesus doesn't get arrested. Instead, it looks like there's immediately a little tete tete between Jesus and the religious leaders, and we'll get into what that looked like next time around. Jesus called Bank. He meant to do it. Anyone who would be like, I don't like the, I don't like the claws, I don't, I don't like the dangerous side of Jesus, I don't like this angry side of Jesus. So I'm gonna try and find a way to make this passage make him seem nicer. Like he, you know, he just got worked up. It was a fit of passion. No, it was not. He called bank, he took time to make a whip, he knew exactly what he was doing. This was calculated and controlled, and he was sending a message, and next time around, we'll think more about what that message is. All right, that's good for now. I'm Matt. This is the 10 Minute Bible Hour Podcast. Let's do this again, sir.