SPEAKER_00: All right.
SPEAKER_00: We're going to be in Matthew 21, so you can find that in your Bibles.
SPEAKER_00: Matthew chapter 21.
SPEAKER_00: If you are visiting with us for the first time, we want to welcome you.
SPEAKER_00: We're grateful that you would come and check out a new church.
SPEAKER_00: If you've never been to church before, well, welcome.
SPEAKER_00: That can be kind of scary, but we're glad you're checking it out.
SPEAKER_00: What we do in the latter half of our church after we sing is we study the Bible together.
SPEAKER_00: And what's happening, so the worship continues.
SPEAKER_00: We call this a worship service because the state of our hearts is inclined toward God.
SPEAKER_00: And we're saying, God, we want to worship you both with songs, but also we want to worship you with our obedience and with living our life in a way that honors you.
SPEAKER_00: And so we're reading our Bibles to understand how to do life.
SPEAKER_00: What does it mean to be a follower of Jesus?
SPEAKER_00: So we're actually studying through a book of the Bible in Matthew that is a biography about Jesus, and we're just going verse by verse through Matthew.
SPEAKER_00: So we've been on this journey for a good year now, and we will finish Matthew probably by the around the end of this year, early next year.
SPEAKER_00: But we're in the section of Matthew where it's the last week of Jesus' life.
SPEAKER_00: And so last week we saw Jesus arriving into the city of Jerusalem, riding on a donkey, and the cult was there as well.
SPEAKER_00: And now we're going to see this was taking place probably on a Monday, probably Monday, although this seems in Matthew's account to blend with the Sunday part of the story.
SPEAKER_00: But really, this is probably Monday, Jesus comes, and he's going to turn over the tables of those buying and selling and the money exchanges in the temple.
SPEAKER_00: And so we're going to go through this.
SPEAKER_00: And the question that we're going to be asking ourselves as we go through this section is what does this teach me about following Jesus in my life during this season?
SPEAKER_00: Not what does this teach my wife or my husband or my kids or my neighbor or my coworkers.
SPEAKER_00: We're asking for ourselves, God, what do you want to teach me?
SPEAKER_00: And so that's why we read the text and then we pray, and we we one of the things we say when we pray is, God, we give you permission to speak to us now.
SPEAKER_00: It's not on us to come up with some great application, but we believe that God's going to be faithful to what he promised, that his spirit is at work teaching us.
SPEAKER_00: And so let me read to you from Matthew's account here, starting in verse 12.
SPEAKER_00: You'll notice we're just covering verses 12 through 17.
SPEAKER_00: It says that Jesus went into the temple and he threw out all those who were buying and selling.
SPEAKER_00: He overturned the tables of the money changers and the chairs of those selling doves.
SPEAKER_00: He said to them, It is written, My house will be called a house of prayer, but you are making it a den of thieves.
SPEAKER_00: The blind and the lame came to him in the temple and he healed them.
SPEAKER_00: When the chief priests and the scribes saw the wonders that he did, and the children shouting in the temple, Hosanna to the son of David, they were indignant.
SPEAKER_00: And they said to him, Do you hear what these children are saying?
SPEAKER_00: Jesus replied, Yes.
SPEAKER_00: Have you never read that you have prepared praise from the mouths of infants and nursing babies?
SPEAKER_00: Then he left them, went out of the city to Bethany, and he spent the night there.
SPEAKER_00: Let's pray.
SPEAKER_00: Father, we ask, would you please open up our eyes to understand how this section of Scripture, how it teaches us, how it wants to correct us.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, what what do you have for us personally from your word this morning?
SPEAKER_00: For us as a church, we ask for the work of your Holy Spirit in our lives.
SPEAKER_00: We give you permission to speak to us and to guide us this morning.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, would you let there be a holy moment for us in our own lives, we pray.
SPEAKER_00: In Jesus' name.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: So some of you are familiar with this account.
SPEAKER_00: Pretty radical, right?
SPEAKER_00: That Jesus is literally overturning tables and chairs and rebuking those that are doing business in the temple.
SPEAKER_00: Now, this morning I'm going to try something new.
SPEAKER_00: I'm going to show you a lot of slides so that you kind of got a sense of where we're at.
SPEAKER_00: And we're going to take this one little piece at a time.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, let's start in verse 12.
SPEAKER_00: It simply says that Jesus went into the temple.
SPEAKER_00: And it'd be easy to go past that section, but you need to know this was not just any temple.
SPEAKER_00: This wasn't like Jesus going to the church, because if you're Jewish, there are two different places where you go to worship.
SPEAKER_00: There's the Saturday place that you go on Shabbat, the Sabbath.
SPEAKER_00: And that's called your synagogue.
SPEAKER_00: That's where you would go and meet with your local gathering of Jewish people, kind of like a gathering of church.
SPEAKER_00: But the Jewish people had a central location where they worshiped God, and it was called the temple at this time.
SPEAKER_00: But the meeting place with God was not always the temple.
SPEAKER_00: And I want to walk you through just Genesis through Revelation, the place where God's people met with him.
SPEAKER_00: And so, and I'm going to use some images to show you this.
SPEAKER_00: Let me just, when we talk about the temple that Jesus came into, this is what it looked like.
SPEAKER_00: This is actually a micros on a small scale that you can see.
SPEAKER_00: This is Jerusalem surrounding it.
SPEAKER_00: And this is the temple mount, this temple area.
SPEAKER_00: So somewhere in here, there were these money changers.
SPEAKER_00: And we'll talk a little bit more about that.
SPEAKER_00: This is modern-day Jerusalem.
SPEAKER_00: You see that there's a mosque now in the center where the temple used to be.
SPEAKER_00: And this is the Kidron Valley.
SPEAKER_00: Over here is the path that Jesus took to get into.
SPEAKER_00: He was riding the donkey over here into Jerusalem.
SPEAKER_00: Here's another angle from, yeah, a different angle of the temple.
SPEAKER_00: Again, looking kind of from this side here would be the Kidron Valley and the Mount of Olives is over here.
SPEAKER_00: But let me walk you through just some sketches, okay?
SPEAKER_00: And I put this here to illustrate the point.
SPEAKER_00: When Adam and Eve were created by God, did they have a temple to go to?
SPEAKER_00: No.
SPEAKER_00: The place of meeting with God was there in the garden.
SPEAKER_00: It says that God walked with them in the cool of the day.
SPEAKER_00: When God created humanity, he just had unfettered fellowship.
SPEAKER_00: It was just so natural to be a friend of God.
SPEAKER_00: Just like you have some of the close friendships in your own life, the way that God designed you and I created humanity in the beginning was to just have friendship with God.
SPEAKER_00: Just like a human has a friendship with another friend, you were designed to be a friend of God.
SPEAKER_00: But then in Genesis 3, sin came in and broke the relationship.
SPEAKER_00: And so God begins this process of trying to bridge the gap and come back into humanity's world.
SPEAKER_00: But sin is the real issue that comes up.
SPEAKER_00: And so these meeting places, there's no more garden to meet with God.
SPEAKER_00: There becomes these places where people are meeting with God and they're building altars and sacrificing to God.
SPEAKER_00: So we see that Adam and Eve's sons, Cain and Abel, make an offering and offer sacrifices to God on an altar.
SPEAKER_00: And God receives Abel's sacrifice but rejects Cain's.
SPEAKER_00: We see Abraham sacrificing to God, Isaac and Jacob.
SPEAKER_00: They're all doing this altar worship where they're at, meeting with God.
SPEAKER_00: But then we go a little bit further in the story, and God calls his people, Israel, to himself out in the wilderness, and he gives them instructions about a tent-like structure called the tabernacle.
SPEAKER_00: And the tabernacle is this mobile meeting space that could be set up in different locations.
SPEAKER_00: And the presence of God would come and rest upon the tabernacle, and the Levites were the priests.
SPEAKER_00: The Levites were a tribe of Jacob.
SPEAKER_00: This tribe was the tribe of priests that would mediate on behalf of the rest of the nation to meet with God.
SPEAKER_00: And that was the meeting place with God, was the tabernacle.
SPEAKER_00: Now God gave the instructions to Moses on how to set up the tabernacle.
SPEAKER_00: One of the interesting things was the decorative design resembles the garden.
SPEAKER_00: And so as we go through these different meeting places with God, it harkens back to the very beginning of your Bible, Genesis 1 and 2.
SPEAKER_00: There's pomegranates woven into the tapestries.
SPEAKER_00: There's nuts, there's leaves, there's just the beautiful artwork that was put all around the tabernacle resembled a garden.
SPEAKER_00: And then you get into the nation being established, and David has it in his heart to make a fixed structure, to get the nation out of the tabernacle and into an actual building called the temple.
SPEAKER_00: And so he prepares all of the materials and the plans, and then his son Solomon builds the temple.
SPEAKER_00: And so they worship God in the temple for about 400 years, but they're a rebellious people and they keep rejecting God and turning away from God.
SPEAKER_00: And so the nation itself gets exiled out to Assyria and Babylon, and this temple gets destroyed.
SPEAKER_00: And then after 70 years, well, actually, while they're in exile for 70 years, God appeared to some of the prophets through vision.
SPEAKER_00: So this is a vision that Ezekiel has on the river going out of Jerusalem on their way into Babylon.
SPEAKER_00: Ezekiel has this vision.
SPEAKER_00: So God again is found in the place where his people are at.
SPEAKER_00: Just because the building's gone doesn't mean that God's presence can't be found.
SPEAKER_00: They come back into the land.
SPEAKER_00: After 70 years of exile, God brings them back into the land.
SPEAKER_00: Ezra leads and organizes the people, and some other leaders are a part of this to establish a new temple that is smaller.
SPEAKER_00: And that's the temple that Jesus would have seen.
SPEAKER_00: But I want to go beyond Jesus, Jesus' time to Jesus himself.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus is the very presence of God.
SPEAKER_00: And so while we have Jesus in our story, he goes into the temple.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus is the person of God amongst his people, which is in and of itself incredible.
SPEAKER_00: But that's not the end of the story, right?
SPEAKER_00: Jesus ascends up to the Father in heaven, and we have the day of Pentecost.
SPEAKER_00: And on the day of Pentecost, Acts chapter 2, these followers of Jesus, 120 of them, are in an upper room praying together, and they have all of a sudden there's an earthquake, and there's little flames of fire that appear over the heads of these believers, just like the tabernacle had a flame of fire over it in the wilderness.
SPEAKER_00: Now you have these little flames of fire over the heads of the believers, signifying now each of you are a temple for my spirit.
SPEAKER_00: And so now we're living in this age where we are the dwelling place of God.
SPEAKER_00: God, we are the temple of God.
SPEAKER_00: In 1 Corinthians, it also says the church gathered together is in and of itself like a temple.
SPEAKER_00: Ephesians chapter 2 and 3 talks about how we're a building built, one stone next to each other, as the house of God, the temple of God.
SPEAKER_00: And so there is this now sense where you and I individually and corporately, we are the temple of God's presence.
SPEAKER_00: But then the Bible continues on and it talks about a heavenly temple where Jesus is at, where Jesus mediates on our behalf, where the very throne of God is at, and we are called in Hebrews to go before the throne of grace to find help in our time of need.
SPEAKER_00: To boldly go into that heavenly place where God's presence is, because Jesus mediates as our priest on our behalf.
SPEAKER_00: But that's not the end of the story.
SPEAKER_00: The final end of God's place is that he dwells.
SPEAKER_00: In your midst.
SPEAKER_00: At the end of our service in a few minutes, we're going to take communion.
SPEAKER_00: We're going to hold up the cup, and we're going to follow what Jesus said to take this cup in remembrance of him, but we're remembering that that cup signifies his blood shed so that a new covenant could be made.
SPEAKER_00: That new covenant, part of it, is that no longer do you need your neighbor to help you to know God.
SPEAKER_00: You each know me individually.
SPEAKER_00: You see, God wants you to know him directly through his son Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: You don't need me to mediate your spiritual situation.
SPEAKER_00: I play a significant role in your life as a pastor.
SPEAKER_00: That's a gift that God gives to his churches, pastors, evangelists, prophets, and teachers.
SPEAKER_00: I play a role in your life, but I'm not your priest.
SPEAKER_00: I'm a teacher.
SPEAKER_00: I care for your soul.
SPEAKER_00: I'm trying to help you separate your life from sin, to get a vision for your flourishing that God intended for you.
SPEAKER_00: All of those things that I do on your behalf, they are not a priestly role like Jesus does, because God wants to have a personal relationship with you.
SPEAKER_00: Not only are we going to take communion at the end of their service, but I'm going to ask you if you've never made a decision to let God be your friend, to never, that you've never turned to Christ, you've never had your come to Jesus moment, I'm going to ask you to make that decision this morning.
SPEAKER_00: I'm not going to ask you to do anything foofy or weird, but I'm going to ask for you to make a decision in your heart where God wants you to decide where your will is that you're ready to turn your life over to Him.
SPEAKER_00: But what I want you to see through all of these different cheesy images is that God is about being in your midst.
SPEAKER_00: And so Jesus going into the temple as he does here in this verse 12 is this awesome moment because what does he do?
SPEAKER_00: Let's keep going.
SPEAKER_00: Let's see what he does.
SPEAKER_00: It says he goes into the temple and he throws out all those buying and selling.
SPEAKER_00: Well, that's not very nice.
SPEAKER_00: Why are people buying and selling?
SPEAKER_00: People are buying and selling in the temple courts because pilgrims come to Jerusalem for Passover and other feasts, and they need to purchase animals to make sacrifices.
SPEAKER_00: Many were traveling from long distances all over Israel.
SPEAKER_00: They're coming to celebrate Passover, and they want to buy an animal so that they can make a sacrifice.
SPEAKER_00: This marketplace activity, however, it had become it had moved from the city outskirts into the very tabernacle, it's our temple itself, into the very courts where people were supposed to just be able to be without distraction meeting God.
SPEAKER_00: They had turned this place, this temple, into a noisy commerce hub.
SPEAKER_00: Imagine I told you, hey, listen, I want you to go and I want you to go and read your Bible and spend some time praying and just meditating on the presence of God.
SPEAKER_00: But I want you to go and do it in the middle of a water park.
SPEAKER_00: Yesterday we took some of our kids to a water park because we're celebrating a birthday.
SPEAKER_00: And it was crazy, you can imagine all the kids screaming and having fun, and it is it was chaos.
SPEAKER_00: Or imagine I told you, hey, I want you to go in the middle of um Black Friday to Walmart, stand right there at the entryway.
SPEAKER_00: I want you to just spend time enjoying God's presence.
SPEAKER_00: That would be really tough, right?
SPEAKER_00: It'd be like this crazy, frenetic, energetic, loud, you know, uncomfortable setting.
SPEAKER_00: And that's what had happened was there were people who were industrial.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus isn't against business and entrepreneurial ship.
SPEAKER_00: What he's against is the fact that this business is taking place right in the temple there, and and the dealings that were going on were not necessarily above board.
SPEAKER_00: So we have the buying and selling that's taking place, and and they're not selling for a reasonable price.
SPEAKER_00: It's like when you go to like a stadium and you pay seven dollars for a bottle of water, right?
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, you've had that experience, right?
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and how do you feel?
SPEAKER_00: You feel like worshiping God in that moment, don't you, right?
SPEAKER_00: You're like, thank you, God, for the$7 water.
SPEAKER_00: Me neither, man.
SPEAKER_00: I hear you.
SPEAKER_00: I'd be parched.
SPEAKER_00: That's right, that's right.
SPEAKER_00: But yeah, that does not put you in that position where you want to worship God, but that's they're marking up the price on these goats and these sheep and these doves.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, there's gouging, money gouging that's going on.
SPEAKER_00: But that's not all.
SPEAKER_00: There's also the money changers.
SPEAKER_00: The money changers are individuals who are taking the foreign currency.
SPEAKER_00: Remember, people are the Jews had been spread out.
SPEAKER_00: Because of their earlier rebellion, the Jewish people were spread out all over southern Europe, northern Africa, and Egypt.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, you had people over in modern-day Iraq and Syria.
SPEAKER_00: So these Jews would pilgrim over to Jerusalem to celebrate, and they would come with their foreign their foreign currency.
SPEAKER_00: And um the Jewish law required every male to pay a half shekel temple tax, but only certain coins were accepted in the temple.
SPEAKER_00: And since these pilgrims were coming from many different regions with different currencies, the money exchange would go on to provide this service.
SPEAKER_00: But it was often, again, through a high profit margin on the exchange.
SPEAKER_00: Their presence was necessary, but the system was prone to exploitation and corruption, especially when it was conducted in this sacred temple space.
SPEAKER_00: And the doves, let me just mention you see the doves that are being sold.
SPEAKER_00: The doves were sold because they were prescribed as an offering for those that were poor.
SPEAKER_00: You see, the easiest you had an option when you went to go give a sacrifice to God in the temple, you could give like a bull, or you could give like a um a sheep or a goat.
SPEAKER_00: But if you're if you're poor, you don't have enough money for a sheep.
SPEAKER_00: Like the going rate right now is like twelve to eighteen hundred dollars for a uh uh imagine.
SPEAKER_00: Offering a full bull or a full cow in the temple.
SPEAKER_00: Like it, you know, and that and that's gone.
SPEAKER_00: Like you offer that sacrifice.
SPEAKER_00: It's not like tithes and offerings at church where you know the money leaves you and it goes towards paying for the ministry.
SPEAKER_00: No, this is like God, I'm gonna just take this cow, I'm gonna give it to you.
SPEAKER_00: We're gonna just burn it.
SPEAKER_00: We're gonna just burn it up, it's gonna smell good.
SPEAKER_00: And that's it.
SPEAKER_00: That was like the that was the that was the act of worship that they were doing.
SPEAKER_00: So some people didn't have the money to do that and they were poor.
SPEAKER_00: And so you had these doves that were sold.
SPEAKER_00: You can read about in Leviticus 5 and Leviticus 12.
SPEAKER_00: Uh and so their s of these doves in the temple courts ensured access for all, but it also opened up the door for price gouging and commercial exploitation, and Jesus condemned it by turning over their tables.
SPEAKER_00: Let me just show you a few.
SPEAKER_00: This is an image that we've found through archaeology in the third century A.D.
SPEAKER_00: Um of a money changer servant counting the daily income.
SPEAKER_00: Here's another relief of money being exchanged in the scene.
SPEAKER_00: And again, another some more money, um, money changers.
SPEAKER_00: Here's a you know, more recent, like money.
SPEAKER_00: This is like a money exchange that you'd find at Jerusalem.
SPEAKER_00: And this is a second-century chair that you could have found.
SPEAKER_00: A second century chair.
SPEAKER_00: So just as you're imagining Jesus turning over the tables, this is the kind of thing that you um would have seen.
SPEAKER_00: So Jesus says in verse 13, he says, It is written, My house will be called a house of prayer, but you are making it a den of thieves.
SPEAKER_00: Do you see here that Jesus is not just doing this act of turning over the tables and chairs, but he's explaining that it's written, this is literally in Isaiah 56, 7, that his house will be called a house of prayer.
SPEAKER_00: Let me read that passage to you.
SPEAKER_00: I will bring them to my holy mountain and let them rejoice in my house of prayer.
SPEAKER_00: That's what this place is supposed to be, where Jesus is at.
SPEAKER_00: And he's like, You've made it a den of thieves.
SPEAKER_00: You want to see a picture of a den of thieves?
SPEAKER_00: Since I'm on a roll, I might as well show you.
SPEAKER_00: This is what this is what the um Jesus had in mind, because the road going up to Jerusalem, you would have um roads kind of down here, and then you'd have these like little dens, and robbers would hang out in these caves and ambush you on the way.
SPEAKER_00: Here's another one.
SPEAKER_00: So Jesus is saying, you've made the Temple Mount as dangerous and crooked as the road back there that we just got off of.
SPEAKER_00: You know?
SPEAKER_00: And it's interrupting what people are trying to do, which is to worship God and to be in his presence.
SPEAKER_00: You see, God is passionate for his people to be near him.
SPEAKER_00: So much so, like, I don't think we see Jesus doing anything like this.
SPEAKER_00: He does this early on in his ministry.
SPEAKER_00: In the first year, in John, we have this record early on in his ministry that he takes and he ties some cords together.
SPEAKER_00: He literally creates a whip and starts turning over the table.
SPEAKER_00: So he does this in the first part of his ministry, and then three years later, he does it again.
SPEAKER_00: But it punctuates the fact that God is passionate for you and I to be near his presence.
SPEAKER_00: He's passionate for there to be this unfettered fellowship that you can enjoy with him.
SPEAKER_00: That's why when we come into the church and I say, hey, let's silence our phones and let's try to not be a distraction, these are the ideas here because when God wants to meet with you, that's important, right?
SPEAKER_00: Like, like, what is God saying to you right this very minute?
SPEAKER_00: Like, what's what does he want to say to you?
SPEAKER_00: The last thing I want is somebody next to you distracting you from what God might be trying to communicate to you.
SPEAKER_00: And so Jesus goes to town on these individuals and and what's taking place because he uh cares deeply for this idea of prayer and nearness to God.
SPEAKER_00: But that's not the end of the story, it continues over here in verse 14.
SPEAKER_00: The blind and the lame came to him in the temple and he healed them.
SPEAKER_00: The blind and the lame came.
SPEAKER_00: Who who when we say the blind and the lame, what are we talking about?
SPEAKER_00: Obviously, people that can't see can't walk.
SPEAKER_00: But what is what do they signify?
SPEAKER_00: Like, why can't they see?
SPEAKER_00: Was that God, is that how God created humans to not see and not be able to walk?
SPEAKER_00: No, they're in that, they're experiencing that ailment because the world is broken from God's original design.
SPEAKER_00: This week you went through things where you were limited in your capacity.
SPEAKER_00: There were things that were confusing, frustrating, hurt, disappointing.
SPEAKER_00: There was a lack of resources, not because that's how God designed the world to be, but because you're living in a world that is broken.
SPEAKER_00: And that's why when we see in the next verse these children singing Hosanna, which means save now, that's our cry.
SPEAKER_00: God, sometimes this sucks.
SPEAKER_00: This is hard.
SPEAKER_00: Life is hard, but that's not how you want it to be.
SPEAKER_00: We need you to rescue us, right?
SPEAKER_00: But we all know that people experience hardship and they chase the rescue, the Hosanna, from something other than Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: So maybe they're trying to pick up chicks and they're like, you're my Hosanna.
SPEAKER_00: Or they're going to get, you know, their next bump and they think that's their Hosanna.
SPEAKER_00: Or they're finding the bump, or they're finding their Hosanna at their workplace, and they walk in the door and they're like, Hosanna.
SPEAKER_00: But all of those things fail.
SPEAKER_00: They never take us and bring us back to what God originally designed for you and I.
SPEAKER_00: And if that's your course of life and you're like, look, Josh, I didn't need you to stand on that stage and tell me that life is painful.
SPEAKER_00: I know that already.
SPEAKER_00: I'm glad we're on the same page on that.
SPEAKER_00: But maybe what you need to know is that when you're trying to fix the brokenness in your life, you're running further away from God's good rescue.
SPEAKER_00: And so here's Jesus in the temple, the meeting place where people come to meet with God, and he's healing them in that place.
SPEAKER_00: Isn't that beautiful?
SPEAKER_00: You've got all these overlapping images, like the temple was like a recreation of the garden.
SPEAKER_00: Here's God in the flesh there, you know, interacting with the broken people that are there.
SPEAKER_00: Incredible moment.
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus is healing them.
SPEAKER_00: In other words, he's taking away the brokenness that they've experiencing, and he's bringing to bear the kingdom is literally coming on earth as it is in heaven.
SPEAKER_00: You know that prayer.
SPEAKER_00: If you grew up in the church or the Catholic Church, or you've been around religion for any bit of time, you know that prayer, our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come.
SPEAKER_00: Right here, the kingdom's coming.
SPEAKER_00: The kingdom's coming into the temple space.
SPEAKER_00: The kingdom's coming to this blind person, the kingdom's coming to this person who's lame.
SPEAKER_00: And this is what you're praying.
SPEAKER_00: When you pray that prayer every day, Father, your kingdom come in my life.
SPEAKER_00: I would encourage you to don't just say it, but say, God, I need your kingdom to come in this particular relationship.
SPEAKER_00: I need your kingdom to come in this job assignment.
SPEAKER_00: I need your kingdom to come here in this place where I live.
SPEAKER_00: I need your kingdom to be present in this ailment, in this sickness, in this cancer, in this handicap.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, I need your kingdom to come because when it comes, if it's your kingdom come as it is in heaven, then these things go away.
SPEAKER_00: Now, not everyone is healed.
SPEAKER_00: Paul had an ailment through his whole life with his eyes.
SPEAKER_00: Not every ailment goes away.
SPEAKER_00: But there is this invasion of the kingdom into our life.
SPEAKER_00: And I'll tell you this: Jesus would not have told you to pray that if he didn't want it to happen, right?
SPEAKER_00: Do you think Jesus would come to you and say, like, hey, pray the king, your kingdom come, and he doesn't want his kingdom to come?
SPEAKER_00: No.
SPEAKER_00: So we don't get to dictate the terms, right?
SPEAKER_00: These guys didn't get to dictate that this was when they would be healed.
SPEAKER_00: But the reality is, is that this is the kingdom coming to bear.
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus tells you and I to pray, your kingdom come, your will be done.
SPEAKER_00: And so he heals them.
SPEAKER_00: And then we see and so again, more pictures.
SPEAKER_00: Do you like the pictures?
SPEAKER_00: You okay with the pictures?
SPEAKER_00: So these are some um a group of handicapped beggars outside of uh Jerusalem.
SPEAKER_00: Here's a blind man being led.
SPEAKER_00: This is in Tiberias, a mission hospital in Tiberias.
SPEAKER_00: So in verse 15 it says, when the chief priests and the scribes saw the wonders that he did, healing these people, and then they they not only hear, but then they see the children shouting, Hosanna to the son of David, they are so excited for Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: No, it doesn't say that.
SPEAKER_00: It doesn't say they're apathetic.
SPEAKER_00: No, they're they're shaking with anger.
SPEAKER_00: That's what indignant means.
SPEAKER_00: Shaking in their anger.
SPEAKER_00: They're so angry they're having a physical response.
SPEAKER_00: It's important for a couple of reasons.
SPEAKER_00: Our anger does not always register, is not always justified.
SPEAKER_00: Some of you wrestle with your own anger.
SPEAKER_00: And I hear, I've talked to you about some of it, and you've said, like, well, I, you know, that's just who I am.
SPEAKER_00: No.
SPEAKER_00: Here's these guys just being who they are.
SPEAKER_00: Were they right?
SPEAKER_00: No.
SPEAKER_00: Our emotions do not, our emotions are fallen.
SPEAKER_00: And so they don't always line up accurately.
SPEAKER_00: Just because you feel something, just because you're shaking in your anger, does not mean you're feeling how you ought to feel.
SPEAKER_00: Just because that's your true self, you maybe need to like smack yourself on the cheek and be like, cut it out.
SPEAKER_00: This is not a moment to be indignant.
SPEAKER_00: This is a moment to be rejoicing in Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: But the way that these men think and who they are as the religious elite, they're threatened by Jesus' goodness and his kingdom.
SPEAKER_00: It threatens their authority and their position.
SPEAKER_00: And so they're indignant.
SPEAKER_00: They're wrong.
SPEAKER_00: And you need to know that it's easy to be in the presence of God and be wrong.
SPEAKER_00: You can be in the presence of God working.
SPEAKER_00: You can be in the presence of people who know Jesus being kind to you, feeding you, loving you, and you can be wrong as wrong could be.
SPEAKER_00: And these guys were wrong.
SPEAKER_00: They're indignant.
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus has a word for them from Psalm 8.
SPEAKER_00: Here's a scribe, just in case you were wondering what a scribe looks like.
SPEAKER_00: That's the only one I can find a picture of.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus says to them, Do you hear what these children?
SPEAKER_00: Or they say to him, they say, Do you hear what these children are saying?
SPEAKER_00: Like, this is um so wrong.
SPEAKER_00: This is a scandal.
SPEAKER_00: And they and Jesus says, Yes, I do hear it.
SPEAKER_00: I hear it.
SPEAKER_00: Have you never read, you have prepared praise from the mouths of infants and nursing babes?
SPEAKER_00: Jesus points these scribes, these religious elite, the ones who knew the Bible professionally.
SPEAKER_00: He says, Go back to Psalm 8.
SPEAKER_00: Psalm 8 should give you all the information you need to know about this moment right here.
SPEAKER_00: I think that reading our Bibles ends up with these kind of responses.
SPEAKER_00: I talk to you guys about life.
SPEAKER_00: You tell me your stories.
SPEAKER_00: I appreciate the it's it's really an honor to be invited into your life and to hear the things going on, so the painful things going on in your life.
SPEAKER_00: I hope you don't stop doing that.
SPEAKER_00: I want to pray for you.
SPEAKER_00: But I just want you to know that I can pray for you.
SPEAKER_00: I might be able to give you some advice.
SPEAKER_00: But Jesus comes to us and he often says, Have you never read?
SPEAKER_00: And church, that's my question for you this morning.
SPEAKER_00: Have you never read?
SPEAKER_00: You see, all these guys needed to do was go back to Psalm 8 and they would have been locked in.
SPEAKER_00: They would have known where they're they how to respond.
SPEAKER_00: But but they were not tracking with the moment because they weren't reading their Bibles.
SPEAKER_00: Their hearts were caught up with themselves.
SPEAKER_00: They were just so off.
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus makes it simple enough of like, yo, just go back to the Bible.
SPEAKER_00: Like all the things Jesus could have said to them that would have been justified.
SPEAKER_00: But he simply says, yo, you didn't read your Bible this morning, did you?
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
SPEAKER_00: So Jesus' response is to go to Psalm 8.
SPEAKER_00: I sent you a video this morning.
SPEAKER_00: As long as you get emails from the church, I sent you a link to the video from Psalm 8 from the Bible project.
SPEAKER_00: It's a seven-minute video that explains all of Psalm 8, and you'll see if you watch that video, why that was the perfect scripture for Jesus to quote here.
SPEAKER_00: It's like so good.
SPEAKER_00: That video is awesome.
SPEAKER_00: And it shows that that the work of God, the triumph of God, the frail, the weak, the small, the those that are not powerful, even babies and children are participating in the coming of this kingdom and the power of God.
SPEAKER_00: So Psalm 8.2 says, From the mouths of infants and nursing babes, you've established a stronghold on account of your adversaries, in order to silence the enemy and the avenger.
SPEAKER_00: He closes our passage closes with this.
SPEAKER_00: Then he left them and went out of the city to Bethany and spent the night there.
SPEAKER_00: So he goes back out over the Mount of Olives, over to Beth Page and Bethany, about an mile and a half away from Jerusalem.
SPEAKER_00: He's got friends there.
SPEAKER_00: This is where Lazarus, the region where Lazarus and the rest of the family is at.
SPEAKER_00: And he stays the night there.
SPEAKER_00: In closing, I want to read to you a passage out of 2 Corinthians.
SPEAKER_00: Because we talked about how you and I are the dwelling place of God.
SPEAKER_00: And Paul uses this picture and he says some pretty radical stuff.
SPEAKER_00: And I want you to listen to this with a tender heart, just for yourself personally.
SPEAKER_00: I'm not going to apply this to your life, but I want you to listen to this.
SPEAKER_00: You've got to respond.
SPEAKER_00: You've got to figure out how you want to respond in this moment.
SPEAKER_00: Here's what it says.
SPEAKER_00: Or what fellowship does light have with darkness?
SPEAKER_00: What agreement does Christ have with Belial?
SPEAKER_00: What does a believer have in common with an unbeliever?
SPEAKER_00: And what agreement does the temple of God have with idols?
SPEAKER_00: In other words, you are the temple.
SPEAKER_00: We are the temple of the living God, as God has said.
SPEAKER_00: I will dwell in them.
SPEAKER_00: I will walk among them.
SPEAKER_00: I will be their God, and they will be my people.
SPEAKER_00: He wants to be your people.
SPEAKER_00: We say that sometimes, right?
SPEAKER_00: That's kind of a saying that's taken hold, like, you're my people.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus wants to say that about you, that you're my people.
SPEAKER_00: And so the question that Paul is asking of this church is like, come on, guys, why are you mixing your life with evil and good?
SPEAKER_00: Why is there like, why are you letting junk into your life when you are the place where God is at?
SPEAKER_00: Therefore, come out from among them, be separate, be different, says the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: Don't touch any unclean thing.
SPEAKER_00: And I will come to you.
SPEAKER_00: I will welcome you.
SPEAKER_00: And I will be a father to you, and you will be sons and daughters to me, says the Lord Almighty.
SPEAKER_00: So then, dear friends, since we have these promises, let us cleanse ourselves from every impurity of the flesh and spirit, bringing holiness to completion in the fear of God.
SPEAKER_00: Our job as we are following Jesus is to let him put his finger on the stuff that doesn't belong in our life.
SPEAKER_00: One of the things that should be going on is that God's saying, hey, that's not for your good or my glory.
SPEAKER_00: And maybe it's permissible.
SPEAKER_00: This would be the areas where it's not a hard line, but it's like maybe it's your finances, right?
SPEAKER_00: Maybe it's there's no rule in the Bible that says, you know, you can't have a credit card, but you personally struggle with racking up debt.
SPEAKER_00: And so maybe for your good and God's glory, God would have you cut up your credit card so that your relationship with money is simplified and you can't go and rack up that credit card debt.
SPEAKER_00: And it hinders who you are.
SPEAKER_00: There's no Bible verse that says, don't have a credit card.
SPEAKER_00: But the Holy Spirit puts these things on our hearts individually.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe it's with your diet, maybe it's in the way that you dress or the music that you listen to or the films that you watch.
SPEAKER_00: All of those things are where the Spirit of God works in us personally and says, hey, be different, be separate.
SPEAKER_00: Set yourself aside for me because you're my temple.
SPEAKER_00: And you need to give permission for the God of the Bible to come into your life and turn over some tables.
SPEAKER_00: Not because he doesn't love you, but because he wants to be in your presence.
SPEAKER_00: He wants to give you his goodness.
SPEAKER_00: He wants to teach you.
SPEAKER_00: Let's pray.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, we thank you for your word.
SPEAKER_00: We do give you permission to work in our lives.
SPEAKER_00: We want to be that cleansed temple where we are setting aside the things that are not for our good or your glory.
SPEAKER_00: And Lord, we don't want to be legalistic or or have a bunch of rules for rules' sake.
SPEAKER_00: We just want to walk with you, God.
SPEAKER_00: Let that be the motivation for the changes in our life, that we just want to walk with you.
SPEAKER_00: I pray for each of my brothers and sisters that you would work in their life to set them apart from sin and the things that trip them up.
SPEAKER_00: Bless them, God.
SPEAKER_00: I pray in Jesus' name.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.