The Neighborhood Church, Bentonville, AR

"Emotionally Healthy Spirituality: Unpacking Anger and Jesus' Righteous Emotion"

• theneighborhood.church • Season 2025 • Episode 13

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In this episode of the podcast, Pastor Joe, Pastor Tom Helmich, Roseann and Tyra, explore and unpack the often misunderstood emotion of anger within the context of spiritual growth. Drawing from the narrative of Jesus cleansing the temple, they make a critical distinction between destructive anger and righteous emotion.

Breaking down the biblical text from multiple perspectives and challenging traditional interpretations, they offer fresh insights into Jesus' actions. The discussion traverses Jesus' journey, the complexities of temple commerce, and the systemic injustices of the time, all the while answering the question of, "what truly constitutes righteous emotion?" 

As part of our ongoing "Emotionally Healthy Spirituality" series, this podcast offers reflections on managing emotions, understanding biblical narratives, and cultivating a more non-anxious approach to faith. Whether you're a theological scholar, a spiritual seeker, or simply curious about the intersection of emotion and spirituality, you can find deep insights into anger in this podcast. 

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Pastor Joe Liles:

Music. Welcome to the TNC podcast. We are recorded in studio with three of my friends. Three of my friends. Wait. Sorry, there is a fourth friend here, but she's not on the podcast today. It's Mercedes. Everyone say, hi, Mercedes is great. Yeah, it's wonderful. So Mercedes is walking through the church as we're recording on a beautiful day. Might I say this day is gorgeous, and I'm very happy that the sun is shining again. The weather is creeping out of the 60s into the 70s. I am 100% fully in for all of this. So let's introduce who we have on the podcast today. We're gonna go around the horn a little bit now in full, full garb, which I call the All Blacks, right? With a caller in his pocket, a call a traditional pastor, caller in his pocket, the one, the only the future pastor of care and education at the neighborhood church. It is Tom. Tom. It's great to see you. Tom. It's wonderful. Yeah, it's great. I have so many questions while he's in full guard right now. Did you did you have pastoral duties today,

Tom Helmich:

on standby for somebody that's having a hip replacement surgery? Okay? And then had to lead a Bible study, like old school Bible study for one of my classes this afternoon. Nice.

Pastor Joe Liles:

Oh, you were talking about that yesterday. Yeah, you had a lot of work for that. That was a big one. So I got that that's done

Tom Helmich:

behind me. I just got one more assignment. More assignment in that class. Nice, still waiting to see whether or not and you go to the hospital to visit that fellow. I'm not sure if, okay, I have to stay or not. So, yeah, it's kind of being prepared. I love color. Kind of helps you get access. I

Pastor Joe Liles:

bring the big cross on my hospital visits, just so, like, when I walk by, I'm like, I'm Pastor Joe. I'm looking for so and so they're like, Yes, sure. Room 13. And I'm like, thank you so much. I appreciate that so and then I can break through, break it through the hospital, just fine, alright? And then next to Tom wonderful, we've been rolling today together in the community, meeting people, growing the church, right? It is the one, the only Roseanne. Roseanne the Director of Operations, which is wonderful. And to my left in the podcast studio, right? Yeah, it is my left. Yeah, he's back checking me already. That's we could be fighting on this podcast. It's gonna be great. And today's podcast is about anger, not fighting anger, not mine, but it is the one, the only my good friend from LA, worship leader inter um, it is in residence. In worship leader in residence. It is Tyra. Tyra, Tyra, Tyra. That's great. So we got a full house today, and I wanted to bring everyone in because we're talking about a sensitive issue. The sensitive issue is we have not done the jingle yet, and Tom doesn't tell us to the end, so we're gonna do the jingle right away. That glass three podcast, Tom has been like we forgot the jingle. That's not right. Tables coming back in a couple weeks, and I will no longer have 11 days. We missed table. We missed table, yeah, and guess what? He usually sings the jingle with me. So I've soloed the jingle for so long. Do you want to sing the first part with me? I don't know it Okay, yeah, you can hum it. Okay, you hum it with me. You guys do the church part. You guys miss it. Okay? It's great. 479367, 479-367-2285, neighborhood church. Nice. Thank you so much. That harmony was awesome. Wow. We need to hold that out and kind of, wow. Okay, that was a moment, yeah, that did not resolve at the end, hurts my soul. So with that, this past Sunday, we're in our series on Emotionally Healthy Spirituality, and our series has gone through a lot of different emotions. Tom, you've preached twice in the series. Is that correct? I know you kicked out once. Okay? You kicked off the series. You kicked off talking about Emotionally Healthy Spirituality, right? What has your experience been kind of talking through these emotions since the start of the series.

Tom Helmich:

Especially, becomes the anger, since that's the one that's up, it can be a difficult and destructive one. It's the easiest one. It seems like we'd rather turn rather be angry than have shame. Yeah, we'd rather turn that into anger, because I was just to blame somebody else, but not always wrong, not always bad. I think it's such a thing is righteous anger. Yeah, there's time in the Scripture we see that that God is angry. And so there's a difference between sinful anger and righteous anger. You know,

Pastor Joe Liles:

I do have to say, like, when you opened the series, and we talked through, like, the emotions of God, right? We took through, like, what is the definition of spiritually healthy, right? And what does that mean at the start? And then that second week, when I jumped in, I was like, Hey, these are the emotions of God, and I just read them in a line, right? Here's when's God's emotion, here's when's God's jealous, here's when's this happening, here's when this happening. And I was like, we live with an emotional God, right? And we are made in the image of an emotional God. Now, I love how you you kind of took the adjective to anger as to righteous Right? Like righteous anger, right? We're describing a relationship to God that deals in emotions. So we're not devoid of emotion. We should not be fearful of our emotions, right? We should not walk away from our emotions or hide them. But our emotions need to be come from a godly perspective. They need to enter the world in a place where it's first comes with a relationship with God out. The world, and I think that's where we miss it's the

Tom Helmich:

difference between being informed by our emotions or being controlled by our emotions. Oh,

Pastor Joe Liles:

that's a good one. Preach. Good point. That's what we say when Tom's not preaching, but he's preaching. Preach. That's what we say. We

Tyra Dennis:

say that all the time in the black church, even when the pastor just stands there. Are you serious? Even just saying it? Preach, he just stands there and he does like the whole like, I'm here, I'm about to give you some hot fire Gospel before we're to say, like, preach, preach it. That's

Pastor Joe Liles:

fantastic. One motherboard

Tyra Dennis:

lady, preach,

Pastor Joe Liles:

oh, she gets out there. She gets out that's great. Oh, man, that's fantastic. All denominations, all denominations, all denominations, which is great. So in a way, we've come through joy, we've come through being overwhelmed, right? We've come through all these different emotions. We've come through sadness and grief, right, and all these different ways. And we're now to a space of talking about anger and and I think anger is a sensitive topic. It's one that and it's sensitive because the people who are angry, it's sometimes hard to speak about that with someone who is an angry person, right? Because it can be triggering, right? It can activate the anger. And I think there's a lot of fear around anger. So the first thing I wanted to do on Sunday was kind of to dispel the fear of anger, right, and start that. And so I did something I'd never done before in life of the church in 15 years. I had everyone shout angrily, right? Kind of yell right, angrily at the start of the service. So both services, right? I just said, Hey, we're gonna pause. I want you to shake it out and we're just gonna let out. Ah,

Roseann Bowlin:

that was terrifying. That was so fun. I was terrified. I don't

Pastor Joe Liles:

know what to do with both these comments right now.

Tyra Dennis:

Well, because I had an inner monitor, like situation, yeah, in a pack, and your mic comes through my pack, yeah. And I promise you, I was looking at Mike, and I did not think he was gonna catch it in time. So I was like,

Pastor Joe Liles:

no, stop. Turn off Joe. Turn off Joe. And then, like, he caught it. It was perfect. Okay, that's great. So it was fear before the terrified because I gave Mike a heads up. I'm like, shut my mic down, like, when I do the shut, yeah, two, three, go, yeah. So good. That's great. And then you said it was joyful.

Roseann Bowlin:

I know it was fun. It was fun to get to yell at church. Yeah,

Pastor Joe Liles:

that's great. And everyone did it now, here's a here's a very interesting thing. When I said, Yo, I thought it was gonna be like, Ah, right? And then everyone's good, like, it's kind of it's hard to yell. People don't normally yell. It's to get that out right, especially in the combined space with other people right, like, here we go. The first service definitely held that.

Tyra Dennis:

I don't know what happened so long that I turned around and looked like, oh, they have some things.

Pastor Joe Liles:

That was my exact thought they were like, struggling. I was like, We need to break some things down. This is trouble and

Tom Helmich:

then therapeutic release. That was

Pastor Joe Liles:

very much, and that's kind of how I drove it. What was fun about it? Yeah, and here's the other part, everyone did it, yeah, I did not think everyone would do it. In fact, when I said that children, like everyone did, I thought people would not yell and I would be the only one, and then I'd have to be like, okay, not me the only one. Let's go again.

Tyra Dennis:

There was a plan that for second service, when you told people yell, we tried to tell everyone in second service, no to not yell. Are you serious? So it could be silent. That's great. That's great. Yeah. Clearly we failed. Yeah, that's

Pastor Joe Liles:

so good. Don't do it. Yeah, that's exactly right. That's exactly right. That would have been hilarious. It would have been so good. So that being said, I think one of the big things is that, yeah, that first service went long, and then I asked for service. I said, How was that for you? Because I wanted to see, like, what was the shock value? How did everyone feel? Did everyone feel so uncomfortable they don't know what to do? And honestly, they were like, No, like that, like we needed that. Like it felt good. So okay. So then I went and said, Should I have second service do it? And they're like, you have to make second service if you made us do it, like, second service has to do it. And so, and the interesting part of the second service didn't want to do it. So I was like, Oh, you can be angry at first service, because they said you have to do it. They didn't want to do anything the second service. Second service was awesome, fun. I mean, no, they were singing, you got him singing, you got him going. I had to fight. Yeah? But hey, that's what anger is about. Like, you fight, right? You get them going. That's because

Tom Helmich:

that's right, just the crew that, like, sleeps in a little groggy, you know? Yeah, maybe I don't know.

Pastor Joe Liles:

We need an espresso shot. We need to throw, oh, man, espresso All right, over for second service. That'd be kind of nice. We could roll with that. That'd be really

Roseann Bowlin:

good. So now, ordering espresso?

Pastor Joe Liles:

Yeah, we had a coffee fiasco today. It wasn't fiasco. We ordered a coffee.

Roseann Bowlin:

Yeah, learning. It's a learning, learning experience.

Pastor Joe Liles:

So with that, we're still gonna have great coffee on easier. It's gonna be amazing. It's gonna be that's why we do things ahead of time now. So hey, not everyone needs to laugh when I say ahead of time. We are actually a planned out church. Everyone didn't laugh. Some of us just looked Yeah, it hurts. It hurts. Makes me kind of angry. No. Wow. So with that, let's talk about anger. Let's open up and read some scripture and truly talk about that before we get into that. I asked the church on Sunday if anyone's been around angry people in their life, and if that's been a reality of people you've been around. And so I just want to ask it here, have you guys been around, and I would say in close relationships, right? Not just kind of outside relationships or third party relationships, but close relationships. Have you guys been around a person who's been angry before, or you would describe as an angry person? Everyone with consternated Looks is thinking right now,

Tyra Dennis:

because I'm thinking, like, are they actually angry? Are they having a really jacked up life moment, right? That's where my brain is, okay, yeah, because I

Tom Helmich:

think, I don't think very many people are just like, angry people. You catch them in the moment when they're having a really bad day and it bubbles over, had a lot of that, because they often would call 911, when that would happen, yeah, it's true. Yeah, when your copy, but not nobody in like, personal relationship like that. I've spent a lot of time with it's just a genuinely angry person. I think that would be incredibly exhausting to be like that all the

Roseann Bowlin:

time. Neighbor that was like that when I bought my first house. He was my next door neighbor. He and his wife. He was angry all the time, and he looked for things to be angry about.

Pastor Joe Liles:

I constantly think that there's so much behind a person in their life when they're angry, like there's so much life experience packed into every moment of anger, right, that is in them, and especially when they lead their lives in anger, like, that's a prevailing emotion that comes out and honestly, like, when we're talking about angry people in our life, there's a justification that people use in Scripture that even Jesus got angry, right? Like, even Jesus flipped the tables as well, to say, right? And they're using this moment to say, like, I'm allowed to be angry, and sometimes it's a healthy allowance to say, hey, in my relationship with God in a righteous way, I've come to this emotion of anger. But a lot of times it's not healthy, right? They're justifying an unhealthy action through a biblical precedence. And that's the danger of kind of using scripture to not norm your life or inform it, but defend your life right and defend ways that are not characteristic of walking with Jesus and characteristic of deep discipleship. So we opened with the text, talking about Jesus and this moment in the temple, right where he'd come for Passover and all these people, pilgrim, pilgrimaging, I said that on Sunday too, they have a pilgrimage to Jerusalem for Passover, and typically there are sacrifices brought to the altar. There are sacrifices brought to the temple from everyone coming for the Passover. And so if you don't have or couldn't bring your sacrifices from wherever you came from, you bought them in the temple, and people were selling the sacrifices. There's some outside the temple, inside the temple courtyard, which was the courtyard for the Gentiles, the non Jewish Christians. And so they were sitting in there for the Gentiles. And they couldn't go any further into the temple. They couldn't go into any other part of the temple. Only priests were allowed and the Holy of Holies and different things like that. So Jesus coming into this area, recognizing Old Testament scripture, right and fulfilling Old Testament scripture, recognize that this has been made into a den of thieves and not a house of prayer. And so we have this whole language of him recognizing that if you come in and you're poor, you have to pay the price for the sacrifice at the temple. The people who are selling the sacrifice get to regulate that price. The money changers between the different cities and people groups, then get to add their fee onto the money, and then the priests get a cut of all that because it's in their temple, and that's what's happening. So this is not a one moment I see a person selling a a dove, or I see a person selling a cattle or an oxen, or anything else like that. This is a systemic issue that is happening in the temple that Jesus is saying, No, it begins here, and something needs to change. And so we read this text in that way. So we're going to be reading in John, and it's going to be chapter two, verses 12 through 17. And what we're going to do is Tyra, if you can read 12 and 13, I'll do verse 14 and 15, and then can you read 16? And can you read 17? Alright, so Tyra, would you care to start us off in verse 12 of chapter two of the Gospel of John? Sure,

Tyra Dennis:

John 212, and 13, and this is the NIV version after he went down to Capernaum with his mother and brothers and his disciples. I feel like context matters. So something happens, and then they go to Capernaum. Okay? After this, he went down to Capernaum with his mother and brothers and his disciples. There they stayed for a few days, when it was almost time for the Jewish Passover Jesus went up to Jerusalem. Hmm,

Pastor Joe Liles:

that's great. So, and then the after, this is the wedding at Cana, which is the first miracle of Jesus, before that, before this, right? That's what they're speaking about, right? Where

Tyra Dennis:

you turned water into wine. Water was already frustrated, because they will come up out of his sleep.

Pastor Joe Liles:

This is true. Oh, he's already frustrated. Are you saying that frustration leads to anger? Not yet. Okay, here

Tom Helmich:

we go. He obviously didn't drink the wine.

Tyra Dennis:

Then, yeah, there's a whole

Pastor Joe Liles:

different story of Jesus drank the wine. All right, so going on in verse 14, in the temple, he found people selling cattle, sheep and doves, and the money changers seated at their tables making a whip of cords. He drove them all. He drove all of them out of the temple, both the sheep and the cattle. He also poured out the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables.

Roseann Bowlin:

Verse 16, he told those who were selling the doves, Take these things out of here. Stop making my father's house a marketplace.

Tom Helmich:

His disciples remembered that it was written, zeal for your house will consume me. The Jesus, no

Pastor Joe Liles:

team, yeah, that's okay, yeah, that's verse 17, only you've already read an 18. Now I want to hear

Tom Helmich:

it. The Jews then said to him, What sign can you show for doing this? That's great justification. Yeah,

Pastor Joe Liles:

there's a justification there, right? So this is the text we have of Jesus flipping the tables. And what I asked the church on Sunday was this. I said, I want you as you're hearing the text, I want you to stop when you hear the word anger, and I want you to listen for what's around it, and I want you to listen for what you're hearing and how it makes you feel, and what Jesus was feeling, and everything else. And I basically brought them into an area of saying, listen for anger. But anger is never in there, because we always attribute this to anger. So there is no word for anger in there, right? And it doesn't appear in the text. Yet, we always attribute that the emotions of Jesus were anger, because that's what our response would have been when we were flipping tables. If we're flipping tables, we're figuring that we are angry, right? Frustrated. Tyra, you're giving me such a look right now, like there's a moment. She's like, I have so much to say. We're gonna get there one second. So with that, I wanted to display what I believe Jesus was showing us in this text and in the Scripture. And it was three things to me. One, it was that Jesus had a righteous anger. A righteous What anger? Oh, a righteous anger. Jesus. And I said it on Sunday. More it was emotion, not anger. But I'll go with you on this one, Jesus had a righteous emotion, and that righteous emotion was that it was in relationship to God, anger. No, not anger. It was in relationship to God. And that relationship to God was when he said, My house, my father's house is a house of prayer. He was concentrating on a scriptural presence towards a systemic issue in the temple that was created long ago to be a certain way that Jesus is coming to fulfill. So we have this righteous part being in right relationship with God. Jesus's anger was not harmful, right? The whip, even though we hear that as an anger and people got whipped, no people were harmed in the flipping of the tables. That was pretty good that we know of, that we know of. And then addition that the whip was traditionally used to move the cattle and the sheep, right? Not the doves, but the cattle and the sheep. And so we have this moment where no one was harmed in this. And then lastly, Jesus's emotion was public. That's very important. This was not something that was hidden behind. It wasn't something that was shrouded it wasn't something that was covered up. It was very public, and it was out there because it was in a righteous way. And I think those three things are very important as we look at anger, because I don't think we do anger in that way. So my question to you all is one, do you believe that Jesus was angry when he flipped the tables? Why or why not.

Tom Helmich:

It seems flipping a table seems like an angry response. Okay, because there's one thing to say, Get out or to drag it away, but when you flip it like that, just seems like an angry response. So that's me interpreting that based on my own context and things I've seen, yep, but it seems like an angry response to me. Those

Roseann Bowlin:

tables were probably not light plastic either.

Pastor Joe Liles:

You're very true. I don't think those tables would have been our foldable plastic tables that they can move around very

Tom Helmich:

easily, not necessarily been very big either, though, just based on, you know, first century Jerusalem, but not IKEA plastic table.

Roseann Bowlin:

Yeah, right. So I see anger in that, mainly because of the flipping the tables, but in in what he said, stop making my father's house a marketplace. I this is not the purpose of this, by the way, I really enjoyed the graphic that you showed, okay, of the temple. Oh, great, because it made sense. Really hope, because it made sense, right? But I will

Pastor Joe Liles:

link to that in the show notes if you do want to see the graphic, right? So, yeah, the graphic is very helpful.

Roseann Bowlin:

It was very helpful and and kind of eye opening that there's a. Tiles. And I think that his anger wasn't, wasn't, I think it was for the benefit of the Gentiles, not, not the anger part. But this is my father's house, yeah, and he wanted to be there for the Gentiles also,

Pastor Joe Liles:

yeah, I agree with that.

Tyra Dennis:

I think he was pissed. Okay? And here, here's why, like, I try to think about this, the the journey up until this point. So I'm trying to sleep during a wedding. I should be I'm and this is gonna sound horrible, but in this moment, I'm not Jesus the miracle maker. I'm Jesus the son of Mary and Joseph, and we are attending as a family at somebody's wedding, right? Like we are guests. It's a party. I fell asleep, so I'm probably really tired. If I'm falling asleep at a party y'all didn't have y'all stuff together. I now have to be woken up out of my sleep again, taking the whole Jesus piece of like holier than thou out of it, Miracle Worker, out of it. You woke a human up out of their sleep, who probably went to sleep from exhaustion and knowing they have this long trip tomorrow to get to Capernaum for them to then serve you. Yeah. Then he snaps at his mom, so you see the frustration? Yeah, he does the thing. We never find out if he goes back to sleep or not. The next time we hear about him, is him, his brothers and his mom ended up here, yep, and when they got there, this is what he saw and and so in my brain, there is still this piece of frustration. We don't know what that conversation was like on the road, just for him to get there, and then people are wilding out in the temple. That's crazy work. So I could get the course together, and I could move the cattle, and I could get rid of the sheep or whatever, but I don't have to overturn, because the word they use is overturn, right? I don't have to overturn tables unless overturn has a different meaning. Then he flipped them. There are many ways in his power and in his authority bringing that back into context. He could have stopped them from selling the things that they were selling, but instead he flipped the tables. Now it could be like, I'm so tired. I did this long journey. My mom had me messed up. My brother's just talking crazy to me. Triples are tripping this long. My donkey wanted to fall asleep mid ride. I'm mad because y'all tripping and sending and now I gotta show you who I am, and instead of using my right hand, this might be, I'm gonna just flip this table. Or it could be what Roseanne said, I'm so disgusted that you would turn my father's house into a circus like this, that you would treat these people who are already on the margins. You would marginalize them more in a place you definitely aren't supposed to do that. The quickest way I can get you to stop is to flip the table. I just have to remove it from your power. So I still think that comes with anger, though, because he's Jesus. He could have done it a million different ways. And I think

Roseann Bowlin:

that sometimes we people out here in the 21st century tend to turn the Bible into flowers and roses, and it's all love. But this is the grit of the Bible, the Passover meal that he went to and what happened after that, that meal was gritty, yeah, and ugly and it happened. And we're here because it happened. And I

Tyra Dennis:

think I love that you say that too, because I I try to think of the fact that we're talking about emotions right as a series. And Jesus knew he was going to the cross. There was not ever a moment that he didn't know that that was his whole purpose to live. So can you imagine, like holding that for so long, knowing how excruciatingly painful embarrassing that death is going to be, knowing you cannot get out of it, knowing people that you love are going to be the ones that send you there, and you still gotta do all these other pieces on your journey like but we're, we're supposed to pretend he never got mad, he never got scared, he never, you know, had anxiety around it. He never felt lonely or if, if he is human the way we believe and confess, then, of course, he felt every last one of those emotions. And I don't see why it wouldn't be, I don't see why he wouldn't have gotten angry. I think there are other moments where he was mad too, but that's that's not another podcast.

Roseann Bowlin:

It's a righteous it's a righteous anger. But how do we relate to God if we can't relate through Jesus's emotions that he showed i.

Tyra Dennis:

Listen, God destroyed all the earth by water. I know that's anger. Yes, my good and perfect creation done.

Pastor Joe Liles:

We're over. We're starting again. The great reset. Yeah, yeah. So it's usually when I look at this text. Something I didn't notice on Sunday, but I noticed now, is that, you know, I talked about the 1000s upon 1000s upon 1000s upon 10s of 1000s of people that have done this pilgrimage to this place, right in Jerusalem. And here we are in this temple court, where everyone's coming to worship. And this temple court is probably packed right with people that are coming to visit. And now mind you, I think how many, how many people selling cattle and those would need to be there in order to handle the crowds? Think of this like a food truck part outside a stadium. Oh, it had to be a ton, a ton, right? Yeah. So, yeah, if you walk into the first money change market, like a it's literally a market. So imagine. So here's something I didn't pick up. The text, it says he flipped their tables. Well, do you think Jesus went to every single table?

Tyra Dennis:

I think he grew like 10 feet, or

Tom Helmich:

just flipped enough to get the point across.

Pastor Joe Liles:

So, so this is where I'm going. So, and I didn't pick this up when I was reading it, so this is kind of like new revelation for me today, if I'm really putting this together in the way. Because when you when you guys triggered me and said, Hey, you put up the graphic. That was really good. And I was like, Yeah, because there's like, 10,000 people, I wanted people to know that, right? Like, it's a lot of people. And I thought, oh, in a second, I've always had this image. Like, there's like, three tables outside. The front of the temple, and they're selling some cattle and stuff like that. And then all of a sudden, here we go, Jesus coming. He flips that one table, and I'm like, there had to be hundreds, oh yeah, hundreds of money changers, plus,

Tom Helmich:

what? Yeah, that, that, that area, that court of the Gentiles, and, like, multiple pillars, the whole Yes. It's almost like, like, booths, like, yes,

Roseann Bowlin:

yeah. Like the marketplace, yeah.

Tom Helmich:

Because, like, in January, Amy and I are Istanbul went to the Grand Bazaar, yeah, in the morning, so it wasn't busy, and we didn't get our pocketed. But there's little nooks everywhere to be like that. Like little booths everywhere you go, there's, you know, maybe 100 of

Pastor Joe Liles:

them, well, and I'm thinking, like, all these tables. So you imagine that, like Jesus flips the first table you got the guy going, you see, you see what Jesus just did? Like, they're two tables down. Here comes Jesus next table. And they're like, hey, Jesus. Like, hold on, right? Like, sweeping the stuff, yeah, let's go. Like,

Roseann Bowlin:

well, don't you think that they were like, who is he? Well, so

Pastor Joe Liles:

part of that, this is the beginning of His ministry, right? So there's not a relationship to this yet, right now, the people from the wedding at Cana just happened, so we don't think that word has traveled. So has traveled, right? So gosh, do you remember? Tom, look it up. Okay, yeah. Tom, look at that. Yeah. I want to say that it was a day journey by foot.

Tyra Dennis:

He is mad. He is mad. He is walking around on his feet in a donkey. He's tired, probably a little hungry. Oh

Pastor Joe Liles:

my gosh. You guys, you guys are putting our, all our emotions on Jesus. You're like, I ain't walking, I ain't walking for a day. We're doing a series. We're doing a series coming in June called Jesus was here, and it's a historical series about the places that Jesus walked, right, and what happened. And so with that, so with that, what we're going to do is we're going to look at all these different places and the series graphic. The series graphic is Jesus with sandals, right? Jesus with sandals, and it's only his sandals on like sandy shores are raggedy. I would tell it. They had to be. They had to be. We're going to have sandals Sunday. That's what we're going to call that

Tyra Dennis:

day sandal Sunday. Know what? Though, like, it could have been that. It could have been that they saw him flip one table and was like, Oh, let me get my act together. But it also could have been, going back to the photo. It could have been the revolution being televised, because there was this one part of the photo very in the high right corner. It's like a little balcony, and it's, I guess, the highest priest, or whatever, gets to sit there. And my brain is going, there's no way that they came off their high horse to be in the market, right? They are watching the market happen in their temple. They're counting the dollars because they're counting the people. They're making sure they're not getting like, I'm just thinking, think about it like business, right? I bet money that Jesus prompted other people to help turn those tables, whether that's what he was trying to do or not, people probably felt empowered to be like, yeah, no, you're wrong. Give me back my whatever for your whatever, and they're watching. And so now it creates a whole other dynamic that's interesting, and we don't know what happens between all those different parties.

Pastor Joe Liles:

So, so 67

Tom Helmich:

miles, so that's more in that day's journey.

Pastor Joe Liles:

Yeah, if you're walking, you can typically walk 16 minutes. Is a typical walking pace for a mile, right? So you figure that roughly an hour. Let's just do an hour. We'll say we're walking a little bit fast, right? You have an hour to walk four miles, right? And so you're going to walk an hour and four miles, so that way, yeah, 24 you're, you're looking at, yeah, you're

Tom Helmich:

not going to walk 24 Yeah, probably not. So that's probably a two day trip,

Tyra Dennis:

yeah? So Jesus was even more upset, because now it's two days because, yeah, because you're also,

Tom Helmich:

depending if there's a settlement in between, you know, you got to bring your food and your water. Yeah, I

Pastor Joe Liles:

don't know. Know if we're doing, if we're doing four miles an hour. I mean, that's only, that's only six hours, 24

Tyra Dennis:

hours. But also it's a 24 miles

Pastor Joe Liles:

too. Oh, you said 67 miles. 67 three days. Three days. Definitely. It's

Tyra Dennis:

a bunch of people too, with different personalities. He's walking alongside two of them. They're gonna get him killed. His mom's probably still nagging, like it's, I'm really trying to put this. You are building a story. Because I feel like often I'm 100% with Roseanne. We cookie cut the Bible so much that we forget that these are real live people, like, who did real human things, like, we forget that my mom gets on my nerves after two hours. I love you, Sylvia, if you're listening, because I did tell her she might she's so this is her first one. Watch I cannot walk three days with her. What three you just want me to walk for three

Tom Helmich:

days if you want to take the emotion out of Jesus in any other story, it undercuts the reality of the

Roseann Bowlin:

Christian. I agree. Yeah, that's true. So

Pastor Joe Liles:

here's where I want to land on this, though. So the reason I brought up, like, how many tables there were in Jesus flipping tables? If it's anger, you're just flipping tables. Ah, you're just flipping tables right? If you're starting a movement, or the narrative is bigger than the tables, right, you're setting an example by a table in order to put forward, right? The real reason you're doing this, and they're short people back then, what really

Tyra Dennis:

short? That's probably true. Yeah, I wonder how that table was being

Pastor Joe Liles:

what so I mean, but we think about this like the reason, if Jesus coming to flip the table, right? They would say that Jesus was angry. They would say he flipped his table in anger, right? Jesus was overwhelmed by his anger. That's what we get from God, right? We get anger from God. And it says, God was angry. God was jealous, right? We get this emotion, but that's not the emotion that's portrayed in the text, which was, here's the deal. I chose this text because I Jesus was angry. And then I read it and I was like, I've always just made assumption Jesus was angry,

Tom Helmich:

and I still think he was okay. I still, I still side with the anger side. Okay, Matthew, but, you know, but think about so Matthew and Mark don't have the zeal word in it. I

Tyra Dennis:

don't think so. Yeah, think about

Roseann Bowlin:

the Pharisees that were observing this. They know the Torah right, and the Torah said, zeal for my house. And so they had to have been back in the background going, Oh my gosh. Oh yeah, this is prophecy coming true.

Tyra Dennis:

Yeah. They had to, that's, I'm convinced there were people sitting at that little top area watching this freaking out, which only led to his death, probably sooner than what it was going

Tom Helmich:

to be, which is probably why they asked, you know, what sign can you show for doing this? Right? Oh, yeah, you know, like, what?

Tyra Dennis:

What also piss me off. What gives you authority after I just made 12 barrels of wine. You want to know the sign, bro, I made it here after all of the three day trick,

Roseann Bowlin:

did that miracle then travel that 67 miles, 6267 57 miles. Okay,

Tyra Dennis:

probably she seemed a little pushy. Not gonna lie, she seems okay.

Pastor Joe Liles:

I have an update from Mark, Gospel of Mark Matthew, but go ahead. This is great gospel of Mark. So right before this, in this text. Context, Jesus curses the fig tree. Ooh, waits away for this. Wait for this. So on the following day. So following day is when we have the oh, we're at, we're in, Jesus entering Jerusalem, right? And so the triumphant entry into Jerusalem, right? Everyone's shouting, Jesus, Jesus, Hosanna. This is wonderful. This Palm Sunday coming up this Sunday. This is where we're at in the text. On the following day, when they came from Bethany, he was hungry, seeing in the distance a fig tree in leaf. He went to see whether perhaps he would find anything on it. I wonder if they're figs. He says when he came to it, that's not in the text. Don't repeat that. When he came to it, he found nothing but leaves. For it was not the season for figs. Why did Jesus not knows this. So

Tom Helmich:

he walked for three days. He was hangry like

Pastor Joe Liles:

he gets to the fig tree. This does back up hangry,

Tom Helmich:

right? There's no figs, and it's wrong season. I can't believe

Pastor Joe Liles:

I reinforced hangry. This is a horrible reality. All right, here we go. So wait, I'm going on. I'm moving. Jesus was angry, man. This is Snickers all day. Okay, here we go. Yeah, here we go. I'm digging myself a hole. All right. Here it is. So he said to it, make no fruit. He said, May no one ever eat fruit from you again. And his disciples heard it, I love it. There's a one line says, And the disciples heard it like they you got to stick with that, Jesus, that fruit can never be bare again. They get their mouth shut the rest of the journey. That's what, yeah, that's right. Ooh, you're Jesus. I ain't talking bad. He cursed that fig tree right. Here we go, so, but then it's cleanses the temple. So listen to this now. I'm going to get back to reinforcing my point. It's gonna be great. Then they came to Jerusalem, and He entered the temple and began to drive out those who were selling and those who were buying in the temple, and He overturned the tables of the money changers and the seats of those who sold doves. Yes. So now he's thrown some seats, not throwing. See, we already do this. We already made it more. He overturned a seat. He actually lightly went over and tipped over the chair of the people selling the doves. That was plastic, either? No, it wasn't plastic. Here's what he says, verse 17. So listen to this. I'm sorry now, hold up. Can't see, but he is tripping right now. Okay, hold on. One second. Tip a chair. Here we go. And he turned over the seats of those who sold doves, and he would not allow anyone to carry anything through the temple. Verse 17, he was teaching and saying, it is not written, My house shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations, but you have made it a den of robbers. And when the chief priests and the scribes heard it, they kept looking for a way to kill him, for they were afraid of him because the whole crowd was spellbound by his anger, nope, by His teaching. And when evening came, Jesus and disciples went out of the city. So here's, here's Mark. Okay, I'm in Mark. You're Matthew. I'm in Mark. Oh, we just, are you going to read the same

Tom Helmich:

thing? Well, you say that he would not allow anyone to carry anything through through the temple? Yeah, correct. Yeah. So it's like, not only is he, you know, flipping these things over and but he stopped the sacrifice, stopping him, yeah, out of that, keeping him out of the whole building, like he would, not

Pastor Joe Liles:

everything well. So what he's saying is that he wouldn't let anyone carry anything through the temple, right? Which means coming to bring your sacrifice. He stopped. He just stopped all he said, we've made it sacrifices. And that's not the relate. It's very interesting, actually, because if we take it that he didn't allow anyone to carry anything through the temple and from Mark, it's meaning that he did not allow the sacrifices to happen anymore,

Tom Helmich:

or he just didn't allow them to bring in the stuff they're buying and selling.

Pastor Joe Liles:

But think about this. But what so if he's teaching, and he's truly teaching, well, where is he at in this place? So he's still on the Court of the Gentiles, right? So he's not at where the correct so they're about to enter into a different place to bring these sacrifices forward, or pay their sacrifices through. Here's the very interesting narrative, if it truly was teaching and it was not about anger, what is Jesus teaching? This is the week leading up to Good Friday in the cross.

Tyra Dennis:

This is why you don't walk during offering? No, no, I'm not even being funny. This is why church is this text, that it's why churches don't let people walk during offering, because it's too much movement, and they don't know what's coming and going, and they're trying to keep their eye on the offering, right, or the sacrifice. But what, what I think is interesting is that it was very clear in Mark that he only turned the tables of the money changers. Yeah, you heard that, and the seats of the people who had the doves, not he gathered the whip, he moved out the animals, blah, blah, blah, blah. So I find that interesting, because if we go back to the marketplace and it's 1000s of people, so there's hundreds of tables, I'm like, Well, how many tables were were exchanging money? How many different nations were coming to this one place where you needed to exchange the coin so you could purchase whatever you needed to purchase. So the

Tom Helmich:

coin issue is because you could not use, like, unclean coinage in the temple, right? If it had an image of an idol or, you know, a pagan god, and so they would exchange it to one that did not but that it was the temple, I have to believe. Was it the temple? But maybe wrong on this? Well, it was the temple priests that were doing that. Yeah, the temple the money changing. They were still keeping it. They were still using the money. The money, but they wouldn't allow them to use certain coins because it would have like a pagan god, yeah? And so instead, they're getting a different coin, but the Jewish priests are still using that money, yeah?

Roseann Bowlin:

And they're making money off it's

Tom Helmich:

there. It's not that. It's not like an acceptable Oh, very much. So it's an issue of what image is on the coin? Yeah, which makes me wonder. That's why Jesus went and flipped the table of money changers, because they're doing it. It's like going to an exchange kiosk at a another country. Yeah, you're going to get a gnarly exchange rate. And so they're abusing the people that have to go to this sacrifice. They can't bring their animal with them, and they're also ripping them off with the amount of the exchange rate on the money, which makes me wonder if that's why Jesus went to flipping the tables of the money changers. Yeah.

Tyra Dennis:

I Yeah, that. I thought that was interesting. I also, I have a lot of questions about these dove people. I'll do it on my own.

Pastor Joe Liles:

So I think one of the narratives that I love in here is that if Jesus was truly doing the teaching, right, and this was about, it's not about the sacrifices anymore, if he stops the sacrifices moving through the temple, that means that Jesus came as a new commandment.

Tom Helmich:

Well, it's also a consistent theme throughout Scripture, yeah, that you know, God does not desire your sacrifices, right? Because we have one true sacrifice. So one more thing to prop up, anger, Luke, okay,

Pastor Joe Liles:

I was just gonna say, because we call this the Synoptic Gospels. Yeah. And what that means is that these stories are shared in all of the Gospels.

Tom Helmich:

Yeah, no, because it's not in Matthew, Yeah, correct. It's in Mark, Luke and John. And John isn't one of these synoptics,

Tyra Dennis:

which I think is interesting. That it's not in Matthew, because almost everything has to do with money. Matthew clocked it because he was he was the accountant. He was the tax collector. Which also leads me to my theory that Jesus was balling out of control, because you got to walk around with the money man the whole time you have read Jesus, but IRS with

Tom Helmich:

you, yeah. So then He entered the temple and began to drive out those who were selling things there. And he said, It is written, My house should be a house of prayer, but you have made it a den of robbers. Oh, wow, you don't drive somebody out, yeah, just out of enthusiasm, like you drive somebody out out of anger. But that's so

Pastor Joe Liles:

here's what we do. We leave this one open because we don't know. We got no, we don't know. We don't know. So this Sunday, coming up out of anger, we lead into joy. And joy is a wonderful way to talk about, truly, the life of shouting Hosanna Jesus's triumphant entry into Jerusalem, literally, the text that we're reading. It all comes together in a beautiful way, right where we get to decorate the whole church with palms and everything's absolutely beautiful. So I just want to say that one, it's okay to have emotions. Jesus had emotions. Not all of them are anger. Tyra, in addition to that, we have joy, we have sadness, we have grief, right? We have all these different things. But this week we're gonna be talking about Maine, Joy. Oh my goodness. Just so we know. Just so we know. So that being said, this Sunday's Palm Sunday, it's gonna be incredible leading the Easter and Good Friday next week, it is a wonderful time for that very church and all guys. People said, Amen, amen. You.

People on this episode

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Pastor Joe Liles

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Pastor Tom Helmich

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Roseann Bowlin

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Tevo Christmann

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Tyra Dennis

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