Dennis Tuuri

# Sermon Transcript: The Cleansing of the Temple

This was not a rookie hazing of Flynn this morning. You may have noticed that he now is being part of the liturgical action of the church apart from leading songs because he’s now an ordained elder at Reformation Covenant Church. The lack of a working relationship with the microphone was not intended. It’s also important to note that John S., Elder S., became leader of the audiovisual team two days ago.

This is also no reflection on his abilities. We are adding capability of course and so we have this time of kind of bumpiness and just don’t worry about it. James B. Jordan thinks you really shouldn’t use amplification of worship anyway. So I guess God is pushing us that way.

Well, today we’re going to look at the account of the so-called cleansing of the temple from the Gospel of Mark. It’s actually recorded in all three synoptic gospels and in the Gospel of John.

Mark 11:15-19. And please stand then for the reading of God’s word. And you can follow along either on the outline or in your scriptures or you can just listen, open your ears and listen to what God says today.

So Mark 11 beginning at verse 15: “So they came to Jerusalem and then Jesus went into the temple and began to drive out those who bought and sold in the temple and overturned the tables of the money changers and the seats of those who sold doves. And he would not allow anyone to carry vessels through the temple. Then he taught, saying to them, ‘Is it not written, my house shall be called a house of prayer for all nations, but you have made it a den of thieves.’ And the scribes and chief priests heard it and sought how they might destroy him, for they feared him, because all the people were astonished at his teaching. When evening had come, he went out of the city.”

Let’s pray. Father, we thank you that you are most gracious, most powerful, most sovereign, most wise. We thank you that at this point in our history, we have to say that you have done all things well and will continue to do so. Help us, Father, to understand this text as it relates to our world, our lives personally, our corporate life, the life of the church here in America and across the world. We thank you for your word, the beauty of it, the delightful things it brings to us as we meditate upon it and study it.

Thank you for the Holy Spirit who indwells us. And we pray that that spirit do his work. Lord God, we ask you that we might understand the text and be transformed by it. We ask this through the powerful name of our Lord Jesus Christ, King of Kings and Lord of Lords. Amen.

Please be seated.

Commerce, money, buying and selling. It’s kind of what’s at the heart of today’s text. And in the providence of God, it’s also what’s at the heart of a debate that began in earnest last Sunday afternoon, last Lord’s Day, when the United States government, the Congress that is, passed a bill that was then signed into law mandating that when it becomes fully implemented, every American engage in a particular kind of commerce. That is, you must buy health insurance from a private company. So the government is mandating and going to enforce that mandate with fees and fines, etc., that each and every one of you adults has to engage in commerce.

Now you say well we engage in commerce all the time. Well that’s correct but we have never for the over 200 years of this country’s history had to engage in commerce. The government has the constitutional authority to control commerce. That’s granted in the commerce clause of the Constitution. But the constitutional test of this bill, which will no doubt be heard very quickly by the United States Supreme Court, this is going to happen fast, I believe, will be does the United States government have the constitutional authority to mandate that every citizen must enter into commerce. That’s at the heart of the constitutional debate.

Now, the people that say yes say, “Well, it’s not a matter of commerce. It’s a matter of can we tax everybody?” But taxation up to now has always been on some activity or some purchase you make. Now this would be a capitation tax, a head tax on every person and that is specifically prohibited by our constitution. Now whether or not we like a capitation tax is irrelevant. It seems like in the Bible you can make a case for it but our constitution says no.

So will this stand or not? It will be as close as the vote last week we have nine justices and four will probably say this is unconstitutional and four will say it’s constitutional probably and one man will decide for the rest of them and that man is the swing vote in the Supreme Court. I think it’s significant apart from all the other rhetoric about some of this stuff that happens in the bill and I’ll mention one other item here shortly.

It’s significant that we have now a radical change in the constitution’s ability. I was listening to liberals talk about this. Even liberals say, you know, it may be constitutional, but this is a radical opening up of the door for the government in terms of regulation of commerce because now it’s not regulation of commerce, it’s mandating that you engage in commerce. So this is a significant shift in the life of our country potentially, not because of, you know, death panels or something, but because of that area.

It’s a law. Some would say it’s a loss of liberty to decide or not to engage in commerce. Clearly, it’s loss of liberty to decide what sort of health care you want to insure yourself for. HSAs will be gone, but commerce and that’s at the heart of our text today. We’re looking at a piece of text that happens in Holy Week, and commerce is at the core of it as well.

Division and polarity is what Jesus’s actions in the temple produced. I’m going to make the case in a moment, and I can make it now, that this is the pivotal turning point. The text tells us this is when they really got upset and decided to kill him. Now, they had been planning that for a while, but the text says this is the turning point. And when they finally crucify our savior and try him, the trial is all about this action. It’s all about his threats to the temple.

And this demonstration that we look at today is set in that context. So, it’s pivotal to what goes on. And it involved polarization in like manner. We have never seen a country, I don’t think, at least in my lifetime so polarized. I mean, you know, boom, everybody’s on a side. Boom, the Supreme Court’s divided. Boom, the bill passes by a couple of votes. Polarization. And again, moderate and liberal commentators are commenting on the fact that the polarization of a man who is very confident.

Our last president had now we’ve got a president who seems even more confident of his abilities and what he thinks about things. And the result has been increasing polarization. The comparisons were inevitable this last week when President Obama saying that if people want to campaign against the healthcare bill this week, he sort of mocked them at a rally and said his answer is go for it. And commentators, not conservatives, but a lot of commentators saw the connection between him saying, “Go for it. We’re ready for the fight.” And President Bush saying in terms of al-Qaeda and Iraq, bring it on, which they thought was a brash cowboy-like move.

But notice the shame. When President Bush said, “Bring it on,” he was talking about people that really were committed to our physical death. But now that kind of language, and it’s not as if it just now has happened. It’s happened from the left and right for many years. But look at the big letters written in the sky for us here. Now that kind of bravado and swaggeringness is applied against people who have a different idea politically than you have. It’s very interesting.

Polarization. We have a split now, amazingly, between the anti-abortion group and the pro-life group. Now, people aren’t looking at it that way yet, but that’s what’s happening now. People are saying there are no pro-life Democrats because whether you know it or not, it was Bart Stupak and his four or five or six votes that pushed healthcare over the top. And his four or five people and him were concerned about federal funding of abortion. Now, again, here you don’t hear much about this. But they’re not worried about the buying of insurance plans that cover abortion. That’s one aspect. But what the bill did was it took funding for community health centers that are required to provide abortion out of the funding of health and human services because the Hyde Amendment only applied to the department of health and human services.

The prohibition against federal funding of abortion only applied to the community health centers funded through HHS. And in this new bill, the funding for community health centers is moved out of HHS. There is no federal requirement not to fund abortions in community health centers because it’s been moved away from the one organization that the law applied to. People know this. Bart Stupak knew it.

He decided that, you know, overall it’s more important that people get good health and that more babies die. I think you have to say that’s what he decided or something else. But the end result is this. Now, anti-abortion and pro-life. You’ve heard me from this pulpit if you’ve been here many years on sanctity of human life Sunday, which we call anti-abortion day of the Lord. We do it for a reason.

When the anti-abortion lobby decided to get kinder and gentler and more positive, they stopped being anti-abortion and they became pro-life because everything’s about marketing and you can’t market a negative. And as a result, the Catholic nuns decided to support the bill because they’re pro-life, and pro-life means a lot more than saving babies and stopping abortions. Now, the Catholic Church regularly lobbies through its various agencies, not the bishops, for any kind of statism that grants more ability to help poor people because they’re pro-life, they’re pro health.

You see, it’s the implications of that. Now, it involves a view of civil government and it involves a view that in their mind is unrestricted. We say no. Government has to punish particular crimes. Abortion is a crime. The government should punish it. We’re not pro-life. When it comes to executing a criminal, we’re pro-death. That’s what we are. Don’t ignore it. Don’t try to say you’re something that you’re not.

We are against certain things. We’re not pro-marriage. Well, we are, but we’re also by implication anti-adultery. We’re anti-homosexual behavior. We’re anti-abortion. And because we gave up the language in an attempt to affect political change in our country, we now have God using pro-lifers to pass this tremendous shift in our constitutional liberties and freedom of choice. You know, whether or not you like aspects of the bill, whether or not how we should go about helping people have better health, all those arguments aside, I’m just trying to say the big issues were these and these are issues that are directly related to today’s text.

Jesus attacking commerce of some sort polarizes the religious community and in the same way polarization is going on today. Let’s talk a little bit about the context and then we’ll look at the text itself.

Ox, lion, eagle man. Jesus does something here that’s very active. He’s throwing over things. You know, it’s sort of interesting. I mentioned Lost. For those of you Losties out there, the last episode we saw a different sort of Jacob, did we not? Jacob is this character. He’s generally sort of Christlike or Jesuslike up to now. Very, you know, only touches people, doesn’t make them do anything against their will. And in this episode, he’s quite different. I won’t tell you what he does, but he’s quite different. And I liked it. Jesus, our view of him is one thing, but he’s quite different in this text. He’s doing something that’s quite radical.

The most radical thing he probably does in terms of his actions. Well, you know, it’s in all the other gospels, but in this particular text, I think we want to see that because of the progression of the gospels. Matthew presents Jesus as the true priest. It’s oxlike in terms of the forefront of the cherubim. Mark, I think, primarily represents Jesus as king. He’s a man on the go. He’s doing things. He’s going in and out. He’s conquering things. And he’s taking these actions of a king. And we’ll see later that’s what this is. These are actions of a king that Jesus is engaging in the context of this demonstration of the temple.

Luke, I think, emphasizes Jesus as man and the image of eagle in the imperial context or prophet rather and then finally Jesus is true God, God man in the gospel of John. So the three-fold offices of Jesus lay out like priest, king, prophet in the flow of one’s life in the flow of Christ, gospel of Christ here.

And so this incident in Mark is seen from a kingly perspective and we’ll do just that when we get to talking about the specific detail. Secondly, this is Palm Sunday and Holy Week. Why are you talking about the cleansing of the temple when it’s Palm Sunday? Because this is one of the things he does in Holy Week. He comes in like we did. He’s, you know, riding walking on the clouds. We’re all like Luke Skywalkers today walking.

Well, you weren’t, but the elders were when we walked on the branches of trees here, we’re a heavenly people and Jesus is a heavenly entity who reigns here, but he brings heavenly reign to earth and we did that. So the triumphal entry so-called that happens that’s celebrated on Palm Sunday, you know, a couple of days later he’s doing this action in the context of the temple and that’s the specific context for his actions.

And as I said, this will lead this is the sort of incident that moves us to Good Friday, his arrest and then his crucifixion. And of course, we’re having a Good Friday service here this Friday. We don’t do a very good job of publishing these things, but we’ve done this for years, a “Tenebrae” or darkening service here at the church on Friday evening for Holy Week. And this event happens in the context of that.

And that’s why I felt it would be a good one to talk about today because it happens in that context.

Third, it’s a crucial text. There’s action involved. And it’s bracketed by the cursed fig tree. And I’ve alluded to this already, but this is not just, you know, one more thing. This is like the most amazing thing Jesus sort of the most astonishing thing we should say. And the crowd is astonished at his teaching. But this action astonishes us, too. We don’t get it. We don’t understand it. I’m not sure we can fully understand it, but it is an astonishing action. And it’s pivotal because now the leaders get very involved in killing him.

And they will bring him to he he will be brought to charges on the charge that he just threatened to destroy the temple. Now, he’ll actually say that a few chapters later in Mark’s gospel, but here, this is what they’re doing is they’re in Mark’s gospel, the enemies are brought into action through this demonstration of the temple that we look at today.

And the brackets of this and the way Mark has written his gospel, right? You know, we’re starting up our Bible study again. Christine and I a week from Tuesday at my house. If you want to come, great. Come.

Pericopy identification. Where’s the section of scripture that’s that’s a unit? We’ll look at that in a minute. But then what’s around it as well, the context is important for understanding what happens in a text. And one of the contexts for this is just before this, Jesus is coming in and he curses the fig tree. And right after this, they’re leaving and they see the cursed fig tree and it’s dead. So what do we see? This is the pivotal event that results in the cursing of the fig tree, the Jewish nation that rejects Jesus and it will die. It will die in AD 70. So it’s it’s it’s an important text. It’s very significant.

And as I said, in the providence of God, we have this text before us at a very important event in the history of our national or yeah, our nation’s life as well.

It’s enigmatic. You know, it’s one of those things, you know, I hope this doesn’t sound disrespectful, but I mentioned this before that sometimes Jesus is kind of more like Bob Dylan than we would like him to be. Dylan writes these lyrics that are enigmatic, intended to make you meditate and think. Well, that’s a lot of what Jesus does. And of course, Dylan was raised in the Old Testament, particularly his songs are filled with prophetic references. And the prophetic references are the same way. Christine and I were struggling over Isaiah 32 and 33. And you know, now throughout Isaiah, you have this stuff going on. And is it about Assyria, Babylon, the restoration of exile, the death of Jesus, the resurrection, the final coming, the heavenly state.

And it’s hard to figure it out. And I’m not sure we’re supposed to figure it all out. These things are enigmatic and they give us stuff to think upon, to meditate upon, and then apply to our lives. And that’s what Jesus does. Now, his actions, not just his words are enigmatic, although his words also are not clear in terms of what he’s saying.

So this is this is what’s happening here. And now the text itself, the pericope. Right? How do we know this is a discrete unit? Because he comes into Jerusalem and at the end of this narrative, he leaves Jerusalem. He leaves the city. There are the markers to tell you this is a discrete unit of scripture. You should be you should know this stuff. You should know how to study your Bibles to identify at least these kind of easy markers or brackets that give us a particular text.

Now, it’s important for Bible study, but it’s also important to remember what we’ve said over and over again in these Palm Sunday sermons. Jesus is coming from the Mount of Olives. Olivet, we sang about that earlier. That means this mount of olives. Olives oil is this association throughout the Bible with the Holy Spirit. Jesus is dwelling in the context of the Holy Spirit. Jerusalem is the city that he’s trying to that he’s transforming. He’s actually going to destroy it. but the true place is with Jesus outside of the camp where we are filled with the Holy Spirit empowered to go into our Jerusalems tomorrow to transform our cities.

Again, that’s the imagery that goes on throughout Holy Week. We’re told explicitly in Luke 21:37, “In the daytime, he was teaching in the temple.” He was talking about Holy Week. And at night, he went out and stayed at the mountain called Olivet. So, this is not this throughout the whole week, this is what he does. And it’s significant, right? Every detail is significant. We’re told this over and over again.

And then we’re actually told it in a summation form in Luke that God wants us to know about this movement. He wants us in union with Christ like the children singing as they came in this morning to recognize that we’re in that place that Holy Spirit environment when we come to worship and we leave here to go into our Jerusalems to transform our culture Oregon City Vancouver Boring Estacada whatever it is see those are our Jerusalems and so what we learn here is significant for that.

Secondly the demonstration itself now what I’m doing here is I want us to look at the text. We’re not going to, you know, look at it line by line. We’re going to look at various things that I found interesting or I thought were important to point out to you. A lot of the stuff you might already know, but I wanted to point out particular things to you.

And so now we deal with the demonstration itself. And I call it a demonstration because you know like when Jeremiah broke the pot when he gives this prophetic oracle to God’s people in his life, are these various symbolic actions and this action you know didn’t have any much of a practical effect I don’t think how could one man do that this place is huge it’s 450 m by 300 m the precincts of the temple where this stuff is going on he wouldn’t have gotten very far in overturning stuff it doesn’t say that he you know there was just wild commotion everywhere there were up to 500 Roman guards stationed in the tower right next to this place if they wanted to stop him they could have but it’s more a symbolic action And this so we call it a demonstration maybe is a good word to think of.

This demonstration involves driving driving out buyers. Okay. Now we know it drives out sellers but the text tells us the details when you study your scriptures are important. And what does it tell us? He began to drive out those who bought and sold in the temple. Now we like to think of this incident as you know maybe he’s just you know those mean capitalists who are oppressing all the people that were buying things. Those are the ones Jesus is aimed at. But that can’t be true because he’s not just driving out the sellers. He’s driving out the buyers. He’s doing both ends of the commercial transaction, buying and selling. He’s driving them both out. And the text wants us to know that.

We might infer that. Yeah, the sellers aren’t going to be anything to buy when the buyers are not there. But the text wants us to know that the subjects of his actions are both ends of the transaction.

Now, that’s important. It’s an important detail that helps us not go down a particular road. We don’t know a lot of what Jesus is doing here, why he’s doing it. We have to make inferences from the text. And the inference that he’s just concerned about poor buyers being overcharged cannot be right because his actions are aimed at sellers. But not just sellers, buyers as well.

John 2:16 says this, and John, it’s in the early part of John, there are actually two cleansings of the temple. One at the beginning of Christ’s ministry, one at the end, but they’re common. They’re common features to them. In John 2:16, we read this. He said to those who sold doves, “Take these things away. Do not make my father’s house a house of merchandise.” So, what he’s telling us in John is not that he’s against bad transactions. He’s saying he’s against the temple being a house of merchandise. Period. It’s the buying and selling that is the object of Christ’s action or demonstration here. It’s that it’s become a house of merchandise. There’s nothing wrong with merchandise. There’s nothing wrong with buying. In fact, it’s impossible to live without buying and selling, transacting with other human beings. God wants us to live in community, but not here. Not in the precincts of the temple.

Jesus isn’t within the temple proper, by the way. He’s in the precincts where the buying and selling was going on and the but it’s connected enough to the temple where it’s associated with it and part of that holy atmosphere. And in the context of the worship that goes on in the temple, Jesus wants no financial transactions. That’s what I take from the text here before us.

Zeal for your house has eaten me up. The disciples remind themselves of after Jesus says your house I want you don’t don’t make God’s house the house of merchandise. So a zeal for God means that we should want financial transactions to stop in the immediate context of worship, whether they’re fair or not. Whether they’re fair or not, put an end to it.

Zechariah 14:21 is interesting in this regard. We read in Zechariah 14:21 this that the time will come that in that day there shall no longer be a Canaanite in the house of the Lord of hosts. Now the word Canaanite can also be translated and is in many translations trader. We’re not sure the origins of Canaan. The term Canaan, but some people think it refers to the same sort of purple dye that made Tyre merchandising so lucrative for it. Canaan, the word itself is related to financial transactions and it’s legitimate to say here there shall no longer be a trader, a trader of merchandise, in other words, in the house of the Lord. It doesn’t say a bad trader of merchandise. Says any trading will not be going on. And this is seems what we’re seeing here. God has had it. He’s not going to have financial transactions in the context of the worship environment.

Secondly, he eliminates he overturns the tables of those who sell doves. All right? So he commanded the excuse me, he drove out those who bought and sold in the temple and he overturned the tables of those of the money changers. The money changers were those people that would, you know, take various international commercial units and give you, you know, you come here and you take your Polish zlotys and turn them into American dollars or whatever it is. So again, that’s not a bad thing to have happen, but just not in the temple. And the third thing he did is it says that he the seats of those who sold doves, he overturned their seats as well.

Now doves, just a brief point here, and that is that doves can mean either dove or pigeon. And when the when the spirit descends like a dove upon Jesus at his baptism. I know we’re all enamored of the dove imagery, but it’s the same word that could be a pigeon descending. So the idea is not the genus and species so much, but the fluttering action of the dove. Now the dove has associations with the Holy Spirit of course, but the dove or the pigeon in the context of the offerings in the temple have association primarily with the poor. So the least of the things required, right? A turtledove or pigeon could bring for particular offerings after the cleansing of childbirth. This is what Mary and Joseph brought were pigeons for the offering associated with the uh churching of women after childbirth. So it’s the poor that are kind of emphasized here and again we want to be careful. This means the poor are linked up with those who buy and sell.

So the implication seems to be that he’s overturning the tables of the doves and driving out those who sold doves but also those who bought them. So he’s an equal opportunity, equal economic class, are both receiving his rebukes for engaging in transactions in the context of temple worship.

Now third, this is again a detail that’s not normally thought of, but it says he would not allow anyone to carry vessels through the temple. So it wasn’t just the buying and selling, yet it was the carrying of things through the temple. temple. What’s a vessel? Well, a vessel, the Greek word here, can be it’s just a container for something. Sometimes the Greeks would talk about our physical bodies as vessels. So, there’s a human dimension to this. We carry our souls about in these bodies. A pot used to carry anything was a vessel. So, the idea is don’t carry things through the temple. Now, again, you might make the association that these are the money changers hauling their stuff in and out or the buyers and sellers of merchandise, but it doesn’t really say that. And as we’ll see later, I think there’s a reason for that.

This association between a judgment against buying and selling in the context of worship and carrying burdens in the context of worship will be repeated someplace else. Not repeated foreshadowed someplace else that we’ll turn to as the sermon develops. So no carrying of vessels is to go on in worship. my wife has a nice sort of a coloring page per se. You can color on the back of the sheet kids or the coloring page rather, but she also has these images of what things are okay and not to do and not do in worship. And so carrying things, no, you’re not supposed to do that in worship. You’re not supposed to engage in heavy lifting of anything in the context of worship. Vessel is a big thing you were carrying. uh Christine’s page, by the way, there’s a whip that divides the bad things from the good things because in one of the other gospel accounts, Jesus actually makes his own whip and uses the whip in this demonstration that we’re considering today. This is not we sang about Jesus’s meekness a couple of times earlier today in the service. that’s okay if we understand that meekness means broken to harness. It means a strong horse. It doesn’t mean weakness. There’s nothing weak about Jesus. And here he powerfully moves like Jacob did in Tuesday night’s episode of Lost. He really gets involved animated. That’s the word I was looking for.

And he actually makes a whip. So that’s why it’s on that page. But carrying heavy things. This is not good. All right. So that’s the first section of the actions that Jesus did. And then the second section of the text is the teaching and the reaction to the teaching that goes on. And so we read then that he then taught them. So the text is laid out. He does this action and then he teaches them something then they react to the teaching and then the discussion is over. The pericope is ended. He leaves again and goes outside of the city. So now we have the teaching and its reaction is the next major section.

There’s only two major sections at the heart of this unit. One is his actions and the other is his teaching and the response of the people. So we have to consider what he says here in terms of his teaching. And he quotes a couple of texts of scripture and he’s actually quoting here and you know a lot of people have big discussions about what version of the Old Testament he’s quoting. It doesn’t make any difference. he says that he taught them saying is it not written my house shall be called a house of prayer for all nations. this is a reference to Isaiah 56. This is on your outline. as well as 1 Kings 8:41-43. Let’s start with the 1 Kings 8. In 1 Kings 8 in Solomon’s temple, the dedication prayer of the temple. Solomon part of the dedication. There’s kind of a sevenfold pattern of his prayer of dedication that I think matches the actions of the Holy Spirit in creation week. That’s how the spirit works typically of these sevenfold movements. But in any event, in Solomon’s prayer for dedication, the verses that I list here is the dedication of the temple and asking God to hear the prayers of foreigners who come to the temple and make prayers because God wants to be worshiped and prayed to by all nations. Solomon says, “So hear the prayers of the foreigners.” So the temple was never just an exclusively Jewish thing and its very dedication.

The temple is a house of prayer for all nations. So that’s the background to the quote that Jesus is actually reading in Isaiah 56. And in Isaiah 56 our savior is quoting a text and he quotes the text that says that this house is to be a house of prayer for all nations. I’m looking for the specific reference. I want to read it in context, but let’s look at the reference itself directly. If I can find it.

Oh, yeah. So, verse 7 of Isaiah 56. Turn in your scriptures to Isaiah 56. We’ll look at this. And specifically, we’re going to look at verse 7. This is where the quote comes from. But then we want to look a little bit at the context. You know, when as you’re turning, you can listen while you turn. When Jesus quotes scripture, we said this again, an important part of Bible study is when a text of scripture is alluded to or quoted, go back and look at that whole text because usually what’s happening is God is bringing in the whole song or at least the verse, you know, first verse of a song by quoting a portion of it, right?

We can do that. We don’t have to quote the whole thing. And so Jesus points us to Isaiah 56. And specifically in verse 7, it says, “For my house shall be called a house of prayer for all nations.” This is what Jesus is quoting as he teaches on this very critical incident, this polarizing incident involving commerce that moves the nation in a particular direction. This is what Jesus is quoting. All right?

So that’s the specific thing. Now go up to verse 2. Blessed is the man, and this is the context what he says, who does these things, the son of man who has lays hold of it, who keeps from defiling the Sabbath, keeps his hand from doing any evil. Do not let the son of the foreigner who has joined himself to the Lord speak, saying, “The Lord has utterly separated me from his people.” Nor let the eunuch say, “Here I am, a dry tree.”

For thus says the Lord to the eunuchs who keep my Sabbaths and choose what pleases me and hold fast my covenant: “Even to them I will give in my house and within my walls a place and a name better than that of sons and daughters. I will give them an everlasting name that shall not be cut off. Also, the sons of the foreigner who join themselves to the Lord to serve him and to love the name of the Lord, to be his servants, everyone who keeps from defiling the Sabbath and holds fast my covenant.”

We talked about this verse several weeks ago when we began our series on the fourth word. And here we have verses that absolutely parallel the keeping of the Sabbath or Sabbaths, which we do by keeping a singular Lord’s day but keeping the Sabbath the sabbatical system at that time is identical to parallel with the covenant of God keeping the covenant. So the covenant and the Sabbath are linked in the text here and they’re talking about this is the immediate context for the citation from our savior.

“Even to them I will give in my house and within my walls a place and a name better than that of sons and daughters. I will give them an everlasting name that shall not be cut off. Also, the sons of the foreigner who join themselves to the Lord to serve him and to love the name of the Lord, to be his servants, everyone who keeps from defiling the Sabbath and holds fast my covenant. Even them I will bring to my holy mountain and make them joyful in my house of prayer.”

So the foreigner is supposed to be joyful in the house of God’s prayer. And that’s the context then for God saying in Isaiah 56 that my house shall be called a house of prayer for all nations. Now we could drop down to verse 11 and say yes they those that are not allowing this to happen are greedy dogs who never have enough. and they are shepherds who cannot understand.

In Isaiah 56 then we have the citation that Jesus makes. It’s made in connection to the foreigners entering into covenant with God and keeping his Sabbath. And then it’s parallel or boxed on the other side by the same kind of condemnation of the rulers that Jesus is engaging with here because it’s the head priests who come and respond to Jesus and those are the ones he’s attacking.

Okay. So Isaiah 56 shows us that the relationship of what Christ is doing isn’t just the gentile house of prayer idea, but it’s bringing in this whole notion of Sabbath. That’s what the Sabbath was at its heart was temple worship. And in temple worship, he is taking out commercial transactions. Okay.

The next verse that’s cited is Jeremiah 7. In Jeremiah 7, we used to use it as a call to worship. It’s a little severe. You know, he says, “Well, you’ve gathered You enter into my house, but who are you to come here? Your hands are filled with blood. You say the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord are these. You identify with just coming here as being okay. And Jeremiah says it’s not okay unless you do justice, unless you do the right things, unless you keep God’s law. That’s the context in Jeremiah 7 for 11, which says has this house which is called by thy name become a den of thieves in your eyes?

So here it’s the religious establishment, those who go to church regularly, and yet because their attitude isn’t right, because their lives don’t reflect what’s going on in their worship, he says, “You’re making my house a den of thieves.” So, this is the other citation that Jesus makes, and it’s from Jeremiah.

Notice here as well, the third point on this section of my outline is the house of prayer versus the den of thieves. And, you know, I don’t want to make a big point about this, but just, you know, this is one of those things that sort of say, well, that’s really interesting. House of Prayer, Den of Thieves. There’s an obvious contrast in the text when we do Bible study. This is what we do. We look for these kind of things. It’s not easy to find it, but this is pretty obvious. You can either have a house of prayer or if you do what he says you’re doing, not doing it right, you’re entering into transactions in the temple. You make it into a den of thieves.

Now, I don’t think when we talk about thieves, this is why people think there’s economic oppression going on, but that can’t be the case because he’s driving out the sellers of doves which are the poor. So that’s not what’s going on. We think we don’t think as the scriptures develop symbolically. We don’t think in terms of the associations that these words have. And if we look at a thief, it doesn’t mean he’s necessarily stealing something.

But he’s stealing from God really by doing what he’s doing. He’s involved in sacrilege. Adam was a thief. We don’t think of it that way, but that’s what he did. He took what God gave him and used it. Not the way God told him to use it. So it doesn’t necessarily mean there are literal thieves. Of course there are literal thieves, but the but the but the contrast then between prayer and the commercial transaction that’s being characterized as theft.

So prayer is the sort of transaction that goes on in worship between God and man. That’s contrasted with the thievery of economic transactions that are literally entered into in the context of the temple environment. That’s a contrast. The end result also is a contrast between living in a house and living in a cave. The word here can be translated den, but it means cave, right? So, you know, what do you want? A house or a cave? You decide. And then based on that decision, you can go after prioritizing in the formal worship of the church, prayer, or you can engage in buying and selling and go down to 7-Eleven as I’m preaching and buy yourself a cup of coffee and come in here. Choice is yours. Take that choice. You’re going to end up living in a den. Either figuratively or literally, you’re a thief. Take the other choice and you get to be God’s house.

There’s no better house than God’s house. It’s the penultimate house or no, it’s the ultimate house rather. Worship is the penultimate, the one that leads up to the ultimate. All right.

Fourth, the pivot point. As I said, this is the pivot point. This is where the reaction to the teaching is stressed. We read in the reaction then to what Jesus says that the scribes and the chief priests, the scribes were the guys that knew the Bible. The chief priests were the priests. This is the religious establishment, not the civil establishment, heard it. Oh, I should have mentioned there. I was going to mention this. I already I failed to noted in my it’s in my outline, but I didn’t mention it. When Jesus does this, this is a kingly action. it’s the kings, for instance, Josiah who cleans out the temple. Jehoash cleans out the temple. It’s the kings who brings judgment. Jesus is messianic king here being destroyed as a king again in Mark. And in the cleansing of the temple, he’s acting like the king. That’s what kings did in the Old Testament. It wasn’t priests who cleaned it out. It was the king who would clean out the mess.

In Nehemiah, it’s the civil governor, the king, we could say. Nehemiah, civil governor, who with his reforms the worship of Jerusalem and kicks the bad guys out of the temple and brings in the good guys, restores the priests and all that stuff. So, so this action of Jesus on Palm Sunday is particularly good. And it also leads us up to next week where we’re going to talk about Sabbath enthronement and the resurrection. It’s a kingly action. It’s a civil government action just like the context for what’s happening in our country today.

But in any event, then the reaction to this is that the scribes and the chief priests, the priests hear it and sought how they might destroy him for they feared him because all the people were astonished at his teaching.

Okay, so there’s several key words that are going on here, right? They’re seeking him. This has been repeated several times in the Gospel of Mark. They’re seeking how they might destroy him, though. It’s interesting that if you look at when people are seeking Jesus, the very first of nine references in Mark’s gospel is to seeking him for a good thing. The very last is seeking him in the resurrection, resurrection Sunday. But in between people are seeking Jesus for the wrong reasons. Here they’re seeking him to destroy him.

And so people, you know, seek Jesus for lots of reasons. they fear him. Again here in the Gospel of Mark, this is, you know, a phrase that can go one way or the other. You can seek him for good or bad. You can fear him properly or improperly. Either way, you’re going to fear. Most of the references to people being fearful of Jesus is because of his miracles, his incredibly powerful teaching, etc. Here they fear him because he’s a challenge to their authority. He said, “What you’re doing is wrong. I’m the king and the king is cleaning up the king has come to his temple. The king has come to his holy temple and he’s cleansing it and you guys are dirty. I want you out. And so they fear him for their own sake and their fear, fear of death lead them to this great sin to destroy him. And then finally all the people are astonished at his teaching.

This is part of their fear. They don’t want to get the all the people who are astonished meaning positively moved by saying wow his teaching is really impressive. We’re not sure what it means a lot of the times. It’ll drive us back to the scriptures like it did us today, right? To the quotes to see the context and we’re astonished at his teaching. Again, astonishment is a familiar word that Mark uses in his gospel to describe the reaction to the teaching of Jesus Christ.

So, the people are astonished and we had this critical turning point where now they’re going to plot after him. This is what drives in the Mark gospel at least the crucifixion of Jesus. This is what he does and this is the big problem is over his demonstration in the temple. And then you have the astonishment of the people in reaction to the teaching of Jesus. We could talk a lot about that but we don’t have time.

Now the last text I want to point to is Nehemiah 13. Turn to Nehemiah 13 as we kind of wrap this up. It’s not the last text but it’s the last significant Old Testament text. And as we move toward wrapping up our lessons from this.

Now, we’re going to look at the text that has a reference to both buying and selling and has a reference to the carrying of burdens. You know, Nehemiah 13. It’s the great summation, I hope you do, of the book of Nehemiah. Nehemiah lists four great things that he does. And then he audaciously, and we should be the same, the same kind of audaciousness. Nehemiah audaciously asks God to remember the good stuff he’s done. You ever do that? Nehemiah did. It’s the spirit of God moving Nehemiah. Spirit of God moves us to say, “Hey, we did good work today.” Nothing wrong with that. In fact, Solomon says that’s the key to not getting overly depressed. Get home at the end of the day, say, “I did good things. Remember me, God. Thank you for the blessings of this wife, this home, this good food, whatever it is.” So, Nehemiah does this. And specifically, one of the first reforms is the reformation of the tithing system. And he cleanses the temple. Actually, it’s the first thing he does.

And then in verse 15, he does his second thing. And it says that in those days I saw people in Judah treading wine presses on the Sabbath, bringing in sheaves and loading donkeys with wine, grapes, figs, and all kinds of burdens which they brought into Jerusalem on the Sabbath day. Okay. it’s interesting, by the way. They’re selling provisions. Men of Tyre dwelt there. We’ll return to Tyre in a couple of minutes as well. Famed merchants of the Old Testament. But the great merchandisers was Tyre. You remember Hiram of Tyre was a man that God used a gentile to sponsor the building of the temple. so Tyre is not always bad. Tyre is sometimes a very good city. but it’s also can be a negative city because its merchandising is either good and dedicated to God or it’s just plain mammon.

And so Tyre is mentioned here. and then it says that they have all kinds of goods and they sold them on the Sabbath to the children of Judah. and in Jerusalem. Then I contended with the nobles of Judah. This is a governor and he’s working with the rulers. And he tells them, “What evil thing is this that you do by which you profane the Sabbath day?” And the text goes on. He says, “God brought destruction upon we just got back from the exile. And the reason we were exiled, Nehemiah says, is because of bad commercial transactions not place taking place in the right time or the right place.” That Nehemiah says in the next verse is why we were in exile. That’s why the judgment happened. You’re going to bring an even greater judgment on us. If you let this happen, that’s what Nehemiah says.

Verse 19. So it was at the gates of Jerusalem as it began to be dark before the Sabbath. Then I command, which is interesting, dark before the Sabbath. Anyway, that I commanded the gates to be shut and charged that they must not be open until after the Sabbath. So he just shuts it down. Then I posted some of my servants at the gates so that no burdens would be brought in on the Sabbath day. Now, the merchants and sellers of all kinds of wares lodged outside.

Now, I’ve talked about Nehemiah 13 to people in personal counseling as a text that I believe appropriately is used to command them that they’re not to buy and sell on the Lord’s day. It’s the Sabbath, the Christian Sabbath. It’s the fulfillment. We want worship purified the way Nehemiah did it. We want Christian marriages the way Nehemiah, that’s the next reform he’s going to make, his Christian marriages. And we want the kind of worship of God and time and place that God wants.

And so I view Nehemiah 13 as a justification for our church’s confessional position which was held by a substantial part of the reformed world until modern times when people just didn’t like it anymore. And the point is Nehemiah 13 is a strong evidence that the Sabbath forbad commerce, not just work. And people say, “Well, no, actually it says here the carrying of burdens is what Nehemiah was after.” Yes, Nehemiah does say he doesn’t want burdens carried, but he also says he doesn’t want buying and selling going on. Isn’t necessary to carry something heavy to set up a table and sell a few little things. So, I don’t think it’s the work that Nehemiah was prohibiting. It was the buying and selling.

And I think that’s what lies behind, at least in part, Jesus’s demonstration in the temple. It’s not just the carrying of vessels. It is carrying heavy burdens around in the context of the worship environment in the in the temple. But it’s also the buying and selling directly. Housing of merchandise. He doesn’t stress the labor of it. In John, the only thing he stresses is the merchandising itself. And in our gospel, he stresses buying and selling. Even the poor people buying doves. He’s after the commerce as well as carrying heavy burdens.

Now, I think that tells us that what we’re reading about today as applied to the temple environment is also appropriately applied to the not just the place and the specific actions of worship that happen for an hour or two here but to the entire Christian Sabbath or Lord’s day. I believe that’s right. And I believe that what our savior here is saying is when you make the Lord’s day, the Lord’s house, the Lord’s time and place when he decides to set apart for himself a place of commerce and labor. You’re headed for a bad thing. You’re headed for a bad thing.

Revelation 3:14-21, he writes to the Laodiceans and he says he’s going to vomit them out of his mouth. Now listen to why. “You say, ‘I am rich and I have become wealthy and have need of nothing’ and do not know that you are wretched, miserable, poor, blind, and naked. I counsel you to buy from me gold refined in the fire that you may be rich and white garments that you may be clothed that the shame of your nakedness may not be revealed and anoint your eyes with eye salve that you may see as many as I love I rebuke and chasten.”

Jesus loved the people that he was rebuking and chastening in the context of the worship in the temple. He loved them because he was compassionate and because he was compassionate to the Laodiceans he says I’m ready to spew you out of my mouth because you think one thing and then Jesus says the way to cure your problem is to enter into the great transaction in the context of worship. That’s what this is talking about. These messages come to the church in worship and he tells them in worship we get the imputed righteousness of Jesus Christ. We get his fine garments. We get his gold, his value through the knowledge of the word. We get eye salve. We get a heavenly vision of how the word of God tells us to interpret the world.

God says that the ultimate transaction happens as we transact with him. Prayer, whole worship is prayer. It’s man who’s needy and God who has everything. And God gives gifts to us in worship. That’s where it must come from. And because of that, God says, “That’s fine. Now go out and engage in transactions understanding that undergirds all transactions with humanity all business is the stuff you’ve done with me. Treat each other the same way in your financial transactions. Be fair. Be just. Be loving and compassionate the way I was with you when you buy and sell things.”

I think that’s what the text tells us. I think that’s why God doesn’t like buying and selling on the Lord’s day. It’s not because he wants us to stop something that’s good in and of itself. Work is good. Buying and selling is good. But he knows that we are prone to become worshippers of mammon. That is what is our tendency and that’s what we need correction on. And the one way to correct it is to stop once a week. Is it so hard to just not enter into transactions? It seems to be. My son Elijah posted a blog post several months ago on this and he had a picture on it.

“I shop, therefore I am.”

Elijah was raised in my house. We like buying Christmas presents. We like shopping, most of us. He’s not against that. But what he’s against is when that becomes so important to us, is that we find it inconvenient to not be able to buy and sell in the context of God’s worship day, the Lord’s day. It’s astonishing. People can’t do it. It’s like kicking cigarettes. It’s a hard thing to do. And when a culture has become so enamored and so used to and dependent upon daily financial transactions instead of prayer to God, we need correction. And that’s what God brings us.

God is very faithful. He loves us and he brings us chastisement and judgments.

Isaiah 23 is a woe against Tyre. Tyre was the great city of merchandise. And as I said, they could be good or bad. And at this point in time in Isaiah 23, Tyre has become bad. And God says, “I’m going to bring down your commerce. I’m going to bring down your world empire of merchandising and trade because that’s what Tyre was at the time.” When he destroyed Tyre’s commerce, he shook the whole financial marketplace of the world by bringing his judgments upon Tyre. Commerce is what caused his judgment upon Tyre. Commerce of the wrong sort. And that’s what is behind our Savior’s actions today.

Central to Palm Sunday, central to the Passion Week, the very thing that led to directly to his crucifixion was his rebuke of commercial transactions and the carrying of burdens in the context of the place of worship. God says Tyre was destroyed. or at least significantly brought down. What about us? What about us?

9/11 2001. What did God do? We asked for signs. The signs were sent. And the sign was that the Twin Towers, a symbolic demonstration of America’s tremendous power, its supremacy in world commerce were destroyed in front of our eyes. God brought them down. Now, wicked men did it. And I’m not saying he did it for these specific sins, but I do think that unless we’re stupid, we have to look at the symbolic action that God gave us and said, you know, we should at least think about how we’re engaging in commerce and transaction. It’s the World Trade Center for heaven’s sake. And it’s not just America’s financial head. It was the it was the World Trade Center.

World commerce was struck by God. Now, other things going on in these things. But in part, we have to say that in 2001, God, at least in part, at least by application of what happened on that day, God gave us a Tyre-like judgment. What happened seven years later at the end of another week of God’s time, another sabbatical period, 2008, boom, was the strike to the stomach of 9/11. Boom was the strike of the financial collapse of 2008.

Do you think God maybe is trying to get something across to us? I do. And I think what he’s getting across is the same thing that this text is getting across. We are engaged in this country in the worship of mammon. We have become idolatrous relative to what is a good thing. Money is good. Money trading is good. Buying and selling is good. But we are addicted to it and it becomes our only value and then and we are certainly not a nation of prayer anymore. The gods of gold in us as the great hymn says that’s what happens to us now and God says you know take the warnings look at the demonstration nothing happened big in the temple you know couple of minutes and everything was over and people could forget about it and most of us after a few months from 9/11 you can sort of forget about it and now the markets are back so we can sort of forget about what happened in 2008.

But I’m not forgetting. I know God wants us to evaluate what we do with commercial transactions. They’re critical. and they’re critical because they image Monday through Saturday what happens every Lord’s day. The great transaction when the God who is grace and love and the giver of all good gifts says, “Come to me. Get from me with nothing really more than your acknowledgement of your dependence. Get wonderful clothing, get beautiful eye salve, get gold from me and riches.”

Now, if we don’t value that above everything else, and if that doesn’t undergird our transactions, I don’t know what’ll happen in another six years, but something will maybe sooner.

Let’s pray. Father, we thank you for your judgments in the earth. We thank you for this great demonstration in the context of the temple and Holy Week. Help us this week, Lord God, to meditate upon these things. Help us to see the importance of our commercial transactions and help us to go about them this week in a godly way.

In Jesus name we ask it. Amen.