The Road To Easter
Pt. 2 - Turning Tables
I. Introduction
Remember those family vacations you took as a kid? Loading the car. Hunkering down in the back seat as miles passed by. I would imagine that if you look back at pictures from those road trips you would probably see pictures from the final destination. The family on the beach. The family in the oversized rocking chair. The family at the campsite. It seems like the final destination always garnered all the attention and certainly the bulk of the photo ops. However, it little store, the tower we climbed up, the rattle snake pit I almost fell into that really what made the trip memorable. The same is true when it comes to Easter. As a believer Easter is our focus. It garners all of our attention and in many ways rightfully so. However, just like we do regarding vacation travels, we become so locked in on that final destination that we overlook and fail to give the proper attention to the stops along the way that were essential and consequential not only in Jesus' life and journey but in ours. I think it crucial for us to slow down on the way to Easter and walk the road Jesus took to get there. What leads to the empty tomb? What happened on the Tuesday or Thursday before He is raised from the dead? Do you know? Does it matter?
Last week, we covered the Sunday that we call Palm Sunday and Jesus' triumphal entry. Now let's proceed to Monday on the Road to Easter.
Monday - Cleanses The Temple
Text: Matthew 21:12-17 (MSG)
Jesus went straight to the Temple and threw out everyone who had set up shop, buying and selling. He kicked over the tables of loan sharks and the stalls of dove merchants. He quoted this text: My house was designated a house of prayer; You have made it a hangout for thieves. Now there was room for the blind and crippled to get in. They came to Jesus and he healed them. When the religious leaders saw the outrageous things he was doing, and heard all the children running and shouting through the Temple, “Hosanna to David’s Son!” they were up in arms and took him to task. “Do you hear what these children are saying?” Jesus said, “Yes, I hear them. And haven’t you read in God’s Word, ‘From the mouths of children and babies I’ll furnish a place of praise’?” Fed up, Jesus spun around and left the city for Bethany, where he spent the night.
On Monday, Jesus approaches His Father's House. It is interesting to me that He enters the Gentile Court. The inner areas of the temple were reserved for members of the people of Israel (men, women, priests). The Gentile Court is believed to have been large enough to house 75,000 people. Since they were not Jewish, they were not allowed into the areas of the Temple that were nearest to God’s presence. Instead, they were allowed access that was further away from God in the court of the Gentiles. There, they could learn God’s Word and learn to worship God. Curiously, Jesus goes to the outcasts and marginalized, sees how they are being mistreated and He responds. (Perhaps that should remind us of who how we should view people.) Jesus finds that the priests had turned this Gentile Court into a shopping mall. The money changers were needed because foreign currency was not allowed to be put into the temple treasury. Every man was required to pay a half shekel, as per the command given to Moses in Exodus 30. Many of the coins in circulation would be Roman. So, the money changers were needed to make the exchange. The chief priests had the money changers charge an inflated fee to exchange foreign currency. Historians believe the priests took in what equated to about $300,000 by this practice. On top of that, the priests were also scamming the people because if someone brought an animal in from the outside for sacrifice, then they would intentionally find something wrong with it so that the person would have to purchase one from one of the merchants at 30 times the price of the animals outside.
Jesus sees that the priests are taking advantage of the people and that the priests were literally becoming a barrier to keep people from worship (It would be like trying to hold a church service on the Midway at the State Fair). There isn't any room for the sick and lame in the house of God. So, Jesus cleans house. Jesus turns tables over. He challenged the entire banking system of Jerusalem.
This account of Jesus' Monday activities is mentioned and detailed in Matthew, Mark and Luke. However, John doesn't mention this account leading up to Jesus' death. He actually talks about an instance at the beginning of Jesus' ministry in John 2 immediately following the first miracle Jesus performs - turning water into wine. It is an eerily similar, but most historians believe, separate account.
John 2:13-17 (MSG)?When the Passover Feast, celebrated each spring by the Jews, was about to take place, Jesus traveled up to Jerusalem. He found the Temple teeming with people selling cattle and sheep and doves. The loan sharks were also there in full strength. Jesus put together a whip out of strips of leather and chased them out of the Temple, stampeding the sheep and cattle, upending the tables of the loan sharks, spilling coins left and right. He told the dove merchants, “Get your things out of here! Stop turning my Father’s house into a shopping mall!” That’s when his disciples remembered the Scripture, “Zeal for your house consumes me.”
Jesus had already cleaned out this place of worship once. He begins and ends His ministry . . . literally bookends . . . by cleaning out, removing and displacing these blockades to worship. I simply mention John's account to ask you a question. What has Jesus already removed from your life that you have allowed the enemy, others or by your own hand to be reestablished and rerooted? If He removed it, then shouldn't the assumption be that He doesn't want that in your life now or ever again! Could it be that we need to allow Jesus to revisit the temple of our hearts and minds to forcefully remove some things once again? He removed doubt. He removed anxiety and worry. He uprooted pride. He dislodged anger. He kicked out the negative. He threw out grudges. He chased pornography out. He tossed greed out. Are those things back? I know in my own life I have to allow Him repeated entrance to keep me cleaned out! I need Him to constantly turn over tables in my heart, my mind, my life so that I am a pure temple of worship.
1 Corinthians 6:19-20 (NIV)?"Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your body."
How clean is our temple? What needs to be driven out? What have we allowed to set up shop that the presence of Jesus wants to throw out? What is doing normal day to day business in our lives that Jesus wants to forcefully expel? We must allow Jesus to cleanse us. Repentance must be practiced! Repentance must be repeated! Repentance must become routine!
The second thing I want you to notice is what Matthew says happens after the tables have been turned.
Children are running through the temple. To say this aggravates the religious is an understatement. Jesus responds to their complaint by saying, “from the mouths of babes and infants you have perfected praise.” Could it be that perfected praise is only possible when what should have been removed from our lives and has been allowed to reestablish itself is once again removed? Perfect praise comes from a clean place! It isn't that Jesus won't receive praise from messed up folks. I am thankful that I don't have to be perfect to get to Him. He let a prostitute worship Him by pouring oil over His feet. However, like children and infants, our praise is perfected when we can approach Him with a clean heart and with clean hands! When we allow Jesus to clean us up and then we do our dead level best to remain clean our praise is perfected! Nothing blocking us. No grievances. No barriers. No interference. Just freedom to run into His presence and praise!
Matthew 5:8 - “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.”
Did you hear it? The pure in heart see God. Open access! The reason that Jesus cleans us out and wants us to stay clean is so that we have unencumbered access to the Father! So, that we can boldly approach the throne! No guilt. No shame. No worry. Access!
Then the sick and lame make their way from the Court of the Gentiles or likely the Court of Women, through the Beautiful Gate, and go into the temple, i.e. the inner court (Court of Israelites) to be healed by Jesus.
The healing of the lame in Acts 3 gives us a picture of what it looked like for a disabled person to enter the temple. He was laid daily at Beautiful Gate “to ask alms from those who entered the temple”. This gives us an idea that the Beautiful Gate is the furthest a blind/sick/lame person could go. It was only when he was healed that he entered into the temple with Peter and John as Acts 3:8 reports.
The scene is different in Matthew 21:14. The blind and lame entered into the temple, to come to Jesus. And there, He healed them. In the minds of the religious leaders, the temple has been defiled by the entrance of those who did not have the right to enter it.
I am thankful that changed through Jesus. In Galatians 3:28 we are put on notice that His death on the cross is for the purification and inclusion for all who come to Him. “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither male nor female”. That isn't about being politically correct or radical agendas that is about our status spiritually due to Christ's supreme sacrifice. According to Ephesians 2:14 Jesus has “broken down the middle war of separation”
The blind and lame, though excluded, are healed and restored as the people of God. Now they find their place in His presence and worship. Jesus makes it possible for the sick and lame, discouraged and marginalized, forsaken and overlooked, rejected and despised to enter . . . shouldn’t we?
How many of us get saved and then become barriers to others getting to Jesus?
Are we doors or have we become table monitors? We are now priests . . . a royal priesthood. Freely we have received, but now are we trying to allow only the right people, by our standards, into His presence? Jesus, on the road to Easter, throws the door open to the sick, lame and young to join Him in the presence of God. We must ask ourselves the hard question today are we more like the priest or more like Jesus? Are those of us who have experienced grace gracious? Are those of us who have been rescued really trying to rescue?
Are we trying to get those who need Jesus the most to Him or are we trying to keep them away from Him?
"What if the ugliness of our way is keeping the world from seeing the beauty of our truth? What if people’s hearts are not open to hearing our thoughts on truth and life because we’ve failed to show them the beauty of The Way of Jesus?" Jay Pike
The tables have been turned over. The doors have been opened and we should be going into the highway and hedges to invite people to come into real life. To find hope. To find healing. To find life! Let's throw the doors open and let people into our lives and into our church so that those who sincerely need an encounter with Jesus have access!
