In Jesus Holy Name October 1, 2023
Text: Matthew 21:14-15 Redeemer
“Yahweh Has Come to His Temple”
Good Morning: Our message today based on the gospel lesson in Matthew 21 will make little sense unless we understand the context of the Jewish mind, based on their understanding of their First Testament scriptures; through which they had a certain expectation of the coming Messiah and what that Messiah was supposed to do and be.
In the Jewish theological mind they expected the Messiah to heal the blind, cure the leper, and cast out demons. These three signs were necessary to prove that the Messiah had arrived. Matthew is writing His gospel, telling proving that the teachings of Jesus are based on the Old Testament. Then Matthew verifies the miracles Jesus performed, healing the blind & those with leprosy, including the raising of the dead. Every time Jesus cast out demons the Pharisees said he did it by the power of Satan not the power of God.(Jesus A Theography Leonard Sweet p. 168)
Matthew writes the “story” of Jesus to prove that Yahweh, the Creator of the Universe has made His appearance in flesh and blood. In the past His presence was known by the “cloud” and “fire” in the Old Testament tabernacle. The Pharisees rejected Jesus because He forgave sins, a prerogative that belonged to Yahweh alone at the temple, which of course they controlled.
Each Sunday we have been reading through the Gospel of Matthew. We have arrived at chapter 21, The Palm Sunday parade is over. Jesus, who has claimed and demonstrated by His miracles that He is the Yahweh of the Old Testament, now enters “His” temple. When Solomon built the temple in I Kings (8 & 9) God told Solomon that the “earthly temple which he built, in Jerusalem, would now be His dwelling place on earth.
We must read: (Read the background from I Kings 8:10-11, 27 followed by the Lord’s answer in I Kings 9:3) “His name would be there forever”… as it had been in the tabernacle in the wilderness with Moses.
In this the 21 century we miss the offense and opposition Jesus is causing the
Pharisees, when He entered the temple and drove out the money changers,
overturning their tables. He has just been hailed “King” by the crowds in the city streets of Jerusalem. He healed two blind men “at the temple” entrance. Because of their blindness they were not allowed by Jewish law to enter the temple to worship God. Jesus heals them and the people are amazed and praise God, but the Pharisees are not happy.
They are not happy because Jesus heals two blind men, He has cured the leper and cast out demons and raised the dead. They know what that means. They are angry that Jesus challenged their financial thievery and corruption. In our national news this week a Senator from New Jersey is extremely upset over the government’s recent indictment. Even though he had money in his coat pockets and gold bars in his closet.
Like the New Jersy Senator, imagine the Pharisees making their defense at the microphone of the local Jerusalem newspaper., but their pockets are full of gold coins. They are upset with Jesus. He called them out on their corruption of God’s house of worship. They are very angry over the words of Jesus when He said: “My house, (My Temple) will be called a house of prayer but you are making it a den of robbers.”
On the “second day” of “Holy Week” when Jesus enters the temple, we can now understand why the Pharisees ask Jesus “By what authority are you doing these things?” “Who gave you this authority?” In other words, “You are removing our money laundering scheme, our fleecing of God’s people, who have come to the temple to worship? You can’t drive us out like that, you are not the owner of this temple, we are! Ah! But He is the “I Am”. This is their public rejection of Jesus as their King. They are rejecting Him as their Messiah.
This is why the Apostle Paul would write about Jesus:
“Who, being in very nature God, did not consider
equality with God something to be used to his own advantage;
rather, he made himself nothing
by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness.
And being found in appearance as a man,
he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death—
even death on a cross!
Therefore God exalted him to the highest place
and gave him the name that is above every name,
that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father.” Philippians 2:6-11
This exchange, (on the Day we recognize as Palm Sunday) between Jesus and the chief priests and elders is happening in Jerusalem during “holy week”. It is only a few days before the arrest of Jesus and the end of His earthly ministry. The crowds have gathered. Jesus told the best stories. Everyone could understand …farming, masonry, baking, shepherding, finding pearls of great price, making wine.
Some people just wanted to see another confrontation between Jesus and the Temple authorities. A crowd always gathers to see the school yard fight. (Bad Habits of Jesus Leonard Sweet p. 72) . Jesus further frustrates the priests by telling two parables: the first one is the Parable of the Two Sons, and the second is the Parable of the Vineyard.
“God’s greatest creation is not the flinging of stars in an expanding universe nor the carved out canyons, it’s His eternal plan to reach His children. Behind His pursuit of us is the same brilliance behind the rotating seasons and the orbiting planets. Heaven and earth know no greater passion than God’s personal passion for you and me and our relationship with him.” This is why Jesus came to the earth He created.
In Hosea chapter 11:8-9 God speaks to Hosea about His love for His people. “My heart beats for you and my love for you stirs up my pity. I won’t punish you in my anger and I won’t destroy Israel again. I am God and not a human. I am the Holy One, and I am among you.” This is the message when Jesus rides into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday. This is His message when He enters His temple. “I AM in your midst.
Think about those last four words, “I am among you.” This is what John wrote in his gospel: “The Word became flesh and made His dwelling among us. We beheld His glory….” The Pharisees did not believe that Jesus was God. It didn’t matter how many miracles He did, nor how many lepers He cured nor how many people He raised from the dead. So the question comes to each of us. “Do you believe that Jesus is who He claims to be?” He wants you to know He is in the midst of your world. Wherever you are as you hear these words, He is present. In your car. On the plane. In your office, your bedroom, your den, He is near.
Jesus involves himself in the car pools, and at school board meetings to save His children. When your heartbreaks, at the funeral home. He is as near to each of us on a Monday as on a Sunday. God comes to the place where we live, steps up to the door, and knocks. But it’s up to you to let Him in.” (some phases Max Lucado Daily Devotions the Prodigal Son) The Pharisees did not want Jesus in their “space”.
With that background, Jesus engages the Pharisees. “What do you think? There was a man who had two sons. He asked them both to go and work in the vineyard. The first refused but then changed his mind. The second said he would go, but he lied.
Matthew knows, and Jesus knows that both of these parables in this chapter are direct reference to the temple and the people of God. (see Isaiah 5:1-7) whom the Pharisees were to manage for the benefit and care of God’s people not for personal benefit.
Matthew concludes: “They knew Jesus was talking about them and they looked for a way to arrest Him.” By the end of the week, Judas took the 30 pieces of silver, betrayed Jesus with a kiss. Jesus knew how, at night he would be run through a series of sham trials and sentenced to death. In reality, the tenants would kill the Master's Son; humanity would murder the Christ who had come to save them. A story which was fulfilled just as Jesus predicted. He was condemned, and placed on a cross outside the city walls of Jerusalem, He was murdered.
The Day of the LORD would come in AD 70 when Jerusalem was captured and the Temple destroyed. It would become briars and thorns. Jesus says the vineyard would be taken away. Israel was to be removed and new tenants installed. The stone the builders had rejected would fall upon them and grind them to powder. The new tenants would be Gentiles and Jewish Christians. We are the new tenants of the mercy and justice of God, which must be displayed in our lives.
You and I know that this terrible story of death on a cross, does not end with the death of God's Son. Because Jesus was the Son of God; because He had, through His entire life, resisted every temptation put before Him by the forces of evil; because He had fulfilled all the prophecies made about the Messiah; because He had successfully carried every sin we have committed; His sacrifice and substitution for us was accepted by God.
Everyone knows John 3:16. But there is another verse like it. It’s found in I John 4:10 “This is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.”
His death on Golgotha’s hill is where God provide the Lamb for the salvation of the world. The owner of the Vineyard has come to His temple. They rejected His love in the person of Jesus. That's why, three days after He was pronounced dead, Jesus returned to life. Sin, death, and devil had been defeated and the risen Savior showed a prideful world the success of His mission. Because Jesus has risen, all who believe on Him as their Savior, who acknowledge Him as their Lord, are forgiven their sinful past and promised the blessings of eternal.
The devil could not stop him, The cross could not defeat him,
The grave could not hold him. Jesus will come again.
