The Cleansing Of The Temple

-Have you ever done the right thing in a sticky situation and it ended up costing you dearly?

-Maybe it cost you a friend, a loved one, money, a deal, your pride, your reputation but it cost you something that you would have rather not give up. {PAUSE}

-We watched a cool animated movie on Friday night called “Treasure Planet”

-It was about a boy who read a book as a boy about outer space merchant ships and a pirate who robbed them

-He grew up dreaming about going to outer space and finding the lost treasure on treasure planet.

-One day a mysterious stranger shows up and with his dying breath passes off a secret treasure map and then the bad guys show up looking for it

-The boy, along with his mother and a scientist they live with, escape and chart course to find the lost treasure

-They hitch a ride on an outer space merchant ship and the boy is forced to be the cabin boy to pay for his ride

-He works closely with the old cook aboard ship and they begin to develop a strong bond, much like the one he wished that he could have had with his own father growing up, who left when he was very young

-We find out earlier in the movie that the crew knows of the treasure map and plan a mutiny

-They take over the ship and find the planet, get a hold of the map and find the treasure

-They have to escape quickly because the pirate who left the treasure booby-trapped the planet to explode if the treasure was taken

-However, as they are escaping, the boy falls out of the ship and is barely holding on

-The cook tries to reach the boy but he can’t keep a hold of the ship and reach the boy

-The cook spent his entire life looking for the treasure and now has to choose between it and the boy he has grown fond of

-What do you think he does?

-Do you think he risks his own safety and this long lost treasure to save this boy he barely knows?

-What would you do?

-What would Jesus do? {PAUSE}

-Well, we kind of know what Jesus would do?

-We have a story where Jesus is faced with making a choice about doing the right thing that might cost him

-Let me set the scene for you

-Here we have the Holy House of God, on the site where God first told the Israelites to build the temple

-Remember that one was destroyed in 587 B.C when they were taken into captivity in Babylon

-However, this one was built later under Zerubbabel after they returned from exile and expanded upon by King Herod, beginning in 19 B.C.

-The religious authorities had quite a racket going on in the temple

-Remember that Jerusalem was filled with pilgrims who came from all over the known world to celebrate the great feasts like Passover so they needed to exchange their money in order to buy an offering for the Lord

-Obviously, they weren’t going to go to the trouble of bringing a lamb with them the entire journey

-And those of you who have traveled outside the U.S. know what a racket that money changing can be

-Not only that but the animals being bought and sold in the temple, some scholars believe were never sacrifice – those selling them would lead them away, only to bring them back minutes later to be sold again

-In the synoptic gospels – that’s Matthew, Mark and Luke (synoptic means “seeing together” because the first three gospels tell mostly the same stories in roughly the same order) – tell the story of the cleansing of the temple during Holy Week but John tells it at the beginning of Jesus’ ministry so we’re not sure if they are one in the same put in two different places chronologically or two different events

-Assuming they are one in the same, we read something a little different in Mark’s gospel

-He relates that Jesus did not let anyone carry merchandise through the temple courts

-Apparently, since the temple was such a huge structure that forced laborers and contractors to go way out of their way to get from one side of Jerusalem to the other, the chief priests cut them a deal to go through the temple with their building materials but they had to pay a tax to do so

-Wow, was their greed astounding

-And we think professional athletes and movie stars are too into money

-No wonder Jesus is upset

-But Jesus is more than upset

-He is more than a little miffed

-He is downright angry

-He is livid

-I mean, He is really ticked off