So congregation, if you're given to immediate or quick prayers, you might pray for a weak voice of your pastor today. If it happens that the voice goes out again, we're gonna just press on. So you hear a squeaky little sound, but you'll be patient with that, I know. The most important thing is that we sit under the preaching of God's word. So let me invite you to turn open your Bible to Mark chapter 11, Mark chapter 11. And we have come in our study of Mark to 15 through 19 in chapter 11. Remember we said last week that we noticed the work of the great prophet, in his prophesying about Israel through the visible, that is through the fig tree and its presentation of those things, we come this morning to the work of the high priest. And we consider his work as he comes into the temple. So to Mark 11 and verse 15 through 19. On reaching Jerusalem, Jesus entered the temple area and began driving out those who were buying and selling there. He overturned the tables of the money changers and the benches of those selling doves and would not allow anyone to carry merchandise through the temple courts. And as he taught them, he said, is it not written, my house will be called a house of prayer for all nations? but you have made it a den of robbers. The chief priests and the teachers of the law heard this and began looking for a way to kill him, for they feared him, because the whole crowd was amazed at his teaching. When evening came, they went out of the city." As far as congregation, God's gracious and always true word. Let's ask his help as we continue this morning. Let's pray. Our Father, in your good providence, we have been thinking this morning in an unexpected way, thinking again of our weakness. Lord, that weakness of ours includes our hearing and our reception of what we hear, that is, our teachableness. And so we pray this morning that you would make us teachable. Lord, we pray for open ears and open hearts. As we might have open hands as we sing, or open hands as we pray, or open hands as we receive blessings from you in every area of life, including here, Lord, may we have open hearts by your spirit. May we receive the good that you have planned to pour out upon us this day. For we ask it in Jesus' name, amen. So dear congregation of the Lord Jesus Christ, to properly apply God's word, we must first understand its real and true meaning. Now a lot goes into the discerning process, the discovery of what it is God's word teaches us, including asking, this goes into it, including asking what the original hearers, readers, would have understood. If Mark was serving God's Gentile people in Rome, as he writes this gospel record, as is commonly understood, and I also agree with that, writing, as he was initially, to a particular congregation in Rome, these things, then we want to ask, what would those Gentile, non-Jewish first readers take away from this text in its broader context? What would they have understood of these matters we are considering now to the beginning of chapter 14? What would they have thought about the issues of Israel's reckoning day? Because remember, that's what this section is unfolding. The time of the reckoning of Israel is at hand and Jesus will not let up on that theme from now to the very end of chapter 13. You'll see it again and again and again. What were those Gentile non Jewish Christians in Rome? Have been thinking. Well. At least. They would have been scratching their heads. About the significance of the temple. and how here it is front and center in the worship of God and would want to have known more about why the Lord Jesus Christ enters into the temple in this cleansing mission. And surely we also want to know something of the same. The words he will also speak at another place, Jesus will say, quote, destroy this temple and I will rebuild it in three days. reminds the Gentile Christians in Rome, Mark's original readers, of what we also know, that the proper use of the temple was very significant to him, because his perfect life and sacrifice was portrayed by it, by the temple. Jesus was zealous for the temple to be a proper picture of his own work of salvation, So the high priest zealously restores the temple to salvation use. The high priest zealously restores the temple to salvation's use. Well, to get at that this morning congregation, we need to do a little bit more work. So the first thing we're gonna consider, you see this as the first point in the sermon handout, is context. This is the time to pause and consider what's going on here? especially when we say Passover is at hand. What does that mean? Well, surely it means that the religiously committed men and their families from all over Israel, indeed from many countries around Israel, these men were leading their families to get, if they could, to Jerusalem on time for the Passover. It's something we have a hard time seeing visually in our eyes because for us the most people we're familiar with rubbing shoulders with might be at a sporting event where you're standing in line waiting to get in and there are hundreds or thousands of other people. This is something like that on a grand scale of people from all points on the compass focused on one place and that is Jerusalem for Passover is at hand. In the Hebrew reckoning, in their calendar, it's the month of Nisan, N-I-S-A-N. We would say springtime. We don't have an equal to say, well, it was surely March or surely April, because our understanding of Passover, of course, is reckoned with the first new moon in that time, the first fruits of spring to be brought. So whatever exact time it is, we're not entirely sure. It's either March or April in the reckoning of our calendar, but the faithful are flooding to Jerusalem. The city is bursting at the seams with all of these people, the worshipers, who now will listen, listen, who will need the required sacrificial rites. They will need animals. They will need spices and wine and oil. And now listen to this, these foreigners will all need to have their particular money exchanged so that they might have the shekel that was to be given as the temple offering. The temple offering could only be given in the approved shekel. Now Greeks didn't have those, and all of the rest of the people around Jerusalem, and many within Israel itself didn't have that kind of accepted coin. And so you begin to see some of the context of what was going on when Jesus enters the temple, and we see here, turns over the benches of those selling doves, and we would say other animals, and the money changers. We might say the people working at currency exchange, right? That's the way we would think of it. Now this is made all the more significant because it is the year AD 30, or it is the year AD 33. And three years earlier, the year of AD 30, Caiaphas, whose name we come to be familiar with in the gospel records, Caiaphas, then the high priest, made a decision. Three years before our text, he made a decision that the marketplaces for buying those animals and those spices and that wine and that oil, which was before set up as four markets near the Mount of Olives, that had been that way for centuries, Caiaphas decided in AD 30 to move that into the court of the Gentiles. Something that had only been going on now for three years. And you remember from last week that Jesus initially made an appraisal of the temple when he comes down, but it was late, so he just went back to Bethany. Now in the morning he has returned, and this is the site that confronts him. Caiaphas, of course, and the other religious leaders would earn a percentage. from the sale of the religiously approved rights for the worship that were sold in the court of the Gentiles. And now, beloved, if I could just ask us to think about the broader picture for a moment, I think it's easy for us to see how all of what we've just been rehearsing reminds us how we have been set free. Now I don't mean the more spiritual aspects of that, which of course we realize, free from our sins, free from the future and hell, all of that is of course the most significant thing. But could you think about the freedom that we have from these Old Testament rites? You didn't come this morning and park your car near a cellar of doves. You didn't come this morning and walk into church having to wind your way through the money changers. Now you kind of smile maybe or laugh about that a little bit, but do you realize the significance of Jesus Christ in this reality? How the relative ease and freedom we have about worship is something gifted to us because of what Jesus Christ has done for us. Again, this seems ahistorical, it seems out of history to say this, but I'm gonna say it anyway. If it were not for the arrival and the work of the Lord Jesus Christ, what would we have to do? Read Deuteronomy, read Leviticus. carefully read all of those Old Testament rights and stipulations and responsibilities, and we would come into a building and sacrifice animals and burn incense and all of the rest of those things. But we, you see, have been set free. The price has been paid. And that, in the context, beloved, of what these were trying to do as Jesus arrives in the temple, if I can put it very crassly, make a buck off of the worship of God. Price fixing, price gouging. Can you imagine the financial boon for a man who had just been the seller of doves before, but then he receives the stamp of approval from the Pharisees to be an approved seller of approved doves for the worship of God being granted access into the court of the Gentiles. What would happen with his income? It would increase exponentially. Not just on the season of Passover, but all of the time. And so we realize, oh dear congregation, of how much we have been set free from and the glory of what we have in Jesus Christ. Well, that's something of the background as we consider, secondly, Jesus' zeal as high priest is the sanctity. Jesus' zeal as high priest is the sanctity of God's house. When you look at the text, if we study the words carefully, we can come to but one conclusion about Jesus' emotional life. Remember, yes, fully God, but also fully man. What was his emotional state? when, verse 15, he comes into the temple area. Here's the word, furious. Now, we think of lots of emotional words about Jesus Christ. Maybe that's not one we often connect to him, but here it is. Why? Why does he come in and single-handedly cleanse the temple by the violence of zeal? Well, he does so for a couple of connected reasons. First, first because making the Court of the Gentiles to become a marketplace, like something of a Middle Eastern bazaar, if you've ever seen pictures or if you've ever traveled to the Middle East and walked through their crowded, energetic bazaars, you realize that this is a corrupting of the sanctity of God's house. The place dedicated to the worship of God, to the glory of God, and to finding peace with God has been polluted and corrupted and ruined by worldliness, but second, Second, he comes in to cleanse it by the violence of zeal because the sanctity of God's house was supposed to portray his righteousness, was supposed to portray his righteousness. And that applies so personally to us. He comes into the sanctuary to eradicate death and debauchery that has polluted the place of purity, which was supposed to portray his own purity, which purity we need. Now we have to follow this, beloved, because there's a lot here. We're going to come in a little while to me mentioning significantly 2 Corinthians chapter 6 and verse 16, that we are the temple of God. But what we need to understand is that he is first the temple of God, whom we need. And so, beloved, we ought to say about his fury that this for us is incredibly good news. This is incredibly good news. Oh wait a minute, you're saying that the fury and the anger of Jesus Christ is good news for us? Yes, that's exactly what I'm saying. That he comes in with zeal to purify and to cleanse. Now I'm gonna come back to that significantly in our third point, but I want to also warn us this morning. I want to warn us this morning. Because we need to deal with Jesus as he is. And Jesus as he is in the text is the one who, verse 15, enters the temple area and begins driving out those who were buying and selling there. Do you see what that means? He comes in with fury and anger about the worship of Almighty God. The warning and the caution then which we should draw from that is that Jesus Christ is not ho-hum about the worship that is to be presented to God. That's an easy application to make, isn't it? But then why are so few churches making that application? Or to make it more personal, why are so few Christians making that application? Should we dare now to say that, well, we can worship how we want, and we can do it in very easy and convenient ways as it appeals to us, and we don't need to be so burdened by a careful following of the scripture in terms of worship, because look what Jesus has done for us. No, we ought not to say that. We ought to say, rather, the opposite, that because of what Jesus Christ has done for us, we ought to be very zealous about the worship of Almighty God. and to strive to do all we can to keep his worship pure? Are you checking your neighbor's worship? And I don't mean that in a way of looking down on them, but are you encouraging your brother or sister, your wife or your husband, your parent or your child about being zealous to worship God rightly? Are we caring for one another in those ways? Now, why do we make this application? Because Jesus comes in and it is that he is filled with zeal and fury about worship that is wrongheaded and the use of a place of worship that is in effect blasphemous. Should we think that we can belittle his majesty and tarnish his glory and he won't be concerned? The Apostle Paul, when he is writing to the church in Corinth, and we get to 1 Corinthians chapter 11, that passage that we're familiar with in terms of the Lord's Supper, he says something that oftentimes we diminish about worship. He says, your wrong-headed worship is why some of your people have died. And we say, oh, well, they were sick, or they left off with the faith. Well, they're certainly not dead because they worshiped wrong. Oh, no? But then do the names Nadab and Abihu come to mind? Because of disobedient worship of God? Do we say, well, they didn't really die. It was just kind of a visual presentation. And then we look at the zeal of Jesus Christ and we say, wow, he was, he woke up on the wrong side of the bed, or boy, he was angry, and that's the length to which we go. No, we need to go the whole distance. I'm asked the question, what about my worship? What about my zeal to worship God rightly in his house on the Lord's day, every Lord's day, whenever we're called to worship, am I that zealous because of what he has done for me, you see? For the sanctity of the worship of God, Jesus does what he does. Well, let's expand it. Thirdly, two Old Testament texts provide the teaching. You'll notice in verse 16, in addition to the cleansing of the court of the Gentiles, you'll notice also that all of the marketplace stands, the currency exchange tables, the Lord pushes them all away and he cuts off those people who are using the temple court as a shortcut. Look at this, verse 16. He would not allow anyone to carry merchandise through the temple courts. There's two ways to understand that. People were bringing in the next fresh batch of doves because the others had sold out already. That's true. But also because of the place of the temple in terms of the geography of Jerusalem, it was a very convenient pass through to go somewhere else into the middle of the old city as we call it now. People would take their fabrics. And people would take their pots and pans. And they would just walk, hum, skip through the court because it was a shorter path. Now we say, well, that seems to be rather insignificant, doesn't it? But not to Jesus Christ. Not to Jesus Christ. And to prove why that is, he ties together two Old Testament passages to show the depth of Israel's guilt. You probably have it as a footnote in your Bible, Isaiah 56 verse seven and Jeremiah chapter seven verse 11, where Israel has come to disregard the temple of the Lord. That place which was supposed to be the gathering place of the nations in prayer to God. But I want you to notice something here of the detail of the text before we go to another application. Something very important about the detail of the text. Why does he first turn over the tables and stop the passing of people through the temple area and then, then bring these two Old Testament texts to light? It is because of a very important principle that the Reformed have always held to, which says the word authorizes the sign. The sacraments cannot stand on their own, they need the word. It is because signs of visual presentation of something needs the word. And here he makes that very clear for us and blesses us in this regard. And he says, I'm going to tell you what you just saw. It's why we have in the text here that he was teaching. I don't think this is a broad teaching of a whole slew of subjects, that he was there all day teaching all kinds of things, but I think it is a very particular word here, meaning a very specific teaching, and that is that he was teaching with great interest and great earnestness, here's the word, teaching with great zeal, what it is they just saw him do. Because then the people, if you remember the old cartoons with the light bulb that's on top of the head and it's not lit, and then all of a sudden they get it, right, and the light goes on. I think it is here the teaching of the Lord Jesus Christ about what they just saw that then in the people gathered there, the representatives of Israel, the light goes on. And this we come to when the chief priests and the teachers are furious and want to kill him because all the people, notice verse 18, were amazed at his what? Teaching. About what? about the sanctity of the temple, his teaching about the righteousness of the worship of God, his teaching about the holiness of God. People were saying, aha, I get it, I see. And the ones who were profiting both in real financial terms and in terms of being held up by the people and living in pride, the Pharisees, teachers of the law, all of those didn't like the fact that the light was going on, right? Dear ones, do we remember that we have been saying that this Jesus of the Bible is never ho-hum about anything? He comes into the court of the Gentiles in the fury of holiness, under the fuel of God's word. He is propelled into action. Now listen, he pushes, he flips tables over, he yells, he gives commands. He says, don't do this. He is powerful. He's hollering. This is the Jesus of the Bible when it comes to people trampling on the sanctity of the holiness of God. Why? Because righteousness demands it. The sanctity of the worship of God is being trampled upon and the high priest will not stand for it. He says I'm going to show you that the temple must be cleansed. He himself will be the cleansing temple. And then notice this. This is a spiritual application, so I'm alerting you ahead of time. We 2nd Corinthians 616. We are the temple that he must also cleanse. We are the temple of God. And since that is true, beloved, can you begin to make some connections about what Jesus, how Jesus responds to Christians living flippantly in a disinterested way in terms of righteousness and sanctity and holiness since he has given himself the temple of God for us and what he does to purify us? Is he disinterested? when we, the temple of God, trample on the word of God in our behaviors and in our lives. All beloved, what we need to see in this passage, yes, of course, it is the physical temple, the court of the Gentiles. Yes, of course, that temple was destroyed by the Romans, come in in AD 70 to level the whole city of Jerusalem. But we are now the temple of God, and so we need to make that application. We need to say this is the spiritual work that Jesus Christ does in his church, in Christians, and say it personally, does in me. cleanses us, purifies us, overturns tables of idolatry in our lives, stops us from using our lives in ungodly ways. This remains to be Jesus' zealous interest. Now, I could stop and say nothing more, and we would be applying the text correctly. And I trust that you'll take that with you and go home and say, I am the temple of God whom Jesus is cleansing, and he is zealous about it. And then we ought to be zealous about our gathered worship every time we're called to worship because Jesus is zealous about it. And I would say all of those things, and all of those things are true from the text, but the text goes on in verse 18 and says something else we need to reckon with. The chief priests and the teachers of the law heard this. Stop there. Heard what? Well, you would naturally say, heard what Jesus had done. Yes, but there's more. Because of what this text teaches us, there's more. What did the chief priests and the teachers of the law actually hear? That the people were amazed. They were amazed at his teaching. That's what they heard. Which is why they, verse 18, the chief priests, teachers of the law, feared him. They couldn't handle the fact that the populace was going over to Jesus. And I think now in the text, if we're serious about the chronology leading up to the crucifixion itself, now is the time when the chief priests and the teachers of the law began with their counter-cultural campaign, their devious campaign to cause the people to hate him. Because that's how this works. That's the politics of it. It happens all the time. But because they fear him, because they cannot control him, they have but one goal. What does the Bible tell us? They began to look for a way to kill him. If our consistory, now I'm being very fanciful here, had had prior to this moment the opportunity to counsel Jesus, would our consistory, our wise elders, have counseled Jesus before he enters Jerusalem? Now, you better not get too energetic and don't get too zealous because the results are not going to go well for you. Would we counsel the Lord Jesus in that way? I'm being totally ridiculous here in saying such a thing, but I think you see the point, don't you? Jesus leads. And he knows exactly what is coming. And he does not shrink back. This is, to use the phrase of politics now, this is, in his earthly ministry, the moment of the tipping point. When something so swings one direction that it's irreconcilable, it's going to go in that direction to its conclusion now. He is going to the cross. If there was ever a question before this moment, there is now no question. They are furious with him. They are afraid and terrified of him. And they are going to do all they can to kill him. But Jesus, Church, your Jesus is courageous and bold and fiery and zealous, and he has no time to countenance All of this wicked stuff about worship that the world is throwing at the church. Do this, do that. It's going to go great for you. Neither about we ourselves who say, oh, well, I want to do this and I want to do that. And I don't care too much about what God says. Jesus is zealous. And he's pursuing you. And he will not let go. And he will have your whole heart and your whole life in your whole mind, in your whole being. Interesting that Jeremiah, that's one of the texts he quotes here, Jeremiah 7, says something else about the temple of the Lord. And Jeremiah 7 says, the people of God were already then in Jeremiah's day saying, oh, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, that's where all of our hope is at, rather than saying the God of the temple, the God of the temple, the God of the temple, that is where all our hope is found. And what about us, dear church? What about the holiness of worship today? What about the sanctity of our own lives as servants of the living God? What about agreeing to the ongoing zealous work of Jesus Christ by His Spirit and Word to sanctify us? Do we say, yes, Lord, cleanse me. Yes, Lord, purify me. Of all about me that is disagreeable to you and your Word, I want that work of yours in my life. Oh, beloved, the high priest about these things is zealous. Amen. Our Father and our God, we thank you that you have made us to be the temple of God. That as Peter would later say, we are that people being built together to a spiritual house, brick upon brick. And oh Lord, as you are building us and making us to be yours more and more as individuals and then together corporately as a congregation, we pray, have your way with us. May it be that we are those who receive willingly the zealous cleansing that Jesus brings by his spirit and word into our lives. For we ask it in his name, amen. Well, congregation, let's sing again this morning to the glory of our God, 324. And then our doxology will be 488. Let's begin the Blue Psalter, 324.