The Fig Tree & the Temple: Two Unforgettable Object Lessons - Part 2

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Well, as I mentioned to you before I left on vacation, I want to go back tonight to Mark's gospel and finish up what we began, the passage we started before I left on vacation. Then, Lord willing, next time we'll begin our summer series. We're going to take a break from Mark's gospel, and we're going to take a look at, very practically, how to study the Bible. Not to teach it. I've done that before in teaching seminars and those kinds of things. But for all of us as Christians, how can we study the Bible in such a way as to gain the nutrients for our soul that we need in order to grow. So starting next week, Lord willing, we'll do that, kind of work our way through. Probably the better part of the summer before I'm done with that. And then we'll come back to Mark's gospel in the fall. But tonight I want to finish up the passage that we started just before I left a couple of weeks ago.

In C. S. Lewis' Chronicles of Narnia, there is this fascinating description of a lamb. In The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, Lucy and Edmond encounter on their journeys a little white lamb, and the lamb is cooking a breakfast of fish. With the lamb they enjoy the best meal that they've ever had, and then the lamb explains to them the way to the land of Aslan, or in Lewis' analogy, heaven. As the lamb explains how it is that a person gets to Aslan's land, a miraculous change begins to happen. Lewis writes this, speaking of the lamb: "His snowy [surface was flushed with] tawny gold and his size changed and he was Aslan himself, towering above them and scattering light from his mane." From a lamb to a lion. Lewis is trying to capture the reality that the Lamb of God is also at the same time the Lion of the tribe of Judah, that glimpse in Revelation 5 where John hears about the Lion, and he turns to look and he sees a little pet Lamb. The Lamb is also a Lion. Sadly, many people only think of the one side of Jesus, the meek little Lamb. But in Scripture from time to time we come face to face with the wrath of the Lamb, with the Lion of the tribe of Judah, and one of those times is tonight in Mark 11.

Mark 11 begins in the last eight days of our Lord's earthly life and ministry. It introduces us to the Passion Week. Just to remind you—We've already studied this.—but on Sunday of the Passion Week several things happen. There was the Triumphal Entry into the city of Jerusalem. He spent time healing in the Temple. He prophesied and wept over the future destruction of the city. And, as I described it, He cased the Temple; that is, He walked all around the Temple grounds to see what was happening, which was preparation for what He would do the next day on Monday. Then Sunday evening, Jesus and the Twelve went back to Bethany, some two miles away over the Mount of Olives, until the next morning.

That brings us to Monday of the Passion Week, which is where we find ourselves. On Monday there were only three events. There was the cursing of a fig tree on the way to Jerusalem that morning. There's the second cleansing of the Temple, which we come to tonight. And then after that, John 12 records there was a request of some Greeks to see Jesus. And that's recorded at length there in John 12. Mark only records the first two of these events, the cursing of the fig tree and the cleansing of the Temple. And both of them are acted-out object lessons. Christ is teaching, but He's not teaching with His words. First and foremost, He's teaching with His actions.

Let me just remind you, we looked last time at the cursing of the fig tree. Let me just remind you of what transpires here. Notice in verse 12, "On the next day [that's Monday morning], when they had left Bethany, He became hungry." Matthew uses a word for morning that means early morning, shortly after daylight, possibly around 6 am. The walk to Jerusalem was some two miles. So shortly after they left the home of Mary and Martha and Lazarus that morning, early in the morning, Jesus recognized that He was hungry.

Verse 13 says, "Seeing at a distance a fig tree in leaf, He went to see if perhaps He would find anything on it." We talked about this at length. But basically, ripe figs for the winter crop would come in another 30 to 60 days from Passover. But the green or unripe figs had already begun to appear back in February. They were called the paggim in Hebrew. This is what they looked like, just a little stub of a piece of fruit. But they were edible, and they were in fact often eaten by the people of Israel. By early April, when Passover occurred, it would be normal to find such green figs, and that expectation would have particularly been true of this tree because it was in leaf. Usually, the little baby-green fig buds appeared before the leaves. So if there were leaves, you expected to see these little green figs. Jesus anticipated gathering some fruit to eat on the way to Jerusalem to address His hunger.

But notice what happens in verse 13:

When He came to it, He found nothing but leaves, for it was not [yet] the season for figs. And He said to it, "May no one ever eat from you again!" And His disciples were listening.

What does this mean? Well, we unpacked it last time, but let me just give you the thumbnail sketch. With the Old Testament background of Israel as a fig tree, and the historical context of the story put between the casing of the Temple and its cleansing, the fig tree represents the Nation Israel. God had every right to expect fruit from Israel. And in her Temple worship and in her rituals she appeared to have the fruit of genuine worship and genuine love for God, but in reality Jesus found nothing but leaves. The religion of the people was all appearance. It was all show, and there was no reality. That was the point of the cursing of the fig tree. It was Christ not only noticing that here was a tree that promised fruit but had none, it was all show with no fruit, He was essentially saying the same thing is true of Israel. And that's the lesson that comes also in the second object lesson.

The second object lesson that we come to tonight makes exactly the same point of the cursing of the fig tree. A fig tree is like an analogy of what Jesus will find at the Temple: a lot of outward show, a lot of leaves, looks great, but no reality, no true worship of God. That brings us tonight to the second object lesson in this passage, and that is the cleansing of the Temple. Let me read it for you. Verse 15:

Then they came to Jerusalem. And He entered the Temple and began to drive out those who were buying and selling in the Temple, and overturned the tables of the money changers and the seats of those who were selling doves; and He would not permit anyone to carry merchandise through the Temple. And He began to teach and say to them, "Is it not written, 'My house shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations'? But you have made it a robbers' den." The chief priests and the scribes heard this, and began seeking how to destroy Him; for they were afraid of Him, for the whole crowd was astonished at His teaching.

The stage for what Jesus planned to do on Monday, and what we just read that He in fact did, was set late on Sunday afternoon or evening the day before. Look back at verse 11: "Jesus entered Jerusalem and came into the Temple; and after looking around at everything, He left for Bethany with the twelve, since it was already late." Jesus had checked out the Temple because He had a plan for the next day, for Monday, for what we have just read. This, believe it or not, is the first time in Mark's gospel where he refers to the Temple in Jerusalem, and it's the first incident that he tells us actually occurred there. And so I think before we get into the story itself, I want to step back for a moment and just give you a flyover of what was the Temple and what was its significance.

The story really begins back in Old Testament times, in Moses' time shortly after the Exodus. God commanded Moses to build a Tabernacle. That's a glorified name for a tent. It was a tent that traveled along with the people of Israel. Instructions for it were very clearly given. And in Exodus 40, it was completed in about the year 1444 BC, about a year after the Exodus. When it was completed, Exodus 40 tells us that the glory cloud descended on it. That visible representation of God's presence, the Shekinah glory cloud descended and took up residence in that tent.

What was its significance? Well essentially, it was God's house. The Holy of Holies in the Tabernacle, and later in the Temple, was the throne room of Yahweh, Israel's King. Think of the Ark of the Covenant as His throne and the Holy of Holies as His throne room. All the nations around Israel had kings, and those kings had palaces where you could go and appeal to them. God, in a condescending way to the people, in His wonderful, glorious condescension said I will dwell among you. I will have a tent right in the middle of your camp. It will be My house, and I will make My presence there. And you can come seek Me in that place. That was the significance of the Tabernacle and later of the Temple.

Fast forward 400 years from the completion of the Tabernacle. David is alive, and David decides that God should have a permanent residence. You can read about it in 2 Samuel 7. David lived in a permanent home of wood. Israel's true King, Yahweh, still lived in a tent. And so David decides that he's going to build God a house. It was a noble desire, but God told David that he couldn't do it, because he was a man of blood. Instead, his son Solomon would build a permanent house for God, a Temple. So Solomon undertook it. We call it Solomon's Temple.

It was first completed, Israel's first Temple was completed (in 1 Kings 6:38) in the year 959 BC.

We know that for a variety of reasons. And if you wonder about my dates, you can go back and listen to the survey of the Old Testament where I argue for some of those dates. But for now you just have to trust me, because I'm not going to stop and prove it. Nine fifty-nine. It was the fourth year of Solomon's reign when they started it, and we we're told how long it took, so we can figure from that. That's where it comes from.

It was built on Mount Moriah. We're told that in 2 Chronicles 3:1: "Solomon began to build the house of the Lord in Jerusalem on Mount Moriah, where the Lord had appeared to his father David, at the place that David had prepared on the threshing floor of Ornan the Jebusite." You remember the story of the plague and how it was stopped, and David purchased the threshing floor and built an altar there. And God said it is on this place that eventually a Temple will be built for Me. So it was on Mount Moriah. But not only was it where David had stopped the plague and offered sacrifice to God, but go back to Genesis 22 and you find that it was on Mount Moriah where Abram had offered his son Isaac. And he'd prepared an altar there to sacrifice his son. Same mountain. Very likely the same exact spot.

So Solomon builds his Temple. Here's an illustration, a very good illustration using the information we have of what that would have been like. Obviously, it's a cutaway, so you can sort of see inside there. But you get an idea of the size of the burnt altar in the front (it was a massive structure) and the laver for the washings, and then you can see inside. And there were these massive doors, brass doors that separated the Holy Place from (and you ascended the stairs into) the Holy of Holies. So you get a little feel for what it was like. That Temple, often called Solomon's Temple, stood until it was destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar and the Babylonians in the year 586. So it lasted a little less than 400 years. Solomon's Temple stood a little less than 400 years, and, of course, at that point Judah was carried off in captivity.

Then another Temple comes along, Zerubbabel's Temple. In 538 BC, Cyrus decreed that the Israelites could return from Babylon back to Israel. The first priority of those who had returned under a man named Zerubbabel was to rebuild the Temple. Construction began in the year

536 BC, but then they stalled out because of pressure and persecution. It was only later under the preaching of Haggai (You can read the prophet Haggai.) that eventually it was completed in 516. This second Temple, named for Zerubbabel, the man under whose direction it was built, was only a faint reflection of Solomon's glorious Temple. In fact, those who were older and who had seen Solomon's Temple before it was destroyed wept when they saw the foundation of the new Temple being laid. You can read about it in Ezra 3. They wept, because it was so tragically inferior to the one they had seen before. Here is an artist's rendering based on what we know of what that Temple looked like. Again, just a simple stone structure. This structure also stood for some 400 to 500 years.

Zerubbabel's Temple stood until the time of Herod the Great, but it had suffered extensive damage over the 500 years and had become dilapidated. And so in the year 19-20 BC (We're much closer to the time of Christ now.), a man named Herod the Great began what he called a massive renovation. In reality, he essentially rebuilt it from the ground up. Most of the work was completed in ten years, but the detail work and all the exterior decoration continued until the year 63 AD. If you can do the math, that's just seven years before it was destroyed in 70 AD. By the time of Jesus' death they had been working on this Temple for nearly 50 years. It was a magnificent piece of architecture.

Herod had started by creating a huge raised platform over a hill there in Jerusalem. Josephus describes the platform being 400 yards long (That's four football fields long.) by 330 yards long, or about 35 acres. That was the total area of the Temple complex. Here is some artist's renderings of what it would have been like. This is actually a reconstruction at the hotel in Jerusalem where they've built an ancient city of Jerusalem, and this is based on Josephus' descriptions and other descriptions. You can see that large area that's encased there is 35 acres. It's massive: 400 yards by 330 yards in size. In fact, this is what it looks like today. You can see the wall that surrounds it. You can see in the middle the Dome of the Rock. But you'll notice all around it is that wall, much of which is built on the original stones below from Herod's retaining wall, the retaining wall he built to make that huge platform over Mount Moriah.

There's only one portion of that left, and it's part of the western retaining wall. The Temple itself was absolutely destroyed ("Not one stone... left upon another," as Jesus said.) by Titus when he invaded in 70 AD. But there is a portion of what Herod built that remains. It's just the retaining wall on which the Temple set up on top, and it's the Western Wall, as it's called. The lowest layer of the stones in the Wailing Wall or the Western Wall are Herodian from Herod's time. That's why they come and pray and kiss those stones, because those are the original stones of that retaining wall that supported that massive Temple complex.

It holds a lot of people. This is the Temple Mount on the last Friday of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. They estimate on that day there were 400,000 people on that Temple Mount. So it was made, that 35 acres was made to hold a lot of people who came to worship at feast times. In Herod the Great's Temple there were huge courtyards surrounded by beautiful, arched balustrades. You can see something of the size. If you can see the little red (my pointer here) art I injected there, that's to give you a six-foot person, just to give you something of the scope and magnitude of the size.

You would come up from the outside gates, up onto the courtyard through these two entrances, and as you came up this is what you saw—a massive Temple building. The focal point in the center of that massive 35-acre compound was the Temple proper, the building there in the center. It was built of white marble, decorated with gold, covered with a cedar roof. On the top, Josephus tells us, were golden spikes to keep the birds from landing on it and polluting it. At the front it was 150 feet high by 150 wide. Just to give you the order of magnitude, that means that building you see jutting up there in the center, this building which is the Temple proper that houses the Holy Place and the Holy of Holies, that building was 50 yards high by 50 yards wide. A massive structure.

If you'd walked inside you would have entered the Holy Place where the priests ministered daily. And in the Holy Place there were three pieces of furniture. This is another view of it, just to give you a little different vantage point. But in the Holy Place there was the golden lampstand on the right side; there was the table of showbread, the table for the bread of the presence as it was called; and right in front of the Holy of Holies was the altar of incense. This will give you some idea of how those were situated. If you can see there, this is the Holy Place where the priest went daily. And there you see the golden lampstand. Over there's the table for the bread of the presence. And there is the altar of incense which symbolized the prayers of the people. And there's that massive curtain dividing the Holy Place from the Holy of Holies.

In the back, back there, that area I just identified for you, was a small room, a perfect cube, 30 feet by 30 feet by 30 feet. And it was called the Holy of Holies or the Most Holy Place. It was accessible by just one man once a year, the high priest on the Day of Atonement. Before 586 BC, before Nebuchadnezzar came, if you had entered the Holy of Holies you would have seen only one piece of furniture, the Ark of the Covenant. The Holy of Holies was God's throne room, as I said, and the Ark represented His throne where His presence dwelt. The glory cloud dwelt in that room. But in Herod's day the Ark had been lost. And it's still lost, unless you believe every movie you see and think Harrison Ford found it. It's still lost. So the Holy of Holies in Herod's day was empty except for one thing. There was only one thing in that room, and that is the huge rock outcropping on which the Ark had set.

Here is a picture inside the Dome of the Rock from the top. You have to get oriented here. This is as if you were up inside the Dome looking down at what's in the center of the Dome of the Rock today. And you can see there is this huge rock. And on that rock are several interesting features, but the only one I want to identify for you is this very carefully carved outcropping that is the exact dimensions of the Ark of the Covenant. And a famous scholar named Leen Ritmeyer has written extensively and diagrammed to show that it's very likely that was the place the Ark sat in the days of the Temple. I have seen that rock in what is called the Dome of the Rock, which Muslims, of course, believe to be a holy place. It's probably where Abram offered up Isaac. It's where David offered his sacrifice in 1 Samuel 24. And as you can see, cut into the rock, to this day, is a rectangular box the size of the Ark of the Covenant. Here is Ritmeyer's drawing, just so you can sort of get acclimated. This is the existing Dome of the Rock building today. This is the center of the Dome. Here's the rock outcropping that sticks up from below, and there's the rectangular depression that is the exact size of the Ark. And so it's very likely that this is the place. That's why it's such a holy place to the Jewish people.

Now, if you walked out of the Temple proper, out of that massive 50 yard by 50 yard building, you would have encountered a series of courtyards, descending courtyards. When you were at the Temple proper, that massive building in the middle, you would have been at the highest point on that massive 35-acre compound, and you would have gone down from there. If you come out the main doors, you would have gone down 12 steps from the main porch into a courtyard that's just behind that structure. There is a courtyard between the two. And in that area was the Court of the Priests. That's where the priests could go, and that's where they served. On that same level, surrounding the Court of the Priests was the Court of Israel. That's where the ritually clean Jewish men were allowed to enter. Once you left that and you came out this gate, called the Gate of Nicanor, and you descended these steps, this large square area was the Court of the Women. This is where Jewish women were allowed to go and no further. It was in this area that there were receptacles, large trumpets (you saw in one of the drawings), where the offerings and tithes were given. One of the stories we'll encounter shortly from Christ will occur in that area.

From the women's court you would descend another five steps to a kind of landing, and on that landing was a wall all the way around this structure separating it from the rest of the courtyard. That wall had on it a warning to all Gentiles. That wall had slabs at various intervals around it, on that three-to-five-foot stone barricade that encircled the entire Temple building. These were the warnings: "No Gentile is to enter within the balustrade and embankment around the sanctuary. Whoever is caught will render himself liable to the death penalty which will inevitably follow." That was the dividing wall that Paul talks about in Ephesians 2. It went all the way around. That's as far as a non-Jewish person could ever go.

So with that in mind, here is the Temple proper, here is the dividing wall all the way around the Temple proper and the courts that make it up. This large area here and here and in front was the Court of the Gentiles. That massive 35-acre area was all part of the Court of the Gentiles. It was paved with fine marble. And it's on that area, that I've just identified for you, where the events of verses 15-18 take place.

Now with that in mind, come back to verse 15. They came to Jerusalem. On Monday morning, early, after cursing the fig tree, they came to the city. Verse 15 goes on to say, "And He entered the Temple and began to drive out those who were buying and selling in the Temple, and overturned the tables of the money changers and the seats of those who were selling doves." From several ancient sources, we know that these businesses, that he's just referred to, used to be on the Mount of Olives just across the Kidron Valley. But around the time of Jesus' ministry (in fact, close to 30 AD, not very long before this happens), Caiaphas the high priest had moved these businesses from the Mount of Olives into the Court of the Gentiles, ostensibly to make it more convenient for the worshipers. It was Annas and Caiaphas and the other high priestly families along with all the members of the Sanhedrin who benefited from that move, from the income that was made from these businesses. They may have run some of the businesses themselves, but certainly they franchised out the rights to certain businessmen to have those goods to be sold there in the Court of the Gentiles to the Jewish worshipers as they came. Now notice—but of course, I should say as well, they did that, they franchised it out so they could get a percentage of the profits. This was about the financial gain they would have.

Now, there were primarily two kinds of businesses. One was the money changers, you can see Mark refers to. Why did you need money changers? Well, the Law in the Old Testament required every Jewish male older than 20 to pay an annual, half-shekel Temple tax every year at Passover. It was to support the sacrificial system and the priests and all that went with it. But you couldn't use the normal money to pay that tax, because the primary money in first-century Israel was whose money? Caesar's money. It was Roman money. It was pagan. It had what on it? An image of Caesar. And you remember the story (that we'll get to shortly in Mark's gospel) where they bring the coins to Jesus and that happens. It was pagan. The rabbis had decided, couldn't be used. Instead, they had decided that the closest money to the original Hebrew coins they used to have in the Old Testament time, and that didn't have any images on them, was money from Tyre, up the coast on the Mediterranean. And so when you got to the Temple, you were there to worship at Passover, the first thing you needed to do was go to the money changers to exchange your pagan, idolatrous money for money that could be used to buy things to celebrate the Passover.

So when you got there, you exchanged your money into Tyrian currency. And, of course, they charged you to do that. Somewhere between 1/24 and 1/12 was the variation. As a point of comparison, it would be something like 4 to 8 cents on the dollar. So every time you went up to get money to use, to do what you needed to do at Passover, you were spending 4 to 8 cents of every dollar to do that. And you hadn't even bought anything yet, you just got the money to buy it.

That's one business, the money changers. The other business that was going on here was those selling items that were necessary to offer sacrifices. You see, to offer a sacrifice you needed several things. You needed a blemish-free animal. Now, you could bring your own from home, wherever you were coming from, but you risked that animal being injured on the way or being somehow rendered unfit and the priest, when you got to Jerusalem, saying, "Sorry, this is not a blemish-free animal. It can't be offered." So for the convenience of the worshipers, Caiaphas and Annas and the other high priestly families would sell you, out of the goodness of their hearts, all you needed to worship. That included livestock, whatever animals you were going to sacrifice. It included salt, and it included wine, depending on the sacrifices.

Now Mark mentions one specific kind of animal that was sold there in the Temple and perhaps the only one that was—no, it wasn't the only one. There were lambs as well. But this was one of the most common ones sold: the doves. When someone could not afford a lamb for sacrifice, the Law allowed them to substitute either two pigeons or two doves. So this was a poor man's offering. The doves were for the poor people who couldn't afford to buy a lamb. I think Mark mentions this animal, specifically, because it shows that this whole business really took advantage of the poor people. Caiaphas and Annas and the high priestly families were riding on the backs of the poor, and we'll see more about that in coming weeks and in the fall when we look at the rest of Mark's gospel.

So all these things were sold in that massive Court of the Gentiles, probably on this side, because the main entrance was on the south side of the Temple. They would come out of these entrances up to the Temple grounds proper, and so it's likely they were sold in that area.

Now of course, for the convenience of having those things right there, it cost more than you would ordinarily have paid anywhere else. You can put it all together. Between the money changers and what they were selling at exorbitant prices—And remember, they were the ones who could tell you whether or not your animal passed inspection, the very ones who were then going to turn and around and sell you an animal that did.—it was legalized extortion. But it was big business. Josephus tells us that during just one Passover in 65 AD, 250,000 animals were sacrificed. And if you were making a cut off the sale of each one of those, you were making a killing. Pardon the pun. Another author documents that one Temple merchant sold 3,000 sheep in one day. It was big business. There was money in it.

Now when you read this passage,—As my father-in-law, who's now with the Lord, used to say, always read the Bible with a sanctified imagination.—put yourself in that situation. Imagine what this would have been like. When you imagine the Court of the Gentiles on that day, don't imagine the picture you see here. It would have been, literally, packed with people. More than 400,000 people, probably, all over that area. Picture a cross between the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, the busiest open-air market you've ever been in, and a commercial farm. That's what it would have been like. It would have been loud and smelly and unpleasant. That's what Jesus saw.

Verse 15 says, "And He entered the Temple and began to drive out those who were buying and selling in the Temple, and He overturned the tables of the money changers and the seats of those who were selling doves." In all three gospels that record this cleansing—and remember, there was another cleansing three years before at the early days of His ministry, the early days of the Galilean ministry, recorded in John 2. That's distinct from this one. But all three gospels that record this second cleansing at the very end of His ministry during the Passion Week, they all use the same Greek word to record what Jesus did. It literally means He "threw them out." That's what the word means. He began, systematically, methodically, to throw out the money changers and those who were buying and selling. He moved across the Court of the Gentiles, and He threw them out. He overturned the tables on which the money changers had their money stacked, and He overturned the seats or the benches of those who had the cages of doves all around them. Three years earlier He had made a whip of ropes and used it to drive them out. We aren't told if He used a similar whip here or not, but regardless, He drove them out. He threw them out.

This is not the weak, sentimental Jesus most people want Him to be, but this is a preview of the future. Fast forward to the end of time, to the Book of Revelation 6:16. And in that day all the peoples of the earth will say to the mountains and to the rocks, "Fall on us and hide us from the presence of Him who sits on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb." Jesus describes Himself as gentle and humble, and that's true. But that's not weakness. Here He accomplishes His will by physical force. He is the Lamb, but don't ever forget that He's also the Lion of the tribe of Judah.

Mark adds in verse 16, "And He would not permit anyone to carry merchandise through the Temple." The Greek text reads, "He was not allowing that anyone should carry anything through the Temple." That probably means that Jesus wasn't permitting people to use the Temple courts as a shortcut. You see, the Temple divided the ancient city. The Mount of Olives would be in the foreground, and the rest of the city on the other side. So if you wanted to go from one side of the city to the other, east or west, the quickest way to do so would be to cut through the Temple courtyard. There is on the backside a couple of passageways that go into the city, and there is into the Temple complex on this side the Eastern Gate. There were other entrances, so it was a great shortcut to get whatever you needed done, done. The rabbis didn't allow that. They looked down on it, but it wasn't enforced. That day Jesus enforced it. He wasn't allowing people to use the Court of the Gentiles as a shortcut.

For two days, Monday and Tuesday of the Passion Week, Jesus essentially takes control of the Temple Mount. Now why did He do this? Well, He explains it Himself. Look at verse 17: "And He began to teach and say to them, 'Is it not written, "My house shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations"? But you have made it a robbers' den.'" The Greek verb tense for "teach" and "say" implies that Jesus didn't just say this in the heat of the moment while He was turning over the tables and throwing out the money changers. After He cast them out, He set out to systematically instruct the people about why it was He did this. What we have here is a brief summary of what He taught. Specifically, Jesus quotes from two Old Testament passages. You'll notice that verse 17 is in all caps in two different places. As I've told you before, when you see that in our New American Standard Bible, that means it's a quotation from the Old Testament. And there're two quotations. If you'll look at the side margin you'll see that the two passages are Isaiah 56:7 and Jeremiah 7:11. Jesus saw, in what was going on that day in the Court of the Gentiles, something that was appropriate from these two great passages. And out of these two passages Jesus makes four distinct points. There are four lessons He makes that we need to see in this one verse.

First of all, the Temple was God's house. Notice, in quoting it He says from Isaiah, "My house," God says. "My house shall be called a house of prayer." The Temple was God's house. There were other primary purposes for the Temple, or I should say there were other purposes, but the primary purpose was for God's residence. Jesus Himself called the Temple "My Father's house." You remember, when He was 12 years old He referred to it that way and then later when He cleansed it the first time in John 2.

It wasn't that God could be contained there. It's not like God was completely present only there. And that point is made several times. Even when Solomon dedicated Solomon's Temple, you remember what he said in 1Kings 8:27? "But will God indeed dwell on the earth? Behold heaven and the highest heaven cannot contain You, how much less this house which I have built!" It wasn't like God just lived in the box. It was to represent His presence. Isaiah makes the same point in Isaiah 66:1: "Thus says the Lord, 'Heaven is My throne and the earth is My footstool. [It gives you some scope of the magnitude of God.] Where then is a house that you could build for Me? And where is a place that I may rest?'" God fills all. He is infinite in His person. He cannot be contained in a little box. It was simply the place where He chose to specially manifest His presence. It was like His earthly address. It was His house.

Jesus makes a second point, and that is that the primary function of the Temple was not the sacrificial system, but for worship. The primary point of the Temple was not for the sacrifices but for worship. Notice what He says in verse 17 as He quotes Isaiah: "Is it not written, 'My house shall be called a house of prayer'?" You see, the people of Israel had gotten into this mode (and this is why they were selling all these animals) that the whole point of the Temple was the sacrificial system. But the sacrificial system was a means to an end. It was to illustrate that sinful man can only approach a holy God through sacrifice. But the point wasn't the sacrifice. The point was to approach a holy God, to worship, to fellowship, to pray. So the sacrifices simply made it possible for sinful man to approach God. The priority of coming to the Temple for an individual was worship of God and prayer to God. Remember, it's God's address. Just like any of the other peoples of the nations around Israel could go to their king's palace and appeal to him, this is what these people were doing. They were coming to God's address, as it were, and appealing to their King.

A third lesson Jesus teaches in this is that the Temple was not only for the Jews, but for all the nations. Look at verse 17 again. Mark's the only one that includes this part of the quotation from Isaiah. "Is it not written, 'My house shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations'?" In its context, Isaiah 56 promises that in the future millennial kingdom, foreigners, people from all nations will have equal right with Jewish people in the worship of the one true God. In fact, turn back to Isaiah. Look at Isaiah 56:6. Isaiah writes of that future time:

"Also the foreigners who join themselves to the Lord, to minister to Him, and to love the name of the Lord, to be His servants, every one who keeps from profaning the sabbath and holds fast My covenant; even those [those foreigners] I will bring to My holy mountain and make them joyful in My house of prayer. Their burnt offerings and their sacrifices will be acceptable on My altar; for My house will be called [here it is] a house of prayer for all the peoples." The Lord God, who gathers the dispersed of Israel, declares, "Yet others [beyond Israel] I will gather to them, to those already gathered."

This was a promise that God would reach out to the nations. And the Temple was not merely for the Jewish people. Israel wasn't supposed to keep the knowledge of the true God to themselves. They were God's witness nation to the world. But those leaders of the first century had allowed the only place on the whole Temple compound that the nations could gather to be used instead as a market. They had made all prayer, all quiet meditation, completely impossible for the Gentiles, for the nations. And it was all for their own convenience and their own financial advantage. The Jews expected Messiah, when He came, to clear the Temple of foreigners; instead, He cleared the Temple for foreigners.

A fourth lesson Jesus taught them that day was the spiritual leaders of the nation were robbing the people. Look at the end of verse 17. It's supposed to be a house of prayer, a place for true worship, "But you have made it a robbers' den." By the way, there's a whole message here on the reality that our business practices matter to God, but that's a separate issue and not the main point of this passage. Jesus is quoting Jeremiah 7:11, from Jeremiah's great sermon in the Temple. Jeremiah denounced the people for the reality that their lives were a total contradiction of their outward worship. They had leaves but no fruit, and Jesus uses that passage here to make the same point. He's talking about the leaders of the nation. He's talking about Caiaphas and Annas and the Sanhedrin. He said it's like you're robbers holding up the people. You're robbing the Gentiles of a place to pray and worship, and you're robbing My people by exhorting money from them with this financial system you've created. Why did they do that? Well, in another place, in Luke's gospel, Jesus tells us that the Pharisees were lovers of money.

Now remember what's going on here. Remember, those businesses in the Court of the Gentiles either personally belonged to the leaders of the nation or were franchised from them, and they benefited personally from the profits. And Jesus has just chased them all out. And then Jesus says that they have completely perverted the divine purpose of the Temple and that they are thieves, and they have made God's house, literally, a hideout for thieves, a cave of robbers. You spiritual leaders are the thieves, and you're using the Temple as a hideout. You're stealing from My people. Wow, this is right there. They're there. They're listening. Notice their response in verse 18: "The chief priests and the scribes heard." They're there. They met in the Temple complex over—I don't have my slide up. But over on the left-hand side that I showed you earlier, there was a room in there were the Sanhedrin met. They're right there. They hear all of this. They see all of this. "And [they] began seeking how to destroy Him." They had already determined six weeks before that He had to die. Here they're simply searching for how, how can it happen.

So why didn't they do something right then? Look at verse 18: "For they were afraid of Him, for the whole crowd." Now remember, this isn't like 5,000 people or 10,000 people or 50 people. This whole 35-acre complex is filled with people. Word has spread about what Jesus did. There are likely at least 250,000 people gathered up on that Temple Mount. "[And] the whole crowd was astonished at His teaching." Jesus had way too much popularity with the people. The Greek word that Mark uses here, literally he says, "The whole crowd was struck out of themselves with His teaching." They're dumbfounded. They're amazed. So the leaders feared His power over the crowds who had come for the feast. They can't do it in such a public venue where there are hundreds of thousands of people who might defend Him. So the stage is set—isn't it?—for what will happen later that week when the opportunity from Judas presents itself.

Now when you take these two object lessons together, there are several lessons for us. Very quickly. First of all, God hates empty, hypocritical worship and will judge it. That's what Jesus is doing in both of these parables. Hypocritical worship. That is, when your body shows up but your mind doesn't show up; when you're putting on a facade, when you're putting on a front; when you're acting like the people around you; and you're trying to pretend that you really care and it really matters to you, but God doesn't really matter to you. That's hypocritical worship. And it's like a tree that has leaves but no fruit. It's like the people of Israel in Jesus' day, and you see how Jesus responded. God hates empty, hypocritical worship, and He will judge it. Let me plead with you, read through the Old and New Testament, and you will see again and again that God judges hypocrisy. He hates it when we show up with our bodies but our minds and hearts are not engaged. Don't ever do that on the Lord's Day. Don't ever do that when you set aside time to be in the Word of God and prayer. Make sure your mind and your heart are engaged.

Number two, another lesson for us, Jesus has the personal authority to evaluate the genuineness of our worship and of our spiritual lives, just like He did then. By the cleansing of the Temple, Jesus was exerting His authority, and He has the same authority today. Whether it's the church as a whole (You see that in the New Testament epistles where He's correcting churches; you see it in the letters to the seven churches in the book of Revelation.) or whether you're talking about us as individuals, listen, do not try to hide the absence of a righteous life under a facade of outward religious activity. Jesus will not be fooled by all the leaves. He has the personal authority to evaluate our worship, and when He finds only leaves He hates it and judges it.

Number three, we see here that Jesus has a heart for all the nations. That's what's going on here. Jesus was making room in the Court of the Gentiles for Gentiles. And when was He doing it? At Passover. There is huge symbolism in that. Do you see it? The Gentiles could come and participate in the reality of what happened when God redeemed His people, they could enjoy redemption, and yet they were being crowded out by all the paraphernalia and all the money changers and all the buyers and sellers. And Jesus goes in and clears them out to make room for the Gentiles at the Passover. This had huge symbolism for the Romans to whom Mark wrote this gospel. Listen, Jesus has a heart for the nations. It has huge ramifications for us too, doesn't it? He was making room for us, as it were, to participate in the redemption God purchased for His people.

You could apply this a couple of ways, that Jesus has a heart for the nations. First of all, when it comes to world missions. Read Psalm 67. Contemplate Psalm 67. God has a heart for the nations. Psalm 67:1 says, "God be gracious to us [talking about Israel] and bless us, and cause His face to shine upon us." Why? Verse 2, "[In order] that Your way may be known on the earth, Your salvation among all nations." God, do good to us so that You can become known. Later in that same Psalm we're told, "Let the nations be glad." God cares about the nations, and so should we. Do you have a heart for world missions? Do you care? Jesus did. That's part of what He was doing when He cleansed the Temple. Also, we could apply it to personal evangelism. Start with your own world. Start with the people in your life. Do you have a heart for them like Jesus had a heart for those forsaken Gentiles?

Finally, (This lesson is profound.) in this confrontation with the leaders of the nation, we can clearly see the love of Jesus for us, because Jesus here intentionally exerted His authority. He does it publicly. He confronts them on their own territory. He throws out their franchised businesses on which they are profiting. And [He] tells them they're like thieves, and they're using the Temple like a cave to hide out from God; they're like a fig tree that as leaves but no fruit, no reality. And He knew when He did these things that it would provoke the hatred and eventual action against Him later that same week. The point is, when Jesus started toward Jerusalem, His face was set toward Jerusalem. His face is still set, but not toward Jerusalem, rather, toward the cross. And He did it because He loves us, because He cared about you, because He would die for you, Christian, and for all of those who would believe in Him. Let's pray together.

Father, thank You for this study tonight. Thank You for the heart of our Lord. We're overwhelmed by it, that He would knowingly confront Caiaphas and Annas and the Sanhedrin on their own turf, because it was right, but also knowing that it would lead to the cross where He would lay down His life for us. Father, thank You for this amazing story from the life of our Lord. May we embrace its truths. May we be a people of prayer. May we remind ourselves, O God, that because of our Lord's sacrifice we can now approach You, a holy God, in prayer from anywhere. May we use that. May it be the direction and pursuit of our lives,. We pray in Jesus' name, amen.