Preached · April 2, 2017
Where we're headed
Good morning, brothers and sisters. My name is Anthony. I'm on staff here at Good News. It's good to be with you this morning, being able to talk about God's Word together.
We are in the middle of a series — we're in week 25, marching, charging on ahead to week 31. This week, to give you a bit of a preview of where we're going, is kind of a prelude to the crucifixion, a prelude to what got Jesus killed. Next week is Palm Sunday; Pastor Steve is going to talk about the crucifixion itself, what all that represents, and what Jesus' death did. And the week after that, April 16th, is Easter, when the church celebrates the resurrection of Jesus, the fact that the grave is empty, that Jesus is alive — that the crucifixion didn't do what they thought it would do. It's a great opportunity to invite someone to church on Easter. Maybe they need a little bit of resurrection in their lives. Maybe they need to hear some good news. So maybe you've got a neighbor, a co-worker, a friend, a family member, and they're feeling like, "Man, it'd be nice to go to church, but no one's invited me." Well, this is a great opportunity, a good time of year to do that. And then from there on out, we'll be finishing up the New Testament, wrapping up The Story on May 14th, which is Mother's Day, and going on from there.
What got Jesus killed?
So, if you would, join me in the book of Mark chapter 11. In The Story, we're in chapter 25, but we're going to take a look at something that's kind of left out of The Story, and I wanted to highlight it for us today. And that's basically the question: what got Jesus killed? What got Jesus up on that cross? And not just his reasoning, his purpose, but why did so many people want him dead?
And related to that question, what I want to ask you all this morning is: when have you stood up for what's right, even when it's hurt you personally? When have you taken a stand, spoken out for what's right, even if it's hurt you personally?
I've got to be honest: as I was thinking and preparing and trying to answer this question myself, I have to admit it's not been very often that I've had to stand up for what's right and know that I might suffer harm for it. I've lived a pretty cushy life, all things considered — a life in which, even if I knew I had to stand up for something, there wasn't a lot of threat to life or limb or property. And as I look at those pictured behind me, I know that they couldn't say the same thing. When they stood up for what was right, they did suffer life and limb and property. And so that is the question I want to ask us: when have we had to do that? And are we, as a culture, heading to a place where that might have to happen more often?
So what got Jesus killed? What did Jesus stand up for that eventually led to his execution?
Toward Jerusalem
Join me in Mark chapter 11. We're basically immediately after what we talked about last week. If you weren't here, what we talked about was Jesus taking his disciples to a place called Caesarea Philippi, and his disciples make this declaration that he is the Son of God. Caesar, who claims to be the son of God, is not — Jesus is. And Jesus is the Messiah. Herod Philip, the ruler of the Jews, claims to be the anointed one, claims to be the Christ, but it's not him, it's Jesus.
And so from that point forward, Jesus takes his disciples back toward Jerusalem. And he starts making these claims about himself, saying, "I'm going to be handed over, executed, and on the third day rise again." And his disciples say, "That can't possibly be right. Messiahs don't get executed — they execute other people. Messiahs don't get raised again, because they didn't die in the first place. And the resurrection is happening a long time from now; it has nothing to do with what Jesus is talking about. What is Jesus saying?" And so they head toward Jerusalem with fear and trembling and confusion.
And so Jesus — he knows what he's doing, he knows what he's up to. He starts heading toward Jerusalem, and he is ready for a confrontation with the religious powers of the day in a place called the temple, the Jewish temple.
What the temple was meant to be
Let's talk about the Jewish temple for a moment. The Jewish temple was primarily three things to the Israelite religion.
Number one, it was a house of prayer and worship. In the Jewish mind, the temple was the center of God's presence on earth. The Jewish religion basically focused on four festivals, for which you would take a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, go to the temple, and make a sacrifice. And you would experience the very presence of God in this one geographic location. So it was a house of worship and a house of prayer. That's the way it was meant to be.
Secondly, the Jewish temple was also a house of peace. It was meant to represent all that God had done on behalf of the Jews — all the victories, all the battles that had been won. And it was meant to be a place where warfare and violence didn't happen, a place centered on God's peace, God's shalom in the world, and not a place of violence and bloodshed. We see this in Ezekiel 37, when God says:
I'm going to make my covenant known with my people. And it's going to be an everlasting covenant. It's going to be a covenant of peace. I will establish them, the Jewish people. I will increase their numbers and I will put my sanctuary, my temple, among them forever. My dwelling place will be with them, and I will be their God, and they will be my people.
And thirdly, the temple is a place for all nations. Israel's vocation, their purpose in existing, was to bless the world, to let everyone know who God is and what his plan for the world was. That was their purpose. We see this with Abram, Abraham, in Genesis chapter 12, that they are blessed to be a blessing. And we see this throughout the Old Testament, that Israel's purpose is to be a light to the nations, a light to the world, about who God is. We see this in Isaiah chapter 12.
And so Jesus, who has just been told by his disciples and has been affirmed in his vocation — the Son of God, the Messiah, the Anointed One — makes his way to Jerusalem, knowing that he's making his way to his death. And he is heading to the temple to make a confrontation with the religious powers.
Jesus weeps over the city
So if you would join me in Mark chapter 11, verse 15, we're going to go through this phrase by phrase. Verse 15: "On reaching Jerusalem." Stop. That's where we're going to stop for now. We didn't make it very far. Sorry.
So, "on reaching Jerusalem," Jesus gets here. It's not in Mark, but in the Gospel of Luke the writer tells us a little bit more about what happens on the outskirts of Jerusalem. There's this scene where Jesus gets to where he knows he's about to die, and he starts crying. His heart is broken for his city. Let me read to you what it says:
As Jesus approached Jerusalem and saw the city, he wept over it.
And in the Greek, it's kind of like this broken Greek. You get the idea that he's kind of crying — he says a few words, and he catches his breath, and he says a few more words. Jesus says:
If you, even you, had only known on this day what would bring you peace — but now it is hidden from your eyes. The days will come upon you when your enemies will build an embankment against you and encircle you and hem you in on every side, and they're going to dash you to the ground, you and your children within your walls. And they're not going to leave one stone on another, because you did not recognize the time of God's coming to you.
In other words, "You didn't recognize me for who I am." And this is true. Not even 40 years after Jesus' life and death, Jerusalem is destroyed — stone taken off of stone, brick off of brick, and thousands of Jews killed because of their attempt to violently overthrow Rome. And this is a primary message of Jesus' teaching. He knows this is coming if the nation of Israel is going to keep going the way it's going, and he's trying to say it doesn't have to be this way.
And so he goes to Jerusalem, sees the city, weeps over it. In this scene we see God's — and in God, Jesus' — tender heart for his people, that he cares for them. And that same Jesus that we believe is alive today has a tender heart for you and for me. He cares for you. And how often do we think that maybe he's even weeping over what is heading toward our own destruction?
Inside the temple courts
So we keep reading. Jesus gets to Jerusalem, and "Jesus enters the temple courts." We'll stop again. Still not getting very far — still in verse 15.
Let's talk about the temple, a little refresher. The temple is the geographic center of God's presence on earth — that's what the Israelites believed. And it's a building with four primary sections. Number one, in the very center, is the holiest place, the holy of holies. This is the locus, the nexus, the very center, where God is enthroned between the cherubim on the Ark of the Covenant. And this place was entered only once per year, to make a sacrifice, an atonement, for all of God's people, for the sins they didn't even know they committed. And it was entered only once a year because it was so holy.
Just outside of that is the normal holy place — holy place number one, the not-as-holy-as-holy. This was the place where, if you were the leader of an Israelite family, a Jewish family, you would take your family and your animal sacrifice, and that's where it would happen. And I always want to take this opportunity to remind you that when you sacrificed your animal, it wasn't just thrown away. It was then cooked, and you would eat that. And the idea is that you are having dinner with God. You're dining with the divine. It's a place where you experience God's presence as a family and experience his forgiveness. That's the holy place.
Outside of that is the inner court — basically where you would wait in line to get into the holy place. And outside of that was the outer court, or what's sometimes called the court of the Gentiles. It's this massive area, about six football fields large. And it was meant to be a court for the Gentiles, so that even if you weren't Jewish, even if you didn't follow the Jewish religion, weren't circumcised, didn't follow the food laws, you could still go there and worship. You could be part of any nation, any culture, any religion, have any background, any past, and still go into this outer court, this court for the Gentiles, and experience God's presence, and worship him there.
And so when it says that Jesus goes to Jerusalem, weeps over it, and gets to the temple's courts, those are the courts we're talking about — the court of the Gentiles, the outer courts, this massive space where thousands of people were intended to worship, to wait in line to get into the holy place.
Turning over the tables
So Jesus goes in, and we keep reading:
And he began driving out those who were buying and selling there. Jesus 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.
So what's happening here? Well, the Israelite religion is centered on these pilgrimages, these feasts, where they go to Jerusalem, and hundreds of thousands of Jews and God-fearers would make their way to Jerusalem to make their sacrifice. However, there are some very practical concerns about all those people bringing all those animals. So you didn't bring your animal sacrifice with you; you bought it at Jerusalem. They originally had a system set up where the animals would be outside the city — you would buy your animal there and take it to the temple. But over time, those animals got moved into the court of the Gentiles. And that's where the buying and selling started to take place. It becomes a literal zoo.
So Jesus sees what's going on, and he stops it. He's only one person, so he can probably only stop it for a moment, for a second. But as God's prophet, he starts turning over tables and says, "Stop." Why? Well, several reasons.
Number one, the primary purpose of God's temple is to be a place of prayer and worship, and it ceased to be that because of the religious leaders of the day. The religious leaders had made the Jewish religion no longer about faith, but about works. It had become about going through the motions. It wasn't about experiencing God's presence; it was about following some law to make sure that you were all right, politically okay, in with the right people.
And Jesus recognizes — as God's prophet, as God's messenger, and as God himself — that the temple was about to become redundant. Jesus was going to be the last sacrifice, for all, forever. And so the temple was getting God's judgment proclaimed against it in Jesus. Jesus, like a prophet of old, is basically performing an enacted parable on the temple. By ceasing its operations, by making it stop what it's doing, Jesus is saying it's not necessary anymore, because of what Jesus is about to do. And if the temple was meant to be God's geographic center of his presence, Jesus proclaims that anyone who gathers in his name — that anyone who gathers in the name and the purpose of Jesus — they become God's church, and God's presence is now everywhere on earth. The temple, again, is unnecessary. And so Jesus goes into the temple, starts turning over tables, and proclaims God's judgment on what is soon to be a redundant, unnecessary part of religion.
A house of prayer, or a den of revolutionaries?
And Jesus starts teaching. This is what 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 revolutionaries.
Now, if you're looking at your Bible, some of you probably have translations that say "a den of robbers," maybe some say "a den of brigands" — whatever a brigand is. And there's a translation issue here. For instance, if I were to say to you the word "pirate," what comes into your mind? Probably Johnny Depp, right? If I say the word "pirate" to a 17th-century fisherman — not Johnny Depp — they're going to be kind of shaking in their boots. The same kind of thing is happening here. The Greek word is lestes, and when Jesus says, "You have made this a den of lestes," it's a very specific term. It was originally translated "robber," but it's kind of lost its punch. A leste was basically a person who wanted to violently overthrow the government — what we might call a revolutionary, what we might call a terrorist. And so Jesus is saying, "This is meant to be a house of prayer. You've made it a den for terrorists, for revolutionaries."
Now, two things to keep in mind as we take a look at Jesus' teaching here.
The issue of hospitality
One, there seems to be an issue of hospitality. This place, this outer court, this court for the Gentiles, was intended to be a place where anybody from any culture, from any religion, with any background or past could go and experience God's presence. It was meant to be a place of worship for all people. Now, can you imagine trying to have a quiet time, trying to have a moment with God, while 100,000 bleeding animals are crowded in around you? Instead of you lighting your Yankee candle and getting a nice sweet smell, you get manure instead. Not a great worship space. In a very practical sense, Jesus is saying, "How can this possibly be a house of prayer with all of this noise and stench going on?"
Which reminds me and makes me think: how are we doing with that, by the way? As a church, in a building that we call a church, how are we doing with making this a house of prayer for all people, from everywhere, no matter their background or their past? Do we feel like people can walk in, enter in, and not feel like an outsider, not feel shunned, not feel like they can't play a part in what happens when we experience God together? Do we use Christianese, a lingo and a language all our own, that makes people feel excluded? Do people feel welcomed in? By the way, this is why on a weekly basis we practice our two-minute opportunity. It's a way to practice hospitality, even if — especially if — it makes us feel uncomfortable.
How are we doing with this in our homes? Is our family life so busy that it hasn't even occurred to us to invite someone over for dinner in months? Is our life such a zoo that we just don't make space to tend to God's presence around the table?
And how are we doing with this in terms of our institutions, the big capital-C Church? Are we actually preventing those who are seeking God from doing so because of our own alignments, our own priorities? Are we preventing people from seeking God, from experiencing God, because the church has become too aligned with things that push people away? Perhaps an alignment with a political party, perhaps a stance against a certain sin. Eighty-seven percent of non-Christian young people see Christians as judgmental — 87%. Even 52% of church-going young people see Christians as primarily judgmental. So how are we doing with this hospitality issue? Are we a house of prayer for all nations — this house, our literal houses, the big capital-C Church house?
The issue of violence
The second thing to see in Jesus' teaching is that Jesus was calling for a revolution, but a very, very different one than what the religious leaders were calling for. Instead of taking up a sword and taking up violence, Jesus instead absorbs it on the cross, and calls his disciples to do the same thing.
This passage has often been used to talk about consumerism in the church — don't sell tickets in the foyer, don't sell books in the welcome area, or something like that. But listen to what Jesus is actually saying. He's saying, yes, there's a problem with a system that uses money intended for worship to line the pockets of religious leaders. Yes, there's something wrong with that. But more focused: look at what that money is being used for. It's being used for violence. The money that's being absorbed into the temple, a place intended for worship — that money is going to eventually be used to stage a violent rebellion against Rome, and it will be Jerusalem's destruction.
We have a culture that oftentimes wants to do the same. Defend yourself, defend your family, defend your home, defend your borders. There's no cost too high. And Jesus' message is quite the opposite: take up your cross. Those who save their life will lose it. Give up your life for the sake of others — even, perhaps especially, your enemies, those different from you — and that's how you're going to find true life. Remember Jesus' words as he weeps over Jerusalem: "If only you had known the things that made for peace."
So there's an issue of hospitality — are we creating space for God-seeking people? And there's an issue of violence — how are we meant to spend our money and our time?
The response of the religious leaders
So how do the Jewish leaders, the religious leaders, respond? Verse 18:
The chief priests and the teachers of the law heard this and they began looking for a way to kill him. For they feared him, because the whole crowd was amazed at his teaching.
In other words, what happens if people start to agree with him? This Jesus, who goes in and turns over tables and stops the functioning of the temple — in doing so proclaims that it's unnecessary, redundant; in doing so says this is a place meant for worship, a place meant for hospitality, a house of peace declaring God's shalom over the world, not war-making. What happens if people start to get this message and live it out? Jesus stands up to the powers that be. He stands up for what's right. He stands in front of the tank of religiosity, and he calls the religious order of that day defunct.
The temple had aligned itself with all the things opposite of what it's meant to be. It became about moral superiority and rules, and Jesus preaches the gospel of grace and forgiveness. The temple was about keeping Gentiles out, keeping those different from us out, keeping those who have a different past or background or religion than us out — and Jesus says, "If you're thirsty, come on in." The temple was about gathering more and more resources for the sake of violence, protection, safety, and security — and Jesus says, "Your life has value when you're willing to sacrifice it for the sake of others, for the sake of God's kingdom." In other words, "If only you had known the things that made for peace."
And this, of course, is the message that got Jesus killed. It was the precipitating event that would get him up on a cross, the most brutal form of execution known to man. The message that Herod Philip, ruler of the Jews, wasn't the Messiah — Jesus was Messiah. The message that Caesar wasn't the son of God, wasn't the Dominus, wasn't the Lord — Jesus was the king of the universe. The message that said, no matter what your background, no matter what your past, you are welcome. And for this, they said, "Crucify him."
Response
So I want to invite the worship team up as we continue in worship this morning, and I want to ask you three questions.
Number one, how are we doing in inviting others into knowing Jesus? Can we clear the zoo of our lives enough to invite someone over for dinner and pay attention to God's presence over the table? So on a personal level, how are we doing?
Number two, when do we need to stand up and say "enough"? What tables do we need to turn over because they only lead to more violence and oppression? Is there a place in our lives where we need to say enough is enough, speak out even in the face of embarrassment or persecution, and say "enough"?
And finally, together, corporately, how are we doing in inviting someone new in? Is our church a space where someone can come and feel welcome and invited? If not, how can we improve that? How can we get better at that? And how can you and I be a part of that?
So I invite you to consider these three questions, not just today, but over the coming week. Let's stand together and continue in worship.
