T Minus 6 Days and Counting: The Monday of Passion Week
You’ll find the events of this day in: Matthew 21:1-17; Mark 11:1-11; Luke 19:29-44; John 12:12-3
Read Matthew 21:12-19
Authority is a word that we often do not like to hear. Perhaps we are fine with being the authority, but from a young age we struggle to submit to it. We see this from toddlers to teenagers. It never gets easier to submit.
Christ cared about His Father’s truth.
The Jewish leadership of Jesus day believed they were their own authority. This is seen on the second day of what we call Passion Week. Jesus had entered Jerusalem the day before, and now daily he would begin going to the Temple to teach. His interaction with the leaders showed their refusal to accept God’s authority. The refusal of Jesus to accept the established authority shows us what was important to the Son.
Specifically, the Jewish leadership had the clear and revealed Word of God, but instead of submitting to God’s truth, they chose to create their own. God had instructed that his house (the Tabernacle in the Old Testament, and then the permanently constructed Temple after Solomon’s time) should be a place for all of God’s people. In other words, worship was to be open to all, but these leaders were charging people when they came to worship. “And Jesus entered the Temple and drove out all who sold and bought in the temple…(Matthew 21:12).”
The Bible records two different times Jesus came to the Temple and overturned the money changers. Once was in the beginning of Jesus’ ministry (see John 2). The final time was this last week of his life when he entered Jerusalem (see Mark 11; Matthew 21). He bucked the rebellious authority of the leadership both and the beginning and end of his earthly ministry. It was a statement that was loud and clear. Christ came to reject those who rejected God’s truth.
Christ cared about His Father’s glory.
While it appears that the Jewish leaders of Jesus day were providing a service, that is anything but the case. These leaders were using the Temple to charge extra fees and taxes on the worshiper. For example, you could bring your own animal into the Temple for sacrifice, but there were inspectors that would examine your animal looking to find defects so that you would have to buy their product. The entire process was designed to make you buy and sell from their temple “gift shop”, so to speak. If you hoped to worship God at all, then you had to play by their rules. Those rules made the leaders rich and the people poor. Jesus saw this for what it really was, “He said to them, ‘It is written, My house shall be called a house of prayer, but you make it den of robbers (Matthew 21:13).”
God intended that worship not be this way under the Old Covenant. The rich would have access to come before God, and the poor would not be forgotten. If one were too poor to bring the standard sacrifice Scripture allotted, then they were given accommodations (see Leviticus 5:7). Both rich and poor alike were to pay equal amounts of tithe for the census (see Exodus 30:15). God always recognized the poor, and made provisions for them. The Lord even gave a group of people to be servants. The Levites were to be servants for the people, and their presence was a gift so that the people could come and worship (see Numbers 18:2-7).
When Jesus came to the Temple he saw how the leaders had rejected God’s stated desires for worship, and created their own. This is what caused him to reject their authority as he stood for God’s authority.
What about us? How committed are we to the pure and unadulterated word of God? What have we wrongly interpreted for our own gain? Those are good questions we all should ask when we approach the Scriptures. Our aim and task is to let the Scriptures speak, and make certain we are interpreting the Bible as simply and as clearly as we can. The plain, literal sense is the best sense until it does not make sense.
“How committed are we to the pure and unadulterated word of God?”
Your church is committed to sound expositional preaching, faithfully examining the Scriptures, with the goal of submitting ourselves to God’s revealed Word. To do anything otherwise would mean that one day Christ may look at us the same way he looked at these Temple leaders!
Going Deeper:
Look at the two different accounts of Jesus entering the Temple and turning over the tables. What similarities and what differences can you note?
Some scholars believe that Jesus only entered the Temple once and turned over the money changers. They say that Matthew must have not written his account chronologically but thematically. What do you think of that answer? Would there be any reason Jesus could not have entered twice on two different occasions?
Why did Jesus do this at the end of his life and ministry? Why during passion week? What do you think he is communicating as he goes to the cross?
