When Jesus Flipped Tables

Dr. Jeff Schreve: People misunderstand this passage of scripture. You have protesters who say, see, we have a right to protest because Jesus flipped tables and Jesus, he wasn't nice about it. And so if we go and we protest and people's property gets damaged or we block the highway or whatever, we're just being like Jesus. You're being nothing like Jesus when you do that.
Larry Nobles: In the Gospel of Mark chapter 11, Jesus storms the temple courts and turns over the tables of the money changers in an act of righteous indignation. Why did Jesus do this? Why was he so angry? Thank you for joining us today on Promise Heart with Pastor Jeff Schreve. And in today's message, he's going to reveal three key reasons behind the Lord's furious reaction and expose the emptiness of religion when it lacks the true faith generated by sincere faith. The lesson we're about to hear is from Pastor Jeff's six lesson series, Watch and Pray, which is also our gift of thanks to you for your support this month of any amount. Just go to promiseheart.org to get your copy in the format of your choice. Right now though, open your Bible to the book of Mark chapter 11. Here's Pastor Jeff to begin the lesson entitled Flipping Tables.
Dr. Jeff Schreve: Mark chapter 11. I'll begin reading in verse 15. Jesus has already come into the city for his triumphal entry that we call that Palm Sunday. Some say it was on Monday, but we call it Palm Sunday. This is the next day. Jesus is going to be crucified on Friday, arrested on the early hours late hours Thursday, early hours Friday. And he's going to be crucified and on the cross by 9:00 a.m. Friday. So this is the the last week of his life. This says in verse 15 of Mark chapter 11, then they came to Jerusalem and he entered the temple and began to drive out those who are 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 to 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 robber's 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. And let me ask you a question. When is the last time you got really really angry? I mean like spitting nails angry, flipping tables angry. When's the last time that happened to you? You know, it happens to people when they drive. We have a whole term for that. It's called road rage. They get so irate when they drive. Somebody does something they don't like in traffic. Maybe you had a situation at your home that caused you to get so angry. You know, the police can get called out when there's a domestic dispute between a husband and a wife, between a parents and their children, between siblings. And people get so angry. Maybe it's with a neighbor. I had a neighbor one time and I was mowing my yard. This was years ago and she she was mad at me. She I didn't didn't even never met the person. She just lived the the you know, the other side of the fence. And she said to me, she goes, you know, if your little dog gets out next time, I'm going to kill it. I said, go ahead. I don't like the dog. She said, well, you're a terrible pet owner. I said, well, you're a pet murderer. I mean, you know, I'm just mowing my yard, minding my own business. So sometimes you can have that that crazy neighbor that just makes you so mad. Maybe it's a situation at work. Something happened on the job that you just got so angry. You were just losing it. How about when people go play golf? You know, it's a it's a game that you're supposed to we're going to relax. We're going to have fun. We're going to play golf. I had a doctor. This is a true story that was told to me. My doctor when I was a kid growing up, his name was Dr. Wall. And he was playing golf at Champions golf course, very famous golf course there in Houston. And Dr. Wall evidently wasn't playing very well and he got so mad that he took his whole bag full of clubs and threw them in the lake. And then he thought for a moment, that's not good. He had to go retrieve them. He went in the water, retrieved his clubs, pulled it out, took out his car keys and threw it back in the water. Very very angry. Well, those scenarios have one thing in common, sin. It is sinful anger. All those situations sinful anger. But what we just read about, Jesus flipping tables, cleansing the temple, that wasn't sinful. That was righteous anger. That was anger over sin. We call that righteous indignation. You know, when you read in the Old Testament, you read a lot about the anger of God. There passage after passage about the anger of the Lord burned against this person, that person, the other person. You don't have to go very far into the Bible to find out that God has wrath. And when you cross him repeatedly and shake your puny little fist in his face, well, he will bring wrath upon that because God is holy holy holy. And by the time you get to Genesis chapter seven, you see that God is destroying the whole world with a flood. Only Noah and his family were saved out of the millions and millions, maybe even billions of people who lived on the earth. It was 1,746 years before the flood came. And so you see that God has wrath, the God who is holy, the God it's impossible for God to sin. Yet God has anger, righteous anger. Now some people say, well, you know, I don't like that God of the Old Testament. The God of the Old Testament, he seems to be angry a lot, but I like Jesus. Oh, because Jesus seems just so meek and so mild and so gentle and so kind. Who is Jesus in the New Testament? His name is Yahweh saves. You shall call his name Jesus because it is he who will save his people from their sins. The name Jesus literally means Yahweh saves. Jesus is God in the flesh. He said, if you've seen me, you've seen the Father. I and the Father are one. Colossians 2:9 says, in him the fullness of deity dwells in bodily form. The God of the Old Testament is Jesus in the New Testament. It's the same God. But now Jesus comes as the Bible says, for God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that whosoever believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life. For the Father did not send the son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world should be saved through him. And so Jesus came as John the Baptist said, behold the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. He came as the lamb of God. But he's not just the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. He's also the lion of the tribe of Judah. He's also the God who has righteous indignation. And in the passage we just read in Mark's Gospel, the lion roared because of what was taking place in his Father's house. People misunderstand this passage of scripture. Jesus actually cleansed the temple at the beginning of his ministry, John chapter two, and then at the end of his ministry that Matthew, Mark, and Luke recorded. In all four Gospels, we read about the cleansing of the temple, about the lion of the tribe of Judah as he roars with passion and zeal over his Father's house. People today, you have protesters who say, see, we have a right to protest because Jesus flipped tables and Jesus, he wasn't nice about it. And so if we go and we protest and people's property gets damaged or we block the highway or whatever, we're just being like Jesus. You're being nothing like Jesus when you do that. And so the question comes into play, why in the world did Jesus start flipping tables? Why was he so angry? Why was he spitting nails? Now he is never He's God. He's never out of control angry. He's always in control, but he is expressing his anger in the passage that we just read. Why is that? Well, I want to give you two key reasons to help you understand this. Number one, his father's house was being desecrated. Why was Jesus so angry? Because his father's house was being desecrated. Now when you think of the temple, he talks about my father's house. His father's house is the temple. And I think for most of us, I know it was for me early on in my Christian life, I would think of the temple of God, that Old Testament temple, even the New Testament, the temple of Herod that was destroyed in 70 AD by the Romans. I would think of it like this big big room like this. It wasn't like that. The temple area is a big open area. The actual under roof part of the temple is very very small, but the temple mount itself is about 37 acres. And that whole area is called the temple mount. 36 37 acres or so. And it's 1.6 million square feet of space. You can get 300 400,000 people on that plot of land on that temple mount. And the area to the left that you see the temple there, the under roof area is right there in the middle. And you have all these courts. You have the the court of the priests. That's real close to the temple and only the priests can be there. That's where they have the altar. That's where they sacrifice the animals. That's called the court of the priests. And then you back up from there and you have the the court of Israel, which is the men. And then you have the court of the women. And that just means that the people could come that far and no farther. And then at the very outskirts, all that open area around the temple is called the court of the Gentiles. And that's as far as they could go, the court of the Gentiles. That 's what they had turned into a market. They had turned that area into what they called Josephus called it uh the bazaar of Annas and his sons. Annas was high priest. Annas was high priest for uh 10 years. And when Jesus was uh sentenced to go to Pilate with the sentence of death, uh it was from Caiaphas and that was the son-in-law of Annas. Think about the high priesthood. It's kind of like the mob during the reign of during the first century. And these guys would they would take this position as high priest and it was so corrupt that they would use the temple to make money. And that was their business. And they they kept it all in the family. Annas had five sons and all his sons were chief priests. And then Caiaphas was chief priest that year when Jesus was brought before the Sanhedrin and sentenced to death. So he was angry. Why? Because they were desecrating his father's house.
Larry Nobles: Have you been guilty of that from time to time? Pastor Jeff will return in just a moment to continue today's lesson called Flipping Tables. It's from Pastor Jeff's new six lesson series, Watch and Pray. This resource is our thank you gift for your generosity this month. This practical Bible study will help you strengthen your prayer life, remain spiritually alert, and grow closer to the Lord through prayer. And your donation to Promise Heart this month will make a lasting difference in your community and beyond. Your support enables us to continue reaching out with the good news to transform lives for the kingdom each and every day on radio, around the world, on television, and online around the world as well all the time. And the benefit to you, as we've read in 2 Corinthians chapter nine verse seven, God loves a cheerful giver. So if you need some cheer today, pray and ask God what he would have you to do to help support Promise Heart. You can request your copy of Watch and Pray when you go online to fromhisheart.org and you can ask for it on a USB flash drive, on CDs, DVDs, or an immediate MP3 download. Thank you for helping us share the life-changing truth about prayer because prayer connects our weaknesses to God's almighty power and how there is no problem, personal, relational, national, or global, that cannot be answered through prayer. Go to fromhisheart.org. Now back to the lesson today to explain the anger Jesus exhibited when he flipped the tables on the money changers.
Dr. Jeff Schreve: Now his house had been turned into a house of commerce. That's not what it was designed for to be a house of business, a house of trade, but that's what he saw that day. A house of commerce and he even said in John chapter two verse 16, and to those who were selling the doves, he said, take these things away. Stop making my Father's house a place of business. What were they doing there? Well, that whole area, the court of the Gentiles, they had set up a table for changing money. You had to exchange money because they said Roman money's not good here, Greek money's not good here. And so you have to have temple money. You have to have the specific temple coins very high in silver content. And so you'd have to exchange all your money. And so people had to do that because you couldn't buy the animals that you needed. You couldn't pay your temple tax with Roman coins or with Greek coins. You had to have the Jewish coin. And so that was a problem because everybody had to exchange money. Now the exchange rate was normally 4 to 8 %. At the temple, the exchange rate was up to 50 %. I mean it was it was so high. And the people are getting ripped off. It's like buying a Coke at the ball game. Like good grief. I mean I go to Walmart and get them for uh you know whatever it costs. I don't really do that much shopping, but whatever it costs today. But you go there and it's like, yeah, I got I got a good deal. I got a a some popcorn and a Coke for $30. Uh you know, wonderful. And so it was like that. They have you as a captive audience. You have to exchange money there because you have to buy an animal for sacrifice. You have to pay your temple tax that was required and you had to use their currency to do it. And in addition to the money changers, then you had people selling doves and selling lambs and selling, you know, other livestock for sacrifices. And all those things were kosher approved. If you said, well, I'm going to bring my own animal that I took, we walked for 40 miles to get here and I'm going to take my own animal, what would the priests do? Your animal's no good. You can't use that animal. That animal's blemish. You have to buy one of our kosher approved animals. And how much would that be? Well, that's going to be uh marked up. Some said uh marked up sometimes 1,600 %. Two doves, that was the sacrifice for a poor person, two turtle doves. It would cost a fraction of a day's wage in the marketplace. But in the temple, it would cost 25 days wages. I mean you're ripping the people off. So that his house had been turned into a house of commerce. His house had been in turned into a house of extortion, just cheating the people and making so much money. This is the bazaar of Annas Annas and his sons doing this, the the priests doing this. And then his house had been turned, as Jesus said, into a den of thieves, a den of robbers. It's supposed to be a house of prayer, p r a y e r. A house of praying, but it turned into a house of praying, p r e y i n g. They prayed on the people. And Jesus said, you've turned my Father 's house into a robber's den. He quotes from Jeremiah 7:11. Has this house, which is called by my name, become a den of robbers in your sight? Behold, I even I have seen it, declares the Lord. I'm watching you. I'm seeing what you're doing to the people. And you're turning my house into a den of thieves. Now G. Campbell Morgan says that a den of thieves, that's where thieves run when they want to hide. They go to their cave. They go to their lair. This is, hey, you you rob from this person, you rob from that person will meet back at the cave. Their cave, their den of thieves was God's house. Can you imagine that? Just think about this house. If this were the place where the drug dealers would gather, if this is the place where the the thieves would gather, if this were the place where the prostitutes would gather, this is home base, well, that would hopefully cause you to have righteous indignation. You can't desecrate this house like that. That's what Jesus saw that day. His father's house was being desecrated and he flipped tables. Secondly, his father's house was being hijacked. Hijacked, not only desecrated but hijacked. Why did God have a temple for his people? Isaiah chapter 56 verses six and seven. The scripture says this, 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, everyone who keeps from profaning the Sabbath and holds fast my covenant, even those 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 a house of prayer for all the peoples. God wants his house to be called a house of prayer. It's important to preach. Jesus did a lot of teaching and preaching, but he doesn't call his house a house of preaching. He doesn't call it a house of teaching. He doesn't call it a house of music. He doesn't call it a house of singing. He doesn't even call it a house of worship. He calls it a house of prayer for all the peoples, for all the nations. And at the temple, everybody is welcome. Now you have limits to how far you can go. If I'm a Gentile, I can go worship at the court of the Gentiles, but I can't come further. I can't come into the court of the women. I can't come into the court of Israel. I can't definitely can't come into the court of the priests. Even uh Jewish men couldn't go into the court of the priests because that was reserved for the priests. And then you keep going further and further. Then you get inside the temple and you have the holy place that's only for priests. The priests and the Levites could come into the court of the priests, but the holy place only the priests. And then the innermost court, the holy of holies, only one guy, the high priest, and only one time a year. And he goes in with bloodshed. He goes in with a rope around his waist. He goes behind that veil, that heavy veil of the temple and he goes in with blood to offer blood on the mercy seat on the ark of the covenant. That's where God was in that inside that small area. That's where God dwelt. And only one man in went in there on behalf of the people and he went in there very quickly and got out because you don't just saunter into the presence of God. So there're limits, but the temple is a place for all people to come. And the house of prayer, God built his house for all the nations to connect with God. That's the point of prayer. It's connection with God. When we pray, what do we do? We as one man said so appropriately, when you pray, you bring your nothingness and you link it up with God's almighty power. You bring all your needs before the Lord. Say, Lord, here I am. We talk to God. We connect with God. How do we do that? Through prayer. And everything that we do is to point people to pray. It's to point people to connect with God. Preaching is good. Singing is good. What's the point of that? To connect people to God. It's not so you walk away saying, man, that was great singing. Man, that was a great sermon. That was it's to get you to connect with God. If it doesn't get you to connect with God, then it's missed its purpose. It's missed its point.
Larry Nobles: Hey, there's much more to be said about this on the next chapter of fromhisheart, Flipping Tables. Make sure you're with us then. You know, when a waiter in a restaurant flips a table, he or she is doing that because it allows them and the restaurant to make more money, more customers, more money. Nobody gets angry, just richer. But when Jesus flipped tables, he did get angry because the vendors were more interested in making money than hearing the truth of God and keeping others from it. Is there anything in your life that is making you richer but ignoring the real needs of others? Today's message called Flipping Tables is one of six in Pastor Jeff's new series, Watch and Pray. We're airing the messages this month. This series will truly help you get better perspective on prayer and make you a more effective Christian by being able to share more time alone with God. The series is our special gift to you for your support this month of any amount. Just go to fromhisheart.org to get your copy or you can make a gift when you make a call to 866 40 Bible 866 40 Bible and request the series that we're featuring this month, Watch and Pray. And thank you for joining us today on Promise Heart for the lesson Flipping Tables. I'm Larry Nobles inviting you to be back on Wednesday for part two of this powerful message. Here's more of what's to come.
Dr. Jeff Schreve: His authority was on full display. This is God in the flesh. Nobody came up and said, you can't do that. How dare you do that? I'm going to I'm going to fight you, Jesus. Nobody did that. Why? Cuz when the lion of the tribe of Judah is roaring, you back up. And they backed up.
Larry Nobles: That's next time as Pastor Jeff Schreve speaks truth, love, and hope to a lost and a hurting world here on Promise Heart.