Rev. David Holwick K
First Baptist Church
Ledgewood, New Jersey
March 18, 2012
Mark 11:15-18
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I. When you've had it up to here.
A. Educational meltdown.
Donald Brian Wood had been a high school math teacher in
Nashville for 21 years.
One October morning, he tried to get his Algebra II class to
calm down but they kept jabbering away.
One student even recorded the teacher on his cell phone.
The teacher smilingly jokes with them, asking them to be quiet.
It doesn't work, of course.
Still smiling, he turns a classroom table over.
The kids cheer.
Then he picks up a computer monitor and hurls it on the floor.
Then he throws a desk.
At this point the kids are panicking and even the kid with the
cell phone runs from his desk.
Teacher Wood finally tried to throw a desk out a window.
They escorted him from the school in handcuffs.
The teacher is now on administrative leave and getting
psychiatric treatment.
Of course, the student who recorded it on his cell phone put
it on YouTube and it went viral.
#63574
B. We've all been there at one time or another.
1) Maybe you've thrown a few things.
2) Maybe you didn't, but you wanted to.
3) Did Jesus have moments like this? Apparently so.
C. A dramatic event in Jesus' life.
1) It is uncharacteristic of him.
a) He is involved in much conflict throughout his ministry
but most of it is argumentative.
1> Sort of like our political campaigns.
b) Here, he gets physical.
1> Turning over tables.
2> Driving people away.
3> The gospel of John says he even made a whip.
2) It was the last straw for his opponents.
a) They plotted to finish him off.
b) There could be no compromise after this point.
D. It was not a tantrum, but a calculated demonstration.
1) In John 2, at the beginning of his ministry, Jesus had
already cleared out the sellers in the Temple.
a) They are back at it again, at the end of his ministry.
b) In Mark 11:11 we see that Jesus scoped out the temple
area on the previous night.
1> He had a good idea what was going on.
2> As God's Messiah, he had to make an important point.
2) His point is that you can't compromise with God.
a) True faith is not a money-grubbing opportunity.
b) God wants us to worship him with purity and integrity.
II. The beginning of the final week in Jesus' life.
A. The ministry of Jesus is reaching its climax.
1) The crowds are getting larger.
2) He has moved from the boondocks of Galilee to the political
and religious capital of Jerusalem.
3) A huge throng welcomed him to the city on the previous day,
what we call Palm Sunday.
B. On the first night he had made his way to the temple.
1) The temple is focus of everything the Jews stood for.
2) So that is where he takes his stand.
III. What were the people actually doing?
A. Jews were required by the Bible to give sacrifices.
1) They didn't want to haul a goat halfway around the world.
a) It was more convenient to buy it in Jerusalem.
b) Jesus' own parents had probably purchased doves when
they made an offering for the dedication of his birth.
c) The sellers were providing a necessary service.
2) The services didn't need to be offered in the temple itself.
a) Until A.D. 30, you could get these things on the Mount
of Olives.
1> Perhaps Jesus' family got their doves there.
b) The high priest Caiaphas brought the commerce into the
temple area so the religious leaders could get a cut
of the profits.
3) Even beyond the commercial angle, it was disruptive.
a) The temple was meant for meditation and prayer, not the
sounds of bartering.
1> Notice that Jesus kicks out both sellers and
buyers.
b) Lots of sacrifices meant lots of animals which meant
lots of noise and confusion.
c) The area where this commerce was conducted was called
the Court of the Gentiles.
1> The people who needed to hear God's Word the
most would find it hard to focus on God.
2> Jesus quotes the Old Testament, Isaiah 56:7,
to emphasize that God wanted all humans,
not just Jews, to worship him.
B. Every year Jews had to pay a temple tax.
1) It had to be in a special currency, not Roman money.
a) Jews who lived in other countries would have needed
this currency.
b) The moneychangers did these transactions.
2) It probably went beyond helpful commerce.
a) Jesus' emphasis on robbers and thieves suggests the
sellers were taking advantage of the pilgrims.
b) The prices were high; the exchange rates were terrible.
1> It was like the swindlers who greeted immigrants at
the Ellis Island train station.
2> They had a captive audience and they made the most
of it.
IV. What would tick Jesus off about the modern church?
A. Bling-bling preachers.
1) Too many TV personalities live high on the hog.
a) Joel Osteen's $10 million mansion.
b) Others have personal jets, outlandish jewelry, multiple
homes.
2) The extravagance of Christian personalities brings disrepute
on the body of Christ.
a) Jesus certainly didn't live this way.
B. Overcommercialization of the faith.
1) Christian bookstores have more fluff and refrigerator
magnets than serious literature.
2) Commercial ads on Christian radio.
3) Christian concerts that don't seem much more spiritual than
a Bruce Springsteen concert.
C. Trivialization of worship.
1) A recent discussion after one of our services - "How often
do you really encounter God in our church?"
a) The consensus was not very often.
b) Perhaps that's understandable. You shouldn't expect a
mountaintop experience every 7 days.
c) Still, some people go for YEARS without sensing the
real presence of God.
2) Are we just going through the motions?
a) Perhaps we are so jaded we never expect God to touch us.
b) Maybe we would rather he didn't...
V. It's not just those other people.
A. Jeremiah 7 is particularly revealing.
1) When Jesus refers to the "den of robbers" he is quoting
from Jeremiah 7.
a) The passage begins in verse 2, with God commanding the
prophet to go to the temple.
1> He is to preach at the people coming to worship.
2> They must reform their ways and their actions.
b) The attitude of the people was that the temple was
magical. Jer 7:4
1> By just chanting its name, they will be protected.
2> No enemy could touch their nation as long as they
had their temple.
2) They've got it all wrong.
a) The temple doesn't have any protective power.
b) Only compassionate, moral living will entice God to
protect them.
c) Notice verse 9 - they do all this rotten stuff, then
march to the temple and declare they are "safe."
d) That is when Jeremiah calls the temple a "den of
robbers."
B. How does your life measure up to your worship?
1) The worshippers in Jeremiah's day, and Jesus' day, felt
comfortable in their sins.
2) Many American Christians do as well.
a) Survey after survey shows Christians don't live any
different than anybody else.
b) Often, it seems like we are worse.
1> But we still "Love Jesus!"
c) Our faith and our morality have become severed.
1> How is it with you?
C. What would Jesus find in our church?
Although he probably wouldn't find cattle or sheep, would he
find the same attitude -- religion being just a business?
We treat God like a vending machine.
We put in our offering and our hour, and out comes blessings.
Any decent thing we do is just a bargaining chip to manipulate
God.
#30844
1) God doesn't want to be your good luck charm.
2) He wants to be your Lord.
a) He wants you to take him seriously.
b) He wants us to worship him seriously.
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SOURCES FOR ILLUSTRATIONS USED IN THIS SERMON:
#30844 “Questions About the Whip,” Rev. Brett Blair's Illustrations by
Email, www.sermonillustrations.com, quoting from Brian
Stoffregen’s “Questions.”
#63574 “Educational Meltdown,” by Rev. David Holwick, adapted from
article “Teacher’s scary classroom eruption captured on video,”
October 12, 2010, <http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/39635528/ns/
today-today_people/t/teachers-scary-classroom-eruption-
captured-video/#.T2CqwHmn58s>. The video can be viewed at
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CLmQ1KdhRO0>.
These and 35,000 others are part of the Kerux database that can be
downloaded, absolutely free, at http://www.holwick.com/database.html
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