What a remarkable sight that day must have been. Isn't it a remarkable thing that
in this day and age where the name and the character of our
great God is polluted by the notions that he loves everyone
and he wishes to save everyone, that he was going to Calvary's
tree to die for everyone. These Jews that had turned the
temple into a marketplace, as well as Peter for Judas, as well
as Peter for the people. He's going to die for the people
who've already been in hell for many, many years from the time
of Cain. It's remarkable, isn't it, that
his first public activity in Jerusalem is one of him expressing
his wrath and his anger. And I think if you had been there,
you would have been like the merchants and like the scribes
and the Pharisees and the whole Sanhedrin. There was just silence
when the Lord Jesus Christ revealed his anger. He says in Psalm 2,
which they preached on often in the early church, he says,
be wise now, therefore you kings be instructed, you judges of
the earth, serve the Lord with fear and rejoice with trembling,
kiss the sun, lest he be angry and you perish from the way when
his wrath is king kindled but a little. Blessed are all they
that put their trust in him. There is a righteous, holy wrath. We mustn't think of the wrath
of the Lamb of God to be anything like our wrath. Our anger, even
our righteous anger, is mixed with sin. His is mixed with no
sin whatsoever. But what a remarkable day that
must have been, as he walked into that temple, an unknown
Galilean carpenter. And there, he takes charge with
a whip. They would whip him at the end
of this gospel. He takes charge of them with
a whip. And that court of the Gentiles,
which has turned into a marketplace, the Jews had to come three times
a year to the festivals, to these feasts. And they had to... It says you are not to come empty,
but there was a... an instruction in the law in
Exodus that if you lived a long distance away, you could exchange
your lamb in the place that you lived and bring the money and
then exchange that money again and buy a lamb in the temple
for the sacrifice. You weren't to come empty to
the festival. And you can imagine what happened. The Jews and the priests and
the Sanhedrin were the ones alone that could determine whether
the lamb was a spotless lamb or not. And so what they were
doing, what started off as a convenience and no doubt started off as in
some distance from the temple, had now been brought into the
very court of the Gentiles. The temple was set up so the
Gentiles could join in. The instructions for the Passover
were always that the strangers could come in. And there in the
temple court, those of you who had a little bit to do with cattle
in cattle yards or animals in confined spaces would have some
understanding of the stench of that place and the confusion
of it, all the noise and the animals. animals in their manure, the
blood of the sacrifice mixed with the merchandise of men.
And there the Lord Jesus Christ comes and he says, this is my
father's house. This is my house, he was saying.
He says, I am God. His very first activity in Jerusalem
is to say that I am God. And I have absolute right and
reign over all of this. And he made that whip. And I'm sure he used it in the
most extraordinary way if you'd been there and seen the wrath
of the Lord Jesus Christ. I want us to see, as we look
at these festivals of Passover, to see how extraordinary they
had polluted what was meant and designed by God for his people
to be a blessed memorial of the redemption that's in the Lord
Jesus Christ. And here they are. polluting
it and the animals would have stampeded and the doves would
have gone flying and the money would have been mixed with the
manure and the tables turned over and the merchants whipped
out of that place and they fled for their lives. And the leaders
were silenced. The same Sanhedrin mob that had
gone down to Jordan to pass judgement on John and his saviour, the
Lamb of God. This Lamb of God, this Passover,
the real Passover. now come and he's judging them. He claims divinity in his statement
and his actions and this place which was designed to resound
with the praises of the name of God on this day when the Passover
is to be honoured and revered in this court of the Gentiles
had turned it into a sewer, a market in the place of a sacrifice. They made merchandise of men's
souls. And it's not as if the Old Testament
hadn't warned them again and again and again. Let's read together. If you can turn there in Micah
chapter three, verse eight, the Lord says, But truly I am full
of power by the Spirit of the Lord, and of judgment, and of
might, to declare unto Jacob his transgression, and to Israel
his sin. Hear this, I pray you, ye heads
of the house of Jacob, and princes of the house of Israel, that
aboard judgment and pervert all equity. They build up Zion with
blood and Jerusalem with iniquity. The heads thereof judge for reward,
and the priests thereof teach for hire, and the prophets thereof
divine for money. Yet they will lean upon the Lord
and say, Is not the Lord among us? None evil shall come upon
us. Therefore shall Zion for your
sake be ploughed as a field, and Jerusalem shall become heaps,
and the mountain of the house of the high places of the forest."
The warnings of God about false religion, the warnings
of God throughout the Old Testament, that one that we've just read
could be multiplied thousands of times. These Jews in their
arrogance the very house of God, the very
place that they thought was their sanctuary, the very place that
in 40 years' time they would see as the safest place on all
the earth became the place where the wrath of God fell finally
upon the Jews and that nation, and a million of them died there,
thinking that this was a place of safety. What a picture of man-made works
religion. What a picture of religion that
spurns the true and living God at the very same time as pretending
and claiming that they honour the name of God. They're too
proud to be humbled and too proud to bow and too proud to obey. and too proud to be mercy beggars. These religiously proud people,
they purified themselves and thought that they were righteous. When the Lord Jesus Christ does
this at the end of his ministry, before them in the last of these
Passover's that he comes, it says in Matthew 21 that having
cleansed the temple, He left them. What a solemn word, to
be left by God. We spoke last week about Christ
being our Passover. The Lord Jesus Christ fulfilled
everything in the law. When the Lord Jesus was circumcised
as an eight-day-old baby, he was making a commitment, wasn't
he, to keep the whole of the law and to keep it perfectly,
to keep it spiritually, to keep it from his heart. As Isaiah
says, he came to magnify and to honour the Lord. Christ is
our Passover. He came to deliver his people
from bondage. The bondage of religion which
binds heavy loads on men's shoulders and doesn't lift a finger to
help them. The bondage of this world. The bondage of Satan's
deception. The bondage of sin. The bondage
of the curse of the law. The bondage of darkness. of not being able to see he delivers
his people Christ our Passover see the Exodus event is an ongoing
event isn't it the Exodus event that we looked at last week it's
pointing forward to that great and final Exodus but wherever
there is the Passover wherever there is this Exodus there is
a judgment as well see Noah experienced an exodus and there was judgment
Abraham experienced an exodus Israel experienced an exodus
the chosen remnant were taken out of Jerusalem before it was
destroyed in the days of Nebuchadnezzar they had an exodus in the opposite
direction they were taken to Babylon and the Lord says I'll
be a little sanctuary for you there I'll be a sanctuary and
the early church had an exodus it was taken out of Jerusalem
and believers for these last 2,000 years have experienced
an exodus as a result of the work of the Passover lamb. We
have been taken out of bondage and brought into the glorious
liberty of the sons of God. Taken out with a strong hand
from darkness and from judgment and from bondage, from legalism,
from law righteousness and its curse. Just as Pharaoh built
his superpowers, and men have built and built and built, and
they're with great religious buildings. This was a magnificent
building, 46 years, and Herod was no mean builder, nor those
who followed him. They build their great edifices,
don't they? And they build them and they
bind people in duties. But our God comes and he delivers
his people. There is no power that will stand
in the way of our great and glorious God. He came, he came our Saviour. sure that their temple was purged
for that little time of the leaven of the Pharisees. And it's remarkable,
isn't it, that he needs to do it three years later, which shows
us that the only people that ever learn the lessons of God,
the only people who are ever instructed by the judgments of
God upon the people of this world and the nations of this world,
are the children. will find themselves rejoicing
in the blood that God sees, the blood of the Passover lamb and
the feast of rest that follows. The law said that no man was
to come empty to the feast and the Lord Jesus Christ says here
I am on the Passover lamb. I come as a body prepared, a
man and God God in human flesh, a man to die, a man to perfectly
obey God in our room and in our stead, came as the God-man to
be an offering. He made his soul an offering
for sin. We are going to look at 1 Corinthians
5 and we are told to keep the feast This Passover, like the
Feast, is kept in a specific place. And the Temple is a place
where God says, My Name is. It's a place where He places
His Name. It's a place, the one specific
place, where He was going to reveal Himself. And what a remarkable
way He does when the Lord Jesus comes to this Temple. And it's
at a specific time. The Feast was at a specific time,
at the first month. And this feast went on, as I
said earlier, for eight days, and it's to be kept in a perfect
and particular manner. See, the cleansing of the temple
by the Lord Jesus Christ is a picture, isn't it, of the cleansing of
his church. The place where God chooses to have his name is a
place that's cleansed by the Passover lamb. All in him. They are cleansed and saved and
made whole. I'd like you to turn in your
Bibles to Luke Chapter 9 with me. There's a glorious statement
made. And if you want to know what
the Old Testament, a summary of the Old Testament here on
the Mount of Transfigurations, Moses and Elijah come and meet
with the Lord Jesus Christ and God the Father bearing witness
to them and speaking from heaven. Peter said that all of the Old
Testament speaks of the sufferings of Christ and the glory that
should follow, and Moses and Elijah are no different. Let's
read from verse 28. And it came to pass, about an
eight days after these sayings, he took Peter, and John, and
James, and went up into a mountain to pray. And as he prayed, the
fashion of his countenance was altered, and his raiment was
white and glistening. And behold, there talked with
him two men, which were Moses and Elias. Moses representing
the law. Can't come into them, won't bring
the people into the promised land. But Moses, resurrected,
is there in the promised land. He spoke. Who appeared in glory, and what
did they speak? What was the topic of conversation
at this remarkable event? What was the topic of conversation
when God the Father looks down and speaks from heaven and speaks
of his Son? What's the topic of conversation
when Moses and Elijah come back from heaven to be on that mountain
with the Lord Jesus Christ? What's the topic of conversation
when the Lord Jesus Christ is revealed in this extraordinary
display of his deity bursting through his humanity? There is
one topic of conversation, isn't there? Just listen to it. Verse
31, they who appeared in glory and spake of his decease. which he should accomplish at
Jerusalem that word deceased in the original and you can write
it in your Bibles if you like beside it or somewhere that word
in the original is the word Exodus he spoke of the Exodus which
he should accomplish at Jerusalem he should fulfill at Jerusalem. He should bring to pass at Jerusalem
the Passover that began the exodus of the children of Israel from
the bondage of Egyptian darkness and legalism and slavery. It began with the Passover lamb. See, the death of the Passover
lamb marks the beginning of the exodus out of bondage, out of
slavery, out of oppression, into what I said earlier is the glorious
liberty of the sons of God. And it is to bring them to a
place of worship of him. That was Moses' instruction to
the Pharaoh. You let my son go that he might
come and worship me, might come and serve me. He's a glorious
exodus to a place of worship. a worship in spirit and truth
and a place of communion. You've got to remember that the
Lord Jesus Christ had gathered those disciples and taken to
a marriage feast, and this is his next public activity, is
to bring those who participated and were symbolically there in
that glorious marriage, which will be consummated when the
exodus, the final exodus, comes. They were there with him to witness
this. It's a place of communion, isn't it? To be taken out is
to be taken into a place of communion and peace and provision, the
provision of the Lord and the provision from the Lord, and
the place where He makes His name known. He causes His glory
to be seen, a place where He is reverenced and delighted in,
a time of deliverance as it was throughout all of the Old Testament. The time of deliverance is also
a time of judgment. The judgment of God fell on every
house in Egypt that night. In the houses where the blood
was on the doorpost, the wrath of God fell on the lamb and the
firstborn son. And in the crucifixion of the
Lord Jesus Christ, the wrath of God falls. It falls, and our
glorious Saviour absorbs that, and His children go free. But in the same deliverance,
there is a judgment of those who stand in proud judgment of
God, our Saviour. The exodus is to be remembered
at a specific time. It's to be remembered
at a specific place. It's to be remembered at a specific
way. The blood is to be honoured. The lamb is to be seen as that
substitute. The fire that fell on the lamb,
the fire that is pictured, that fire that came out of heaven
is pictured as falling on the lamb and it fell on the Lord
Jesus Christ. And the religious of this world
are warned as God takes his people out. They will, in that day of
judgment, when that exodus, that final exodus children are with him on that
day of the Great White Throne Judgment. The sinners of this
world and the rebellious who remain in their pride and rebellion be an honoring of all of his
glorious attributes. The warnings were there, weren't
they? Nadab and Abihu, that fire that came from heaven, lit the
sacrifice. When the tabernacle was finished,
a fire came out from heaven in Leviticus. in Leviticus 9 verse
24. The fire came from before the
Lord and consumed the altar, the burnt offerings, and the
faps which all the people saw. And they shouted and they fell
on their faces. And the very next story is one that should
send a chill through our bones about how close people can be,
as the Jews were in Jerusalem, how close people can be to the
true and living God how close they can be to all of the history
and to know it well, how close they can be to his word and still
be lost. Let's read on in Leviticus 10.
And Nadab and Abihu, the sons of Aaron, took either of them,
his censer, and put fire therein, and put incense therein, and
offered strange fire. What was strange about the fire?
The strange thing about the fire is that the fire didn't come
from the altar. It wasn't the fire that fell on the Passover
lamb. before the Lord, which he commanded
them not. And they went out far from the
Lord and devoured them, and they died before the Lord. Then Moses
said unto Aaron, This is it that the Lord spoke, saying, I will
be sanctified in them that come nigh me, and before all the people
I will be glorified. And Aaron held his peace. There is a religious fire of
man's own kindling. And it starts with man and not
God. Our God is not to be trifled
with. When we think of sin and think
of sin lightly, we think of the glory of God and we think of
his son and his sacrifice on Calvary's tree lightly. The Lord
Jesus Christ, in wrath, dealt with those Jews on that day in
the temple as an absolute sovereign, and saying, I'll be sanctified
in them that come nigh me, and before all the people I will
be glorified. What a glorious saviour. purify his temple he will purify
his temple and in purifying his temple he will reveal his glory
his name is revealed his name is revealed in these feasts his
name his character is revealed in the Passover his character
is revealed in the feast that follows the Passover that's his
name who I am He's the one that has all authority. All authority. That's what he was exercising
there in the temple. And why does he do it all? He
does it all for his glory. He does it all to reveal how
he saves sinners by grace and not by works. How he saves sinners
in a substitute. In that blood sacrifice. And
I love to think of those words the Lord told Moses and told
the Jews in that day of the Exodus. When I see the blood, when I
see the blood, I will pass over you. Not when I see your works,
not when I see your obedience, not when I see the depths of
your faithfulness, not when I see anything about you, when I see
the blood. God looks to his son. May He, may He by His grace cause
us to find our peace and our rest where our great God and
Saviour finds His in His dear and precious Son. Everything
that God requires of us He sees perfectly fulfilled in His Son. This is the exodus that He must
fulfill, He must complete in Jerusalem.