Dear Father, we thank you for
your mercy. Thank you for sending the Lord Jesus Christ to save
your people, those you've chosen from the foundation of the world,
to save them all by himself and to give them this eternal life
that's entirely worked out by him, brought to us by grace. given to us that we might receive
it by faith. Lord, we pray that from your
word you would speak to us and teach us about the heart of our
Lord Jesus and this salvation that you've given to us in him.
In Jesus' name we pray, amen. Matthew chapter seven, I mean,
sorry, Matthew 21. Take a look there. Look at chapter
21, verse 12. Jesus has just ridden into Jerusalem.
And he had come just at the entrance of Jerusalem, remember, and he
looked at that city and he wept over it. We went over that last
week. He wept over that city because he had done so much He
had shown Himself to them through teaching, through miracles, and
had now come, declared Himself to be the King, the King of God's
Church. But they rejected Him, they refused
Him, and so He wept over that city because of the destruction
that was coming upon them. We read about that in Luke 19
last week. Now, I want to pick up in verse
12 and read through verse 16 where it says, And Jesus went
into the temple of God, and cast out all them that sold and bought
in the temple, and overthrew the tables of the moneychangers,
and the seats of them that sold doves, and said to them, It is
written, My house shall be called the house of prayer, but you
have made it a den of thieves. And the blind and the lame came
to Him in the temple, and He healed them. And when the chief
priests and scribes saw the wonderful things that He did, and the children
crying in the temple and saying, Hosanna to the Son of David,
they were sore displeased, and said to Him, Hearest Thou what
these say? And Jesus said to them, Yea,
have you never read out of the mouth of babes and sucklings
thou hast perfected praise? And he left them and went out
of the city to Bethany, and he lodged there. The Lord Jesus
comes into Jerusalem. He's coming on this colt, the
foal of an ass, and he rides in as the king. He's showing
himself to be king because as the king he's going to do what
the king does. He's going to deliver the people
from their enemies. The way he does that They don't
know. They're actually going to be
the ones who fulfill scripture. Because of their unbelief, they'll
take him and put him to death. And in his death, he will actually
defeat the enemies of his people, sin and death, the devil and
the world and all things which are the consequences of sin.
But when the Lord Jesus comes, though he's coming as a king
and the son of David, he doesn't come and sit on the throne in
the city. Instead, he goes to the temple.
The temple is his father's house. He's coming to the temple because
he comes not as the son, he comes as the son of David, but he's
the son of his father, the son of God. And he comes to rule
in his temple. Now, the term here used for temple
just means that building. And when he gets into this city,
when he comes to the temple, he drives out the money changers,
he drives out those who sold the sacrifices, the doves and
all the animals. And he tells them, it's written,
my house shall be called a house of prayer, but you've made it
a den of thieves. The question here is, what is
this temple and why was Jesus so angry about this? Because he was righteously angry
about what these men were doing here. Was he angry because they
had made the physical temple a place to sell animals for the
sacrifices? Or was there something deeper
than just the physical temple and the physical sacrifices?
The fact of the matter is we have to ask this question, what
is the house of God? Because he says here, my house
shall be called a house of prayer. So the first question we have
to ask is what is the house of God? And then we also want to
know whose house is it? And then what is the purpose
of this house? And then we'll see in these things
why Jesus was so upset. Because these men were obviously
doing something there that was contrary to why God had established
this house. Now, in the scripture, the term
for house of God is explained in 1 Timothy chapter 3. And if
you want to turn there, I'll show this to you. It's unambiguous
what the Bible says about the house of God. First of all, it's God's house.
Now, when Jesus came to this physical temple, he was it was
clear that it was a physical building with people and animals
for sacrifices. But there was something more
important than that physical temple. If we only see as far
as the temple and the physical things in the temple, then we've
completely missed the truth of Scripture. In 1 Timothy chapter
3 and verse 14 it says, Paul writing to Timothy, these things
write I unto thee, hoping to come unto thee shortly. But if
I tarry long, that thou mayest know how thou oughtest to behave
thyself in the house of God. Same thing, the house of God,
which is the church of the living God, the pillar and ground of
the truth. So there's a couple of things
we learn there, that the church is the house of God and the church
is the pillar and ground of the truth. Now, what is the church? Well, the church in scripture
is a word that refers to all those God has given to His Son
to save, all those Christ has saved by laying down His life
for them, and those are the ones that God gathers having chosen
them from eternity, having redeemed them by the blood of Christ,
and then having called them by His Spirit to life. It says in
Revelation chapter 9, if you want to look at that, in Revelation
chapter 9, I'm sorry, chapter 5, not chapter 9, chapter 5 verse
9, he says, when the people are in heaven, they're singing this
song, they sung a new song saying, thou art worthy to take the book,
speaking of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God, The saints in
glory are singing this song, thou art worthy to take the book
and to open the seals thereof for thou was slain and has redeemed
us to God by thy blood out of every kindred and tongue and
people and nation. So Christ has redeemed a people. They were redeemed out of every
kindred, that means every tribe or group of people that are related
in some way. Every tongue, meaning every language,
every people and nation, social groups. political groups throughout
the world, over time, Christ has saved his people. But he
redeemed them. That means he purchased them.
And what did he purchase them with? His own blood. He purchased
them out of all those places. So they were not all, not every
person in the world was purchased by the blood of Christ. Only
those that were here in heaven saying, thou hast purchased us
to God by your blood out of every kindred, tribe, people, and nation.
And so also in Acts chapter 20, I'll just quote it, it says that,
feed the church of God, which he has purchased with his own
blood. Christ purchased the church, that's why they're his. Ephesians
chapter five, it says the Lord Jesus Christ loved the church,
and he gave himself for it. He gave himself for the church.
The house of God is the church of God. And so we know right
away whose house it is. It's the Lord's house. It's God's
house. It's not ours. We don't say it's
Pastor Joe's or Pastor Bob's or some other pastor's house.
It's not his church, it's Christ's church, it's God's church. Jesus
said in Matthew chapter 16 to Peter, he says, I, this is
the Lord Jesus Christ talking, he says, I will build my church
And the gates of hell will not prevail against it. He calls
it his church. He purchased it. But it's also
the church of God. So we know the Lord Jesus Christ
is both God and man. And God gave that church to him.
It's his bride. His people are called his wife
in scripture. All the people that the Lord
saves are the church of God throughout every place in this world. It's
not limited to the nation of Israel. It's not limited to the
people in the United States or some other country or a certain
race of people or people who speak a certain language. The
gospel goes throughout all the world, and the Lord Jesus Christ
builds His church. How does He build this church?
Look at 1 Corinthians 1. We see how the Lord builds his
church. Because he says in Matthew 16,
I will build my church and the gates of hell shall not prevail
against it. So Christ builds his own church. He says in verse 17 of 1 Corinthians
1, Paul says, For Christ sent me not to baptize, but to preach
the gospel, not with wisdom of words. lest the cross of Christ
should be made of none effect, for the preaching of the cross
is to them that perish foolishness, but to us which are saved it
is the power of God." So, Paul was sent by Christ. Why was he
sent? To preach the gospel. Why did
Christ send him to preach the gospel? That he might save his
people. Those who are saved find the
preaching of the gospel to be the power of God. That's what
he says in verse 18. In verse 19, he shows the effect
of the gospel. He says, For it is written, I
will destroy the wisdom of the wise and will bring to nothing
the understanding of the prudent. It doesn't matter how much you
know. You're not saved by your knowledge, you're saved by what
Christ has done. And he explains that in his gospel,
and hearing that, by God-given faith, and understanding it,
and taking it to ourselves, we are saved. So, he asks in verse
20, where is the wise? Where is the scribe? Where is
the disputer of this world? Has not God made foolish the
wisdom of this world? For after that, in the wisdom
of God, the world, by wisdom, knew not God, it pleased God
by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe. The
gospel is given to us through the mechanism, through the means
of preaching, through the written word preached to us. Now, to
those who don't believe, it seems like foolishness. We trust, naturally,
we trust our own understanding. But God says here, the wisdom
of this world, God has made that wisdom foolishness because it
pleased God to save His people, not by the wisdom of this world,
but by the foolishness of preaching. for the jews require a sign and
the greeks seek after wisdom but we preach christ crucified
to the jews a stumbling block to the greeks foolishness but
to them that are called both jews and greeks christ the power
of god and the wisdom of god what is our how are we saved
by the lord jesus christ he is the power of god he is the wisdom
of god and his power and his wisdom that saves us because
the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of
God is stronger than men. For you see your calling, brethren,
how that not many wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, not
many noble, are called." It doesn't mean there's no wise men, no
noble men, and no mighty men called. It just means that there's
not many. Most of the Lord's people are
simple, plain, folk who find themselves hearing the gospel
as sinners and rejoicing in it. And that's what pleases the Lord
to do, to save those who in themselves are nothing. They're ordinary,
everyday people. But God has chosen the foolish
things of this world to confound the wise, and He has chosen the
weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty,
and base things of the world, and things which are despised
hath God chosen, yea, and things which are not. It means things
that don't exist to bring to nothing things that are, that
no flesh should glory in his presence. Why does God save us
through the preaching of the gospel? Why does he save us through
something that men consider foolishness so that no one could glory in
their salvation? But of Him, of God, are you in
Christ Jesus, who of God Christ has made into us wisdom and righteousness,
sanctification and redemption, that according as it is written,
he that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord. We boast in the
Lord because he saves us by what he thinks and has received from
Jesus Christ. And look at chapter 3, 1 Corinthians
3, the same book, just a chapter over. In verse 9, Paul says,
we are laborers together with God. You, speaking to the church,
you are God's husbandry. That means like a vineyard. He's
the farmer. It's his vineyard. You are God's
building. He compares the people of God
to plants, and he compares them to a building, and he compares
them to a body. According to the grace of God
which is given to me, as a wise master builder, Paul says, I
have laid the foundation, and another builds thereon, but let
every man take heed how he builds thereupon, for other foundation
can no man lay than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ. How is
the church built? How is it that the Lord Jesus
Christ builds his church? How does he bring his people
to himself and put them in his body? It's through the preaching
of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Christ is the foundation on which
the building is built. And any who preach another gospel,
then that gospel are cursed according to Galatians 1 verse 8 and 9.
So that's the church of God. It's God's church. It's the church
of Jesus Christ, which he purchased with his own blood. It's the
bride of Christ. He builds it. He builds it by
the preaching of the gospel. And the apostles were laborers.
Christ made them laborers in that. And he calls the church
the pillar and ground of the truth. We read that in 1 Timothy
3.15. Now, when he says in 1 Timothy 3.15 that the church is the pillar
and ground of the truth, That is perverted by the Catholic
religion, by the Mormon religion, by the Jehovah's Witness religion,
and by lots of other religions who claim that their church organization
has authority over scripture. The highest authority on earth,
according to the Catholics, for example, is the pope and the
whole organization of the church leaders in that church, that
organization. That is not what this scripture
is teaching. The church is the pillar and ground of the truth. It doesn't mean that there's
a hierarchy of men in an organization with some denominational name
over history that have established the truth of scripture. They
don't establish the truth of scripture. To add to or take
away from scripture is to add to or take away from God's word
and any who do that add to the plagues, their own plagues from
God. according to Revelation. So the
pillar and ground of the truth means that Christ has only given
the gospel to his people. He hasn't given it to an organization. He hasn't given it to a nation. He's given it to his people throughout
the world. And those people that he gave
it to first were the apostles. And he gives it to his people
through pastors and teachers and prophets that he's given
the gift of faith and the gift of understanding the scriptures
so that they might be able to teach it to others. That's why
it's called the pillar and ground of the truth. Not because the
church establishes scripture. Scripture establishes the church.
But the scripture teaches the gospel, and God has given the
gospel to his people. That's the truth of God. So Paul
says, no other foundation can be laid than Jesus Christ. Christ
is the truth of God. Now, the second thing I want
you to see about the church is that church groups gather, churches
gather, or people who are saved by the Lord gather in groups.
In 1 Corinthians chapter 2, we're right there, I'll just look at
verse 2. I'm sorry, 1 Corinthians chapter 1, verse 2. 1 Corinthians
1, 2, it says, unto the church of God, which is at Corinth,
you see that? To them that are sanctified or
called saints in Jesus Christ, called to be saints with all
that in every place, call upon the name of Jesus Christ, our
Lord, both theirs and ours. Where is the church located?
Well, it's located throughout the world. But when Paul writes
to the Corinthians, he speaks to them, he says, the church
which is at Corinth. Because in towns and houses and
places throughout the world, God's people assemble. And the
word church actually is a word that should be translated in
our scripture as assembly. It's Christ's assembly. So the
word church, when we use it, we think of a building. We say,
oh look, there's a church. It's not a church. It's a building.
This place is not a church. It's a gathering place. And the
assembly of those who gather there, who believe the gospel,
are the church. And so here's a church at Corinth.
It doesn't mean that there's a number of different churches.
There's only one body. But within that body, there are
local assemblies. And those local assemblies collectively
make up the assembly which is called the Church of God. So,
I want you to see that. Because it's God's church, God,
not man, dictates how and what is done in that church. What
is it that the Lord tells us to do in the church? Well, we
just read it, to preach the gospel. Feed the sheep, he says in Acts
20, 28. Feed the flock of God that he
purchased with his own blood. What do the sheep eat? They feed
on the Lord Jesus Christ and him crucified. How do they eat? They can't put their mouth on
him. They eat by faith. They partake. They take in from
his word through the mechanism of faith that God gives them
so that they can live on Christ by faith. That's the way we were
first made to see the truth. That's the way we walk in the
truth. That's the way we die and receive our inheritance is
through faith. Everything comes to us through
faith. Faith isn't a work. But it's
crediting the Lord Jesus Christ with all of our salvation, and
all the glory goes to God. We rest on Him through faith.
We come to Him by faith. We look to what God looks at,
which is our Lord Jesus Christ, and not men. Now, in Matthew
21, back in Matthew 21, you see the Lord Jesus Christ is coming
to a temple. The physical temple was just
a building. But in 1 Corinthians 3, which
we didn't read it, it says, you are the temple of the living
God. The church is called the temple,
the people. That means that God dwells in
his people by his spirit. In fact, let me read this to
you. In fact, why don't you go with me to Ephesians chapter
2. In Ephesians chapter 2, he says this. In verse 10 of Ephesians 2, we
are his workmanship. We already saw we were his building
and his husbandry, now we're his workmanship. Created in Christ
Jesus unto good works, which God has before ordained that
we should walk in them. Wherefore remember that you,
being in time past, Gentiles in the flesh, that means that
your natural birth was as a Gentile, who are called uncircumcision
by that which is called circumcision in the flesh. In other words,
the Jews are called the circumcision in the flesh. They call the Gentiles
the uncircumcision in the flesh. Well, that's what you were. You
were called the circumcision in the flesh made by hands. Those
who are circumcised in the flesh, Jews by physical birth or Jews
by circumcision, they're just outwardly Jews. That's not the
true church of God. That's not the people of God.
They're just outwardly called the Jews. We're outwardly called
the uncircumcision. But in verse 12 he says, at that
time you were without Christ. being aliens from the commonwealth
of Israel. The commonwealth of Israel means
those things that God promised to the Jews through Abraham and
to Christ ultimately. You were aliens from the commonwealth
of Israel and strangers from the covenants of promise, having
no hope. and without God in the world. But now, in Christ Jesus,
you who were sometimes far off are made nigh by the blood of
Christ. How are we brought into the church? He says right here,
you were brought near. You were connected to the church
by the blood of Christ. Christ purchased us out of every
kindred, tribe, nation, and people. That's what he says in Revelations
5.9. Verse 14, For he is our peace, who has made both one,
and broken down the middle wall of partition between us. The
Old Testament, there was a separation between Jews and Gentiles. In
Christ, that separation has been removed. But the separation that
needed to be removed was not so much between Jews and Gentiles,
it was between us and God. And Christ is the one who removed
it by His blood. Verse 14, For He is our peace,
who has made both one and broken down the middle wall of partition,
having abolished in His flesh the enmity. What was the enmity?
What separated us and God? It was God's law and our sin. God's law is holy, but our sin,
according to God's law, demanded His justice punish us with a
curse. In other words, he took people from the nation of the
Jews, and he took people from all the other nations called
Gentiles, and he brought those people to himself by removing
their sins, and therefore the curse of God against them, and
in that one people that he saved, he took them to himself. They're one man. And it says
in verse 16, that he might reconcile both to God in one body by the
cross, having slain the enmity thereby, and came and preached
peace to you that were far off and to them that were nigh. Listen
to verse 18. For through him we both have
access by one spirit unto the Father. Now therefore you are
no more strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens with the
saints and of the household of God." What is the house of God?
It's the saints. Those who have been purchased
by the blood of Christ and brought nigh by the preaching of the
gospel so that in that preaching they believe and in believing
they're brought near through the blood of Christ. Verse 20,
and you are built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets,
Jesus Christ himself being the chief cornerstone. The apostles
and prophets point to Christ. Remember John the Baptist? Behold
the Lamb of God. That's what they say. In whom,
in Christ, all the building fitly framed together grows into a
holy temple in the Lord, in whom you also are built together for
an habitation of God through the Spirit. It's clear from these
verses that the temple of God are the people of God. The dwelling
place of God is in them. God dwells in His people by His
Spirit. The result of his dwelling in
them is that they're brought by faith to see Christ as their
total justification before God. They're all before God. All that
God requires of them has been fulfilled by the Lord Jesus Christ.
As sinners, we hear that truth. And hearing that truth, we are
so thankful to God. It humbles us to find that even
though in ourselves we ought to be punished by God and separated
and alienated from Him, He's brought us near by shedding the
blood of His own Son. bringing us near to himself,
removing our enmity against him and bringing us near. So when
the Lord Jesus Christ drives out of the temple these things
that are listed in Matthew 21, we have to understand it not
as being significant because of the physical temple, but because
of the significance that it has in a spiritual sense. And if
we understand that, then we can understand the truth of what's
being taught here. What were these men doing? There
were money changers there. They were exchanging one kind
of coinage for another, and they were taking a profit from it.
They were selling sacrifices. And the people who were buying
these sacrifices were buying them in order that they might
fulfill, to bring the sacrifice themselves to God, that he might
accept them through that sacrifice. All of this, according to what
Jesus did, was abhorrent to God. It was an abomination to God.
Why? Why was it so distasteful to
Him? Well, Jesus says, because my house shall be called a house
of prayer. and we're going to go to to uh...
jeremiah chapter seven there's two places this is actually prophesied
one is in jeremiah seven and one is in isaiah fifty six but
understand this the purpose of the church the purpose of the
house of god is that sinners me and you who believe on the
lord jesus christ might come there and pray not to a specific
place but to christ is to bring sinners to christ and what is
the what is that I mean, we believe on him, but what is that that
the Lord emphasizes here? It's prayer. What is prayer? What does it do? Prayer is our
expression of utter dependence, isn't it, upon the living God?
We come to God in prayer. Lord, save me. Lord, help. All these things are expressing
our utter dependency upon the Lord Jesus Christ. And so we
come to God in prayer. We bring our supplications. We
bring our requests, we bring our needs, and we come to God
asking Him to accept us by what He's done in His Son, the Lord
Jesus Christ, and to give us the blessings that Christ has
earned for us. That's what prayer is. It's coming
to God. looking to Christ as all of our
salvation, asking Him to receive us for Christ's sake and His
sake alone, and blessing us as He has promised He would do to
all those who are in Christ. Is that too bold? Is it too bold
for us as sinners to come to God and ask Him to do for us
What the Lord Jesus Christ has earned? No, it's the command
of God, actually. He says, look unto me, and be
ye saved, all the ends of the earth. You have not because you
ask not, and when you ask, you ask amiss. So, coming to God
in prayer, coming to God through the Lord Jesus Christ is our
worship of God. Remember in John chapter 4, when
Jesus was talking to the Samaritan woman, she came to Jesus and
she said, should we worship here in this mountain or at Jerusalem?
She was completely confused by the fact that worship is not
confined to a physical place. She was thinking it was altogether
outward, like the temple here. But Jesus says, no. The Father
seeks those to worship Him in spirit and in truth. The whole
problem, well not the whole problem, but the main problem that the
Jews had is that they looked at all of the outward things
in religion just like men do today. Not just the Jews, but
the Gentiles. We look at outward things. So
when you see this great cathedral that men have architected and
built with their own skill, what do you think of? Man, somebody
was really smart. Somebody had a lot of skill.
Look at what those people did. That's exactly the opposite of
coming to see what God has done in Christ. When God saves us,
we can only think, look what the Lord has done. You see, Looking
at a fancy building and thinking of that as a temple or as a church
is exactly the opposite of what God wants. But the Jews were
confined to come to God in that physical building and bring physical
sacrifices through men who were sinful as their priests. They
came to a physical place through sinful men who acted as priests
for them, bringing a physical sacrifice. And the problem with
all of that was that they only saw at the physical level. They only saw their coming to
God as a physical activity. And not only did they not see
the spiritual meaning behind it, they didn't look to God in
faith, didn't look to Christ, and come to God by faith in Christ. Because they only saw the physical
things, then they not only didn't understand the truth, but they
didn't enter into it. And so they perverted. the physical
things into something that represented the perversion of the spiritual.
So they took the temple and they bought and sold animals to make
a business out of religion. And not only to make a business
out of it, but to put it all under their control. Look back
at Jeremiah chapter 7. I want you to see in this chapter,
it is in verse 11, the prophecy is made where it says, is this
house which is called by my name become a den of robbers in your
eyes? This house he's speaking about in verses 10 and 11 is
the same house that Jesus is speaking of in Matthew 21. And
what is that house? It's the house of God. What is
the house of God? It's the church. It's the household
of God. It's the people of God in which
he inhabits by his spirit. And so that's what we, we must
understand that in order to understand scripture. The temple are all
of the people of God, the Lord saved by his blood. They're all
the gathered people in the world who come to Christ by his spirit
and are given faith in Christ. To see or to try to come to God
in any other way is a perversion of the truth of scripture. Jesus
said this, I am the way, the truth, and the life. No man comes
to the Father but by me. If we miss that, we miss everything.
We miss life, we miss eternity, and we consider in ourselves
that the death of the Lord Jesus Christ was unnecessary. But look
here at Jeremiah chapter 7. I'm gonna start at verse 1. He
says, the word that came to Jeremiah from the Lord saying, stand in
the gate of the Lord's house and proclaim there this word.
Stand in the gate of the Lord's house. You see that? The Lord's
house is what? Well, it's the people of God,
isn't it? It's the Lord's house. And he says, not only proclaim
there the word of God, but say to the people, hear the word
of the Lord, all ye of Judah, and enter in at these gates to
worship. Hear ye the word of the Lord,
or hear the word of the Lord, all ye of Judah, that enter in
at these gates to worship the Lord. Why did the people come
to the temple? They came to worship the Lord.
Isn't that what the purpose was? To worship the Lord. When we
come, when we come together, and we come and we read scripture,
and we pray, and we listen to the preaching of the gospel,
and we speak to one another about the greatness of our Savior,
what are we doing? We're worshiping God. When the
Samaritan woman asked Jesus, should we worship here or should
we worship there in Jerusalem? Jesus said, you don't know what
you worship. We know what we worship, for salvation is of
the Jews. The meaning of, the importance
of that statement was that the only way that we can worship
God is to know him as our savior. Remember Jesus said, I am the
way, the truth, and the life. If we're not saved by the Lord,
by Jesus Christ, if we don't know that, and if we come to
God in any other way but by the salvation he has accomplished
by himself, we can't worship God. How can we worship God if
we think we have to bring some satisfaction to him from ourselves,
or earn his favor, or do something? All of that activity is denying
the purpose of the Lord Jesus Christ coming and dying and rising
and reigning again. So to fail to see Christ as our
salvation is to fail to see and understand and know God and to
come to Him at all. But we come to Him to worship
Him, and the way we worship Him is by faith in Christ, in seeing
our salvation in Christ. So he says, hear the word of
the Lord, all you of Judah, that enter in at these gates to worship
the Lord. Now, he's going to correct them. The book of Jeremiah is a huge
warning. It's a warning to the people
of Jerusalem and Judah. They were apostate. That means
that they had gone away from God. They had forsaken the truth.
And not only had they forsaken the truth, but they served idols.
And it wasn't just a day, or a month, or a year, or ten years.
It was all of their history. God sent them prophet after prophet.
And they rejected the words of the prophets. They rejected God.
And they dealt with their guilt before God by going to idols. They took satisfaction in satisfying
the gods of their own making. That's what idols are. Idols
are constructed and made by what men do with their hands. They're
called the works of men's hands. So just as the temple physically
represented a spiritual truth, which was the church of God,
idols then, which you could see and touch and feel, but couldn't
do anything, and were stupid, and couldn't talk, couldn't walk,
couldn't handle, couldn't see, couldn't hear, they're just the
works of men's hands, that represents false religion. All that men
do in religion is idolatry. That means anything that a man
does in order to come to God, to remove his sin, to bring a
righteousness to God, all the things that men do in religion
is called idolatry, and it's represented by that. That's what
the people Jeremiah speaks to were. They were idolaters. They
were stubborn and refused to be turned by all of God's warnings
throughout this book. And therefore God warns them,
I'm going to take you away. I'm going to take you away and
I'm going to forsake you. Now, the Lord, in all these things,
also said, but I'm going to save a remnant throughout the book
of Jeremiah, who keeps seeing his promises. In the midst of
judgment, the Lord remembers his mercy. But in this next part
here, he's going to do the correcting. He says in verse 3, Thus saith
the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, amend your ways and your
doings, and I will cause you to dwell in this place. Trust
ye not in lying words, saying, the temple of the Lord, the temple
of the Lord, the temple of the Lord are these. Now, it's hard
to understand these things unless you read the whole book and in
the context of all of Scripture. But what is he saying here? Well,
the people were clearly disobedient to God. They had left the truth
of Scripture. They disobeyed God's law, first
of all. They didn't keep God's law. And
they brought sacrifices. And when they brought their sacrifices,
they thought that God would accept them because of their physical
sacrifices. Now, understand that if you only
see the physical sacrifices, think about it, if you thought,
well, I'm going to be doing these things and they're sinful things,
but it's okay because I'll just take a sacrifice and God, He's
such a God that He will just look at that sacrifice and it'll
all be okay with me and God again. I just pay a little money, I
buy a sacrifice, I take it to the priest, and He does away
with my sins and I'm good to go. What does all that mean? Well, besides the fact that it
means idolatry, it means that I can live apart from God lawlessly. And I can think of God as someone
who accepts me as a man through some trivial offering of a sacrifice. It makes me think of God as not
being very good. It makes me think of my sin as
not being very bad. And it puts me in total control. All I gotta do is go out and
buy a sacrifice or get one out of my flock and bring it in and
everything's taken care of. And so this is the way that men
deal with their idols. They think, well, I've made this
idol. I'm going to adorn it. I'm going to make it pretty.
I'm going to bow down to it. And when things aren't going
well, I'm going to ask my idol to fix it for me, save me from
my enemies, make the rain fall. And if I want to live a certain
way, and God forbids that, my idol's OK with that. So I can
live like hell, and it doesn't matter. And so idols are very
convenient ways of getting around the problem of sin. Getting around
the problem that God is sovereign. God himself alone can save. God himself alone says what's
acceptable to him, and God must provide it. He must save us.
But idols completely get around God. They get around his justice.
They get around his sovereignty. They put me in control. I can
make atonement anytime I want to. Just bring a sacrifice. And so that's what the people
were doing. They would do whatever they wanted to do, even serve
idols, and they would come to the temple. The temple of the
Lord! The temple of the Lord! The temple
of the Lord are these! And they would bring their sacrifices
and they would assume that God would accept them because of
their physical sacrifices. They wouldn't see that the temple
was representative of the fact that God's people alone in Christ
can come to Him. They wouldn't see that the sacrifice
that was offered in the temple pictured God's sacrifice, which
He would offer His own Son in order to save His people. And
so they had no respect of God. They had no respect of sin. They
had no respect of His law. It could all just be wiped away
with just a few outward ceremonies. And that's exactly what religion
does. It puts us in control of God. How can you worship a God
that you can control? You can't. The only God you'll
worship is a God you can't control. A God who is holy, who demands
of you what you cannot give and you come to him and you put yourself
in the dust and say, God have mercy on me a sinner and be propitious
to me. You have to provide what is required
to bring me to yourself. And that's what the truth of
the gospel says. You are a sinner. You're utterly unfit to come
to God, and you're unable to come, but God has done something
in Christ. And so these people would say,
and God says, you need to amend your ways, amend your doings.
I will cause you to dwell in this place. Don't trust these
lying words of false prophets who say, the temple, the temple,
the temple. and then you just come here and
go through some ceremony. Amending your ways means repentance. When God says to us, repent,
what do you immediately do? Well, you think, I gotta change
this habit, I gotta change that habit, I gotta change this other
thing. And we begin to do that. And so we trust then, what? What
we can do. But when God tells us to do things
in scripture, it is meant to bring us to realize that we cannot,
because of our sinful nature, do one thing God has required
of us. And so when he says, amend your ways, it's meant to drive
us into the dust and cause us to fall on our face and say,
Lord, turn thou me, and I shall be turned. And that's what the
gospel does. When God puts us in the dust
because of our sinful nature and our sins, and then he brings
the gospel to us that's how he turns us he reveals what christ
has done when he shows us that we're sinners and he shows us
that in christ he has provided all for his people that he is
required of them and then he causes us to come to him in thanksgiving
and humility how could you save such a dead dog sinner as me
and bring me to yourself so wonderfully by this salvation and we worship
God and then we are soft in our heart so that God works in us
then with a clear conscience through the blood of Christ to
serve Him. But that's what he says here in verse 3 and 4. And
then in verse 5 he says, "...for if you thoroughly amend your
ways and your doings, If you thoroughly execute judgment between
a man and his neighbor, if you oppress not the stranger and
fatherless and the widow and shed not innocent blood in this
place, neither walk after other gods to your hurt, then will
I cause you to dwell in this place in the land that I gave
to your fathers forever and ever." What is he saying here? Well,
the people They didn't execute judgment between man and his
neighbor. What does it mean to execute
judgment between a man and his neighbor? Well, it means more
than saying, well, let's see, how much did you pay for your
cow? 10, well, and he cheated you,
I gotta fix that. It means a lot more than that.
It means more than just dealing with the everyday. It means that
we do not, arrogate ourselves before men. We speak the truth.
We speak the truth about ourselves. We speak the truth about Christ.
You see, in the New Testament, it's explained what it means
to judge between a man and his neighbor. How did Paul come to
How did the Lord save Paul? Remember Paul? He persecuted
the church, he trusted his own righteousness, and then the Lord
showed him. The law is so holy that it demands of you what you
cannot give and never have been able to meet. And the Lord appeared
to him and showed him who he was, the Lord Jesus Christ. And
what happened to Paul after that point? He says in 1 Corinthians
15.9, I'm the least of the apostles. I'm not even worthy to be called
an apostle. And then in Ephesians 3.8, he
says, I'm the least of all saints. I shouldn't even be able to preach
this gospel. This is proud Paul. This is the
one who persecuted the church. And then in 1 Timothy 1.15 he
says, Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of
whom I'm chief. What is Paul doing in all that?
He's judging between a man and his neighbor. He's saying, look,
I used to think in my mind, I used to despise others and think that
God accepted me for what I did. That's not the way it works.
Peter said it in Acts 15-11, he says, But we believe through
the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ. We shall be saved even as those
Gentiles. That's judging right between
a man and his neighbor. The Lord is saying here that
you have to be honest about what God says about you and your neighbor. There's no difference between
you and your neighbor. Don't come to church acting like
you're better than others, you've got more knowledge, you have
better works. Forget it, it's all worthless.
The only thing that matters is what God has done in Christ.
That's what the gospel tells us. So if you come and you oppress
the stranger, the fatherless, and the widow, and you shed innocent
blood in this place because you come Telling men that the only
way they can come to God is by doing things. By doing what you've
given them to do. Following your traditions. Then
you're killing them with a false gospel. And that will earn you
the curse of God in the most serious way. And so in verse
8 he says, Behold, you trust in lying words that cannot profit. Will you steal, murder, commit
adultery, and swear falsely, and then burn incense to Baal,
and walk after other gods whom you know not, and then come and
stand before me in this house? which is called by my name, and
say, we're delivered to do all these abominations. You come
to this house, you offer your sacrifices, you make atonement
at your own. There, I made it. I've done what
God says. I've fulfilled whatever his law
requires, and where I've messed up, I offered a sacrifice. I'm
totally in control. I can manipulate God. And you
come here and you do that. You break the law in every way. And then you come and say, but
I'm delivered by my sacrifice and by coming to the temple to
do all these things. You see the hypocrisy? Worship of God is in the heart. It's not these outward things.
It's only in the heart. Obedience is in the heart. Yes,
it works in the outside. But it starts in the heart. And
there's only one way a sinner can obey God. That's when God
tells him what Christ has done, and we see by faith, all my salvation
is in the Lord Jesus Christ. When we see that, it's called
the obedience of faith. And that brokenness that comes
from seeing our sin and Christ as being our all, that produces
a love to God and a humility and a love for our brothers and
sisters in Christ. We come and we speak to one another
of the great things that he has done. God gets all the glory
and salvation, and we find ourselves doing in our heart what we could
never even dream of. We didn't even know what obedience
was before. We thought it was about something
we produced. So God would say, fine job, fine
job. No, it's not that at all. It's
coming and saying, salvation is of the Lord. All my hope is
in what the Lord Jesus Christ has done. So he says, do you
think you come to all these things, the temple, the sacrifices, all
this, just so you can go out and do these things by serving
idols and breaking God's law? No. Is this house, which is called
by my name, become a den of robbers in your eyes? Behold, even I
have seen it, saith the Lord." The house had become a den of
robbers. The people were taking money. They were enriching themselves
on the backs of poor people who had to come into the temple to
do what God had required of them in those days. And in this, they
were not feeding God's sheep. They didn't know the truth themselves. They fed them with the lies of
hypocrisy and outward external religion which could do nothing
for these poor people and the people were dying spiritually. They were shedding innocent blood.
Now look back at Matthew 21. So Jesus tells them this in verse
13. He says, it is written, my house
shall be called a house of prayer, but you've made it a den of thieves.
Now that's also from Isaiah 56, which we don't have time to go
through, but look at verse 14 of Matthew 21. Jesus has driven
out now, think of it, one man. He makes this whip, he goes in
there and he turns over these tables with all the money on
them. And you can know there was a lot of money because all
these thousands of people coming to Jerusalem had to buy those
sacrifices and change the money. Doves, lambs, thousands of animals
had to be sold there. And they were taking a little
bit of that money for themselves. Even if it was a penny per sacrifice,
they would have tons of money. And Jesus flips those tables
over and he chases these men out by himself, out of the entire
temple. What a power he demonstrated.
And it says, when he had done this, The blind and the lame
came to him in the temple and he healed them. You see what
the Lord has done here? He cast out the hypocrisy and
the false religion. And when he does, in his temple,
in his church, the gospel is preached. He himself is there. The Lord himself, the Lord of
the temple, has come to the temple, and he's there, and he tells
them the truth. What is the truth? I am the way,
the truth, and the life. He tells them about himself,
how he would bring his people to God. And when he does that,
the poor and the lame, the blind and the lame, come to him in
the temple, and he healed them. Isn't this what the gospel does?
God drives out the false, and he establishes his place where
his gospel is preached, and those who are spiritually lame, spiritually
blind, come and hear it, and they're healed. So on the one
hand, he casts it out with an anger and a fury and a power,
and on the other hand, he establishes the truth of the word of God.
in himself, and the blind and the lame come and are healed."
So there's the casting out, and there's the bringing in, and
that's the message of scripture, isn't it? And then there's verse
15, and when the chief priests and the scribes saw the wonderful
things that he did, how he rode into Jerusalem and all these
people were hailing him, crying out, oh, save son of David, and
they were worshiping him. When they saw all that and the
fact that he was able to throw out all these money changers,
one man, and then heal the blind and the lame, all these wonderful
things that he did, what did they do? They fell down on their
faces and said, you are the Christ. No, that's not what they did.
It says, when they saw these things, and the children crying
in the temple, saying, Hosanna to the son of David, they were
sore displeased, because these men were not part of any of the
things that Jesus was, he had taught them, he had done miracles,
he did only good to them, and they rejected him out of envy,
and they plotted to kill him in their heart, and so they were
sore displeased. All the people praising him,
healing the lame and the blind, and showing himself to be the
king of glory, driving out with power these men and establishing
a place where he himself and the truth would be preached.
And he said to them, in verse 16, Hearest thou not what these
say? And Jesus said to them, Yea, have you never read? Out
of the mouth of babes and sucklings thou hast perfected praise? This
is actually a quotation from Psalm chapter 8 verse 2. God
himself is speaking in Psalm chapter 8 In verse two, he says
this. Let me see if I can get there. He says, O Lord, our Lord, how
excellent is thy name in all the earth, who has set thy glory
above the heavens. Out of the mouth of babes and
sucklings thou hast ordained strength, because of thine enemies
that thou mightest still the enemy and the avenger. Who is
the one here? Who ordained strength? Who ordained
this and perfected praise out of the mouth of babes and sucklings?
The Lord. The Lord God. Jehovah. The Lord
Jehovah. And who is Jesus saying is praising
Him in the temple, fulfilling this prophecy? The children. The babes and sucklings. These
little children are praising Him with perfect praise. They're
speaking In fulfillment of scripture that the Lord himself has come
to his temple, the one who made heaven and earth, his glory set
above the heavens, has perfected praise out of the weak. out of
the insignificant to men, he has perfected praise out of them,
that his strength might be made perfect in weakness. And in doing
so, he would still the enemy. He would silence the enemy. He
would put them to shame, because Christ, the mighty captain, the
king, has delivered his people by himself through his blood.
And the people, the little children, are just praising him for it.
They're giving him thanks. They're saying, oh, save us!
Oh, Christ, save us! And that's perfect praise put
there by God. This is what the temple is about. It's about the people of God
seeing Christ, all my salvation is in Him, and worshiping God
in the Lord Jesus Christ. That's what's meant by the temple
of the Lord. That's the purpose of the church,
to meet together, to worship God, and then to show forth the
praises of Him who has called us out of darkness into His marvelous
light, into His glory and virtue in the Lord Jesus Christ. What
a wonder is this salvation. When God shows us His salvation,
It humbles us, it causes us to be thankful, it causes us to
rejoice with one another, that he would save us when we were
so helpless and insignificant in ourselves. To give him all
the glory, that's what God wants us to do. Let the redeemed of
the Lord say so. And it's a wonderful thing what
the Lord has done here with us. Thank you. I hope that you see
the Lord Jesus Christ as all your hope and salvation. Let's
pray. Father, I pray that you would be with us in this place,
with your people in this world, that you would show yourself
mighty on their behalf. You would save us by what you've
done, not by what we can do. We can find no goodness in ourselves.
If we were to pile up all that we've done, it would be the worst
mess. It would be abhorrent. Even to
ourselves it would be loathsome, but especially to you. And so
we flee to you and say, Lord, we can do nothing but look to
Christ and find all of our salvation in him. If you don't save us,
Lord, by him, by himself, without our help, we cannot be saved.
But we glory in the fact that you've told us that's exactly
what you've done. He cried from the cross, it is
finished. By His one offering, He's redeemed,
He's obtained eternal redemption and perfected forever them He
sanctified. Thank you, Lord, for this gospel.
Thank you for your people with whom we meet. Thank you for your
spirit that teaches us that Christ is all and gives us His faith
to see Him and depend on Him and rejoice in Him, to take no
confidence in our flesh. In Jesus' name we pray, amen.