Series

As they approached Jerusalem and came to Bethphage and Bethany at the Mount of Olives, Jesus sent two of his disciples, [2] saying to them, "Go to the village ahead of you, and just as you enter it, you will find a colt tied there, which no one has ever ridden. Untie it and bring it here. [3] If anyone asks you, 'Why are you doing this?' tell him, 'The Lord needs it and will send it back here shortly.' "

[4] They went and found a colt outside in the street, tied at a doorway. As they untied it, [5] some people standing there asked, "What are you doing, untying that colt?" [6] They answered as Jesus had told them to, and the people let them go. [7] When they brought the colt to Jesus and threw their cloaks over it, he sat on it. [8] Many people spread their cloaks on the road, while others spread branches they had cut in the fields. [9] Those who went ahead and those who followed shouted,

[11] Jesus entered Jerusalem and went to the temple. He looked around at everything, but since it was already late, he went out to Bethany with the Twelve.

On reaching Jerusalem, Jesus entered the temple area and began driving out those who were buying and selling there. He overturned the tables of the money changers and the benches of those selling doves, [16] and would not allow anyone to carry merchandise through the temple courts. [17] And as he taught them, he said, "Is it not written:

[18] The chief priests and the teachers of the law heard this and began looking for a way to kill him, for they feared him, because the whole crowd was amazed at his teaching.

[27] They arrived again in Jerusalem, and while Jesus was walking in the temple courts, the chief priests, the teachers of the law and the elders came to him. [28] "By what authority are you doing these things?" they asked. "And who gave you authority to do this?"

[29] Jesus replied, "I will ask you one question. Answer me, and I will tell you by what authority I am doing these things. [30] John's baptism--was it from heaven, or from men? Tell me!"

[31] They discussed it among themselves and said, "If we say, 'From heaven,' he will ask, 'Then why didn't you believe him?' [32] But if we say, 'From men' . . . ." (They feared the people, for everyone held that John really was a prophet.)

Jesus said, "Neither will I tell you by what authority I am doing these things."

On May 7, 2007, the White House welcomed Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II and His Royal Highness The Prince Philip Duke of Edinburgh for a state visit. Approximately 7,000 guests attended the Arrival Ceremony, including the American and British delegations, British Embassy staff, State Dinner guests, Members of Congress, Cabinet Members, White House staff and their guests, and State Department staff.

§ The President and Mrs. Bush greeted the queen and the prince on the south side of the driveway

§ The ceremony began with the National Anthem of Great Britain (simultaneous 21 gun salute) and then the National Anthem of the United States

§ President Bush and the Queen observed the musical troop in review performed by the Old Guard Fife and Drum Corps

§ President Bush, Mrs. Bush, Her Majesty, and His Royal Highness proceeded to the Blue Room Balcony for a photo opportunity

This welcoming ceremony was then followed by a State Dinner for 134 guests in the White House.

When we read the story of Jesus entering Jerusalem on what we have come to call Palm Sunday, we should think of it as the arrival of a head of state, because He was the King of Israel, coming into His royal city. Jesus’ arrival in Jerusalem was the culmination of a trip that had started nine months before, in Galilee, in which Jesus had walked all through Galilee, Samaria, and finally into Judea. He had ministered in thirty-some places, timing the trip so He arrived in Jerusalem at the time of the Passover. Not long before this, He had raised Lazarus from the dead, and that had created quite a stir in and around Jerusalem. More recently, He had healed blind Bartimaeus in Jericho, so now, wherever He went, large crowds followed Him. The religious authorities were nervous, and were plotting how they might get rid of Jesus, because His popularity was growing so fast. His arrival in Jerusalem, the holy city, at the time of this auspicious Feast of Passover, created a huge sense of anticipation that something significant was about to happen.

In order to understand what was going on that day when Jesus came to Jerusalem, we need to answer a few questions.

Up to this point, Jesus had done everything He could to discourage public demonstrations. He told people He healed not to say anything about it; He withdrew into more remote areas when the crowds got too large. But now, it is time. His hour has come, and He does something which may seem insignificant to us, but which was a powerful symbol to the people who lined the road to Jerusalem. He chose to ride into the city on a young donkey that had never been ridden before. We might think that a king should ride into town on a white stallion, but the choice of a donkey was very deliberate. Jesus is the greater Son of David, who will sit on David’s throne as King of Israel, and in David’s day, kings did ride on donkeys. Not long after that, they switched to horses, but Jesus is deliberately making a point of His identification as a son of David. Not only that, but over 500 years before this, Zechariah had prophesied that the Messiah would come riding on a donkey. Zech. 9:9

So Jesus is very consciously proclaiming Himself to be the Messiah. He’s not keeping His identity under wraps any more; it’s time to shout it to the world. The King is coming into His royal city.

All along the road, the people were shouting. It might even have been like some cheers at a game, where the people in front of Him shouted, “Hosanna!” and the ones behind Him shouted in response, “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!" [10] "Blessed is the coming kingdom of our father David!" And then the ones in the front shouted again, "Hosanna in the highest!"[1]

Hosanna is a Hebrew word that means “save”, which had become an expression of praise. So it was both a prayer, “Save / save us!” and a proclamation that Jesus was the Savior. You can just imagine the people lining the road into Jerusalem, waving tree branches, laying them down in the road, laying their cloaks down in the road for the donkey to walk on, as though to say, “We are yours; we put ourselves and all we have at your disposal.” And they are shouting: “Save! Save! Save! Save!” It was a pretty exuberant scene. I’m reasonably certain that the people did not fully understand the significance of that exclamation as it applied to Jesus; they were probably still thinking of Him saving them from Rome. But then, it was often the case in Scripture that people said things that were true without knowing just how true they were.

By the time Jesus got all the way into Jerusalem and went to the Temple, it was already pretty late in the day, so He went back out to Bethany with His disciples. Bethany is just about three miles from Jerusalem.

III. Why Did Jesus Clear the Temple?[2] Mark 11:15-19; see Leviticus 12:8; 14:22; 15:14

The next day, Monday, Jesus went back into the city, and when He got to the Temple, He found that the outer courts had been turned into a market of sorts. The temple area was divided into several different sections, and this was the outermost area. It was well outside the temple building itself, and Gentiles could come here to worship the God of the Jews if they liked. But in Jesus’ day, this outer area had become completely commercialized, much like the vendors that set up outside a large stadium event, hawking their wares.

First, there was money to be changed. Every Jew had to pay a temple tax of one half shekel per year. When Jews came to Jerusalem from other parts of the Roman Empire, as they did in droves for Passover and some other feasts, they typically brought with them money in the currency from their home country. But when they got to Jerusalem, they had to change that into the only currency that was accepted as the temple tax. So some enterprising men set up tables in the outer court of the temple to change the currency for them. It looked like they were just providing an important service for the worshipers, but of course, there was a fee for the service. That was one hit on the poor pilgrim’s pocketbook.

The other came when the worshiper wanted to make a sacrifice of a dove, as prescribed in Leviticus (12:8; 14:22; 15:14). Doves could be bought very cheaply outside the temple courts, but the law was clear that an animal sacrificed to the Lord had to be perfect in every way—no physical deformities or imperfections—and the temple inspectors were sure to find something wrong with any doves brought in from outside. They advised the pilgrims to buy their doves from the sellers in the Court of the Gentiles, where the doves might cost 25 times as much as outside. (It was interesting to me to learn this week that the sellers of doves and the money changers were all associated with the family of Annas, who had been High Priest, so there was a little graft going on there as well.)

But the commercialization of worship, and the gouging of the poor pilgrims, got to Jesus. He went on a rampage, wading in to the crowd, driving out the sellers and money changers; He tipped over their tables and scattered their coins and their doves. He yelled at the people who were bringing their wares into the court.

What brought all that on? Why was Jesus so upset? He explained as He ranted and railed at them: Mark 11:17, "Is it not written: 'My house will be called a house of prayer for all nations'? But you have made it 'a den of robbers.'" So one problem was that they had turned a place of worship and prayer into such a commercial activity. A more serious offense was that they were robbing the people who just wanted to worship, by charging such high prices for the temple currency and the doves for sacrifice. But more serious still was that fact that this was supposed to be a house of prayer for all nations. Remember, this was going on in the Court of the Gentiles, the place specifically designated for people of other nations to come and worship the God of the Jews. But nobody could pray or worship in that place with all the hubbub of commerce going on.

It seems to me that there is something significant in this phrase, “a house of prayer”. That was not the only purpose of the temple and its surrounding courts, because that was also where they offered sacrifices, but it was one of the main purposes. God loves us, and He loves it when we want to talk with Him. It honors Him when we bring Him our needs and requests, even in desperation, knowing that only He can help. It pleases Him when we take the time to tell Him how wonderful we think He is. And He loves it when we love Him enough to just want to share our lives and talk things over with Him in prayer.

So God designed a place in the temple for people to do that. I don’t know if you realize it, but you are welcome to come to the church and pray at any time. Talk to me after the service, and I’ll tell you how to get in here after hours. We have a prayer room set aside just outside the sanctuary, which is a nice, comfortable place to commune with God, but it’s in a bad location during the day with all the activity in the hallway and offices. (That’s why we want to move it with our proposed building expansion to a place that will be a little more out of the way.) But this room here is called the sanctuary. It’s not an auditorium, where you just listen; it is a sanctuary, a holy place, because the Holy God meets us here, and this is a great place to come and pray.

But more broadly, we want our entire church to be a house of prayer. We want prayer to be the driving force for all we do. Prayer is the way we should set our goals and priorities. Prayer is the way we should raise the resources we need. Prayer is the way we support each other in the trials of life.

I want to thank the 70+ of you who have signed up to be on my personal prayer team! Wow! That means so much to Barbie and me. I encourage many of you to sign up for Bill’s prayer team as well. We want him to be fantastically successful and he needs the direction and leading and support of God’s Spirit to do that.

And God bless you who come each Sunday afternoon at 5:00pm to pray for the church and our community and the world. Your faithfulness does not go unnoticed by the King. I encourage all of you to join us for that time when we learn what it means to pray, “Your kingdom come.”

And God bless the many of you who pray faithfully and earnestly in your small groups and in your families. Keep it up!

But I know that I could do more, and I think many of us would have to say that our prayer lives are not what we’d like them to be. We forget; we fall asleep praying; we lack faith; our prayers are so self-centered instead of kingdom-centered. So let me just encourage you to evaluate your prayer life in light of what Jesus says here. His house is to be a house of prayer. The Church—the people—us, we are now the house of God, and He wants our lives to be saturated in and empowered by our constant communication with Him. If you find that you could do better in this area, let me encourage you to use this coming season of Lent to really concentrate on improving your prayer life. Again, I think you will find that the Seek God for the City booklets will expand your prayers in directions you might not otherwise go, and they will all be consistent with God’s heart for our city.

The second half of that statement by Jesus is that His house is to be a house of prayer for all nations. This is a quote from Isaiah 56:7, and it may be another clue as to why Jesus was so angry. God wants all nations, all ethnic groups, to worship Him, but right there within sight of Jesus was a barrier beyond which no Gentile could go. Any non-Jew who tried to get past that into the Court of the Israelites would have been immediately killed. But the whole reason Jesus came to earth was to make a way for everyone, not just Jews, to come into a loving relationship with the Father. I’m thinking that when Jesus drove the people out of the temple area, He was thinking that one day very soon, it would be possible for all men, all women, all people of every nation to come to God through the sacrifice He was about to make. The ground is level at the foot of the cross, and we are all equal in God’s sight as we come to pray for mercy and salvation.

This church has a fantastic heart and vision for the nations of the world, and I am so grateful for that. Let’s keep working and praying and sending and giving so that there will be a house of prayer to the one true God in every ethnic group in the world.

The next morning, Jesus went back in to Jerusalem from Bethany where He was staying with Martha and Mary and Lazarus. He was walking in the temple courts, where He had thrown all the sellers and buyers out the day before, and the chief priests, the teachers of the Law, and the elders—in other words, the religious establishment—came up to Him and said, in effect, “Who do you think you are? Who gave you the right, the authority, to do these things? This is sacred ground; this is the temple of God. We are the ones who are in charge here, and we resent you taking over and ordering people around like you did yesterday.”

Mark 11:29, “Jesus replied, ‘I will ask you one question. Answer me, and I will tell you by what authority I am doing these things. [30] John's baptism--was it from heaven, or from men? Tell me!’” Why do you suppose this is the question Jesus asked them? He never said or did anything on impulse or randomly; He had a purpose for everything. It’s because He was answering their question with His, but they were too blind to see it. He asks them about John the Baptist, and where they think he got his authority, because Jesus got His authority from the same place, but the religious leaders treated John the same way they are treating Jesus. Just a couple of days before, Jesus had ridden a wave of public acclamation and praise into Jerusalem, riding on a donkey to symbolize His identity as the Messiah and the greater Son of David. He was saying as clearly as He could without coming right out and verbalizing it that He was the long-awaited-for King of Israel. The King has come, and He has the right to do whatever He wants with His kingdom and His servants. Where does Jesus get His authority? He has it as a commission from God Almighty.

So the leaders discussed it among themselves and said, Mark 11:31, "If we say, '[John’s authority came] From heaven,' he will ask, 'Then why didn't you believe him?' [32] But if we say, 'From men' . . . . (They feared the people, for everyone held that John really was a prophet.)”

They thought they had Jesus up against a wall, challenging His authority to order people around and clear the temple, but Jesus neatly turned the tables on them, and caught them in a trap. All the people believed John was a true prophet of God, but the leaders didn’t. If they say what they know the people standing there believe and want to hear, it will only highlight their own disregard of God’s prophet. But they can’t say what they really think, because the people would riot against them. Mark 11:33, “So they answered Jesus, ‘We don't know.’” Sounds just like us when we don’t want to say what we really think. Mark 11:33, “Jesus said, ‘Neither will I tell you by what authority I am doing these things.’” But in fact, He had already told them, because the answer to His question is the answer to their question. John’s authority and Jesus’ authority both came from the same place—from “heaven”, from God Himself.

Jesus is the King, and the King is coming. Advent is the season of the year when we focus on His coming; Lent is the time when we focus on why He came. He came for us. He came to take on Himself the punishment we deserve for our sins. He came to die in our place. How will we respond to Him?

Where are you in this story? Are you in the crowd, praising Him as Savior and Messiah, shouting, laughing, rejoicing that the King has come? Are you eager to welcome Him into your life, to give Him the authority and supremacy He deserves? Will you submit to His leadership, and make room for Him in your heart and your schedule?

Or are you more like the religious leaders, who question and challenge His authority? You’re happy to have Jesus as your Savior, but you are really not interested in Him as Lord. You just want to continue to do things your own way, rather than submitting to His way?

Or maybe you’re more like the sellers and money changers who just wish Jesus would stop interfering with your life. He gets in your way; He bothers you; He interrupts what you’re doing; you can’t have any fun with Him around, and you resent that.

I want to encourage each of us to use this season leading up to Easter as an opportunity for spiritual growth.

§ Some of you have been Christians for many years, even many decades, and you could be tempted to coast on what you already know and the habits and patterns of life you have already established. But I challenge you to continue growing. I’ve been a follower of Christ for 48 years now, but I don’t want to grow stale; I want to keep growing, pressing forward, learning, changing, falling more in love with Jesus every year. Philip. 3:12-14 NLT, “I don't mean to say that I have already achieved these things or that I have already reached perfection! But I keep working toward that day when I will finally be all that Christ Jesus saved me for and wants me to be. [13] No, dear brothers and sisters, I am still not all I should be, but I am focusing all my energies on this one thing: Forgetting the past and looking forward to what lies ahead, [14] I strain to reach the end of the race and receive the prize for which God, through Christ Jesus, is calling us up to heaven.”

§ Some of you are new to Christ; you have maybe only been a follower of His for a year or two. You need to grow like crazy so you can grow up in Christ. Don’t settle for having prayed the prayer; don’t stay a spiritual baby—press on to know Him better every day, to make Jesus Lord of your life, to submit to His authority as King. Study His Word, don’t just read it casually; learn to pray; find a way to serve Christ with the abilities He’s given you.

§ Some of you teens and children have simply borrowed your faith from your parents and Sunday School teachers and youth leaders. You need to press on to make it your own, to decide what you really believe, apart from your parents, to follow Christ Himself, not just a human teacher or leader.

It is just six weeks until Easter. Let’s all take the next six weeks and make every effort to grow in Christ. Here are some concrete things you can do to welcome the King to your life:

1. Fast from something that is important to you, as a way of saying to Jesus that He is more important than that to you. Give up a favorite food, or television, or time on the internet, or text-messaging, or IM-ing, or video games. If you tend to talk too much, make it a point to just be quiet in conversations. If you struggle with pride, say No to opportunities that come your way to feed that ego. What can you do to enter in to the sufferings of Jesus that will help you appreciate just a bit more what He suffered for you?

2. Be more consistent in your Quiet Times. I know I struggle with consistency here, and I’m sure many of you do, as well. Let’s make a covenant with God that we will spend time with Him every day between now and Easter, and see what it does for our sense of His presence and our delight in Him. The Seek God for the City booklet is a great way to help us be consistent, because each day is labeled. There is a good balance of Scripture, and prayers, and prayers for different things that will stretch your spiritual life.

3. Take a Spiritual Inventory, and let God search your heart. It was our sins that put Christ on the cross; let’s examine our lives and see just what it was in us that killed Him. I’ve put some of these on the Information Center counter.

4. Read a book or devotional guide for Lent. I recommend Reliving the Passion, by Walter Wangerin, which is based on the Gospel of Mark.

5. Find a time between now and Easter Sunday when you can get away and spend at least four hours alone with Jesus. Take your Bible, a notebook, some music to worship with, and a heart that is eager to fellowship with your Lord. If you’re not sure how to do that, come talk to me and I’ll give you some suggestions.

The bottom line is this: The King is coming! He has come into our world, and we have to choose how to respond to Him. Will we praise Him and pray to Him, or will we resist His kingly authority? Let’s make the next six weeks a time of intense spiritual growth, so that when Easter comes, we will really feel like celebrating!

[1] William L. Lane, The Gospel According to Mark (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1975), p.397. Referenced in R. Kent Hughes, Mark, vol.2, (Westchester, IL: Crossway Books, 1989), p.82.

[2] William Barclay, The Gospel of Mark (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1975), p.272ff. was helpful for the cultural background here.