B (10:56)
And at one thing is dying in my life and bringing me sorrow. At the same time, something is being birthed in my life, bringing me joy. And is this not the Christian life? How in many seasons we hold joy and sorrow in the same hands. We hold trouble and mountaintops in the same hands. And I'm wrestling with the sorrow of my father. And I recall this week how my father, man, said one final thing to me before he died. He made me a promise that I would not forget it. He promised me. He said, promise me, son, that no matter what happens to me, you will keep this prayer gathering that we do every week. We had this small gathering in my parents home that we did every Wednesday night for one hour called access. And it would just be my parents and myself and a few people from the ministry. And we would gather in my parents home and we would pray for one hour. And we hijacked that from the book of Acts when the two disciples went up to the temple for the hour of prayer. And my father made me promise him in his final days not to let that thing fall to the floor, but to keep access going, to keep that prayer gathering going. And that's why after 12 years in my ministry, we still keep access going. We still do that hour of prayer after 12 years. And I thought about how my father never got a chance to see what his son would become for our ministry. Started in October. He transitioned to glory in December. He died on a Saturday and had to get up and preach on a Sunday. But to this day, I honored his request. Why? Because his final words were very important to me. In the same way for those of us who truly love the Lord Jesus Christ and that we have an affinity for him in our hearts. Hear me. And we adore him in our hearts. Hear me. In the same way, we who love the Lord Jesus Christ should take very seriously his final words and his final actions. So when the Lord said to us his final ministry instruction, all authority in heaven and Earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, ethos of all people groups. That was his final instruction to the church. So we're going to be serious about the Lord's business that it does not matter if we do conferences or podcasts or write books or even do church. If we're disconnected from his final instructions, we are wasting our time as the body of Christ. And since that was the final thing he told us to do, man, the people of God should take that serious. Hear me. But not only his final instructions. Listen to me. But also his final grievances. We should take serious. The things that made him angry, the things that made him frustrated, the final things that pissed him off, we should take very seriously, hear me. The final grievances of the Lord Jesus Christ. That what we have in Matthew, From Matthew chapter one to Matthew chapter 20, we have three years of the life of Christ. But in Matthew 21, until Matthew 28, we have the final days of the life of Christ. And in his final days, we should not only take his final words serious, we'll get to the Great Commission, Hear me. But if we love him, listen, we should take his final grievances. That is the thing that made him the most upset. We should take that serious just the same. This is the drama, and this is the grievance at the center of our text. One of the most important texts in this final life of Jesus, one of the most important texts in these final chapters of Matthew. You recall from last week, I taught you that Jesus is walking from northern Israel all the way down to Jerusalem in the south. You remember that? You recall that he traveled with his disciples a hundred miles from the north to Jerusalem in the south. You remember that? You remember that? Right outside of Jerusalem, about a mile before he entered the city, he stopped in a suburb called Bethphage. You remember that? You remember? Instead of walking the last mile, he gives a command to his followers, go get this donkey that's tied and bring it to me. You remember that? You remember that? He did that to fulfill scripture that was written in Zechariah, chapter 9. And that he spent that last mile riding on that donkey, coming to them as the King of peace. You remember that? You remember? As he came into the city, the people on the outside of the walls were shouting, hosanna, Hosanna. Hosanna in the highest, which is a declaration of who he is, his messianic self. They're shouting, hosanna to the Son of David. Hosanna to the Son of God. You Remember that? And you remember when he entered into the city, that the whole city was stirred up. The whole city was in an uproar. You remember that? And then right after Matthew writes that Jesus entered the city, the very next thing that Matthew records is right here in chapter 21 and verse 12, Matthew writes, and Jesus entered the temple and he drove out all who sold and bought in the temple. Look, this is savage. Jesus, this is angry. Jesus, this is serious. Jesus, this is not. Now he lay me down to sleep. Jesus. This is not Jesus in a manger. This is not meek and gentle, this little child. No, Jesus, this is furious Jesus, man, God forbid, the Lord was alive in our generation where every fool has an opinion because of social media, that if the Lord was alive and did something like this, right now, man, they'll be saying all kind of nonsense about him in the comments, but let any of his representatives behave the same way. And you persecute them on social media because you don't read. You love sermons, but you don't like scripture. So you have no knowledge that the Lord acted like this in his ministry, but let somebody like this act like that. Now they show you too over the top. You too. You too aggressive, man. You too harsh. You too this, you too. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, man. Praise God for social media, man, that technology allows us for the proliferation and the spread of the gospel. But man has given a platform for fools to have a voice. So the Lord goes into the temple. Watch the text. And he overturned the tables. Watch the text of the money changers and the seats of those who sold pigeons. Now everybody pause. Now, if you just read Matthew's account with a cursory eyes, he would make it seem to the reader that as soon as Jesus entered the city, he automatically went to the temple. But Mark, another Gospel writer who was not an immediate follower of Christ, but was a disciple of Peter, he makes the same account, but gives us a detail in his account that Matthew omits. So in Mark, chapter 11 and verse 11, listen to what Mark says. About the same moment he says, and he, that is Jesus Christ, when he entered Jerusalem and went into the temple. Watch this. And when he had looked around at everything, the Lord comes into the city, he goes straight to the temple. And then Mark writes, he looked around at everything as it was already late, he went out of the city back to Bethany with the 12 important detail in the text, that the Lord comes into Jerusalem on what is believed to be a Sunday. On that Sunday afternoon, he goes straight to the temple. He surveys everything that's happening in the temple. Then he leaves and he goes back to Bethany, a suburb, for the night. So what the Lord does. Listen. He comes into the city. Pay attention. And the first place he goes is to the house of God. Watch. He comes into the city and the first place he goes is to where the people of God gather. Watch. He comes into the city and the first thing he's concerned about is the spiritual condition of his people. He doesn't go straight to a restaurant. He doesn't go to the mall. He comes into the city and his primary concern is the spiritual condition of God's people. He comes into Jerusalem. He goes straight there. Watch this. And then he goes home for the night. Watch. He has time to meditate on what he saw. He has time to think about what he saw. And as he sat all night and probably thought about what he saw and meditated on what he saw and thought in his heart about what he saw, what does he do? Now Matthew tells us he comes back on Monday. Watch. With righteous indignation in his heart. He comes back with. Watch this word holy anger in his heart. And he goes back to the temple and he drives out the money changers. He drives out those who are selling. He drives out those abundant. What is he? He's mad and furious about what he sees is a glorified flea market inside the temple. An idolatrous flea market inside the temple. The Lord saw one night. He went and he thought about it. He meditated. And then what came up in his heart as he saw and thought about what he saw was righteous indignation. He comes back. Watch. And he disrupts everything in the temple. He disrupts the status quo. He does not see and stay quiet. He does not see and do nothing. He does not go down his feeds, see and do nothing. Man. He responded to this crap with disruptive behavior. With disruptive action. He comes and he turns everything upside down. Where in the temple? Watch. The place that was the house of God. Pay attention. The place that was supposed to be set apart for worship and proclamation. Watch. The place that was consecrated to be holy. But now what he sees as a flea market inside the house of God. Why is the Lord vexed, man? Because according to history, it is the priest that is responsible for that flea market. And what was happening in that flea market. Now everybody pay attention. This is happening during the feast of Passover. Watch this. Pay attention. And during the feast of Passover, all the Jewish families had to sacrifice a lamb. I told you last week, 250,000 sacrificed. Now, if you had to sacrifice a lamb. You went to the temple, and then you had to purchase your lamb to be sacrificed. And since the temple did not take Roman money, you had to go to the money changers. Watch. To exchange your Roman money for temple money. And then you would take that temple money and buy your lamb. But because the priests, or watch this, the pastors of the day, were morally corrupt, they would jack up the price on these animals with great interest. Watch. To fleece God's people from their money. See, this is like you buying a cheeseburger outside of the airport for $5. And then you get behind TSA and it's 25 for a burger. This is. You gotta pour out your two dollar water at TSA checkpoint. And then you get behind TSA and it's fifteen dollars for a bottle of water. They gonna fleece you because they got you. You have no other option but to be fleeced. And then for families who came to Jerusalem with their own animals, they had inspectors at the temple. So they would inspect your creature and if they found anything on your animal that was a blemish, would say, this animal is not credible. You got to buy one of our animals. And so what we see happening in the market is a fleecing of God's people, right? This ain't new behavior. But your $1,000 line and your $50 line and your $100 line. And I feel like the Holy Spirit is saying to me, there's 25 people in here that need to bring me $40,000. Oh, I thought at least the black people knew about that. Fleecing God's people. Line up everybody and bring me a thousand dollars right now and lay that. Listen, this ain't new behavior. This is the priests who set up the market. Fleecing God's people, raping God's people. People exact an interest from them. Why? To pad their own pockets. Profit working for profit. Prophets preaching for profit, fleecing God's people. And the Lord is mad about this. So watch. When he sees the corruption in the temple, man, he comes the next day on Monday, man. And he comes in there, he disrupt that market. He drives out the money changers, he drives out the sellers. He turns over the tables. He is angry, he is broken, he is frustrated. He surveys, he sees. He's full of zeal. Now watch. He should be, because this ain't the first time he's had to do this. John, chapter 12. No, John, chapter two. You read your Bible, Elder Milton. John, chapter two. Watch. This is at the beginning of his ministry. Verse 13 the Passover of the Jews was at hand. And Jesus went up to Jerusalem and in the temple he found those watch who were selling oxen in the temple watch and sheep and pigeons and money changers. And they were sitting there and he made a whip with cords. Yeah, why don't you. Yeah, post that on your social media. He made a whip with cords and he what? He drove them out. That's what he did. He was in there driving them out is what he did. He made a whip with cores and he drove them out. He. He's driving them out. He's beating them on their back. He's telling them, get out of the temple. Watch. Yeah, imagine having Jesus on your phone doing that. And you post that to social media. They going to say, oh, he too over the top. He too wild and crazy. What kind of behavior is that for a man of God inside the church? The Lord wouldn't even survive in the culture we live in right now where every fool has an opinion about every man or woman of God. Right? But let somebody behave the same way. Let a real minister drive out nonsense from a church and they say, oh, that minister is over the top. That minister is too aggressive. That minister got a big mouth. We talk like that because we have not read. So we full of sermons, but not full of scriptures. The Lord has a cord in his hand. Pay attention. It's like me taking over the belt and beating people in the room and saying, get out. Get out of the gathering. Get out. Do you know what kind of hate I would get in the comments if somebody had me doing that? Right? And we get hate because you don't read and he drives them out. He said, take these things away and do not make my father's house a house of trade. His disciples remembered that it was written, zeal for your house will consume me. The Lord is fulfilling scripture right here. Watch. He cleanses the temple in the beginning of his ministry, and now he comes back and cleanses the temple at the end of his ministry. Watch. The Lord sees. He's frustrated, he's angry. He surveys what's going on. Watch. He does something about it. Shouldn't we not do the same family? Come on, man, I'm serious. Don't play around with me. Shouldn't we not do the same? How do we say we love the Lord but we turn a blind eye to the foolishness in the church, the foolishness of pastors, the foolishness of spiritual leaders. You see us doing foolishness and you don't hold us accountable. You don't Say anything. You keep showing up, you keep giving, man. How do you see all of this mess and it not break your heart? How do you see transvestite pastors and it not break your heart? How do you see drag queen pastors and it not break your heart? How do you see the government try to redefine marriage and it not break your heart? If you don't care about the nonsense in the church, if we're not broken, about who's going to fix all of that? And God forbid any real woman of God, there's one right there, or any real man of God stand up and say anything about the foolishness in the church. They want to crucify you, they want to cancel you. They want to not invite you. They think you're over the top. No, you too lukewarm. What are we talking about? That's the problem with America right now. We made lukewarm Christianity, normal Christianity. And then we keep having all these services you call revival with no power, no presence of the spirit spirit, no souls being saved, no lives being changed. We keep talking like we got it and we don't have it at all. Meanwhile, there's revival in South America and revival in Africa. And, man, we watching for revival in America. But we don't like repentance. We don't like gospel preaching, we don't like conviction. We don't want to deal with sin. I'm getting sick and tired of us. Keep taking the word revival, smacking it on a service, and the church remains dead. Our sermons are dead. Our conferences are dead. Our podcasts are dead. Our books are dead. Our preaching is dead. We need to be awakened. Should it not be on us? Watch this. Watch the body of Christ. To not see foolishness in the church and be grieved in our heart. If the body is connected to the head, how do we not feel what the head feels? How do we not have the same righteous indignation? How do we not have the same anger? Because we do. Church disconnected from the head. Too much church, not enough Christ. Too much preaching, not enough Christ. Too many podcasts, not enough Christ. Too many books, not enough Christ. Too many programs, not enough Christ. We have a whole body disconnected from the head when we should feel what he felt. Look at me, man. Look at me. We should be grieved over what grieved him. We should feel his pain. We should feel his indignation. Pray that if it's not in there, Lord, let me love what you love. Watch I pray this every day. And let me hate what you Hate. Watch. Starting with me. First my heart. First my darkness, first my sin. First let me hate it. You want to be gangsta? Pray that. You want to be thugged out? Pray that, Lord, let me love what you love and give me eyes to hate what you hate. Then you'll be going like this and your heart will grieve. You'll be going like this. You'll shed a tear. You'll be going like this and you will get angry. Let's go deeper. You'll be going like this. And you say, oh, Lord, you get down and you pray. Watch. And what is the source of his frustration? Matthew tells us in the next verse 13 why is the Lord mad? He said to them, it is written, my house shall be called the house of prayer. But you, you corrupt preachers have made it a den of robbers. Now, I want to draw your attention to three things in this verse, and I'm going to move really quickly. First, I want to draw your attention to the words. It is written. You know why the Lord is upset? Because he knows what's in the word of God. And because he knows the Lord's standards and he sees the corruption in the temple. He's grieved because he knows what is in there is disconnected from what he sees. Shouldn't we be that way? We should read and be burned. We should be reading and upset. We should be reading and awakened. See, some of us, we read it. Either we either we don't read or we read and we don't care. And listen to me carefully, man. Listen. This is why I keep telling y'all, stop listening to everything we say and stop believing me every time I'm up here. Why don't you go behind us and read for yourself? Stop believing everything we say. Why don't you go home when the sermon is done and open up the Scriptures and read for yourself, man. I challenge all of you. Homework for the week. Pick one letter from the New Testament, a short one that you could do in 20 minutes. Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, Galatians, Jude, Philippines. First John, read it in 15 minutes and then come up for air. And then listen and tell me if it sounds like American preaching. Does it sound like the sermons we hear every week? Just do your. Do it for yourself. Just read one small book. Fifteen minutes. Just read it and then come up and say, does it sound like anything I'm hearing in the culture? Watch. We should read and be burned. Read and be stirred. Read greed and be angry. Watch. The Lord is mad because it is written and then watch what he says. He says, what is written? My house shall be called a house of prayer. He's quoting Isaiah 56, the word of God. He said, but you have made it a den of robbers. He's quoting Jeremiah 7, the word of God. So he quotes two verses of Scripture to them. Isaiah 50:6, Jeremiah 7. My house should be a house of prayer. You've made an ident of thieves. He's mad because he sees the drift in the culture from the word of God. He sees the drift from the priests from the word of God. And the Lord is mad. He said, watch. My house should be a house of prayer. That the Lord said it shouldn't be a market, it shouldn't be a platform to showcase talent. It shouldn't be a place for worldliness. It shouldn't be a place for corruption. He said, my house will be a house of prayer. Watch. And if a house is a house of prayer, he said every church, every gathering, his house where people are should be a placement that they prioritize God. They are dependent on God so that everything flows out of the dependence man. Community flows out of prayer and worship flows out of prayer and proclamation flows out of prayer and outreach flows out of prayer. We are praying and being intimate and everything is flowing out of that. So ministry flows out of intimacy with God. He said his house will be a house of prayer. Not a house of commerce, not a house of corruption, not a house to showcase talent, a house of prayer. And what Jesus does here in this second act in the city watch. He reminds everybody in Jerusalem that God's house will be a house of intimacy with him through prayer. That's just like wife watch. This fall, while we're going to remind the whole city of Atlanta that God's house is going to be a house of prayer when we take over State Farm arena for access Watch. I said in October of this year we gonna take over State Farm arena for prayer. You ain't heard me. 20,000 of us local discip digital disciples packed in to State Farm arena crying out to God in prayer, crying out for our families, crying out for the nations, crying out for souls, crying out for the world. Watch. And when we take over that arena, we ain't taking over that arena with no celebrities on the platform. The only celebrity that's going to be on the platform that day is going to be the Lord Jesus. Now just imagine what's going to happen in October this year when 20,000 digital disciples and local disciples are pound in heaven all at the same time. Signs Wonders, miracles, healing. The city is going to shift in the name of Jesus. Somebody give him praise in this house right now. Hallelujah. They could keep talking junk all they want. We're going to be serious about the Lord's business. October this year, 20,000 of US State Farm arena for access. As we cry out to the God who has never let us down, the God who has never failed, the God that hears our prayers, the God that moves on our behalf, the God that performs miracles. They gonna remember the day a church took over arena for nothing else except pray. Get a venue, put a celebrity on a platform. Everybody come get a venue. Put a worship artist on the platform. Everybody come call a prayer gathering. We're going to remind the whole city this is what the Lord intended for his house, that his house would be a house. Somebody shout prayer. Somebody give him praise right there.