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April 12/13, 2014
Jason Meyer | Matthew 21:1-17
Now when they drew near to Jerusalem and came to Bethphage, to the Mount of Olives, then Jesus sent two disciples, saying to them, “Go into the village in front of you, and immediately you will find a donkey tied, and a colt with her. Untie them and bring them to me. If anyone says anything to you, you shall say, ‘The Lord needs them,’ and he will send them at once.” This took place to fulfill what was spoken by the prophet, saying,
“Say to the daughter of Zion,
‘Behold, your king is coming to you,
humble, and mounted on a donkey,
on a colt, the foal of a beast of burden.’”
The disciples went and did as Jesus had directed them. They brought the donkey and the colt and put on them their cloaks, and he sat on them. Most of the crowd spread their cloaks on the road, and others cut branches from the trees and spread them on the road. And the crowds that went before him and that followed him were shouting, “Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest!” And when he entered Jerusalem, the whole city was stirred up, saying, “Who is this?” And the crowds said, “This is the prophet Jesus, from Nazareth of Galilee.”
And Jesus entered the temple and drove out all who sold and bought in the temple, and he overturned the tables of the money-changers and the seats of those who sold pigeons. He said to them, “It is written, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer,’ but you make it a den of robbers.”
And the blind and the lame came to him in the temple, and he healed them. But when the chief priests and the scribes saw the wonderful things that he did, and the children crying out in the temple, “Hosanna to the Son of David!” they were indignant, and they said to him, “Do you hear what these are saying?” And Jesus said to them, “Yes; have you never read,
“‘Out of the mouth of infants and nursing babies
you have prepared praise’?”
And leaving them, he went out of the city to Bethany and lodged there.—Matthew 21:1–17
Introduction
Last week we saw that Paul’s pioneer passion was to see Christ named where he had never been named. He didn’t want Jesus’s name to make a mere appearance in a language—like just one name among other names that would appear in a phone book or a baby book. His name was not to be one name among other names, but the name above every other name! This was his pioneer passion. The name above every name in every language of every nation!
If we share that pioneer passion, then we as senders will live a certain way so that we can send our global partners all the way, not halfway. Here is the image that the Lord gave me last Sunday. Wartime living must result in wartime giving so that our supply lines keep up with our spreading. We need our senders to catch a pioneer passion so that they will be faithful rope holders. If we are living in the ditch of over-indulgence, the following is what is going to happen. Here we are saying to loved ones in our church family, “You go into that dark mining shaft to rescue the perishing, and we will hold the ropes.” Meanwhile we start looking around and we see all the things we think we need to be happy. When we start over-indulging and over-reaching, we let go of the rope. We can’t afford to let go of the loved ones on the end of the rope! By saying “yes” to too many good things, we will in effect be saying “no” to the greatest cause of spreading the gospel.
This week is also a sermon on worship. Palm Sunday is all about worship. I love the line of the song:
Hosanna, loud Hosanna, the little children sang.
Through pillared courts and temple the lovely anthem rang.
To Jesus who had blessed them, close folded to his breast,
The children sang their praises, the simplest and the best.
Here is the point: Pure praise is childlike praise. Palm Sunday is about childlike praise. We saw in Matthew 19 that the kingdom of heaven belongs to those who are childlike. Did you catch that? The citizens of heaven are childlike. So it should come as no surprise to find children praising Jesus on Palm Sunday. It is also not a surprise that this worship has scandalized the Pharisees. They want Jesus to put a stop to this childlike praise.
We see three aspects of praise in Matthew 21: 1) poisoned praise (vv. 12–13), 2) pure praise (vv. 14–16a), and 3) prepared praise (v. 16b). My prayer is that Jesus will come to us this Palm Sunday and purify our praise.
And Jesus entered the temple and drove out all who sold and bought in the temple, and he overturned the tables of the money-changers and the seats of those who sold pigeons. He said to them, “It is written, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer,’ but you make it a den of robbers.”
Jesus condemned the false praise he saw all around him. Remember that the crowds had just sung praises to him and acclaimed him as the Son of David. But this same crowd would later cry, “Crucify him.” The praise of the crowds on this day would be contradicted by the outcry for his death only days later. On this occasion, Jesus did not comment on the crowd’s praise. The narrator takes us right to the temple. Jesus has plenty to say there about temple worship.
Jesus performed an action and then gave an interpretation. We will look at them both. First, he overturned the tables of the money-changers. Some assume that he is attacking unjust business practices. But once you read the verse again you will see why that is not true. “And Jesus entered the temple and drove out all who sold and bought in the temple, and he overturned the tables of the money-changers and the seats of those who sold pigeons” (Matthew 21:12).
Notice that Jesus throws out both the sellers and the buyers. Why did Jesus not want buying and selling? What was the purpose of these tables and the buying and selling? The tables were set up to receive the annual half-shekel tax that was required of every Jewish male which funded the daily sacrifices in the temple for the atonement of sin. Do you see what this means? The temple sacrifices would be brought to a screeching halt!
One Jewish scholar, Jacob Neusner, catches what was going on here. This was not a mere reform of the temple:
Only someone who rejected the Torah’s explicit teaching concerning the daily offering could have overturned the tables—or…someone who had in mind setting up a different table, and for a different purpose: for the action carries the entire message, both negative and positive. Indeed, the money-changers presence made possible the cultic participation of every Israelite, and it was not a blemish on the cult but its perfection.
In Mark's gospel, he even adds that Jesus did not allow anyone to carry anything through the temple (Mark 11:16). David Garland comments on the meaning of all of these prohibitions: “If money cannot be exchanged into the holy currency, then monetary support for the temple sacrifices and the priesthood must end. If sacrificial animals cannot be purchased, then sacrifice must end. If no vessel can be carried through the temple, then all cultic activity must cease” (Zondervan Illustrated Bible Backgrounds Commentary).
We see the same thing this year in Matthew that we saw last year in Mark. Jesus is not cleansing the temple—he is cursing it because he is going to replace it. Both Mark and Matthew connect what Jesus did with the fig tree (Matthew 21:18–19; Mark 11:12–14, 20–21) with what Jesus does in the temple (Matthew 21:12–13; Mark 11:15–19). Jesus did not cleanse the fig tree so that it became more fruitful; he cursed it and it withered. The curse was, “May no fruit ever come from you again” (Matthew 21:19).
Why would Jesus do this? He curses it because they have corrupted it. They have poisoned the praise. How? The next verse tells us, “He said to them, ‘It is written, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer,’ but you make it a den of robbers” (Matthew 21:13).
Jesus quotes from two texts: Isaiah 56 and Jeremiah 7.
First, Isaiah stresses that God is going to save the nations.
Thus says the LORD:
“Keep justice, and do righteousness,
for soon my salvation will come,
and my righteousness be revealed.
Let not the foreigner who has joined himself to the LORD say,
“The LORD will surely separate me from his people”;
and let not the eunuch say,
“Behold, I am a dry tree.”
For thus says the LORD:
“To the eunuchs who keep my Sabbaths,
who choose the things that please me
and hold fast my covenant,
I will give in my house and within my walls
a monument and a name
better than sons and daughters;
I will give them an everlasting name
that shall not be cut off.
“And the foreigners who join themselves to the LORD,
to minister to him, to love the name of the LORD,
and to be his servants,
everyone who keeps the Sabbath and does not profane it,
and holds fast my covenant—
these I will bring to my holy mountain,
and make them joyful in my house of prayer;
their burnt offerings and their sacrifices
will be accepted on my altar;
for my house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples.”
—Isaiah 56:2–7
Notice that Isaiah 56 says salvation has come to those typically thought to be excluded: foreigners, eunuchs, and the outcasts of Israel (v. 8). Eunuchs are important as a reference here because according to Deuteronomy 23:1, they were not allowed to enter the temple. It even looks like foreigners will be ministers “to minister to him, to love the name of the LORD, and to be his servants” (Isaiah 56:6). The priests were able to go even further into the temple than Jewish males. The barriers will fall someday indeed!
Why does Jesus add that the temple has been made into a “den of robbers?” We have to look at the context of Jeremiah 7. The people in Jeremiah’s day are treating the temple like a lucky charm. They are trusting in a ritual. There is no heart change. They are going through the motions in order to stay safe. They are not seeking God in worship at the temple; they are hiding from him in the temple.
The word that came to Jeremiah from the LORD: “Stand in the gate of the LORD’s house, and proclaim there this word, and say, Hear the word of the LORD, all you men of Judah who enter these gates to worship the LORD. Thus says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel: Amend your ways and your deeds, and I will let you dwell in this place. Do not trust in these deceptive words: ‘This is the temple of the LORD, the temple of the LORD, the temple of the LORD.’
“For if you truly amend your ways and your deeds, if you truly execute justice one with another, if you do not oppress the sojourner, the fatherless, or the widow, or shed innocent blood in this place, and if you do not go after other gods to your own harm, then I will let you dwell in this place, in the land that I gave of old to your fathers forever.
“Behold, you trust in deceptive words to no avail. Will you steal, murder, commit adultery, swear falsely, make offerings to Baal, and go after other gods that you have not known, and then come and stand before me in this house, which is called by my name, and say, ‘We are delivered!’—only to go on doing all these abominations? Has this house, which is called by my name, become a den of robbers in your eyes? Behold, I myself have seen it, declares the LORD.—Jeremiah 7:1–11
In other words, the people were not seeking God; they were hiding from God. They were like the robbers that came into Jerusalem to steal and then hid from the authorities in a den or a cave. Here they were hiding from God in the temple as a place where they did not believe God would judge them. So what is God going to do to the temple? Look at verses 12–15 of Jeremiah 7:
Go now to my place that was in Shiloh, where I made my name dwell at first, and see what I did to it because of the evil of my people Israel. And now, because you have done all these things, declares the LORD, and when I spoke to you persistently you did not listen, and when I called you, you did not answer, therefore I will do to the house that is called by my name, and in which you trust, and to the place that I gave to you and to your fathers, as I did to Shiloh. And I will cast you out of my sight, as I cast out all your kinsmen, all the offspring of Ephraim.
They are like the kids playing tag that claim they have found a safe place—a kind of home base that allows you to not be tagged. You can even stick your tongue out at your “tagger” because you are safe there. They are not being childlike; they are being childish. God’s children do not praise him in this fake kind of way.
And the blind and the lame came to him in the temple, and he healed them. But when the chief priests and the scribes saw the wonderful things that he did, and the children crying out in the temple, “Hosanna to the Son of David!” they were indignant, and they said to him, “Do you hear what these are saying?”
The Pharisees were not excited about Jesus’s healing of the blind and the lame. The narrator tells us how out of touch the Pharisees were. The chief priests and the scribes saw the “wonderful things that he did,” but they did not respond with worship at the wonders. By way of contrast, the little ones saw the wonderful things as wonderful. They weren’t too proud to celebrate them. The Pharisees seem to be especially offended by the praise of the children. They were crying out “Hosanna to the Son of David.”
Matthew tells us that the Pharisees were “indignant” (v. 15). The fact that the Pharisees were indignant about praise that is pure shows how impure their hearts were. The Pharisees made the same mistake we saw the disciples made in Matthew 19 when the disciples thought that children were not valuable and would be a waste of Jesus’s time. The Pharisees were offended by the children’s praise even though Jesus was pleased.
It shows how far off the Pharisees were from pure praise. Jesus tells us that they “worshiped with their lips but their hearts were far from him” (Matthew 15:8). They were hypocrites. In the ancient world, the word “hypocrite” was like our word “actor.” We don’t regard actors as hypocrites because we know that they are pretending to be someone else. But Jesus applied that word to the Pharisees because they were not pretending for a stage play, but in real life. They were pretending to be people that they were not.
The children were not pretending. They were genuinely praising. But why? How do we know that Jesus regarded the children’s praise as pleasing and pure? He tells us in the next part of the verse.
And Jesus said to them, “Yes; l have you never read, “‘Out of the mouth of infants and nursing babies you have prepared praise’?”
Jesus quotes exactly from the Greek translation of the Old Testament in Psalm 8, “O LORD, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth! You have set your glory above the heavens. Out of the mouth of babies and infants you have prepared praise” (Matthew 21:16; cf. Psalm 8:1–2).
It is the same as the Hebrew text except for one word: strength. The Hebrew says, “You have established strength because of your foes, to still the enemy and the avenger” (Psalm 8:2).
I think the Greek text is clarifying the Hebrew text. How can “out of the mouth of babies and infants” establish strength that stills or shuts up the enemy and the avenger? I think the point is this: The sound of the children praising sounds the death knell of Jesus’s opponents. Weak children put to shame these opponents who thought they were so powerful.
The Lord has ordained praise from children. They are actually praising the name of Jesus and calling out to him as the Messiah. It fits the first verse of Psalm 8. “O LORD, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth” (v. 1). Jesus’s name is majestic and glorious and wonderful. He is the promised Messiah. The Pharisees are saying that their praise is a waste of breath. These windbags are using their breath to poison pure praise. They are calling bad what God calls good. The proud Pharisees are defeated by the praise of little children.
This strikes the chord of a major theme in Matthew. We are like the little children here. God is pleased with the praise of his little children (Christians) because he prepared us for it. He ordained it and intervened to accomplish it. He gives us the breath to sing and he provides us with a reason to sing.
Conclusion
There are only two types of people: children of wrath and children of God. Matthew 11 shows us the difference.
“But to what shall I compare this generation? It is like children sitting in the marketplaces and calling to their playmates, ‘We played the flute for you, and you did not dance; we sang a dirge, and you did not mourn.’”—Matthew 11:16–17
In Jesus’s time, the children didn’t have closets full of toys. Two of their favorite games were the wedding game and the funeral game. That is what Jesus is saying. The children called to them and said, “Let’s play the wedding game.” “No, I don’t wanna play.” “Ok, let’s play the other game. Let’s play the funeral game.” “No, I don’t wanna play.” Who called to them to play the funeral game? Who called to them to respond to the wedding game?
“For John came neither eating nor drinking, and they say, ‘He has a demon.’ The Son of Man came eating and drinking, and they say, ‘Look at him! A glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners!’ Yet wisdom is justified by her deeds.”—Matthew 11:18–19
The Pharisees were like children who were impossible to please! Nothing God gave them was enough. Jesus began to pronounce woe on them as children of wrath.
Then he began to denounce the cities where most of his mighty works had been done, because they did not repent. “Woe to you, Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida! For if the mighty works done in you had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes. But I tell you, it will be more bearable on the day of judgment for Tyre and Sidon than for you. And you, Capernaum, will you be exalted to heaven? You will be brought down to Hades. For if the mighty works done in you had been done in Sodom, it would have remained until this day. But I tell you that it will be more tolerable on the day of judgment for the land of Sodom than for you.”—Matthew 11:20–24
How does someone become a child of God and start singing God’s praises? Jesus delights in the way that his Father brings this about.
At that time Jesus declared, “I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that you have hidden these things from the wise and understanding and revealed them to little children; yes, Father, for such was your gracious will. All things have been handed over to me by my Father, and no one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him."
So come to Christ. You might respond and say, “How can you bring up God’s sovereignty in choosing us and then ask us to choose him?" Because I keep reading.
“Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”—Matthew 11:28–30
Wait a minute. How do you reconcile those two sets of verses? God chooses us and we are called to choose him. Charles Spurgeon said it just right: You do not need to reconcile friends. They are not at odds. Yes, come to Christ. I call you and I urge you and I plead with you. But I know that no one will come unless God does the revealing. God’s sovereignty does not restrain the coming of his children; his sovereignty compels the coming of his children. Children of God are like baby chicks that run to their parent when there is danger. When God reveals himself as Father through Christ the Savior, we run to him. He is our only refuge, our only source of safety. And I call you to praise. Come and worship him with the breath he gives and the reasons he has given you to sing. God has opened your eyes to see so that you can savor him and sing to him.
The term “little children” stresses our weakness and dependence, but don’t miss the obvious fact that it also stresses God’s affection for us. It is a term of endearment. “My little child, my dear sweet child.” Isn’t it astonishing that God would care about us that way? As John says, “See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are” (1 John 3:1).
It is almost as if John jumps out of the chair. This is such lavish love to be called a child of God. And that is what we really are. Really. I am serious. Can you believe it?! “And so we are!”
Sometimes I will sing to my daughter Allie at night after giving her a blessing. I know that she loves it, but I think I might enjoy it even more. I love the smile that washes over her as I sing: “You are so beautiful to me, can’t you see. You are so beautiful to me.”
Growing up, you may not have had a father that sang over you at night. If you are a Christian, you do now. Your perfect heavenly Father can and will heal any wounds that your earthly father gave you. One day he is going to make all things new. The best part of being a child of God is not our singing to him, but his singing to us. God sings a song over his children. Listen to the awesome promise in Zephaniah:
On that day it shall be said to Jerusalem:
“Fear not, O Zion;
let not your hands grow weak.
The LORD your God is in your midst,
a mighty one who will save;
he will rejoice over you with gladness;
he will quiet you by his love;
he will exult over you with loud singing.”—Zephaniah 3:16–17
He is the mighty one; we are the little ones. He saves us. He rejoices over us. What does God sing? He sings his promises over us. How could the Bible be boring? As you read the word, memorize the word, and meditate on the word, you will hear more of the song. Do you hear it? Do you hear it today? Let it melt your heart with love.
The question now comes down to the heart. How can we refuse to sing when we hear him singing over us? Or will you see that he has given you every reason to sing and indeed to shout—a spontaneous outburst of praise, because you cannot hold it in? The fact that he shouts over us makes us want to shout to him.
Closing Song: "When I Think About the Lord"
Discussion Questions