Sunday Morning April 16, 2000 Bel Aire Baptist Church, Hobbs NM
THE DAY JESUS GOT MAD
MARK 11:15-18
Introduction:
1. I have included in the sermon notes today a chart that lists the events that took
place the last week of Jesus’ life here on earth and His resurrection.
a. The event you see on the chart that took place the Sunday before Jesus’
resurrection is what we call Palm Sunday.
b. Palm Sunday was the day that Jesus made His triumphal entry and all
seemed well.
c. Many of us are familiar with this story, but if you look on the chart you
see what Jesus did on the next day.
d. We are also familiar with our text today, but many times we do not
recognize the timing of this event.
2. Like most Christians, I love the mental picture of Jesus the Good Shepherd
putting the lamb on His shoulders and carrying it to safety.
a. I love the soft image of the Baby in the manger.
b. I love the story about Christ feeding the hungry multitudes with bread and
fish.
c. When I think about Jesus dying on the cross to pay for my sin, I’m deeply
moved.
d. I marvel at the sight of Him bursting out of the tomb, alive on Resurrection
morning.
3. But there is one picture of Jesus that frankly, doesn’t seem to fit.
a. It is so stunning I wonder why God would even put it in the Bible... not
once, but twice.
b. The second account is in Mark 11:15-18 which is our text this morning.
c. Let’s read our text together.
4. The twelve disciples were no doubt just as stunned as the crowd; nothing is said
about their helping their Master clean house.
a. All by Himself Jesus started pitching over the tables, blocking people who
were carrying things, and saying, "Get out of here with that! You can’t bring
that through the courts."
b. He stormed over to the merchants of oxen and sheep and doves, saying,
"Out! Get your business out of here!"
5. What happened to the loving Jesus?
a. Anyone who gets that irate and physical surely must not be walking in the
Spirit, right?
b. But this was Jesus Christ.
c. In fact, the first time He did this a couple of years before, He even made a
whip out of cords.
d. He was physically thrashing people out of the temple!
6. What made God’s Son so angry?
a. His house was being prostituted for purposes other than what was
intended.
7. As the feathers were flying and the coins were clattering to the pavement and the
businessmen were shouting for the police, Jesus said above the roar, "This place
looks and feels more like a mall than a temple. Whatever happened to Isaiah’s
word about the real point of this building- to be a house of prayer for all nationalities and races? Out! Get out, all of you!"
I. Just Doing Their Job
A. The odd thing about this event is that if Eyewitness News had interviewed any
of the merchants that day, each would have defended the right to be there.
1. "We provide an essential service to the worshipers," they would have said.
a. "How else are people going to get the required animal to sacrifice? If
you live any distance away, you can’t be herding your sheep and cows
through the streets of Jerusalem. We’ve got to help the program along..."
b. But, of course, they had added a gouging charge to the price.
2. The money changers would have said the same.
a. "Everybody has to pay the temple tax, and people can’t be walking in
here with Greek or Roman or Macedonian money. They’ve got to use the special coins minted here in Jerusalem. We help people with their currency problems."
b. But once again, they were tacking on big-time profits.
B. For all of us involved in ministry there is a message here: Jesus is not terribly
impressed with religious commercialism.
1. He is not concerned not only whether we’re doing God’s work, but also how
and why we’re doing it.
a. When I stand before Him, His main question for me will have to do
not with the growth or the budget of Bel Aire Baptist Church, but
with why I pastored this church- in what spirit.
b. If you sing in the choir, the question is not if you’re on your note; it’s
why you are singing at all.
c. If you teach a class, are you doing it with a heart that radiates God’s
love for the students, or for some other reason?
2. These money changers were in the temple, but they didn’t have the spirit of
the temple.
a. They may have played a legitimate role in assisting people to worship, but they were out of sync with the whole purpose of the Lord’s house.
b. In essence, Jesus was saying, "The atmosphere of my Father’s house
is to be prayer. The aroma around my Father must be that of people
opening their hearts in worship and supplication. This is not just a
place to make a buck. This is a house for calling on the Lord."
3. I do not mean to imply that the Jerusalem temple is the direct counterpart
of our church buildings today.
a. God no longer centers His presence in one particular building.
b. In fact, the New Testament teaches that we are now His dwelling
place; He lives in His people.
c. This fact makes Jesus’ message about the importance of prayer even
more important.
C. The feature that is supposed to distinguish Christian churches, Christian people,
and Christian gatherings is the aroma of prayer.
1. Does the Bible ever say anywhere from Genesis to Revelation, "My house
shall be called a house of preaching or a house of music"?
2. No, but the Bible does say, "My house shall be called a house of prayer for
all nations."
a. Preaching and music are important and necessary, but they must
never override prayer as the defining mark of God’s dwelling.
b. God can do more in people’s lives during ten minutes of real prayer
than in ten of my sermons.
II. The Church’s Main Point
A. Have you ever noticed that Jesus launched the Christian church, not while
someone was preaching, but while people were praying?
1. In the first 2 chapters of Acts, the disciples were doing nothing but waiting
on God.
a. As they were just sitting there... worshipping, communing with God,
letting God shape them and cleanse their spirits and do those heart
operations that only the Holy Spirit can do... the church was born.
b. The Holy Spirit was poured out.
2. What does that say about our churches today that God birthed the church in
a prayer meeting, and prayer meetings today are almost extinct?
B. Let’s not lie to ourselves or try to divert attention away from the weak prayer life
of our own churches.
1. In Acts 4, when the apostles were unjustly arrested, imprisoned, and threatened, they didn’t call for a protest; they didn’t reach for some political
leverage.
a. Instead, they headed to a prayer meeting.
b. Soon the place was vibrating with the power of the Holy Spirit.
2. The apostles had this instinct: When in trouble, pray. When intimidated,
pray. When challenged, pray. When persecuted, pray.
3. The British Bible translator J.B. Phillips, after completing his work on this
section of Scripture, could not help reflecting on what he had observed.
a. In the 1955 preface to his first edition of Acts, he wrote:
It is impossible to spend several months in close study of the remarkable short
book... without being profoundly stirred and, to be honest, disturbed. The reader is
stirred because he is seeing Christianity, the real thing, in action for the first time in
human history. The newborn Church, as vulnerable as any human child, having
neither money, influence nor power in the ordinary sense, is setting forth joyfully
and courageously to win the pagan world for God through Christ...
Yet we cannot help feeling disturbed as well as moved, for this surely is the Church
as it was meant to be. It is vigorous and flexible, for theses are the days before it
ever became fat and short of breath through prosperity, or muscle-bound by
over organization. These men did not make ’acts of faith,’ they believed; they did not
’say their prayers,’ they really prayed. They did not hold conferences on
psychosomatic medicine, they simply healed the sick. But if they were
uncomplicated and naive by modern standards, we have ruefully to admit that they
were open on the God-ward side in a way that is almost unknown today.
4. Open on the God-ward side... doesn’t that stir your spirit?
a. That one brief phrase sums up the secret of power in the early church,
a secret that hasn’t changed one bit in twenty centuries.
III. No One Too Tough
A. A fascinating footnote appears in Acts 9 when Saul of Tarsus, the violent
persecutor of the church, was converted, and God needed a believer to minister
to him.
B. Naturally, no Christian wanted to get within five blocks of the man.
1. Yet God coaxed Ananias along by saying, "Go ... ask for a man from
Tarsus named Saul, for he is praying" (vs. 11).
2. This was the proof, it seems, that everything had changed.
3. "It’s okay, Ananias... calm down... you don’t have to be afraid now, it’s safe:
He’s praying."
IV. The Secret Of Grace
A. No one is beyond God’s grace.
1. No situation, anywhere on earth, is too hard for God.
2. The apostle Paul, having benefited from that grace in his own life,
preached and wrote about it ever after.
a. He outlines in Romans 10:13-15 a chain of events that describes
New Testament salvation.
"Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved." How, then, can they
call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in he one of
whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to
them? And how can they preach unless they are sent?"
3. Churches often refer to this passage in connection with overseas missionary
work.
a. "We need to give a good offering today in order to send out
preachers," they say -which is true.
b. But that is just the beginning of Paul’s sequence.
4. Sending leads to preaching.
Preaching leads to hearing.
Hearing leads to believing.
Believing leads to calling on the name of the Lord.
B. Notice that believing is not the climax.
1. Head knowledge is not enough, it must be from the heart.
2. The clearest instructions about church life come in the Pastoral Letters,
where Paul tells young pastors such as Timothy how to proceed.
a. The apostle couldn’t be more direct than in 1 Timothy 2:1.
"I urge then, first of all, that requests, prayers, intercession and thanksgiving be
made for everyone."
3. Why? Why first of all, before anything else?
a. Paul was saying, Timothy, remember that God’s house is to be called
a house of prayer.
b. Later in the same chapter (vs.8), Paul says, "I want men everywhere
to lift up holy hands in prayer, without anger or disputing."
c. That is a sign of a Christian church.
C. The book of Revelation says that when the twenty-four elders eventually fall at
the feet of Jesus, each one will have a golden bowl- and do you know what’s in
the bowls?
1. What is this incense that is so fragrant to Christ?
"The prayers of the saints" (Revelation 5:8).
2. Just imagine... you and I kneel or stand or sit down to pray, really opening
our hearts to God- and what we say is so precious to Him that He keeps it
like a treasure.
3. Here in our community, what church do you know that takes a prominent
night of the week, with all the leaders present, and says that because prayer
is so great, so central to Jesus’ definition of the church, they’re going to
concentrate on prayer?
4. Listen to all of these promises the Bible has:
Matthew 7:7: "Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and
the door will be opened to you".
Jeremiah 29:13: "You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your
heart."
James 4:2: "You do not have, because you do not ask God".
5. Isn’t is time to say, "Stop! We’re going to pray, because God said that when
we pray, He will intervene."
6. The sad truth is more people are turning to crack than to Christ.
a. More people are dipping into drugs that are getting baptized in water.
b. What is going to reverse this tide?
c. Preaching alone will not do it; classes aren’t going to do it; more
money for more programs won’t do it.
d. Only turning God’s house into a house of fervent prayer will reverse
the power of evil so evident in the world today.
V. The Missing Link
A. Over the last 30 years more books have been written on marriage and raising
children than in all of the preceding 2000 years of church history.
1. This is not because we have all of the answers, it is because we stopped
going to the proper source, God.
2. Again, J.B. Phillips points this out:
The Holy Spirit has a way of short-circuiting human problems. Indeed, in exactly the same way as Jesus Christ in the flesh cut right through the matted layers of tradition and exposed the real issue;... so we find here [in Acts] the Spirit of Jesus dealing not so much with problems as with people. many problems comparable to modern complexities never arise here because the men and women concerned were of one heart and mind in the Spirit... Since God’s Holy Spirit cannot conceivably have changed one iota through the centuries,... He is perfectly prepared to short- circuit, by an inflow of love, wisdom and understanding, many human problems today.
B. That is why the writer to the Hebrews nails down the most central activity of all
for Christians: "Let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence, so
that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need"
(Hebrews 4:16).
1. It doesn’t say, "Let us come to the sermon."
a. We have made the sermon the centerpiece of the church, something
god never intended.
b. Instead, the centerpiece ought to be prayer.
c. That’s the true source of grace and mercy.
2. If a meeting doesn’t end with people touching God, what kind of a meeting
is it?
a. We haven’t really encountered God.
b. We haven’t met with the only One powerful and loving enough to
change our lives.
3. I am aware that we don’t get everything we ask for; we have to ask according to God’s will.
a. But let us not use theological dodges to avoid the fact that we often
go without things God wants us to have right now, today, because we fail to ask.
b. Too seldom do we get honest enough to admit, "Lord, I can’t handle
this alone. I’ve just hit the wall for the thirty-second time and I need you."
4. The words of the old hymn are so true:
Oh, what peace we often forfeit,
Oh, what needless pain we bear,
All because we do not carry
Everything to God in prayer.
Conclusion:
1. God says to us, "Pray, because I have all kinds of things for you; and when you
ask, you will receive. I have all this grace, and you live with scarcity. Come
unto me, all you who labor. Why are you so rushed? Where are you running
now? Everything you need, I have."
2. If the times are indeed as bad as we say they are... if the darkness in our world is
growing heavier by the moment... if we are facing spiritual battles right in our
own homes and churches... then we are foolish not to turn to the One who
supplies unlimited grace and power.
3. He is our only source. We are foolish to ignore Him!
(This sermon title and theme of this sermon come from chapter 5 "The Day Jesus Got Mad" from the book "Fresh Wind, Fresh Fire" by Jim Cybala.)
