Introduction

Apparently yesterday was the last day of National Spring Cleaning Week. I’m sure that’s a fact that you really, really wanted to know. One lady labeled last week, “Lay A Guilt Trip Week.” Well, I’m not going to be laying a guilt trip on you for not cleaning your house yet. Instead, I want to talk about a very surprising cleansing of the temple that Jesus did on Palm Sunday and the significance of that. I think this is a very interesting passage with a lot of application to the modern state of the church. And I've deliberately picked it because it rarely gets preached on

But first a little bit of Old Testament background as to what was happening in this passage. I’m going to read from Malachi 3:1-7 - one of the passages Jesus quoted. In Malachi, God says,

"Behold, I send My messenger, and he will prepare the way before Me.

Matthew already quoted this part of the verse as having been fulfilled in John the Baptist. But verse 1 also speaks of a second Person who will come, and will cleanse the temple. And it is speaking of the Lord Jesus. It says,

And the Lord, whom you seek, will suddenly come to His temple, even the Messenger of the covenant, in whom you delight. Behold, He is coming," says the LORD of hosts.

This coming to the temple that Malachi anticipated was not seen as a pleasant time for the priests and Levites in verses 2-3: Verse 2 says,

"But who can endure the day of His coming? And who can stand when He appears? For He is like a refiner's fire and like launderer's soap.

I think that image of launderer’s soap is such a cool image of Christ’s work of purification. Verse 3 says,

He will sit as a refiner and a purifier of silver; He will purify the sons of Levi, and purge them as gold and silver, that they may offer to the LORD an offering in righteousness.

Commentators point out that the purging Christ did on Palm Sunday was a precursor to the breaking off of Jewish unbelieving branches and the ingrafting into Israel of believers from the Gentile nations. And they point out that there would even be Gentiles who would be Levites - in other words, who would be pastors. And these new kinds of Levites in the new Israel that God was going to establish in the first century church would faithfully stand firm on the covenant. It would be a very successful Spring Cleaning. Malachi says that the cleansing would be a radical purifying of the church so that the new Israel would be true to God. And by the way, the early church was largely the remnant of Israel in the early years. It was a Jewish church. And so it very literally was a new Israel into which Gentiles were grafted. Verse 4 continues.

"Then the offering of Judah and Jerusalem will be pleasant to the LORD, as in the days of old, as in former years. And I will come near you for judgment; I will be a swift witness against sorcerers, against adulterers, against perjurers, against those who exploit wage earners and widows and orphans, and against those who turn away an alien--because they do not fear Me," says the LORD of hosts. "For I am the LORD, I do not change; therefore you are not consumed, O sons of Jacob. Yet from the days of your fathers you have gone away from My ordinances and have not kept them. Return to Me, and I will return to you," says the LORD of hosts. "But you said, 'In what way shall we return?'

Today Palm Sunday is being celebrated in numerous churches across this nation who are just as humanistic and just as far from God as Israel was on that first Palm Sunday. In these churches we have a sweet Jesus who is merely a mascot. He sits on the sidelines as we wave Palm branches and smiles upon all that we are doing. The Jesus of many churches today doesn’t mess around with our lives. He lets us run our churches however we want, and He is portrayed as love, love, love without a hint of judgment. Well, Matthew corrects any such thinking by making clear that this King does not put up with dirt in His church. As surely as He judged and purified Israel back then, He will continue to bring judgment against the sorcerers, adulterers, perjurers and those who exploit the fatherless in the mainline churches and even the evangelical churches of America. So with that context, let's look at Matthew 21:12

A King Who Casts Out (vv. 12-13)

Then Jesus went into the temple of God and drove out all those who bought and sold in the temple, and overturned the tables of the moneychangers and the seats of those who sold doves.

One of the tasks of Spring Cleaning is casting out or throwing away things that we don’t use. I've been doing a lot of throwing away of things recently. Now, it might seem like a harsh thing for Christ to do that with people, but we need to realize that Jesus is a King who drives people out of the house of God. He not only welcomes people, but He also drives some people out.

How do you like that for a theology of church growth? There are some who should be driven out of the church - before the church will truly grow. God’s periodic Spring Cleanings include people who are an offense to God and to His temple. That may not seem like a loving thing to do, and there are many churches in Omaha who would be just as offended with Jesus if He were physically present today as those priests and scribes were back then. There would be many people driven from the 21st century church as well, and I suspect that many of them would be pastors. I personally know of many churches in Omaha that have not practiced church discipline in 50 years because of a humanistic desire to please people which they interpret as love. But there are issues raised in this verse that show it is not an issue of pleasing people but an issue of being faithful to the Lord.

God owns the temple, not men, and therefore God determines the membership "temple of God... My house"

Notice first of all who owns the temple. And this is point A in your outlines. It wasn’t Caiaphas the high priest. It wasn’t any other priest or scribe. It says, "Jesus went into the temple of God." God owns it. In verse 13 God calls it "My house." Yet how frequently do leaders think of the church as their church, their empire that is being built. How many churches are built around the personality of a particular pastor or preacher? It is God’s house, and that makes all the difference in the world as to whose policies we are to follow. It’s not the elders’ policies, but God’s policies. And God has laid out His policies (both big and small) in the Scriptures. We call that the Regulative Principle of Government. You may not understand why God requires certain things of New Covenant officers, but He has His reasons for it, and it is His right to spell those out. Gary and I are training leaders, but the King of the Church gets to tell us what the minimum qualifications for officers is.

Of course, Jesus was confronting major issues of compromise that had been taking place in AD 30. If you look at the traditions of the Pharisees (that are preserved for us in the Talmud), you will see that they blatantly justified occultism, adultery, and other perversions. You don't have to read much in the Talmud to see that. So even the Pharisees were very perturbed by the rebukes of Jesus.

But we have all kinds of compromises that have been condoned in both the mainline denominations as well as in evangelical denominations. The compromises in the mainline denominations are a bit more obvious. In 2024, the United Methodist Church General Conference officially removed the ban on homosexual clergy, removed penalties for performing same-sex marriages (they've been ignoring them anyway, but two years ago they removed those bans), and in other ways institutionalized other perversions. The same has been true in the PCUSA, the ELCA, the Anglican Church, and the Episcopal Church. These denominations' own websites allow for doctrinal heresies. But Spring Cleaning needs to occur in even so-called evangelical denominations like the Southern Baptist Convention, which thankfully has tried to tighten its standards because of how much cover-up has occurred on sexual abuse (including of children). So that is good. We need to pray for these denominations. I love those denominations and want to see them reformed.

But many evangelical denominations have gone soft on women pastors, woke issues, pastors who support socialism, and members engaged in gross unrepentant sin. The very fact that Evangelical pastors can speak of a Judeo-Christian consensus, and cite the Talmud as authoritative in interpreting Scripture shows the blindness of the modern church. You can find elders in Reformed denominations who are also Free Masons. Here’s something that is even more troubling - a major Lifeway study has shown that church discipline is almost non-existent in many Evangelical denominations - and we are talking about church discipline of gross immorality.

Now, I can sort of understand why those churches fail to exercise church discipline. It can be emotionally draining. People get upset. Sometimes it seems like a lose-lose situation. It doesn’t make for building churches fast. And there are many ways in which we might be tempted to cut corners. But we need to always keep in mind, this is God’s Church and He makes the rules. I think it was Joe Morecraft who said, "the only voice that should be heard in the church is the voice of Christ speaking through the Word." The only authority Gary and I have is a delegated authority; it’s the authority of the Word. And so point A says that God owns the temple, not men, and therefore God determines what should go on inside that church. And I bring this up to stir us up to pray for revival and reformation in the broader church. But I also bring it up because it is healthy to evaluate whether we have any issues in need of Spring Cleaning.

Ministries that need to be cleaned out

Point B deals with ministries (even legitimate ministries) that need to be adjusted in our churches. And the four subpoints are the four main reasons that Christ was offended with these people.

Any ministry that replaces prayer

The first reason is given in verse 13:

"And He said to them, “It is written, “My house shall be called a house of prayer,’ but you have made it a ‘den of thieves.’ ”"

Central to the ministry of the temple was prayer, and any ministry that replaces prayer needs to be adjusted or removed. And next to preaching the most central ministry in the synagogues was prayer. They were called "houses of prayer." What had happened in the temple was that the place of prayer for Jews and Gentiles was so crowded with people selling animals that space for prayer was almost completely pushed out. In fact, this was the only place where the Gentiles could gather for prayer at the temple. It was called the "court of the Gentiles." Selling animals was not wrong. There had been four markets for buying unblemished animals on the Mount of Olives for years. But it was not until about 30 A.D. that Caiaphas the High Priest sought to compete with those markets by introducing this one into the temple. And he didn’t do it just for convenience. A few scholars have successfully demonstrated that Caiaphas did it as a monopoly to line his own pockets.

It might have been excused as a means of making worship more convenient. You didn’t have to hunt all over town to find an animal that would meet the temple standards. And it may not have been a deliberate attempt to exclude Gentiles. Neither the Sadducees nor the Pharisees were opposed to converting Gentiles. In fact, on one occasion Jesus told the Pharisees, "You travel land and sea to win one proselyte." So they were trying to reach out. They did reach out. It might have even been seen as a means of accommodating Gentiles who had to travel from afar. But Christ’s point is that a legitimate ministry of providing animals had displaced prayer from the house of God.

And though we don’t live in the first century with a literal temple, the church of Jesus Christ has done the same thing today and needs the same Spring Cleaning that was needed back then. Any program, no matter how good it might be, that displaces prayer from the ministry of the church, is fit to be adjusted or thrown out.

People might think, “What could be more important than x,y,z ministry? I’m involved in that ministry and it just doesn’t give me time to be involved in prayer at church.” But these first century people could have said the same thing. What could be more important than providing clean, spotless animals for the temple? Without adequate sacrifices, the ministry of the temple would grind to a halt. And yet Christ basically said, "Figure some other way of fitting that ministry in, but prayer takes precedence."

So my question to you is this: "How important is prayer to your life? Do you acknowledge Christ’s kingship in this area, or has Christ just become a mascot who never interferes with your priorities and your comforts?" It's a worthwhile question to ask ourselves. The statistics in America on prayer have actually been improving. So in some ways, I am encouraged - especially among the younger people. I was looking at statistics on prayer this past Tuesday, and the median daily prayer time for pastors has risen to 30 minutes a day. That's great. A LifeWay study found that 65% of Protestants spend time with God one or more times per day, which is also a huge improvement from previous years. But if prayer priorities are a gauge, many Christians still need to do some housecleaning because there is a lot of busyness that has displaced prayer. We don’t want to wait for Jesus to arrive with a whip and to overturn money tables in order to restore prayer to it’s rightful place. And I say that because it seems that some people only pray when things are miserable - when God brings pain or economic loss into our lives.

But here's the thing - prayer is a litmus test for the Christian. I'll just give you one example of what God thinks of it. Isaiah 59:16 says that God marveled that there was no one to intercede. He marveled. I can't imagine God marveling at anything, but yet that's what the text says - that God marveled that intercessory prayer on behalf of others had been lacking in the church of that day. Now, it is true that others translate that word as "appllled" - He was appalled that there was no intercessor." But either way, may He not marvel or be appalled at lack of intercession in our lives. If we do the Spring Cleaning ourselves, it will be a lot easier on our church than if God has to do it with His more radical ways of pruning. God sometimes has to bring pain and misery into our lives to force us to pray. Every revival and Reformation of the past has been preceded by prayer. And before Reformation happens in the broader church, God may have to bring some national pain - perhaps through war, inflation, a man-made plague, or other causes. I've been reading about Bill Gate's introducing millions of genetically modified mosquitos into various South American countries, and I have been hoping that this and other similar experiments with genetically modified viruses and bacteria will not introduce major plagues. But be in prayer that God would stir up the whole bride of Christ to prayer. Prayer has always preceded revivals and reformations.

Any ministry that is statist (λῃστης = zealot brigands who were Caiaphas' enforcers)

A second reason Christ cast these men out of the temple is given in the last phrase of verse 13: "you have made it a den of thieves." Even though it is a quote from Jeremiah, Jesus is clearly calling these people thieves. And interestingly, the thieving was not the prices that were being charged; nor the exchange rates they charged on foreign currencies, nor the fact that they made a profit on the sales of sacrifices - all of which had been authorized in the Old Testament. The Old Testament made special provision for foreigners who came by sea and couldn’t bring their own animals, to be able to buy them locally. And I point that out because socialistic instincts make people assume that Jesus was against a profit. But that would contradict so much of His previous teaching. In his commentary on Matthew, Douglas Hare correctly says,

In any event, it must be insisted that nothing supports the ever popular interpretation that Jesus, as a champion of the poor, was protesting against dishonesty and price gouging on the part of the vendors and money changers. It is not their business practice but their location that angers Jesus. This is particularly clear in Matthew and Mark, where the buyers (the alleged victims!) are ejected along with the sellers.¹

We’ve already dealt with the location, and how it pushed out prayer. But that still doesn’t answer the question of what made them thieves. The key is to ask who they were stealing from? It wasn’t from the customers. And the reason commentators affirm that it wasn't theft from the customers is because Jesus drove out the customers too. Those who were not buying or selling were not driven out by Jesus, but verse 12 says, "drove out all those who bought and sold." So if they weren’t stealing from the customers, who were they stealing from? And the answer is that they were stealing from the market places that had been in existence for centuries. This was a government-imposed monopoly, and Jesus called that monopoly theft.

Let me give you a little bit of background - and once this gets up on the web, I'll give a footnote with numerous books if you want to research this more.² It's a very interesting subject. Up until somewhere around AD 28, 29 or 30 (we are not totally sure of the date - but based on the text, my guess it was up till AD 30) there had been a totally free market in currency exchange and in the animals that could be purchased to sacrifice at the temple. For example, we know that there were four market places on the Mount of Olives that competed with each other up until that time. But people were free to bring their own animals as well, so long as they were ritually clean. And so, the Old Testament permitted a free market exchange in both money and animals. There was no monopoly. And if you brought Roman money, Tyrian money, Greek money, or currencies from other countries, there were several places outside the temple where you could exchange that foreign money for a temple currency, so as not to bring foreign gods (on the coins) into the temple.

But Caiaphas the High Priest came up with a brilliant plan to get rich. In the name of consistency, convenience and quality controls, he mandated that all animals be bought and sold in the temple, and he allowed currency exchanges to take place on the temple grounds - thus making Scripture's accusations of pagan gods being brought into the temple very literal. And the owners of the market places were furious, insisting that this was not biblical. But Caiaphas and later high priests (like Ananias) got their way by hiring Zealots and Sicarii as enforcers.³ These were scary people that Josephus said would force the will of the high priest on anyone who didn't cooperate. If you messed with a zealot, and you could very easily get a sword in your belly. And several commentators and dictionaries point out that the Greek words for “den of thieves” is not the normal word for thieves. Instead, it was an expression that was commonly use to describe the Zealots and Sicarii in the first century. For example, one Greek dictionary says,

Significantly, Josephus applied the term consistently to the Zealot party of Judaism who hoped to violently overthrow their Roman oppressors... Rengstorf also notes that Rabbinic Judaism may have also borrowed the term in a similar fashion referring to Zealots (ibid., 4:258).⁴

So the High Priest gave the Zealots a cut in his profits for being his enforcers. Caiaphas used the zealots to shut down any free market competition to this new market that Caiaphas had set up for the first time in the temple itself. (There is some debate on to what degree he was successful in that. But reading between the lines it seems that he was very successful.) That political arrangement with the zealots would come back to bite a later high priest during the war, but both the Zealots and the Sadducees made a great deal of money off of this arrangement. The result was that the temple became a harbor for these murderers (and they were murderers), while making it difficult for Gentiles to worship in the court of the Gentiles. One commentary says,

Instead of becoming a sanctuary for Gentiles, however, the Temple has been turned into a σπήλαιον λῃστῶν, a phrase that is ... commonly used by Josephus for the revolutionary bands that were active in the Jewish revolt against the Romans of A.D. 66–74.⁵

So the answer to the question of what made this arrangement thievery is even hinted at in the text here. The theft was a civilly imposed monopoly with the zealots being Caiaphas' enforcers. And it would have been extremely dangerous for Jesus to oppose either group and to accuse them of being thieves. In verse 46 they tried to arrest Jesus, but were not successful. But the point is that this was dangerous work for Jesus. Yet He engaged in it because God called Him to do so. He called theft “theft” whether it was an individual who engaged in it or whether it was the church or the state. In this huge debate that started during His ministry, Jesus sided with the free market advocates and sternly rebuked those who used power to limit the free market. On that Palm Sunday, His kingship extended to even the economics of those in civil power in Israel.

Notice too that Jesus was just as upset with the people who purchased these tainted goods as He was with the system itself. Almost every commentary points this out. And I think that speaks volumes about what our approach to statist policies should be. It appears that Christ would be just as opposed to the willing beneficiaries of an illegitimate system as He was to the system itself. And this is where it gets really convicting. As an example, when people are on welfare, they are recipients of stolen money and are just as implicated in the sin of robbery as the civil officers who gather illegitimate taxes for the welfare system. That may seem like an extreme position to take, but commentators point out that that was exactly the attitude that Jesus had when he drove out those who willingly used this convenient system rather than bringing their own animals - which they still could have done. My research shows that you still could have brought your own animals. But this market was far more convenient. The least they could have done as citizens was to protest; to say something about it. It was the silence of the citizens that enabled Caiaphas to get away with this obvious breach of the law all the way through the rest of his reign - one of the longest reigns of any high priest.

So here's my question: Is the church today filled with people who ask the Caiaphases of our day to destroy the free market? Yes it is. The church of today is filled with socialists and statists of all brands - asking the state to do all kinds of the that the Bible says the state is not allowed to do. And it stands in need of a new Spring Cleansing.

Any ministry that is at the expense of holiness

The third reason that Christ drove these men out was that they harbored zealots - they harbored wicked men in the house of God without disciplining them. This can be seen not only from the phrase "den of thieves," but also from the context of the quote from Jeremiah that described these men who were no a regular part of the temple scene. Jeremiah 7:9-11 (the second passage that Christ quotes), says this:

Will you steal, murder, commit adultery, swear falsely, burn incense to Baal, and walk after other gods whom you do not know, and then come and stand before Me in this house which is called by My name, and say, “We are delivered to do all these abominations”?

That was an early example of the carnal Christian theory – because we are delivered from hell, we can continue to sin. No big deal. Let us sin that grace may abound. And if you are skeptical that the religious leaders harbored such sinners, I would point you to not just the Zealots who mingled at this General Assembly camp, but the Pharisees who were also part of the synagogue system that met at this General Assembly Camp as well. The Pharisees gave the illusion of uprightness, but they used very creative ways to justify all kinds of sins - sins which Jesus repeatedly accused them of. Church discipline was almost non-existent against the sins that they approved of, and discipline was only used against so-called “trouble-makers” like Jesus and early Christians who pointed out such sins. Anyway, Jeremiah goes on to ask:

Has this house, which is called by My name, become a den of thieves in your eyes? Behold, I, even I, have seen it,” says the LORD.

The temple tolerated these compromised zealots, and it appears that they positively wooed them because of the financial gain. And this gets back to our earlier comments on church discipline. The reason wickedness is tolerated in many Evangelical churches today is because giving will go down; or because a wealthy patron will leave.

At the time of the Reformation the three marks of the church were 1) the right preaching of the Word, 2) the proper administration of the sacraments and 3) the exercise of church discipline. By their definition, most evangelical churches have ceased to have all the marks of the church. Discipline is virtually non-existent, and when we are not willing to cast out unrepentant sinners, Christ must come as King and do His own Spring Cleaning. May we take to heart the implications of verses 12-13. We need Spring Cleaning if we are prayerless, if we are statist or if we are careless toward one another in holiness.

Anything that removes children from the worship of God (vv. 15-16)

The fourth thing that Jesus corrected was the bad attitudes that the scribes had to the praises of the children in the temple as they cried out, "Hosanna to the Son of David." The text says that they were indignant, and in verse 16 they ask Jesus, "Do you not hear what these are saying?" But Jesus quotes a verse from Psalm 8, which says that God perfects the praises of even babes and nursing infants. That implies that babes and nursing infants should be allowed to join in adult worship and not be excluded - as happens in so many churches. Christ was calling for family integrated worship. And I'll comment on that more in a later point.

God continues to cast out through judgments. This cleansing was merely a foretaste of God’s judgment upon Israel in 70 AD (v. 17 with vv. 18-22).

But many commentators point out that the Spring Cleaning that Jesus did was also a typological foretaste of God's judgment upon Israel in AD 70. If Israel had repented and restored the temple to its God-given functions, there would have been no need for judgment. But Jesus leaves them in verse 17 (the phrasing there is not by accident), and in the following parable of the fig tree (an image of Israel) that did not have fruit on it (an image of Israel failing to have the fruits of repentance and holiness), Jesus leaves Israel as a whole to God's judgment, saying, "Let no fruit grow on you ever again." He is saying that about Israel - "Let no fruit grow on you ever again" (verse 19). Commentators point out that this imagery anticipates God's permanent destruction of Israel, the temple, and its sacrificial system.⁶ If no legitimate fruit would ever grow on it again, there can be no Judeo-Christian consensus. Until Israel abandons its Judaism and becomes Christian, it cannot be said to bear any good fruit. The Talmud is a demonic document that not only justifies various sins, but very actively opposes Jesus. For example, Gittin 57a describes Jesus as being punished in the afterlife with "boiling excrement." Sanhedrin 43a says that Jesus was rightly killed because He "practiced sorcery and incited and led Israel astray." Later Jewish works, like Toledot Yeshu are far worse. The point is that Talmudism is not Biblicism - it is the traditions of the Jews that the New Testament explicitly contradicts as overthrowing the Bible. We need to get rid of this concept of a Judeo-Christian consensus, or Jesus may have to drive it out.

A King Who Restores (v. 13)

But let’s move on to Roman numeral II. Spring Cleaning not only involves throwing things away, but also in restoring some things that were lost and have been found. And Christ’s ministry was not only negative; it was restorative. When you do Spring Cleaning in your houses, you probably run across all kinds of exciting things that you forgot that you had. And many of those forgotten things get restored into service and use. Decluttering also frees up space, and time for more important things. Well, three things got restored: praise, ministry to others, and prayer. I'll briefly comment again on the restoration of prayer as one of His primary concerns. Verse 13 says, "My house shall be called a house of prayer." On that particular day Christ enabled prayer because, as Mark 11:15 says, "He would not allow anyone to carry wares through the temple and He stayed there till evening." Finally there was peace and quiet so that the Gentiles could pray. The decluttering enabled spiritual priorities to take place.

But that was merely a symbol of the far greater restoration that would later come through Pentecost. Christ by His Spirit restored prayer to a prayerless church. The following kinds of references to prayer are found in Acts: Acts 1:14 "These all continued with one accord in prayer and supplication with the women." Acts 2:1: "they were all with one accord in one place" Acts 3:1 - "they went up together at the hour of prayer" Acts 6:4 - "we will give ourselves continually to prayer." Acts 12:5 - "they prayed... they prayed... but constant prayer was offered to God for him by the church." Acts is a book that shows prayer fully restored to the church. And it was to such a church that awesome things began to happen - so much so that the persecutors of the church say in Acts 17:6, "These who have turned the world upside down have come here too." The prayer-saturated church was turning the world upside down. Revival will never happen in America until the place of prayer is restored to the church. And I am encouraged with the amount of prayer in this church. That is always a good sign.

A King Who Gathers (v. 14)

A third thing that is needed in Spring Cleaning is gathering stuff and organizing it. If you can’t find things, it doesn’t do much good to own them. And there were hidden people whom Christ gathered to Himself. Verse 14 says, "Then the blind and the lame came to Him in the temple, and He healed them." Spring Cleaning includes gathering things that are lost or misplaced, and we too must have a restorative ministry. If the first two points are in order, then those who are hungry and needy will come. The Pharisees didn’t come to Christ, but those who were hurting certainly did because Christ had proved that He cared. Do we minister to those who are hurting in our congregation? What about those who are outside the congregation? If we only fellowship with and minister to those whose lives are put together and who are in no way embarrassing, we are not imitating Christ. We may want to take inventory and find out if there are areas like this in our life where we need to make some adjustments and ask Christ to do His cleansing work.

A King Who Divides (v. 15)

Between Those Who Praise Him

Spring Cleaning also requires division between things and discernment. Do I really need this Hawaiian shirt that I'm probably never going to wear again? Which keepsakes are clutter and which are essential memories? Division and discernment of what is important are a critical part of Spring Cleaning. And Christ certainly had that ability in verse 15: "But when the chief priests and scribes saw the wonderful things that He did, and the children crying out in the temple and saying, “Hosanna to the Son of David!” they were indignant." Christ was continually surrounded by both disciples and detractors and He had the ability to distinguish those who sang hymns in the temple out of tradition and had no heart for him, and those who really meant what they were saying. Christ continues to have that ability to distinguish. He knows how to cleanse. He can see into the deepest recesses of your heart. And during those times when we are not even sure if our hearts are pure or not, you can pray the Psalm that says, "Search me, O God, and know my heart. Try me, and know my anxieties; and see if there is any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.” (Psalm 139:23-24). We often don't know our own hearts. We need His wisdom to discern.

And Those Who Hate Him

A King Who Notices (v. 16)

Finally, He is a king who notices what needs to be noticed. Have you ever started cleaning your house and for the first time noticed cobwebs or dust that you had previously ignored? We can get used to overlooking the cobwebs. But Jesus noticed in this passage what was out of place. He also noticed what was fine china. Verse 16:

and said to Him, “Do you hear what these are saying?” And Jesus said to them, “Yes. Have you never read, “Out of the mouths of babes and nursing infants You have perfected praise?”

All the Pharisees could hear was that these kids were being a nuisance. Christ noticed their hearts; He received their praise. And I want you to notice what categories of people Christ says are capable of bringing perfect worship in the temple: “out of the mouths of babes and nursing infants You have perfected praise.” What kind of praise do babies and nursing infants bring to a worship service? We’ve heard their howls haven’t we? Nursing infants can’t even talk. How can their praise be perfected? The only way they could be perfected is through Christ. You think about that and it has a profound ramification in covenant theology. When I was a Reformed Baptist for a couple years in my early twenties, I was taught that we should not allow our children to pray or sing in church because until they made profession of faith, their worship was the worship of an unbeliever – an abomination. In contrast, Christ says that the children of believers are enabled by God to have perfected worship – not abominable worship. Now most Christians are inconsistent on this, and they do teach their children to bring praise. But when God receives people as families, and the Pharisees try to shut the children up, there was need for Spring Cleaning. The family is a precious heritage and even though a child cannot understand to the degree that we do, God delights in seeing them in our worship. He delights that we are presenting ourselves as families to Him. He delights in their unexpected and occasionally, as at this time, perhaps the socially unacceptable expressions of faith. If we live in an era that requires a more perfect atmosphere in worship than God requires, it may be because we need Spring Cleaning in our attitudes toward the covenant. You see, the sign of the covenant that was applied to infants did not welcome children into the families. They were already in the family whether they were circumcised or not. The sign of the covenant welcomed them into the church.

Yet what do we do to children in America? We segregate them. We have religious apartheid. Americans typically don’t want them in their worship services or their prayer meetings. And it may be because their views of worship are more akin to the Pharisee’s than they are to Christ’s. Now Scripture does make exceptions. In the book of Nehemiah, nursing children did not have to be present. But it wasn’t mandated that the children leave. Listen to the call of God in Joel 2:15-16: "Blow the trumpet in Zion, consecrate a fast, call a sacred assembly; gather the people, sanctify the congregation, assemble the elders, gather the children and nursing babes.” When we get upset with the lack of neatness and lack of sound quality that children sometimes provide, we need to remember Christ’s words, "Out of the mouth of babes and nursing infants You have perfected praise."

Now, you may think that we at DCC are inconsistent with this by not allowing babies to partake of the Lord's Supper. But if you've read my book on children and communion, you will see that we follow the pattern that God established all throughout the Old and New Testaments. Even the last book of the Bible gives the right to eat of the sacrament only to those who are "overcomers." In other words, they have begun to successfully fight against their sin nature. Where baptism is a passive sacrament that initiates, the Lord's Table is an active sacrament for those ready to declare allegiance to God and who are committed (however weakly) to being overcomers. In fact, there are so many active metaphors connected with the Table that the Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland wrongly concluded that only adults could partake, making age twenty to be the minimum age for partaking. But my book shows that that tradition is wrong as well since there were young children in the Old Testament who partook - on rare occasions as young as three - but the condition was always the same - that they had in their faithfulness sanctified themselves to the Lord in holiness. That denomination pushed back by emphasizing the spiritual warfare that the Table commits us to, saying that you are not ready for warfare until adulthoood. Passages like, "You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies," or "to him who overcomes I will give to eat" (Rev. 2:7) or "to him who overcomes I will give some of the hidden manna" (Rev. 2:17), etc. Yeah, there are Scriptures like that. But here's the thing - even children can be taught to fight the world, the flesh, and the devil - and they should be taught to do so at a very young age. So while the FP church emphasized the conditions for partaking, paedocommunionists just emphasize the presence of children. We believe both need to be taken into account. In any case, if you are curious about what conditions God gave in both Testaments for young children to partake, you can read my book that argues just as strenuously against adult communion (age 20), mature communion (age 12) as it does against automatic infant communion.

But certainly God expected young children to be at least be admitted to worship as infants where they can gradually learn the ropes of worship, singing, and praying by imitating other worshipers. And He perfects that worship. And as they internalize worship, begin to be God-centered in their thinking, start self-examination, start warring against their own flesh, even very young children were admitted to the Table in 2 Chronicles 31:16-18. That passage says, "because in their faithfulness they sanctified themselves in holiness." That phrase is explicitly used of the young children who were admitted. In their faithfulness, they sanctified themselves in holiness. Three active conditions.

Now, some of you have wondered, "What should we be looking at in our children to see if they are ready to be admitted to the Lord's Table by the session?" And I'll quickly go through seven of the conditions and show how it can be fairly young children.

1. Discerning the Lord's Table and what it signifies (1 Cor. 11:28-29). That's fairly simple - knowing what the bread and the wine symbolize, and that it is not literal blood or literal flesh.
2. Second, remembering what the table is memorializing (Luke 22:19; 1 Cor. 11:24–25; Exodus 12). That too is fairly simple. Each of the actions at the table teaches about the Gospel.
3. Third, self-examination and repentance of sin before eating so as to eat worthily (1 Cor. 11:28-29). That's a little tougher, but young children can certainly recognize their sins and be coached to repent of them.
4. Fourth, self-consciously proclaiming the Lord's death (1 Cor. 11:26). To proclaim His death means that they can verbalize ("proclaim") what the cross is all about. They at least know the basics of substitutionary atonement and how Christ took our sins, was punished for our sins, and gave to believers His righteousness.
5. Fifth, recognizing our spiritual enemies (Ps. 23:5; etc.). I know very young children who recognize that they need to battle their flesh, and Satan, and other temptations.
6. Sixth, Revelation 2 twice requires that people be overcomers before they partake, but that is not calling for perfection, or no one could partake. It is beginning the process of successfully fighting the world, the flesh, and the devil, which very young children can be taught to do. When they start being motivated to overcome their sins, it may be time to admit them.
7. What about the condition that in their faithfulness they sanctified themselves to the Lord in holiness (2 Chron. 31:16-18)? Parents will notice when children repent on their own without being caught, when there is some consistency or faithfulness in putting off sin and coming to the Lord for forgiveness, and they will notice when there is clear evidence of some holiness. So we rely fairly heavily on you parents to let us elders know when you think your children are ready to be interviewed. And then one of the elders will start asking them some questions in hopefully a non-intimidating way.

So this passage tells us to let the Lord dictate the rules of His House on every issue. It's not what feels good that counts; it's submission to God's kingship.

But let me end by pointing to the passage immediately after the one that we read. Beginning to read at verse 17.

Then He left them and went out of the city to Bethany, and He lodged there. Now in the morning, as He returned to the city, He was hungry. And seeing a fig tree by the road, He came to it and found nothing on it but leaves, and said to it, “Let no fruit grow on you ever again.” Immediately the fig tree withered away.

And the rest of this chapter highlights God leaving Israel - symbolized by that fig tree. I'll just read two more verses. Verses 43-44 say,

“Therefore I say to you, the kingdom of God will be taken from you and given to a nation bearing the fruits of it. And whoever falls on this stone will be broken; but on whomever it falls, it will grind him to powder.”

This whole episode according to Malachi 3 was a warning or foretaste of the final leaving of Israel by the Lord of glory. God was giving them chances. Indeed, there were chances all through the next 40 years. But eventually God will leave a church and give it up and pluck up its candlestick as He threatens to do to one church in Revelation. And we too must not presume forever upon God’s mercy continuing in America. God has been very gracious to the church in America, but He is calling the church to a Spring Cleaning and if we do not get our act together, Ichabod may be written over this land. We are only one tiny church, but I encourage you to do what you can to promote personal Spring Cleaning and to ask God to clean His house as well. Pray for revival in America. Read on the subject. Work for revival. Today’s message is a call to hope for such revival and to expect it. Amen.