One of the characteristics of wisdom is understanding the difference between design use and design misuse. Like, am I using an ability, an opportunity, or an object for its intended use, or am I misusing it? A couple of mundane examples:
A kitchen knife is not made to be a can opener. Not good for the knife, not good for the fingers. A microwave is not designed to dry your clothes. A hair dryer is not an ideal appliance for heating food.
Or more seriously, a truck was not designed to be a weapon (as in when a terrorist plows into a group of people). A gun was not made to take your own life, but to protect it.
Design can also be related to context. For example, sexual intimacy was designed by God to be experienced between a man and a woman exclusively within the context of the covenant of marriage.
That same act, even when consensual, when experienced outside of the covenant of marriage, is an offense against God and is an exploitation of the other person. This is what Jesus and Paul taught. For example, 1 Thessalonians 4:2,
“For you know what instructions we gave you through the Lord Jesus. For this is the will of God, your sanctification—”
What does that mean? Big word for your being set apart to God, body and soul.
“…that you abstain from sexual immorality—”
That’s the Greek word “porneia,” which is all unwed sexual stimulation. We get our word “porn” from that, but it’s more general. Verse 4,
“…that each one of you know how to control his own body in holiness and honor, not in the passion of lust like the Gentiles who do not know God—”
Don’t be like your culture: driven by your cravings. Verse 6,
“…that no one transgress and wrong his brother in this matter—”
Pause. The word “wrong” there is a Greek word that means “to defraud,” as in exploitative or manipulative actions at the expense of a brother or sister. That is, when you have sex outside of marriage, you’re taking advantage of the other person.
You say, “Well, it’s consensual.” Still. “In what way?” You’re essentially saying to that person:
“I want a piece of you, but I don’t want all of you. I want to get pleasure from you, but there’s no way I’m committing to you for life, heart, soul, health, sickness—God forbid—children. I’m not in this for covenant. I’m in this because I love you in this moment. I may not love you another moment, but right now I want a piece of you.”
That’s exploitative, it’s manipulative. Whether we say that or not, or think that or not, it is not the way God designed it to be. Sexual intimacy is a beautiful gift given by God to be experienced within a particular context. He goes on, verse six,
“…because the Lord is an avenger in all these things, as we told you beforehand and solemnly warned you. For God has not called us for impurity, but in holiness. Therefore whoever disregards this, disregards not man but God, who gives his Holy Spirit to you” (1 Thessalonians 4:2-8).
If you disregard this, it’s not like you’re just disregarding some freakishly conservative preacher. It’s not just some puritanical culture. This didn’t come from man; it came from God. You’re guilty of design misuse, taking a good gift and using it in a way it was not intended to be used.
Now, in Matthew 21:12-17, the next passage we’ve come to, Jesus is confronting a different kind of design misuse. There are two things happening in this little passage: restoring and responding. Let’s look first at restoring.
Restoring
Jesus starts by restoring the temple to its proper use. Look at verse 12.
“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’” (Matthew 21:12-13).
Jesus is most likely driving out the money changers and the pigeon sellers from what is known as the Royal Stoa. A stoa is a Greek covered walkway with Corinthian pillars.
This is a picture of the temple, Herod’s temple, the second temple. If you look on the left side, you’ll see the Stoa. That’s the southern wall. It is a 912-foot-long portico that had four rows of 40 columns. That is three football fields in length. This was one of the longest buildings in the world at the time.
Jesus’s primary concern is not the sale of animals or the exchange of money. Both were needed services in that day. Pilgrims would come to Jerusalem, and they needed to be able to purchase a pigeon or a lamb to offer in the temple.
They also needed to be able to exchange their money, from Roman money to temple money. Those services were needed. Jesus had two problems: One was the location. Two, the method.
The location should be outside of the temple, and the method should be done honestly, not fleecing the people who come to worship. So Jesus is saying, “You are guilty of design misuse. You’re taking something that was designed by God as a house of prayer, and you’ve turned it into a den of thieves, a cave of robbers. That’s not what it was made for.”
Now, in what way was the temple designed as a house of prayer? A lot of places we could go to answer this question, but I was struck by a passage last week in my Bible reading. You know how, when you’re reading along, and then you read a passage like you’ve never read it before? Like, “Where was this?”
In 1 Kings 8, Solomon is dedicating the first temple, and he is praying a prayer about prayer. He’s praying the prayer at the altar— which is so interesting, communicates huge gospel truths (e.g. we pray in Jesus’s name based on his sacrifice).
He’s praying the prayer next to the altar. He’s crying out to God, and then he goes on to pray seven different scenarios for the people of Israel, and he adds people from all nations.
“When they pray—” and he keeps referring to “in this house” (1 Kings 8:31, 33), “toward this house/place” (35, 38, 42, 44, 48). Solomon is praying that when they experience things like failure, drought, war, exile, and they pray “in this house” or “toward this house” that God, “you would hear, forgive, and answer.” That’s what the temple is designed for.
Even the sacrifices are facilitating prayer, crying out to God, receiving his forgiveness, cleansing, and having their needs met. The temple was always designed to be a house of prayer.
This is why today, thousands of years later, orthodox Jews pray toward the place of the temple mount, even though the temple has been destroyed.
This is why they gather at the Western Wall. The Western Wall is the closest they are allowed to get to where the temple was and pray. They’re not allowed to pray on the Temple Mount lest they have an international incident, because there’s a mosque there now.
When we were there this past December, some of us from here gathered and prayed at that wall for God to open the eyes of the Jewish people to their Messiah, Jesus, the ultimate temple. We’ll get to that in a moment.
But here, back in Matthew 21, Jesus is deeply concerned that the temple in his day is being misused as a place to make money dishonestly. He is restoring the temple.
Second, he is restoring people. Look at verse 14:
“And the blind and the lame came to him in the temple, and he [what?] healed them” (Matthew 21:14).
Healed them. So Jesus is not simply restoring the temple to its proper use; he is also restoring the body parts (i.e. eyes, legs) to their proper use. All of this gives us a vision of what is coming in the future, when the King sets up his kingdom and makes all things new. Read Revelation 21-22. Jesus is restoring the temple and the people.
Number 2, we move from restoring to responding. Verse 15:
“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 21:15-17).
Three different responses.
1. The chief priests and scribes see “the wonderful things” and “were indignant.”
They have no interest in the restoring of the temple or the restoring a people. They’re focused on maintaining the status quo: business as usual. That’s their passion.
2. Children see Jesus and cry out praise. Verse 15,
“Hosanna to the Son of David!”
This is Monday. Remember two weeks ago, Jesus came into Jerusalem, and the children were crying out. Same words. They’re still crying out. What they were crying out on Sunday, they’re crying out on Monday. So the kids see a Messiah, the leaders see a threat.
3. When the priests and the scribes angrily questioned Jesus about the children, Jesus left them, heading back to Bethany.
Bethany was a little less than two miles (around a 60-minute walk) past the Mount of Olives.
So, restoring, responding.
Now, what does this teach us? A lot of lessons. I’m going to mention four, and we’re going to land on the last one and spend most of our time there.
1. Jesus is disturbing his culture.
He is disturbing his culture. We know that Jesus isn’t simply losing it in a moment of unbridled anger. How do we know? The Gospel of Mark maps out the timeline.
When Jesus came into Jerusalem on Sunday, Mark 11:11 tells us that he went to the temple and he “looked around at everything.” He didn’t do anything; he looked around at everything.
He goes back to Bethany, comes back the next day on Monday, and drives out the merchants and the animals, expels them like a bouncer, and flips the tables of the money changers.
Have you ever tried to imagine what would be said about Jesus on social media about this event? Can you imagine that? Unsaved people, obviously, but even many so-called followers of Jesus would be scandalized. You could imagine the post:
“I was good with him when he was healing people and hugging babies. I’m all in. But what is this? Tearing up people’s lifestyles, calling stuff wrong… I thought he was inclusive. I thought he was loving. Apparently not.”
Have you noticed we have a perverted view of love? When Paul defines love in Romans 12:9, he warns us against fake love. “Let love be genuine,” Romans 12:9. Like, don’t buy the fake stuff. Best translation is probably, “Let love be unhippocritical.” Don’t go for fake love.
What is real love? He gives one of the most beautiful descriptions of what love is. The most beautiful, in all the weddings, is 1 Corinthians 13, but Romans 12 gives a very clear description of love. Look where he begins:
“Let love be genuine. Abhor what is evil; hold fast to what is good” (Romans 12:9).
Real love hates evil, holds on to what is good. Please, brothers and sisters, do not let the culture intimidate you into divorcing truth and love, as if you have to choose.
You either have to love (and our culture’s fine with that, fake love), or you have to be truthful and cold and angry (and our culture is kind of expecting that). But our culture literally does not know what to do with people who have truth and love together, like Jesus exemplifies.
Notice he cleanses the temple (that’s all about truth), and he heals the sick (what we would think of more as all about love). He is all about holiness and all about helpfulness, all in one. There’s no one like him. And we can’t live like him, apart from him. James 1:27 defines these two:
“Religion that is pure and undefiled before God the Father is this: [number one,] to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world” (James 1:27).
Compassion and conviction. Don’t buy just one or the other. Both— that’s counter-cultural. That’s what Jesus is disturbing in the temple. Jesus is disturbing his culture.
2. Notice Jesus is driven by the Word of God (verse 13).
Jesus is driven by the Word of God.
“He said to them, ‘It is written [say that out loud with me, it is written], “My house shall be called a house of prayer [Isaiah 56:7, he’s quoting],” but you make it a den of robbers [Jeremiah 7:11]’” (Matthew 21:13).
The activism of Jesus does not arise from the latest social media trend. It arises from the Word of God.
Christians are to be active, animated, and involved in what’s going on in our culture. But what drives us is not “we won’t feel accepted if we don’t post or act on this particular trending issue.”
Jesus is not driven by what is fashionable. He’s driven by what is true in the Word of God.
3. Jesus receives praise from the unlikely ones.
He receives praise from the unlikely ones. The priests and the scribes missed it. The kids got it.
We’ve seen this theme over and over again in Matthew, haven’t we? It’s really humbling, especially for leaders. It’s possible to be all around the things of God and still miss it. God, give us eyes to see what we can’t see.
This has hit me—again, you can tell I’ve been in Kings—in 2 Kings 6:17, when Elisha prays for his servant. They’re in Dothan, they’re surrounded by the Syrian army. His servant can’t see anything but the problem (the Syrian army), and so Elisha prays (verse 17), saying,
“‘O Lord, please open his eyes that he may see.’ So the Lord opened the eyes of the young man, and he saw, and behold, the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire all around Elisha” (2 Kings 6:17).
Right now, we see certain things with our physical eyes. We are aware of certain things happening, but there is way more happening than what we can see. God, give us eyes to see what God is doing that we can’t see.
That leads us to the main point.
4. Jesus is restoring the temple as a house of prayer.
What is a restored temple?
First, the temple is where heaven and earth meet.
The God who cannot be contained by the universe manifests himself in and through the temple.
Second, we’ve noticed in Matthew that Jesus describes himself as greater than the temple (Matthew 12:6).
He is the manifestation of God in flesh. God’s presence is manifested through Jesus’s death, burial, and resurrection.
Finally, when we repent and believe in Jesus, we become mini-temples filled with the Spirit. Mind-blowing. 1 Corinthians 3:16,
“Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you?” (1 Corinthians 3:16-17)
Chapter 6,
“Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body” (1 Corinthians 6:19-20).
We are mini-temples, but we are not isolated temples. 1 Peter 2:4,
“As you come to him, a living stone rejected by men but in the sight of God chosen and precious, you yourselves like living stones are being built up as a spiritual house [a temple], to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ” (1 Peter 2:4-5).
So here’s the question we have to wrestle with: In what ways is the “temple” cleansed and restored to a house of prayer today? Let me give you the short answer:
When people of prayer gather to pray. When people of prayer gather to pray in Jesus’s name. When people of prayer gather to pray in Jesus’s name. Two questions that will help us unpack that:
1. Are you a person of prayer?
What does that mean? Do you begin your day with a deep awareness of your need for God? A deep awareness of your need for the gospel, a rehearsing of the gospel?
Then throughout the day, we pray as we work. If we are temples of God, then we work our jobs throughout the week in dependence on God. We go to school in prayer. We practice medicine in prayer. We parent our kids in prayer.
I’m not saying we’re always folding our hands and closing our eyes, articulating formal prayers. We will at times. But we are people of prayer because we are abiding in Christ with the deep awareness that apart from him, we can do nothing.
So I want to ask you, what is keeping you from being a person of prayer? I’ve talked to so many people who will avoid any discussion on prayer or feel like a failure on prayer simply because “I don’t know how to pray like we’re supposed to pray. I’m not eloquent.”
Do we know that has nothing to do with it? Are we clear on that? You can be really eloquent in your prayer and not pray. Or you can be clunky in your prayer and really pray.
What is holding you back from being a person of prayer? Is it uncertainty as to how? Is it maybe failure to build rhythms of prayer into your day?
I have to start my day in prayer, on my face before God. Not because I feel like I have to earn some kind of merit with God, I have to survive. Then, praying before meals, not as an empty ritual, but because I want to train my prayer muscles to work with gratefulness.
Or praying at different periods throughout the day. Bake that into your day. I know if you’re at work, it’s not like you can always stop and fold your hands and get on your knees, but you can have moments throughout your day where you know you’re going to recalibrate in the midst of the busyness of day, reminding yourself that you are dependent on God and he is pouring out his empowering favor on you. You’re interceding for the people around you, for help to do what he’s called you to do. We are people of prayer.
The second question is, are you gathering on Sunday in prayer?
What does this have to do with it? Think about it. If God has designed the gathering of his people, for this to be primarily a house of prayer, if I’m coming for a different reason, then I’m guilty of design misuse.
What if I don’t care about all that prayer stuff? I’m here to see my friends. I’m here to build business contacts. I’m here just because I’ve grown up this way, and I feel guilty if I don’t go. I’m here to try to offset the mess-ups of the week. Is that why we come?
It’s great, we want to see our friends. We want a fellowship. All that’s good. But what is our primary purpose for gathering? To engage with God, to pray. That’s why we come.
So how do we gather in prayer? A couple of suggestions.
First of all, we are preparing in prayer on Saturday evening. You may do that formally. Some of us have been meeting for, I don’t know, 25 years on Saturday evening in building A to cover everything we do in prayer, because we know nothing good can happen at North Hills apart from his Spirit moving. Otherwise, we’re just going through the motions.
You might do it formally there or at home. I know when my kids were little, Saturday night was vital for Sunday. Sunday doesn’t start with Sunday when you have little kids.
If Sunday starts with Sunday, when you have kids, then church is a house of pressure, not a house of prayer. It’s terrible, you’re frantic. And even if you do prepare, sometimes you’re going to have crazy Sundays.
For us, it was a commitment on Saturday night. When they were little: baths, get everything ready, we prayed over the passage (and explained it) that they would hear preached the next day. We wanted to come ready to engage with God.
This is a house of prayer, where we meet together with God. We are people of prayer who can meet anywhere all week, but there’s something special when God’s people come together in his presence, expecting to meet with him, to hear from him, to adore him. There’s nothing like it.
So how do we do that? Here’s another suggestion: praying throughout the service.
Have you noticed we have an amazing parking team? Give it up for the parking team. Woo! Rain or shine, snow or blizzards, they are out there. But they aren’t just parking, they’re praying. They take that calling seriously, to be the first face people see— to serve them, but also to pray blessings.
Our greeters— give it up for the greeters. Yes, we have amazing greeters! Hundreds of greeters who will— like last week, we had people showing up at 6:15 in the morning for Easter (first service), greeting. But they’re not just greeting.
They’re greeting, and I know they may not stop and pray out loud, but they’re praying blessings on all the people who are coming in, aware that some people are coming here carrying heavy, heavy burdens. They’re praying that today we can share those burdens, that God will meet with us as we cry out to him. We want to be a house of prayer.
I asked my wife for an example of this, and the first one she mentioned was caring for little ones in the nursery. She said, “When I cared for little ones in the nursery, I didn’t just rock them, I pray for them.” We’re praying blessings over one another’s kids. This is a house of prayer.
Can I share a pet peeve? This is dumb, but I think it’s important. The reason I share this is not to pick on anyone but me, because I’ve done this so many times.
Think about when we’re crying out to God (e.g. “Great are you Lord”) in song. That ends, we sit down, and someone comes up (like me) and says, “Let us pray.” What do you think? “Aren’t we already praying?” Do you ever think about that? No, you’re not as pet peeve-ish. You’re more spiritual. Good.
I know it’s a dumb thing, and I say it all the time, but really, how about we continue to pray? Let’s shift our thinking from, “We’re singing now. We’re not praying, we’re singing.” No, we are praying.
Many of our songs are written as prayers, but even the hymns that we sing that declare truth about God, we are singing to our God who is here with us.
So we are praying. We’re praying when we’re preaching, “God, help me to hear what you want me to hear. Spirit, move among us.” We’re praying when we read scripture.
One of my favorite things is seeing God bring about divine appointments. We pray for these on Saturday night, that there’s someone who might walk in with a weight or a struggle and God brings together people who need to talk to one another. But then we don’t stop there. We’re ready to pray for one another.
It’s a beautiful thing to look around after a service. The service has ended, but the prayer hasn’t. People are asking one another good questions and “Can I pray for you?”
Then just pray for them, here and in the lobby and down in the cafe. That’s why we have all these spaces, so that we can slow down and pray, because this is a house of prayer. This is where we collectively meet together and respond to God.
So what is God saying to you? What’s the Spirit saying to right now? Has he convicted you of something? Has he spoken a word to you?
What we’re going to do— I’ve purposely cut my message a little short, which is highly unusual, but so beneficial, because we’re going to sing two songs, pray two songs. Then I’m going to come back up here.
I would love for a few of you— Worship team, come on up. I would love for a few of you not to wait. It’ll be over if you wait. Come sit up here. Then a few of you who may feel led to pray for us, confess a particular area of your life that the Spirit has convicted you of (sin or an area he’s changing you), or speak a word of encouragement— however the Spirit is leading you, real short so we can have a few.
There will be people up here during these two songs who would love to pray for you, with you. Don’t hold back. Let’s be a house of prayer.
Father, we ask that you would drive our money changers from our hearts today. We pray that you will flip the tables of our greed, of our hypocrisy, resentment, our busyness, our fear of what other people think of us.
Thank you, Jesus, that you’ve died for all of this, that you forgive us when we use what you’ve given us in ways that you had not intended. May we be a people characterized by prayer so that when we gather, this is a house of prayer. We pray this in Jesus’s name, amen.
