Undermining God's Purpose

Luke 19:45-48.  This sermon was preached by Pastor Marty Bonner on August 9, 2015.

The term “undermine” has no shocking origin.  It refers to the fact that valuables are often underneath large amounts of overburden (earth that has no value to the miner).  Even though mining has been honed to quite a science we still have cave-ins today.  In 2010 a mine in the Atacama Desert of Chile had a single block of stone break free from the mountain and fall through each layer of the mine in a collapsing chain reaction.  When the dust settled it was recognized that this “stone” was at least 45 stories tall and had trapped 33 miners half a mile under the surface.  It took 17 days to drill a hole to the location of the miners and find out that they were still alive.  After 69 days, the world was able to see these miners return to the light of day.  The greater the thing you undermine the greater the consequences if you don’t do enough to mitigate your actions.

Today, Jesus reminds us that God has purposes that he is accomplishing.  It is easy for his people to lose sight of those purposes and, in fact, undermine them.  The eternal purposes of God are far “heavier” than that 45 story block of stone.  If we do not let God correct us, we will eternally endanger ourselves and the lives of our loved ones, and eventually suffer a spiritual collapse.

Jesus Removes That Which Offends God

On the heels of being declared King-Messiah by the large crowds of people, we see Jesus resolutely head to the temple and begin to clean house.  Over time the leaders of the temple had instigated and allowed practices that were undermining the purpose God had in having a temple in the first place.  Let’s take a closer look at the problem.

The temple presented a very practical, logistic problem.  People were required to bring animals for sacrifice, and those animals needed to be inspected and judged.  Also, once a year a temple tax had to be paid in the Hebrew coinage.  Some people were traveling great distances and thus would have trouble trying to bring animals to Jerusalem.  They would also have foreign money and would need to exchange it to pay the tax.  On top of this many people didn’t have their own flocks and would need to purchase animals once they got to Jerusalem.  Thus people would bring money with them in order to exchange currency and secure an acceptable sacrifice.

Now sometimes the solutions to problems can create other problems.  So, at first, people would get animals in the surrounding area and bring them to the temple.  At some point, the place of getting an acceptable animal kept moving closer to the temple until it was moved into the outer court of the temple (also known as the court of Gentiles).  On one hand this was more convenient for the people and allowed them to buy “pre-approved” animals.  This convenience led to what it always does, higher prices.  In fact Jesus called it a den of thieves.  They were price-gouging the people.  This solution had begun to undermine the purposes of God.  The people were commanded to come, give sacrifice and pay the tax.  Yet, the priests and vendors were taking advantage of that situation to “rob” the people.  When leadership takes advantage of those who are trying to obey God’s commands, it has crossed a line that God will not tolerate for long.  This happens in the Church today.  Many false leaders have taken advantage of the fact that people are commanded by God to believe on Jesus and become a part of his Church.  They undermine God’s purposes as they fleece the flock and abuse their authority. 

Another problem is that the vendors in the court of the Gentiles had become an added distraction to worship.  Now let me first say that even if everything was done perfect, there would still be plenty of distractions to worshipping God.  They still had to bring an animal that would be relieving itself wherever.  They would also have the slaughtering of the animals and other people.  We should never fool ourselves that worship of God in this flesh is meant to be a perfect event.  The flesh is always distracted.  Part of the challenge of a believer is to learn to see God in the midst of those distractions.  In fact, salvation and redemption is messy business.  But the lust for money and convenience was adding more distraction than was necessary.  Also, the rip-off prices would fill the heart of people with anger at men, and ultimately anger with God.  “Why should I come to Your temple and get robbed?  Is this just?”  It is hard to worship when you feel like you have been abused.  Commercialization within the Church diminishes and trivializes our participation within it.  Leaders may think they have created a wonderful thing, but they are undermining the ability of people to truly worship.

God Desires Prayer From All Nations

Jesus reminds the priests that God’s purpose was that the temple be a place of prayer for all nations.  He does this by quoting from Isaiah 56:6-7, which says, “Also the sons of the foreigner who join themselves to the Lord, to serve Him, and to love the name of the Lord, to be His servants-everyone who keeps from defiling the Sabbath, and holds fast My covenant- even them 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 nations.”  Thus God wanted His temple to be a place of prayer, and not just for Israel.  That passage says that God wants to make the Gentiles joyful in his house.  Prayer is basically a person reaching out to God and interacting with Him.  This was done with sacrifices and words.  Whether to cover sins or to honor God, prayer is our approach to God.  The symbolism of the temple speaks to the importance of approaching God correctly.  But we should never lose sight of the main point.  There is a way to approach God, interact with Him, and be accepted.  This is a joyful thing.  Whether we are glorifying Him, petitioning Him, or confessing and repenting before Him, we can know that He accepts us.  This was being lost through the actions of the leaders of that day. 

God’s heart is to take those who are separated from Him and to bring them near.  The whole chapter of Isaiah 56 is worth reading because he is dealing with the reality that some people were separated from going all the way into the temple.  In fact, the closer you got to the temple the fewer people who could continue.  Thus those who were not Jews could only approach the first level.  Then the next level was the Court of Women.  Only the Jewish males could go in to it.  Then there was the temple building itself.  Only the priests could enter the Holy place.  And then only one priest, the High Priest, could go into the Holy of Holies, and it only on one day out of the year.  Some people see this cynically and say something to the affect that they couldn’t worship a God who appears so racist or misogynistic.  However, they are completely misreading the reason for these barriers.  Isaiah 56 is a prophecy to Eunuchs and Gentiles who could feel badly about being separated.  He encourages them not to be discouraged.  You see the whole point was to show that no matter how “qualified” a person was in the flesh, it still couldn’t guarantee their hearts were in the right place.  The High Priest in the days of Jesus wasn’t even a son of Aaron.  He had manipulated and bribed his way into the post.  It was those who were most removed from God in the flesh who were the most easily brought near in the Spirit.  In fact, Israel as a nation rejected Jesus and when the Gospel went to the Gentile nations it was initially received my many.  Thus instead of thinking God is racist, recognize His well illustrated point that no race, biology, sex, station in life, or physical ability can ensure a person’s heart will truly believe God and worship Him.  Yes many worshipped God with their lips, but their hearts were far from Him.

The New Covenant

So what does this say to us today?  Yes, it can apply to us under the New Covenant.  First of all, we should receive Jesus as our King.  Jesus is the King of kings and Lord of lords, and God requires all men everywhere to repent (Acts 17:30).  There also is no other name under heave given among men by which we must be saved (Acts 4:12).  Jesus is the master and we are His disciples.  Thus His Word is authoritative in our life by His position.  Yet, he has also saved our lives by dying on a cross for us.  Thus His Word is authoritative in our life by His value to us. 

We should also let the King cleanse our life.  Jesus knows exactly what it is that is getting in the way between us and God.  If we accept Him as king then we should also accept His judgments of the things in our lives.  He prunes us and enables us to be fruitful.  Thus the true believer in Jesus is in a relationship of learning to surrender to the wisdom of Christ.  It is easy to say that all our sins were covered 2,000 years ago and thus we don’t have to worry about sin at all.  However, this overlooks the fact that to embrace Jesus as our savior is to admit that we need saved, aka “I am a sinner.”  Jesus didn’t die so that we can keep on sinning.  Rather, He died so that we can be freed from our sins and enabled to truly change.

Lastly, we should draw near to God in Spirit and in Truth.  Regardless of what you are in the flesh, God has enabled you to come into the Holy of Holies through Jesus.  Regardless of race, gender, or lineage, you can come into the holiest place of all, the throne of God.  He accepts you not because of your flesh, but because you put your faith in His Son Jesus.  Let embrace and worship Him today!

Undermining audio