Jesus goes to the Temple ‘big church’ (Mark 11:11 - 19)

Mark 11:11 Then he entered Jerusalem and went into the temple; and when he had looked around at everything, as it was already late, he went out to Bethany with the twelve. 12 On the following day, when they came from Bethany, he was hungry.  13 Seeing in the distance a fig tree in leaf, he went to see whether perhaps he would find anything on it. When he came to it, he found nothing but leaves, for it was not the season for figs.  14 He said to it, “May no one ever eat fruit from you again.” And his disciples heard it. 15 Then they came to Jerusalem. And he entered the temple and began to drive out those who were selling and those who were buying in the temple, and he overturned the tables of the money changers and the seats of those who sold doves; 16 and he would not allow anyone to carry anything through the temple. 17 He was teaching and saying, “Is it not written, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations’? But you have made it a den of robbers.” 18 And when the chief priests and the scribes heard it, they kept looking for a way to kill him; for they were afraid of him, because the whole crowd was spellbound by his teaching.  19 And when evening came, Jesus and his disciples went out of the city.

Intro
Some months ago I spoke from the first chapter of Mark’s gospel about the day (1 v20 ff) when Jesus went to a local synagogue in terms of “Jesus goes to church” We saw how the coming of the Kingdom bearer led to both people being astounded at his teaching and the fearful shouting of a demonized man.
That was near the beginning of Jesus’ ministry of establishing the Kingdom of God on earth among people.
Today Jesus is drawing to the end of his ministry, or his ‘mission’ as he arrives in Jerusalem.
The day after his arrival Jesus goes to the biggest and most important house of prayer to the Lord God of Israel.  If everything is so much bigger than the Capernaum Synagogue what will break out here?

We need to understand something about the Jerusalem Temple in Jesus’ day. 
•It was not simply like a cathedral or big synagogue as we might experience it today. 
•By Jesus’ day the second Jerusalem Temple was something like a shopping mall containing a currency exchanges + markets + an animal slaughter house + places of higher education + a national shrine + a political forums + perhaps libraries as well as the expected places for prayer and worship. 
•It was the main stay of the city’s economy, religion, politics and a centre of national life all in one.
•In concrete religious terms the temple was the core of the umbilical cord linking God to God’s people and Jerusalem was the navel of the whole earth. It was centre stage.

Jesus chose a moment in the busiest week of the year to go there and he was determined about it. *1
•What would he find? 
•What would the reaction or response be to him and his Kingdom mission?
••Would he find the fruit of faithfulness or leaves of religious camouflage and showy deception? 
••What would the reaction be to a true Son of God who represented and embodied the Kingdom of God in that place?
For those with eyes to see some fog was about to be lifted

Narrative Comment
Jesus went into the city amidst the shouts of praise. Because it was already late he only went into the temple area to look around. Then he left the city and took a night to sleep on what he had seen.
What had he seen?  The place assigned by God as a place for his name to dwell and supposedly devoted by people to God’s glory and a place of prayer for people of all nations had been hijacked. 
•It had become a place harnessed to the demands of local commerce.
•It had become a place of Jewish chauvinism with no regard to the God seeking Gentile.
•It had become a place that made priestly worship into a profitable industry.
•It had become a place of exploitation of the pilgrim and the poor alike in the name of God, swallowing both the widow’s mite and the supposedly unclean blasphemous coins of the pilgrim.
••It had become a god-less place in the name of God,
••A place where God was cluttered out by so many human agendas that God was buried under it all.
••All these things constituted demonic strongholds cluttering the place assigned for prayer and worship of the Lord God of Israel.
••To now establish a Kingdom presence these needed to be cleansed and exorcised.

But going a step beyond the physical building and its significance, people’s imaginations, their conscious awareness and sensitivity also needed to be cleared and delivered of the perverse associations that had been established.  All the graft and exploitation had become normal, standard practice, no one thought anything of it.  The blinding grip of gold, wealth and power on people’s imagination also had to be broken.

So having taken a night to sleep on this Jesus would do this head-on through confrontation and humiliation of this ‘den of robbers’ (v.17).  On the next day Jesus, personal embodiment and champion of the Kingdom of God, would step into the ring and eye-ball the powers which had been allowed to hijack and corrupt the longing in every heart for a relationship with the one true God.  Jesus of Nazareth, Son of God was going to let every contender know that the Kingdom of God had arrived and would not be silent:

Jesus would clear the decks so he could be seen for who and what he was in contrast to the surrounding religious fraud to which people were accustomed to in godless and self-serving ‘successful’ religion.

For us:
Let us here understand that the outworking in Jesus of our salvation just moved up a gear.
Jesus is taking on the oppressor of all humanity on the centre stage of history on his own terms at his own time for our benefit.

The Response.
The aristocratic priestly class of the Sadducees seemed to have clearly understood the implications of what Jesus did. In v 28 they ask: “By what authority are you doing these things? ” The matter of authority is the key Kingdom question:
•Who was really in charge here? 
•Who was sovereign? 
•Who genuinely had the power or franchise of salvation? 
•Who really represented God: Rich Caiaphas and his colleagues in their priestly splendor or poor Jesus, one time Galilean carpenter in the habit of calling God ‘Abba-Daddy’? *2

In the days that followed, people would see this played out in how this Son of God chose to combat the strongholds he provoked in the Temple.  When the powers Jesus provoked fought back by nailing him to a cross Jesus pressed on invading another realm and stronghold overturning that too.  This was the darkest realm of all, the realm of death.

Application:
Friends we each have a Temple.  In fact we may have several temples, Firstly our hearts, that inner place from where we live, then our homes, that combination of walls, floors and ceilings that we inhabit, and perhaps our places of work and worship too?  Can we see Jesus standing for God’s Kingdom in those places or has the clutter built up as to obscure and bury him?  What would happen if he paid a cleansing kingdom visit to your temple?  Maranatha, Lord Come to your Temple!

*1 Isaiah 50:7b I have set my face like flint, and I know that I shall not be put to shame;
*2 For those with who knew their scriptures this was a replay of Moses and his contest with Pharaoh, Who is in charge here?  Let the contest begin!  In Exodus dusty Moses stood before the splendid god king and the fight went 10 rounds climaxing the death of the first born of Egypt.  Jesus would fulfill that as well.