Our Passover Lamb: The Provocation of Jesus’ Anger

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0:17So Father, you know that when any one of us puts our grubby paws on the sacred revelation of your Holy Word, we instantly contaminate it. And yet you take great pleasure in allowing us to feel the great joy of the Holy Spirit surging through us when the power of your revelation enters the hearts of your people to do the upbuilding work that you can do, only you can do. And so my prayer this morning is that to whatever degree you do an upbuilding work in your people through this text as I speak it into their lives, everyone in the room would know that you and you alone have done it. And I'm asking this now in Jesus' name, amen.

1:02So my name is Jason Vaden, I'm the pastor for Community Outreach and Connection. And I still remember the What Would Jesus Do bracelets that were sweeping across the youth groups of our nation from somewhere around 19 1980s, late 1980s, well into the 2000s. If you're unfamiliar with what that concept is or what that wrist bracelet was, it had the abbreviated letters WWJD printed on them as a reminder that wherever you are and whatever situation you're in, you only have to ask yourself the question, what would Jesus do? And then imitate him. Now, I'm not wanting to toss that question as though it's completely unhelpful, and I also understand that there is a biblically appropriate way to talk about imitating Jesus.

2:04I'm arguing, however, that it's simply not the fundamental starting point, especially when it comes to the righteous anger and holy outrage of Jesus in Matthew 21 verse 12. Instead, the first order of business for us this morning is to gaze long and hard by faith at the ultra-exquisite beauty of the one who exercised this righteous anger. In other words, the further we have gotten into Matthew's account of the gospel, the more evident it has become that this one-of-a-kind savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, alone fits the bill to save his people from their sins and to assuage the wrath of God from us, even in his righteous anger. So here's the first facet of ultra-exquisite beauty that we want to gaze at in our Messiah.

3:09And it's Jesus' perfect faithfulness to his Father. In verse 12, "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." All this really gets back to who Jesus Christ the Lord is. Jesus is God, the eternal Son, and Jesus is the sinless son of man, or as our text says, the sinless son of David. Subsequently, Jesus repeatedly said things about himself like, "I speak just as the Father taught me, and I always do the things that are pleasing to him." That's a big 100% word, but Jesus said it about himself.

3:58So what I'm contending for is because of who Jesus is, and because of all the profane money-making schemes happening at the temple at this time, Jesus' entrance into the temple was a perfect firestorm for everything you see in verse 12. In other words, Jesus had no other recourse once he entered the temple but to drive out all who sold in the temple and to overturn the tables of the money changers and the seat of those who sold pigeons. And look, let me insert this. It's not like the incarnate son of God would start turning tables over and driving us all off the premises if he hypothetically entered our building during November when we host our craft boutique.

4:39That's not the point here. Jesus wasn't outraged just because there were transactions happening in the temple. Jesus was outraged because the Jews were using God's holy place for the sacred assembly of worship and prayer as a pretext for their greed. They were exploiting their fellow countrymen and doing it all under the auspices of meeting the needs of those countrymen. See, lots and lots of Jews, as they made their way to the Passover, had to travel from great faraway distances. And so to be able to leave behind their sacrificial animals where they lived and to purchase sacrificial animals at the temple was a great relief to them.

5:31And yet, as one commentator estimates, when they got there, the fair market value of any given animal sold was sometimes sold for 10 times worth that price. And I think that verse 13 in our text confirms a lot of what I'm saying. Look at that verse. Jesus said to them in verse 13, "It is written, 'My house shall be called a house of prayer,' but you made it a den of robbers." So there it is, in part referring to using the house of God as a pretext for their greed, and even indicts them in the severest way as making the Father's house, His Father's house, a den of robbers. When He uses this word, He's not using the ordinary word for a common thief who steals in the stealth of night.

6:36He's using a word that describes ruthless criminals who ravage innocent bystanders in broad daylight to get exactly what they want, just like the thieves or criminals or robbers who hung on either side of Jesus at Calvary. Now let me insert this. Let me say this. Many of you are aware that verse 13 is a quote from the Old Testament. And so I also want to say that just as Jesus' perfect faithfulness to His Father made His holy outrage and anger unavoidable in the temple at this moment, Jesus' holy anger and righteous outrage also fulfilled Old Testament prophecy. This is the second facet of ultra-exquisite beauty that we want to gaze at by faith, Jesus' prophetic fulfillment for His Father.

7:39When Jesus says in verse 13, "It is written," He's actually quoting Isaiah 56:7, "My house should be called a house of prayer." On the tail end of that, right on the heels of that statement, He's quoting Jeremiah 7:11, "But you make it a den of robbers." Then drop down to verse 15, and "Hosanna to the son of David" is a reiteration of Psalm 18 that was chanted or cheered over Jesus just the day before during the triumphal entry. And then down in verse 16, Jesus Himself once again quotes Old Testament scripture from Psalm 8 verse 2 when He says, "Out of the mouth of infants and nursing babes, you have prepared praise." The entire section, this entire section openly broadcast how deliberately calculated and strategically scheduled this whole event was, not by the chief priests and the scribes, but by God.

8:45You see, at this time, hundreds of thousands of Jews were streaming to the temple in Jerusalem to observe the Passover. The Passover feast was a commemoration of God's deliverance for the Hebrews from the final plague in Egypt just before the exodus. God commanded at that time that the Hebrew people would paint on their doorposts and lintels with the blood of an unblemished lamb, and when the Lord saw it, the destroyer passed over them and did not strike their firstborn as he did the Egyptians. And so now fast-forward centuries later to Matthew 21, and at the exact moment that households and families all throughout Jerusalem are taking to themselves the unblemished lambs from their flocks, the ultimate Passover lamb has rolled into town and entered the temple in the flesh.

9:54The one to whom all the throat-slit lambs since the day of Moses had been pointing to was right under their noses. But they didn't get it, because when He rolled into town, He's turning tables over instead of overthrowing the Roman government. And I'm saying to you that the flavor of this text suggests that even that is strategically scheduled by God. At every turn, we see Jesus' prophetic fulfillment for His Father, and this also assumes Jesus' ardent preoccupation with His Father, and this is the third exquisite facet of beauty that we want to gaze at. See, after Jesus drove everyone out of the temple and turned over the tables in verses 12 through 13, what we see in verse 14, at least from where I'm sitting, feels really disjointed.

10:54Look at that text, verse 14, "And the blind and the lame came to Him in the temple and He healed them." How in the world do you make sense of that little piece of narrative given what just happened? I'm convinced that we all have to orient ourselves onto Jesus' preoccupation with His Father, and by preoccupation, I mean red-hot desire and passion for the infinite honor of His Heavenly Father to be exalted and magnified. We got to get centered on that with Jesus to understand what's going on here. See, the Lord Jesus, as I've already said, the Lord Jesus Christ has always been and will never cease to be God, the Eternal Son.

11:42However, in order to qualify as our Passover lamb, He also had to maintain His sinless manhood all the way from the womb to the tomb with no flaw. And He didn't do this simply by flexing His divine muscle at every turn. No. Instead, He had to walk by perfect sinless faith At every turn in Spirit-empowered reliance upon the Father. Which suggests to us, this is why of all the things that the scripture could call God's temple, it labels it in verse 13 as a house of prayer. It suggests to us that this is why Jesus' whole earthly existence was defined by his devotion to sacred, sweet communion with the Father through Spirit-filled prayer.

12:48In light of all this, I'm arguing this morning that if Jesus would qualify as the ultimate Passover lamb, there had to be more going on here than just his perfect external obedience to the demands of God's law and in fulfillment of prophetic texts. In other words, all of his internal faculties had to be energized and brimming over with red-hot affection for God the Father at all times. You want a proof text? How did Jesus summarize the greatest commandment? "You shall love the Lord your God," how? "With all your heart, with all your mind, with all your soul." Now, our text does not explicitly address this, but Jesus' first cleansing of the temple over in John chapter 2, verses 13 through 17 does.

13:50So you can turn there and follow along, or you can just listen. In this scene, it's a totally different point on the chronology of Jesus' public ministry. It's on the front end of his public ministry instead of the last week of his life. But the context is the same, so it means that the same firestorm is perfectly at hand, perfectly brewing here. It's the Passover. Jesus went up to Jerusalem. He entered the temple, and when he did, he found those who were there selling oxen and sheep and pigeons, and the moneychangers were sitting there as well. So what does he do? Very similar. Makes a whip of cords.

14:30He drove them all out of the temple with the sheep and oxen, and he poured out the coins of the moneychangers and overturned their tables, and he told those who sold the pigeons, "Take these things away. Do not make my Father's house a house of trade." And when the disciples witnessed this first cleansing of the temple, and when they heard Jesus speak the words that he did, they instantly recalled another messianic prophecy, Psalm 69:9. And so John 2:17 says that his disciples remembered that it was written, "Zeal for your house will consume me." This is a pregnant word, this word zeal. It's virtually synonymous with jealousy.

15:27And according to texts like Proverbs 27:4, it's more acute and more severe than anger and wrath. And this text said he's consumed with it. "Zeal for your house will consume me." And so we have to ask the question, what's all this zeal consuming him for? Well, the text says, "For your house." Whose house is this? Verse 16 of John chapter 2 says his Father's house. So now import some of that undergirding understanding back into Matthew 21. And first of all, you go to Matthew 21:13, and it makes the most sense to see the first person plural there, "My house should be a house of prayer, but you have made it a den of robbers."

16:20That first person pronoun makes the most sense to hear that as the voice of God the Father. But then secondly, consider this. With all that given, because Jesus' fiery zeal and holy jealousy was 100% centered on his Father's infinite glory and honor, there wasn't even a whiff of resentment or malice or retaliation in his zeal. None of that was there. And so as a result, even when Jesus cleansed the temple in righteous anger, his mercy and compassion were never eclipsed. This is a phenomenal dynamic and reality to consider. And therefore, because of that fact, after he cleansed the temple, after he drove everyone out and turned over the tables and likened what was going on there to a den of robbers in verses 12 through 13, verse 14 says, "The blind and the lame came to him in the temple."

17:31Wow. Really, really vulnerable people don't draw near to violent, volatile men who are out of control, like raving mad lunatics. Vulnerable children down in verse 15 don't draw near to shout the praises of those people. They shriek in horror, and they hide behind their parents. Disabled and special needs people run from raving mad lunatics. So this all suggests that even in Jesus' holy outrage over what was going on, he remained perfectly measured, self-controlled, and in step with the Spirit at every turn. Note in the text, verse 14, he didn't go out to the blind and lame like the whole mission of his life had been.

18:25They came to him in the temple. And get this, when they did, the text says he healed them. Not only was his compassion and mercy not eclipsed, it was on full display. And just as a sideline thought here, for any of those who want to dispute the supreme authority like the chief priests and elders did down in verse 23 of this same chapter, this text in essence is saying, "Here are his credentials." Verse 14, here are his credentials. He healed the blind and the lame. Jesus didn't heal undocumented, obscure illnesses like the charlatans of our day. Jesus publicly healed documented, incurable diseases.

19:17This is something to gaze at, folks, hard and long by faith. He is a one-of-a-kind Messiah. There is none other like him. Had he cleansed the temple without this fiery zeal energizing all of his internal faculties for his Father's infinite honor, I'm arguing all bets would be off for us, North Church. If he had cleansed the temple, even with this fiery zeal in his belly, but it had a single whiff, a single stitch of resentment, malice in his zeal toward the Jews, you and I would be toast. We would be history. It would be lights out for us because Jesus Christ would not qualify as the ultimate Passover lamb. But friends, this is where the good news of the gospel gets so gloriously good. He did it.

20:14He did it. The Lord Jesus Christ fulfilled Psalm 69:9 with all of his heart, with all of his soul, with all of his spirit, with all of his strength. And for that reason, God the Father can credit to the likes of you and me here at 5151 Program Avenue in Mountain View, Minnesota, the perfect record of Jesus' righteous life. Hallelujah. Hallelujah. Amen.

20:51Let that stagger you. Let that stun you. And yet keep gazing because there's more. Jesus' perfect faithfulness in the Father, his prophetic fulfillment for the Father, and his preoccupation with the Father strategically stoked the provocation of his foes. And this fourth facet may not sound exquisitely beautiful to you, but it is. Stay with me. And I'm getting it from verse 15. Follow along. Matthew 21 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." The chief priests and the scribes pictured for us in Matthew's account of the gospel both ruling authority and teaching authority, and in this text, Matthew clearly frames the supremacy of God and Jesus Christ to override both of them.

21:52When Jesus single-handedly dismantled the selling and buying in the temple, he overrode the ruling authority of the chief priests. Remember now, some have estimated that there were as many as 2,000 or upward of 2 million people streaming toward the temple in Jerusalem at this time. But even if that estimate is inflated, it's safe to assume there were hundreds of thousands of people, and Mark 11:16 says Jesus would not allow anyone to carry anything through the temple. Now, we know Jesus got his marching orders from God the Father, but that's some massively impressive unilateral authority over the Jews. Wow.

22:35But Jesus infuriates them all even more by overriding the scribes' interpretive authority. In addition to cleansing the temple, which that's a part of the wonderful things they were seeing. That doesn't just include the healings. It includes the cleansing of the temple. These Jews were indignant over Jesus silently receiving public praise from these children. These children cried out in the temple, "Hosanna to the Son of David." And this enraged the chief priests and the scribes. Their anger was inflamed, and that's why they ask the question they do in verse 16. Do you hear what they're saying?

23:17Read this question with livid chief priests and scribes in mind. They are beside themselves with anger, and from here, it's only going to get amped up by Jesus. "Jesus said to them, 'Yes.'" Verse 16, "'Have you never read, "Out of the mouth of infants and nursing babes you have prepared praise"?'" See, first of all, Jesus verbally affirms his own public praise with the response, "Yes." He's saying, "That's right." He's not silent anymore. He's openly, verbally saying, "That's right. This praise, my name is due this praise. I'm worthy of this praise. Yes." Second, he takes them to school, so to speak, by answering their question with a question. Keep looking at verse 16.

24:03He says, "Have you never read?" Now, that is a massive insult to the interpretive authority of scribes. Not just suggesting have they never read, but if you read it, how far off your interpretation must be. And then third, Jesus boldly frames his own public praise with scripture itself. He's saying sacred divine inspiration of holy writ is actually speaking about my life was Psalm 8:2. "Out of the mouth of infants and nursing babes, you have prepared praise." But friends, I believe the final nail in the coffin wasn't just a quotation of scripture. Even though these scribes routinely twisted and distorted scripture for their own self-exaltation, they knew their way around their Old Testaments as well as anyone.

24:59Therefore, when Jesus quoted Psalm 8:2, these scribes would've instantly recalled whom Psalm 8:1 addressed or addresses. You may know it. You'll know it when I quote it. "O LORD, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth." The very first LORD there is all caps, L-O-R-D, to remind us it's translated from the word Yahweh, which is exclusively reserved for God himself. By quoting Psalm 8:2, Jesus is equating himself with God openly, accurately, and in a very real sense, Jesus, our ultimate Passover lamb, was consumed with holy jealousy and zeal for the infinite honor of God, that the just, holy, good wrath of God might consume him in our place at the cross, and the direct essential path to getting there was provoking these Jewish leaders to a place of murderous rage.

26:12But even here, Jesus had to balance the provocation of their murderous rage with avoiding his own premature death. So look at verse 17. Verse 17 says, "And leaving them, he went out of the city to Bethany and lodged there." Now, going back to the beginning of the sermon, I realize that I said imitating Jesus is not the fundamental starting point here, but I want to try to bring this message to a close by saying once you have gazed hard and long by faith at this one-of-a-kind Messiah, you can't help but be immersed in him by the Spirit, and that necessarily leads to an overflowing life of imitation before God of the Lord Jesus Christ.

27:10In fact, we have texts like Ephesians 4:26 that command us to be angry. But be careful. Be careful. The very next statement follows that by saying, "And do not sin." And that's why I want to give you some vital signs that accompany righteous indignation so that we can identify it, or the absence of it, in ourselves and others. So here's the first vital sign. Righteous anger is suspect of self. See, you and I need to learn not to insert ourselves as the hero and champion of biblical narrative, especially Messianic narrative, right? There's one Messiah with marching orders to cleanse the temple, and it's not you and it's not me.

28:13Instead, I think we would do well to see what a close resemble we bear to other categories and personalities of righteous anger. For instance, the disciples, chapter 20, verse 24. They were indignant. Or right here in the text, the chief priests and the scribes, they were indignant, verse 15. You see, I'm well aware that temple worship in Jerusalem has long since been disordered and dismantled. But friends, consider this. Saints of God, brothers and sisters in the Lord Jesus Christ, we are the living temple of the Holy Spirit. And ask yourself, how outraged do you get when this same Messiah goes to work through affliction and distress and hardship mopping up the inner sanctum floor of your heart?

29:12I suppose if there's any warranted righteous anger in our day, it might be over agitators disrupting legitimate assemblies of Christ-exalting worship. But ask yourself this. Which causes you more outrage? The sin of other people being disruptive or the profane thoughts on the inner sanctum floor of your own heart? The first vital sign says that righteous anger is suspect of self. Second vital sign, righteous anger is productive. In the throes of Jesus' holy anger, he actually had the presence of mind to do the tedious task of making a whip of cords in John 2:15. Isn't that fascinating? In the throes of this outrage, before he drove everybody out and turned over the tables, he made a whip of cords.

30:21You see, the righteousness of God through Jesus Christ living in the hearts of his saints is able to harness the anger he inspires for production, for productivity. Righteous anger doesn't blow up abortion clinics, folks. Instead, at the other end of the spectrum, righteous anger strikes in week after week with New Life Family Services to fold clothes or to sign up as a parenting coach for expecting mothers. Third vital sign says righteous anger bears the fruit of the Spirit. What is the fruit of the Spirit? Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.

31:04On the one hand, patience and kindness that never gets hot and bothered about anything because it's so devoid of any ironclad faithful commitment to the truth isn't fruit of the Spirit at all. That's just niceness. But on the other hand, things done in faithful, ironclad, red-hot commitment to the truth without gentleness and self-control are like artificial wax fruit. From a distance, they're very appetizing, but under closer scrutiny, there's no productive nourishment to be found there. And then fourth and finally, righteous anger is saturated with tears of grief and sorrow. Let me just be blunt here for a moment and call on you, all of you, to be really hard on yourself at this point.

31:59If the only thing you feel towards the worst of your enemies, and I'm underscoring the worst of your enemies, is fiery outrage, that is entirely antithetical to righteous anger. It's not for nothing that Paul wrote Philippians 3:18 with literal tears over those, and I quote, "Who walk as enemies of the cross." It's not for nothing that when Jesus drew near and saw the city, He wept over it. He wept over it in Luke 19:41 before He cleansed the temple, and this included people who would be provoked to murderous rage and put Him to death, nail Him to a tree. Yet He's weeping over them. And perhaps the most illustrative moment in Jesus' life about this supernatural coexistence of anger with righteousness is found in Mark 3:5, where the religious leaders among the Jews are putting Jesus to the test to see if He will heal on the Sabbath. In that text, Mark 3:5, Jesus looked around at them with anger, grieved at the hardness of their hearts or at their hardness of heart.

33:21Righteous anger saturated with tears of grief and sorrow. We need more of that. To those scattered around the room, different places here who are unsaved and still outside of Christ, hear me saying to you this morning, your big concern is not exercising righteous anger. Oh yeah, you're responsible to restrain your sinful anger, but your biggest concern is the holy, just wrath of God that's looking you in the face. And here's the call. Here's the appeal. Jesus stands right now with open arms of compassion ready to receive you. And here's the good news. If you run to Him, make a beeline to Him on His terms and in repentance toward God and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, He'll receive you, and when He receives you, you'll be reconciled to God.

34:11But you're not promised tomorrow. You're not promised the next breath of life. Today is the day of salvation. Go to Jesus. And to all the saints in the room, even though we talked a little bit about the vital signs that accompany righteous anger and holy outrage, you're still going to be tempted to reduce all of this down to mere duplication. Just ask yourself, what would Jesus do? And imitate Jesus. But friends, hear me saying loud and clear this morning, that didn't work back in the 1990s, and it doesn't work now. You will never muster up enough will to just muscle your way into this supernatural combination of holy outrage and bitter grief.

34:57Only the Father and the Son lodging within you through the Holy Spirit can ignite this and make this happen. And the way the Holy Spirit does this is through the childlike faith of desperate prayer. Since there's no time like the present, let's go to Him now. Oh, Father in heaven, you have given us the mind of Christ. You have given us yourself with Christ through the Holy Spirit who's resident within, and He can make all of these combinations happen. In fact, that's His very business. That's what He does. He supplies. He produces love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, and gentleness, self-control, and Lord, we need you to do just that, and we ask you for it in Jesus' great name. Amen.

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