This transcript was generated by whisper.ai.

>>[music] >>Welcome to Day 3 of our look through Mark chapter 11 in Daily Drive
Time Devotions. We're going to look at verses 12-19 today. This is Monday in the
last week of Jesus' earthly life.

Yesterday we looked at Sunday, we looked at him riding into Jerusalem as the
king on a colt of a donkey. Now we're going to look at Jesus as the priest. But
before that some verses that will get us ready for what's going to happen
tomorrow, verses 12-14.

The next day, as they were leaving Bethany, Jesus was hungry. Seeing in the
distance a fig tree in leaf, he went to find out if it had any fruit. When he
reached it, he found it had nothing but leaves because it was not the season for
figs.

Then he said to the tree, "May no one ever eat fruit from you again. " And his
disciples heard him say it. Now just hold on to the thoughts in those verses
because we're going to come back to it tomorrow.

And now let's look at Jesus as priest. What he did on this Monday of this final
week of his earthly life, verses 15-19. On reaching Jerusalem, Jesus entered the
temple area and began driving out those who were buying and selling there.

He overturned the tables of the money changers and the benches of those selling
doves. And he would not allow anyone to carry merchandise through the temple
courts. And as he taught them, he said, "Is it not written, 'My house will be
called a house of prayer for all nations, but you have made it a den of robbers.

'" The chief priests and the teachers of the law heard this and began looking
for a way to kill him. For they feared him because the whole crowd was amazed at
his teaching. When evening came, they went out of the city.

This was Monday, and this is Jesus the priest. Jesus the priest teaching the
true nature of the temple. At the end of those verses I just read, he talked
about what it means to have a temple, a place of worship for God.

And he says three things. He says the temple is a house of God, it's a house of
prayer, it's the house of all. It's a house of God.

These people were acting like they were the owners of the temple. They were just
invited guests. It's God's house.

They'd forgotten who lived there. It's a house of prayer. They'd made making
money rather than offering prayers the purpose of this temple.

They'd forgotten why they'd come there. And the temple is also a house of all.
They had made the temple into a place of separation.

Who could afford this? Who could not afford that? There were even different
courts for different people in this temple that recognized different levels of
being able to access God.

They'd forgotten who invited them there. But to us, the teaching of Jesus in
these verses isn't the most telling thing, isn't the most memorable thing. The
actions of Jesus are what we remember.

We remember Jesus Christ walking into the temple on that day and turning over
tables, chasing out the money changers, and saying, "You have made my father's
house into a den of robbers. " We remember Jesus Christ, the priest, casting out
the unclean from God's temple on this day. Now, what does that mean?

How does that impact my life? Well, in two very powerful ways. Jesus, the
priest, casting out, number one, this attitude of using God for my profit.

And Jesus has the priest casting out, number two, an attitude of indifference
towards God. First, he casts out an attitude of trying to use God for my profit.
In the temple on that day, buyers and sellers had set up some tables to sell the
people who were making a pilgrimage to Israel, the birds or anything else that
they might need for the offerings.

Now, in one sense, it was a good service to people because some had traveled a
long way and they wouldn't have had an animal with which to make an offering at
the temple. But they'd taken what might have been a good idea, a service to
others at the beginning, and all of a sudden they made it into a service for
themselves. That can easily happen in ministry.

That can easily happen in ministry. So what was happening is they had a markup
of maybe 400% over what the value of something was. In the temple on that day,
you had to have the correct change in order to be able to buy the right things.

But you had to change that money with the money changers. And the money changers
made sure they made a hefty profit. In the temple on that day, the doves that
were sacrificed had to be a perfect dove.

The sheep that was sacrificed had to be a perfect sheep. But guess what? If you
brought a dove from your house, even the most perfect dove in all of Israel, it
would be stamped imperfect and you'd have to buy one of their doves at about a
400% markup.

Jesus sees what's happening. Everybody saw what was happening. And he angrily
cast these people out.

And you can see why. They were using religion for their own profit. They were
using God for their own profit.

And the question I have to ask myself is, do I ever use God? Do you ever use
God? Is the only time you pray when you're in a tight spot, "God, get me out of
this.

I need you right now. " Or do you pray prayers of praise to God, thankfulness
for the things that he has done? Do you use the Bible as a crowbar to get people
to do what you want them to do?

Or do you trust God to speak into your life and other people's lives? Do you use
God? Do you use God in that the kind of prayers that you pray, the kind of
attitudes that you have towards God is, "God, I'm going to be faithful to you as
long as you make my life good.

I'm going to be faithful to you as long as I have enough money and a good job
and all my kids are safe and no problems in my household. I'm going to be
faithful to you as long as you make life work like I want it to work. " Well,
life doesn't always work like we want it to work in this world.

That's pretty obvious. Do you have an "I'm going to be faithful to you, God," no
matter what attitude? Or do you use God to try to get what you want?

Jesus comes into the temple that day to cast out this attitude of using God for
my profit. He also comes in to cast out an attitude of indifference. In that
day, the people had begun using the temple as sort of a thoroughfare.

It had become a shortcut from one place to the other and a place where all of
this business was going on. For some, it was just a quicker way to get where
they were going. It's easy to begin to see faith as a shortcut.

It's just a way for me to get where I'm going. It's a way for me to get what I
want. Now, in sense of the eternity of our lives, some people see their faith as
a shortcut to heaven.

It doesn't really matter what I do in this life. I'll say a few words about
Jesus and I'm going to make it to heaven. Rather than a committed life, they're
leading a shortcut life.

Other people in daily life see their faith as a shortcut to get what they want.
Has your life, your Christian life, lost its meaning, lost its excitement? It's
almost always because we've tried to make God into a shortcut in our lives.

Now, there is an answer for the shortcut syndrome. You quit walking through
temples as if they were highways. You quit going past the things of God, the
holiness of God, in a quick way to get to where you want what you have to get
done.

When your Christian life becomes just a series of to-do lists and you want to
get them done as quickly as possible, even if you're saying that's to please God
and you never have time to stop and appreciate the holiness of God, the power of
God, be humbled by the greatness of God. If you've never got that moment in your
life, then you're living a shortcut life. And of course, you're feeling empty
inside.

Of course, you're feeling rushed inside. Of course, you're feeling this attitude
of indifference towards God inside. You ask yourself, "Am I treating the holy
things of God as if they were everyday affairs with an attitude of indifference?

" The only way to stop doing that is to stop. Just to stop long enough to think
about who God really is, how thankful you really are, the greatness of what he's
really done. Are you whizzing by on some Christian highway all the things that
God has done, wants to do in your life?

You're not seeing the mighty hand of God at work? Stop for just a moment today.
Five minutes, ten minutes, half an hour, an hour, and notice what he's about.

In these verses, Jesus comes and he cleanses the temple. I want you to remember
something. The Holy Spirit has now made you and I, as believers in Jesus Christ,
the temple of God.

The presence of God does not live in a temple in Israel somewhere any longer.
That ended when Jesus died on the cross and was resurrected. Now the temple of
God is human beings, those who've accepted Jesus Christ into their lives.

So these verses aren't about going into some church building somewhere and
cleansing it out. That's not a bad idea, but that's not what this is about.
These verses are not about going to some temple in Jerusalem and cleansing it
out.

These verses are about the temple of God and that's you and that's me. These
verses are about cleansing the attitudes of selfishness and indifference that
make their way so easily into my heart, saying, "Jesus Christ, I need you to
cleanse me. I need you to come into my life.

I trust you to cleanse me. " And if there are places in my life where I've made
my heart a den of robbers rather than a place of worship, there are places in my
heart where indifference and selfishness has crept into the extent that I'm not
recognizing the greatness of what you're doing, cleanse it, Jesus Christ,
because I want to focus on you. Now for just a moment together right now, I want
to turn to him and make this a holy place and say, "Jesus Christ, cleanse my
heart right now.

Cleanse my heart. I know that it might be painful because I'll have to let go of
some things that I don't want to let go of, but I know that it won't be nearly
as painful as holding on to things in my life that are keeping me from you. "
And I know that in the end, the pain will be only for a moment and the joy will
last forever.

Cleanse my heart. Cleanse my heart of those attitudes of selfishness and
indifference and put in their place an attitude of humility, an attitude of
service, an attitude of praise. Bring that into my life.

Refresh this temple, Jesus Christ, the temple of my heart, the temple of my
life, by your strength, by your power. I ask this, Jesus, in your name, amen. Be
sure to join us tomorrow.

We're going to come back to that fig tree and find out what Jesus was teaching
us there.