"Well, I've Got You" (2006)

Luk 19:45-48 And he entered the temple and began to drive out those who sold, saying to them, "It is written, 'My house shall be a house of prayer,' but you have made it a den of robbers."
And he was teaching daily in the temple. The chief priests and the scribes and the principal men of the people were seeking to destroy him, but they did not find anything they could do, for all the people were hanging on his words.

Short Statement/Diversion
This passage means how it reads. There is no hidden meaning…no code…no secret numerology to tap into a sacred truth that can’t be discerned from regular people and only the ones in the know. It reads like it says. This is one of the most critical points about the Bible that its harshest critics never see….that it is set in time and space, communicated verbally with language that can be understood. Therefore, you can truly gain knowledge from it. All other religious books are set off in mystical places, with mystical characters saying things which do have a hidden meaning or are based 100% on the word of one man who comes back to set everybody straight, despite history. But those books were written for one purpose only…to separate the elect from the hoi polloi. …to create an inner circle of those with special knowledge, insight and stature.

Not His book. Its heroes have a blemished record for all to see. It’s people are always considered ‘stiff necked’ and stubborn. There is no special inner ring with His book. In fact, all throughout its pages, He commands over and over again that those who are dearest to Him are precisely those who are not dearest to anyone else….the fatherless, widowed, poor, foreigner, etc.

But His people never got this. By the time of Jesus, Herod the Great, in a shameless and ultimately futile attempt to gain the respect of the very people he ruled, rebuilt the second temple with such grandeur that it could’ve been considered a wonder of the ancient world. In fact, the building and renovation continued long after his death. The Gospel of John indicates that it was in the building for 46 years. In the Olivet discourse, Jesus draws the disciples’ attention to the grandeur of the temple and tells them that not one stone was to be left on top of another. This caused great concern to them, seeing as how that temple seemed indestructible. It looked like heaven come down to earth, yet Jesus stated that its existence was short-lived. In fact, after Vespasian and Titus destroyed Jerusalem and the temple, there was nothing left but a field used for farming. Every attempt to rebuild the temple after its destruction was foiled and in its stead, stands the Mosque of Al-Aqsa.

We know from the text that the commerce going on in the temple court was a profanity to the sacredness of God’s house. But what exactly did He mean? Why did it provoke so much anger from the Prince of Peace? Why did they actually leave? After all, one man driving out commerce is a death wish for anyone these days. Money is God. You mess with that god, and you will be crushed. But not with Jesus….they left.

Interfering with something very sacred…
"It is written, 'My house shall be a house of prayer,' but you have made it a den of robbers."

Jesus told them why He was chasing them out, and appealed to Scripture as His reason. His first reference was Isaiah 56:7. But the entire chapter of Isaiah 56 is critical in understanding His anger:

Isa 56:3-7 Let not the foreigner who has joined himself to the LORD say, "The LORD will surely separate me from his people"; and let not the eunuch say, "Behold, I am a dry tree." For thus says the LORD: "To the eunuchs who keep my Sabbaths, who choose the things that please me and hold fast my covenant, I will give in my house and within my walls a monument and a name better than sons and daughters; I will give them an everlasting name that shall not be cut off.
"And the foreigners who join themselves to the LORD, to minister to him, to love the name of the LORD, and to be his servants, everyone who keeps the Sabbath and does not profane it, and holds fast my covenant--these 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 peoples."

How do you think that text makes the ‘foreigner’ or a ‘eunuch’ feel? The eunuch felt like a ‘dry tree’, meaning they had nothing to offer and relegated themselves to insignificance. The foreigner may have desired God, but because of being an outsider, never believed he or she was welcomed within the temple walls. But God, instead, offers them both a very special place in His home. That’s redemption. It’s establishing a bond that was always meant to be established, regardless of class, circumstance or birthright. There is nothing in this realm more sacred than the relationship between God and His children…..absolutely nothing. The temple was God’s gift to them so that they could draw close. And God was very clear that His heart was for those who were broken, haggard and in need of His acceptance.

You can’t damage God’s sacredness. You destroy yourself in the process….Isaiah stated in the presence of God’s glory, “Kill me now! I can’t take this! I am not worthy to be in this presence!” Peter, John and James fell to their faces with the same reaction when the glory of God rested over Christ on the mountain.

But there is a sacredness that can be left to the whims of sinful human beings…the sacredness of relationship between the Father with His children. There is nothing more sacred and once that relationship has been tampered with, manipulated or abused….then begin to pray for mercy, because God will be provoked.

So God provides a special place which purpose was for those who sought Him could come and draw close…to heal and to restore them by honoring the One who called them from bondage and into His arms. Piper is right…He is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in Him. It is our purpose…to enjoy Him forever. Throughout Scripture, God calls the Israelites to righteousness, but explicitly speaks about having a heart and a special place for those without anything…the fatherless, widows, poor and the foreigner. He wasn’t calling everyone to become homeless and poor in order to gain acceptance from Him. This group of folks God holds special because they represent the real human race, without the window dressing. He points to them to show us all who we really are and what we really need. And He offers this. Listen to the words that Christ echoed much later on from the previous chapter…

Isa 55:1-2 "Come, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and he who has no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price. Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which does not satisfy? Listen diligently to me, and eat what is good, and delight yourselves in rich food."

Your money and your ‘righteousness’ are no good here. Don’t let that stop you from drinking and eating at His table. Nothing else will satisfy and spending money on anything other than His invitation is destructive, not nourishing. We are all foreigner and the eunuch…we are weary and heavily burdened, and He offers rest for our souls. It’s just natural for us to hide that behind the mask of resilience and ingenuity, which is a lie.

Now enter the merchants into the court yard… In the midst of His invitation, many decided there was a great deal of cash to be made in the temple courts. Originally, Jews from all over the Diaspora would come and exchange denarii’s for ½ shekels to pay temple tribute. You need money changers for that. But money changers wouldn’t be interested unless they could mark up the trade. You also didn’t need to haul in your sacrifice. You could purchase it there. You need traders. In order to give the incentive to traders, you need to mark up the price. Imagine the depraved mind with all the money that could be made in the temple courts, especially on high and holy days. You could retire on the cash flow from religious activities…making a retirement from the broken drawing close to their Redeemer. So, other things were probably bought and sold there, as a result. There was probably food, trinkets, souvenirs, clothes, etc. What was created as a special place to draw them closer to God, turned into a shopping mall.

You can’t damage God’s sacredness. But when you mess with His relationship with His own, you have done much worse than burning down an orphanage. You have done much worse than raping an unsuspecting woman. And God doesn’t take that lightly. When the Prince of Peace roars into the courtyard and throws a tantrum, you have a tiny indication of what God thinks about this.

There are people in need and desire Him greatly. But many times they may feel unworthy to enter His place of worship or feel as if they have messed up too much to be accepted. There are also those who encourage this frame of mind, and they are no different than the hucksters and venture capitalists surrounding the temple courts.

Jesus, who is what the temple represented, symbolically, comes in to purify it. Anyone who feels as if they are not good enough to belong with Jesus is precisely those He calls. God holds a special place for the broken, bedraggled and weary. He also holds a special wrath for those who desire to keep the broken, bedraggled and weary from coming to Him….and it can be done through intimidation or manipulation. You can intimidate them, in order to keep the Inner Ring nice and clean and in your control. By the time Jesus came in to chase them out, the temple had been stratified into several areas representing degrees of ‘holy’ people…the outer court was for the gentile….then the inner court was for Jews only and split in two….the outer portion was for the Jewish women and the inner portion, closest to the alter, was for the Jewish men. Jesus always preached in the outer courts. He will destroy the walls of those rings. You can manipulate them by getting them drunk… flooding their senses with sights, sounds and things an itching ear longs to hear and an addicted body desires to have. He will overturn your tables and your boon will fizzle fast.

Don’t try to get between God and His people. You’ll prove to the skeptic that the supernatural does exist, at your expense.

House of Prayer to Robber’s Cave
The next text He uses, calling the temple a ‘den of robbers’ comes from Jeremiah 7:11. When you go back and read that entire chapter, you can understand the condemnation Christ is using for those in the temple. God, through Jeremiah, prophesied to Judah about the temple and the temple’s people back then. Basically, they would go out and worship Baal and other gods, then come back and do the temple-shuffle, all the while thinking that by going through the motions, they were safe in the land God gave them. God was reduced to a toll booth to guarantee periods of safety so long as they went through the motions, thinking by doing it, they were satisfying His decrees. His house, built for those who were desperate for Him became flooded with the disingenuous and deceitful. A robbers den was a reference to a place where robbers would make temporary dwellings….a place to meet up after a day of plunder and plan the next day of plunder. This is what God said His people were turning His house into. It was simply a gathering place to break in between kicking dirt in His face and robbing His people of the one place they had to go to draw near to Him through sacrifice.

“Come, everyone who thirst and hungers….don’t worry about money…it’s no good here…..buy and eat!” That has no place in the heart of the profiteer or the power player. However, once they see many coming in response to His call, the numbers and the opportunity that goes with it will create a desire to ‘get in on the action’ in terms of worldly success, and it gets in the way between the sacredness of Father to son and daughter. To the son and daughter, He is our very life and our food to satisfy…and we can be taken advantage of and have been. But it isn’t unseen, unnoticed and it will not go unanswered. There are those who won’t enter the Kingdom and hold these from entering themselves. That doesn’t go unseen, unnoticed and it won’t go unanswered.

In Million Dollar Baby, Hillary Swank’s character has saved up enough money to go back to Missouri and buy her mother and sister a home to live in. She is so excited to see their faces when she gives them the keys to their new home. When they arrive with her at the new home and she tells them the good news, the mother’s face twists and contorts. She then tells Swank’s character, “Now they’re going to stop with the welfare checks. How could you do this? Why did you buy me a house? Why couldn’t you have just given me the money?” Swank’s character is heartbroken. As they are ready to leave, the mother finds out how she made the money and tells her, “Find a man and get a real life. People are laughing at you.” Later that evening in the car, Swank is telling Eastwood’s character about growing up and then she turns to him to say, “Boss, you’re all I’ve got.” Eastwood turns to her, smiles and says, “Well, I’ve got you…”

That scene brings to mind our security in His unyielding love for us, when everything else we held so dear has pushed our faces in the mud. The most sacred thing in this universe is for a broken, bedraggled and weary child to turn and say, “Lord, you’re all I’ve got” and for the Lord to respond, “Well, I’ve got you.” Messing with that relationship is the most sacrilegious thing that can be done, because it is the most special thing that you can experience in this life and thereafter. And He will overturn all the tables, throw out all the hucksters to make sure you will never be deprived of Him.