And now that you're comfortable, why don't you stand up as we read God's word this morning. We're in Mark chapter 11. As most of you know, we're going through the book of Mark, and we've reached Mark chapter 11, which is a crucial point in history. Mark chapter 11, verses 1 through 19. Now, when they drew near to Jerusalem to Beth Bethphage and Bethany at the Mount of Olives, Jesus sent two of his disciples and said to them, go into the village in front of you and immediately as you enter it, you will find a colt tied on which no one has ever sat. Untie it and bring it. If anyone says to you, why are you doing this? Say, the Lord has need of it and will send it back here immediately. And they went away and found a colt tied at a door outside in the street and they untied it. And some of those standing there said to them, What are you doing untying the colt? And they told them what Jesus had said, and they let them go. And they brought the colt to Jesus and threw their cloaks on it, and he sat on it, and many spread their cloaks on the road, and others spread leafy branches that they had cut from the fields. And those who went before and those who followed were shouting, Hosanna, blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. Blessed is the coming kingdom of our father David. Hosanna in the highest. Verse 11, and 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 12. On the following day, when they had came from Bethany, he was hungry, and seeing in the distance a fig tree and leaf, he went to see if he could find anything on it. When he came to it, he found nothing but leaves, for it was not the season for figs. And he said to it, may no one ever eat fruit from you again, and his disciples heard it. And they came to Jerusalem, and he entered the temple and began to drive out those who sold and those who bought in the temple. And he overturned the tables of the money changers and the seats of those who sold pigeons, and he would not allow anyone to carry anything through the temple. And he was teaching them and saying to them, 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. And the chief priests and the scribes heard it and were seeking a way to destroy him for they feared him because all the crowd was astonished at his teaching. And when evening came, they went out of the city. Let's pray. Father, we pray that you would help us to see the Lord Jesus for who he is this morning and what the implications are for our lives as we walk out of here today and go into the world. Lord, we just pray you would help us. Open our eyes, we pray in Jesus' name, amen. My house, growing up in Crossgates in South Toledo, we had a single-car garage, we had a bay window, and then we had the two-bedroom windows. And beneath the two-bedroom windows, we had some landscaping bushes. And lo and behold, I don't remember exactly how this came about, but the bushes started to die. And my dad, And my dad was not a jokester, so you might think he's a jokester by what I'm about to tell you, but he really wasn't so much. He had a good sense of humor. So what my dad decided to do to get more life out of these bushes is he spray painted them green while the foliage was still on them. But soon, very soon, he extended their life a little bit, they were not going to be fulfilling their intended landscaping purpose. Somewhere along the way, they had lost connection, their true connection at the roots with their source of life. And the title of the message today is, Are We Truly Rooted in Him? Sub-question, or have we lost our life-giving connection? The purpose for the people of God at this time, in Mark, but also in our time, is to have a real life-giving connection with the Lord Jesus. through his work on the cross to pave the way and for us to pave the way for others to do the same as Israel was to pave the way for Gentiles to come in into the temple in the court of the Gentiles. Some have summed up the purpose of the church and the purpose of us individually is to know Christ and to make him known. And what Jesus is doing here this morning is making himself known to the people of Israel and to others who are all the big throng that's coming into Passover here in this final week of his life. Our individual, each one of us, and our church-wide need is to be clear, first of all, about who Jesus is, and then second of all, the state of our connection with God, both as a church and as individuals. Is it real? Is it life-giving, our roots? actually connected to Jesus as we're drawing strength from him each day? Or is our life full of activity, looking good on the outside, but really we're, in effect, a spray-painted bush, and our roots are not truly embedded and connected to him as we draw life from him each day? And so as we come into this text, our prayer is similar to the blind Bartimaeus, who had prayed two things, he prayed that, he said, Jesus, have mercy on me. And so we pray, Lord, if I'm blind to something about my lack of connection with you, would you have mercy on me? And then the second thing he asked for is that Jesus would recover his sight. And so that's our prayer as we go into the text this morning. The Jewish leaders back then had by and large lost their connection with God. Not that everyone had, As you can see, things aren't going well. And Jesus has now come into the center of Jewish religious activity with all its hustle and bustle, and he came to fulfill his purpose and to make a new and living way for people to connect to God through him. And in order to do that, in our passage today, he does some very purposeful acts in order to communicate with his disciples, but also with the people around him who he was. And we want to see that. Peter, if you remember, a little bit further back in Mark, had already identified Jesus as the Christ. And when he did that, Mark records for us that in Mark 8, 30, he strictly charged them not to tell no one about him. And so back in Mark 8, it wasn't time yet, as far as Jesus was concerned, to present his identity as the Christ, as Messiah, publicly. And what we see here now is, now is the time. Now is the time. And we'll see why now is the time in a little bit. But before we dive into the text, you know when you're looking at maps on your phone, if you use phones and maps, you zoom out, you pinch and zoom and you zoom out. We wanna zoom out, away from Mark 11 for a little bit, to see the big picture of what God has been doing from the beginning of history until this point in Mark 11, and then we'll complete the history at the end of the message. We're gonna get a bird's eye view from Genesis through Mark real quickly. God's plan, and we wanna see this, God's plan with man is to dwell in a fruitful connection with him. And so starting in Genesis 1 and 2, God dwells with Adam and Eve in sweet connection in the garden. As a result of sin, of eating the forbidden fruit, that connection is broken, And in response to that, what does Adam and Eve do? Mark talked about this. They go and get some fig leaves and they construct a covering because they realize they're naked before a holy God now. And what God does is he assesses what they've done and he comes to the conclusion, evidently, that these fig leaves are completely insufficient for the job at hand to try to restore connection between man and God, and so what he does is he replaces them with the death of an animal and covers them with animal skins. God needed to provide the solution to this restored, this connection that needed to be restored. And that was in Genesis 3, 21, where it says, the Lord God made for Adam and for his wife garments of skins and clothed them, and of course, as Mark talked about, the death of that animal was pointing to the ultimate death of Christ that would cover our sins and restore in a more complete way our connection with Jesus and with the Lord. But this first step of killing this animal and covering them with animal skins is the beginning of a rescue mission to restore man's connection with God that was broken in the Garden of Eden. Later on, in Genesis chapter 12, when God selected Abraham to be the father of a great nation, the scope of this connection was not limited to just Israel, but it says that all the families of the earth shall be blessed through you. So the scope was always all the families of the earth, not just one smaller group of people, but it would be through that group of people that the families would be reached. Then later, Abraham's descendant ended up in slavery in Egypt. And God delivers them and Moses out, Moses being the chosen leader, and he gave instructions that continues the theme of God dwelling with man. In Exodus 25, eight through nine, it says, and let them make me a sanctuary that I may dwell in their midst, exactly as I show you concerning the pattern of the tabernacle. And so God is a God of details. He said, I want you to make a sanctuary that I may dwell in their midst. And you see, this is the continuation of the theme of God dwelling with man. And then, at the very end of Exodus, the tabernacle is built, and we read, the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle. Exodus chapter 40, verse 34. Eventually, this temporary tabernacle gave way to the temple in the promised land. And we see that Solomon is praying a prayer of dedication, and as soon as Solomon finished the prayer, fire came down from heaven, consumed the burnt offering and the sacrifices, and the glory of the Lord filled the temple again. 2 Chronicles 7, 1. So then this temple is present for a season, but really it's just another link in the chain of God's unveiling plan to have man dwell with God. When Jesus comes, it says in John 1 14, the word, that is God, became flesh and what? Dwelt among us. And so this theme of God dwelling with man is reaching a bigger and bigger impact as time goes on through the grand story of the Bible. And it's within that backdrop from the garden, the tabernacle, the temple, and now the incarnation, which we just sang about. That's the little piece of Christmas in my message right there. And now they're about to enter what is now called Herod's Temple, which is the second temple of the two temples. It's called Herod's Temple because he did a lot of renovations on it and apparently named it after himself. And so he's now coming in here and he needs to communicate his kingly identity to people so that we can continue, so they will know that he is the Messiah and that connection between God and man and God dwelling with man can continue. And so the outline for today's message is really three parts. In Mark 11, one through 10, Jesus connects us with his kingly identity. In Mark 11, 12 through 16, he connects us with his kingly authority. And then in verse 17, he connects us with his kingly purpose. So first, let's see how he connects us with his kingly identity. He does it by fulfilling prophecy in both the timing and the manner of his arrival. And so he's being very purposeful about this here. You know, in our digital age, knowing people's identity and who they are is getting harder and harder, is it not? And so when you go to a website and it asks you for a password, the reason it does that is because the website doesn't know who you are unless you tell it something that you know and only you are supposed to know. And that's how you identify yourself with that. And if you have a website that's trying to be really secure, you not only have to do that, but you've probably been at these sites where now it texts you a code, and you get a code, and then you gotta retype that code in and do that. And so if you really need to be sure about the identity of somebody, there's some extra steps that occur. One of the things we're seeing here with Jesus is he's taking lots of extra steps to make sure that we know who he is, and we wanna see that unveil as we go through this. This past week, I got an email from Patty Parmelee saying she needed some help. And I thought, that's weird. And so I emailed her. And I said, did you mean this for me? And she rolled back, yeah, my niece needs an Apple gift card. And I'm like, I remembered Scott's email about people's emails being hacked and all that stuff. I said, this isn't Patty. So Rob said, you know not to reply to that. I said, I know. I replied to the first one. I kind of dove in on it. So we want to be careful as we look at Scripture, more careful than I was in replying to the first one, and you would think I would know better, but we want to be careful that we understand Jesus' identity and what He's doing. The purpose of prophecy in Scripture, particularly predictive prophecy, where there's a prophecy predicting something in the future, is to be a sign. And what's the purpose of a sign? the sign is to point to something. And so when Jesus fulfills prophecy, he's pointing to something. He's doing something to communicate himself. He's called the Word, after all. And so he's a communicative God, and we're so grateful for that. And so we can authenticate his kingly identity by carefully looking at the timing of his entry. It was anticipated Messiah would come to establish God's kingdom, and many wanted Messiah to provide promised blessings in this temporal world. They wanted him to come and establish some sort of political structure and that they may live under it and not be under the oppressive Romans as they saw that. But when Jesus fed the 5,000 in John 6, the people had seen the sign that he had done and they said, this is indeed the prophet who has come into the world. Perceiving then that they were about to come and take him by force to make him king, Jesus withdrew again to the mountain by himself. And what do we see there again? It wasn't time yet. They wanted to make him king, it's not time yet. It wasn't time. And back then, it wasn't time to recognize his king, and now in Luke 19, they didn't see that it is the time. Luke 19 describes, it's not in Mark, but in Luke 19, it describes what Jesus was thinking and going through as he approached Jerusalem. And listen to what it says in Luke 19. He drew near and saw the city and he wept over it. Because of the state of the broken connection between God and man that was not supposed to be there. And he says, would that you even you had known on this day the things that make for peace. What are the things that make for peace? God makes for peace when we come to him in repentance. and trust him to restore that connection. And then he says, but now they are hidden from your eyes like blind Bartimaeus. And then in verse 43, for the days will come upon you. And he predicts the fall of Jerusalem and the temple that is coming in 70 AD. And so he's making a prophetic prediction ahead of time while he's fulfilling prophecy of something that was predicted to him before time. It's proof upon proof of his identity. And it says at the end in verse 44, they will tear you down to the ground and they will not leave one stone upon another in you because you did not know the time of your visitation. They did not understand the timing. The time was to be known, but by and large, the Jews did not see it. Details matter. And we do not have time to look into this, I wish we did, but in Daniel chapter nine, there is an amazing prophecy that talks about from the time of the rebuilding of the walls of Jerusalem, to restore the rebuilding, rebuild the temple, rebuild the walls of Jerusalem, until when the Messiah comes, it will be 483 years. And the date of that rebuilding that occurred that you can look up in Encyclopedia Britannica, if you add 483 years, accounting for the fact that these are 360-day prophetic years, so you do the math, and it comes to right to this point in time in history. And what Jesus is weeping over is they don't know the timing. They don't know what is really happening. But even in addition to that, he's coming in on the celebration of what? Passover. And we find out later that he is killed just when the lambs are being killed. And the Passover lambs, you remember when they put the blood, they put the blood, they put the blood up here, and they put it over here, and of course, if it's meant to be significant, it is significant at the shape of a cross. Besides being careful of the timing of his entry, he's also careful in another way. He's careful in the manner of his entry. Mark goes fast, and so if he includes details, they matter. Well, they matter anyway, but especially in Mark. In verses one through seven, he describes Jesus' means of travel coming in. How often do we do that? How often do we describe means of travel? For example, my friend Jeff is visiting with us this weekend, really wouldn't say to somebody, yeah, meet my friend Jeff, he came to visit us in his Honda manufactured vehicle with leather seats. You just don't say that. But Mark is making a point of how he came into Jerusalem to show that he was fulfilling prophecy. It says in there, in Mark 11 too, go into the village in front of you, Jesus telling the disciples, and immediately as you enter it, you will find a colt tied on which no one has ever sat. Untie it and bring it. Mark 11, two. There's some remarkable things about this. First of all, he's fulfilling prophecy. We don't see Mark explicitly saying he's fulfilling prophecy, but if you look at parallel passages of the other gospels, they explicitly say it, that he is. And that prophecy's from Zechariah 9, nine. And then there's another thing that's interesting about this as well. And I got this off of like, ridehorses.com or something like that. So I wanted to get it from a secular site just to see. So he's riding on a donkey or a foal that's never been sat on before. So this is what this secular site says. It is vital that the donkey you intend to ride has been properly taught how to be ridden. You cannot ride a donkey that has not had any training. It may end badly for both you and the donkey. So by riding on a donkey that has never been ridden, Jesus is perhaps demonstrating his sovereignty over creation and over us, and that as this donkey is submitting to him as king, we too should as well. Another person has thought that perhaps the fact that the donkey had never been ridden reflects the fact that he was going to accomplish something in this, in what he's about to do and in the kingdom he's setting up, unlike anything that anybody had ever done before. And so no one had ever rode this donkey, and I'm gonna ride in one, and it's symbolizing no one's ever done what I'm about to do. And then the disciples, though, didn't see or understand the significance of this until later, because it was later that they, and the gospels show this, that they realized, oh, that's why he came in that way. But then finally, and the significance of this isn't coming from scripture, So take it for what it's worth. But I found it interesting nonetheless that the genetics within donkeys, which we know Jesus put there, Jesus created all creation, the genetics within donkeys are such that they have a cross on the back. So if you Google donkey back, don't do it now, and you click images, you will see a whole bunch of donkey backs with crosses on it. So he's sitting on a donkey, the cross there, coming into Jerusalem in so many ways, potentially. And again, Scripture doesn't say that's why that is. I just find it interesting, so I thought I'd mention it. So he communicates his kingly identity both in the timing and manner of his arrival, but he also does it by the acceptance of praise by people as he enters in. And we find that in Mark 11, 7 through 10. It says they brought the coal to Jesus, they threw the cloaks on it, he sat on it, and many spread their cloaks on the road, and they spread leafy branches in front, they had cut from the fields, and those who went before and those who followed, notice that, there's a throng moving, and they're moving, and there's some that are before and there's some behind, and they're moving as they go. shouting, Hosanna, blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord, blessed is the coming kingdom of our father David, Hosanna in the highest. Josephus tells us that in 65 AD, there was nearly three million people, by his estimate, that would come in at this time. So we're talking about the population of Chicago. This is a lot of people. And the depiction of these events oftentimes are described by folks as when he comes into Jerusalem, every single person is for him. And then at the end of the week, every single person is crying for his crucifixion. And in studying this a little bit and looking at some scholars, there's some doubt about that, actually. You've got this throng moving, some in front and some below. And the reason there's some doubt about that is because the testimony of scripture, and I would tend to lead toward a little bit different description of this. In Luke 19, it says, as he was drawing near, already on the way down the Mount of Olives, the whole multitude of his disciples began to rejoice. So it was his disciples who were rejoicing. We can't believe that all three million people were his disciples. His disciples began to rejoice and praise God with a loud voice for all the mighty works they had seen, And then there's the seeing. And then the Pharisees saw it and said, teacher, rebuke your disciples. Rebuke these people who are in front of you and behind you as you move into Jerusalem in this three million throng of people that are heading in a festive mood on their way to Jerusalem. And he answered them, I tell you, if these were silent, the very stones would cry out. I tend to lean from that, that Jesus is basically saying, if these were silent, the stones would cry out, that this praise of his disciples in some form was legitimate. Because if this wasn't legitimate praise, then the stones would cry out. In some form, this is legitimate. And I tend to see that this crowd of people that's up front and behind him is maybe similar to the disciples, They loved him, they saw what he was doing, they had misguided expectations, perhaps, but they weren't necessarily all screaming for his crucifixion afterwards. That's something that we impose into the text, but it's not necessarily something that's explicitly stated. The cloaks on the road, the people who throw those, symbolize the crowd's submission to Jesus as king And it happened with Yehu in Jehu in 2 Kings 9.13. And the other thing that we see in that is between that and the praise and what Jesus' response is, there may have been a sincere throng of disciples that were traveling with him. Application for us. Do we see his kingly identity? Do we see Jesus for who he truly is? Are we impressed with how many different ways he authenticates his identity? Or would we like the website that's like, okay, you gave me your password, you gave me your, you texted me some code, that's not enough. At what point is it enough for us to see Jesus and his kingly identity? And then another question is, as he looks over us, is he weeping because we still do not see? Where do our roots lie in our life? Do they lie in him or do they lie in something else? Are we trusting in something else? So Jesus roots us not only in his kingly identity, but he also roots us in his kingly authority. And he does this by the cursing of the tree and the cleansing of the temple. So in your Bibles, in verse 12, there may be a heading above verse 12 that says something like this. If you have the ESV, it might say this. Jesus curses the fig tree. And that heading makes a space between verse 11 and verse 12 that kind of breaks it out. That's fine. However, the presence of that heading in the Bibles isn't in the original text. And what that space does is it might cause us to not see the connection that is really there between verse 11 and verse 12. So in verse 11, my desire is that you would all see this firsthand from the Bible. If you have a Bible, my hope would be that you would actually read the letters and look at it in front of you. Jesus enters the temple. This is fascinating. Jesus enters the temple and what does he do there? So he had just come in, the throng was there, they had apparently dissipated. This is another reason why I would lean toward the idea that there's a smaller group of people traveling is Here he's now in the temple, and it's kind of over, and that thing just seems like it dissipated into the crowd. And so here he is in the temple, and what does he do there? And he entered Jerusalem, went into the temple, and when he had looked around at everything, as it was already late, he went out to Bethany with the 12. What'd he do? What would you call that in one word? He assessed it. He was just assessing, right? Now remember that as we get to verse 12. Don't let that big heading block your mind from that. Verse 12, on the following day, and obviously the disciples knew he did that, because it's written here. On the following day, when they came from Bethany, he was hungry. And seeing in a distance a fig tree and leaf, he went to see if he could find anything on it. How would you describe that in one word? He assessed it. You see the connection? There's something about this fig tree that's connected to the temple and what's going on. And when he came to it, he found nothing but leaves. What is Jesus seeing here? Only fig leaves. Does that ring a bell? Back to Genesis? What's the truth about this tree with only fig leaves? It's insufficient. This isn't enough. There's no fruit. It's, in my mind, and maybe the connection isn't intended, but when I saw these two, I thought of the insufficiency of man's attempt to be right with God on his own. All this activity in the temple and what Adam and Eve did did in the garden. So in response, in seeing only insufficient fig leaves, he pronounces a curse on the tree, which is precisely what he did after he saw only the fig leaves. He cursed the ground and the serpent in Genesis. The parallels just continue. Verse 14, and he said to it, may no one ever eat fruit from you again, and his disciples heard it. Look at what is in the next verse in verse 15. He is coming into the temple, and what had he just done in the temple? He had just assessed it. He had said he had looked around in verse 11, and in verse 13, he looked at the fig tree, he pronounced judgment on it, and now he's coming back to the temple, and he cleanses it. Do you see the order of things there? It's fascinating. He assesses the temple, he assesses the fig tree, he curses the fig tree, he cleanses the temple. When he comes into the temple, what does he see? He sees a bustle of activity. He sees green leaves. Looks good from the distance, but he's coming in. He came in to assess it. It appears to be a green bush performing its intended purpose, but it's really spray painted. It's in leaf, so to speak, looking alive. Sacrificial animals, services for pilgrims, exchanging currencies so they can purchase animals, et cetera. Question for ourselves, our personal lives, are we only in leaf? Are we a spray-painted bush with lots of activity, busy, busy activity, mind filled with all kinds of things, but not truly, truly connected with our life source day by day as we walk through life? The root may be withered, even though it looks like things are going well on the outside. But Jesus knows the difference, and he knows better. And so then we come to, he has connected us with his kingly identity, he has connected us with his kingly authority, and finally he connects us with his kingly purpose. And he does this by his post-cleansing teaching in the temple. In verse 14, Jesus was announcing the end of the fruit tree, It was not fulfilling its intended purpose upon his inspection, and the same was true of the temple, and so he acts. And then after he acts and turns over the tables and the changers and clears all that out, he now begins to teach. Can you imagine? All this stuff's strewn everywhere, and now he's stopping to teach, and people are listening. And as he's teaching them in verse 17, it says, 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. Why did Jesus cleanse the temple? The animal sellers provided a service to worshipers, legitimate service. It enabled them to travel a long journey without having to traipse animals with them the whole time. That's not necessarily what was wrong. The money changers, likewise, served the people by enabling them to trade in their own currency, which was for shekels. And the shekels were required for the temple tax that needed to be paid. These activities in themselves were not wrong. The problem was where they were being conducted. And most people believe that they were being conducted in the court of the Gentiles, which was the external area of the temple. And what does all that activity effectively do? It prohibits a state of reverence, a state of prayer. It prohibits worship, particularly for the Gentiles in that outer section and in that outer area. And verse 17 is the key verse as it relates to purpose. They had lost the purpose for why they were there. The temple was the place where all men, Jew and Gentile, were to meet God in prayer and to worship. And so this is Jesus continuing to teach God's plan from the beginning that God and man were to dwell together in intimacy and in prayer. And at this time, the focal point of that was the temple. The Israelites had, in effect, kept the Gentiles. most likely themselves from worshiping properly. And the application for ourselves here, one application is, what in our lives keeps unbelievers from worshiping Jesus? And it may not be like really bad sin in our case, but it might be, and depending on how you look at it, this could be really bad sin, it might be just neglect. neglect of engaging the unbelieving world as the court of the Gentiles was supposed to do and be a bridge into the presence of God. It may be living a life of isolation in a Christian bubble. It may be when I interact with people who don't know the Lord, I'm not really thinking about their eternal state. It may be my preoccupation is with the things of this world I'm caught up in controversies I read on Fox News or whatever. And so when I'm with unbelievers, I'm more interested in talking with them about those things than about the identity and kingly authority of Jesus Christ and who he is for us. The story continues. It doesn't end with this physical temple that's being destroyed, and it doesn't even end with Jesus being the God-man dwelling among us. When Jesus came to earth and sacrificed his life on the cross at the end of this week, he provided a way of salvation to people of every nation. And now all who accept Christ's invitation to come are welcome in God's house of prayer. There's a new temple coming, yet even another one. Listen to Ephesians 2. Therefore remember that at one time, you Gentiles in the flesh were alienated from Christ, but now, in verse 19, you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God. There's man dwelling with God in the house. built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone in whom the whole structure being joined together grows into a holy temple in the Lord. In him you also being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit. Isn't this a beautiful sequence of events? It's like when you watch, have you ever seen a time lapse of a building being built or a bridge being built and it starts with nothing and all of a sudden all this stuff's happened? That's what we're doing this morning. We're looking at Genesis and going all the way through and so we had the garden, intimacy, broken, the tabernacle, the first temple, the second temple, Jesus comes and dwells among us and then by his death on the cross, he creates another temple, a spiritual temple, with the church being the place where God now dwells. It says in there that we are being built together. God is the builder of this temple. Jesus says, I will build my church. In Hebrews 3, now Moses was faithful in all God's house as a servant. You can see the actual connection here between the old and the new. To testify to the things that were spoken later, but Christ is faithful over God's house as a son and we are his house. If indeed we hold fast our confidence and our boasting and hope, if our roots are embedded in him. Therefore, as the Holy Spirit says today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts. Our hearts are the roots into Christ. This temple, this new temple, is both individually, each one of us, and corporately as a church. Individually, Jesus says in John 14, I will ask the Father, and he will give you another helper to be with you forever. even the spirit of truth whom the world cannot receive because it neither sees him or knows him, you know him for he, and here's that word again, for he dwells with you and will be in you. John 14, 15 through 17. 1 Corinthians 3, 16 says, do you not know that you are God's temple and that God's spirit dwells in you? The question we have to ask ourselves is, while the temple activity back then became extremely impersonal with lots of hustle and bustle, is our being a temple extremely personal in our connection with God, or is it mostly a spray-painted bush with a bunch of hustle and bustle? Even if it is Christian ministry, we can lose that sense and a connection with God Not ultimately, if we're truly saved, but experientially with Him. Are we fulfilling our temple purpose in prayer and communion with God? These are some probing questions as individuals, but we also have probing questions to ask ourselves as a church. Notice carefully what Jesus says to these ministry leaders. Is it not written, my house shall be called a house of prayer? What is Jesus teaching here? He's appealing to these ministry leaders and to the people who set all this up and were allowing it to happen. He's appealing to scripture. He's saying, your ministry is not scripture driven. Can that happen to Christian fellowship if we're not careful? Hope you all say yes. I hope I say yes. Have you ever audited a class? I never have. And the reason I never have is because, if I really want to know the material. And the reason I never have is because I know me. I'm just going to, no one's going to really assess me on this. I'm not really going to dig into this much. The question is, as individuals and as a church, are we living our lives as if we're auditing this class, we're auditing this life? Or are we really living as if there's legitimate assessment upon our lives individually and upon us as a church? And when the beauty is, Even when we're living our lives as if we're auditing, what does Jesus do? He comes into his temple, he comes into our lives, he's already in our lives, but he comes in in a certain way and he begins his cleansing act to get our attention and then he does what he did in the temple, he teaches us. And God promises in this new covenant that that will always work for the believer. and that we will always return to him. Maybe not every time he cleansed the temple, but ultimately our connection with him can never be broken because of what Jesus did on the cross and creating a covenant that cannot be broken. And so do we say like the psalmist, one thing I have asked of the Lord that I will seek after that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord and to inquire in his temple. When we pray, We are inquiring in His temple. In summary, from fig leaves to broken intimacy with God in the garden, to the tabernacle, to the temples, and to now us in the church, God intends us to dwell in true rooted connection with His people and Him in intimacy. And Jesus' assessment of us individually and as a church goes all the way into the book of Revelation, where in Revelation 3, 1 through 2, he gives a corporate assessment. I know your works. You have the reputation of being alive, but you are dead. Sound like a spray-painted bush? Sound like a fig tree with just a leaf? Wake up and strengthen what remains as an about-to-die, for I have not found your works complete in the sight of my God. You're not paying attention to the details like those in the temple were not. And that same church, there's an individual assessment in verse 4, yet you still have a few names in Sardis, people who have not soiled their garments and they will walk with me in white. He's paying attention. Has something abrupt happened to you this year, last year, this week that maybe got your attention from a hustle and bustle of distraction back to the Lord? The Lord gets our attention. He comes into our temple and he performs his cleansing act in love so that we can be restored to him. As with the temple in Jesus' day, the bushes at my parents' house started showing their true colors and we had spray painted foliage things all over the place. I'm mowing, it's all over the lawn, the bushes are dead. It was time to move on from those bushes. It says in Revelation 21, you know this temple here and as a church, we're gonna move on to to something new. Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. Beginning to end, is it not? The dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them and they will be his people and God himself will be with them as their God. This is a bigger story than escape from hell, as big as that is. This is a story of God rescuing his people to be in true fruitful connection with him. And we are told now today to abide in God's love. And all of this shows God's love for his people, that Jesus would go through all of this, the weeping, and the death on the cross to bring us to himself. And finally, at the very end of Revelation 22, through the middle of the street of the city on either side of the river, the tree of life with its 12 kinds of fruit yielding its fruit each month. You got a tree yielding fruit. The leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations. No longer will there be anything accursed but the throne of God and of the lamb will be in it and his servants will worship him. Let's pray. Father we just thank you for sending the Lord Jesus and Lord Jesus we thank you for coming willingly to communicate yourself to us to prove your identity to show us who you are that we might dwell in intimate connection with you. Lord, may the things in our lives be evaluated, and we don't want to evaluate them on our own. We need your help, and we just pray you will do that. And Lord, what we want, we pray, we desire. If we don't have this desire, we pray you give us the desire to desire nothing more than to see your beauty in the temple. We pray these things in Jesus' name, amen.