In the second chapter of the book of
John, the gospel according to John, beginning with
verse 12 and reading to and including verse
17, after this, he, Jesus, went down to
Capernaum, he and his mother and his brethren
and his disciples.
And they continued there not many days.
And the Jews, Passover was at hand, and
Jesus went up to Jerusalem and found in
the temple those that sold oxen and sheep
and doves, and the changers of money, sitting.
And when he had made a scourge of
small cords, he drove them all out of
the temple, and the sheep and the oxen,
and poured out the changers' money, and overthrew
the tables.
And he said unto them that sold doves,
Take these things hence.
Make not my father's house an house of
merchandise.
And his disciples remembered that it was written,
The zeal of thine house hath eaten me
up.
They remembered this verse and applied it to
Jesus somehow.
The zeal of thine house hath eaten me
up.
Now, Jesus was born in Bethlehem in the
days of Herod the king.
And shortly after that, to escape the fury
of the jealous Herod, he with his parents
fled into Egypt.
They were there only a short while, until
it was safe to return, and then they
came back, but not to Bethlehem.
They came and went seventy miles north through
Samaria and into the province of Galilee, and
established their residence in the city of Nazareth,
so that Jesus was known as a Nazarene.
And then when our Lord had had his
first miracle and had entered into his ministry,
his father, his supposed father, Joseph, having died,
he went with his mother and his brethren.
And a few disciples tagged along, and they
went way north of Nazareth to the city
of Capernaum on the shore of the Galilean
lake.
And there they tarried not many days, but
they established residence there, and from that time
on till he died, our Lord was a
resident of Capernaum, though he was certainly not
there very often.
And after they had established their residence there,
and I suppose had gotten moved in, it
was Passover time, and our Lord went for
his first Passover since his baptism and since
his public ministry.
He went up to Jerusalem, up being up
into the mountains, because Capernaum was at sea
level on the northern shore of Galilee.
And so he made the journey up to
Jerusalem.
And when he got to Jerusalem, the story
occurred, or the events occurred, which are told
in the story which I have read in
your hearing.
Now, our Lord Jesus Christ was and is
a prophet.
But he is a prophet not only in
word, but in deed.
His deeds are prophetic, as well as his
words.
And his deeds carry, as they still carry,
tremendous prophetic meaning.
By prophetic, I do not mean predictive.
The truth is that the word prophetic, and
prophet, and prophesy, and so on in the
Bible, only incidentally is a predictive word.
Its connotation is predictive, but it means more
than predictive.
It means spiritually significant and divinely ordered.
And our Lord was a prophet, and his
deeds carried tremendous significance.
And here, in dealing with these moneychangers, we
find his deed and his deeds very heavily
charged with moral teaching.
Now, it will be necessary that I give
you a little background.
Backgrounds are never desired in our day.
We want whoever it is to jump right
into the middle of it.
But I want to lay a little background
here for you, and point out that the
temple worship was still continuing in the days
of our Lord Jesus, full swing.
I even understand that it had been ordered
and had received a certain revival.
And the temple worship was attended better and
was getting on better than it had been
even before that time.
And when they went up to the temple,
they went for several reasons.
There were three great feasts during the year.
This one was, of course, the Passover feast.
And there, there was the offering of animal
sacrifices by the priests.
And animals were brought by the worshipers.
And then, in addition to the animals that
were presented by the worshipers, there was the
payment of the half-shekel.
And we use the word shekel now almost
entirely in a comical sense.
We give it a humorous meaning.
But it was far from being humorous, because
every Jew had to bring the half-shekel
when he came up to the temple, and
it had to be in temple currency.
When a worshiper went in, he had to
bring money, and it could be only in
temple currency, no other kind.
And then there was the great feast day
such as this Passover, when pilgrims came from
all over Palestine and from all over the
world for the Jews since the dispersion.
Way before Christ's time, there had been travelers,
and they were all over Asia Minor, and
Asia Proper, and Arabia, and Egypt, and the
islands, and into Europe.
And they went to the Catholics now sometimes
will go from all over to Rome.
They came, the Jews, from all over the
world to Palestine and, of course, up to
the temple in Jerusalem.
They say that there would be as many
as one million attending the great week's Passover
feast there in Jerusalem, at least at Pentecost
when the Holy Ghost fell.
The historians say that the city had been
bursting at its seams, that the city normally
around a hundred thousand or so had been
pushed up until there were about a million
people present in Jerusalem and in Byron's.
Now, if that's true, then we may say
that there were around a million during this
Passover time, and they'd come from everywhere.
It's possible that they came and went, and
came and went, and were not all present
at the same time, but at least during
that period there were that many that were
supposed to have been in attendance.
Now, the sacrificial animals.
Let's look at that for a minute.
These were the gifts brought by the people.
They tithed their herds, and they brought the
animals, or the equivalent of it, and these
sacrificial animals had to be ceremonially approved.
We call it kosher now.
That is, somebody had to examine these beasts
and know that they were all right.
Now, the point is, a man lived way
north here, if you turn to your maps
you'll see, way north here someplace, say, up
in Serapta or Tyre or somewhere, or he
lived way down south here by the Dead
Sea, and it was a matter of, say,
a hundred miles or maybe longer, further, and
if he came from the east, or from
way south, or from across the Mediterranean, of
course he had to come vast distances, and
they traveled very slowly.
They couldn't get in a jet plane and
be shot there out of a gun.
They had to travel on a little beast
or walk that there the best they could.
So it took a long journey.
Now the point was, how was a man
going to take a sacrificial animal, say, from
Decapolis or the city somewhere in Asia Minor,
or even in Palestine, and drive it all
that distance?
Literally it would take him weeks and months
to do it, and when the poor thing
arrived it wouldn't be in shape for sacrifice.
How were they going to do it?
And then this half shekel that everybody had
to pay, and had to pay in temple
currency, no other was accepted.
Now consider the countries from which all the
people came.
At Pentecost you'll remember they were there from
17 different countries.
I've been fishing around here in my head
for places where they might come from, and
I didn't want to seem to be reckless
in my statements, so I was careful, but
I happen to remember here that the Holy
Ghost, when he told where they came from
just a little bit later, said they came,
there were Parthians, and Medes, and Elamites, and
those from Mesopotamia, and Cappadocia, and Pontus, and
Asia, and Phrygia, and Pamphylia, and Cyrene, and
Rome, and Jews, and Proselytes, and Cretes, and
Arabians.
Now that's the list they had here at
Pentecost, and of course they had that same
diversified crowd at the Passover feast.
And they all came, of course, bringing their
own money.
They had money, what money they had was
in the currency of the country from which
they came.
And they say that actually there was legal
in Palestine this many monies, just as we
have one in this country, and you can't
pass a Mexican, well, Canadian penny here.
I don't know what the Mexican money is,
but you can't pass anything but American money.
It has to say, in God we trust,
and they have Lincoln, or Roosevelt, or somebody
on it, in order to make it American
money.
You can't pass anything else, but in Palestine
they had Persian, Tyrian, Syrian, Egyptian, Grecian, and
Roman money, and all of it was good.
But when you came to the temple, none
of it was good.
When you got to the temple, you had
to have a half shekel, and they wouldn't
make change, and it had to be a
half shekel.
The sons of Annas, the priests, would not
receive anything but the half shekel.
It had to be a half shekel.
And Persians, and Tyrians, and Egyptians, and Syrians,
and Grecians, and Romans, and all the rest
didn't have half shekels.
So what were they going to do?
Now the point is, how was a man
going to bring a beast 500 miles, maybe
across the water, and sacrifice it, offer it
at the temple?
How was he going to have a half
shekel ready to give to the priest when
he got there?
Well, the answer would suggest itself.
Being Jews, they figured it out very neatly.
The Jews established a market.
They had sacrificial animals all prepared.
The priests had already examined them and stamped
them with the temple seal.
They were kosher.
And the fellow who lived, say, over in,
now I'll have to go back to that
list again, Parthia or Metia or somewhere, he
came hundreds of miles, he had a cow
there he wanted to offer to God.
So he just sold the cow and put
the money in his pocket.
And when he got to the temple, he
went to those that sold beasts, and with
the money that he had got for the
cow and sold up in the north or
the south or west, he bought a beast
there in the temple, offered that.
Now that was the neatest thing that you
could possibly think of.
Who could speak against that?
And then about the money.
The fellow now comes and all he has
is Persian money, or Syrian money, or Grecian
money.
But he's a Jew, and he wants to
make his offering in the temple, he wants
to give that half shekel.
So what does he do?
He won't take his Persian money, his Grecian
money, so he hunts up the money changers.
The Jews had fixed that up too.
Notice the Bible says here that those that
sold beasts, it didn't say they were sitting,
but it said the money changers were sitting.
That is, they were sitting by tables, and
they had various little pots of money, Persian
money, Syrian money, various monies, and then they
had their shekel money here.
And when a strange looking fellow with a
foreign accent would appear, and by the use
of his hands, which the Jews are still
good at, by the use of his hands
and a few words he had, and perhaps
the Hebrew that he remembered from his old
home, he would get some shekels.
And the money changer would change his money
and then take a little cut out of
it.
For a price, he would change the money
into temple currency.
And the man who sold the beast, brother,
are you so naïve as to think that
he didn't make himself a prophet?
And not only a prophet, but all the
traffic would bear?
Don't be like that.
Of course.
First he was a Jew, and whoever heard
of a Jew that wasn't interested in the
prophet?
And then there were sinners, and whoever heard
of a sinner that wasn't interested in the
prophet?
Prophet, not prophet.
Now, that's the way it was.
That's the historical background, and that sets up
this whole business to me very clear.
The Jewish, the sons of Annas, they say,
established this so that it was a very
great convenience, and everybody could worship God at
the minimum of inconvenience.
And they could come from anywhere and get
a cow or a beast and offer that
beast or that dove.
And I understand also that they pushed the
price of a pair of doves up to
a fare of four dollars.
And if you go back that far, you
would find out maybe that that would amount
to sixteen dollars, a pair of doves.
The Lord said, if you're so poor you
can't offer a beast, get a pair of
turtledoves and offer them.
Turtledoves, of course, were under the Old Testament
very, very cheap.
But these sellers of beasts and doves, they
saw to it that they pushed up all
they could.
They could raise them for practically nothing and
sell them for four dollars a pair because
of the pressure and crisis it was on
when the pilgrim had to have the sacrifice
and didn't know where to look.
He couldn't carry a pair of doves under
his arm and travel several hundred miles on
a donkey.
So he bought himself a pair and was
willing to take the chiseling and get the
nick just in order to have the convenience.
Now that's what Jesus walked into.
And here were doves.
And there was the cooing of the doves
and the lowing of the kind and the
bellowing of the oxen, or bulls, and the
sound of the bleating of the sheep.
And you don't have to use your imagination
to know what kind of a mess there
was around the temple.
They had actually brought the thing into the
area of the temple, not into the Holy
of Holies and not even into the holy
place, but into the environs so it was
all part of the temple.
This had been going on for years.
Now what was wrong with that, I want
to ask you, brother?
Let's look at it first.
Let's look at what was in favor of
it, or what it had in its favor,
rather.
First place, it encouraged people to go up
to the temple.
And so it had a crowd argument.
They sold cattle and the crowd would come.
They said anything that will bring in more
people must be all right.
And that was a good, strong argument.
And it is an argument.
If you can get people out, I suppose
it's better than not getting them out.
And so that is in its favor.
Let's say check.
Now that's in its favor.
And then it aided the Jews to obey
the Old Testament scripture.
And I can hear a silky-voiced priest
arguing very unctuously that this system enabled the
Jew to worship after the Old Testament pattern.
And then this business also represented what we
call now consecrated business talent.
And I can hear some oily priest say,
well, God needs Christian businessmen.
And if you can't sing, you can't preach,
you can't win souls, you can't expound, you
can at least sell doves and beasts and
change money.
And that's just as necessary as anything else.
Now that was done for the glory of
God.
And they said, now if we were doing
this somewhere else, it would be different.
But we're consecrating this to God.
This is all done for the glory of
God.
Then another thing, it had ecclesiastical approval.
I don't want to be sour, I want
to be just as sweet as I can
be.
But brother, it's awfully hard to stay real
sweety-sweet when you look out on the
ecclesiastical world.
I wonder if there is anything short of
mayhem and murder that doesn't have ecclesiastical approval
somewhere.
If there is, I don't know where or
what it is.
Well, the objector, anybody that objected to this
system, of course, was in a position of
fighting against the temple and the temple priests
and the orders because it had ecclesiastical approval.
And then the clincher was that everybody was
doing it and nobody stopped to question it.
They all accepted it because everybody was doing
it.
And, of course, the objector then would be
considered unsocial and radical.
And they would say, oh, he's against it.
He's against it.
What's he for?
He's against it.
I've had that said about me.
And all I'm against is sin and the
devil, that's all.
And all the truck that sin and the
devil wants to drag in.
Now, you see, brother, there's so much to
be said in favor of this system, and
I can just hear a fellow standing up
on a conference floor, lowering his voice two
octaves, and speaking in a gentle, persuasive, throaty
tone, perhaps blowing his nose loudly, and saying,
these poor, dear brethren of ours in faraway
countries, they want to worship too.
And unless we have these money changers to
make it possible, they'll be deprived of this
most precious privilege.
I can just hear that boy.
I could make a speech on that myself.
But then, now, what was wrong with it?
Why did our Lord walk in there and
upset the money tables, and drive the cattle
out of the temple, and burn them with
his terrible, castigating remarks?
I only gave you two or three reasons,
but, brother, there are plenty.
The first place, this selling cattle and beasts
and doves in the temple, this money changer
tables in the temple, was something added to
the pattern which God gave them in the
mount.
Whenever an extraneous thing is brought in through
the worship of God, it assumes that God
hadn't sense enough to know what he was
talking about, or else that the Bible can
be improved upon.
Just as soon as I introduce something that
does not have biblical sanction, I am at
least tacitly telling God to excuse me while
I edit his Bible for him, that I
don't want to seem to be nosy, but
did he overlook such and such a thing?
So I add something to the pattern shown
in the mount.
Though God had said to Moses, Be careful
that thou follow closely the pattern shown thee
in the mount.
So that this was apparently harmless and even
useful, this system of changing money and making
available sacrificial animals, but it was strange fire
nevertheless.
You know, friends, sometimes all you can do
is just stand still and suffer.
Just stand still in the middle of it.
They'll argue you down, they'll stare you down,
they'll talk you down, they'll reason you down,
and they're dead wrong, but their reasons are
all on the side of wrong.
All you can do is stand in the
middle of it and say, I know what
I know.
I know where I've been, and I know
what I've seen, and I know what I've
heard, and you can't change me any.
But they'll reason you out and show that
you don't know what you're talking about, and
of course they would anybody that would have
talked against the temple market there, the Maxwell
Street, all of the holy place.
Now here, that was one thing, that they
added to the to the temple worship and
thus introduced strange fire upon the altar of
God, but that wasn't the worst.
The worst was that they intruded the secular
into the sacred.
Now if you have done me the honor
reading the book, The Pursuit of God, you'll
remember that one chapter, I think it may
be the last one, is called The Sacrament
of Living.
And in that chapter I say, and I
am prepared to continue to say it tonight,
that there properly is no dividing line between
the sacred and the secular for a true
Christian.
A holy man makes everything holy, and to
a holy man all ground is holy ground,
and every place is a holy place, and
every day is a holy day.
That is why we in this church, and
I, do not don't blow a fuse at
Easter nor at Christmas, get all excited and
have to have two policemen and extra ushers
to take care of the mobs on Christmas
and Easter, and then have nobody around for
the rest of the year, because we don't
believe that any day is any holier than
any other day to a man in whom
the Holy Ghost dwells.
That is why we wouldn't hesitate to eat
a biscuit over here in Mimacathy Annex next
door, because we believe that any place is
holy if you are doing a holy thing
in it, and you can eat to the
glory of God.
And the Bible says, whatever you do, whether
you eat or drink, let it be to
the glory of God, so that there ought
not to be, and there need not be,
any division between the sacred and the secular.
You do not need to go on Sunday
to the church and sit among the boys
and humbly bow our heads and hold our
breath and think we're holy on the Lord's
day, and then wrongfully get up and walk
out in the Monday and say, God, you'll
have to help me now, I'm in an
unholy day, and I'm going to have to
go out and do secular things.
No, my brother, your job can be an
offering to God, and the thing you do
can be a sacrifice to the Most High.
And you can make tomorrow as holy as
today, and you can make the cab where
you sit to drive your truck, or the
stenographer's chair where you sit to type, as
holy as the church seat where you are
tonight.
I still believe that.
I believe that it's a beautiful, liberating, and
expanding truth, that everything can be holy to
what the man is holy, and nothing can
be holy if the man is not holy.
Now, that is true.
But over against that, there is this other
truth, that anything that is done selfishly, that
is not done in faith and love, is
profane.
It is a secular thing, and there's a
whole secular world, a world of secularity, a
world of profaneness, an earthy, unregenerate world, and
everything they do is secular.
They're unable to do a sacred act.
There is not a single holy thing that
the world, the unregenerate world, can possibly do.
Therefore, when we bring the unholy, selfish, unsanctified
methods of the world and deeds of the
world into the holy place, then we're guilty
not of sanctifying the secular, we're guilty of
profaning the holy.
And instead of the holy man selflessly making
everything holy, we have the unholy man selfishly
making everything secular.
And we have not sacredness at all, we
have profaneness.
And these Jews were guilty of bringing the
selfish, money-grabbing aggrandizement and love of wealth
and covetousness into the very sacred precincts of
the temple, and setting it up boldly there,
as vastly as the sow that was offered
on the temple in Jerusalem.
Now, these money-changers operated for profit, and
that was their curse.
Could be said they aided people to come
to the temple worship and increase the crowd,
yes, but they operated for profit, and that
was their curse.
Could be said they were a convenience to
the worshipers, but they operated for a profit,
and that was the blight that was upon
them.
It could be said that they aided the
dispersed Jew to return and worship according to
the Old Testament pattern, and that was true,
but they did it for a profit, and
that was the disease that was upon their
souls.
They operated for a profit.
They didn't desire to promote the honor of
God, they desired to fill their own coffers
and realize personal gain.
And what they were doing was, they were
serving God for a profit.
Some years ago I read a sermon by
an old fellow by the name of Johannes
Eckert, they called him Meister Eckert.
About 700 years ago he lived, and he
wrote a little sermon called, Jesus Went Up
to the Temple.
Well, I have read that in English, and
it's almost funny, it's so terrible.
He said that these money-changers and sellers
of the beasts were merchants.
He said they did it for a percentage,
and whatever they did, they did for a
percentage.
Then he turned around and rammed that down
the necks of his ears, and he said,
anybody that serves God for any other reason
than his own glory is a merchant of
holy things.
And if we go to God and say,
now God will give you 75 percent of
the praise, but I'd like to see my
name in print, we're asking God for a
percentage.
If we go to God and say, God,
I'm willing to give you 90 percent, but
I'd like to have something out of this,
too.
My name is not in as large lines.
I remember one evangelist a long time ago,
and he was mad because his name wasn't
in as large print as some other names
that were on the billboard, on the Dodgers
they had around.
Well, that fellow wanted a cut on that
thing.
And old Eckhart said, you are your merchants.
He said, you are making merchandise out of
the things of God.
I believe it with all my heart.
But to go on, let us notice how
Christ handled this whole business.
The way we are supposed to handle things
now is to offend nobody and to be
very, very gentle and try to be as
much as possible like the pastor in the
deserted village.
Ever read the deserted village?
Everybody's been to high school, of course, didn't
that all of you, except the younger ones?
You've been there, and everybody reads the deserted
village.
And the preacher in that deserted village is
certainly a darling old man.
He had much hair, but the sun shined
on it, and it reflects, and it's like
a mountain peak kissed by the sun.
As he walks down the street, the children
run and grab around his legs.
I never knew how he could get any
place, because they'd just grab him and hold
on.
But he's such a darling old fellow, and
he never hurt anybody.
And he'd have done something here if he'd
gone into the temple, he'd have looked at
it, shaken his head, sighed deeply, and gone
away in meditation.
Not hurting anybody.
Don't offend anybody, they say.
Never draw blood.
Well, our Lord Jesus Christ is a good
example of how to deal with money changers
and merchants inside the temple of God, and
those that have brought in unauthorized and unwarranted
additions to the holy place.
Jesus handled it not by argument, not by
gentle argument, but there are some things you
can never do anything by gentle argument.
You can stand up and know you're right
by the word of God and the witness
of the Holy Ghost and the voice of
history, and still like a thousand angry chickens
they'll cackle and peck at you until you
have to run for safety just to get
them off your neck.
And you can't argue some people out there,
they just will go on.
They will have their way, and they will
because they can give reasons why there ought
to be a cow in the holy place.
They can give reasons why there should be
a man there with pots of metal to
change money into the half shekels.
You know how much money they brought up
in the course of a feast?
Seventy-five thousand English pounds when the pound
was five dollars, Brother McAfee.
I don't know myself, but it's up there,
and that had that many hundred thousand dollars
present.
That is, they actually brought that in, and
they say that it was common in a
week's time, one week's time, for those Jews
to make five times eight, it would be
forty thousand dollars off of their worshipers.
Forty thousand dollars!
I know how much five times eight is.
And they'd make forty thousand dollars out of
these worshipers, and then go pulling their beard
and say, We're doing it to the glory
of God, and we're consecrated Christian businessmen, and
our talents belong to the Lord.
But the simple fact, they were merchants making
merchandise out of holy things.
And Jesus Christ never argued with them.
When a fellow goes so far, Brother, don't
break your teeth on him.
Don't bother arguing with him.
When thou seest not, when thou discoverest not
the lips of wisdom in a foolish man,
go from these peasants.
And Jesus, oh, I love this.
You know, the deistic and rationalistic Frenchman Renan
said in his Life of Jesus that this
showed an outburst of bad temper on the
part of Jesus.
I can't see that at all.
This was God.
And God is capable of holy wrath.
And this was the Eternal Son acting like
the Eternal Son in the midst of human
profanity, in the midst of babies and children
and penitent publicans and street women.
He was as tender as a nurse bending
over her patient.
He was as sweet as a fresh fragrance
of the spring breeze.
But in the presence of these incurable lovers
of themselves, he grabbed their tables and overturned
them.
And I can see the look of consternation
when Syrian money went with Persian money and
Persian money mixed with Grecian money and Grecian
money mixed with the holy shekel of the
temple.
How would they ever audit their boots and
what would they tell the income tax collector?
What did the Lord care, brother?
What did he care?
He overturned the whole thing.
And then he picked up a rope.
Somebody said he was terribly brutal.
Take a little rope.
If anybody has ever driven cattle, know that
if you are going to make a cow
even stop and look around, you are going
to have to use something bigger than a
rope.
You couldn't hurt a cow with a rope.
They are built for that kind of business.
They are tough-hearted and thick, and their
nerves are way down deep.
And they can go through briars and lie
down on stubble.
What could a little whip made out of
rope do?
He just used it to encourage them out
of the temple, and he did it himself.
And out they went, glowing and bawling, but
not bawling nor shedding as many tears as
their covetous owners did.
Brother, there is only one way to get
rid of some things, and that is simply
to grit your teeth, lean into the wind
and grab it.
And Jesus, our Lord, knew how to do
that.
I'm glad he did it like that.
I'm very, very glad.
For over against it was all the sweet
tenderness that later died on the cross.
But in the midst of profaneness, in the
midst of these deep-dyed hypocrites who served
themselves in the guise of serving God, Jesus
never stopped to reason or to argue.
He tore into it.
Luther had to do that when he came
to Rome.
In the Roman Church, the sophistry, the casuistry
of the false teachers is very difficult to
get around.
They have fought their way through all of
the pores of the human brain, and you
can't take time chasing them through all the
fine arteries of the mind.
There is only one thing to do, and
that is to overturn them by the grace
of God.
Jesus did it, and he drove them out
of that temple.
I'd love to have been there.
I think I'd have ventured a wee bit
of applause when they were on their way
out.
Now, I want to make an application of
this.
What about the strange situation today?
Have we become too lost in profit-making,
financial profit, profit of private glory, profit of
shining and publicity and all that?
Has fundamentalism become so bogged down in this
same thing?
Perhaps in a different degree, but this same
thing.
Have we become so lost in it that
God can't help us, that he may have
to throw the whole thing out and start
over?
Take such a thing as missions.
The Christian Missionary Alliance taught the religious world
that if people were given a missionary motive,
they would give to missions, and the Church
would prosper more than if they didn't give
to missions.
And men picked that idea up.
Now, certainly not all, but there were men
and there are men who picked that idea
up, and because they know that God's people
are very tender when it comes to missions
and the need of the heathen, they're exploiting
the cause of foreign missions and are making
gobs of money in the name of a
broken heart and a world vision.
Take such a thing as divine healing.
If someone very dear to you lay ill,
perhaps hovering on the border, oh, it would
mean so much to you.
If your faith could rise and take hold
of the Great Physician, and you could believe
and have somebody encourage you to believe that
the Lord's interested in our human body, anyone
who would speak against the tender, beautiful thing
of kneeling in reverent prayer and offering prayer
for the sick, anybody who would speak against
it certainly is not much of a Christian,
and I would not.
But when it comes to men incorporating the
healing touch of Jesus and calling it healing
incorporated, and we have such a grotesque and
fantastic incorporation in the United States of America,
the beautiful virtue that went out of Jesus
to the woman twelve years bleeding and healed
her instantly, that beautiful virtue has now been
incorporated under the laws of the state so
that givers and donors can take it off
their income tax.
That's the reason for all that.
It's financial.
The auditors and tax collectors know why it
is, but the poor dumb sheep of God
don't, and I do not hesitate to say
that while there are tender men who believe
in healing, who believe that God hears, as
my good Irish brother Tom says, if God
ever pours the Holy Ghost out, there will
be marked cases of physical healing.
It's part of the pattern, he says.
Of course it's part of the pattern, and
I believe it, and you believe it, and
we believe it, but I do not hesitate
to say that in the name of the
holy virtue that went out of his seamless
robe, men are driving long cars and living
in ranch-type houses and riding high.
Profit, profit, profit.
So missions, nothing sacred, nothing sacred.
Missions, healing, prophecy.
I was going to bring it down, and
then I groaned and didn't.
Magazine came yesterday, and I saw it this
morning.
In it was a big ad, widely known,
widely circulated magazine.
Big ad.
Fellow's name I'll try not to pronounce for
decency's sake, but he had incorporated himself.
He was Jones Incorporated.
Well, I'm glad he's incorporated.
He's that in his favor, but he incorporated
himself, and he allowed this thing to be
said about him, with all prophecy.
He's written ninety books, and he can tell
you the very color of the Antichrist I
thought.
He knows all about it, but he allows
this degraded thing to be said about him.
The greatest preacher since Henry Ward Beecher, and
it rhymes, and it's a lie, but the
beautiful father of Jesus coming back again.
Don't we all believe it, and don't some
of us hope that it might be soon,
and do we not read with tender affection
those passages that tell us to let not
our heart be troubled.
He goes to prepare a place, and he's
coming back to receive us unto himself.
Did not Paul say in great detail how
it would be when he comes, the dead
in Christ shall rise first, and how many
sweet saints lie sleeping quietly after the passing
of the centuries, and how could we be
believers in the church of Jesus that Brother
McAfee talked to the young folks about tonight,
the universal church of Christ on heaven and
in earth?
In heaven and earth, how could we be
believers in it all, and not look forward
to the time when those believers shall rise
from their dusty bed and be made in
the image of Jesus Christ, rid of all
disease and all weakness and all sickness and
all limitations, and shall rise to be with
him forever?
That's the coming of Jesus.
That's prophecy.
That's a light in the tunnel, a star
on the horizon that tells the traveler that
it's all right and the morning is coming.
Now, to incorporate that and to use that
as a gimmick, how rotten can we get?
Two things, and I'm finished.
The true temple says that a great man
is the soul of man.
The true temple is the soul of man.
And you know that just as Jesus, when
he went into that temple, said, This is
my Father's house.
I should be Lord here.
I am the Father's Son.
This is my temple, a house of God
for all, prayer for all people.
Look, they have filled it with beasts and
money and sharp-eyed tellers and money changers
and collectors.
And he drove them out.
In the soul of every one of us,
there is a sanctuary, and it belongs to
Jesus alone, and he wants to occupy it
alone.
And he doesn't want any rivals, no beasts,
no doves, no bleeding sheep, no pile stacks
of money, no busy merchants, no hagglers over
prices.
He wants it all by himself, and he
wants it clean.
I wonder if maybe our getting indignant over
that scene that happened two thousand years ago
might not be just a wee bit serial
comic, when we forget that we have a
temple and that Jesus Christ made it for
himself, and he wants to occupy it without
a rival.
Rain says the song without a rival there.
Break down every idol, cast out every foe,
now wash me and I shall be whiter
than snow.
I wonder if that isn't the secondary teaching
of this.
The primary teaching is what I've given you.
But I wonder if there isn't a secondary
teaching that the expositors tell us is by
extension.
I wonder if it isn't fair to say
that we too are temples, not only this
church, but we individuals, and that we are
his temples, purchased at a price that they
never paid for the temple in Jerusalem.
It ran into the millions, that temple, and
it took thirty years to build.
But it never cost what your soul costs.
That temple costs the blood of God's Son.
I wonder if it might be that unknown
to you there are merchants and money changers
inside your soul, asking a cut, wanting a
percentage, defiling it with profanities and secular things,
selfish things, profaning it with foreign presences in
your soul.
And he visits it and expects to find
it clean, and he finds it filled with
cattle.
Well, there are some who will never see
the smile of Jesus.
I'm sure Jesus didn't smile the day he
drove out the cattle.
I'm sure his face was set in a
stern look of disapproval, no smile on his
face.
But do you suppose if they had taken
that, now they didn't, but if they had
taken that lesson and repented and sent for
him, and said, Young Prophet, we don't know
who you are, but you sure hit us
where we live.
And we're not going to get mad and
try to kill you, you're right.
And we're going to stop this business.
The cattle will never come back in the
temple.
We're scrubbing.
We're cleaning up this mess.
And there will never be a sharp-chinned
money changer with his beady eyes making profits
in this temple again.
Thank you, Jesus of Nazareth, for telling us
this.
We admit we were all wrong.
You know what, I'm sure there would have
been a smile on that face of his.
I know it.
He'd have smiled with sheer delight and maybe
said, Let's sing a hymn, for he loved
to sing the songs.
But they didn't do it.
But you could.
And there are those of you that will
never know the smile of Jesus until you
say to him, Lord Jesus, my poor temple
is all full of stuff.
All full of stuff.
And you hear him say, All right, get
rid of it.
Get it out of there.
And then he'll smile.