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Welcome to the Bridge Church Greenbrier Podcast, where we connect all people to the person,
power, and purpose of Jesus.
Wherever you are listening from, we're so glad that you are joining us.
Now let's listen to this week's message.
This morning, I'm so excited to continue this series that we're on, The Road to
Resurrection.
We get so excited about Jesus raising from the dead, you know, he went to the cross as
a lamb and he came out of the grave as a roaring lion.
Come on somebody.
And I get excited about that Jesus in my life.
But today we're going to talk a little bit about how savage Jesus really was.
Come on somebody.
I know we, the lay me down to sleep Jesus is the one we sing our kids the lullaby
to sleep.
But you know, Jesus was a savage too, but he didn't tolerate some things that we tolerate
today.
And so last week we saw Jesus coming in and he was riding in on a donkey and the
crowds were yelling, Hosanna, Hosanna, what does Hosanna mean?
Save us, save us.
How many people came in here for some saving today?
Okay.
All right.
We'll have an altar call at the end.
Amen.
And so, and so they were laying down and Jesus came in on a donkey to signify peace,
to signify that humility, because he could have came riding in on a horse as Jesus.
He could have came riding in on a horse.
Not okay.
It would be like this, I guess.
But I don't know what kind of horsepower he's got, but listen, he could have came
riding in a horse, but a horse back then signified war and controversy, but he did
not come to war.
He came not to condemn you, but through his son, Jesus, you might be saved.
And so that day he went into following immediately after he followed him, went right into the
temple.
He didn't stop by and go get something to eat first.
He didn't stop by and visit his friends.
He went to go see what was going on in the house of the Lord.
You know, this week has been a great week.
Our good friends, Amy and Bob are here and, you know, I, I, as you know, I, we live
in a clean house.
Okay.
Like our house is pretty clean all the time, but you guys know how it is when you
get a visitor, you gotta, you gotta clean and if they're gonna be staying with you,
you know, you don't want them to see the dirty.
You don't want them to see all that.
And so I was cleaning my house and you know, my wife's telling me to do this and do
that.
And I'm like, yes, ma'am.
And I did that.
And I was cleaning the baseboards and I was cleaning like even like back behind the toilet, like
getting down and dirty with it.
Y'all.
I didn't want them to see any dirt in my house because you know, I'm an ordained pastor
now.
Amen.
And, uh, and yeah, and so it's, so it's cool because, uh, but hear me when I say
this, like, it doesn't mean that I'm better than anybody because I'm not, you know,
I never want my titles to be bigger than the towel I carry because I'm called to serve
God.
Okay.
And I started serving in my house by cleaning the toilets.
Amen.
And, uh, no, because the Bible says everything that you do, do it unto the Lord.
Everything means everything.
Right.
Okay.
And so I'm cleaning the bathrooms for the Lord and my wife and, and, and Bob and
Amy because they were coming to our house.
But you know, anybody have a catch all room?
Like you have a cat, like a room that like, you know, you'd be throwing all kinds.
Yeah.
Kelly, you know what I'm talking about?
Jeremiah.
Yup.
And you just throw everything in that room and shut the door and pretend it's not there.
And so I was going through the house and I'm collecting toys and I'm getting on my clothes
and cleaning up and I'm just throwing everything in this room because base coming home from
work and I wanted to see that like, well done my good and faithful husband and, and
I wanted to see this.
And so I'm cleaning up everything, I'm vacuuming y'all, y'all would have been impressed.
Like I was, I, do you think I'm sweating right now?
I was sweating big time in my house because believe it or not, the AC in my house
was, was, was broke this week.
We got it fixed.
Amen.
Hallelujah.
And the AC in this house will be fixed next week.
Amen.
Hallelujah.
So, uh, it's crazy how these stories like blend in.
And so I started throwing everything in this room and I shut the door and the whole house
looks clean.
Except for I know this one room is dirty.
Anybody got junk drawer?
Yeah.
And so today's message is going to be cleansing out the temple.
I know we talked about the health side of keeping your body, treating your body like
a temple because Jesus went to the temple.
But now that he died and rose again, you and I are the temple.
Yeah.
All right.
We'll get there.
I'll get you guys shouting back at me.
I know it's hot, but come on.
We, we, so Jesus lives inside me.
So I'm an Airbnb for the great spirit of the GOD.
Amen.
And so, and so I must clean out myself because where I invite Jesus in, I can invite
him into the mess, messy areas of my life.
That's what I love about it.
Jesus is a gardener.
So that means he gets down in the dirt.
He gets down in the mud.
He gets down in the dirty situations that you will, but you have to reveal them to
him and for him to heal them.
He'll illuminate them.
But I, so today I really feel like today's the day that we're going to open the door
in some areas in our life that we have not allowed Jesus into our lives.
And those areas would be the ones that you fear the most.
Those areas, the ones that you worry the most.
Because where Jesus is invited in, there is no fear and there is no worry.
So it's those areas in your life you need to invite him in today.
And so we're going to see what requires us, what we have to do in order for him
to come in those areas in our life today by the scripture.
And so in Matthew, Matthew 21, you know, Matthew records Jesus enters the temple courts
and drove out all who were buying and selling there.
He overturned all the tables and the money changers and the benches of all those selling
doves and lambs and all this.
But what Matthew doesn't record, which Mark does is in Mark 11, 11, Mark records
this significant detail because Jesus did not act out of rage.
He acted out of anger.
What's the difference between rage and anger?
Control, he acted out of anger, but controlled anger.
And so actually Mark 11, 11 says that when Jesus came in Sunday,
he went into the temple courts.
He looked around, he saw everything that's going on.
Just like he sees every area that's going on in your life.
He sees what you're doing.
Come on.
Father sees, you know, there was that one song back.
It was an old song.
It says, the father up above is looking down in love.
Be careful, little eyes, what you see.
That song was real creepy.
I don't know.
But anyway, I'm getting off topic.
But the father sees what you're doing, not to judge you.
He doesn't, he's not here to judge you, but he's here to correct you and to love you.
And so, but this is the important part of this message is that he withdrew himself that night.
Him and the 12 disciples went back to Bethany.
He didn't act out of rage.
And then the next day, Monday, because Sunday is when he wrote in, right?
Palm Sunday, which is next week.
But he wrote in that Sunday, he went to the temple, withdrew himself that night.
And then Monday comes in, and this is what he does on Monday.
Jesus entered the temple courts and drove out all who were buying and selling.
They were overturning the tables, the money changers.
See, in Passover, there was over 250,000 sacrifices by people.
Everybody had to come in and sacrifice for the forgiveness of sins.
I'm so thankful that you and I don't have to sacrifice goats and bulls and lambs and doves today
that he made the ultimate sacrificial on the cross 2,000 years ago.
And for that, he died for all of our sins.
Everybody say all.
He died for all of our sins, but he also only died for a maybe.
Maybe you would receive them, maybe you would reject them, but I love you so much,
I'm going to die for you regardless.
That's reckless love, ain't it?
Oh, the never-ending, reckless love of God.
A lot of people had a problem with people saying reckless, that God's not reckless.
No, it is reckless love when he dies for your maybe.
And so he came in and he died.
But the thing is, with this, he comes in, and what's powerful in this story
is that when he saw all these things going on, people exchanging money,
these people would come with lambs.
And if their lamb wasn't perfect, according to religious traditions,
the prophets would say, hey, you have to go buy one of our lambs in order to sacrifice here.
So these are prophets working for profit.
You don't act like we have this going on today?
We have to shut the doors.
I feel a thousand dollar, 40 people are about to give a thousand dollars today.
Shut the doors.
I feel 50 people about to give a hundred dollars today.
That's compulsive giving.
God says he does not like a compulsive giving.
He loves a cheerful giver.
And so when we see all this stuff going on in the churches today,
oh, lock the doors, oh, we need this.
No, no, no, no, no, no.
That's not biblical.
And that's what made Jesus mad in the temple courts.
He was flipping tables because of that.
Because they were waxing people.
You know how, like, we go to the airport and we get the bottles of water and they make us dump
them out of TSA.
Oh, it makes me so mad.
Only for me to go past TSA and buy a $7 bottle of water.
They were waxing them.
And it's the same thing these prophets were doing inside the temple.
They would bring their lamb and they say, oh, that thing's not clean enough.
Come buy one of ours.
And so they have to go to the exchange.
They have to change in the Roman money for temple money.
And that's what Jesus said.
My house is not a flea market.
And he said, the next word was so powerful.
He said, it is written.
Why did Jesus get so upset in this passage?
Because he knew what the word said.
And he knew these prophets knew what the word said.
He said, it is written.
My house will be a house of prayer, not a den of thieves.
It's powerful because Jesus quotes the word back to him.
Isaiah 56, 7.
He says, my house will be a house of prayer.
Jeremiah 11, 7, not a den of thieves.
He quotes two Bible verses at these scribes and Pharisees,
at these hypocrites, these teachers of the law, saying, you knew better.
You have the word, but you're not applying the word.
Is he talking maybe to some of us today?
Like, you know what the Bible says, but you ain't doing what it says?
You're letting the world influence you and you're not influencing it?
And so he got upset.
And he goes out there and he flips all these tables and he's upset.
What's going on in his house?
The question to you, are you sitting at a table Jesus would flip?
I mean, are you going to places?
Because you are the temple now.
Are you going to places with your temple, with your body?
Or are you going to places that Jesus would be, that he would flip, that he would drop?
How many times did Jesus run out people out of the temple?
Two times.
You know, in John chapter 2, after he just turned the water into wine at the wedding,
his mother and the 12 disciples go into the temple
and Jesus sees the kind of same thing going on at Passover
and he gets mad.
And what he does this time, he didn't withdraw himself.
What he did this time is he goes and he takes a whip
and it takes him a while to make this whip.
So he didn't act out of rage, he acted out of anger, righteous anger.
And he makes this whip and he drives them all out of the temple.
He was fulfilling prophecy because it says this.
And so it was powerful because, and I was like, man, God,
there's got to be some significance that you drove them out.
You cleaned your temple at the beginning of your ministry
and you also cleansed your temple at the end of your ministry.
You know what God said to me?
He said sometimes when Christians get saved,
they ask for forgiveness of their sins
and they only do it one time.
And sometimes you need to be cleaned more than once.
Any of you sinners in here?
Oh yeah, we all sin, fall short of his glory.
I have to ask for forgiveness about every single day.
The Bible says that even if you fought it in your mind,
you have done it already.
What's going on in your mind?
Oh, and that's the thing, man, I'm your pastor
and I still got to ask for forgiveness every single day.
Every single day, God forgive me of all my,
it's the Christian bar soap, John 10, nine, if, if.
If you confess your sins,
he's faithful just to forgive us of our sins
and cleanse us from a little bit of unrighteousness.
Q, what's that mean?
All, all, that means all my nasty thoughts.
All my sin, I confess it and he cleansed it.
He says he casts away as far as the east is from the west.
I don't even know how far that is.
So it's gone.
It's as if I've never done it.
It's called justification.
Just as if I've never done it, my God.
But if we confess our sins.
And so he goes into the temple and what's next is really,
he comes in and, but the only,
only way you and I personally can get cleansed
is by posturing our heart in humility and maturity.
Where are my grown Christians at in here?
Come on, somebody.
It's okay that you're an infant.
It's okay.
But it's time to get off the milk and move to the meat.
And the only way you're going to get to the meat
is when you know whenever you can combat the enemy
and say it is written.
It is written.
And so what Jesus does is so powerful.
He says, well, David, even in Psalms 119,
David says in Psalms 119, he says,
I incline my heart.
David, a guy, a man after God's own heart,
I had to incline his heart.
That must have meant his heart was on decline.
And the problem with the most Christians today in America
is our heart is reclined.
And you wonder why we can never get filled up.
It's because we're sitting there.
God fill me up.
And it's God saying, listen, you got to posture yourself
towards heaven.
And when you do that, I can pull out of black
and fill you up out of your humility and your maturity.
I can fill you up, but we have to posture ourselves
and say, God, get rid of that self-reliance.
Get rid of that pride.
You get rid of that and say, God, I need you.
God, have your way in my life.
God, because a lot of us, we get saved,
we posture our hearts one time,
and we just set it and we forget it.
You guys know that infomercial, set it and forget it.
Have you just said it?
No, no, no.
That's how it works in our Christian life.
I got to set my heart and position my heart
every single day.
I have to set my heart and position it every day
towards heaven.
Otherwise, I'm going to start settling for discouragement
and despair and dysfunction.
But when I set my heart towards heaven,
I'm setting my heart of the things of heaven.
And then David goes on in verse 13.
He says, I hate double-mindedness.
What's that word hate doing in the Bible?
I thought we were supposed to love everything.
No, we're supposed to love everybody, not everything.
There's a difference.
He says, I hate double-mindedness,
but I love your law.
That means I hate the way I think, right?
Because some of our thoughts could be unpure.
I hate double-mindedness.
I hate sinning.
Anybody with me?
I hate sinning.
I'm tired of tolerating my sin.
I hate it, but I love your law.
I love your word.
I meditate on your word day and night.
Psalms 103, those who meditate on the word of God
day and night will be like a tree planted.
Come on, somebody.
Makes us streams of living water who will yield its fruit
no matter the season.
It's not because of who you are.
It's because of who you stay planted in.
And we say planted in him, no matter the storms that come.
Oh, it's so good.
The Bible's so good.
I suggest you read it.
I mean, I know a lot of people come to church for sermons,
but sermons don't change your life.
Scripture does.
That's why I read so much Bible in here,
because I want to make up for the Bible
you haven't read all week, amen?
And so I want you guys to understand that
when you apply the word in your life,
it's active, sharpening any two-edged sword,
piercing to the division.
Come on, to bone and marrow.
That means it gets in real deep.
Think of it like a butcher in there,
cutting the fat away.
And that's what God wants to do in your life.
He wants to get rid of that stuff that's not from him.
And so it's really powerful.
But the thing is, he says,
my house will be a house of prayer.
Prayer causes intimacy.
Intimacy.
God, see into me.
Intimacy.
Get the things out of me that I can't see.
Intimacy.
I want God to see inside of me
and take away the things that are not from him,
the things that are hindering me
from running the race that's set before me,
because we're all in a race.
And I just want to finish well,
but I can't, it's hard to finish well
when I have all these weights and sin holding me down.
That's why Hebrews 12, 1 says,
since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses,
come on somebody,
I know you know somebody in heaven.
They're your cheerleaders.
It says, let us lay aside every weight
and sin which so easily ensnares us
that holds us back, that binds us.
That's what sin does.
Let us lay that aside
and let us run the race that's set before us
with endurance, with perseverance,
with character, with hope.
So it's the intimacy part.
But in order to have the intimacy,
we must purge ourselves first.
We must get rid of the things in our life
in that little storage room,
that little catch-all room.
We need to open the door to that
and let Jesus come in.
We need to open to the junk drawer
and let Jesus take all that junk out
that we've been hiding.
You can't hide nothing from him,
but he won't take it from you.
You've got to give it to him.
You've got to open the door to him.
But it's not until you start hating sin.
It's not until your heart breaks
for what breaks his
that you're actually going to start
living the life he wants you to live,
the more abundant life.
It's not a prayer prosperity gospel.
It's called, you do this, he does that.
It's very simple.
And so when you understand that,
you start living a little different.
I love Hebrews.
Hebrews 1, 9 says,
those who love righteousness
and hate wickedness,
hate sin,
that my God, your God,
will set them apart
and anoint them with oil of joy
more than their companions.
Oh, come on.
I need to be anointed
with the oil of joy.
And I have the anointing.
I do.
People wonder why I'm happy all the time.
I can't describe it.
I just got joy.
I got joy.
Why?
Because I stopped tolerating my sin.
I stopped making sin my pet.
I stopped being best friends
with a sin that so easily ensnares me.
And I started confessing it.
I started openly revealing it to God
and saying, God, help me through this.
God, walk me through this.
God, I pray.
I purge the area of my life.
When you purge something,
it means to clear it out.
When you purge it,
it causes more presence.
Presence produces power.
You need more power in your life?
Clean the areas in your life
by inviting Jesus
into those areas in your life.
It's powerful guys.
We have power.
Yes, we do.
Because of what lives inside of us.
But we live in this coddled Christianity.
We really do.
Go, go do you boo.
God will forgive you.
God will bless you.
Yes, God will forgive you.
But he won't set you free
from the sin you befriended.
Yes, God will forgive you,
but I don't want to keep doing.
I don't want to keep doing
what I did before.
In order to experience something,
I got to do something I've never done.
A matter of fact,
I got to be someone I've never been
in order to experience something
I've never experienced.
But I'm so happy that
if anyone being Christ
sees a new creation,
the old is gone,
the new has come.
We have to stop operating
in the old Jew
and step out of it
and leave it back there.
So Jesus comes to the temple, man,
and it's powerful
because he came into the temple,
he drove it all out,
and after he drove all the sin,
after he drove all the stuff
that he didn't want going on in there,
you know what he did next?
He started to heal people.
The Bible says he healed
the blind and the lame
that came to him in the temple.
You know what's crazy?
Before Jesus came,
none of them were even allowed
in the temple.
They were considered unclean people.
But Jesus, since he's a savage,
he came to break all that off,
saying, I came here
for the broken people.
I came here to heal.
I came here to seek and save
that which is lost.
And so they came
and he healed them.
But you know these Pharisees
and these teachers of the law,
they got real upset.
They got angry.
It says in verse 15, 16,
the children shouted
in the temple courts,
Hosanna, Hosanna, the son of David.
And it says the disciples
were indigent.
That means they were angry.
That means they were pissed off.
They didn't like what Jesus was doing.
They didn't like,
even though he was healing them,
he was, he was healing the blind.
He was, he was doing
all this stuff in the temple
because he was getting rid
of the religious mindset
and putting a relational one in there.
He's going against all that.
He was savage.
And so that's the part.
But you're saying,
pastor, like I don't understand
these children are saying,
Hosanna, how did they learn
that he was to be saved?
Well, you remember the day before Sunday
when they saw their parents
in a crowd shouting, Hosanna?
Children will do what you say, yes.
But they'll also see what,
they'll also do what they see you do.
Some things are better caught and taught.
So you guys, I mean,
did your, do your children
see you praying at home?
Do your children see you
reading the word
or is it just on Sundays?
I mean, it's the,
it's the private moments
that, that just children
and it's so powerful.
Like my son,
just this week,
my son grabbed the anointing oil,
ran upstairs.
My wife's in the bathroom
getting ready and he says,
Mom, can you rub this on me?
Why?
Because he sees his parents
activating this
and he wants some of it.
In John,
in John 15,
Jesus said this,
Jesus said in John 15 or 519,
he says,
I tell you the truth,
the son can do nothing by himself.
Without us,
God cannot.
Do you understand that?
It's not about you and me,
but God uses you and me.
He says,
he says,
I tell you,
the son can do nothing,
but he does only what he sees
the father doing.
Jesus only replicated
what he saw his heavenly father doing.
He says,
whatever the father does,
the son also does.
I only do what I see
my heavenly father doing
and what is my heavenly father?
What it was his commands
to us?
He was that none should perish,
but all of everlasting life.
That's why I go out there
to the community.
I want to make heaven crowded,
and so does he.
We talked about it last week, right?
He said,
go to the canals and the byes
that my house may be full.
He wants heaven crowded too,
and so I want to do
the mission of God.
I want to carry out that
here on earth.
This ain't my home.
I'm just out here recruiting.
That's all I'm doing.
That's what I did with Q
on our football team.
I'm out here recruiting.
I said,
Q, you look athletic.
Not because he's black,
just because it's Q.
He's athletic.
He owns a gym.
OK, come on somebody.
And so I invited him
and we did OK.
You know what I mean?
We did good.
Right Q, we did good.
Come on.
And so that's the point
of this guys is that
we are here to do
a mission for Christ.
That's why we got left here.
If I would have got saved
and I had nothing else to do,
God would have
just took me to heaven.
God didn't take me to heaven.
He left me here
on mission, on purpose.
I have a purpose
to glorify God.
I have a purpose
to make heaven crowded.
Stop telling God
you don't have a purpose.
You have a purpose.
That's your purpose
to be conformed
and transformed
to the image of Christ.
That's our purpose.
Here on Earth.
And so these kids,
I love it.
They were yelling,
Hosanna,
because they saw
what their parents were doing.
They were praying
because they saw
their parents praying.
You know.
A prayerless Christian
is a powerless Christian.
And we start praying to God.
It gets rid of
that whole pride thing.
Prayer is basically telling God
I can't do this.
I can't do this without you.
I can't live without you.
I can't be a good father
without him.
I can't be a good pastor
definitely not without him.
Especially y'all.
Y'all are wild.
I mean, y'all see how many
empty seats are in here right now?
Your fault.
Like, I say that
because listen,
it's the power of the invitation.
Y'all like coming to church, right?
When you guys eat
at a good restaurant,
what do you do?
You tell somebody.
When you guys see a good movie,
you tell somebody.
If you're in the presence of God
and you're at a good church,
go tell somebody about him.
So if you guys don't bring
somebody here next week,
don't come back, okay?
No, I want to encourage you guys
to bring somebody.
Bring them in the house.
So the house may be full.
This is where people's lives
are being transformed.
We've seen it all.
Unless you guys are getting tired
of seeing people saved.
I mean, maybe you are.
I don't know, but I'm not.
But if that's the case,
you're getting tired of that,
then stay home.
Like, really, just stay home.
We see people get saved here
every single Sunday
and it's so amazing.
It is amazing.
The gospel has not lost its power.
It still saves people.
It still forgives.
It still transforms lives.
But as we all stand to our feet today,
I'm going to get you out of here.
It's hot.
It is hot.
But as we all stand to our feet,
I want to encourage us
to invite Jesus into that area.
I don't know that area in your life.
That area of chaos.
The area of fear.
The area of doubt.
The area of worry.
I don't know that area in your life,
but you do.
The one that keeps you up at night.
That area.
That area you haven't invited Jesus.
When you invite him into that area,
that dark area,
that messed up area,
that catch-all room.
When you invite him in,
he doesn't live in chaos.
He lives in order.
And he will put order in your life.
And it's just about opening the door to him.
I wish Jesus busted in my doors
like Superman all the time.
I really do.
But he doesn't.
He wants you to open the door.
And when you open the door to him,
he comes in and he satisfies you.
Revelation 3.20 says,
Here I am.
Anybody ever felt the presence of God?
You know he's here now?
The Bible says he inhabits the praises of his people.
Where two or three are gathered,
there he is in the middle.
He's here.
Here I am.
I stand at the door and knock.
Man, the door to your heart,
the door to this church.
Yeah, actually in Revelations,
if you go down a couple verses,
he's talking about the church.
The door to your heart.
He said, if I come in,
he says, I will eat with that person
and they with me.
Man.
I want every head bowed and every eye closed.
I picture it like a glass door.
Like he's looking through and he's like,
I see, I see what you're going through.
I see you crying yourself to sleep at night.
I see you worrying, staying up all night.
I never intended you to live that way.
I died so you could live.
And here you are with these suicidal ideations.
I know you don't want to die.
You just want the pain to go away.
But that's what I do.
I take pain and turn it into purpose.
I take the pain away from you,
but I cannot come in the door.
He says, you have to open the door yourself.
You have to.
I wish I could.
I wish, I wish I could just make everybody say,
but the Bible says,
work out your own salvation with fear and tribbling.
That means I can't do it for you.
You have to do it for yourself.
Thank you so much for joining us today.
If you would like to connect with us,
just text BRIDGEGB to 55498
or visit our website at bridgeturch.tv.
Thanks so much for listening.
Now go out and be the bridge.