First Baptist Church Litchfield
October 25, 2026

      • Psalm 130:1–8NIV2011

  • Before The Throne Of God Above
  • His Mercy Is More

      • 1 Peter 1:3–9CSB

  • Because He Lives
  • Because He Lives (Amen)
  • Living Hope

  • Sacred Space

    Eden: The First Sanctuary

    The temple was a sacred place where heaven and earth meet in sanctity and communion between God and man. The temple did not begin with Solomon or Israel in the wilderness. The story of the temple begins in the Garden of Eden.
    God created the heavens and the earth. He also made man in his image. God wanted a special place to commune with man, so He made a garden for man and God to dwell together. The garden was a sanctuary. There was no death, nor destruction, or disease, nor deformity or evil. Only perfection. A holy God dwelling in harmony with his holy holy image bearers, Adam and Eve. The Garden was the fulfillment of God’s desire to dwell with man. Unfortunately, man broke communion with God through his disobedience.
    Adam and Eve decided to deliberately transgress God’s command to not eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. In doing this, unity with God and the serenity they enjoyed was lost. Because of their sin, God cursed creation and he kicked Adam and Eve out of the garden. Their separation was so intact that God stationed cherubim, and a flaming whirling sword east of the garden of Eden to guard the way to the tree of life. The flaming sword is an instrument of death. In their fallen condition, no one was allowed back into the presence of God. God, however, was not done with humanity.

    The Promise to Abraham

    God still desired to dwell with his people. In Genesis 12, God called Abram and promised him land, seed, and blessing. God makes a covenant with him promising to build a great nation from Abram’s children, a people he will call his own. God promised him land where his people will dwell in the safety of his refuge and the holiness of his law. God also said that his people will be a blessing to all the nations and that the nations will come to a special place to worship and know God. This special place was Jerusalem, more specifically, the temple.

    The Temple in Jerusalem

    The temple had an outer courtyard for the gentiles to gather. The inner courtyard was reserved for the priests and those making sacrifices. There was an inner room called the Holy of Holies. The Holy of Holies was the most sacred room of any place on earth. The high priest was allowed to enter the Holy of Holies once a year only after completing a rigid purification process to be ceremonially clean. The sacrifice he made was for the atonement of the sins of all the people. The Bible says that without the shedding of blood there can be no forgiveness of sins (Hebrews 9) for life is in the blood. The priest never entered the Holy of Holies without the blood of a perfect sacrifice.
    The problem is, there was never a perfect sacrifice. No animal’s blood could sufficiently deal with man’s sinful heart. Israel failed at keeping the law, so much so, God had to exile them from his presence twice. Solomon’s temple was razed to the ground by the Babylonians in 586 B.C., symbolizing God’s absence from the land and his people.
    A second temple was built 70 years later at the same site, as Ezra chronicles, but to a lesser glory than Solomon’s. At the completion of the second temple, there is a bi-polar response by God’s people. The younger generation rejoices while the older generation lamented because God’s fullness was not entirely felt or seen. There was something missing.
    In the first century, Herod greatly built on to this temple. One commentator noted:
    “The temple consisted of four divisions and was of immense and grandiose proportions. The first and largest division was the Court of the Gentiles, an open-air quadrangle measuring some 500 yards long by 325 yards wide (= thirty-five acres) and enclosed by a portico supported by rows of columns. According to Josephus (Ant. 15.391–425), the columns were thirty feet high and so massive that it took three persons with hands joined together to surround one of them at the base. The columns were crowned with Corinthian capitals, and the ceiling of the porticoes was ornamented with wood carvings.”
    It was estimated that the outer courtyard could hold up to 75,000 people! At its completion, Josephus notes that over 255,000 animals were bought and sacrificed. But still, something was mission.

    The King Comes to His Temple

    For centuries, God’s people had been waiting for the day when God would return to His temple. The last of the Old Testament prophets promised it: “The Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple” (Malachi 3:1). Then four hundred years of silence followed, until Jesus shows up on the scene.
    As the people went about doing their religious business, God was about to enter the temple once again. Not in his Shekinah glory, but as a sovereign, majestic and yet meek Messiah. In our last passage, Jesus rode into Jerusalem on a donkey while the crowds cried, “Hosanna to the Son of David!” Now Matthew tells us where the King went first. He went straight to the temple to clean it up.
    As Jesus enters the temple, Matthew shows us three things about our King:
    He exposes barren religion, He welcomes the broken, and He receives the praise that belongs to God.

    I. The King Exposes Barren Religion (vv. 12–13)

    The King Inspects His Father’s House

    As I said before, the temple is a sacred place where heaven and earth meet in sanctity and communion between God and man. With its purification ceremonies and sacrificial rituals, God provided a way for He and his people, and the nations for that matter, to come into his presence and find blessing. Israel, however, had long forsaken the Lord. They worshiped with their lips, but their hearts were far from him. By the time Jesus shows up the temple was in effect barren.
    Notice what Matthew does. In Mark’s Gospel, Jesus looks around the temple and leaves, and the cleansing happens the next day. Matthew moves straight from the triumphal entry into the temple. The King rides into His city, and the first place He goes is His Father’s house. And what He finds there is not worship. It is business.
    First, it should be noted that the scene was modest. Remember, the temple courtyard was massive, some thirty-five acres holding almost 75,000 people. Had Jesus caused a major uproar, it would have been seen as a revolt and would have involved the Roman guards and temple police. Jesus’ intention was not to start a revolt but to make a symbolic point.
    When you walked into the outer courtyard of the temple, it was common to see people buying and selling animals and exchanging currencies. This was not wrong so to speak. People came from all over the region with different currencies and needed to fulfill the sacrifice. That is not to say that the Pharisees and Sadducees did not take advantage of the massive commerce to pad their pockets. There was corruption, and Jesus was not happy with it. But there was something larger looming behind his anger.

    A Den of Robbers

    As Jesus is tearing up the place, he quotes Jeremiah 7:11. To get the point Jesus is making, we need to understand the context of Jeremiah 7:1–15.
    Jeremiah 7 takes place on the same hill, at the gate of Solomon’s temple, some six hundred years earlier. God sent the prophet to stand at the entrance and confront the people’s false confidence. As they came in to worship, they chanted, “This is the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord” (v. 4). They believed the building itself guaranteed their safety. As long as God’s house stood in Jerusalem, nothing could touch them.
    But look at how they were living. They were stealing, murdering, committing adultery, swearing falsely, and burning incense to Baal (vv. 8–9). Then they would walk into God’s house and say, “We are delivered.” So God asks them, will you “stand before Me in this house called by My name and say, ‘We are delivered, so we can continue doing all these detestable acts’?” (v. 10). Do you hear Yahweh’s indictment? They lived like the pagans of the land and then treated the temple as a safe place where their sin could not follow them.
    That is what God means in verse 11: “Has this house, which bears My name, become a den of robbers in your eyes?” A den of robbers is not a crooked marketplace. It is a hideout. It is the cave where thieves retreat after the robbery, the place they run to escape the consequences of their crimes. So when Jesus quotes Jeremiah, His main target is not unfair exchange rates. It is a temple that has become a refuge for people who have no intention of worshiping Yahweh in word and deed, spirit and truth.
    God then pointed them to Shiloh, where the tabernacle once stood and which now lay in ruins (v. 12). The warning was plain: unless they repented, He would do to this house what He had done to Shiloh and drive them from His presence. And He did.
    In 586 B.C., Babylon burned the temple to the ground. Now Jesus stands in the rebuilt temple speaking Jeremiah’s words again. The same sin has returned, and the same judgment is coming.
    History gives us a picture of what this looks like. In medieval England there was a legal custom called the right of sanctuary. A man who had committed a crime could flee into a church, grab hold of the door knocker or reach the altar, and the sheriff could not touch him. For forty days he was untouchable. The church building became a wall between the criminal and the consequences of his crime. He had not repented of his sin. He had not made restitution to the people he wronged. He had simply found the right building for refuge. That is what Jeremiah saw at the temple gate, and it is what Jesus saw in the courts of His Father’s house. The temple had become a sanctuary for unrepentant sinners, a place to run from justice.
    So when Jesus overturns the tables and cries, “You are making it a den of robbers!” He is exposing an entire whole system of worship that let people believe they could find fellowship with God regardless of how they lived the rest of the week.

    Fire Insurance Religion

    The religious establishment had set up a practice where one could live like a pagan Sunday through Friday, and offer a sacrifice on Saturday and be just fine; as if fellowship with Yahweh was fickle. Living as if God only cares about how you live your life on the Sabbath, exempting every other day of the week. Living as if God does not care about the injustices you commit against your neighbor: the stealing, lying, adultery, covetedness, and murder. Just make sure you get to the temple on Saturday with your sacrificial lamb, and you will be fine. Can you see the absurdity of all this?
    We have a modern name for this. We call it fire insurance. You pay the premium, you keep the policy current, and you never think about it again until the house is burning. Insurance does not require you to change the way you live. It only requires that you pay on time. Many treat God the same way. Show up, pay the premium of an hour on Sunday, keep the policy active, and then live however you please.

    Leaves Without Fruit

    Matthew drives the point home the very next morning. As Jesus returns to the city, He sees a fig tree full of leaves, finds nothing on it, and curses it, and it withers at once (vv. 18–19). The lesson is that which appears to bear fruit but does not, is cursed. The temple was green in foliage, but when Jesus inspected it, He found no fruit.
    Fig trees in Israel put out small early figs along with their leaves. A tree in full leaf was a promise: fruit is here. That is why the barren tree is so damning. It was advertising something it did not have. Imagine walking into a grocery store with the lights on, the doors open, the sign glowing, and every shelf empty. Everything about the building says “come and find food,” and there is nothing to eat. That was the temple. Its sacrifices were smoking on the alter, its courts were crowded, its priests were busy. It had all the leaves. But when the King came hungry for righteousness, justice, and faithfulness, there was nothing on the branches.
    A little bit later in the week, Jesus will teach his disciples what it means to bear fruit. In John 15, Jesus refers to himself as the vine, and His Father is the vinedresser. Jesus says in verse 15:2, “Every branch in Me that does not produce fruit He removes…” And in verse 6, “If anyone does not remain in Me, he is thrown aside like a branch and he withers. They gather them, throw them into the fire, and they are burned.” Jesus teaches us that a tree is known by its fruit. If a tree produces good fruit, it is a good tree. If a tree produces bad fruit or no fruit at all, it is dead and worthless. The Father removes the tree and throws it in the fire.
    The Christian life is lived bearing the fruit of obedience. John Owen rightly says,
    “We are the servants of God, we are the disciples of Christ, when we do what has commanded us, and because it is commanded us.” John Owen
    To claim to love Jesus and to love the world is no different than a man who is married to two different women. He can claim he is a husband. He can claim he is a father to his children. But he cannot claim to be faithful to any of them. He can show the world his wedding ring and pictures of his family, whichever family he chooses to show. The world will know this man is married with children. But in God’s eyes, he is an adulterer! The fruit of his life is adultery.
    You can claim you are a Christian. You can claim your membership in a church. You can tell the world you love Jesus with your t-shirt and your bracelets. You can know your Bible and be here every Sunday singing our hymns and speaking our language. But if your life is not marked by joyful obedience to Christ, you cannot claim to be faithful. If your heart is cold to his Words, if you feel more comfortable around the worldly than you do the godly, if you are living your life with one foot in the world and one foot in the church, in God’s eyes you are an adulterer. You are not faithful to Him, His Son, or his church. The fruit of your life is spiritual infidelity. Unfaithfulness is bad fruit. It is dead fruit. Jesus says that a branch that is not bearing his fruit is a bad branch, and the Father cuts it off and throws it in the fire. Heed the warning.

    Has the Church Become a Den of Thieves?

    In Jesus’s day, the temple was not bearing the fruit of faithfulness to God. It was not the light shining in a dark world beckoning the nations to come and see Yahweh. It served more like a nationalistic symbol of Israel’s ethnocentric pride that divided Israel from the nations. Furthermore, the temple became a safe hiding place for those who would practice wickedness on the outside and think they can find refuge and forgiveness inside the temple. I think someone could make this same case for the Western Church.
    Has the Western church become a sanctuary for unrepentant sinners?
    Has the Western church allowed the world to take up residence in our pews?
    Does the habitual liar, murderer, thief, and the sexually immoral feel comfortable in our presence?
    Have we become complacent in our pursuit of God’s holiness that we have forgotten the cross is offensive and scandalous?
    Does it grieve you as much as it does me to see the Western Church profess homosexuality as sacred as normal, monogamous, covenantal marriage ordained by God between a man and a woman?
    Does it grieve you that the Church has adopted an arbitrary (subjective) view of God’s love?
    According to much of the Western church, God’s love is merely a mixture of mercy and acceptance, with no mention of his justice or holiness, as if justice and holiness are not lovable attributes?
    How absurd! Do you not love your child while you administer discipline for wrongdoing? If you who are evil can love your child while administering discipline, then could not God who is perfect in the very essence of perfection love in his discipline of sinners? And yet the church will tolerate sin under the guise of “love.” When a sinner walks into the presence of the godly, they should get a real sense of God. We are not ashamed of this.
    I remember several summers ago being around some old friends and family members while vacationing in Wisconsin. As I was sitting around the fire, a man who was drunk began to use profanity as he was speaking with me. His wife, ashamed, told him to mind his tongue. He was speaking to a “Man of God.” Now, be certain of this, I was not wearing a white collar or a suit. As a matter of fact, I said nothing to him or his wife about what I do for a living. I’m sure one of my family members told her I was a pastor. It was not me she was fearing. It was the presence of God testifying in me. Sinful people who have not repented and come to Christ get uncomfortable around genuine Christians, not because we parade our righteousness in pride, but because the Holy Spirit testifies through our lives, our language, our lack of taste for what is evil. Unrepentant sinners should feel uncomfortable in church if the church is living rightly before the Lord. We cannot be a sanctuary for the habitually wicked.
    Is it no wonder Jesus became angry? The temple appeared to be doing the work of God. It appeared to be religious, but all along it was bearing the fruit of the world, celebrating barren religion, which became a stumbling block to the world.

    Back to the Garden

    We began this morning in the Garden. God made a sanctuary where He dwelt with man, and in the middle of it stood the tree of life. But Adam reached for the tree God had forbidden, and a flaming sword was set to guard the way back. Ever since, humanity has been trying to find its own way back into the presence of God.
    Israel thought the temple was the way back. They had the building, the sacrifices, the crowds, and the priests. They had all the leaves. But when the King came hungry for fruit, He found none. The temple was a hideout, not a house of prayer. And like the fig tree, it was cursed.

    What Will the King Find on Our Branches?

    Let’s be honest, we stand where the fig tree stood. Every one of us has leaves. We know the hymns. We know the language. We know how to look fruitful on Sunday morning. But when the King walks up to our branches and looks beneath the leaves, what does He find? If He cursed every barren tree, which of us would be left standing?

    The Perfect Sacrifice

    Here is the good news. Remember what we said about the high priest. He never entered the Holy of Holies without the blood of a perfect sacrifice, and there never was a perfect sacrifice. Until this week in Matthew. Within days of cursing the fig tree, Jesus would offer Himself as that sacrifice.
    And notice how He did it. Paul writes, “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us, because it is written, Cursed is everyone who is hung on a tree” (Galatians 3:13). The King who cursed a barren tree on the road to Jerusalem was Himself hung on a tree outside Jerusalem. The fruitful One became the cursed one, so that the fruitless could be made fruitful.
    Adam reached for a tree and lost the way to the tree of life. Christ was nailed to a tree to open the way back.

    Abide in the Vine

    This is why the answer to barren religion is not more religion. Christ gave His life, and He asks for yours. You cannot glue fruit onto dead branches. Fruit grows from a living root. Jesus said, “I am the vine; you are the branches. The one who remains in me and I in him produces much fruit, because you can do nothing without me” (John 15:5).
    So what will the King find on your branches?
    If you have been hiding in the building, come out of hiding and come to Christ. Your attendance will not save you, but He will.
    If you have leaves without fruit, do not try harder at looking fruitful. Come to the Vine. Repent, believe, and be grafted into the One who bore the curse for you.
    If you are in Christ, abide in Him. Stay close to His Word, His table, and His people. Bear the fruit of joyful obedience, not to earn His love, but because His life is flowing through you.
    When we return to this passage next week, we will see what happened after the tables were overturned. The robbers were driven out, and someone else came in.
    “My Father is glorified by this: that you produce much fruit and prove to be my disciples” (John 15:8). To the true Vine, who bore the curse and gives us His life, be glory, honor, and praise, now and forever. Amen.
  • I Know Whom I Have Believed
First Baptist Church Litchfield
pastorjason.fbcl@gmail.com
217-324-4232
http://www.firstbaptistlitchfield.org/
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