First Baptist Church Litchfield
November 1, 2026

      • Isaiah 40:28–31NIV2011

  • O Church Arise (Arise Shine)
  • Christ Our Hope In Life And Death

      • Hebrews 12:1–3NIV2011

  • Yet Not I But Through Christ In Me
  • Christ Is Mine Forevermore
  • In Christ Alone
  • Last week we began our study of Matthew 21:12–17, the day the King came to His temple.
    We saw that the story of the temple does not begin in Jerusalem. It begins in Eden, where God dwelt with man in perfect communion. Sin drove Adam and Eve out, and a flaming sword guarded the way back. But God was not done with humanity. He called Abraham, promised him a people and a place, and in time that place became the temple in Jerusalem, where heaven and earth met and sinners could draw near through sacrifice. Yet there was never a perfect sacrifice, and Israel never truly kept faith. So God’s people waited for the promise of Malachi: “The Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple.”
    Then He came. Jesus rode into Jerusalem to cries of “Hosanna,” and the first place the King went was His Father’s house. And Matthew showed us the first thing the King does there.

    He exposed barren religion.

    Jesus overturned the tables and quoted Jeremiah 7: “You are making it a den of robbers!” We learned that a den of robbers is not a crooked marketplace, but a hideout, a place where criminals run to escape the consequences of their crimes. We likened it to the medieval sanctuary where a guilty man could grab the church door and be safe without ever repenting. Israel lived like the pagans all week and then ran to the temple, believing the building would cover them. We called it fire insurance religion: pay the premium, keep the policy current, and live however you please.
    And the next morning Jesus cursed a fig tree that was full of leaves and empty of fruit, giving us a living picture of a temple that looked alive but was barren.
    We asked hard questions.

    Has the church become a sanctuary for unrepentant sinners?

    Are we a den of robbers or a house of prayer?

    And we saw that, like Israel, we are prone to turn the things of God into a hiding place, trusting religious appearance while our hearts remain far from Him.
    But Matthew does not end the scene with overturned tables. When the robbers are driven out, someone else comes in. This morning we will see the other two truths Matthew shows us about our King:

    He welcomes the broken, and He receives the praise that belongs to God.

    II. The King Welcomes the Broken (v. 14)

    Those Who Were Kept Out Are Let in

    The tables are overturned. The coins are scattered across the stone. The merchants are driven out. And then Matthew gives us one of the most beautiful sentences in his Gospel: “The blind and the lame came to Him in the temple, and He healed them” (v. 14).
    To feel the weight of that verse, you have to know who was normally kept out. When David captured Jerusalem, the Jebusites mocked him, saying that even the blind and the lame could hold him off. From that day a saying arose: “The blind and the lame will never enter the house” (2 Samuel 5:8). The law barred any priest with a defect from approaching the altar (Leviticus 21:17–23). In Jesus’ day, some Jewish communities went further and excluded the blind and the lame from their sacred assemblies altogether. The broken stood at the edges. They could look toward the house of God, but they could not draw near.
    Now watch what happens. The religious leaders had made the temple a hideout for the guilty. Jesus makes it a hospital for the needy. Remember, Jesus said, I came not for healthy, but for the sick, both the unrighteous and the broken. Where David said the blind and the lame would not enter the house. The greater Son of David stands in the house and calls them into the presence of God.

    A House of Prayer for All Peoples

    Remember the first half of what Jesus quoted in verse 13: “My house will be called a house of prayer.” Those words come from Isaiah 56:7. Read the verses just before it and you find out who Isaiah had in mind. God promised that the foreigner and the eunuch, the very people who were kept at a distance, would be brought to His holy mountain and made joyful in His house of prayer. The house of prayer was always meant to be a place where outsiders were gathered in.
    Isaiah also told Israel how they would know when God Himself had come: “Then the eyes of the blind will be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped. Then the lame will leap like a deer” (Isaiah 35:5–6). Malachi promised that the Lord would suddenly come to His temple. Here He is. And the proof that the Lord has come to His temple is not a flash of Shekinah glory. It is blind eyes opening and crippled legs walking in the courts of His Father’s house.

    The Den becomes the Hospital

    So here are two kinds of people in the same temple. Some came to hide their sin. Others came to bring their need. The robbers came to the temple to keep their sin and escape its consequences. The blind came to the temple to be seen and to be healed. Jesus drove out the first and welcomed the second.
    This is how we hold together everything we have said this morning.
    The church must never be a comfortable sanctuary for the unrepentant. But it must always be a safe place for the broken. The proud should feel the presence of a holy God. The humble should feel the welcome of a merciful King.
    We cannot have two different churches representing FBCL. We are one church, filled with the presence of Christ, that welcomes repentant sinners who see their need for the Savior.

    The question for you this morning is, Which one are you?

    Jesus said to the Pharisees, “If you were blind, you wouldn’t have sin. But now that you say, ‘We see,’ your sin remains” (John 9:41). The only people Jesus could not heal in the temple were the ones who did not think they were sick. The way into the presence of the King is not to come pretending to be complete. It is to come, broken, blind, and lame, confessing that you cannot see and cannot walk, and to ask Him to heal you.

    Let us also ask as a church, “Who are the blind and the lame around us?”

    Do we welcome the family with the special needs child who wonders whether they will be welcome? What about the man fresh out of prison who knows he is a mess? How about the woman whose life has fallen apart because of addiction? What about the unchurched teenager who does not know the hymns or our religious language? Do they find in us a den that shuts them out, or a hospital, a house of prayer, that draws them in? Make no mistake about it, we will not tolerate sin. But we will always make room for sinners who come to Christ to be made well.

    III. The King Receives the Praise That Belongs to God (vv. 15–17)

    Indignant at Wonders

    You would think that blind men seeing and lame men walking in the temple would bring the whole city to its knees. It did not. Matthew tells us that when the chief priests and the scribes saw the wonderful things He did, and heard the children in the temple crying out, “Hosanna to the Son of David!” they were indignant (v. 15). Indignant at wonders!
    Think about that. They saw miracles, and they were angry. They heard praise, and they were offended. They stood in the very house where they were supposed to watch for the coming of the Lord, and when He came, not only could they not see him, they were appalled by Him. That is the deceit of barren religion. It fails to bear the fruit of saving faith.
    And who saw Him clearly? The children. The crowds that cried “Hosanna” at the triumphal entry had gone home, but the children kept singing in the temple courts. Once again we see the upside down kingdom at work. In antiquity, children had no standing, no learning, no religious office, zero social capital, but they knew a King when they saw one.

    The Child Who Told the Truth

    Most of us know Hans Christian Andersen’s story of the emperor’s new clothes. Two swindlers convince a vain emperor that they have woven him a suit so fine that only the wise can see it. The emperor sees nothing, but he is too proud to admit it. His ministers see nothing, but they are too afraid to say it. So the emperor parades through the streets, and the whole city praises clothes that are not there. Then a little child cries out, “But he has nothing on!”
    In the temple the story runs in reverse. The leaders refuse to see what is really there. The King of glory stands among them, healing the broken, and the experts insist He is nothing. Then the children cry out the truth: “Hosanna to the Son of David!” Pride kept the religious elite blind, but the simple humble faith of a child allowed them to see.

    Praise Only God Deserves

    The leaders turn to Jesus and say, “Do You hear what these children are saying?” (v. 16). In other words, make them stop. This is blasphemy. Surely You will not accept this.
    Jesus answers with Psalm 8: “Have you never read: You have prepared praise from the mouths of infants and nursing babies?” Psalm 8 opens with the words, “Lord, our Lord, how magnificent is Your name throughout the earth!” It is a psalm about the praise that belongs to Yahweh alone. And Jesus applies it to Himself. He does not correct the children. He does not redirect their worship. He receives it, because it is His to receive. Jesus receives praise only God deserves because He is God.
    Earlier in this Gospel Jesus said, “Something greater than the temple is here” (Matthew 12:6). Now we see it. The temple was built so that God could be worshiped. The children are worshiping Jesus in the temple, and Jesus says that is exactly what Scripture prepared them to do. The One greater than the temple has come to His temple, and He is receiving the praise that belongs to God.

    Praise Is the Fruit He Came For

    Remember the fig tree. Jesus came to His temple looking for fruit. From the priests He found indignation. From the children He found praise. Hebrews calls our praise “the fruit of lips that confess His name” (Hebrews 13:15). The barren tree had leaves. The children had fruit.
    Jesus told His disciples, “Unless you turn and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 18:3). The question is not how much you know about God. The chief priests knew a great deal. The question is whether you will humble yourself to see the King and praise Him.
    Parents, do not underestimate what is happening when your children sing. When they sing “Hosanna” with their little voices, God says He has prepared that praise. Teach them to sing it. Bring them to worship. Let them see you sing it with your whole heart. And all of us, let us come to worship not as critics sitting in judgment, but as children delighted that the King has come.

    The King Walks Away

    Matthew ends the scene with a quiet, chilling line: “Then He left them, went out of the city to Bethany, and spent the night there” (v. 17).
    The prophet Ezekiel once watched the glory of God leave the temple because of Israel’s sin. The glory rose from the house, went out of the city, and stood on the mountain east of Jerusalem (Ezekiel 10–11). Bethany sits on the eastern slope of that very mountain, the Mount of Olives. The Lord had suddenly come to His temple, just as Malachi promised. And now, rejected by its leaders, He walks out of it and goes east. Before the week is over He will say, “Your house is left to you desolate” (Matthew 23:38). Within a generation, the temple would lie in ruins.
    Hear this. Jesus does not stay forever where He is not welcome. You can stand in His house, hear His Word, see His works, and still harden your heart until He leaves you to your indignation. Do not be the chief priests. Be the children. Praise Him while He is near.

    Can We Find Our Way Back?

    Back to the Garden

    We began in the Garden. God made a sanctuary where He dwelt with man in perfect communion. But sin drove Adam and Eve out, and a flaming sword guarded the way back. Ever since, man has been trying to find his own way back into the presence of God.
    That is what the people of Jerusalem were doing. They thought the temple was their way back. They believed that as long as they showed up, offered their sacrifices, and stood in the right building, they were safe. They had turned God’s house into a den of robbers, a hideout where they could run from the consequences of their sin without ever turning from it.
    But you cannot hide from God in God’s house.

    The True Refuge

    The astonishing thing is, the King who exposed the den of robbers would soon be counted among them. The word Jesus used for “robbers” in verse 13 is the same word Matthew uses at the cross: “Then two robbers were crucified with him, one on the right and one on the left” (Matthew 27:38). The One who drove the robbers out of the temple was hung between robbers outside the city. The sinless King took the place of the guilty, so that guilty sinners could find a true refuge.
    The temple could never hide you from God’s judgment. But Jesus can bear it for you. The den of robbers was a false refuge. Christ is the true one.
    Think back over what we have seen. The King came to His temple and exposed barren religion. He welcomed the blind and the lame. He received the praise that belongs to God alone. And then He went outside the city to do what the temple never could. Remember, the high priest never entered the Holy of Holies without the blood of a perfect sacrifice, and there never was a perfect sacrifice. Until now. Christ entered the true Holy of Holies, “not by the blood of goats and calves, but by his own blood, once for all” (Hebrews 9:12). When He died, the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom (Matthew 27:51). Jesus had said, “Destroy this temple, and I will raise it up in three days,” and He was speaking of His body (John 2:19–21). The true Temple was torn down so that the way into God’s presence could be thrown open.
    So let me ask you plainly this morning:

    Where are you hiding?

    Some of you are hiding in the church. You have learned the language. You know the hymns. You are here every Sunday. But your heart is far from Him, and you are living with one foot in the world and one foot in the church. Hear the word of the Lord: your attendance cannot save you. Your membership cannot save you. Your religious activity is leaves without fruit. Stop hiding, and come to Christ in repentance and faith today.
    Some of you know Christ, but you have grown comfortable. Sin that once grieved you no longer bothers you. You have made peace with things God hates. Do not let the house of God become a hiding place in your own heart. Examine your life. Confess your sin. Return to bearing the fruit of obedience.
    And some of you are not hiding at all. You are hurting. You feel like the blind and the lame standing at the edge of the courtyard, you are sure there is no place for someone as broken as you. Hear me: the King has cleared the way. Come to Him as you are, in your need, and He will not turn you away. And when He heals you, do what the children did. Lift your voice and sing, “Hosanna to the Son of David!”
    And as a church, let us take this to heart together. May this be a place where sinners are welcomed and sin is never comfortable. May the world sense the presence of God among us. We are not prideful about this, but we are confident Christ dwells here. May we be a house of prayer, not a den of robbers. And let us look forward to a new garden.

    From Eden to the New Jerusalem

    The story of the temple began in a garden, and the Bible tells us it will end in one. In the last chapters of Scripture, John sees the new Jerusalem coming down out of heaven, and he hears a loud voice: “Look, God’s dwelling is with humanity, and he will live with them” (Revelation 21:3). Then John says something remarkable: “I did not see a temple in it, because the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb are its temple” (Revelation 21:22). There is a river, and on either side of it stands the tree of life, the same tree once guarded by the flaming sword. And “there will no longer be any curse” (Revelation 22:3).
    What Adam lost in the Garden, Christ has won at the cross. What the temple could only point to, Jesus is, now, for us. God’s desire to dwell with His people, the desire that planted Eden and filled the tabernacle and raised the temple on Mount Zion, will be fulfilled forever in the presence of the Lamb.
    The flaming sword that guarded Eden came down on Christ, so that all who come to Him by faith can enter the presence of God. The way is open. Do not hide from Him. Run to Him.
    “The name of the Lord is a strong tower; the righteous man runs into it and is safe” (Proverbs 18:10).
    To Him who is our refuge, our temple, and our King, be glory, honor, and praise, now and forever. Amen.
  • Grace Alone
First Baptist Church Litchfield
pastorjason.fbcl@gmail.com
217-324-4232
http://www.firstbaptistlitchfield.org/
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