Psalm 92: 1, 2								Rev. S. de Marie
Psalm 32: 1, 5
Reading:	Jeremiah 7:1-14: Isaiah 56:1-8
Psalm118: 3, 4, 5
Text Matthew 21: 12-16
Psalm 8: 2,  4
Psalm 72: 2, 9

Beloved congregation of our Lord Jesus Christ,
For you, what is the significance of attending the worship service? Do you see its wealth? As a gift from God?
With the coming of Christ, this worship has been restored to what it should be: our meeting with God, in which we may honour Him.
Those who go to church to experience something for themselves, to have a moment of reflection or to meet others, do not grasp the core of worship. Whoever thinks this way does not put God at the centre of his thinking and thus misses the big goal in his life. He will also be disappointed quickly.
But if you know the correct and rich meaning of Sunday worship, you will also want to prepare properly for the meeting with God. Yes, then you will also want your future life to fit in with it. Because our worship of God is not limited to the meeting in God's house, but applies to our whole life. However, Sunday worship is the highlight of it every week. If you understand that, how rich will your whole life become!
I proclaim to you God's Word of the Passion Gospel of Jesus Christ from Matt. 21 under the theme:

As the Priest-King, Jesus reformed the temple service on His way to the cross.
1. He purifies the temple as a meeting place with God. (verses 12, 13)
2. He puts Himself there centrally for receiving salvation. (verse 14)
3. He arouses there pure praise from God's whole congregation. (verses 15 and 16)

1. The Lord Jesus Christ has begun the last week of his suffering. He is going to accomplish His work as a Priest-King. He works towards it in everything He does. Thoughtfully, He finishes His plan, the counsel of God. It will have to happen in Jerusalem. As the suffering servant who is at the same time the Son of David, He will bring his own into peace with God. It is now a matter of believing in Him. None of His people will be able to say that He was not known to them. It is now more than ever before: for Christ or against Him.
That is why Jesus enters Jerusalem in a very special way. Riding a donkey's colt as prophesied by Zechariah. This is how He makes himself known as a King who, at the same time, is humble: the suffering servant, the Messiah, who is the great Priest King.
And the people: they recognize this sign. Here comes the king! His followers lay their clothes on the road. There is a grand entry with great jubilation. The people understand: something great is happening here. The prophecy of Zechariah is fulfilled here:
Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion; Shout, O daughter of Jerusalem
Behold your King is coming to you, He is just and having salvation, lowly and riding on a donkey, a colt, the foal of a donkey.
And the people therefore recognize Him as the promised Messiah who is coming to redeem them. That is why they wave palm branches and rejoice with words from Psalm 118: Hosanna, the Son of David
Hosanna means "Help, we pray Thee", "give salvation, deliverance".
	The Son of David is the great King who comes to redeem them. They sing:
Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord, Hosanna in the highest heavens.
In this way they honour Him and expect help from Him, help from heaven! The Pharisees and scribes are annoyed. But Jesus knows that even the people – despite their singing and tribute – do not see Him as the Priest King who comes to reconcile them to God. They seek an earthly king for earthly peace, while He brings them true peace. By the atonement of their sins.
Yet Jesus wants to hear their singing. He wants to be praised. He wants to get the attention He is worth to receive as their Savior. The people will have to realize Who they will soon send to die on the wooden cross. The King of the Jews. The Son of David, The Lord's Servant, the Messiah.
After His entry, all of Jerusalem is in turmoil, verse 10. Finally, something is about to happen. They have been longing for a king who will redeem them from the rulers, the Romans. With that sound of rejoicing, everyone wants to know who it is. Who is it? And they get the answer: it is Jesus, the prophet from Nazareth.
The next day Jesus goes to Jerusalem again. Very consciously He goes to the temple. He wants to show himself to His people right there. Isn't he the Priest-King who wants to bring them back to God? Doesn't He want to redeem them with His life, redeem them for service to God? Where else must He be but where the Atonement service indicates His coming. There where the animal sacrifices are made before the Lord. He will fulfil it on the cross. Thus Jesus walks into the court of the temple.
He has been there more often, but now he goes before the eyes of the whole people. Everyone watches Him in great expectation of what is coming. What is He going to do in the temple? What Jesus sees in the court will hurt Him very much. He sees all kinds of traders, busy. They exchange money, they sell sacrificial animals, such as pigeons. It is a clamour and a bustle. It seems like one big market.
Now, congregation, how does the Lord Himself see the temple? It says specifically "the temple of God". That is the house of God. There God lives in the midst of His people. Everything in the temple of God will have to speak of Him. But Jesus rather sees a temple of people here. People who have no respect for God. They do not behave as befits the temple of God. Those traders should seek nothing there. Surely the animals should have been taken from home?
Here stands the Priest-King who is going to his Father. He sees all this. What does he do? Now Jesus drives out all who sell and buy in the temple. And He turns over all the tables of the money changers. Thus He makes it clear with authority how condemnable this whole thing is.
What happened in the temple characterized the religious life of the Jews. For them, it was a matter of trade. You bring in your goods to make yourself favourable to God. As you do it in the temple so you do it outside the temple. Thereby the Pharisees and Scribes and the Priests lead the way. They are the ones who allow all this to happen in the temple. But Jesus intervenes and brings reformation. He wants to show what true worship means. How you stand before God: in dependence, with respectful humility and with deep awe. That is why He cleanses the temple. With the authority of Priest-King. And as the highest Prophet and teacher, He grasps the Scriptures and shows the people how the Lord God Himself has condemned this practice through his prophets.
Isaiah prophesied centuries ago that the temple of God is a house of prayer. A house of the holy God where you can meet Him as a covenant child. Where you can be quiet before Him. But how is that possible in such a clamorous environment? How can you worship God with reverence?
All this trade has nothing to do with the service of reconciliation with God. It has become a human matter. An outer thing that is handled professionally. Not a matter of purifying your heart in order to approach God. To whom you can pour out your heart.
In the days of Isaiah, religion was externalized. Not a matter of the heart. That is why the sacrificial service was an abomination to the Lord. On the other hand, the Lord states through Isaiah. 
My house will be called a house of prayer.
Do you hear it again: God says, “My house.”
The prophet Jeremiah is also quoted by Jesus. 
You have turned it into a robber's den.
A robber's den not only points to profit of unjustified trade and therefore robbery, theft of the temple-goers, but a robber's den is primarily the place where criminal plans are concocted. Plans that do not fit in regards to the relationship with the Lord. Earlier, in his parable of the Good Shepherd, the Lord Jesus also called the leaders "robbers." He said:
 All who have come before Me are thieves and robbers.
The temple of God must be a house for cleansing, for reconciliation, for sanctification, for supplications and thanksgiving. A house for honouring and worshipping the holy and almighty God. But it has become a place of human satisfaction. The hearts were not cleansed. Jeremiah also pointed out: that in his day the lives of the Israelites did not suit the relationship with the Lord. They misused the service of reconciliation with sacrifices, to wash their sinful practices. To look beautiful without conversion.
Congregation, the Lord Jesus points to the core of the problem of His people and His leaders. That they cannot see Him as the true Saviour comes from their wrong view of God. They do not see that God is a holy God who wants to see in them a heart of repentance from their sins. They do not see that they really have to make themselves small and beg the Lord for mercy. They don't see that they need the Messiah for that. Now that Jesus has entered the temple, He wants to show them that. That is why He exposes everything that fights against it, such as profanity and wickedness.
Congregation, the temple of God is a house of prayer, a house of humiliation and worship where you may meet God's grace in the atonement of confessed sins. God's house is not a robber's den, where criminal practices that cannot stand before God are covered with pious rituals. The Lord does not overlook that. He says this in Jeremiah immediately after it: 
Behold I, even I, have seen it, says the LORD.
Now, brothers and sisters, let us also test ourselves. In what attitude do we sit here? In humiliation and guilt? Hoping for the grace of God? Adoring God in gratitude, while longing for His? Whereby we want to drink from His Word? Or …. or are we here to get confirmation of our life. To gain some spiritual powers? And then continue our life unchanged?
Your Savior has purified the temple service so that our worship services are truly focused on the Lord. This is how He helps us see how we can meet God: in reverence and awe let us be reconciled to Him and serve and honour Him in a grateful way.

2. The theme is Jesus, as Priest-King, reforming the temple service on His way to the cross. We first saw that He purifies the temple into a meeting place with God. We now see in the second point: He puts Himself there centrally for receiving salvation (verse 14).
The Lord Jesus comes to Jerusalem to fulfil the scriptures. This is evident from everything that He does in the temple of God. People no longer know what the service to the Lord means. But they also no longer know about true salvation, the true redemption that God wants to prepare for them. They do sing Hosanna, "Give help, give salvation" but they do not see what salvation really is. They have an earthly understanding of it.
How is it possible? Isn't it because they don't know the scriptures? The Scriptures of the Old Testament proclaims to them the Messiah who will make them new people. He will bring them to God and let the acceptable year of the Lord begin.
Now, they have heard Him preach of God's Kingdom, and they have seen His wonderful miracles. But they do not see in it the sign of His renewal through rebirth. They do not understand His preaching and do not connect His miracles to His Word. Everything stays with them in maintaining their own existence. They are trapped in their self-will.
But the Lord Jesus now shows, in the purified temple, who may be there. Verse 14: In the house of God the blind and the lame come to him. These people did expect it from the Messiah. They seek their healing from Him. Many have already preceded them. But few of the people have understood these signs well. Even John the Baptist needed the help of the Lord for it.
Jesus' miracles point to true salvation, to the true redemption of life imprisoned in the dungeon of sin and death. They point to His Messianic gift of eternal life to the new humanity who accepts Him. Jesus now performs these signs in the temple, the house of God. In this way He connects the riches of salvation with the meeting with God.
Congregation, this too is the fulfilment of the prophecies of Isaiah. The Lord refers to Isaiah in the synagogue of Nazareth at the start of his walks. Luke 4:
The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me because He has anointed me. He has sent Me to preach the Gospel to the poor. He has sent Me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to preach the acceptable year of the Lord.
The Lord points to these signs in his response to the disciples of John the Baptist. And now, everyone in Jerusalem can connect those same signs of Jesus with the meeting of God. He calls on them, as it were: People, do not only see that, as the Son of David, I am "a" Messiah, "an" anointed, a Savior, a helper. But especially see that I am the true Messiah, the true anointed, the true Christ of the Scriptures, the only One who can give you true eternal life. I can deliver you from the power of sin and the power of death. The Spirit of God is in Me. My miracles testify to that. You see here, through Me, God Himself working in His house.
Now brothers and sisters, boys and girls, also see this worship as a meeting with your God and your Savior. It is the place where He makes divine powers come to you. These quickening forces God and His Son works in you through Word and Spirit. They are powers of His saving Word and powers of His renewing Spirit. Ephesians 1: 19,20 compares them to the power with which the Lord Jesus Christ was raised from the dead.
These wonderful powers come into effect in the communion with Christ. They make you different people. They renew your heart. You are thereby freed, through Him, from the grip of sin and self-will. You are freed from blindness and lameness, to serve God with your heart and hands.
That is what Jesus is showing now in the house of God, the church, outside of which there is no salvation. Therefore believe in this Lord Jesus Christ as the true Messiah, the only Helper. If you accept Him, you may also know that He forgives all your iniquities, He heals all your diseases and delivers your life from the grave.

3. The theme is: As the Priest-King, Jesus reforms the temple service on His way to the cross. We saw: He purifies the temple into a meeting place with God, and He places Himself there centrally to receive salvation. Our third and final point is: He arouses there pure praise from God's whole congregation (verses 15 and 16)
Congregation, Jesus teaches us to see God's house as the place where we meet God and receive salvation from Him through His Word and Spirit. But also as a house where He wants to be worshipped by us. The latter comes out in verses 15 and 16.
First we read about the indignant words of the chief priests and the scribes. That would have also aggravated the suffering of Christ. These leaders ought nevertheless to be particularly happy and grateful for the reformation that Jesus brings to worship. What a change in the intercommunication with the Lord God! Because of a rich divine miracle in the meeting with Him, the Messiah.
But the leaders of those days will have none of it. The next day they will ask Jesus by what authority He has cleansed the temple. Apparently they don't dare to do that yet. According to verse 15, they are also annoyed by the miracles that Jesus performs in the temple. But they don't say anything about that either.
But when young children in the temple start calling to Him:
Hosanna, the Son of David!
Yes, then they cannot restrain themselves, they are resentful of Him. Why? Because they see their own authority affected by Jesus. Aren't they the leaders? They are in office and the people should listen to them and admire them. But here comes that Jesus, who has contact with prostitutes and publicans, and look at the people idolizing Him. That started with His entry into Jerusalem. Then adult people sang, to the leader's great annoyance (verse 9):
Hosanna, the Son of David; blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord.
But Jesus then said, if they were silent, the stones would cry out. But now, even the children are singing:
Hosanna, the Son of David.
Hosanna: nevertheless let help and salvation come from the Son of David.
It is now too much for the chief priests and scribes. They say to Jesus, with indignation:
Do you hear what these are saying?
In other words: Is it not blasphemous what these children sing about you? As if you are God, Who can help and deliver. Do you just allow this? And at that, even in the temple too!
But what do the children do? They sing what the adults have already shouted. The adults did that with their own ideas about Jesus. They saw Him as the Messiah who would give them earthly help, earthly deliverance. But these children will not have these thoughts. They sing this in their innocence. And therefore pure!
Perhaps impressed by the miracles they saw there, they shout:
Hosanna, Son of David.
How does Jesus respond to this? He says to the offended: Yes. I certainly hear what they shout and sing. And yes, they tell the truth! But Jesus does not leave it at that. He now shows himself as God's Son by referring to Psalm. 8: 2:
Yes, have you never read: Out the mouth of babes and nursing infants You have perfected praise? 
God wants Himself to be glorified even from the mouths of children, even by the very young children who still drink at their mother's breasts, those were children up to the age of about 4 years. Jesus says so: it is God who from the mouths of these children and infants prepares praise for Himself. This quote makes it clear that Jesus is being hailed here as God's Son, and that He wants it to be so. For the point of Psalm 8 is: that is why man was created, to honour, praise and glorify His God.
Brothers and sisters, children,  therefore, see the glorious significance of the liturgy of the Psalms and hymns in the worship service, meant to be sung not only by adults but also by their children! Jesus also says it to you: it is to the praise and glory of God and of your Savior. It was like that with the first human being, and with his children and it is still like that.
Let us never see the singing and praising of our God as an appendix to our faith. That which one likes to do and the other finds less important. No, for all of us, young and old, it is the highest goal on earth and soon also in heaven and on the new heaven and earth. Praising and glorifying our God with songs. 
God gave us birth for that. He makes Himself known to us for that. Baptized children are also born to praise and glorify God. To proclaim God's great deeds. To honour Him for that. In creation it was only the angels who sang and shouted, but after that it is God's main goal for man. In Isaiah 43: 21 the Lord states:
This people I have formed for myself. They shall declare My praise.
That is why the renewal of Christ is aimed at mentioning the glorious acts of the Lord and glorifying God in them. Just look at Pentecost.
Congregation, the young children in Jerusalem sang as did their parents: Hosanna, Son of David. How much more should we teach our children to learn the Psalms that God has given us, because He wants to enthrone the praises of His church. What a wonderful task we have to teach our children the great deeds of God from His Word. So that they glorify the Lord God and the Christ. Parents, let them know that the Lord Jesus is the true Messiah. Parents, raise them in the true fear of God. Tell them of the salvation that the Lord Jesus has also prepared for them. Point out to them how their baptism represents to them the work of salvation of the Messiah. What a great privilege! In the service of the Lord.
Also in communal praise, as much as possible, let us come together in God's house, for God wants it! He wants to prepare Himself from our praise, our joint praise. Staying home while being called to church is therefore against God's will! That must also be learned at home. Then let the households really sing! Because the Lord wants to prepare that praise from the mouths of infants, older children and adults.
	Yes, the Lord even sees an answer to what His opponents are saying. Psalm 8 says and I now quote the rhymed, stanza 2:
Out of the mouth of infants praise is sounded and so a mighty bulwark Thou hast founded. Thus breakest Thou the adversary's force and thwartest Thou the evildoers course.
The Lord wants to be praised, that thereby His adversaries become silent.
	Congregation, our Lord Jesus has reformed worship. He did that on the way to His cross. He experienced widespread misunderstanding of His people with their earthly carnal mind, He was deeply annoyed by haughty church leaders. He had to intervene where God's name was blasphemed and God's praise was opposed.
	But He also taught us true reverence and awe toward God. And, as Priest-King, the true salvation that He gives us. He taught us again what the highest goal in our worship is: our praise to God. In all this, He showed Himself as the true Savior. He therefore deserves our eternal praise and worship.
	Let us now also keep our worship services as He has appointed, full of humility, reverence and awe for God the Father, full of hope and expectation of salvation in God and His Son, full of praise and glory to the Triune God. Let us, young and old, always exclaim in full seriousness and full of gratitude and joy:
Hosanna, Lord help, Lord save, Lord grant salvation. Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord.

Amen