Matthew 21:12-22

Fruitless Religion
Book of the Bible
Matthew
Speaker
Tony Ferguson
Sermon Date

In Christ's day, the money changers would take the common Roman coins of that day and exchange them for the temple shekel (the Tyrian shekel), and they would do so at an exorbitant exchange rate. They also sold animals for sacrifices, so if you brought your own animal they would conveniently find that it had a spot or blemish, they would turn your lamb down, and sell you one of their own. They had turned the temple of God which was supposed to be a house of prayer into a flea market.

Jesus came to the religious establishment one last time looking for fruit, and all He found was fig leaves. The religious system of Israel was Fruitless. Corrupt. And Jesus as He enters Jerusalem, pronounces judgment upon the city, the temple, and the religious leaders. The Kingdom would be taken from them and given to a nation bearing the fruit thereof.

Description of the book of Matthew

As you come to the New Testament the first three books you encounter (Matthew, Mark and Luke) are referred to as the "synoptic" gospels. They are called the "synoptic" gospels because for the most part, they have a "similar view" of the life and ministry of Jesus. Though they account for much of the same narrative regarding the life and ministry of Jesus, they are not identical, nor are they intended to be. They assemble the accounts in different contexts, and contain different amounts of detail, but they are all important. God always seeks to establish a matter on the testimony of 2 or 3 witnesses, so having these 3 synoptic gospels about the life an ministry of the Son of God is in no way redundant.

Matthew’s gospel communicates to us the life, ministry, death and resurrection of Jesus in the fulfillment of the Old Testament Scriptures. From His lineage, to His birth, to His miraculous ministry, to His teachings, to His crucifixion, Matthew will time and time again point out that these things happened “that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet…”.