Thank you, Agnes. As a pastor, there's a part of me that is so thankful for your testimony and what I know of Agnes. I'm hoping in many ways that my own daughter can grow up to be similar and share a lot of these traits, and I'm sure your parents are very proud, so thank you for that testimony.

Well, it's Monday night, and each year our observance of the Passion Week begins on Palm Sunday, as you guys know, with Jesus' triumphal entry on a donkey into Jerusalem. And we reflected on this yesterday, and so each evening this week we will be meeting here to reflect on each of the days leading up to Jesus' death and resurrection.

The Passion Week, which means the week of his sufferings, is the most important week in all of human history, and it's also central to the narratives of the four gospel accounts. The man Jesus, you guys know, walked 30 years – 33 years on the earth, but nearly half of all the gospel accounts are devoted to the events and the teachings of just this single week.

During this week, most all things public – Christ's teachings, confrontations with religious leaders, and the events surrounding his trial – they all take place in Jerusalem. But after each day, Jesus and his disciples, they walk about two miles and return to Bethany, presumably to the home of Lazarus and his sisters.

So Bethany to Jerusalem, Jerusalem to Bethany, Bethany to Jerusalem, and much teaching happens to and from, and also on the road. So this is the physical setting of this week – Bethany to Jerusalem, back and forth. And this is a week in which we also see a lot of Jesus' emotions.

We see him weep, we see him rage, and elsewhere in the gospel narratives, we see more amazement from Jesus than either weeping or raging. But this week is different, and understandably, we see more emotion as Jesus heads toward the cross. And you can tell a lot about the passions of a person's heart by what we see him weep over and what we see him rage over.

And you can observe a lot of what a person loves and what a person hates by outbursts of these emotions. And on Monday, Jesus is visibly very upset. And there are two major things that Scripture points us to that take place on Monday. The first one is the only miracle of destruction in the gospel accounts, where Jesus curses a fig tree while on his way toward Jerusalem.

The second is Jesus causing a scene in the temple where he overturns tables, chases away the money changers, drives away those selling doves, and then he gets into it with the religious leaders. And we read that Jesus literally stands physically in people's ways so that they can't carry merchandise through the temple.

So this is possibly the most physically animated we have ever seen Jesus. So Jesus curses the fig tree. Jesus disrupts business at the temple. The fig tree and the temple. And there is a connection between these two events. The curse of the fig tree is a symbol of God's judgment on the temple.

The leafy fig tree, with all its promise of fruit, is as deceptive as the temple, which, despite its religious activity, it's really an outlaw's hideout, a robber's den. It had the appearance of fruitfulness, of holy sacrifice, but in reality it was barren of anything of worth. So let's take a look at Mark's account together.

I'll be reading Mark 11, 15 to 19 for you, and it's up on the screen. Then they came to Jerusalem, and he entered the temple and began to drive out those who were buying and selling in the temple, and overturned the tables of the money changers and the seats of those who were selling doves.

And he would not permit anyone to carry merchandise through the temple. And he began to teach and say to them, "Is it not written, 'My house shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations'? But you have made it a robber's den." The chief priests and the scribes heard this and began seeking how to destroy him, for they were afraid of him, for the whole crowd was astonished at his teaching.

And when evening came, they would go out of the city. So here in verse 17, we see Jesus alluding to two Old Testament prophecies, Isaiah 56, Jeremiah 7. And I'm going to read little sections of both for you. The first one, Isaiah 56, is one of the most uplifting chapters in all of the Old Testament.

In Isaiah chapter 55, he says, "Seek the Lord while he may be found. Call upon him while he is near." And then in 56, it describes reward upon reward for those who earnestly seek the Lord's face and obedience. Okay, so I'm going to read verses 6 through 7 of Isaiah 56 for you.

"Also the foreigners who join themselves to the Lord, to minister to him and to love the name of the Lord, to be his servants, everyone who keeps from profaning the Sabbath and holds fast my covenant, even those I will bring to my holy mountain and make them joyful in my house of prayer.

Their burnt offerings and their sacrifices will be acceptable on my altar, for my house will be called a house of prayer for all the peoples." The second passage, where the den of robbers is prophesied, has a very different feel. So Jeremiah 7, 8 through 11 reads, "Behold, you are trusting in deceptive words to no avail.

Will you steal, murder, and commit adultery, and swear falsely, and offer sacrifices to Baal, and walk after other gods that you have not known? And then come and stand before me in this house, which is called by my name, and say, 'We are delivered,' that you may do all these abominations?

Has this house, which is called by my name, become a den of robbers in your sight? Behold, I, even I, have seen it, declares the Lord." So you can just tell that the mood of this is very different. The temple of God was always meant to be a physical place where sinful man could draw near in worship to seek holy God.

There had to be blood sacrifices, and humility, and a turning away from sins, and an earnest seeking heart of the worshiper to enable him to draw near to God. And one of the first things that God had told Solomon after the completion of the temple, it's found in 2 Chronicles 7, 14 to 15.

You guys, this is a very familiar passage, and many of you have memorized it, but let me read. "And my people who are called by my name, humble themselves and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways. Then I will hear from heaven, will forgive their sin, and will heal their land.

Now my eyes will be open, and my ears attentive to the prayer offered in this place." So the temple was always meant to be a place where the worshiper could seek God, draw near to him, and to pray to him. But in Jesus' day, the religious elite who profited greatly from the business at the temple had turned it into a place where they could use God for personal gain.

And it's important to remember that the Passion Week was during the Jewish Passover, and it was a time—and what is the Passover? It's a time where the people of God were to remember that God had passed over their sins by blood sacrifice so that they could be his people and that he could be their God.

But the opportunity of the holidays had great appeal, and so this had become a lucrative business for the religious elite. They couldn't help themselves. And they easily justified this. After all, they were serving God, and God had ordained portions for their services in Leviticus and in the Book of Numbers.

They worked hard for God's blessings, so they deserved God's blessings. And here's the problem. The temple was meant to be a place of seeking God, but they had turned it into a place of using God. They were using the spiritual needs of the people to satisfy the cravings of their idolatrous and their greedy hearts.

And in Jesus' actions, we observe the hatred that God has toward idolatry. If you're a diligent student of the Bible, if you're just reading the Old and the New Testaments, one of the things you'll notice when you get to the New Testament is that the Hebrew race, who struggled nonstop for a millennia in the Old Testament, they're almost idolphobic when you get to the New Testament.

They were taught that physical idolatry had led to the loss of all their fame, their wealth, their power, and their land. And so this entire group of people was kind of traumatized by the external practices of idol worship. So statues, monuments, even coins that hinted of idol worship, they didn't touch with a ten-foot pole.

But their heart of idolatry, the heart they wanted to use God for personal gain, it had never gone away or had been dealt with. So it had just become more sophisticated. And this was very readily personified in the religious leaders who Jesus upset at the temple. So there are a couple lessons we can learn today as we reflect on the events of Monday of the Passion Week.

And I'm going to leave you just with one very sobering truth. The seeking of God and the using of God often looks the same. The seeking of God and the using of God often looks the same. The first is worship that is done in spirit and in truth. The other is akin to a dancing around astral poles or bowing before golden calves.

At its root, the heart of worship cries, "I want to know you, Lord. I seek first your kingdom and your righteousness, even if all these things do not get added unto me." You guys know that passage, right? The heart of a genuine worshiper of God seeks first his kingdom and his righteousness, even if none of the things get added.

But at its root, the heart of idolatry cries, "I want to appease you, Lord, and curry favor. I want to seek your kingdom and your righteousness so that all these things can be added unto me." Given time, the worshiper, like the fig tree that was supposed to bear figs, it bears fruit.

The worshiper bears fruit. The idolater does not. The worshiper of Yahweh, of God, abides. The idolater conforms. The worshiper feeds deeply upon the word of truth. The idolater is satisfied with his ears being tickled. The worshiper is broken and humbled. The idolater is either smug or bitter, depending on the reward that he gets.

The idolatrous religious leaders got in the way of those who had come to the temple to worship. Idolatrous greed and fruitlessness, masked in religiosity, evoked a very passionate response from the Lord Jesus. As we examine the events of this week, and today's just Monday, as we examine just all the days leading up to the cross, we're going to be introduced to many characters in the gospel narratives.

But for Monday, as I reflected deeply, just preparing just for this devotion, I was troubled a little bit and saddened, because I see elements in my heart, in my life, that closely resemble these religious leaders, and it has nothing to do with my occupation. There are elements in my heart that long to profit off of God for my kingdom, for my pleasure, for my comfort, for my glory.

And we learned yesterday that his kingdom is not of this world. I'm not sure who you'll identify most with this week. The Pharisees, the teachers of the law, the confused disciples, Judas Iscariot, perhaps, the Roman centurion, the thief on the cross, or the ladies who grieve at the tomb.

Every single one of these characters, every single person in human history, and every single one of us in this room, and every single one of you watching online, there is a few things that we all have in common. We all have idolatrous hearts of stone that cannot be turned into hearts of flesh by effort or by adherence to religious conformity.

And we cannot save ourselves from idolatry. We cannot help ourselves. We are prone to worship the created things rather than the creator who is to be forever embraced. We cannot save ourselves from hearts that are idolatrous. We cannot make our blind eyes see by our own effort. We cannot make our hardened hearts very soft.

And we cannot draw near to God by effort or by our own endeavoring of righteousness. We cannot do that. Atonement had to be made. Sin had to be defeated. And today, I wanted to just reflect on idolatry. Mental heart transplants needed to be performed. And hardened hearts have to be made receptive and fertile supernaturally.

And each of these things we'll be reflecting deeply on over the course of this week, and especially through this weekend, as we understand that we cannot come to God on our terms, but we serve a God who is gracious and compassionate, just slow to anger, abundant in loving kindness.

He draws near to us. But if we're not careful, we may reject this God and not know it. Because the heart that seeks the Lord and the heart that desires to use the Lord on the surface may look the same. So my hope and my prayer for our congregation is that over the course of this week, that our hearts would grow more and more broken over our sin, over our flaws, over our desperation, that they would become much more receptive yet again with the constant reminders that holy God came down to meet man, sinful man, through the atoning work of his one and only beloved son.

So by the time we get to Friday, that Jesus' trials, his floggings, and his crucifixion would serve to remind us that we are absolutely and utterly just desperate and that we cannot help but to rely on the grace and the goodness of God. So that on Sunday, when we're reminded that sin and death have been defeated, there will be shouts of acclamation and shouts of joy from people who understand their depravity, but understand better the great and mighty love of our good God and heavenly Father.

Amen? Let's pray.