And yet, having cleansed the temple, having driven the money changers out, having put them all outside of this great courtyard of the Gentiles where all of this trade was going on, faced down by the King of glory with all his authority as Jesus is standing there alone in the empty courtyard, what happens? All of the others are put out, but the blind come staggering in looking for Jesus, and the lame, and the people helping them to get them to Jesus, and also the children running around singing, “Hosanna. Hosanna. Hosanna to the King.” That’s a great, great illustration of what happens. When our Lord turns his back on one he turns it in order to open the door of the gospel to others.

When we continue to trace the theme of money through Matthew’s Gospel, we see that there was also instruction in Jesus’ words for the sending out of the twelve that you have in the tenth chapter. He told them on that occasion not to be concerned about money, not to take an extra cloak with them or an extra pair of shoes, but, rather, to trust the Lord to provide these things through the people to whom they would minister and in whose homes they would stay.

We’re continuing our study of these stories in Matthew’s Gospel that tell of encounters between the Lord Jesus Christ and certain individuals. So far we’ve been looking mostly at his encounter with individual people. But in the twenty-first chapter we come to a story of his encounter with a whole group of people—the money changers in the temple in Jerusalem, and also the chief priests and the teachers of the law, who stood behind the practice of the money changers.