The Exhilaration of Disobedience

Introduction

So Monday night we held a protest at our city hall, a protest that consisted largely of singing Christmas carols and passing around hot chocolate. We had a wonderful turnout—I would estimate it as being in the neighborhood of three hundreds citizens. The reason for the protest was that our city council was going to be meeting, and on their agenda was the bright idea of extending the mask mandates until June. I have not yet clarified June of what year.

A number of our small businesses have given up the ghost, but some of them are still moving apparently. I don’t know whether it was because of. the protesters showing up, or the fear of the virus showing up, but the council decided to meet by Zoom, and sure enough, they extended the masking order.

Our council wants to cast itself as being responsible, but they most certainly are not responsive. More about this in a bit.

The Unauthorized Cleansing of the Temple

I spoke about the exhilaration of disobedience in the title. What on earth could I mean by that? Aren’t Christians supposed to be obedient? Yes, to God, and to every human institution for the Lord’s sake (Rom. 13:1-7; 1 Pet. 2:13-16). But let’s look at it a little more closely, shall we?

Most Bible readers are familiar with the fact that there are two different accounts of the cleansing of the Temple. One is found in the synoptic gospels at the climax of the Lord’s triumphal entry, at the end of His ministry. The other is in the gospel of John, right at the beginning of His ministry. Some interpret this as referring to the same episode, and then assume that John was giving His account out of chronological order for some reason. I prefer the explanation that says that Jesus cleansed the Temple twice, once at the beginning of His ministry and again at the end of it.

As Gary DeMar has pointed out, this fits with the pattern followed by priests in the Old Testament when they were called to inspect a house that had corruption in its walls. If a homeowner suspected that he had that kind of plague in his house, he would call for the priest (Lev. 14:35), and the priest would come and inspect it. If it appeared that the mold was a possible problem, he would command the house be shut up for seven days, and come back to inspect again after a week. If the corruption had spread, then he would order that section of the wall to be dismantled and replaced. If, after all this, the corruption broke out again later on, he would order the whole house to be demolished and carted off (Lev. 14:45), not one stone left on another.

Now Jesus came to the Temple at the beginning of His ministry, and He inspected His Father’s house. There was indeed corruption there, and so He cleansed the Temple (John 2:13-17). Three years later He came back for His second visit (Matt. 21:12-13), found the corruption was still manifestly there, and so He ordered a complete destruction (Matt. 24:2).

Now look closely at this scene.

Now I want to ask you to picture the pandemonium here. Jesus has just entered the city accompanied by the joyful shouts of faithful believers. It was a spontaneous psalm sing—they were singing Psalm 118. Jesus makes His way up to the Temple for His second inspection, finds that the Court of the Gentiles has been filled up with sacrificial animals that represented the Jews instead (Acts 10:9-48), and with Jewish money-changers, and so He started flipping tables over. Not only so, but the text above tells us that the blind and the lame came to Him in the middle of this work, and He stopped to heal them. The lame were being fitted to worship in the Temple, and the Temple was being fitted to receive them. To add to the hubbub, children from the triumphal entry had not left off their psalm singing, and were still exclaiming hosanna to the son of David.

On top of everything else, the text tells us that the religious fussers looked at “the wonderful things” the Lord did, and were “displeased.” Don’t ever be that person in the story.

But here is the point. I have no doubt in my mind that every table that the Lord overturned was licensed, permitted, and duly authorized. The criminals running this operation did everything by the book. Remember how they gave Judas blood money to betray the only perfect man who ever lived, and when he came back and threw that money down in the Temple, they were most fastidious about which account they put it in. If they put it in the wrong account, that would be a sin.

So if Jesus had come into the Temple asking for the money changers their papers, I am sure they would have been able to show Him their papers. But when the priest comes back to the house the final time to inspect it for leprosy, he was not required to ask the leprosy to show him their leprosy permit. That’s not how these things are supposed work.

Put another way, the cleansing of the Temple was a glorious act of civil disobedience. It was a righteous insurrection. The children were really excited about the whole thing, and they were singing about it. It was the exhilaration of disobedience.

Now of course we hasten to add that Jesus was always obedient to His Father. His disobedience of the posted Temple Rules was the result of His obedience to God. They had made the Temple into a den of thieves, Jews fleecing Jews, when Jesus was insisting that the Court of the Gentiles was supposed to be there for the Gentiles. “My house shall be called a house of prayer for all nations” (Mark 11:17).

Not to put too fine a point on it—obedience to God will result in disobedience of tyrants. And if it does not result in that, then your obedience to God is perhaps not what you thought it was.

Library Lady Leaders

So in the meantime, in the face of massive and unrelenting corruption on the part of our civic leaders, what is our ostensible Reformed evangelical leadership doing? I say Reformed evangelical leadership here, but there are other ways of putting it. Never run with scissors leadership. Shushing lady at the library leadership. Color inside the lines leadership. If you got the permit, your currency exchange table is fine leadership.

Wear your mask leadership.

Arbitrary Government Goes Local

Or perhaps I should say local government goes arbitrary.

Some few months ago, we decided to see if we could respond to the arbitrary masking mandate from our city with a referendum. For the people to repeal a law in this way, someone needs to frame the language of the repeal, get 20 signatures on it, and submit it to the city. They make suggestions about the appropriate legal language and so on, and then you go out and collect your signatures. If you get enough signatures, then an election is held on the law, with the people then having the option of repealing it.

We followed this process, and the city was required to respond to us by November 10, which they slow-walked up to the limit. And in discussions at that time, we found out that it was the view of the city that because the masking order was an declaration by the mayor, one that was extended by the council, it wasn’t technically a law, and therefore the people don’t have any possible redress.

So this means that the citizens of Moscow are living under arbitrary government. A law can be repealed by the council. A law can be repealed by the people. But a simple decision by these people is like the law of the Medes and Persians (Dan. 6:8). It is as though the gods came down.

They are saying that we can’t repeal it because it isn’t a law. Then perhaps an appropriate response should be that if it isn’t a law, we don’t have to follow it.

Don’t let them ban smiles at Christmas.