The Pharisees were very angry, and bade Him stop them; but He answered with the verse of a Psalm, "Yea, have ye never read, Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings hast Thou ordained strength?"
But as He looked at beautiful Jerusalem, He wept over the city, for He knew that sad and dreadful punishments were coming on it; and yet the people would not listen to Him, and be sorry, and so be saved.
1. Who loved our Lord? 2. What did they want Him to do? 3. What made them think His reign was coming? 4. How did He come into Jerusalem? 5. What was the old prophecy? 6. What did the people do in His honor? 7. What did they cry? 8. What does "Hosanna" mean? 9. Who were angry? 10. What did He say? 11. But why was He grieving? 12. What made Him sorry for the city? 13. How were the people bringing sad punishment on themselves?
"My house shall be called the house of prayer."--_Matt. 21:13._
THE first thing our blessed Lord did at Jerusalem was to go into the Temple; and there, in the courts, He found people keeping shop, selling the lambs that were wanted for the Passover, and doves for other services, and changing the coin that strangers brought for Jewish money.
This was very disrespectful to God, and He was angry. He had driven them all out once, and they had come back, and now they were doing it again. So He drove them all out, and told them His Father's house was a house of prayer, but they had made it a den of thieves.
No one dared to answer Him, and all that day and the next He stood in the Temple, teaching the people, and showing the wickedness of the chief priests and Pharisees. It seemed as if all the people of Jerusalem were ready to follow Him, and as if He might begin His reign directly; but this was not what He came for, and, as He well knew, the Pharisees were planning against Him.
[Illustration: JESUS DRIVES OUT THE MONEY-CHANGERS.--Matt. 21:13.]
They wanted to get Him to say something that they could say was against the Law, so they asked Him many hard questions, but His great wisdom put them all to silence, and made them ashamed; but they were so hard and wicked that they only hated Him the more.
1. Where did our Lord go? 2. What were the Jews doing there? 3. Why was this wrong? 4. What did He do to them? 5. Had He done this before? 6. What did He tell them? 7. Who was his Father? 8. What was His Father's house? 9. What are our houses of prayer? 10. How must we behave in them? 11. Who were planning against Him? 12. But who followed Him gladly? 13. What did they want Him to be?