“A house of prayer”
By Pastor Mark Quick
Jesus gets mad when the work and ministry of the church is perverted. The gospels record his zeal manifested at the temple in flipping tables and whipping men and livestock with a handmade scourge. What if he visited our church?
The incidents to which I refer are recorded in John 2:12-19, Mark 11:15-18 and Matthew 21:12-17. Jesus’ actions were in response to the buying and selling that were going on in the temple courts at Jerusalem. You see, pilgrims coming to Jerusalem for religious feasts and personal worship could actually have benefitted from the services of the moneychangers and the sellers of animals. Because foreign currency was considered unclean, they needed to exchange it for the proper currency in order to pay the temple tax. They also needed suitable animals to offer as sacrifices, ones that met the requirements of the law. It’s apparent from the gospels and archaeology that what happened, however, was the moneychangers and merchants began to charge exorbitant prices and to misuse the temple and worship for excessive personal gain.
Think of it this way. I can drive to the grocery store and by a 2-Liter bottle of soda, hot dogs and some buns for only a few dollars. Try to get a 8 ounce drink and a hot dog at a professional sports stadium. “Sir, that will be $45.” It was probably alright for the moneychangers and merchants to make some profit in order to cover overhead and to provide for their families, but they made the system onerous. Quoting Jeremiah 7:9-11, Jesus said they had made his house to become a “den of thieves.” According to Isaiah 56:3-7, he had intended it to be a “house of prayer” where people met with God. This perversion angered him. Jeremiah 7 also adds that we can’t “steal, murder, commit adultery, swear falsely, burn incense to Baal, and walk after other gods” and then come to the house of God to worship before the Lord like nothing is wrong. His house is a house of prayer – a holy place.
Wait, but how then do we reconcile this? The church, God’s house, is a holy place. At the same time we know that God loves all people and wants sinners to be saved. Think of it this way. Imagine a hospital. A hospital exists to treat the sick. If you come up to the emergency room door and there is a sign that says you can’t come in until you are well, now that makes no sense. Let’s say you enter but the doctor does no tests and only gives you sugar pills and sends you home as sick as you came in. Well, that’s messed up. We go to the hospital in order to get a diagnosis and treatment so we can get well. That would be malpractice.
The church is the same – it is both a holy place and a healing place. The first place sinners ought to be welcome and ought to go is the house of God – it is to be a house of prayer. But they must hear the truth – get a proper diagnosis. If they come in sick and we give them sugar pills and send them on their way – we are killing them. You go to a hospital to hear the truth and get better. You go to a church – God’s house of prayer – to do the same.
We need to prayerfully ask the Father, “If Jesus came to my church or my home what would he flip and whip?” Then, let’s do a pre-emptive strike of repentance and move it out before he gets there. It’s much less painful.
