“He overturned the
tables of the money changers and the benches of those selling doves, and would
not allow anyone to carry merchandise through the temple area.” Mark 11:15
I spent the morning helping students figure out pretend
paychecks. Given an assigned job and
salary, they were to determine net pay after appropriate FICA and income tax
deductions. For my class, this process
was not as simple as it seems, and let’s just say you should be glad my kids
aren’t the ones writing your check at the end of the month! Many ended up short-changed because they took
shortcuts in their computations. Due to
not doing the right things the right way, they took home way less than they
should have.
My high schoolers were playing pretend, but in real life grown-ups
often do the same thing, and it makes God sad.
And sometimes mad. Just ask the guys at the temple who found themselves
stumbling backward as Jesus flipped over their tables and flung away their
profits. Ask the peddlers who got tossed
out when they used the temple terrace as a thoroughfare. Some of the merchants were shortchanging those
who came to worship—swapping foreign currency for local cash and charging an ungodly
fee. Others had found a shortcut to the
other side of town and carried their loot through the courtyard with no regard
for the Lord. “On reaching Jerusalem, Jesus entered the temple area and began driving
out those who were buying and selling there.
He overturned the tables of the money changers and the benches of those
selling doves, and would not allow anyone to carry merchandise through the
temple area. And as he taught them, he
said, ‘Is it not written: “My house will
be called a house of prayer”? but you have made it a “den of thieves”’”(Mk 11:15-17). How tragic—these men were as close to God’s
presence as possible, and yet it made no difference in their lives. Though they made daily trips to the temple,
by not doing the right things the right way, they took home way less than they
should have.
These days, due to valiant grace and a torn-in-two veil, no
man-made structure houses God’s holy presence.
We do. “Don’t you know that you
are the God’s temple and that God’s Spirit lives in you?”(I Cor 3:16). If a building made of blocks was meant to be
a “house of prayer,” how much more our
very hearts made holy by His precious blood??
And, yet, in spite of the fact that God’s Spirit isn’t just near us but
in us, we often shortchange our worship and shortcut our praise. At times we undervalue God’s grace and underestimate
His mercy. During others, we carry on
with little regard for the Lord, and though we are more than close to His
presence, it makes only a minor difference in our attitudes and actions. It is then that we rob both God and ourselves,
and it is then that He steps in and starts turning things over. God’s cleaning up and clearing out can seem
to make a mess at first, but His purging purifies our spirits and profits our
souls with the bountiful blessings of being His and His alone.
When we don’t do the right things the right way, we end up
with way less than we should, but God’s rich mercy won’t let us set up shop in sin
for long. Our hearts are His home, and He desires for them to be holy.
God may turn us over, but He will never toss us out, and grace
that great deserves a good long prayer of praise.
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