(John 2:14)
�And found in the temple those that sold oxen and sheep and doves, and the changers of money sitting.�
One time when my daughter was small we went to one of those fast food burger barns. Amy refused to eat her hamburger. I got upset with her because she always played with her food until it was time to go; then she suddenly got hungry and Linda and I would have to just sit and watch her slowly eat.
This time I hollered at her. I told her to hurry up and eat because we were in a hurry. She would take a small bite and cry that she didn�t like her food. I finally lost my temper and held the sandwich in front of her. �Here,� I said as I took the top bun off, �Look at this. This is the same kind you always get.�
Then I looked at what I was holding. Yes, this was the same type of hamburger than Amy always got. The only difference was that this burger had not been cooked. It was raw meat.
I took it back to the counter and got another, a cooked one, for free. I allowed Amy to eat this one while we were driving to our destination.
Have you ever gone into a store and found that something was not as you wanted, or expected, it to be? When I was small, that�s a long time ago!, my mother sent me to the corner grocery to buy some of those frozen ice treats. Imagine my horror when I discovered that I didn�t have, at seven or eight years old, enough money to pay. It seems that the �sickles� had gone up to seven cents.
I sure wish I could find them for that today. I�d treat the grandkids every day!
We might surmise that Jesus was surprised by the desecration He found at the Temple on this day. He wasn�t surprised. He knew. And, He obviously did not approve.
At this Christmas season we are prone to talk of Jesus as meek and mild. We look at Him as a babe in a manger. Folks, He was - IS! - The Lord of Glory. He was quite upset with what the religionist of the day had done in His Temple.
Anger is not wrong if it is righteous anger. Most of the anger we feel in this day is because our culture is under attack. We need to get angry at sin. We need to never get angry with the sinner. Attacking the sinner is like being mad at the rope because the wrong man had been hanged.
It is sin that causes the problems in this world. We need to be so upset with sin that we will pray and work so that sinners may come to salvation. The only way we can expect to change the world is to change one person at a time via the convicting power of the Spirit and the saving power of the Son.
As Jesus came into the Temple, we first see His inspection. �And found in the temple��
I think that it is important to note that Jesus went to the Temple.
Jesus is known to have spent time alone with God in prayer as a habitual part of His day. Well, maybe �habit� is the wrong word. Halley�s Bible Handbook, a popular short commentary in a single volume, says at one place that Bible readings should never be just a habit. But, the book continues, Bible reading should be at least a habit.
A habit is something that we do without really thinking about it; we just do it. Such was the custom of Jesus. He just spent much time in prayer and communion with the Father.
So should we.
But, notice that Jesus, even with the uniquely personal relationship with the Father, went to the Temple. Jesus was, as well as being our Savior, our Example of how we ought to live on this earth. If He was willing to go to Church, how can we justify ourselves when we refuse to go to church.
We had a fairly impressive ice storm, that�s two of them this week and more to come, this morning. In our little local assembly very few people actually missed the service. There was one gentleman, in his late 80�s, who has just had a heart attack. He missed. There is another elderly man who is nearly deaf. I don�t believe that he is able to hear much of the service. He came. There is also one younger man, who had an accident on the ice last week and injured his knee making it hard for him to drive. He came and brought his children and his wife who doesn�t drive, herself.
Very few, except those that arrive by the church bus - which we decided was just too dangerous to drive on the icy streets, missed today�s service.
That�s the way things ought to be. In his booklet �Feeding the Flock,� W. V. Grant, Sr., said, �If I go to work with a headache and miss church because of a headache, I am a hypocrite.� We don�t miss work. We don�t miss school. Why do we think less of God than of these other things?
If we are disposed to miss, regularly miss, services with our local church body, this says something about our relationship with Jesus Christ. He established the churches. The local church is called The Body of Christ. What is the reason, the spiritual reason, that one would forsake attending the local church service? A person who says, �I don�t have a local church to attend,� is no better than the person who just �skips� church, maybe worse. After all, shouldn�t every Christian find a group of believer�s with whom to unite? The answer, Biblically, is �Yes, he should.� If there isn�t a group of believer�s to meet with in your area� Well, Jesus gave you the great commission as well. Form a group. Prayer, when it is so obviously in the will of God, will work wonders.
Notice, also, that Jesus worshiped at the Temple. How many church �gad flies� flitter about trying to impress with their great theological skill. Or, they seek to �network� in order to increase their business. Or, they get all �dolled up� and preen like a love sick peacock in allowing others to see them in their splendor. I even know one man, just a few years older than me (That is old!) who has considered moving to another church, from the one he has been attending, because �There are more eligible women my age over there.�
Oh, Good Grief!
The point is that none of those are good reasons to attend a church. The reason, actually, that we should be united with a local church is so that we can gather together to worship the Lord of Glory.
It is more than likely, after we�ve established ourselves in that local church, that God will gift us with some service that we can render to that church. Each member of a local church is part of that church. There are some who just make others feel better because the came. Or, God may ask that you teach a Sunday school class, or sweep the floors after the service. Someone needs to do both. Both are service to the local church and, by the way, to God.
When we seek to worship God, God will honor us with a place in His service. How great, or how seemingly small, is that place is unimportant. The important thing is that we are willing to stand in our place.
I had just, by a few weeks, been transferred out of my �line� unit in South Viet Nam in the early winter (such as winter was there) of 1968, when a letter arrived at my new duty station. It was from a man I had served with back at the old unit on a remote �fire base� near the Cambodian border. It seems that one of the �LP�s,� those men who set up some meters outside the line so that they could sound the warning that the enemy was coming, had taken a short nap.
Because this one man was asleep at his post, over forty men of a small company of about one hundred and forty, lost their lives. One man, had he survived that night, was to take the �chopper ride� back to the �freedom bird.� He was less than a day from coming home to his family. He died that night because one man did not take his own duty seriously and slept while on guard duty.
God has a place for us in a local assembly of believer�s. May we never be derelict in our duty to that church, or to the Lord of that church.
That is an important thing in today�s passage. Jesus went to the Temple. Jesus worshiped at the Temple. Jesus also worried about the Temple.
I don�t mean that Jesus worried in the sense that something bad might happen. Although events might prove that He would have had ample reason to do so. Jesus worried in the sense that He cared about that Temple. He was interested in that Temple allowing true worship.
He had a Personal interest in the Temple. So should we have a personal, and a caring, interest in that local body of believer�s with whom we worship each Lord�s Day. We prayed for a man today who needs a �chair lift� installed on his van. His daughter is confined to a wheel chair and needs the lift so she can more easily take part in the affairs of the family.
We didn�t just pray, �Lord, check out all those who need �chair lift�s� on their vans.� No. We really cared about the man and his need. This is the true fellowship of the body of believers in a local church. We really are family as the children of the Living God.
We need, because we often overlook the fact that such a thing could happen, to consider His infuriation. ��those that sold oxen and sheep and doves��
Now, all these animals were used in the worship of the Temple. That is true. But this was a misuse of worship by the purveyors of the merchandise and, quite often, even by the buyers of those sacrificial animals.
What is sacrifice? Sacrifice is something that we do, not something that someone else has done except in the case of the sacrifice of Jesus where He was sacrificed for us because we could not gain the favor of God on our own.
The point of these animals is that the people were, in effect, attempting to buy their salvation. The idea of sacrifice was Biblical. The animals being used in the sacrificial system were Biblical. What was not Biblical was the consideration that the people, who had traveled, were not all engaged in worship. They were more engaged in the spectacle of the moment.
Some were sacrificially spending so that they might offer a proper sacrifice at the Temple. Their hearts were not centered on the animal as much as their devotion was centered upon the worship of the Lord.
Others were simply going to the nearest street vendor and finding either the cheapest animal available, or the most ostentatious of the wares. The former group were just going out of either civic duty or they were intent on displaying their professed devotion to others. They wanted to �show off.� Pride rather than true worship was center in their intentions.
The latter group would have been wanting to display their great wealth and importance. They might have been attending out of a sense of civic duty, but their primary objective was to display their wealth, importance, and opulence. They wanted to �show off.� Pride rather than true worship was center in their intentions.
Rather than a help to the worship of the moment, these sacrificial animal vendors were actually causing the true purpose of the worship experience to take a back seat to the carnal desires of many.
We find the same thing in many areas in our day. Great universities which were founded to teach preachers to proclaim the Gospel have become so important in their own eyes that their pronouncements are allowed to obscure the very message of the Gospel. I can think of �Fundamentalist� schools which were founded to teach a reverence for the Words of God which are now at the forefront of a movement dedicated to casting doubt on the very preservation, and as a corollary the inspiration, of the Scripture.
Church groups which were founded to facilitate the preaching of the Gospel are now more interested in protecting �denominational turf� than they are in teaching the world that Jesus died in time so that others might live in eternity.
In the Middle Ages, many figurines were incorporated into the design of the great cathedrals. The intent was to draw, visually, the hearts of people who could not read the Words of God to a visual symbol of the Glory of God. In time, sadly, these figurines have devolved into idols which stand between man and God.
Such seems to have been the case with the progression of these vendors. A real need for worship had been apprehended by expediency. The value of faith was reduced as man found ways to �help� God to reach the people.
This is shown in the misleading of the worshipers.
By supplying the needs of the worshipers, these vendors were subverting the truth of God. As we saw above, their very presence led to a �works� salvation. Worse, it was a �work� which they supplied. The element of faith was only essential if one was willing to �pay the price.�
This sort of attitude does not lead to a faith in God. This sort of a teaching leads to a faith in man. Man is fallen. No wonder Paul tells us, in Romans 3:23, that all are short of God�s glory.
Also, by supplying the very animals which were to be sacrificed, these vendors made it seem that the blessing of God could only come through the �professional.� We see this in our day in the matter of Bible �translations� and �versions.� We who hold to the concept of a preserved Scripture are simply discounted as �unlearned.� The counterpoint of this is that the �learned� are necessary to �transmit� what they believe to have been the original Words of God. Well, the claim that they come as close as they are able to reconstruct what God has lost.
Meanwhile, those poor unlearned Christians who sit in the pew are only allowed the leading of the Spirit of God.
I don�t know; maybe I�m just not educated enough. But, I would rather trust the power and love of God to preserve His inspired Words. I would rather trust the leading of the Spirit as He brings the message of life from the preserved Words of Life which underlies our King James Bibles.
There seems to be a misunderstanding of some of the worship artifacts. For some reason it is considered wrong to hold dear the Words of Life by which we were led to salvation. Meanwhile, we are told we must accept the words of lies that forbid to God the power, or purpose, to preserve His Words. We are told that the �oldest and best manuscripts� are that upon which we must base our faith. This, even though the two �oldest and best� were lost to the general Christian world for hundreds of years.
Well, the people at the Temple in the day of our text verse had some problems as well. They were following a well established tradition in the selling of these sacrificial animals. But, they were not following the Spirit and the Law which made their salvation dependant upon faith in the substitute.
Finally, we begin to look at some of His imitators. ��and the changers of money sitting.�
I like cheese. My grandchildren love cheese. I have been buying some �processed� cheese to make cheese sandwiches from. It works quite well. My grandchildren have been taking my stash of cheese and eating it plain. I figured that if the ersatz cheese was good enough for the grandkids to eat plain, grandpa could do the same.
What I found was that the processed cheese works quite well on sandwiches and in cooking. But it doesn�t work very well for just plain eating. It just don�t taste right!
These moneychangers seemed to be doing a religious service. They might have even been called purveyors of the religious arts. In the Temple worship of the time, only the Temple currency could be used in the Temple. Meanwhile, only Roman currency could be used anywhere else. For that reason the moneychangers would act as a �bank� and change the Roman currency for Temple currency.
Of course, they did charge a little for their services. They charged at a usurious rate. In point of fact, these money changers were fleecing the flock. Their real interest lie not in assisting in the worship of the people; their real interest lie in lining their own pockets.
I counseled a lady some twenty-five years ago. She had sent a small donation to one of the big T. V. evangelists. She had asked for prayer from him. He told her that she hadn�t sent a large enough offering for him to pray.
At this point I would have tuned him out and counted it as a bad experience.
But, it seems she did send enough to get on his mailing lists. I was called to counsel her when the letters began to demand at least one hundred dollars a month or, �The Devil will begin to oppress you.�
That is an obvious false prophet who would do such a thing. I finally convinced her, after praying with her, that this charlatan did not deserve any of her money. What she did send was not going into God�s Work; it was going into this T.V. evangelist�s pockets.
There are other preachers who prey on the flock of God. Folks, those of us who have been in the ministry do not need fancy cars and mansions. We need the power of God to preach the soul saving Gospel to the people of God. We can expect, if the church can at all afford it, to be given a living wage to discharge our duties before God and man.
Most preachers I have known would work a �second� job to pay their bills and put food on their family�s tables. The preacher has a �right� to a salary. But many do not accept this because of the burden it might place on their church.
One of the rules I put down in every place I preached was that the church treasurer was not to let me, ever, know how much any person was giving to the church. That way my preaching was of God and not an appeal for a new dishwasher.
I also found that working outside the church gave me more ministry opportunities. It kept me from having that �monastery mentality� that does not understand the stresses of the man and woman in the pew. I was a better minister for serving small churches which could not afford a salary as I kept my experience on those for whom Jesus died.
Don�t get me wrong. It is not wrong for a minister to accept a salary from the church he serves. It can even be a good thing as it frees up his time for the study and the prayer closet. It makes him more available to the people of the church when they have need of counsel.
But, for me, it wouldn�t have worked.
The glory and sheer joy of spreading the Gospel is prized above any earthly check that can be taken to the bank on the corner!
These moneychangers might have imitated Him; but they were processed cheese. A lot of things they could do; but they were deficient when it came to a personal relationship.
They simply charged the churchgoers.
They were also those who fleeced the flock. A good and wise shepherd will not shear his sheep just before a snow storm. That would not be for the good of the sheep even though it might bring extra money to the shepherd.
There was one lady in one of the churches I served who had very little money. She did, however, have children. She was a single mother and her children took advantage of her love. She was deep in debt. One time she came up to me and said that she wanted to give more money to the church but the creditors were calling her demanding payment.
I told her to pay off those bills. Give to the church what she could. But, pay off those bills, first. This was, I told her, a testimony to those creditors that Christians would be true to their words.
Too many pastors take the last morsel out of the mouth of a widow and say simply that �The Lord will provide.� The Lord had already provided. The minister had thwarted the Lord�s provision by looking to his own needs rather than those of the person who trusted him to break the bread of life during the Sunday service.
Don�t misunderstand. I believe that we should give gifts and offerings to the church. Those cease to be gifts and offerings when the minister demands �his� share first. A true pastor�s heart will not do such a thing. A true pastor�s heart will feel the need of the flock before he takes their wool to line his own bed on a cold winter�s evening.
These moneychangers were those who misrepresented the mission.
What is our mission, as ministers and as churches? Our mission is to spread the Word that Jesus Christ died in time so that others could live in eternity.
Have you accepted Him as your own Savior? Why not do this today. It�s the perfect time. His love extends to you, as you are. That is why He came to save you from your sins.