Tables, Coins, And Animals, Oh My!

We visited Pittsgrove Baptist Church this week and heard an amazing sermon on John 2:13-25 This link will take you to those verses Courtesy of biblegateway.com. I know it was amazing because I filled up two pages of notes, front and back, and may have filled a third if I was a faster writer. 

Well, that and I didn't hear any snoring :)

So John 2 :13 tells us of a time near Passover when Jesus went to the temple and started yelling and driving out animals and overturning tables. 

If you're like me you think "Wow, that's great Jesus! Wa-Hoo! Don't let them turn your fathers temple into a marketplace. The nerve of them!"

The thing is, The temple probably didn't end up that way overnight. Nobody woke up one day and said "We can do this and this and this and we'll be rich and the temple will be big and awesome and that's what God wants" I mean, maybe they did, but it doesn't sound very realistic.

It was probably very gradual.

It makes more sense when you realize that at Passover everyone within a 15 mile radius was expected to come and bring a perfect lamb to sacrifice and to pay their temple tax. Well, what if someone didn't have a perfect lamb to bring. Maybe they could have a whole flock of perfect lambs there at the temple for people to buy. Now there is no personal responsibility for bringing an appropriate sacrifice. 

Now imagine that the Jewish leaders thought... Well, if they are going to provide these lambs, they should get a little extra money for the trouble. Then they decide that maybe they can find things wrong with people's lambs so that the people will have to pay extra for one of the 'pre-approved' ones sold there. 

Hello corruption. They got too wrapped up in the business of the temple and less dedicated to the business of worship. Now read that sentence over again and replace the word temple with church. That brings us to the present time and a very real problem in Christianity today. 

Question of the moment: If Jesus were to walk into your regular services what would his reaction be? Smiles and nodding or tables & coins everywhere?

Is there too much concern about how much money is being made? Has the business of keeping the building open and expanding it out-prioritized the reason it's there in the first place; the worship of God? 

I expect I've gone on long enough even though that's only halfway through the back of my first page of notes :) 

Thoughts?

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