Devotional
for the Week 10 March 2008
Worship
in the House of God
Sermon Text: John
2: 13 – 22
We
often read in the newspapers of people being conned.
Pastor recalled that when he was a little boy, he used
to be conned by an old man. This old man used to sit
on an old wooden stool at the foot of a block where
he stayed. The old man used to have a large grey board
with many red packets. Inside some of these packets
were different insignias/stamps which could be exchanged
for stickers, sweets or little toys. However, many times,
the packets would contain nothing but a message saying
“try again”. Whenever, Pastor was alone,
the old man would tempt him to buy these packets and
sometimes Pastor (as a little boy) would fall prey to
this and spend all his lunch money buying these packets.
One thing that puzzled Pastor was that when he was with
his mother, the old man pretended not to know him. He
later found out that his mother nicknamed the old man
as “Cheat Old Man” and warned him against
patronizing his stall which often fell on deaf ears.
Pastor felt that the old man was not that bad compared
to cheats who claim to have magic stones, sure win numbers,
etc which they used to prey on people who lost quite
a lot of money. However, this old man was a cheat. Cheats
know how to choose their victims and have many ways
to fleece them for a good sum of money. Cheats have
one thing in common – they know when to exercise
their trade and when to keep it under wraps.
The
only thing worse than a con, is a con who practices
this trade openly, as if he is not doing anything wrong
or worthy of concealment. It reveals a hardness of heart,
and a certain audacious disrespect for that which is
right. No one likes to be taken advantage of by a schemer.
It gets even worse, when it is done in a religious setting.
You
may have heard of schemers who run supposed “healing
ministries”. They plan their schemes carefully,
sometimes with the help of their wives/husbands and
con many of thousands of dollars. This is very sad.
What runs through your mind when you hear of someone
running a religious scam like that? I think that someone
like that thinks that God does not exist or that He
is blind to what they are doing at His expense. That
was exactly the kind of message the traders in the Temple
of God were sending out.
John
2:13 – 22 speaks of a visit by Jesus to the Temple
of God. He saw the temple offerings being sold and the
traders as well as the money changers taking advantage
of the people, fleecing them of their money. Worship
of God and serving God was far from their mind. These
cheats were using this Passover Festival as a means
to make a profit for themselves. Jesus could not tolerate
their behavior because He was zealous for the Lord.
Zeal is defined as “strong passion”. God
had been insulted and Jesus acted with passion. In 1
Chron 29: 1 it is stated that “the temple is not
for man but for the Lord God.” (NASB)
People
were engaging in a corrupt religion and even worse,
they had brought it ALL into God’s place of worship.
However, this was a new happening. Look at Numbers 25:
6 – 13 which records the story of how, despite
being commanded not to commit sexual immorality with
the women of Midian and Moab, Zimri in the sight of
Moses and the People of Israel brought a Midianite woman
into his tent to sleep with her. This was a blatant
disregard for the command of God! Phinehas, we are told,
filled with passion for the Lord, steps up in response.
He went to Zimri’s tent and killed both man and
woman with a single lunge of the spear.
There
comes a time when we need to react as Jesus and Phinehas
did – that when we see the command of God openly
disobeyed within the congregation. Too often, we make
2 common mistakes:
1)
We practice loving tolerance, even until the point of
tolerating corruption to religion.
2)
We practice idiosyncratic intolerance, subjective only
to ourselves and inconsistent with the direct commands
of God.
That
said, often times, we act out of anger but not out of
passion for the Lord’s name. The next time, we
find ourselves angry about something in church, we should
ask ourselves:
-
Why am I angry?
- Whose rights are being violated here?
- Is the truth (a principle of God) being violated here?
The
final question is most crucial – for it frames
our anger, determining if it is holy zeal or personal
idiosyncratic agenda.
If
our anger is due to what we think is right, but the
Word of God makes no mention about this particular way
of doing things right, then it would be wise to withhold
our responses and speak with our church leaders and
pastors about the incident. You may get a better perspective
of the issue when you consult 2 or 3 more of God’s
people.
If
only our personal rights seem to be at stake and the
issue is not specifically objected to in the Word of
God, you may still wish to discuss it with the offender
but you should not champion your cause in the guise
of religious fervor.
Jesus
actually cleansed the temple twice. John 2 passage records
the first cleansing He did at the beginning of His ministry,
and the Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke (in Mt 21,
Mk 11 and Lk 19) record the second cleansing. The people
of Israel never really learnt their lesson the first
time round.
John
2: 18 records that the Jews or temple authorities came
before Jesus and asked Him “what sign do You show
us as your authority for doing these things?”
The very fact that they asked for a sign from someone
who responded to restore proper worship to the Temple
of God shows that they had not understood the importance
of un-corrupted worship and that what they had done
that was wrong. This is shocking.
Pastor
recalled an incident of seeing a helper who tried to
quiet down the two children she was put in charge of.
For her effort she was scolded by one of the children
who defied her by saying that she was not her mother
and therefore had no authority over him. Have we become
a society where we only accept correction from a certain
channel even though we are in the wrong? Has our pride
taken our call to walk right?
In
2 Samuel 12 we see Nathan rebuke David for his horrible
sin of adultery with Bathsheba and murdering her husband
Uriah to cover up for his sin. It mattered not to Nathan
that David was the king because we read in 2 Samuel
12:1, that “…the LORD sent Nathan to David..”
Compelled by the call of God, Nathan rebuked David severely
for his sin and declared God’s judgment on him.
King David could have responded in an arrogant manner
but instead we read of David’s humility, repenting
at the rebuke and saying in verse 13 “I have sinned
against the Lord.”
The
call to worship God, with undivided passion comes from
Jesus. It is a call to:
1.
seek to profit God in our worship, and not ourselves;
2.
have a passionate zeal for proper worship, in ourselves
and in our community, following the example of Jesus;
and
3)
desire a holy walk so much that if correction comes,
it is a welcome relief.
Prayer Response:
Dear Lord Jesus, thank you for your love for me. Teach
me to have a heart that truly wants to worship you.
A heart that is clean and pure. A heart that is zealous
for you. Examine my heart and if there is any wicked
ways in me, to bring to my mind that I may confess it
to you and be cleansed by You. Amen
Devotional
based on a message by Reverend Joel Yong