House of Prayer - Part 2

The holy temple of God and get so physical and so irate and said you've made it a house of merchandise, you've made it a den of thieves, get out of here. Is it not written my father's house shall be called a house of prayer. Now what's odd about all of this is that the people who were in there belong there.

The people who were selling the animals had to be near the temple precincts because there was no way to offer the sacrifices prescribed in Leviticus in the books of Moses unless somebody could have those animals available for you. You couldn't be carting these animals from your home or all through the streets of Jerusalem. So those people belong there.

But they had put a gouging uplift on the price. They were making money hand over fist taking advantage of the fact that they were the ones who could assist and they were hyping the prices up so that people were getting taken advantage of. And the money changers you know you had to pay the the temple tax if you were a good Jew and you couldn't use Greek or Roman money.

You had to actually use the special coins that were minted in Jerusalem itself. So those money changers were there to take your money from wherever you came from Macedonia or whatever and you change your money so that you could make the proper donation. But they were once again tacking on big time profit.

And the people carrying stuff through the temple actually the writers of that time tell us that instead of going around the temple they said let's take a shortcut and they went through the court of the Gentiles right through the temple carting their stuff making the house of God a shortcut to big time money. And Jesus with his whip made of cords and Jesus somehow physically with just his presence and his authority just thrashes them out of there and kicks them all out. Before I get to my main point it does remind us that all of us who are involved in singing in choirs and preaching the gospel and pastoring churches and gospel singing whatever the style is and you who are Sunday school teachers because I know there's a lot of influence in this room right now you're going to go back a lot of you are leaders in the place where you came from.

Boy does that challenge us to remember that it's not just not if you're doing God's work it's how you do God's work. The Bible tells us that one day Jim Simba is going to stand at the judgment seat of Christ and God's going to ask me why I pastored the Brooklyn Tabernacle and with what spirit. You see these people were in the temple but they didn't have the spirit of the temple.

They were supposed to be there to assist people to worship and to come into God's presence and they were there but they were out of sync with the whole with the whole purpose that God had for the place called the house of the Lord. I mean they were doing it they were doing the job but they were making big-time money and they were greedy and they had brought a secular spirit into a sacred place. They were businessmen they were crass businessmen coming into something that God said my house shall be called a house of prayer.

You made it a den of thieves. You're getting over on the people out with you. Awesome thought.

And in a day when gospel music and gospel preaching and gospel work can become so mechanical or oriented toward me myself and I, it reminds all of us today here at the praise gathering that as we go back to our separate duties that we have to do God's work with God's spirit. We have to do God's work and approach it with God's heart because one day it doesn't matter if your friends approve of you, doesn't matter how many albums you sell or how popular Jim Simbler is or if he writes a book. One day the Bible says I'm going to stand in front of the one whose eyes are like fire and I can't get over on him.

All of you that sing in that choir it's not just if you're on your note it's why you're on your note. It's the spirit that you do in it. Am I doing it for the glory of God? Do I really care about those people in New York City? I mean am I preaching just to put on a show and get through another service or does my heart really radiate with God's love and am I saying the things that he wants me to say with the spirit he wants me to say them in? Why are you teaching that Christian ed class, that Sunday school class? Why are you singing in that choir? Why do you serve? The Bible says that when Jesus went into the temple he reminded them this is not your house, this is my father's house and my father's house has to be run my father's way and when you touch something sacred in a secular way I'm going to kick you all out of here and even though he's not walking through churches today and kicking people out there is going to come that day when Paul says we'll all stand at the judgment seat of Christ and we're going to have to give a review to the Lord and we will be reviewed on Wednesday.