Scripture: Mark 11:15-19
Focus on the Word
The rare time we see Jesus angry was that time when He saw what the religious leaders had allowed the temple to become. It had been turned into a place of business based upon the spiritual requirements for worship. They had turned the place of prayer into a place of business; something the temple was never intended to be. It was so disgraceful an act that Jesus compared the activities to be nothing less than theft.
In capitalizing on true spiritual concerns, and turning them into profit making opportunities, God had been trumped, marginalized, and reduced to living under the authority of the leaders of the temple. They used God to make a buck. They used the place of prayer as the place of profit. They used the call to worship as a means to material gain. Sadly, it was all done in the name of God, the very God who had been placed under the authority of spiritually dead men and reduced to a means to an end.
In Lent we are called to make sure we are not using God as a means to an end but rather as a time to come to Him in sincere prayer that our lives will not be something they were never intended to be. God help us if we ever start using God. He is the Lord God, Maker of heaven and earth. We don't use Him; we worship Him.
Let the church be the church. Let the place we gather be holy and set apart for God. Let God be God. Let us humble ourselves and live, shaped and formed by the Living God we meet in worship.
Today’s Prayer
Come, O Thou God of grace,
Dwell in this holy place,
Even now descend!
This temple, reared to Thee,
O may it ever be
Filled with Thy majesty,
Till time shall end!
(William Evans, 1886)
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