A House of Worship

John 2:13-17 Following Jesus' miracle at Cana, his announcement that the promised Messiah had arrived, he traveled to Jerusalem for the annual celebration of the Passover feast. In Jerusalem, of course, was the temple. The temple was a significant structure in the Jewish faith. Originally, Jewish worship was officially done in the mobile Tabernacle. This was a tent around Moses's time in which sacrifices were made by priests, to God, on behalf of the people. This was where incense was lit, symbolic of the prayers and cries of God's people going up to him. This was where 12 loaves of unleavened bread lay as a constant reminder for the Jews as they traveled through the wilderness to the Promised Land. This was where the famed Ark of the Covenant was housed, symbolic of the very presence of the Almighty God himself. The Tabernacle was quite an important place in the early Jewish history. Sometime later, a man named David became the Lord's anointed king over all of Israel. Being who the Bible describes as "a man after God's own heart," David felt it necessary to express a concern to Nathan, one of God's prophets in 2 Sam 7. David said, "See now, I dwell in a house of cedar, but the ark of God dwells in a tent" (v. 2). David believed that if was worthy of living in a permanent, fixed home, how much more so should theArk of the Covenant dwell in a sturdy location as a opposed to a tent. Surely enough, God then ordained that David's son would construct the temple in Jerusalem once the kingdom became his. After many years of invasions, destructions, and remodeling Jesus stood in this temple in John 2, appalled at what the holiest location in Israel had been turned into: a house of trade. The very place that had been constructed solely for the purposes of worship had become a simple marketplace where greedy merchants were making profits at the expense of pious people. These people had made the journey to Jerusalem in order to celebrate what God had done and to atone for their sins. On sight Jesus rightly expresses his disdain, and in fulfillment of Malachi 3:1-4, Jesus - the Lord - comes to his temple with the purposes of purifying the sons of Levi (the priests). In his righteous zeal, Jesus makes a whip of cords and drives the merchants out of the temple. Of course that temple would later be destroyed by the Roman Empire in 70AD in response to a Jewish revolt. However the temple still exists today, not in physical form as a standing building, but as the universal church. If you are someone who has been saved by the grace of the holy God of the universe then you are part of the continuation of God's holy temple, built on the foundation of Jesus Christ. Therefore all Christians must seek to maintain an attitude of worship. Nothing should be of more value to us than Christ himself. The same goes for our worship services on Sunday. Are we there to experience the corporate adoration toward a Sovereign God? Or have we turned our church services into a house of trade in which we seek first and foremost to be entertained and find pragmatic solutions to our daily relational problems? God is holy, loving, and gracious and is more than worthy of our constant, unending praise.