Just thought I’d post a short summary along w/ a couple of my thoughts from this past Friday’s Bible Study by Rick:
Jesus was filled with anger… but not just any ordinary anger like the kind you feel when someone cuts you off on the freeway. Nope, nor the kind of anger we feel when we get gipped at the store. Nor is it the kind of anger we feel when we get a low score on an exam. But what it is… is righteous indignation. It is a kind of anger that is justified because of man’s nature to sin. These people, who at one point had considered the temple a holy place, blurred the lines between the world and God by bringing the marketplace into the temple.
It’s when you see something that’s not supposed to be the way it is, and it looks wrong and even sad. Yeah, it’s like what Rick said, seeing a brand new car wrapped around a pole, crushed from front to end. Something just doesn’t look right about that. And Jesus seeing the temple, the church, the holy place filled with buying and selling of cattle, exchanging of money, was righteously indignant b/c it’s insulting and offensive! What good is salt when it loses its saltiness? What good is a church if it’s just like the marketplace?! What good is something that’s supposed to bring some sort of change or difference to its surroundings when it’s just the same as everything else? What happens when we blur the lines? We lose our identity. We bring the marketplace into our lives which, for the Christians, have been set apart for God.
How do we blur the lines? Are we really honest about it, or do we just want to do what we want to do?
With that being said, what are you angry about? “Is it anger over myself? Over what was done unto me? Or is it anger over something outside of me?” What you’re angry about is a good indication of who you are.
John 12:12-25
Jesus Clears the Temple
12After this he went down to Capernaum with his mother and brothers and his disciples. There they stayed for a few days.
13When it was almost time for the Jewish Passover, Jesus went up to Jerusalem. 14In the temple courts he found men selling cattle, sheep and doves, and others sitting at tables exchanging money. 15So he made a whip out of cords, and drove all from the temple area, both sheep and cattle; he scattered the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables. 16To those who sold doves he said, “Get these out of here! How dare you turn my Father’s house into a market!”
17His disciples remembered that it is written: “Zeal for your house will consume me.”
18Then the Jews demanded of him, “What miraculous sign can you show us to prove your authority to do all this?”
19Jesus answered them, “Destroy this temple, and I will raise it again in three days.”
20The Jews replied, “It has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and you are going to raise it in three days?” 21But the temple he had spoken of was his body. 22After he was raised from the dead, his disciples recalled what he had said. Then they believed the Scripture and the words that Jesus had spoken.
23Now while he was in Jerusalem at the Passover Feast, many people saw the miraculous signs he was doing and believed in his name. 24But Jesus would not entrust himself to them, for he knew all men. 25He did not need man’s testimony about man, for he knew what was in a man.
Additional:
CNN Article - Taliban: Aid worker killed for preaching
I read an article on CNN today regarding a 34-year-old female aid worker who had been serving at a relief organization in Afghanistan. She was fatally shot down by a member of the Taliban, which claims responsibility for this act, saying she was preaching Christianity. I thought about this and was angry. There are people who take the gospel so seriously and risk their lives. The most we get in America is a weird look, a complacent shrug, or rejection when we attempt to share the gospel with others. And yet we let the gospel slip through our hands and hearts when we blur the lines, when we choose to do what we want to do versus what God wants us to do. In other countries, killings and murders happen when you speak the word of God. In China, there are government-sanctioned churches, but anything beyond the government illegally goes underground, and those caught holding underground church gatherings are arrested and thrown into jail for years. And there are yet far worse penalties for preaching the gospel. As this can also be a challenge for us to live our lives with passion and purpose, I think we can ask ourselves this question,
“Now isn’t THAT something to be angry about? Isn’t that something to be righteously indignant about?”
-kairos1 @ gracepoint fellowship church
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