SUNDAY PRAISE

Hello, friends!  It is hard for me to believe that an entire week has gone by since I last posted.  My only excuse is that every day is jam packed with things to do.  I seem to never stop from the time I wake up until I go to bed.

But I wanted to get today's Sunday Praise up and I will do my best to get some others up this week before the month turns.  And who can believe it's that time already?

Today's lesson is HOUSE OF PRAYER (JESUS CLEARS THE TEMPLE)

At the time of Passover, Jesus and his disciples traveled to Jerusalem to worship God and pray at the temple. The temple was a special place where people worshipped God and offered sacrifices. Jesus always looked forward to visiting the temple and praying with God's people.

But when Jesus arrived at the temple, He couldn't believe what He saw. Instead of people praying and worshipping, it looked like a marketplace.  There were cows, sheep and birds. People were selling all sorts of things and exchanging money. People were not thinking about God.

Jesus was very sad. He was angry at the way people were treating God. Jesus loved His Father and His house! Jesus turned over the tables and set the birds and animals free. He told the people to get all of those things out of His Father's house!

Jesus reminded the people, "It is written in the scriptures, 'My Temple will be a house where people will pray.'"

Some of the people became angry with Jesus. They wanted to keep cheating people. But others joined Jesus to pray and worship God in the temple.

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Think about going to a flea market or craft show in your area.  Now think about trying to read, study or pray in a noisy area like this with things going on all around you.  It wouldn't be easy to concentrate with everything happening.

It's wonderful that we have churches where we can go to worship God and learn about Him.  Where we can sing praises to Him and where we can pray.  Where we can be with others who love God.

When Jesus entered the temple in this passage (Matthew 21:12-16, Mark 11:15-18, Luke 19:45-48, and John 2:12-24), He saw lots of things that He didn't like.  Men were selling animals and changing money right inside the temple.  Imagine if you went to worship God at your church and it was chaos inside. People were trying to make money from people who had come to worship God.

This passage shows a side of Jesus that we don't often see. Jesus is angry when He sees people selling and making money in the temple and clears them out quickly.  Jesus had a righteous anger.  He was not angry at how He was being treated, but by their attitude toward God and cheating other people. These moneychangers and sellers were distracting people from worshipping God.

What things distract us from worshipping God?  The Bible tells us that our bodies are the temple of God.  So, we should not have anything in them that distracts us from the worship of God.  Let's remove the things in our lives that distract us from living for God.

This is another story that we often take as a simple story but has so much in it to ponder.

I hope you all have a great night.  If you can, please pray for me.  I have a very uncomfortable medical test tomorrow afternoon that I am not looking forward to.  In fact, I'm a bit nervous about it.  And my knees are still in a lot of pain.  Thank you so much for caring and praying.

I will see you soon.

Kathy