Carefully determine what pleases the Lord. Take no
part in the worthless deeds of evil and darkness; instead, expose them. --
Ephesians 5: 10-11 (NLT)
All one needs to do is pay
attention to Facebook to see that Christians do not always do a great job at
carefully determining what pleases the Lord. Hateful postings. Lewd jokes.
Refusing to take a stand for God and the Gospel. We allow one little compromise
here and another there. The devil is just as happy with small victories because
they leave the door open. Sin begets more sin. Greed and compromise, whether
done in the name of Jesus or not, needs to be cleansed from our personal temple
and from our churches.
The second major theme that upset
Jesus that day was the taking advantage of the people of God. The Lord just
needed to look around. The temple carried its own tax, worth approximately two
full days wages for the average person. As if that wasn't bad enough, charging
people to sacrifice and worship the Lord, they would charge an exorbitant 15%
commission to exchange the money into Jewish money. Then if you brought a bull
or sheep for sacrifice the "quality control" people would examine to make sure
there were no blemishes, which they invariably would find. The worshipper would
then be forced to buy one of the pre-approved animals at exorbitant prices.
Knowing they had a captive audience and a sellers market, they would price
gouge people on everything, with the priests skimming profits off the top. Fleecing
the people of God would continue throughout the ages. From the Catholic Church
selling indulgences to the televangelists selling prayer cloths. All of it is
evil in the eyes of God. All of it needs to be cleansed.
The Lord detests the use of
dishonest scales, but he delights in accurate weights. -- Proverbs 11: 1 (NLT)
God hates dishonesty in trade. This is why in the key verses
and two other Gospel accounts He refers to the temple people as having turned
the temple into a "den of thieves." We see this in the modern church today as
well. The congregants hammered by leadership about tithing to the point of the
absurd. I have spoke with people who were told by their pastor that the reason
they were not conceiving a child was because they were not tithing correctly.
Multiple collections taken for nearly every reason imaginable. The worst are
what we remember from television. Prayer cloths, holy water, sand from the
The property was yours to sell or not sell,
as you wished. And after selling it, the money was also yours to give away. How
could you do a thing like this? You weren't lying to us but to God!" -- Acts 5:
4 (NLT)
Your tithing is between you and
God. If you choose to be dishonest about it, you will only be dishonest with
God. Churches need to be cleansed of this over-infatuation with tithing and
money. I am not suggesting that we are not concerned about the light bill but
if you are having trouble generating extra money for that new ministry, maybe
it is not from God. If God provides the vision -- He provides the means.
Likewise in our walk this is
important as well. The issue Jesus is dealing with here is inherent dishonesty.
The truth is not a malleable property that we can twist to fit our own agendas.
Nothing brings this into focus quite like Election season in
