Exodus 25-27 and Matthew 21:12-32

Okay, I’m really not into the whole make all this stuff sections. Especially since a few chapters ago in Exodus 20 he tells them to worship him simply. It just seems contradictory. I know it’s not, I know that God was referring to them not worshiping him the way that the pagans worshiped their Gods. Yet, it just seems contradictory to then tell them to use mounds of Gold to make things. I also get that this was necessary because in ancient cultures, plain worship as we give it would not have been accepted among the other people groups. There needed to be something of value shown and tangible or they would have strayed even more so than they did.
We do see however, why God had the Egyptians give all the things that they gave. It was to later build his Tabernacle. I read this section with Annabelle today and her Bible had some great illustrations of the pieces it described. You really see how God was asking for them to give up things they thought were valuable willingly and to then form those things into something to glorify him and worship him. We often are called to do those things in our own lives. For instance, you might have a talent like singing. There is a band called Korn. They have sung lyrics and played music that was base and negative for years. It is pretty bad stuff in terms of righteousness. Yet, a year or so ago (maybe longer) their lead singer became a believer in Christ. He found that he could no longer do what he had been doing. Yet, that was the only life he knew. So he gave that up and started singing songs about how awesome God is. He now uses that valuable talent to build up Christ’s kingdom as opposed to tearing it down as he did before. I think that we need to really look at what talents and things of value we have in our lives and use them to build up God’s kingdom.
I love how the reading in Matthew totally lines up with the reading in Exodus. There are better passages about Jesus’ turning over tables in the temple that show how his behavior was righteous but this truly shows why what was happening in the temple was against the Jewish worship. Remember, Matthew is more concerned about how Jesus fulfilled Judaism than he is anything else. I think many churches start out having some ministries that are truly uplifting and bring those hurting in. Then somehow they are allowed to be tweaked. There are several churches I have worked with that have concert ministries. They started out just wanting to offer an alternative to the many venues offering music concerts that don’t uplift God. Eventually it became about them making some money out of it. Now don’t get me wrong. I love capitalism, and I don’t want to see churches lose money on anything. I can also understand making a little profit to buy better equipment or upgrade the concert space. That wasn’t the case, and if they couldn’t make money off of a gig, they wouldn’t do it. To me, that is the wrong attitude. The money changers were supposed to be helping people meet their spiritual obligations. So were the animal vendors. There is nothing wrong with that. It was when they started overcharging and making it a competition that it became a sin.
The section of our reading in verses 23-32 always cracks me up. The priests come to Jesus trying to force him to say something bad yet again. In his wisdom, he sidesteps them and turns the whole thing around on them again. Their hearts were not in the right places because they refused to hear God’s message given by both John and Jesus. Jesus uses a severe insult by saying that those whom the priests thought were the worst of the worst would enter heaven ahead of them but they could not argue against what Jesus said. When you are used to being in control and authority I can imagine that it is not easy to get slapped in the face like that verbally. We see Jesus doing things as a built up to his crucifixion. With all of the things he is doing through these passages to make the priests mad, no wonder they wanted to get rid of him. He convicted them. He showed them their sin. What is the worst is that he did it in a thoughtful, scripture based and calm way. There is nothing more infuriating than getting irritated and the person irritating you remaining calm. The main lesson here is that if you are going to say that you follow Jesus, do it. If you’re not going to follow Jesus, do not then slack off. That is exactly why the world views the church as full of hypocrites. You can’t pick and choose which things of God you want to follow. It is all or nothing.
Tomorrow’s reading is Exodus 28-29 and Matthew 21:33-22:14.