A few days ago, as I was preparing to leave home I realized that I had run out of my typical morning pick-me-up and decided that it was imperative that I stop and get myself Dr. Pepper so that the day didn’t spiral out of control. I dropped my boys off at school and then contemplated a two mile drive to the grocery store or to just stop at the Walgreens across the street. Convenience won out and I stopped at Walgreens. When I went it I was suddenly faced with the high cost of convenience, the bottle that I would have paid $1 for at Acme was $2.19 at Walgreens. I am ashamed to say it, but I had already committed to the path of convenience and so I paid more than double the price just so I could get what I wanted at that moment. Those of you that know me well are aware that I had already convinced myself that I needed that Dr. Pepper so this was about necessity much more than luxury. As I drove away I was faced with the truth that I had just paid $1 for my soda and $1.19 for the convenience of having it now. I could not help but ask myself how much convenience was costing me in the other areas of my life.
I believe that Jesus confronted this kind of costly convenience during the last week of His life. After the Triumphal Entry Jesus made His way to the temple, when He arrived there He found a scene that He could not live with. The Court of the Gentiles had been transformed from a place where Gentiles could seek God into a marketplace filled with oxen, sheep, doves and money exchange tables. R.C. Sproul writes “The sacred grounds that had been set up for worship had become chaotic.” How did chaos find its way into the temple? Convenience. During the time of Jesus’ life the population of Jerusalem was about 20,000 but at the time of Passover, a pilgrimage feast that required that sacrifice and worship be in Jerusalem, some writers say that the population swelled to nearly one million. Imagine the chaos of that kind of week-long population swell! Part of the Passover worship was that a sacrifice had to be made, at the temple. As we can see from the above numbers that many people traveled to come to Jerusalem and so the realization at some point was that it would be much more convenient if animals for sacrifice and currency for offering were available to be bought, sold and exchanged at the temple so that people did not have to worry about bringing an animal for sacrifice with them. The thought is reasonable from a convenience standpoint but Sproul again points out, “in their efforts to make these procedures easy and convenient for the people, they had impacted the people’s ability to worship.”
I wonder how much thought was given to the Gentiles place of worship when this plan was being put into place. My assumption is that they were considered, but then, again, convenience won out. How many Gentiles actually came to worship in that court? I am not sure, but I know this, it was not nearly a million as was the case with those that needed to sacrifice during Passover. This was one of those times in life when the pressing need took precedence over the created purpose. The temple was never made to be a marketplace, never, not one single part of it. It was created to be a place of worship, a place of beauty and intimacy, a place where God was heard and cherished, thanked and adored. The bigger issue here is not so much the animals and money, it is that at some point in history the giving of sacrifices became a duty rather than an offering, an obligation rather than a gift of love and gratitude. When our lives become filled with obligation and duty we begin to look for ways to make them more convenient, more efficient, faster and easier. Worship goes from a timeless place of lingering to a calculated place of duty. In honesty, it simply stops being worship.
Jesus enters the temple, hears the animals, sees the business and does what Jesus came to do; He goes about restoring the purpose of the temple: worship. He releases the animals and forces all those that were there for business to leave. He turns over the tables of the money exchangers and pours out their money; He drives out the chaos that convenience had created. In Isaiah 61 Jesus’ eternal purpose was prophesied: He came to release prisoners from bondage, to offer beauty for ashes and to restore all that had been broken. This is what He did in the temple that day and it is what He is doing in our lives right now. There are things that are being turned over and driven out of our lives that are not robbery, in fact these are restorations. As a dear friend of mine often preaches, Jesus loves you and I so much that He accepts us as we are right now, but He loves us far too much to allow us to remain as we are right now. I can imagine that the scene of Jesus driving out the business from the temple was intense, but it was completely necessary. I am sure that some thought He was not being understanding of the logistics, some thought that He was being too religious and some probably simply thought He was being used by the enemy, but Jesus was proving, again, that He was willing to go to any length to remove from our lives that which was never meant to be in our lives in the first place.
So I’ve spent some time over the last couple of weeks asking Jesus what I’ve allowed convenience to add to my life. I have found out some things that I am not all that happy about. Sometimes I want to fight for convenience, I want to defend it and even protect it, but I continually find God promising that in every place that I allow Him to remove additions that I have made, He will reveal His eternal purpose. Matthew writes that as soon as the business in the temple ended that the blind and the lame came to Jesus and He healed them all and the children began to sing and dance to Him “Hosanna!” or “Save, Now!” Is it possible that my places of convenience are actually robbing me of gifts of healing, strength, redemption and worship that God has desired and designed for me? I think it is true and I am trying to release everything that is hindering God’s purpose for my life and to choose not to pay for convenience any longer.
Would you consider with me, what part of worship has become about convenience in our lives? How often to I grab my Bible to do my daily reading rather than to hear God’s voice? How often does time affect my willingness to pray or to worship? How much of my love has grown cold by being limited by what I have to do next rather than what God has done for me? How much of my relationship has become duty? I encourage you today; sing a song to God because of what He has done in your life. Open your Bible and ask God to show you His heart because you are love-sick not because you want to fulfill your duty and step out in faith not because you want to be blessed but because you are amazed by the amount of blessing that you have been given. Convenience has a high price, it invited chaos into the house of worship and it limits the beauty of lingering in the presence of Almighty God. Let’s count the cost of convenience and cast out the chaos. We were not created to accomplish a task; we were created to be amazed at God’s accomplishment.