Prayer

“It is written,” he said to them, “ ‘My house will be called a house of prayer,’ but you are making it ‘a den of robbers.’”

Matthew 21:13 (NIV)

I'll always associate this verse with when my brother and I visited a cathedral in the UK. Because of the gift shop in the corner, I quoted this verse (rather tongue in cheek!) in the visitors' book. Jesus wasn't being humorous however.

The entrance to St. Paul's Cathedral in London quotes what Jacob said when he had a dream of God: 'this is the gate of heaven'. It then goes on to mention the entrance charge. Thankfully, in truth, the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ is free: there's no entrance charge to heaven itself.

Jesus's contemporaries had turned the Gentile court of the temple of God into a marketplace. By doing so, they froze out the nations from approaching the one true God. The Jews were supposed to be a light to the Gentiles, not a barrier between the nations and God.

The gospel isn't the means to the end of getting rich. If we come to God for money, he's not our God, money is. You cannot serve both God and money.

'God, forbid that we would idolise stuff, when we ought to be worshipping you. For we ask in Jesus' name, amen'.

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