Matthew 21:12

Jesus entered the temple courts and drove out all who were buying and selling there. He overturned the tables of the money changers and the benches of those selling doves.

From Background Notes [BN] for September 21^st & 22^nd written by Pastor Bob Brown:

At every opportunity, Jesus created space for people to meet him. He would draw crowds through his miracles so that he could tell them about the coming kingdom of God. He would challenge Israel’s prominent leaders so that he could invite others to join the conversation.

 

He would disrupt the ordinary course of life by telling stories with surprise endings. He would share table fellowship with a diversity of persons, some of them blacklisted by the urban elite of Jerusalem. Jesus knew that His heavenly Father was the true owner of everything — the God of great abundance — and wanted to fund the world with blessings. When earthly powers decided to accumulate the stuff of life for themselves, they were acting as if the land belonged to them and not to God. When religious practices seemed to serve the interests of the leadership rather than the genuine needs of the people, Jesus rebelled against the practices and championed the generosity of His Father in the world. Even a casual reading of Old Testament texts reveals that God always stood alongside the marginalized, and He resisted any effort to exclude such persons from His good gifts for them (see especially, Psalm 146:9; 12:5, among others). Jesus, the rebel from Nazareth, radicalized the ancient teaching of Israel, and that sometimes meant upending the settled traditions that maintained the status quo. [BN,1-2]

Join us this week in Study, Worship, Praise and Celebration at Chicago First Church of the Nazarene:

* Saturday 6:00pm
* Sunday 8:30am & 11:00am, 5:30pm