Sunday Morning Worship

“Don't Forget to Worship”

John 2:13-22

Imagine that you pull into the church parking lot on Sunday morning. Your heart is full of anticipation and you are ready to worship! You are ready to enter the church building and join your bothers ands sisters in joyous worship. You look forward to greeting your Christian's brothers and sister and visitors who have found their way into your church. You strongly feel the need to commune with God and others. You can't wait to receive the sacraments of communion. You love to hear the prayers of the people! You long to hear the Word of the Lord taught ands spoken.

But as you pull up, the parking lot is rammed full. You can't even find a place to park so you turn the car around and park a few bocks from the church. So what if you have to walk. As you try to enter the building the there is a long line. There are tables' sets up at every entrance. People are writing checks, putting cash down on the tables and getting tokens in return to place in the offering basket later. You finally make it to the church table and you are told that you need church money in order to make an offering so you put down a 20-dollar bill and you get a 10-dollar bill in return. You finally make it into the entrance of the church only to find that the halls are very congested. Booths are set up all throughout the hallway. People are selling and renting hymnbooks. Get your hymnbook here! You can't sing without the official Immanuel hymnal. Get your hymn-personalized hymnal for 19.95! You look across the hallway and other people are selling communion bread. The sign reads, “Official unleavened bread sold here. Get you pinch for only $5.00. Up ahead you notice another sign that read, 100% pure Fruit of the Vine Communion wine, no additives or preservatives. Individual cups only 7.50.

There is so much commotion, commerce and commercialization going on that you throw you hands up in disgust realizing that you will never make it into the sanctuary to worship!

The church has become too commercial.

We are journeying with Jesus to Calvary. This is the third Sunday of Lent. In three short weeks we will celebrate Palm Sunday and then the following week Resurrection Sunday! Jesus is now in Jerusalem at the time if the feast of the Passover. Multitudes of people from all over the world traveled to Jerusalem for the Passover. The feast of the Passover was an 8-day celebration in March/April. On the 14 day of Nissan the paschal lamb was slaughter from 3:00pm until 5:00pm in the Temple. The Passover meal began at sundown for the beginning of a new day! During the festival no unleavened bread could be found in the Jewish household. The Passover feast commemorated Israel's liberation from Egypt and God's provision of God people of manna and water in the wilderness!

The Passover was intended to be a time of celebration, worship and remembrance of God goodness, protection and provision of God's people.

Jesus entered into the Temple at the time of worship and imagines his horror at finding men selling cattle, sheep and dove in the court of the Gentiles.

Jesus saw that the merchants had moved there selling from the outer areas of the Temple to almost going into he sanctuary to sell. He saw that the people who provided the necessary animals were over charging people and keeping the rest of the money! The sacredness of the temple has been exchanged for profit and convenience. Jesus became furious!

Grace Capitol Church in Pembroke New Hampshire now has a Starbucks coffee house just a adjacent to the place worship space, the Brentwood Baptist Church in Houston Texas has a McDonald franchise connected to it fellowship space and True Bethel Baptist Church in Buffalo New York has rented out it bell tower to Verizon as a cell phone tower. There seems to be no boundaries for use of God's sacred space. What was once a space has become a marketplace says Jeffrey McDonald, correspondent to the Christian Science Monitor. There is n o non-commercial zone in the church anymore. When Jesus said come unto me all you that are thirty and hungry did he really mean for subway and Starbucks to be a part of the sacred worship place?

As we continue to struggle with declining membership, older congregations and limited resources, is this perhaps a way to draw in new people? Do we want to consider making this Immanuel Presbyterian Church and Family KFC?

Mary Slather of NY was applauded hat one day she received an invitation to her community church and the invitation had a Starbucks logo on it!

It is true that the smaller, main line denominational churches are finding it more and more difficult to complete with the ever-growing commercialized, mega churches.

Jesus saw it happening some 2000 years ago and it is rue today that churches are becoming much to commercial.

But God's calls his house a place of prayer

Jesus made a whip out of a cord and drove everybody out of the temple area. The animals ran, the money was scattered all over the floor, the tables were turned over, the loan shark moneychangers started ducking and trying to get out of the way of flying furniture!

He said “get this stuff out of here! How dare you turn my Father's house into a market! Peterson translation says, Stop turning my Father's house into a shopping mall!

This is distortion at tits words. Instead on coming to prayer and finding a place of peace, comfort and security known we come into God's house and if there is not a coffee house on one side, a bookstore on the other, three booths of the cameras, and 59 member choir and a full orchestra we think we can't have church!

No one comes to do what was the place was intended for…to pray, to worship and fellowship with brother and sister in Christ and to welcome the stranger into out gates…. no we come to the church to be entertained!

Look at what Jesus has done …He has disrupted, thrown into chaos the temple system during one of the most significant feat of the year so that neither sacrifice nor tithes can be offered that day and the Jewish leaders want to know just who does he think he is coming in here disrupting the system? That would be like someone walking his or her dogs through the sanctuary while were performing a marriage ceremony! It would just disrupt the entire service.

This is the way we have always done things around here…. you better get with the program Jesus. We have always used this space to sell cattle, sheep and doves here. Who are our go come in here and mess with our system of doing things?

Listen we cannot equate our own religious practices with the presence of God. Just because we are doing something in the Temple does not mean that God is in it! Our ways of doing things is not always God way. We must be continuingly discerning what is God's will for us personally and as a worshipping community?

Jesus had the authority to challenge the system because Jesus is the very presence of God on the earth. Jesus is the reason for the Temple worship!

Listen to me church….

If I call a prayer meeting two people might show up! If I say we are going to have a mass choir and some chicken wings her next Sunday after church we have to call extra security people to watch the parking lot!

God house is to be a place of prayer! Not a place to play! Don't let your children come in here and run all aver this sanctuary, get up in the pulpit mess with t he anointed oil! If you don't have sense enough to tell them that this is a special place and we want to honor the presence of God in this holy place, if you don't have enough courage to disciple them and let the know this is God's house we don't say to at ant king of way in here…then don't get mas at me when I tell them! Because I will tell them!!! You are standing on holy ground!!!

God's house is to be a place of prayer.

So come to worship!

It is interesting when the Jewish leaders asked for a sigh Jesus told them about destroying the temple of his body…his death, resurrection. The sign that I am going to give you is the sign of crucifixion, death and victory of the resurrection! You think this temple I something you wait until you see the new temple that God is preparing in each one who will receive Jesus Christ by faith. The ones who are trust in his death, burial and resurrection as a time of celebration and worship! Amen!