God of Purpose, Justice, and Holiness

I didn't write about small group last week, so I'm going to briefly talk about what we discussed these past two weeks:

Last Monday, the Hale small group discussed Luke 5:1-11, the story of Jesus calling Simon Peter and some other fishermen to leave everything and follow him.  We noted Peter had several opportunities to deny Jesus, and could easily have been tempted to do so after the very long, rough, frustrating night of working so hard and catching nothing.  Peter could have not let him in the boat, not put out into the water two different times, not worshiped Jesus, or not followed him when he called, but something drew him to Jesus.  If you are reading this, you've probably experienced this too.  Will you follow him and obey him, or not?  You may seem like an unlikely person to have God call you to his great purposes, but so were Peter and Andrew--uneducated, unclean, social outcasts with personality flaws.  Yet they ended up playing huge roles in God's plan for humanity's salvation.

Tonight, we talked about John 2:12-25, the story of Jesus driving the merchants from the Temple.  On the surface, it seems as though Jesus simply objects to the buying and selling of animals in the Temple, yet this is not the case.  There was extreme injustice taking place here, as these people were required to come from far off to Jerusalem for the Passover, and by the Temple rules had to buy their sacrificial animals here.  What should have been the choicest animals were instead pitiful things, sold for much more than they were worth.  Even the doves, the sacrifices of the poorest Jews, were meager and overpriced.  Those in charge of the Temple and its rituals were making it an extreme burden on the people--especially the poor--to come and worship God as they were instructed to do!  This injustice and greed at least as much as the use of the Temple courts for buying and selling (after all, this buying and selling was mandated by the law) is what drove Jesus to his extreme righteous anger.

The passage says that Jesus was consumed by zeal for the Temple.  Do you realize that anyone who has been washed by Jesus blood has the Holy Spirit dwelling within him or her, and is now a Temple to the living God? What passion would your life ignite in Jesus?  What unjust, unholy, unloving practices are attitudes reside in you that Jesus would want to drive out?  These things affect our ability to properly worship our God.  Ask God to bring these things to your mind, and if He does, confess of your sin, repent, and give thanks that God is merciful and just and forgives and cleanses us from our sins.  Thanks be to God!  Amen.