House of Prayer

Introduction

Kingwood United:

We began this new sermon series last week on Kingwood United. Discussing what is the big umbrella for our church…what makes us: Vine, Sanctuary, children, students, missions, sunday school classes, small groups....what makes us a church. What unites us?

Last week we talked about the ekklesia, the called assembly of God. The word translated church in the new testament. The NT understanding of church had two main themes: shared identity and shared purpose. So now in the next several weeks we will discuss how that identity and purpose plays out in different ways.

By now you are probably wondering why we have a tent on stage.

There is this beautiful scene in where scripture says that Moses kept a tent outside of the camp. He called it the “tent of meeting” and anytime someone would need to take something to the Lord, they could go there. But this was the place where Moses would go and do business. Scripture says that the Lord would speak to Moses like a friend here in this tent. When Moses would go into this tent, then the pillar of cloud would descend on the tent and the rest would gather and worship.

House of prayer:

Throughout scripture, God has made his presence known in some intentional and local ways. Early on with Abraham and as we have seen with Moses a pillar of cloud, meetings in a tent and eventually a tabernacle tent…the precursor of the temple. Then Solomons Temple and the temple of Jerusalem later. A place where God’s glory, God’s holiness, God’s very presence was manifest. Throughout scripture this was the place where people went to meet with God. As a matter of fact God names his temple, a house of prayer.

Isaiah 56:7 NIV

these I will bring to my holy mountain and give them joy in my house of prayer. Their burnt offerings and sacrifices will be accepted on my altar; for my house will be called a house of prayer for all nations.”

The house of prayer is where God and God’s people are in relationship with each other.

Jesus in the Temple

Jesus goes into the Temple this day in Jerusalem.

<An event that is reported by all of the gospel narratives so we know this was important to the evangelists telling the story. >

According to Matthew, he has just made his triumphal entry into the great city of Jerusalem; the central focus point of the Jewish faith, and particularly during the passover festival, the height of the Jewish faith this is the action that he takes.

I have heard all kinds of sermons on this event. Sermons about righteous anger, sermons about the money changers and the people selling in the House of the Lord. Unless I have missed it, most preach these sermons largely without of the larger context of what Matthew is doing.

He is praised as the “son of David” this potential messiah as he rides in and then he goes straight to the temple and mixes some things up, then he leaves and curses a fig tree and it withers (many scholars think this is a live illustration and judgment of what is happening in the temple), then he goes back to the temple and begins to teach with authority.

See what Jesus is doing is he is staking his claim. Jesus is claiming the temple, or what the temple was supposed to be, as His house. Later he will describe the authority given to him from Heaven.

So when he walks in and flips the money tables…dont get bogged down on what he is tossing. These were good things, these people needed to sell in order for people travelling to exchange their foreign currency and buy animals for the sacrifice.

Reprioritizing the tent:

What he is doing in reprioritizing the tent.

What he is doing in reprioritizing the tent.

He is interrupting “business as usual.” The people that have come over and over again to the temple and they have done their duty of purchasing an animal for sacrifice and then gone into the Temple have missed the priority here that this was to be first and foremost a house of prayer. How have we made this feel like we are going through the motions? How is it that our meeting together has become rote and the same, even mechanical?

Francis Chan puts forth that the church largely has become too satisfied and mostly is content to come and be encouraged rather than desperately seeking the presence of God. He says for this reason, “we end up with gatherings that are very explainable and at times feel mechanical and even obligatory.”

The people that have come over and over again to

Jesus is not challenging the market place here, he is challenging the religious leaders. This was so challenging to me this week as I considered the ways in which I have been complacent in allowing church to become other things before it is a place where God meets. A house of prayer.

House of prayer is the fountainhead of God’s power.

I want you to see what happens right in the middle of this passage. Look again and see this one line that is almost a throw-away, easily missed:

Matthew 21:

Matthew 21:13–15 NIV

“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.’” The blind and the lame came to him at the temple, and he healed them. But when the chief priests and the teachers of the law saw the wonderful things he did and the children shouting in the temple courts, “Hosanna to the Son of David,” they were indignant.

The blind and lame were sometimes not invited to the temple and in other times forbidden from Temple Worship. Matthew does not even tell us where these people come from. But he begins healing them. Jesus is saying this is what it means to be a house of prayer. The locale of my Father’s presence with His people....all welcome to the table and healing available.

Not just about balancing budgets

not just about the status quo

not just about good church leadership practices

this is about no longer being satisfied with what we can do alone, but desiring for God’s presence to be here and heal and set people free.

What does this look like?

We have to get back to the heart of the matter. When we gather together, it is to meet with God. Listen, if your first thought here is defensiveness: Well we are that already, this is not a box to check. Or this is a church so are we not a house of prayer? Do you believe that? Do you believe that when a visitor comes to see us then they see a pillar of smoke descend on this space? Let it go and lean into this with all of us. We have to get back to the heart of the matter. This is God himself. This is Jesus. Not us! Not even our problems. Oswald Chambers said this, “a praying church keeps its eyes on God, not on other things.”

This means when we gather together we come with intentionality. All that we do in song, in scripture, in encouraging one another is intentional because we are here to encounter God. We will talk a little about worship and the corporate gatherings and why it is important. But let me give you this....when you sing, “You are praying twice.” -St. Augustine

Individual accountability…Have you prayed about that? Can we pray about this together?

Uncomfortable!!!

Kingwood United: we are growing into this. Teaching, and leading by example. Book Forgotten power. In Vine we will begin building a prayer team that will be in this space weekly.

Conclusion

In closing:

Paul to the Corinthians:

1 Corinthians 3:16

1 Corinthians 3:16 NIV

Don’t you know that you yourselves are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in your midst?

1 Corinthians

1 Corinthians 6:19 NIV

Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own;

2 Corinthians 6:16 NIV

What agreement is there between the temple of God and idols? For we are the temple of the living God. As God has said: “I will live with them and walk among them, and I will be their God, and they will be my people.”

Yall what the followers of Jesus knew to be true through Jesus and in Pentecost is that we are the “tent of meeting.” When we gather together we are the “tent of meeting.”