The Place of Worship

Good morning. I want to thank you for inviting Annie, Rosie, and I to come and be with you this morning. We’re blessed by the hospitality of you and your church and have already enjoyed the morning. I want to tell you that I’m very thankful for your board. You have an excellent leadership team filled with real servants and they’ve been wonderful to my family and me. And thank you to Mark and his wonderful family for taking us out for pizza last night. They know how to speak our language and let me tell you, they know where to find some good pizza. Thanks again, Mark.

This morning we’re going to be in Matthew 21, so if you have your Bibles or your phone or tablet with you, I’d love for you to follow along. Matthew 21.

A bit about me. I grew up in Southern Indiana as a pastor’s kid. So, I am a SWID kid. We moved to a few different towns and my dad preached at a few different churches, but we spend most of my childhood growing up in Floyds Knobs, Indiana just across the Ohio River from Louisville.

I went to Trevecca Nazarene University and that’s where I met my beautiful bride Annie. She’s originally from California and so I’m really really glad she chose to go to Trevecca.

We got married in 2018 two days after we graduated. And currently we are living and ministering in Columbus, Indiana. I’m the pastor of Children’s ministries at Columbus First Nazarene and oversee all our children’s ministries. And Annie works at a local Christian school where she teaches elementary school.

The most recent addition to our family came to us in February of this year and her name is Rosie Jane. She’s 8 months old and is pretty good at saying Dada and just last night at the hotel we got a Mama. She’s fun to talk to and a good listener and I’m sure if you talk to her today she’ll give you a big ol’ smile. She’s good at that too.

So now that we’ve been introduced, is okay if we explore Scripture together this morning?

The title of my message this morning is The Place of Worship and as a prayerfully sought God in finding the word that I could share with you this morning, God led me to this message and let me just tell you my heart. If you want to know what I’m all about, what I’m passionate about and what I’d love to see for the people of Spencer Nazarene, is that God would help us to know where to Place our Worship. We’re going to be talking today about the fact that you can place your worship in a lot of different places, but my prayer is that God will show us this morning that he is worthy of our worship toady. Amen?

This morning, we are going to be looking into one of the most well-known stories of Jesus, but it’s typically not one of our favorites.

It has the tendency to make us uncomfortable. We like the stories of Jesus healing and Jesus doing miracles and Jesus loving people. Those are the ones that we paint paintings of and hang them in our houses or in our churches. But this one shows us a different side of our savior. And that can make us a little nervous. But in my opinion, the passages that make us the most uncomfortable, that makes us squirm in our seats, are the very passages that we should be delving into, so we are going to be doing that very thing today.

Turn with me to Matthew 21 beginning with verse 12.

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

Wow! What an interesting move for the Savior of the World...He’s overturning tables, he’s letting animals out of their cages, another of the Gospels mentions that he makes a whip out of cords, and starts slinging that around, I mean he’s angry.

That is a powerful response from Jesus. Throughout the entire book up to this point, most of his actions have been reserved, quiet, hidden. He is attempting to keep his power and Messiahship a secret. At some points, he’ll do a miracle and then say, “Don’t tell anyone!” And then all of the sudden, in this chapter, he’s flipping tables! What happened? What changed for Jesus?

As we explore this passage I think you’ll begin to see why Jesus was so passionate that day. I think you will see why his righteous anger was justified.

For starters, to Jesus, this place of worship was not only the location where people went to praise, but the temple also represented the hearts and the priorities of the Jewish people. And what Jesus saw was that their place of worship was misconstrued. They were placing their worship in the wrong place. It was misdirected. It was perverted. It was tarnished. It was corrupted.

So, what Jesus does in this passage is he begins flipping tables and clearing the way. He is saying, “Let me get all of this out of here so I can show you where and in whom to Place your worship”.

Because the people had gotten it all wrong. And my guess is, that Jesus would say that, in some ways, we’ve gotten it wrong as well.

This morning, I want to outline for you, the three things that Jesus tells us about a True Place of Worship. If we clear the tables and hurry out the sheep and let the pigeons fly away, what is Jesus showing us about the True Place of Worship.

The first thing that Christ shows us about the True Place of Worship, is that it Offers Free Forgiveness.

I think it’s helpful here to give you some background on the temple. Like we said, Jerusalem was the center of all things Jewish. It was the place where Jewish families went to worship, but most importantly, the temple in Jerusalem was the place where people went to get atonement for their sins and for the sins of their family.

This wasn’t just taking the family to church so the kids can go to children’s church while mom and dad listen to the pastor preach. This was making a long trek to Jerusalem so that the sins of you and your family could be washed away. This was going to the central place of Jewish worship and killing an animal in the place of you and your family for the sins you committed. It was very important. It was huge.

The problem was this: in Christ’s time the temple had been perverted by greed and corruption. Such things made it almost impossible for families to offer sacrifices in the temple.

Here’s how it all worked:

Imagine this, you and your family travel hundreds of miles to get to Jerusalem. You travel light because you’ve got a long way to go. You don’t bring the sacrificial animal with you and instead you decide to just buy one when you get there. It’s like bringing a beach chair to Florida, you don’t try to shove one in the trunk, it won’t fit in the car, so you just wait until you get there to buy one. Why lug a sheep all the way to Jerusalem when we can just buy one when we get there?

So when you finally get there, you walk into the temple. Now, the temple is broken into four separate courts. The outer court is where you buy your sacrificial animals. So you enter into that outer court and there’s all kinds of tables filled with cages of various animals that are there to be sacrificed. But before you can buy your animal, you have to exchange your money. Because it’s the law of the temple that not just any coin can be used for the purchasing of sacrificial animals. You are only allowed to use coins that don’t have pagan images or other gods on it. So before you can buy an animal you have to go and exchange your money for the proper coinage.

But those money lenders charged crazy prices for the exchange. They were ripping people off. But no one could say anything because it was the only way to get the proper coins so that you could purchase the animal so that you could sacrifice your animal so that you could be forgiven of your sins. Why question the system!?

Then, you have to go and pay outrageous prices from the merchants selling sacrificial animals. They would do everything they could to sell you an animal at way more than it was worth. They knew you didn’t have an option and they had what you needed and so they charged you big time for your animals. They charged you 75 dollars for the plastic beach chair.

But let’s say you brought an animal with you. You didn’t need to buy one in the courts. You brought your beach chair with you. You couldn’t just sacrifice anything. Instead, you had to have your animal inspected by one of the temple inspectors and yeah that cost a lot of money. And only if they found no flaw could you then offer that animal up as a sacrifice for you and your family.

And after all of that. You better hope you had enough money to pay the heavily inflated temple tax from which every priest was able to dip their hand in the pot.

It was crazy! It was a scam. The economy of the outer courts preyed on the poor and profited off the essential atonement of people’s sins. The message of the temple of Jerusalem was this: You can have forgiveness, but it’s going to cost you. You can be forgiven of your sins, but you need the right coin, the right animal, the right amount of money, and if you do all of that, God will forgive you of your sins.

This is why people paid the outrageous prices and no one ever complained about the scam that was occurring in the outer courts. They desperately sought forgiveness. The needed atonement for the sins of their families, and the merchants used their desperation for profit.

It was into that mess, that scam, that desperation, that Jesus walks onto the scene. He knows what occurs in the outer courts. He knows all of the hoops the people must jump through in order to find forgiveness from God, and he’s angered by it! But more than that, Jesus offers an alternative.

You see, for Jesus: No longer does forgiveness have to cost you something. No longer is it about how much you pay. No matter is it about what you do. No longer do you have to travel hundreds of miles and kill an animal in a temple.

Jesus says: What I am coming to do is offer forgiveness for free! You don’t have to do anything! This very week, I am going to go and die, for the ultimate atonement for you! Once and for all I will die in your place! The forgiveness I am offering for you is out of love, it is out of overwhelming grace, and it is FREE!

And that is the message that Jesus continues to speak to us this morning.

My fear, is that somewhere down the road of church history, we’ve went back to setting up tables in the outer courts of our churches. We’ve went back to expecting something of people in exchange of forgiveness. For some reason, when sinners and outcasts walk into our churches, they think that they can only experience the forgiveness and love of God if they clean up their act.

Maybe you’ve heard this before: well, let me get in a better place of life and then I’d feel comfortable going to church. If I was to walk into church now, I’d set fire the minute I walk into the door. People have gotten this idea that they have to do something if they are every going to be able to experience the forgiveness of God.

And if I’m honest, I think it’s us, the Church, that are responsible for presenting that kind of Gospel. We’ve shown people judgement and criticism before we’ve ever mentioned one word about the forgiveness and grace that is available for them. When we judge people who are not like us, when we cast blame on sinners, when we scrutinize the outcasts, when we make people feel like there’s no place for them here, we are saying don’t come to our church unless you look like us! Don’t come to this place of worship until you stop your reckless lifestyle. Don’t come here unless you believe the things we do. Don’t come here if you’re doubting. Don’t come here if you have questions. I’ve heard church people talk like that: I hope they’ve changed recently because they’re trouble. Don’t you know what they’ve done? Haven’t you seen their fb page?

And what we do, sometimes even without realizing it, is we are setting up tables in the outer courts of our churches. We’re setting up barriers. And with each table, and stare, and judgment, and whisper, we are saying: here are the hoops you have to jump through to gain the forgiveness of Christ. Here’s what you have to believe. Here’s how you have to act. Here’s what you have to look like. Here’s what you have to wear.

But what Jesus does, in the midst of all that junk, in our churches, is he comes on the scene and starts flipping tables. He’s saying no! They don’t have to do anything! I have forgiveness for you and for them and it is Free! Out of my unfathomable grace and love, I have paid the price and now I extend it to you. All you have to do is accept it.

Spencer, my prayer is that we can be a church, who doesn’t set up tables outside our doors, but instead we live and we talk and preach, and we sing, and we show, and we shout about the free forgiveness and grace that is available to anyone and everyone! It doesn’t matter your past, or your fb page, or what you wear, God’s forgiveness is here for you!

Bob Goff, in his book Live in Grace, Walk in Love, talks about the importance of forgiveness. He tells about when his daughter was still young, he realized that throughout her life she will have many discouraging moments. He knew that as she grew up she’ll mess up and and slip up. And he was trying to think of a way to show her that no matter what, he would always forgive her show her grace.

Bob had a eureka moment. He decided that he would write letters of forgiveness in advance, covering every bad thing he could think of and then bury them under a tree in his front yard for her to find years down the road. “I forgive you for coming home after curfew, for talking back, for sneaking into the movie theater,” anything he could think of.

One of the notes read “I forgive you for wrecking my car”. To Bob, it seemed odd writing a note like that when his daughter barely came up to his knee caps. But it ended up happening! When she was in high school, she wrecked his car.

When that happened, Bob’s daughter came to him in tears, filled with guilt and shame. And without saying a word, Bob took her out to the tree and gave her a shovel and they were able to dig up the box full of notes. He rifled through them and pulled one out and handed it to her. It was dated many years earlier and on it it read, “I forgive you for wrecking my car”.

Now that’s free forgiveness! When she was a little girl, Bob didn’t know where his daughter would be or what she would do in the future. But he decided that forgiveness would always be open and available and waiting at the base of that tree.

And if you’re here this morning and your hurting and ashamed and broken. If you look back on your past and you see mistake and failure and sin and regret, can I tell you this morning that Jesus has already forgiven you. The note has been written in Christ’s blood and buried for you to find. And that forgiveness is free. No exchange of money. No action on your part. All you have to do is dig it up and accept the forgiveness that is extended to you today.

The second thing that Christ shows us about the True Place of Worship, is that His Presence is Open.

I want to explain to you another crucial characteristic about the temple of Jerusalem. First of all entire property which we refer to as the “temple” spanned the equivalent of 35 football fields. I mean it was huge! And it was surrounded by these massive walls.

And the temple was separated into four distinct courts and each court got smaller and more exclusive the farther into the temple you went. The outermost court is what they referred to as the Court of Gentiles. This was where the moneylenders and the merchants had set up shop and where anyone could come to. It was open to the public. Didn’t matter your gender or your religion. Whether you were Jew or Gentile, the Outer Court was open to you.

Inside of that court was then the Court of Women. This was where any Jew that was considered ceremonially clean could gather. The only people that were not allowed in this court were the Gentiles, people who weren’t Jewish.

Now inside of that court was the men’s club. This was the Court of Israel. This was where all the dudes could gather and they would teach and preach. They would read Scripture and debate Torah. This was where the action happened. All of the courts outside of this one–the Court of Women and the Court of Gentiles–only existed to overhear and peer into what was going on in the court of Israel. If you were lucky, you could hear the priest teaching. If you were lucky you could catch a glimpse of the men debating.

And finally, inside the Court of Israel, was the Court of Priests. This is also known as the Holy of Holies. It was hidden behind this giant curtain and it was where the presence of God was believed to dwell. It was so exclusive and so sacred that no one was allowed in but the high priests. The presence of God was so special that it was restricted. Not everyone was allowed in.

Let’s go back to Jesus’s actions in Matthew 21. Whenever he overturns tables and scatters the money of the people gathered there, he essentially crumbled the temple economy. His actions would have collapsed temple worship. It put everything on pause.

In the accounts of Matthew, Mark, and Luke the crowd stands in stunned silence. No one opposes Jesus actions. No one speaks up.

But in John, something important happens. After Jesus overthrows the tables, the Jews come and ask him for a sign. What do you have to say for yourself? With what authority do you do these things? If you are really from God, then prove it!

And Jesus responds with the sign that is to come, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will rise it up.”

But the Jews are confused. They think he’s talking about the actual temple. It took us 46 years to build this place and you think you can rebuild it in 3 days?

But no. Jesus wasn’t talking about the actual temple. He’s talking about himself. He is the temple, the living breathing walking speaking presence of God. And after being killed he will be raised back to life in three days.

And this is so important. It paints a perspective of his actions in the temple that day that we mustn’t miss.

Jesus’s disruption of the temple economy and collapse of temple worship was a statement that no longer will the presence of God be contained to the innermost court. No longer will the presence of God be exclusive. No longer will Gentiles and women be closed out of the place of worship.

But instead, Jesus was going to go to the cross so that the presence of God can be opened and available to everyone. We see this the moment that Christ died. In that moment, we find this seemingly out of place description of the veil of the temple, of the Holy of Holies, being torn in two.

What does that mean? It means that this place that was so exclusive and sacred where only a select few people could enter. The centerpoint of the presence of God, has now been torn open and the presence of God is open to everyone and anyone!

That’s what happened at Christ’s death. That’s why he disrupted the temple. It was as if he was overturning every table and removing every barrier so that anyone was free to enter the presence of God. Anyone can find the presence of God. It’s no longer contained and compartmentalized. It is everywhere and anywhere.

This morning, did you know that you can enter the presence of God? So often, our language can make it seem like the presence of God is contained to this building or these altars, and while the church is so important and we’re going to get to that in a bit, the truth is, because Christ died, the presence of God can rest amongst his people and anyone can find Him anywhere.

Because of what Christ did on the cross, I can experience the presence of God when I crack open my Bible and spend time in prayer every single morning. I do my devotions at a local coffee shop every morning. Did you know that the presence of God can be experienced at a coffee shop while eating a roasted tomato bagel and drinking a latte? It’s true!

Because of Christ, we can experience the presence of God filling a hospital room of a loved one who is hurting and sick. Because of Christ, we can experience the presence of God in the car as I am screaming and crying out to God in anger and frustration.

His presence is open and available to you. In his presence we find peace and assurance. We feel the warmth of encouragement and can feel the depth of His love. The answer to some of life’s most difficult questions is found in the presence of God.

Where do I find hope in the midst of my hopeless situation? In the presence of God. Where to I find the courage and confidence to overcome my fear and anxiety? In the presence of God. Where do I find out God’s plan and purpose for me? In the presence of God.

If we are ever going to become the Church God is calling us to be or the people God is calling us to be, number one on our list Spencer Church has to be seeking God out and getting into the presence of God as much as we can. Amen? It’s there we are transformed and cleansed. It’s in his presence that our perspective is changed and we can find healing. My prayer is that this church will be a place where the presence of God is felt and experienced in a powerful way!

But it has to start with us.

So my question for you is: Are you getting into the presence of God? Because it is open to you!

All it takes is calling upon the name of God. Humbling yourself before him. Casting your thoughts to him in prayer. Sharing with him your sufferings and your troubles. Asking him for help and strength. Offering him praise and worship.

God’s presence is open to you anywhere. But we have to be willing to get into it.

We have a young adult small group that meets at our house every Thursday. At first, our group was awkward and quiet. You asked a question and a hush fell over the crowd. I though that was quiet. But it got even quieter when you asked someone to pray.

And when I saw how hesitant people were to pray to God, I thought it was high time for us to do a series on prayer. So we took 5 weeks to walk through the study on a book called Circle Maker together. It’s a great book. Highly recommend it. Everybody seemed engaged and interested in the study we were doing and on week 5, the last group before ending the study on prayer. I felt like God was leading me to finish the study in the only fitting way I knew. End it with a time of specific prayer.

So there were 7 or 8 of us gathered together in our living room. We huddled together in a circle and I asked if anyone had a prayer request, someone spoke up and shared their heart, something they were struggling with and rest of us gathered around them and we prayed. And in that moment the presence of God fell like upon us. If you ask any of the Young Adults who were there that night they’d tell you the same thing.

People were sharing their struggles and their fears. Anxiety attacks, depression, a new job, needing a place to live, looking for a boyfriend. All of these needs came spilling out of our group and we cried together and laughed together and prayed together and laid hands on one another. And God’s presence descended in our living room in a real and powerful way. It was amazing. It was like a mini revival.

That’s just a testament to the fact that whenever and wherever we open our hearts and thoughts to God and call upon His name, his spirit and presence will fall upon you where you are.

I believe that we desperately need the presence of God. Jesus has cleared the tables and the booths out of the way. He’s made his presence available to you church, but will you seek him out? His presence is open today.

The final thing that Christ shows us about the true place of worship is that the True Place of Worship is Jesus Christ.

Let’s look now to the events that followed Jesus’s cleansing of the temple in the book of Matthew. Look with me, in verse 13. Jesus has just flipped the tables and scattered the coins. He speaks to the crowd gathered there:

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

And then something amazing happens! Verse 14:

14 The blind and the lame came to him at the temple, and he healed them. 15 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. 16 “Do you hear what these children are saying?” they asked him. “Yes,” replied Jesus, “have you never read, “‘From the lips of children and infants you, Lord, have called forth your praise’[g]?”

Jesus actions in the temple that day, did not prompt anger and hatred at first. That came from the teachers the law and chief priests a bit later. The initial reaction to Jesus’s cleansing of the table was one HEALING and of PRAISE.

People watch Jesus tearing down these hurtful and oppressive structures of the temple economy and suddenly the blind and the lame are free to come to him and Jesus heals them! How long had they been cast aside and ignored while people profited off the poor in the outer courts. And now that the tables and cages and moneylending stations have been cleared, they are free to come into the courts to be healed.

It was Jesus’s clearing of the temple that freed up these little children to run around and to shout praise and to laugh and to play in their Father’s house. Jesus replaced the bondage of financial burden with the freedom to come to be healed and to praise God.

What Jesus did was remove all of the other objects that were being worshipped–money, prosperity, profit–and showed the people who was really deserving of worship: Himself.

You see, our hearts can so easily become a lot like those temple courts. We can worship so many different things! Set up so many different tables and stands, in our hearts!

Why? Because everything in the world is begging for our worship. The world tells us we should worship money because money will make you happy. You can earn and you can buy and you can spend. The world tells us we need to worship our image. If you can just be thin enough. Just be pretty enough just be muscular enough, then you’ll be happy.

We can worship our families. Where everything we do, and everything we buy, and every life decision we make is to keep our family content and happy. We can worship pleasure. Everything we do is in the pursuits of more pleasure. We can use people and things that are destructive all so that we can find more pleasure. We can worship politicians and believe that they are the only way to happiness and peace for our families and our country. We can worship our hurts and our pain, did you know that? Where everything we do is consumed with the mission of somehow freeing ourselves from the pain we feel. We are always doing everything we can to find peace and healing.

The problem with all of those things, when we place our worship in things other than God, when we spend our lives running after other things. We will never ever be satisfied. We will never find fulfillment. You will never have enough money. You will never have enough pleasure. Your family will never be perfectly content and happy. We don’t find the healing and peace we desire. When we worship other things we always always always come up empty. Worshipping other things will destroy us. It will hurt us. It causes us great anxiety running after other things can wear us out!

It so important to direct our worship in the right direction because ultimately what we worship defines who we will become. What we worship defines our identity. What we worship will determine the course of our life.

And Jesus understood this. That is why Jesus was so passionate about the false worship in the outer courts. It was ruining the people he loved and it was ruining the purpose and the point of the temple. It wasn’t about the money. It was about worshipping God!

That was why Jesus overturned the tables. It wasn’t an act of vengeance. It wasn’t an act of anger. It wasn’t an act of destruction. It was an act of restoration! Jesus was restoring the temple to be a place where only God was worshipped. They had turned the temple into a den of robbers, but Jesus restored it to a place of worship. Where people are healed. Where kids can run around and laugh and play and sing praises to God.

And God wants to do the same thing with your heart. He wants to clean house and redirect your place of worship. So easily our hearts can be turned to worship so many different things. Our priorities are out of wack. Our focus is in the wrong place. Jesus wants to come into your life and restore your place of worship. He wants to redirect your praise to a Himself. Because it is there that healing and goodness and joy and peace is found.

I’ve seen too many people who are dissatisfied and angry and lost and hungry and hurting and broken and strung out and anxious all because they’ve believed the lies of the world. They’ve fallen into the trap of worshipping so many different other things and being pulled in so many different directions. I’ve seen people who are so worn out and depressed because they have set up so many tables and cages and stations in their heart that they can’t even get into the presence of God anymore. They can no longer glimpse into the Holy of Holies. They can’t hear his voice. They cannot know his will for their life. They cannot feel his love or understand the free forgiveness he wishes to offer because they have been convinced that they must worship so many different things. There’s so much junk in the way!

But the beautiful thing is this: when we allow Christ to come in, he can’t help but over turn all of the tables that are taking up space! He begins to remove all the junk that we worship, when we are reminded that he is the only one deserving of praise and of our heart’s desire, suddenly God not only restores our hearts but all of the things we were worshipping are also restored. When we quit worshipping and chasing after money and instead place our worship in Christ, when He has a hand in how we spend our money, our finances improve and we always have enough. When we quit worshipping our marriage and our families and instead show them who is truly deserving of worship, suddenly our marriage and family dynamics improve and are filled with more grace and love and intimacy. When we stop worshipping our hurts, and instead worship Christ, we find that our hurts find healing and we find rest.

Where are you going to place your worship? What is deserving?

Annie and I had little Rosie Jane in February of this year. And we were so excited as first parents. We were pumped.

But because it was our first baby, that meant that we had to get everything we need in order to take care of a mini human. Annie and I had never had a need for a car seat or a stroller until we found out we were pregnant and because of the generosity of our closest friends and family who we are so thankful for, we were coming home to gift after gift after gift on our doorstep for Rosie Jane and a lot of them were those necessities that we’re glad to have.

But we’d began receiving those gifts months before Rosie was here. And so what became the routine was to begin storing all of the baby gifts in the baby room–the nursery. From Strollers to high chairs, to baby clothes, all of it was stored in the baby room. It began to piled up and pile up, I mean you can barely open the door.

But as it got closer to her due date I came to the realization that I eventually had to clean out her room. I had to to go in there and move out every box, every package, and every barrier that is taking up space in her room.

I could think of no better illustration then a father’s love for his child. In order to provide a place of safety, a place of contentment, a place of peace, and security. A father will remove every barrier that stands in the way of intimacy with his child. You better believe that long before she arrived, every single box was gone because nothing was going to keep her from the peace and protection of my presence. Why because even now, overwhelming love for her drives me to want to break down any barrier that stands in the way.

And the same thing is true of Christ! If we invite him into our places of worship, into our hearts, out of his overwhelming love for you he is ready to break down every barrier. He wishes to come in and begin flipping tables. He wants to throw the booths into the streets. He wants to scatter the money. He wants to offload all of the many things that your heart is worshipped and free you up so that you can find healing in him, just like the blind and lame. And he wants to free you up to worship him, so that you can once agains laugh and run and sing like the children, free and at peace.

When we place our worship of Christ who is more deserving and honorable, our whole life is restored and transformed and what peace and assurance is found.

I want to close us in prayer this morning

When we see what is the true place of worship, we see that no matter what you’ve done no matter where you are, no matter what your past looks like, Christ has cleared away all of the junk, he has broken down every barrier to offer you forgiveness for free. It costs you nothing. You don’t have to change or figure it all out before you can accept it. Instead, Christ died to offer you forgiveness for free.

Not only that but when we see the true place of worship, we see that nothing can stop you from entering into the presence of God. No matter where you are or what your doing. His Spirit is always there and his presence is always open to offer peace and encouragement and direction. If your here this morning and you’re saying I need more of the presence of God in my life. I want the presence of God to fall on me this week in the midst of the mundane in routine.

And finally, if you find yourself downtrodden, worn out, hopeless, anxious, worried, tired all because you’ve found yourself running after so many different things. Worshipping so many different things. You realize this morning that you’re ready for Christ to come in and flip the tables and tip the booths. Your ready for him to change your perspective and your focus to Himself. You’re ready for Him to be the only place of worship this morning.

I want to pray for us this morning.