. Welcome morning. Sandy suggest
I get a bell I might do that. Well, if you would open your
Bibles with me to Mark chapter 11. Mark the 11th chapter. Before
we begin, let's bow before our Lord in prayer. Our Father, we're thankful that
you have, by your mercy and grace, brought us here this morning.
And Father, I pray that It is your will and purpose that you
brought us here for a time of true worship, that you might
be pleased to make this place a house of prayer, a house of
worship, that you'd be pleased to meet with us and the person
of your Holy Spirit, Father, that you might enable us to see
the Lord Jesus Christ, see him by faith. Father, I pray that
you would be with me as I attempt to open your word and declare
your gospel to your people, that you would enable me to speak
in the power of thy spirit, not in human intellect and human
logic, but Father, in the power of thy spirit, and that you might
be with each one here and enable us to hear. who's sufficient
for these things, either to preach or to hear. Who is sufficient
for these things? Without Thee, we can do nothing.
Father, we beg your blessing on our service this morning.
Father, we pray that you'd be with those who are away from
us, those who are traveling in different sicknesses and heartaches
and trials and difficulties. Father, we pray you'd be with
them. that you'd deliver, that you'd heal, that you'd comfort
and bring him back to us again as soon as it could be thy will.
All these things we ask and we give thanks in that name which
is above every name, the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. It's
for his sake and his glory we pray, amen. I've titled the lesson
this morning, The House of Prayer, and I'll read my text and you'll
see why I chose that title. Mark 11, beginning in verse 15, And they come to Jerusalem, and
Jesus went into the temple, and began to cast out them that sold
and bought in the temple, and overthrew the tables of the money
changers, and the seats of them that sold doves. And would not
suffer that any man should carry any vessel through the temple.
And he taught, saying unto them, is it not written, my house shall
be called of all nations the house of prayer? But you have
made it a den of thieves. And the scribes and chief priests
heard it and thought how that they might destroy him for they
feared him because all the people were astonished at his doctrine.
Now the Lord said his house is the house of prayer for all nations,
Jew and Gentile alike. And I'm glad he said that because
I'm a Gentile. I'm an alien from the Commonwealth
of Israel and the Lord just gave hope to a Gentile heathen like
me His house shall be of all nations a house of prayer. Now,
I know he was speaking of the temple at that time, but you
can apply that teaching to this building, can't you? This building
is supposed to be the house of prayer. Now, there's nothing
holy or special in that way about the building itself. It's just
like every other building made of building materials in that
regard. But what goes on? in this building
is supposed to be very special. What goes on in this building
ought to make this a house of prayer, a house of worship. This
word prayer that the Lord uses here, a house of prayer, that's
also translated in other places in scripture to pray earnestly,
to pray earnestly. This should be a house of sincere
prayer and worship. I know that's what we all want
it to be, And the Temple of God in Jerusalem was supposed to
be the same thing. But the Lord said the Jews at
that time had made it a den of thieves instead of a house of
prayer. And you think about, you know,
that building. This is where the Ark of the
Covenant was. This is where the mercy seat was. This is where
the candlesticks were. This is where, you know, inside
that Ark of the Covenant was supposed to be, pot of manna
and Aaron's rod that budded, the Ten Commandments written
with the finger of God. And even having all those things
didn't stop them from making it a den of thieves. That's very
sobering, isn't it? And I know that we want to do
everything that we can do to make sure that this place remains
a house of prayer. So I'd like to look at what the
Lord is saying here. And I'd like to start with what a house
of prayer is not. First, the house of prayer is
not a place to make personal profits. Now, according to John
Gill, this is what he says was going on here in the courtyard,
where the Lord was, is the courtyard of the temple. And the merchants
had set up permanent booths there. And they would sell animals for
sacrifices, and they would sell other religious things. And what
they were doing was they made the worship of God a convenience. They told people, now you don't
have to worry about raising a lamb or a ram, and then you don't
have to bring them all the way, lead them all the way here from
your house. You just come here and buy one.
We'll save you the time and trouble of bringing an offering to the
Lord. You just come here and buy one.
You know, the problem with that is I don't worship the Lord at
my convenience. I don't worship the Lord in the
way that it suits me or the way that I like the best or whatever. I'm to worship God the way God
commanded it to be done. And besides just making this
thing a matter of convenience, the merchants in these booths
were making a killing profit-wise. They were charging a huge markup
when they're selling these things for convenience sake. Just like
you go to a convenience store, you're going to pay way more
for something in there than you would at the grocery store, Sam's
or something, because it's convenient. Well, they were making a huge
markup selling these animals for convenience sake. And they
were even charging a huge markup on the doves. Doves were the
sacrifices that poor people used. They didn't have the money to
raise a lamb and sacrifice the lamb or a bullock or a goat or
something. They were so impoverished, they'd
buy a dove. They were taking advantage of
the poor people. The same way false prophets do
to this day, they take advantage of the poor in spirit, and they
do it for their own gain. All you gotta do is look at their
houses and their private jets and their yachts, and they're
taking advantage of the poor in spirit for their own gain.
And still yet today, you see the same thing as selling things
for a profit going on. How often do you see false prophets
selling trinkets? selling religious trinkets so
they can make a buck for themselves. Well, you send me X amount of
dollars, and I'll send you this little trinket that I prayed
over and I've touched. They're selling trinkets just
to make a gain for themselves. And I'm just very, very confident
nobody here would fall for that. But I tell you, there's another
way that a person can become deceived and use the house of
the Lord, the place of worship, the house of prayer, for personal
profit. We can be deceived into thinking,
well, you know, if I sacrifice my time and my money and my efforts
and, you know, I come to all these services, you know, in
this building, God's gonna bless me for doing that. He's gonna
give me more money. He's gonna give me an easier
life. He's gonna give me good health. He's gonna bless my children.
And you know, that's commerce. I'll do this and God will give
me this in return. It's commerce. If we think that,
and you know there's plenty of false prophets that preach it. You worship God, he's gonna give
you a better life. He's gonna make you healthy.
He's gonna give you more friends and keep your children off drugs
and all these things. That's using the house of God
for personal profit the same way those fellows were selling
doves. The exact same thing. And here's the thing that the
natural man doesn't get, and I think it's good for us to constantly
be reminded of this. God's to be worshipped, period. God's to be worshipped whether
he blesses me or not. God's to be worshipped whether
he gives me good health or not. God's to be worshipped whether
he gives me more money or not. I mean, whatever it is that he
does, God's to be worshipped. If we would keep that in mind,
we'll probably keep this place a house of prayer, wouldn't we?
The second thing, and I never did see this till I was studying
this this week, the house of prayer is not common. We're not to treat this place
like there's no real significance to what goes on here. Look at
verse 16 again. And Lord would not suffer that
any man should carry any vessel through the temple. Now I never
knew what that meant until this week. Here's what it means. The
people were carrying vessels. You know, they'd gone to the
market, they'd gone to town or whatever. And they bought something
in the market. Or maybe they were taking something
from their house to the market in a vessel. They were taking
it to sell there, to market. Or maybe they bought something
at the market and now they're carrying home in this vessel.
And they were using the courtyard of the temple as a shortcut to
where they were going. Instead of walking around the
outer wall of the temple, they were using the courtyard as a
shortcut. They were going in there not
to worship, They weren't paying one bit of attention to anything
that was going on there. They used it as a shortcut to go home. They were treating the temple
of God as something that was common. It was just a shortcut
to them. Well, you know, there is nothing
common about the worship of God. Nothing common about it whatsoever.
And there's no shortcuts. There's no shortcuts to God.
There's no shortcuts to the worship of God. Repentance and faith
cannot be bypassed. We cannot bypass casting ourselves
at the feet of Christ and begging him for mercy. There's no shortcuts
to that. There's no shortcuts to grace.
There's no shortcuts to eternal life. There's no shortcuts for
the forgiveness of sin. There's no shortcuts to worship.
There's no shortcuts to hearing from God and being taught of
Him. It happens slowly, much more
slowly than we normally want it. Don't you want to know everything
right now? But the Lord teaches us line
upon line, precept upon precept, slowly, slowly, slowly building. There's no shortcuts. And there's
no other way to God than Christ alone. Now our Savior is far
from common, far from ordinary, and we should never treat his
presence as something that's common and ordinary. He promised
that he would be here this morning. You think of that, where two
or three are gathered together in my name, he said, there am
I in the midst of them. The Lord's presence is here.
Now we ought not be treating that as something that's common
and ordinary. I know that we come here and we hear three messages
a week, and for many of us, we've been hearing the gospel in this
town, in the town in which we live, we've been hearing the
gospel here all our lives, all of our lives. God forbid that
we'd ever take that for granted and teach these services as something
that's common and ordinary, because the Savior's here. There's nothing
ordinary, common about the glory of God. That ought to be something
that thrills our souls every time we hear about it. There's
nothing ordinary about the sacrifice of Christ, about the blood of
Christ. Would you be surprised to hear
that in a few minutes when we begin what we call the worship
service, that I'm gonna talk about the sacrifice of Christ?
Would that surprise you? We hear about it all the time,
don't we? God forbid it ever become ordinary to us, common,
just, yeah, I've heard that before. There's nothing common or ordinary
about the Holy Spirit moving when the Word of God is being
preached and giving life and faith in Christ. That's not something
that's common or ordinary. It's a supernatural thing, isn't
it? The supernatural working of God Almighty. And God forbid
we ever treat that as something that's just common or a shortcut
to get something else that we want, that we come here seeking
a shortcut instead of seeking Christ. All right, that's what
the house of prayer is not. Now let's look at what it is.
By definition, the house of prayer is a place of prayer, isn't it?
And as I told you earlier, that prayer is sometimes translated
earnest prayer. Now you know the difference between
praying and going through the motions in earnest prayer. Every
one of us here knows that difference. When is it that when we earnestly
pray, when the Lord's made us feel our helplessness and our
weakness and a heartfelt need of him, it earnestly praying
is begging God to do something for me that I cannot do for myself. Well, I can't save myself. My prayer is Lord save me. I
can't make myself righteous. Lord, make me righteous in Christ.
I can't forgive my sin. Lord, would you forgive my sin
for Christ's sake? I will never truly pray until
the Lord shows me my utter helplessness. And if the Lord ever finally
teaches me that without him I can't do nothing, then I will truly
pray. And it'll be earnest, won't it?
Earnestly praying and seeking him. And you know that prayer
doesn't have to be eloquent. True prayer doesn't have to use
all the right religious words and check all the right doctrinal
boxes. It will cover this one, and this
one, and this one, and this one. And I use these, and thous, and
all these religious sounding words. So I've covered all that,
so that's a good prayer. Prayer doesn't have to be that
way. True prayer comes straight from the heart, crying out to
God. I give you two examples of really
good prayers, really good, that were earnest prayers. When Peter
was sinking under those waves and going down for what he thought
was the last time, he cried, Lord, save me. Not a lot eloquent
about that, is there? But that's earnest prayer. That's
earnest prayer. The leper that came to our Lord,
Lord, if you will, you can make me whole. Now that leper knew
he had no hope but Christ. And from the way he said that,
this is what it sounds like to me. He was begging the Lord to
make him whole, and he was gonna stay right there. And if the
Lord made him whole, he's gonna stay right there. If the Lord
didn't make him whole, he's gonna stay right there. One way or
another, he's gonna stay at the feet of Christ. Lord, if you
will, you can make me whole. Not a lot eloquent about that,
not a lot of deep, Sounding doctrinal words, but that's earnest prayer.
And in the house of prayer, our constant prayer should be, Lord,
save me. Lord, make me whole. Lord, forgive
my sin. Lord, see me in Christ. Lord,
forgive my sin for Christ's sake. And using the phrase for Christ's
sake, that's not a magic word. It's not something. When we say
for Christ's sake, forgive my sin for Christ's sake, this is
what we're saying. Forgive my sin because of the blood of Christ.
Forgive my sin because Christ shed his blood for me. It's not
because of anything I've done. It's not because of anything
that I promise you that I'll do. That goes back to commerce,
doesn't it? Lord, only for the sake of the
blood of Christ, would you forgive my sin? Lord, save me. so that you get all the glory
in doing it. Not because I did anything, but
because you did it all. If the Lord ever shows us that
we're a helpless sinner, that will be our earnest prayer, won't
it? If the Lord enables us to hear Christ preached in this
place, we'll follow at his feet, praying, earnestly, truly praying. And that brings me to the next
thing, the house of prayer is the place of teaching. Look at
the beginning of verse 17. And he taught, saying unto them,
is it not written, my house shall be called of all nations the
house of prayer? Even though everything seems like was going
on in the courtyard there was wrong, the Lord still taught
his people. Isn't that something? And you
know, the Savior was always teaching. He was always preaching. His
house is a place of teaching. His house is the place of preaching
the scriptures. When the Lord taught them, what
did he teach them? The scriptures. The Old Testament scriptures.
He said, it's written. There's a quotation from Jeremiah
chapter seven. It's written. He told them what's
written and he explained to them what that meant. And that's all
we're to do today. Preach the word. That's what
Paul told Timothy. In every situation, Timothy,
you preach the word. Thus saith the Lord. It is written. This book, preaching this book,
it's the only thing that will save sinners. And it's the only
thing that will feed the hearts of God's children. This word
is the children's bread and we're to preach it. We're to lay it
out there so that the children can eat and be fed and be nourished
and be taught. This is the place where we come
to meet the Lord and to hear from him. Now I know audibly
what we're gonna do is we're gonna hear the voice of the preacher.
That's the way God has ordained it. And you just can't get past
that. You can't get past the hearing
from another sinful man. But I hope you didn't. I hope
you didn't come here this morning to hear what Frank's got to say.
It's what did the Lord say? Remember when Cornelius called
Peter there, he said, now we're all here gathered together to
hear what God commanded you to tell us. We're here to hear from
the Lord. We're here to hear from him.
And as I told you earlier, he promised he'd be here. Then we
ought to conduct ourselves accordingly. Don't you reckon? Reverently
and carefully. The Lord is the most important
person here. And we should conduct ourselves
with reverence and humility and come with a desire to hear from
him, that he be our teacher, just like he was the teacher
there on this day. And then the last thing, the
house of prayer, the place of worship. We worship through the
blood of Christ, through the blood. The specific message that
we're to preach is Christ and him crucified. And I say that
because you know what the backdrop here is on this day? It's the
Passover. In just three or four days, it's
the Passover. And in three or four days, it's
the time that Christ, our Passover, will be slain for us. And the
thing that made what these thieves doing is so wrong is they were
making the sacrifice of Christ. And I hate to make the Passover
sound like it was more important than other sacrifices, but now
to the Jews, this is a high holy day, isn't it? And they were
treating that high holy day as common. It's just another ceremony,
just another one, you know, no different than all the rest of
them. They're using that as a way to promote self. But in the house
of prayer, we're to preach Christ. and him crucified. What is it? Why was he crucified? What did
he accomplish in his death? We're to preach Christ as our
only hope. I desperately need him. I know
you do too. We desperately need him. What a horrible thing to treat
the blood of Christ as something that's common and ordinary and
to trample it underfoot. Oh, I don't want us to do that,
do you? And this is what the Lord was teaching them. Now look
over in closing at Matthew chapter 21. I want us to look at this
because Matthew tells us something that Mark does not mention. I
want you to see what is the result of the Lord overthrowing these
tables and casting the religious hucksters out and then him teaching
the people. Look at Mark 21 verse 12. And Jesus went into the temple
of God, and cast out all them that sold and bought in the temple,
and overthrew the tables of the money changers, and the seats
of them that sold doves, and said unto them, it is written,
my house shall be called the house of prayer, but you've made
it a den of thieves. And then Mark tells us how the
Lord taught his people, but look what Matthew tells us happened
when the Lord was teaching his people. Verse 14, and the blind. And the lame came to him in the
temple, and he healed them. You know, I tried to envision
what it looked like that day in the courtyard. This man, Jesus
of Nazareth, came in, and to the human eye, he looked just
like every other man. There was nothing special about
him that made him stand out that you'd look at him in the flesh
and say, oh, this is the Son of God. And one man, I mean,
one man went into this pretty large place. I'm sure there were
quite a few tables and booths set up. And he overturned them
all and threw them all out. One man. I mean, this was a dramatic
scene, wasn't it? And in the midst of that wrath,
I mean, you know he had a holy wrath about this. Them treating
his father's house. This is his father's house. He
loves his father. This is the place of worship. And oh, this made him so angry.
But in the midst of wrath, he remembered mercy. He didn't kick
everybody out, did he? No, the blind and the lame came
to him, and he healed them. He healed every one of them that
came to him, without exception. They came to him in the house
of prayer. I'm sure that, you know, that
they begged him to heal him. It was just like the leper of
old. Lord, if you will, you can make me whole. And he healed
him. There were no qualifications
for them to meet. Well, now I'll heal you if you
go, you know, do this and do this and, you know, you know,
give him some works to do. And then, you know, he just immediately
healed him. They didn't have to come give
him money like they did the false religionists. He healed them
freely. Because in a few days, he's gonna
sacrifice himself for those people freely. Not gonna cost them a
thing freely. He healed them in mercy, in love,
in pity, in power. And it is my very, very earnest
prayer that the Lord would make this place, this building, what
goes on in this place, a house of prayer. And he'd be pleased
to have mercy on the spiritually blind and give us sight. That
he would be pleased to take the spiritually dead and give them
life. That he'd be pleased to give
the spiritually lame, that he give them the ability that he
would draw them So that lame person, spiritually lame person
can get up and go to Christ. And I believe he'll do that as
long as this is a house of prayer. I firmly believe that the Lord
will bless his word. And I don't know about you, but
I fully intend to keep preaching it. How about you? Because that's
what the Lord said he'll bless. All right. I hope that'll be
a blessing to you.