Anointed Sin?

And when he had made a scourge of small cords, he drove them all out of the temple, and the sheep, and the oxen; and poured out the changers' money, and overthrew the tables; And said unto them that sold doves, Take these things hence; make not my Father's house an house of merchandise. (John 2: 15, 15)

What do you call business carried out in a holy place? What do you call ministry focused on financial returns? What do you call a minister who must be appreciated to minister? What do you call a minister who is paid to pray for people? What do you call a prophet who will only ‘see’ after inducement?

I want us to go to the Bible to understand this.

Many people assume what was happening at the temple was outright sin and thus the reason Christ ran the traders out.  

And if the way be too long for thee, so that thou art not able to carry it; or if the place be too far from thee, which the LORD thy God shall choose to set his name there, when the LORD thy God hath blessed thee: Then shalt thou turn it into money, and bind up the money in thine hand, and shalt go unto the place which the LORD thy God shall choose: And thou shalt bestow that money for whatsoever thy soul lusteth after, for oxen, or for sheep, or for wine, or for strong drink, or for whatsoever thy soul desireth: and thou shalt eat there before the LORD thy God, and thou shalt rejoice, thou, and thine household, (Deuteronomy 14: 24 – 26)

People far from Jerusalem were ordered to carry money and purchase everything; from sacrifices to food. And since the sacrifices had to be vetted by the Levites, the temple courts were the ideal place for that to happen, keeping in mind that those were pilgrims and of course very green concerning where they would do anything as any stranger in a city will tell you. And that was the reason God made the provision for that.

Another thing you will realize as you study scriptures is that there was only one currency that was allowed in worship. It was called the shekel of the sanctuary. Of course people from all over would have currencies of where they came from. They would therefore need to exchange it with the sanctioned currency. Once again the temple area would be the ideal place for those transactions as it was managed by the called out people; Levites. Any other place would be risky as conmen, brokers and opportunists would cash in on the flood of pilgrims coming to Jerusalem.

What was happening in the temple grounds was therefore sanctioned by scripture and been going on for centuries.

Why then was Christ chastening people for doing what was spiritually and traditionally right? Why did He overturn their desks and free the animals? I will get us one simple verse.

No servant can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon. (Luke 16:13)

What was meant as an accessory to worship had slowly evolved into a business enterprise. Mammon had slowly and subtly taken control of a good thing, even a thing whose purpose was to facilitate the worship of God’s people. It had become the driver of the activity, meaning that the goal of the activity had shifted from God to profit. At the end Mammon had overthrown God and His purposes and taken centre stage in the God sanctioned thing.

Jesus was not therefore whipping them for the exchange but for the merchandising of the same. They had transformed the temple area into a mega mall and livestock market.

That meant that people who had come from far to be lead through that exchange to real worship were many times left thoroughly frustrated by seeing the goings on in the temple area. They would go back home exploited instead of spiritually refreshed. This reminds me of another passage.

Who is there even among you that would shut the doors for nought? neither do ye kindle fire on mine altar for nought. I have no pleasure in you, saith the LORD of hosts, neither will I accept an offering at your hand. For from the rising of the sun even unto the going down of the same my name shall be great among the Gentiles; and in every place incense shall be offered unto my name, and a pure offering: for my name shall be great among the heathen, saith the LORD of hosts. But ye have profaned it, in that ye say, The table of the LORD is polluted; and the fruit thereof, even his meat, is contemptible. Ye said also, Behold, what a weariness is it! and ye have snuffed at it, saith the LORD of hosts (Malachi 1: 10 – 13a)

Chances are that the enterprise was not as developed in Malachi’s time. By the time Christ came it was fully functional and its structures were solid, very strong. But worse is the fact that it had become normal and accepted as the standard in worship.

No wonder Jesus came at it that strongly. No sermon could have been strong enough. No prophecy could have been powerful enough to challenge that status quo. It required that whipping and overturning of the empire for its perversion to be even considered as wrong.

Fast forward two millennia later; what is happening is much worse that what Jesus was dealing with. In fact some churches have become so steeped in Mammon that they are marketplace churches proudly. We have gone even beyond the temple courtyard to the temple proper, even the altar itself. Most pulpits spew only marketplace sermons. Some have all but forgotten why Christ came and died because we must have this and the other.

We have gone beyond abusing accessories to worship to turning those accessories to objects to be worshipped or at least bring in some money. We have made worship impossible in our assemblies by redefining worship to mean what fits us as opposed to what the Bible teaches.

Assume with me that Jesus appears in your church like He did to the Emmaus couple. Would He be allowed to preach? Would He qualify to occupy that pulpit even for a fleeting moment with the qualifications we know He had when He walked amongst us? Would He have the high qualifications required to fill that pulpit?

You see, the Jesus of the movies is not the Jesus of the Bible. He would appear as just another person who is exceptional in nothing outwardly.

For he shall grow up before him as a tender plant, and as a root out of a dry ground: he hath no form nor comeliness; and when we shall see him, there is no beauty that we should desire him. He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not. (Isaiah 53: 2, 3)

Can we allow such a character to occupy our pulpit? You see He has no degree, even the most basic. He does not have the connections to big names. He does not quote Aristotle and Shakespeare. He will not quote trending topics in His introduction. In other words He would be too plain.

If He had issues with those who knew Him (Matthew 13:54; Mark 6:3), imagine our most progressive society?

When God gave me the ministry to empower Christian writers, one of the very first books I helped publish was titled ‘Why Jesus would not make it to be Senior Pastor Today’. In it the author was using scripture to demonstrate the fact that Jesus would be totally and hopelessly unqualified to be made a pastor in our churches today because His methods are so different, many times opposite to what is done in most churches today.

Yet I believe the problem did not start with a corruption of doctrine. Like in Jesus’ time Mammon slowly crept in and corrupted a good thing. What the church fathers may have started as an accessory to worship and ministry was slowly and surely converted to an end in itself.

Healthcare and education were started by the church. Look at where they have ended?

Yet that can be equated with an introduction to the commerce nowadays prevalent in places of worship.

Consider this media advert that is all over that it appears normal. I am Rev. A, the chairman of B company selling C, D and E. By implication he is saying that the goods and services they provide are the best and most trustworthy because they are headed by a man of God, whatever that means. Rev. therefore is a marketing edge/ advantage to beat competitors.

Was he called by God to sell bananas? Was he ordained to sell plots? Did he become a pastor to market cleaning and security services?

Ministry F and church G have gone into real estate. Again you get the same feel when you see or hear their advertisements. They will buy time on radio or TV but the bigger share of that air time would be spent marketing those plots and houses. I know of one that retrenched dozens of pastors yet their real estate is booming according to their adverts.

Many churches are not content with the offerings they receive. They are investing them in rental and commercial buildings to be more relevant to the marketplace. Some will convert church plots for those purposes.

There are pastors who buy airtime to preach yet spend most of that time marketing their businesses. There is one whose sermons are (at least when I last heard them) very rich but he will preach for a very short time as an appetizer for the books he will be giving for a prescribed (but expensive) gift.

I have left out those who ‘lead worship’ to sell their music videos and CDs, and those who preach to sell their books because I have talked about it in another post. But I need to state that the pulpit has become the most powerful advertisement medium and the congregation the easiest market to sell anything. This is because most come to church for their spiritual nurture and will open their spirits wide for anything the pulpit will offer. Very few have any spiritual life unless it is guided by their spiritual conman, sorry, superstar, sorry, pastor. To most the Bible says only what their spiritual broker says. And I am not afraid of offending.

No wonder then that the pulpit, even church has become the greatest marketplace, a thousand times bigger and worse than the one Christ confronted in the Gospels.

A magazine will just need to write the story of one of the main guys of the church for the same to sell out in the church.

Again I have not talked about the other vendors because most of you can recognize them. The seed, handkerchief, oil, prayer, counseling, the list is endless.

One question I will ask is this. Did Jesus die to enrich us or to make us like Him? Did He die to give us real estate or eternal life?

In the same vein does the church exist to build earthly empires or to break through the gates of hell and rescue captives from Mammon among other prisons? Do we serve the interests of this earth or of the Kingdom of heaven?

I am not saying commerce is sin. What I am saying is that it is sin for a minister to use his calling (assuming he has any) and title for a marketing advantage. It is sin for a church to leave the narrow path and take the wide commercial road and think it still should be called church.

God’s church is holy. In other words it is called out from the world and therefore should live in a way that exemplifies that calling.

Again I am not saying a Christian should not be in the marketplace. It is the church and the minister whose calling forbid them from that involvement. Their work is to empower their membership to be effective in the kind of marketplace God is sending them to. Those millions being invested in church enterprises should be dispersed to members God has raised for that purpose. Then the leader’s prophetic mandate will not be compromised and soiled by their pursuit of that elusive coin.

Remember the Levitical calling? That is what I believe should guide the church and her ministers. And God knows better than the best of us that combining His calling with any other engagement is detrimental to that calling.

Let us not deceive ourselves.

For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul? (Matthew 16:26)

Sadly, the offenders are not the only guilty parties. Those who fund them are as guilty because they have relegated the direction their giving should go to the said fraudsters and spiritual brokers. We are very fluent when arguing about the priesthood of every believer yet relegate the responsibility about the resources He has entrusted to others. Why do we listen to God about our occupations yet relegate the administration of the resources that proceed from that occupation to others. How does God direct my hands to make wealth yet not direct them to where I should give? How does He guide me to a profit making enterprise yet leave the responsibility of my thanksgiving and other offerings and sacrifices to others?

You are responsible for your gifts and the way they are administered. Ask God to direct you to the ministry or person you should give them to. Otherwise you could easily fall into judgment by giving to empires whose only connection they have with your master is their name and probable appearance of success.

For a moment stop listening to the pitch the pastor or whoever else is pitching to convince you that investing in them is investing in heaven. ASK GOD HIMSELF. Then you will know with certainty where He would have you give. I would prefer that you even ask for signs if you are not very clear about the guidance. But listen to God. Your eternal destination could depend on that single decision.

You could be directing all your giving to the Matthew 7: 21 – 23 crowd. Do you think God approves of it? All the time when there are people doing the Matthew 25: 32 – 40 who are starved of support and have to toil when that support could have made them achieve a hundred fold.

A look at some churches will make you wonder where caste systems started from. How do you organize a retreat where people are required to pay the equivalent a month’s salary of the average member and insist that everyone must pay their way? How does a church organize a dinner or breakfast that costs more than a week’s wage of the average member? How do you organize a missions training conference that costs money that can only be afforded by the rich yet they will rarely if ever get any time to go for any mission? Thus we have the most unavailable for ministry being so thoroughly equipped for the same when the people who are called and available to minister are left out because they are unable to fund that equipping. Again reminds me of this.

When ye come together therefore into one place, this is not to eat the Lord's Supper. For in eating every one taketh before other his own supper: and one is hungry, and another is drunken. What? Have ye not houses to eat and to drink in? Or despise ye the church of God, and shame them that have not? What shall I say to you? Shall I praise you in this? I praise you not. (1Corinthians 11: 20 – 22)

Compare this with the church of Acts. There was an equalization that glorified God. And that not because there were no rich and poor people as there could have been no need for deacons. The reality was that the rich had their wealth at the disposal of the King they had submitted to; the risen Christ. They did what He wanted with it, even disposing of it to meet the needs of the church. And Jesus did not need to speak through the apostles; all believers were required to be hearing from the King directly.

This is the reason the whole world was reached in a short time as resources were accurately directed to places needing them. One just needed to know his specific command and do it because the others will also do their part. They did not need to convince any board about their calling because the board could not stand in for the Lord of the harvest like our days. The church also did not have anything as a structure. It had no buildings or lands. It had no business enterprises. It was as rich as the obedience of its members.

Which structure represents you?