Matthew 21:12-13 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 moneychangers, and the seats of them that sold doves, 13 And said unto them, It is written, My house shall be called the house of prayer; but ye have made it a den of thieves .John 2:13-16 13 And the Jews' passover was at hand, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem, 14 And found in the temple those that sold oxen and sheep and doves, and the changers of money sitting: 15 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; 16 And said unto them that sold doves, Take these things hence; make not my Father's house an house of merchandise. The heart of God must have broken into a thousand pieces as He watched His’ creation, cautiously nibble on the forbidden fruit. It was not simply because man had lost their first estate, it was not just because man had transgressed the Law of God. In fact the scripture teaches that the lamb, Jesus, was the lamb that was slain from the foundation of the world. So, God knew in His infinite wisdom, before He had ever created man that Adam was going to sin. God knew that there was going to be the occasion for Adam and Eve to transgress His Law. God had even created the opportunity for the sin. God put it there in the garden, the tree of knowledge of good and evil. He had placed it within the grasp of man, the man which He loved, the man, which He had created, knowing full well that Adam was going to be tempted by that tree. God knew that Adam was not only going to be tempted by that tree, but that he was going to succumb to that temptation. God also knew that in order to redeem mankind from the fallen state of sin that He, would take upon the form of a man, be born of a woman, and walk upon this earth. Then God would allow His creation to take spikes, and drive them through His hands and His feet. God knew that He would be lifted up naked before the world, and crucified. He knew these things were going to happen long before Adam was ever created from the dust of the earth. Yet, God did it anyway; He reached into the earth and formed man because of His love. So when Adam fell, the heart of God was troubled. It was ripped apart, it was torn asunder, and the heart of God was burdened by the estate of His creation, which He loved. It was not just the fallen state of man that caused God to grieve. It was not just the fact that Adam had lost his communion and fellowship with God that caused God to hurt and yearn so. Because God knew that all of this would happen before He had ever created them. This must be understood! Before they were ever created, God knew. Before they were ever created, God was willing to pay the price. Before they were ever created, God loved them so much that He was willing to predict and foretell of His own sacrifice. Death, on a cross. He was willing to foretell the fact that He would take their sins and their transgressions upon Himself. And that He was going to pay the debt of sin. All sin. God knew all of this before creation had ever begun. So, when man fell, it was no surprise to God. It didn’t shock God. It did not cause God to exclaim, "Oh my, what am I going to do now." He already knew. He knew where He was going. The cross had already been planned. The cross of Calvary had already been predestined. Peter said, on the Day of Pentecost, that it was in the foreknowledge of God,. It was predestined in the foreknowledge of God that He would be taken by wicked hands, crucified and slain. God knew that He would be buried in a tomb. He also knew that He would come out of that tomb a resurrected Savior. It was in the knowledge of God that these things were going to happen. So, why was God grieved when He saw His creation sin, when He saw His creation fall? Why was God troubled when He saw those that He had given Himself to and for rebel against Him? When they resisted His nature, when they resisted His love and His plan, why did it grieve His heart so? It is because man did not know. Only God understood the depth that sin would take them away from God. Only God could comprehend how far a man would go because of sin. God looked upon His creation, and He knew that man had started down a road that they would never be able to walk themselves back up from. Man had started on a journey that they would never be able to recover themselves from. Only God understood that His creation had started something, which they themselves could not finish. God understood that it was more than an act of sin. Only God could realize that it was more that a rebellion, more than a transgression of the Law of God. He understood that the penalty of sin was death. Man had no comprehension of death. Man had no idea what death meant. It is amazing what we read in the Bible about mankind. What they have done and how far they can go from the will of God. It is even more amazing when we look around in the world today at the depth of sin and transgression that this world has gone to. There seems to be no limit to the depths of sin that a man or a woman can resort to. There seems to be no end as to how far men can allow themselves to be drug down into the deep, deep gutter of sin. When Adam and Eve partook of the fruit that God had instructed them not to eat, they died. They did not die a physical death they died a much worse death. They died the death of their spirit. Their innermost being died. The scripture teaches us that their spirit was alienated from the presence of God, and that they were bound in utter darkness. They were separated from the very presence of God. Not only were Adam and Eve thrust into an abyss where their spirits could not live, could not feel and could not see or experience God any longer. But every child, who would be born from them, would find themselves without God in this world. Every man, woman, boy, and girl of all future generations, would be born with a spirit that could not feel God. A spirit, which would be separated from the very presence of God. Mankind would be destined to live as living souls, but their spirits would be separated from God by sin. They would be separated by death, if you will. Spiritual death is drastically worse than natural death. If we could understand that as grieved as we are at the passing of a friend or a loved one, we cannot begin to understand the implications of true spiritual death. We go the funeral homes and set in the parlors, and we weep. We sob into our handkerchiefs. Our hearts are troubled by death perhaps for years to come. We have all seen people that for a year after the death of a child or a spouse or some other loved one, their hearts were still grieving. We are deeply affected by death. We start to understand the finality of death. We comprehend that when someone departs from this life, we are not going to see them anymore in our life-time. We are never going to be with them again on earth. We will never touch their hands nor gaze into their eyes perhaps for years to come, perhaps never! And the last few times that we do look into their face it’s cold and stiff. As bad as physical death is, there is a death that is much worse. The death that we call death and understand as death, God calls sleep. The apostle called it sleep. If what we know as death, God calls it "sleep", what does it mean when God says something is dead? If what we know as death, the finality, the heartbreak, the emotional impact of it, God looks at and says "it is sleep." What could it possibly mean when God says that something is dead? If what we call death tears us apart and God said that’s just going to sleep. We could never understand what the true death of a soul is really like. When God looked down upon His creation and saw that they had transgressed, they had died. It was not just a physical death. It was a death of eternal separation from God. A death of utter darkness. Utter darkness. Complete darkness. Darkness you can feel. Darkness which will reach in and grab you by the heart. Darkness which will choke the breath out of you. Darkness which will stop your heart from beating, and make your hands cold and clammy. Darkness which will put upon you such a spirit of dread and weariness that you will not even feel like lifting one foot and putting it in front of another. God understands the death of a soul. God in essence said, "I will tell you what I am going to do. I am not going to let man stay in that condition. I am going to take upon myself the form of that man and I am going to pay his debt. I am going to suffer not for his sleep. I am going to suffer his death. I am going to let you nail me to a cross so that you will be able to come in to the presence of God, that your heart can live. That you can know what it is to have life and life more abundantly. I am going to pay the price so that those who have been carried to the very depth and immorality of sin can be made free. I am going to pay the price so that those whose minds have been bound by alcoholism or drug addiction, and they live in a world were it just seems like everyday is turmoil and turned upside down. And they live in a world were demonic fingers are grasping a hold of their soul and pulling their minds into a pit and whirlwind that they cannot understand. In the mist of that turmoil, I am going to pay the debt. I can stop the whirlwind. I can stop death. I can stop the effects of sin." If we could remember what it was like to be lost. If we could remember what it was like to be reaching for something that we did not know existed. Reaching for something that we only hoped was real. We saw other people who seemed to have an experience with God. And our souls begin to reach out, and reach beyond the sin, and reach beyond the doubt, and reach beyond the fear. We begin to search and cry out. From an empty grave we cried out. Somehow we reached in to the presence of God and God liberated our soul. God knew where sin would take mankind. But He was willing to pay the debt, so that He could bring man back again. He knew that there would be a time in the history of mankind, when as a baby was being born, and its body was almost completely out of its mother. That there would be men who would be paid to reach up into that womb with forceps, and pry open that baby’s scull. And reach in there with a machine and suck the brain right out of that child that was being born, and we call it legal. He knew that there would come a time in the future of man because of sin, that a man would live with a man as he would with a woman. And our society would say that it was okay, that it was natural. That it was an alternate form of life. He knew that there would be a time, because of the ravaging of sin, and the immorality of sin, and the wickedness of sin. That there would be a league of men who would bind together, that their goal in life would be for the legal sex acts with children, even infants. And that our society would say that it was all right. What hurt the heart of God, is that He understood, and He knew how far sin could take us. It was not just the eating of a fruit off of a tree that was such a simple act of disobedience. But when you transgress the Law of God. When you go against the Law of God. When you transgress the Law and the Word of God there is no limit to how far you
> will go. The boundaries are gone. And God said in essence, "I can’t leave my creation like that. I can’t stand for them to be in that condition." He saw the minds of those who were bound by spirits. He saw them get up in the morning and try to go through a day. Their bodies would shake. Their minds twisted. And they would try to go through the motions of life and normality. Trying to go through the motions of society. God knew that in their darkness, in their midnight’s, that their demons would come into their minds, and into their spirits. They would draw them into the gutter and into the depths of sin. Even those men, who appeared to be good men. They looked like they were happy. They were married. They had children. They worked a successful job. They had money in the bank. They drove a nice automobile. But when their demons would began to drag and tear at their soul, they would leave the comfort of their home. They would leave their family. They would forget they had children of their own. And they would find a child on the sidewalk. And snatch that child into the back of their car, and drive to a hiding place. And there they would tear the child apart. They would ravage that child. They would destroy the virtue. They would destroy the body and the life of that innocent one. Then tomorrow they would put their tie back on and they would go back to their job and they would drive home to their family. God saw the depravity. And God saw all of the turmoil. God saw the broken hearts of mothers who would weep themselves to sleep in their pillows each night wondering if their son would make it home because of the drugs. He knew that there would be mothers who would weep themselves to sleep night after night because they had a son who was somewhere sticking a needle in his arm though he had promised her a thousand times that he would never do it again. But sin. Sin, grabbed a hold of him and pulled him to places that he did not want to go. Sin; drug him into gutters he did not want to live in. I’ve stood with mothers beside open caskets looking into the face of their son for the last time. He had promised her, "I’m coming to church. I’m not going to do drugs any more". And God felt that heart break. God decided, "I can’t let my creation go through this." So He paid the debt. He paid the price. He destroyed the effects of sin. He broke the back of Satan. Through the cross He destroyed the works of sin. Through the cross He destroyed the power of sin. Do you understand what it means when the Apostle writes, "and sin shall have no more dominion over you." When he wrote, "you who have been bound by sin have now been made free by the blood of Jesus Christ.” When Jesus marched into the temple with a whip that He had fashioned by His own hands. A scourge of small cords that He had together in the form of a lash. With righteous indignation He began to slap the air and slap the tables, kick over the money changers, loosen the pigeons and the doves, and the sheep and run them out. With the sentiment of, "You don’t know what you are doing; you don’t understand what you are doing. I have called this place a place of prayer, it is written, it shall be called a place of prayer for all nations. And you have turned it into a den of thieves. Every time a broken life walks into your church, God in all of His righteousness, in all of His love and mercy reaches down from heaven and says, "Here, I’ve got healing for your soul. Here is a precious gift. But a prayer-less Church rips that gift out of the hands of God and sends that broken soul home still broken. We have stolen his victory. We have become thieves. Every time a woman comes into your building, who has lived for years under the sin of molestation by those who she thought should love her the most. God is reaching down to love her. God is reaching out to comfort her. He wants to take away the hurt and the nightmares. But she goes home with that demon still tormenting her mind. Because a prayer-less saint is not sensitive to the voice of God. You have stolen her deliverance. You have stolen her future. You have stolen her life. You have become a thief. Every time a soul comes into your building, every time a life walks in that is ravaged by the demons of alcoholism. They can’t get through a day. Their family has been robbed from them. Their wife has left them. Their children don’t want to have anything to do with them. They have lost job after job. They have no sure place of dwelling any more because addiction has wrecked their life and destroyed their mind. Yet they have stumbled in to the House of God looking for hope and refuge. But a prayer-less Church reaches up and steals their victory. Every time we just walk in the power of our own flesh. Every day that we walk in our own carnality. We turn our church into a den of thieves. Robbing our city of the revival that God has for it. Robbing our state of the revival that God longs to pour out upon it. Restoration that He paid the price for their sin so that He could pour His Spirit out upon it; that He went to the tree and gave His body a ransom for their soul and their sin. So that He could redeem them; So that He could pour His Spirit out; So that He could fill them with His power and His glory. God is saying to your city, "Here it is. I’ve got revival for you. I bought healing for you. Here’s the gift of life I’ve purchased for you." But a prayer-less Church reaches up and grabs revival out of the hands of God. We steal their revival. We steal their deliverance. We steal their healing. We steal their peace. We steal their joy. We go through our Pentecostal protocol, playing who’s who among the church members. Who’s the greatest and who’s the best. Who’s going to sit on the right and who’s going to sit on the left. And the whole time, we’re nothing but a den of thieves stealing from this world the revival God has ordained for it. Stealing from your own family the deliverance that God want them to have. Stealing from your own children the hope of eternity. Stealing from your own spouses the joy of God’s Salvation and the life that God longs to fill them with. Because of our own prayerlessness. We want to do everything but pray. And the Word of God declares over and over again and again, that there is nothing to do but pray. I don’t read in here where He said "My house shall be called a house of singing." nor ‘a house of sermonizing’ nor ‘a house of programs’ nor ‘a house of choirs’ nor ‘a house of special singers’. What I do read in the Word is that His house should be a house of Prayer God never did say, "If my people which are called by my name would take organ lessons, and learn to play; I will hear from heaven and will heal their land." Nor did He tell to learn how to preach well that restoration would come. Neither did God instruct us to develop a good Sunday school program to reach the hurting. Nor to put together a successful outreach campaign. All of these things and more might be useful under the direction of the Holy Spirit. But God did instruct us to: humble ourselves, deny ourselves, lay ourselves down and pray and seek His face. The greatest display of love according to Jesus was to lay down your life for another. Jesus did not say that dying for someone else was proof of great love. He did teach that laying your life aside for another was the greatest statement of love one could give. Putting your life on hold for someone else is Jesus’ definition of great love. You know why we don’t want to pray? Because prayer denies our self. Our self wants to be sung to; preached to; wants to be directed; wants someone to tell us what to do, when to do it and how to do it; wants to enjoy our programs; wants to have our own way that’s why Jesus told us to, "Pick up the cross, deny yourself". What are you denying yourself of? Deny yourself. "I wanted to be sung to tonight, but I’m going to deny myself and I’m going to take up the cross". "I wanted to be preached to tonight..." "I wanted somebody to give me a word tonight..." "I wanted another blessing..." Deny yourself so that some one else can have victory or...enjoy salvation or...be healed. Until we deny ourselves we are making our church a den of thieves. Stealing from those who come in their healing. Stealing from those who are troubled their peace. Stealing from those who are bound their liberty. Stealing from those who are confused their direction. Stealing from those who are in darkness the light. Stealing from those who are hungry the bread of life. It all belongs to the lost, God purchased it and gave it to them. And if we are not a house of prayer we are a den of thieves. We need a cleansing. I need a cleansing. We need Jesus to come in and cleanse this temple. God's Best
T. Bailey
