Today’s Daily Lesson comes from Matthew chapter 21 verses 12 and 13:
12 Then Jesus entered the temple and drove out all who were selling and buying in the temple, and he overturned the tables of the money-changers and the seats of those who sold doves. 13He said to them, ‘It is written,
“My house shall be called a house of prayer”;
but you are making it a den of robbers.’
There is, as the hymn says, “Gentle Jesus Meek and Mild”, but this is not Him.
This is Jesus angered at injustice. This is Jesus intolerant of spiritual abuse. This is Jesus indignant at those who take advantage of people in God’s name.
H. Richard Niebuhr said the the 21st century American Church proclaimed:
"A God without wrath brought men without sin into a kingdom without judgment through the ministrations of a Christ without a cross."
Jesus was not put to death for being gentle, meek, and mild. Jesus went to the cross because He cleansed the Temple.
If our Jesus is only meek and mild and never angered enough to cause a scene, or disrupt the status quo then our Jesus is probably a nice guy but he’s not the Christ of the cross. He’s not our Savior.
The Christ who saves us is sometimes meek, sometimes mild, and sometimes just downright indignant with man’s inhumanity to man — and woman.
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