The Unlikely Missionary

Imagine hearing that your house is being robbed. You would probably go straight there to see what's going on. Next, imagine walking into your home and there is the robbery, in progress. I’m sure you would be in shock. Now imagine that it’s a friend or relative that is robbing you. You’d probably be feeling betrayed. Finally, imagine that they look up, see you and continue to rob you in your face. Now here comes the anger. This ladies and gentlemen is where we encounter Jesus in Mathew 21:12-14 . This is a story that most know well. Jesus goes into the temple, flies into a rage and throws some tables. It’s not that simple and the way we simplify it almost trivializes it significance in the Word (Everything in the Bible is significant or it wouldn't be there). Jesus "shook" them tables because he was being robbed; of reputation , of experience and of respect . REPUTATION : When we do the wrong thing in Jesus name we damage God’s reputation as a loving, ...

Anger gets a bad wrap because we often equate the things we do in anger with the feeling itself. Anger is a healthy emotion. Things happen. We get pissed. Now this is the point in the dialogue where the sinning part can take place. Our reaction to the anger is where we get ourselves in trouble. In the Bible, God got angry all the time. People usually talk about and preach about Jesus getting angry ( John 2:13-25 ) - I will talk about that more in my next post ( Jesus Shaking Tables ) - and Him not sinning but we love to forget that the children of Israel had a habit of pissing God off every chance they got. God is the very blueprint of how to be angry and sin not. Where you you think Jesus got it from? Like Father, Like Son. The Old Testament is basically this on a loop: God told the children of Israel to do something. They do the opposite. God gets mad (usually after several and I mean several warnings). Them doing what they did causes them to suffer the consequences of their ac...