Trinity Harbor Church

In my Sunday school class last week, I hoped to both explain a major theme in the book of Exodus--"Who Is the Lord?"--and talk about the deliverance of Israel from Egypt. Since I didn't get to the deliverance part, and since we need to move on to the next subject in class on Sunday, I figured I'd post to the Web site what I didn't get to mention in class so that you'd have a better understanding of the Exodus.

Children have a strong sense of injustice, especially when they experience it themselves. If you punish the wrong child for an offense that you didn’t actually see happen, you will usually get howls of protest in response. Nothing seems to bother us more than getting punished for something we didn’t do.

Of course, we generally don’t mind not getting punished for something we know we did wrong. I don’t tend to feel guilty when a police car doesn’t come after me when I know I’ve been speeding. I feel relief, to be sure, but not actual guilt for having broken the law.

This state of affairs makes the events of Good Friday all the more striking when we consider them.

After Jesus triumphantly entered Jerusalem, he visited the Temple. The Temple was the place where the Jewish people worshipped God.

The Gospel of Matthew records the event:

“And Jesus entered the temple and drove out all who sold and bought in the temple, and he overturned the tables of the money-changers and the seats of those who sold pigeons. He said to them, "It is written, 'My house shall be called a house of prayer,' but you make it a den of robbers."