Israel was always getting into trouble with God, especially when it came to their worship of him. One would think the nation would have learned its lesson for all time when it made and worshiped the golden calf during its trek from Egypt to the Promised Land. Not so, for over and over again, they allowed their religious rites to become corrupt, especially by developing all sorts of ceremonies meant to please God while, outside the Temple, they lived rather secularly oriented lives. Apparently, their worship did not carry over into the way they lived from day to day - and that sounds terribly contemporary, doesn’t it?

Long before Jesus cleansed the Temple, driving out the moneychangers and those doing business in the House of God, insisting that God’s House is a house of prayer for all peo…