Expository Thoughts (continued)
they had made God's house "a den of thieves." He knew how formal and ignorant the ministers of the temple were. He knew how soon the temple and its services were to be destroyed, the veil to be rent, and the priesthood to be ended. But He would have us know that a reverence is due to every place where God is worshiped. The reverence He claimed for the temple, was not for the temple as the house of sacrifice, but as "the house of prayer."
Let us remember this conduct and language of our Lord, whenever we go to a place of public worship. Christian churches no doubt are not like the Jewish temples. They have neither altars, priesthood, sacrifices, nor symbolical furniture. But they are places where God's word is read, where Christ is present, and where the Holy Spirit works on souls. These facts ought to make us grave, reverent, solemn and decorous, whenever we enter them. The man who behaves as carelessly in a church as he would in an inn, or a private dwelling, has yet much to learn. He has not the "mind of
Christ."
Notes on 19:41-48
41. He wept over it. Wordsworth remarks, "Christ here proves his twofold nature, by shedding tears as man for what he foretold as
God."
43. "The days will come . . ." The predictions of this and the next verse were fulfilled literally at the siege of Jerusalem under Titus.
Not one word failed.
44. "The time of God's coming to you." Poole remarks: "God's