GREAT THINGS ENTERPRISE
CLAUDE BLACK
Mark 11:17
Use Correctly
In high school, I took all the shop courses: woodworking, electric, drafting, and machine shop. The machine shop teacher, Mr. Dumont, told us that if we broke a tool, we should call him so we could find out what went wrong, learn from our mistake, and not make the same mistake again. He would walk among us and watch our progress as we worked on our projects. One day, we heard his loud shout and went to see what had happened. A student tightened a micrometer on a nut and used the delicate instrument as a wrench to twist it. Needless to say, we all got a lecture in the correct use of micrometers. That day we learned that tools have a proper use.
Mark wrote that Jesus visited the temple—the outer court available to everyone—and was incensed by the commercial businesses established there: money changers, who exchanged currency into the coins allowed for use in the temple, and merchants, who sold doves for use in sacrifices. All of this, of course, with a license from the priests, who received a percentage of the proceeds. People bought and sold in this sacred place as they would in the marketplace. Jesus, Mark said, chased them all out. “And teaching, he said to them, ‘Is it not written, My house will be called a house of prayer for all nations? But you have made it a den of robbers.’” (Mark 11:17; cf Isa. 56:7)
There was undoubtedly some similarity between Mr. Dumont’s lecture about the correct use of micrometers and Jesus’ lesson about the correct use of the temple court. It’s up to every believer to make a personal application of both lessons.
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