DISCUSSION - When Worship Becomes Theft: The Temple Turned Den of Robbers

Recorded August 9, 2026, this sermon overturns the typical "moral credit score" view of goodness and argues that sin is not primarily rule-breaking but false worship — misplaced loyalty. Tracing a line from Babel and Shiloh through Jeremiah to Jesus, the speaker shows how idolatry repeatedly corrupts sacred spaces and communities.The temple-clearing and the cross are framed as the great reversal: Jesus absorbs humanity's debt and destroys the old system, creating a new, indestructible temple made of resurrected people through the work of imputation and the Spirit.The practical call is demanding but life-giving: believers are urged to love the law actively and to find the "joy of suffering" as participation in God's recreative work, living as faithful "bricks" in a renewed humanity rather than builders of temporary towers.