4 - Make my house a house of prayer for the nations and do not make it into a market or a den of thieves.

Make my house a house of prayer for the nations and do not make it into a market or a den of thieves.

And he said to them, “It is written: ‘My house shall be a house of prayer,’ but you are making it a den of thieves.” Matthew 21:13

Then he taught them saying, “Is it not written: ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples’? But you have made it a den of thieves.” Mark 11:17

And to those who sold doves he said, “Take these out of here, and stop making my Father’s house a marketplace.” John 2:16

It is one thing to recover expenses when charging for goods and services related to the Kingdom, but there is a lot of profit made through the sale of “spiritual” products. I believe we should be VERY careful about this. All we have, all our knowledge and insight and experience and resources are from God. "Freely you have received, freely give." (Matthew 10:8b) It is also a severe indictment that the VAST majority of the income of the Church is spent on herself in one way or another. That is in addition to a tremendous amount of graft.

Here are a couple of my thoughts. Church as we know it in tradition settings is not so often regarded as a holy place, a sanctuary, as we tended to think about the temple in biblical times. Those have been replaced with giant buildings, like coliseums. They are prevalent and note worthy of providing thousands of people with large stages, stadium seating and sporting video, audio, multi-media presentations that wow and sizzle the audiences.

However, The Pew Research Center reports that attendance to religious weekly meetings are highest in the Jehovah Witness and Mormon religions, but less than 40% of those attend regularly. In the Christian realm of belief and attendance, Protestants are lowest on the recorded charts for attendance within mainline churches. So, in an effort to draw people to their programming and ministries, many churches now have restaurants and/or coffee shops as a part of their building structures. In 2011, Brady Boyd asked on his blog, “Have we, as American pastors, given up our calling as shepherds and unknowingly become fast food entrepreneurs who are building a religious business and not a church?” 

Churches spend an absorbent amount of money on building structures and marketing programs. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is worth over 67 billion dollars, according to www.quora.com. Mega-churches are spending millions of dollars in land acquisitions and wealth building projects. This has been a trend in the American Christian churches for 

I'm not so sure how much of this goes on in the world but I do know the issue has its roots in the "love of money" and "the pride of life".  1 Timothy 6:10 "For the love of money is the root of all evil: which while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows." 1 John 2:16 "For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world."

Many religious leaders, teachers of the gospel and religious authors are marketing and selling their videos, books and teachings throughout the world. 

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Ref. Curtis Sergeant, The Commands of Christ 
Ref. J.I.Packer, Knowing God, Got Questions -