Believers across the country were shocked at the recent events taking place at Cities Church in St. Paul, Minnesota this past Sunday.

During their normal worship service, congregants experienced the traumatic invasion of their sacred gathering when dozens of anti-ICE protestors stormed into the church.

Congregants were understandably upset. Video footage shows an elderly woman shaking in her seat and parents shielding their children from what they are expecting to be a violent outburst.

Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon, who oversees the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice, rightly called the protestors’ actions to be “desecrating a house of worship and interfering with Christian worshippers.”

Quite possibly the most infuriating part of this whole incident is those claiming that “Jesus would have been on the side of the protestors.”

Those who claim this clearly have never read the Gospels.

The Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John provide clear insight into Jesus’ true feelings towards those who desecrate and abuse His House of worship.

At the beginning of His early ministry when the Passover was approaching, the Gospel of John records that the Temple, the holy place of worship and communion with God, was being used a place of business – a place to buy animals intended for sacrifice. In addition to this, money changers were being dishonest in the pricing of animals– causing greater financial hardship on the people of God.

Instead of feeling compassion for the money changers or seeking to understand them, John records that Jesus “made a scourge of cords, and drove them all out of the temple, with the sheep and the oxen; and He poured out the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables.”

Towards the end of Jesus’ earthly ministry, a similar practice was once again taking place in the Temple of God.  Matthew 21:12-13 records,

“Then Jesus entered the temple and drove out all who were selling and buying in the temple, and he overturned the tables of the money changers and the seats of those who sold doves. He said to them,

‘It is written, “My house shall be called a house of prayer,” but you are making it a den of robbers.’”

Again, Jesus did not seek to understand the money changers. He did not try to sympathize with them.

He drove them out. He overturned tables. He rebuked them.

What we saw in Minnesota this past Sunday was another way in which God’s House was desecrated.

While former CNN host Don Lemon shapelessly likens the storming of the church to the cleansing of the Temple and claims that churchgoers are “entitled,” the exact opposite is true.

The true entitled ones are the protestors who brazenly desecrated Cities Church– causing confusion, fear, and disruption in the hearts of the congregants who assembled to worship God.

Despite Lemon’s false claim of “free speech” and “freedom to assembly” guaranteed in the First Amendment, the Constitution was never intended to protect disgraceful and deplorable behavior.

Dhillon rightly references the violation to the FACE Act, in which these protestors participated. A federal law that “prohibits the use or threat of force and physical obstruction that injures, intimidates, or interferes with a person seeking to … exercise the First Amendment right of religious freedom at a place of religious worship.”

What took place at Cities Church on Sunday was not an exercise in First Amendment freedom.

It was a brazen violation of the First Amendment, specifically the right of the congregants to assemble peacefully to worship. Every one of these protestors deserve to be prosecuted for their violation of the law, and we as Christians must pray to that end.

The House of God is meant to be a House of Prayer. Not a place of protest.