The Passion Week Day 2
Today I am focusing on the second cleansing of the Temple by a side of Jesus that takes my breath away.
Raised to understand the power of rage and to know and to experience and yet to also admit my own capacity to possess the frightening hold that an ungodly temper can have on a human soul…
having cowered in fear of another’s temper unleashed…
and yet having felt my own heart rate increase, body temperature elevate and the death grip that anger can take on my own soul when it threatens to overtake the spirit of Christ in me…
I try to separate what I know of anger fueled by sin from anger in Christ who knew no sin.
So I read the passages we are given and I try to imagine this Holy Anger loosed on a scene that had grown familiar to the people.
It was commonplace…convenient…no longer considered out of the ordinary…that the beautiful Temple dedicated to the LORD God Almighty had become a market place and shortcut from one side of town to the other.
And the Son of God said…in no uncertain terms…the people had forgotten what it meant to be set apart and holy and reverent and doing the business of God in the House of God.
Prayer.
Healing.
Worship.
This was what should be happening in the Temple.
But instead it had been defiled and dirtied by anything but it’s God ordained purpose.
And now we are His temple, you know.
He has made His dwelling in us who believe.
He has saved us and rescued us and placed His Spirit in us, human temples.
Not that we are our own gods…silence that lie of our culture today, my friend.
No.
We have become a dwelling place for the Lord God.
Small and fragile and insignificant jars of clay in which the Living God,
Jehovah I am, Yahweh has made Himself a place of residence that His light and life would shine out.
We are His temple and thus a place of prayer, worship and reverence.
We attend churches where the focus should be prayer, worship and reverence.
In Christ’s Revelation to John, we see that He is still very interested in cleansing of His Churches:
We see the indictments against the Church in the subtitles of Chapters 2 and 3:
- The Loveless Church
- The Compromising Church
- The Corrupt Church
- The Dead Church
- The Lukewarm Church
Matthew Henry says this in his commentary:
“No observances, professions or supposed revelations, will profit, if men do not amend their ways and their doings. None can claim an interest in free salvation, who allow themselves in the practice of known sin, or live in the neglect of known duty. They thought that the temple they profaned would be their protection.
But all who continue to sin because grace has abounded, or that grace may abound, make Christ the minister of sin; and the cross of Christ, rightly understood, forms the most effectual remedy to such poisonous sentiments. The Son of God gave himself for our transgressions, to show the excellence of the Divine Law, and the evil of sin.
Never let us think we may do wickedness without suffering for it.”
Matthew Henry commentary on Jeremiah 7:11 from ebible.com
As we pause on Monday of Holy Week, it is good to examine our own “temple” and ask God to reveal where we have allowed other things to defile this holy place in us where God alone should dwell.
Along with the passages below, I highly recommend one of the most powerful teachings I have ever heard based on the passages regarding the cleansing of the Temple from Jim Cymbala. The link, My House Shall be Called a House of Prayer is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U79YOKje2zU
Be blessed today with a holy awareness of God’s presence within you.
May it fill you with such joy that your own righteous and pure anger would rise up and drive out anything that would dare to defile the dwelling place of God IN your precious heart, body, soul and mind.
Allow the Passion of Christ to do a holy cleansing in you today.
You are so deeply loved <3
Scriptures:
Matthew 21:12-13 and 14-16
Mark 11:11 and 15-19
Luke 19:45-48
Jeremiah 7:11
Isaiah 56:7 (in context of Salvation of the Gentiles vv.1-8)
Revelation 2:1-3:22