Jesus caught a lot of
people off guard one day when he walked into the temple in Jerusalem and saw
that it had been turned into a business center. Watching the activities of selling and purchasing sheep and
doves and oxen, animals essential to the Passover meals, He made a whip of
certain cords at His disposal and cleared the temple, turning over tables and
pouring out coins and seeing to it that bodies were scampering for safety. As he did so someone heard Him say,
“Take these things away; stop making My Father’s house a place of business”
(Luke 2:16).
The authorities
approached Him and demanded He tell them by what authority He was acting in
such a way. He told them He was
acting on the authority of a greater temple then the one they were violating. He was acting on the authority of His
own life, a life that, upon dying, would rise again in three days. It took them forty-six years to build
the temple they finally hijacked and turned into a place of business. It would take Him three days to conquer
the wages of sin, death, and rise up to establish Himself once and for all
forever, as King of kings and Lord of lords.
During the midst of the
activities that day in the temple Jesus’ disciples remembered something from
their Scriptures about the coming Messiah, “Zeal for Your house Will consume
Me.” What Jesus did that day was
an act of faithfulness to the Father and a reminder that the ways of God can’t
be short-circuited, and that using the ways of the world to accomplish the will
of God is not acceptable. It might be good business but it is not good faithfulness.
In Isaiah 56:7 our Scriptures tell us, “My house will be called a house
of prayer for all the peoples." Everything the church does, all she
might possess, the actions she might take, the life she lives must take into
consideration that the greater Temple is our Temple, and His name is Jesus;
and, Jesus calls us to let the Church be the Church.
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