DEVOTION BY STEPHEN CARRELL
The second day of our Holy Week pilgrimage finds us walking with Jesus as he enters Jerusalem. In v. 41-42, we sense his broken heart and see His tears as he laments over the blindness he encounters. God’s chosen people are refusing to see and obey what is required for Kingdom peace! Jesus, however, foresees the looming storm that is to come for the city he loves.
His tears for Jerusalem were an overture for what Jesus would experience shortly inside the house of his Holy Father. He grieves as he knows what he will find in the temple. Oh, that we would be as deeply impacted as he was by those things within the Church that fall short of the Father’s design and will for his body, the Bride of Christ.
In verse 45, the scene shifts to the temple, where Jesus, the God-Man, is surrounded by the irreverence, sin, and greed of the money changers inside. Unexpectedly, we witness something not often associated with the orderliness of a temple or a church – the violent turning over of the money and commerce tables by Jesus, and his fierce, physical removal of those dishonoring the Father’s house. We are convicted by our Savior’s passion for the holy purpose of the temple as a house of prayer and reminded again of God’s sacred design for his Church.
The second day of our Holy Week pilgrimage finds us walking with Jesus as he enters Jerusalem. In v. 41-42, we sense his broken heart and see His tears as he laments over the blindness he encounters. God’s chosen people are refusing to see and obey what is required for Kingdom peace! Jesus, however, foresees the looming storm that is to come for the city he loves.
His tears for Jerusalem were an overture for what Jesus would experience shortly inside the house of his Holy Father. He grieves as he knows what he will find in the temple. Oh, that we would be as deeply impacted as he was by those things within the Church that fall short of the Father’s design and will for his body, the Bride of Christ.
In verse 45, the scene shifts to the temple, where Jesus, the God-Man, is surrounded by the irreverence, sin, and greed of the money changers inside. Unexpectedly, we witness something not often associated with the orderliness of a temple or a church – the violent turning over of the money and commerce tables by Jesus, and his fierce, physical removal of those dishonoring the Father’s house. We are convicted by our Savior’s passion for the holy purpose of the temple as a house of prayer and reminded again of God’s sacred design for his Church.
What would he cast out today? Though often unintentional, we can be guilty of allowing things in our lives, the temple of the Holy Spirit, that violate the sacred purposes for God’s house. Join me this Holy Week in committing anew to making his house, and our lives,