My defender!!
“12 Jesus entered the temple courts and drove out all who were buying and selling there. He overturned the tables of the money changers and the benches of those selling doves. 13 “It is written,” he said to them, “‘My house will be called a house of prayer,’[a] but you are making it ‘a den of robbers.’[b]”14 The blind and the lame came to him at the temple, and he healed them.”(Matthew 21:12-14)
In this passage of Matthew’s gospel, we find Jesus as he has just entered Jerusalem. The crowd has given him quite the welcome, laying out palm branches and clothing on the streets, shouting “Hosanna!”. It is interesting, then, that Jesus’ first stop is not a celebratory feast in his honor, nor is it a nap after the journey. His first stop is the temple. Know this: God’s house is a priority to Jesus. As I was reading, it seemed out of character for Jesus to really turn up like this. Flipping tables and yelling at people sounds a little extreme, right? Not when it comes to the things of God. Upon further reading, I learned that the temple was designed with an outer court, known as the Court of the Gentiles. This was the place where foreigners and non-Jewish people could have a place to still worship and honor Yahweh (1Kings 8:41-43). God is so kind! Even those who weren’t really a part of His chosen people had a place with him. The problem was there were merchants in this Court selling animals for the foreigners to use as sacrifices and offering to exchange their foreign currency. It sounds like a charitable thing to do, so why was Jesus so upset??
Some sources say that these money-changers and merchants over-charged foreigners for these services and, in conducting this business in the temple, it was obviously a distraction from the purpose of a temple: worship. It’s so interesting how something can be technically good, but when done with the wrong motive or in the wrong place, can get your tables flipped. When we really think about it, before Jesus’ death, we were foreigners. If you were not born of Jewish heritage, you would have been right there in that outer court! But Jesus, our defender, made it his mission to disrupt the very thing in the way of our access to the Father. Because of Jesus’ death, we no longer have to be separated as Gentiles and as women, from the most intimate space with God. Instead, when we pray in the name of Jesus, we are granted this most precious access to the Father. Y’all, that is HUGE.
Notice that when Jesus cleared the temple, people immediately came to him and were healed…inside the temple. The blind and the broken, or in other words, the unsaved and the hurting. The Church was intended to be a place of healing. When the church is instead a place of unchecked motives and darkened heart postures, God is not pleased.
Prayer:
Thank you, Jesus, for being my defender. Thank you for being angry about injustice, specifically spiritual injustice. Help me to prioritize the sanctity of God’s house. Refine my heart and the heart of Your church. Thank you for removing the veil that once separated me from you! Convict me when I try to build new ones. In Jesus’ name, amen.
