Spring Cleaning

As the afternoon waned toward twilight, Jesus took a quick look around the temple mount, taking in the money changers, sheep salesmen, dove dealers and pigeon purveyors as they packed up their wares for the night and formulating his plans for the morrow. With the jubilant crowd that had accompanied him now dispersing across the city, Jesus returned to Bethany with his closest disciples and then went off alone into the mountainside to pray and prepare himself for the next day.

The temple was burgeoning with activity on the following morning as thousands of Passover worshipers gathered for Sabbath prayers. Sacrifices were still being offered, and the money changers and salesmen were facilitating the Sabbath worship with their sanctified supply of lambs and other assorted animals. In the midst of all this, Jesus entered the temple.

Famished from a night of fasting and frustrated from not having found any figs on a roadside tree, Jesus was in no mood for the antics of the temple hawkers and their tables of trade goods. There was the overcharging for substandard sacrificial stuff. There were the slightly altered weights and measures used for changing funds from across the empire into temple monies. They were making merchandise of God's people, not to mention doing it all on the Sabbath.

A coil of rope lay on the corner of a nearby table. Jesus grabbed it up and flipped the table into the air. A surprised vendor fell off his stool, collapsing a small barrier holding sheep back, and an instant later, the flock was stampeding. Tables turned, coins showered the pavement, birds began to fly, and people began to shout. At the heart of it all, Jesus was driving the money changers from the temple.

When everything was in an uproar, Jesus cried out with a loud voice, "My house shall be called a house of prayer, but you have turned it into a den of thieves!" I guess there was no doubt how Jesus felt about all the tricks and trade going on in the temple. Just think about how He must feel about the garbage we have in our own temples--the temple of our heart.