Mark 11:15-19 Cleaning House

Mark 11:15-19
“And they came to Jerusalem. 
And he entered the temple and began to drive out those who sold and those who bought in the temple, and he overturned the tables of the money-changers and the seats of those who sold pigeons. 
And he would not allow anyone to carry anything through the temple. 
And he was teaching them and saying to them, “Is it not written, 

‘My house shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations’? 

But you have made it a den of robbers.” 

And the chief priests and the scribes heard it and were seeking a way to destroy him, for they feared him, because all the crowd was astonished at his teaching. 
And when evening came they went out of the city.

Comments:



Temple Mount looking towards Mt. of Olives

 Jesus had inspected the temple the previous evening (after the Triumphal Entry) so this act of cleansing the temple was not a rash decision—it was what he had come to do. Jesus had come to die on the cross to remove the barrier of sin—so that we might worship God in spirit and in truth. What was going on in the temple was not spiritual worship; in fact, the franchised vendors and moneychangers were hindering those who desired to worship God by requiring them to buy their sacrificial animals from them using temple currency. To obtain temple currency they had to trade at an unfair exchange rate/weight (false worth-ship). This angered the Lord (Prov. 11:1; and 20:23) and he was consumed by zeal for his Father's house. He began to drive out the offending parties.

Matthew's account (Matt. 21:12-16) tells that here in the temple the people praised him as the Messiah. They must have rejoiced to see the oppressive moneychangers put to flight. It seems that Jesus' purification of the temple lasted all day long as he would not allow anyone to carry wares through the temple and he was there until evening when he returned to Bethany.

Luke (Luke 19:45-47) speaks of Jesus teaching daily in the temple after that. Certainly, the purification continued, if not by force, then by the force of his teachings and the receptive hearts of the common people.

Today, our hearts and our churches are to be the temple of the Holy Spirit. We should be making the temple a place of prayer for all people and not an oppressive den of thieves. 

I have to look inside and ask, "What best characterizes my heart?" The greed, selfishness, and economics of the moneychanger-chief priest kind of temple, or the prayer, teaching, healing, and deliverance of the Jesus/Holy Spirit-filled temple?