[ Matthew 21:12–22, Mark 11:12–19, Luke 19:45–48 ]

He said to them, “It is written, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer,’ but you make it a den of robbers.” (Matthew 21:13)

The temple is buzzing with activity. The crowds that have traveled from far and near to Jerusalem need to buy the animals required for the Passover celebration. Currency is being exchanged and animals are being bought and sold when Jesus enters the Temple Mount. Rather than seeing a place dedicated to prayer and worship of God — the primary purpose of the temple — Jesus sees a den of robbers busying themselves in hypocritical religious activities.

By overturning the tables of the moneychangers and driving out the merchants and customers, Jesus echoes the curse he had just pronounced on the fig tree. The fig tree was a mirror reflecting the activity in the temple — all show but no substance, full of pretentious leaves with no fruit. Jesus was doing away with the whole sacrificial system of temple worship — a system that could never bring full reconciliation between man and God. To accomplish that, a far superior sacrifice than mere animals would be required. Jesus, the sinless Son of God, would soon offer himself up as the one, final, perfect sacrifice to usher in the new era of God’s dwelling with his people. An era in which God’s presence no longer inhabited a specific geographic location, but rather indwelled any person who would turn to Jesus in faith.

Prayer: Father in heaven, you have brought us to yourself. We come to you, not because of what we have done, but because you have fully and forever reconciled us to yourself through the blood of your Son Jesus. You put the curse we deserved on Jesus so that we could be with you and you could dwell in us. Jesus, we worship you — our perfect sacrifice, our perfect priest, our perfect temple. We pray that you would get the glory due your name in the new temple — the temple of living stones — you have made us to be. In the glorious name of Jesus, Amen.