January 9
JOHN 2
13 The Passover of the Jews was at hand, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. 14 In the temple he found those who were selling oxen and sheep and pigeons, and the money-changers sitting there. 15 And making a whip of cords, he drove them all out of the temple, with the sheep and oxen. And he poured out the coins of the money-changers and overturned their tables. 16 And he told those who sold the pigeons, “Take these things away; do not make my Father’s house a house of trade.” 17 His disciples remembered that it was written, “Zeal for your house will consume me.”
– John 2:13-17
JOHN 2 HONOR GOD’S TEMPLE
A poem by ILMA inspired by these verses
The temple of the Lord is a place of worship
It is where we go to give praise to our Father
To experience his presence, it needs to be holy
He will not meet with his people if it is dirty
Let us treat with utmost reverence the house of the Lord
Let us never defile it with the systems of the world.
In the Old Testament, Passover is one of the festivals required by God for the Israelites to celebrate the Exodus and deliverance from the Egyptians. This account was in Exodus 12-14 when God commanded Moses to tell the Israelites to mark their doorposts with the blood of a slaughtered spring lamb. The sign would cause God to pass that house with a door that had the blood on it. It was to identify that they belong to God when he killed the firstborns in Egypt so that Pharaoh will finally free God’s people. In the New Testament in 1 Corinthians 5:7-8 Paul says “Cleanse out the old leaven that you may be a new lump, as you really are unleavened. For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed. Let us therefore celebrate the festival, not with the old leaven, the leaven of malice and evil, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.
We can now see the context of Jesus cleansing of the temple knowing the background of the Passover. The vendors selling animals and the money changers were defiling the sanctity of the temple by their corruption, so Jesus had to exercise authority to keep the temple holy.
REFLECTION
• How can believers maintain God’s temple that is now living in their bodies?
