Day One: Jesus Clears the Temple
I know we all love getting gifts at Christmas. But it's what happened at Easter, not Christmas, that saved us. Over the next five days, we'll look at the events leading up to the moment that Jesus paid the price for our sins so that you and I could be reconnected back to God, the moment He saved us. We start today with Jesus going to His Father's house, the Temple. There, He finds some bad characters getting in the way of other people coming to worship God.
Matthew 21:12-17
Jesus entered the Temple and began to drive out all the people buying and selling animals for sacrifice. He knocked over the tables of the money changers and the chairs of those selling doves. He said to them, “The Scriptures declare, ‘My Temple will be called a house of prayer,’ but you have turned it into a den of thieves!” The blind and the lame came to him in the Temple, and he healed them. The leading priests and the teachers of religious law saw these wonderful miracles and heard even the children in the Temple shouting, “Praise God for the Son of David.” But the leaders were indignant. They asked Jesus, “Do you hear what these children are saying?” “Yes,” Jesus replied. “Haven’t you ever read the Scriptures? For they say, ‘You have taught children and infants to give you praise.’” Then he returned to Bethany, where he stayed overnight.
Jesus entered the Temple and began to drive out all the people buying and selling animals for sacrifice. He knocked over the tables of the money changers and the chairs of those selling doves. He said to them, “The Scriptures declare, ‘My Temple will be called a house of prayer,’ but you have turned it into a den of thieves!”
The blind and the lame came to him in the Temple, and he healed them. The leading priests and the teachers of religious law saw these wonderful miracles and heard even the children in the Temple shouting, “Praise God for the Son of David.”
But the leaders were indignant. They asked Jesus, “Do you hear what these children are saying?”
“Yes,” Jesus replied. “Haven’t you ever read the Scriptures? For they say, ‘You have taught children and infants to give you praise.’” Then he returned to Bethany, where he stayed overnight.
1. The Temple was a place where people would come to worship God. According to these verses, who did Jesus "drive out" of the Temple?
2. Look at verse 13. What is Jesus mad about? Why?
3. They were messing with people who wanted to worship God. Worship mattered to Jesus. So, it should matter to us. What are a few ways that you can worship and connect with God every day?
4. Are there some things that you've done that, kind of like the people selling animals in the Temple, have gotten in the way of people coming to know Jesus? Or worse, made people want nothing to do with Jesus or church? Write them down, ask God to forgive, and then commit to cutting those things out of your life so that you can point people to Jesus.
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