Day 28: Mark 11:15-19

Whenever someone asks, “What would Jesus do?” I like to point them to these verses so they know that flipping tables and throwing chairs is a possibility. But in reality Jesus was frustrated because they had taken something that was meant to be holy and had filled it with stuff that should not have been there.

The Temple was the place on earth that God himself had chosen for his name to be honored. This was the place that God met with man. It was to be a place of prayer and worship to the Creator of the universe and they had turned it into a marketplace to try and make a buck. It wasn’t that they were just selling animals and exchanging money, it was that they were doing it unfairly. They were charging inordinate amounts of money for the sacrificial animals and declaring that any other animal was unfit for sacrifice. They were requiring people to change over their Roman coins to ones that were minted there in the Temple and they were not giving a fair exchange. There was business going on in the very Temple of God that was immoral.

Paul says that now our bodies are the Temple of the Holy Spirit. We are the Holy Place where God meets with man. We are the ones he has chosen to bring honor to his name. What are you filling your life with? Are there things present that would keep you from fulfilling the holy purpose that God has for you? Jesus is still in the Temple clearing business.