September 20, 2021

I have become a stranger to my brothers, And an alien to my mother’s children; Because zeal for Your house has eaten me up, And the reproaches of those who reproach You have fallen on me. Psalm 69:8-9

The 69th Psalm of David, as he is addressing the LORD, progresses into a prophetic reference to Jesus. Early in the ministry of Jesus, He went up to Jerusalem for the Passover. It was the spring of 28AD. Coming into the court of the temple, the chaotic scene before Him was anything but worshipful. Many had traveled from far away and at great expense to celebrate the Passover. The throngs were a mixture of rich and middle-class and poor. Many were simply not able to bring the sacrificial animals over the great distances they traveled to reach Jerusalem. The opportunity for profit was too great a temptation for locals who owned livestock – and even the priests of the temple had joined in as facilitators of the practice and were sharing in profits from the frenzied buying and selling of animals and from the currency exchanges, changing foreign coins to the temple shekels. The cacophony of cattle lowing, sheep bleating, doves cooing, coins chinking, and men angrily disputing with one another over prices combined into an uproar that drowned what ought to have been heard: words addressed to the Most High God. Jesus could see that the priests and rulers had no inclination to correct the abuses in the temple court, and that they lacked compassion for the needs of the worshipers due to their own greed. Their example caused distress to those who were already suffering with many and varied afflictions. The result of all of this strife: losing sight of the sacred purpose of the precincts of the temple of God . . . and the One whom it was intended to prefigure.

When He had made a whip of cords, He drove them all out of the temple, with the sheep and the oxen, and poured out the changers’ money and overturned the tables. And He said to those who sold doves, “Take these things away! Do not make My Father’s house a house of merchandise!” John 2:15-16

Everyone who claims the name of the Lord Jesus (as a bride takes the name of her husband), should understand that he or she is to be the habitation of the Spirit of God, who has imparted the responsibility to rule over “the temple of God” and supplies the grace needed to live it out. This includes our thoughts and desires as well as words and actions. Invite Him to “drive out” anything in your temple that doesn’t belong!

I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service. And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God. Romans 12:1-2