PLEASE READ THIS FIRST: John 2:13-25
What do you sense the Lord saying to you in this passage?
“Stop turning my Father’s house into a market!” (John 2:16)
The temple is a symbol of where God lives among us.
Jesus speaks of his own body as God’s temple (v.21), where God lives.
This is not just because he is ‘God with us’, but because he is human.
God made humans to be temples in the world (1 Corinthians 3:16-17, 6:19-20).
God loves this temple, each one of us, and is passionate to clean us out.
God comes to us in Jesus, and Jesus comes to the temple in Jerusalem.
There he shows what the messiah must do to clean up God’s temple.
To bring out the best in us, Jesus needs to clean up the worst in us.
Jesus knows what is in us (v.25), yet he is passionate about cleaning us up (v.17).
As the messiah enters my heart, what mess is he finding?
Is my heart a market, or a brothel, or a dungeon, or a house of lies?
We are destroying our temples by our choices, but Jesus wants to raise us up.
His resurrection assures us that he can, and will, if we allow him to do his work.
Will I resist or welcome Jesus’s efforts to clean up my temple for God?
PRAYER
Lord, I know some of the mess that you are seeing, but there is more I do not know about. Search me, know me, cleanse me and lead me to be the kind of temple that honours God!
Just thinking about my body being a temple: “…the temple he had spoken of was his body.” Jesus in human form carried my sins – he bore the punishment of death on a cross – to meet the penalty of sin. My body connects me – allows me to serve – so it too is a temple. Now it is an important thing for me to clean up my temple – get rid of those sinful thoughts and desires that go against my role to be a blessing to others. Lord, take that whip and whip it out of me, I pray. Make me clean as only you can. Create in me a new heart devote to you! HS come and work within me so that my temple becomes pure!
Lord forgive us for this thing we have turned worship into. Teach us how to worship truly to glorify you and not make glory for ourselves. The many that believed were the many that crucified Him – help us not be among the “easy believers”
Through His death and resurrection i have been made right with God. And He has given His presence by His Spirit so that I m a temple of the living God. The King resides there. Emmanuel. God with us/me. This is His desire to live among His people. May I live each day as a day of the Lord, serving Him in all I do and say.
Have Thine own way, Lord! Have Thine own way!
Thou art the Potter, I am the clay.
Mold me and make me after Thy will,
While I am waiting, yielded and still.
Have Thine own way, Lord! Have Thine own way!
Search me and try me, Master, today!
Whiter than snow, Lord, wash me just now,
As in Thy presence humbly I bow.
Have Thine own way, Lord! Have Thine own way!
Wounded and weary, help me, I pray!
Power, all power, surely is Thine!
Touch me and heal me, Savior divine.
Have Thine own way, Lord! Have Thine own way!
Hold o’er my being absolute sway!
Fill with Thy Spirit till all shall see
Christ only, always, living in me.