A Day of Cleansing

Yesterday we all celebrated Palm Sunday, a day of triumph, a day of celebrating Jesus, “the author and of finisher of our faith” (Heb. 12:2). But all is not as it seems. Jesus knew exactly what was happening. He is in complete control! He came for a purpose and that purpose would be fulfilled at the end of week. On Monday Jesus walked into the temple with one thing on His mind—to cleanse it and consecrate it unto God once again.

This solitary act got the week started off in great fashion—certainly in a way that no one would forget, especially His enemies. For them it was more fuel for the fire. For Jesus it was a symbol of what He would accomplish in all who would believe on Him. His death and resurrection would mean everything. We experience three things through faith—to be cleansed, changed, consecrated.

“Then Jesus went into the temple of God and drove out all those who bought and sold in the temple, and overturned the tables of the money changers and the seats of those who sold doves. And He said to them, ‘It is written, “My house shall be called a house of prayer,” but you have made it a “den of thieves”’” (Matt. 21:12-13).

It was a scandal of epic proportions! This Jesus who had the whole city in a huge uproar with His arrival, now stormed into the temple and created chaos. I can almost see it! Doves flapping their wings as they fly out of the courtyard, men shouting, women beside themselves, and children scrambling after the rolling coins. This fellow from Galilee was once again stirring up trouble!

But stirring things up is always what Jesus does when He enters the scene. The cleansing of the temple has its parallel in our lives. When Jesus comes, priorities are overturned, old sins are swept aside. The first thing He did when He entered Jerusalem is the first thing He does when He enters a life—He goes straight to the temple, to the place where we worship, and cleans out whatever is not part of God’s design.

Your body is a holy temple. “Do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God?” (1 Cor. 6:19). Ephesians 2:21 speaks of our life as a building that “grows into a holy temple in the Lord.” When you trust in Jesus, the Holy Spirit comes to dwell in you and your body is now “a holy temple.” And Jesus comes to stir things up—to cleanse that temple. He casts out anything that does not honor God.

“Then the blind and the lame came to Him in the temple, and He healed them” (Matt. 21:14). In an instant these people’s lives had changed. All of a sudden they could see or they could walk. They had been made whole. And that is what Jesus does for us when we receive Him. He cleanses us from all sin and He changes us. “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new” (2 Cor. 5:17).

There are two actions here—the cleansing of the temple and healing miracles. Together they declare what Jesus was all about. He came to save sinners. He came to cleanse us from our sin and to change us and make us holy. We were designed to be holy. His work on the cross, along with His resurrection, makes us holy.

“But when the chief priests and scribes saw the wonderful things that He did, and the children crying out in the temple and saying, ‘Hosanna to the Son of David!’ they were indignant and said to Him, ‘Do You hear what these are saying?’ And Jesus said to them, ‘Yes. Have you never read, “Out of the mouth of babes and nursing infants You have perfected praise”?’” (Matt. 21:15-16)

“The chief priests and scribes…were indignant” (v. 15) because they simply did not like Jesus. But everyone else was simply surprised. Jesus knew what stood between the people in those days and God. “Astonished” is how Mark describes the people’s reaction to that original cleansing (Mark 11:18), and astonished is how we feel when God cleanses us. It is an amazing experience.

Prejudice, old hurts, all our sins, whatever is blocking our relationship with Him must go! God is at work making us holy, making us like Jesus. By faith we are cleansed; by faith we are changed; by faith we are consecrated. To be consecrated is to be declared holy or to be set apart as sacred. That is what Jesus did for the temple in Jerusalem, and that is what He is doing in us.

“Out of the mouths of babes” praise is “perfected” (Matt. 21:16). Like the children, we should respond with praise to what Jesus did for us. As Hebrews 12:1-2a says, “Therefore we also, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which so easily ensnares us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith.” Amen.