7 March 2021

Bible Reading

John 2 13-22 Jesus Goes to the Temple

It was almost time for the Passover Festival, so Jesus went to Jerusalem. There in the Temple he found people selling cattle, sheep, and pigeons, and also the moneychangers sitting at their tables. So he made a whip from cords and drove all the animals out of the Temple, both the sheep and the cattle; he overturned the tables of the moneychangers and scattered their coins; and he ordered those who sold the pigeons, “Take them out of here! Stop making my Father’s house a marketplace!” His disciples remembered that the scripture says, “My devotion to your house, O God, burns in me like a fire.”

The Jewish authorities came back at him with a question, “What miracle can you perform to show us that you have the right to do this?”

Jesus answered, “Tear down this Temple, and in three days I will build it again.”

“Are you going to build it again in three days?” they asked him. “It has taken forty-six years to build this Temple!”

But the temple Jesus was speaking about was his body. So when he was raised from death, his disciples remembered that he had said this, and they believed the scripture and what Jesus had said.

Explanation

When Jesus went to that temple, and he saw the sellers taking so much money from the people for their sacrifices. They were cheating people by weighting the scales and not being honest. This was not right! This is not how you act in the temple, and this is not what you do with sacrifices to God!
So Jesus told all of the workers and shoppers, “Take these things out of here! Stop making my Father’s house a marketplace!”

The people were in shock. Who was this guy? Why did it matter what he thought? Why do you think it mattered to Jesus?

Jesus knew more than anyone the power and importance of a sacrifice. He was about to be a sacrifice himself, and he didn’t want his sacrifice to be meaningless like these marketplace sacrifices were. He wanted his sacrifice to mean so much more! He needed it to mean more. This was the only way these people were going to be able to live in heaven with him. And if they saw his sacrifice on the cross as just another way to make money, or a careless request for forgiveness, they wouldn’t make it.

The most important thing to Jesus is that we live in heaven with him one day. And in order to get there we have to accept his sacrifice which forgives us of all of our sins. It’s a free gift, all you have to do is accept it.

Prayer

Dear God, thank you that you sent Jesus to sacrifice himself for us. Help us to accept his sacrifice so that all our sins are forgiven. Amen

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