Cleansing Monday

Mark 11:15-19

It’s Monday of Holy Week and Jesus is making it abundantly clear: as He moves toward the Cross this week, He has all nations, tribes, tongues, and people on His mind. We see Jesus’s anger at those who would look to swindle those who would come to the temple who weren’t Jewish. These merchants would set up in the outer court of the temple, the only area that those who weren’t Jewish could come to worship. It was in this place that they would take advantage of these people, overcharging them for the payment of sacrifice. Jesus flips these tables of the obstructors and profiteers of worship and quotes Isaiah 56 which speaks of “the foreigners who join themselves to the Lord… who love His name.” They have come to worship—and Jesus will permit nothing to stand in their way.

Christ will cleanse the temple here, but on Friday He will cleanse their sins on the Cross. He will cry out that “it is finished” and the temple veil that separated the innermost court of the temple, the Holy of Holies, will be torn. God is not only available to some anymore, but to all people. Christ will “break down the dividing wall of separation” (Ephesians 2:14) so there is no longer a separation of the nations, but an invitation to all people to be reconciled to God for eternity and to one another through Christ.

Prayer:

God, thank you for making a way for those of us outside of the people of Israel to worship you, know you, and be saved by you through Christ.

Question to consider:

What does it mean for your life that Christ has reconciled you both to God and to one another?