Holy Week - Monday

Mark 11:15-18 When they arrived back in Jerusalem, Jesus entered the Temple and began to drive out the people buying and selling animals for sacrifices. He knocked over the tables of the money changers and the chairs of those selling doves, and he stopped everyone from using the Temple as a marketplace. He said to them, “The Scriptures declare, ‘My Temple will be called a house of prayer for all nations,’ but you have turned it into a den of thieves.” When the leading priests and teachers of religious law heard what Jesus had done, they began planning how to kill him. But they were afraid of him because the people were so amazed at his teaching. (NLT) 

Author John Eldridge in his book, "Beautiful Outlaw"  talks about the event of clearing the temple and how Jesus is fiercely intentional in his life.  It is hard to imagine a feeble, tender spoken Jesus being forceful enough to clear the temple.  He surely showed he was a force to be reckoned with on this day and not a quiet prophet speaking softly on the side of a hill.  

Why was Jesus so angry?  (den of thieves) Part of his anger was at the injustice of the system that had been put into place to take advantage of people.  You can't buy a sacrifice for the temple with regular Roman money so you would have to exchange your money for "Temple" money.  And of course the exchange rate was in the money changers favor and not the common persons favor.  

Part of his anger was that all of this money changing and animal sales was happening in the temple. (House of prayer)  The outer court of the temple was the only place non-Jewish people could worship God.  They couldn't gain access into the inner courts of the temple.  Money changing and animal markets are not the normal places of prayer.   

How will you clear some space and some time to worship the Lord through prayer this week?  What is some of the noise you might need to reduce or turn off completely? Sometimes we need a change of place and a change of place to have ears to hear what the Spirit says!