Read­ing Time: 2 minutes

Introduction

Hav­ing pre­pared and for­ti­fied him­self, and hav­ing taken pos­ses­sion of the Laws and Proph­ets, Jesus can now head towards Jer­u­s­alem. Gen­er­ally, there are things we do espe­cially with­in the realm of wor­ship think­ing we are pleas­ing God, when in real­ity, we are only execut­ing our per­son­al pro­grams and sat­is­fy­ing our selfish interests. Jesus is gradu­ally approach­ing Jer­u­s­alem, the final des­tin­a­tion of his mis­sion. Ima­gine how dis­ap­poin­ted he must have been enter­ing the Temple, the house of God and find­ing people doing all sort of things except truly wor­ship­ing God, which is the only thing that is sup­posed to be done in the Temple and Churches. On enter­ing the Temple, Jesus found the following:

• Those selling cattle, sheep and pigeons; and
• Money-changers sit­ting com­fort­ably in their coun­ters attend­ing and wait­ing for customers.

The Priests, teach­ers of the law and the eld­ers who.…..

Jesus’ reaction

Jesus’ imme­di­ate and spon­tan­eous reac­tion was to make a whip and drive those miscre­ants and cheats out of the Temple, includ­ing their cattle and sheep, scat­ter­ing their coins and push­ing down their tables. Such action indic­ates how furi­ous Jesus was. Accord­ing to Mat­thew (21:12–13); Luke (19:45–46); and John (2:13–17), Jesus’ action was imme­di­ate. That is, once he entered the temple and saw people selling and chan­ging money, he imme­di­ately made a whip, drove them out and scattered the money changers’ tables. Mark has a dif­fer­ent approach. Accord­ing to Mark, when Jesus arrived Jer­u­s­alem, he imme­di­ately entered the temple. Instead of chas­ing the sellers, buy­ers and money changers out, Mark says Jesus sur­veyed the temple and when it was dark, he left and went to Beth­any with his Twelve apostles (cf. Mark 11:11). The next day, they reached.…

Desecration of God’s house

What was Jesus’ reas­on or reas­ons for doing what he did in the temple? When Jesus drove those who sold doves away and ordered them to take these things away, “do not make my Father’s house a mar­ket­place”, John notes that his dis­ciples imme­di­ately remembered the words of the Scrip­ture (Ps 69:9) that “zeal for your house has con­sumed me” (John 2:17). In the accounts of Mat­thew, Mark and Luke, it was Jesus who said (cit­ing Isai­ah 56:7 and Jeremi­ah 7:11) “my house shall be called the house of prayer.….

FOR DETAILS, GET YOUR OWN COPIES OF THE BOOK “THE WORD OF LIFE: SUNDAY REFLECTIONS” (vols. I and II)!! The reflec­tion for the Third Sunday of Lent (B) is found in vol. II pages 131–141. Happy reading!

For details on how to get it, con­tact the author on this link: https://m.me/uchennabiblia?fbclid=IwAR2yeg4a6sDGBp9QGkIvKj6FSADumMokN6lshdE0zuo-JHs6qOmlhA7jyHo or email me at: postmaster@uchennabiblia.com or simply send an SMS on 08116100926, and I will get back to you.