And they came to Jerusalem. And he entered the temple and began to drive out those who sold and those who bought in the temple, and he overturned the tables of the money-changers and the seats of those who sold pigeons. And he would not allow anyone to carry anything through the temple. And he was teaching them and saying to them, “Is it not written, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations’? But you have made it a den of robbers.” And the chief priests and the scribes heard it and were seeking a way to destroy him, for they feared him, because gall the crowd was astonished at his teaching. And when evening came they went out of the city. (Mark 11:15-19 ESV).
In our reading today, Jesus became angry and cleared out the temple. He saw that this house of prayer had been turned into a thruway and a marketplace. There are two practical applications for us today.
First, one of the things that made Jesus upset was that this place of worship was supposed to be “for all nations,” but it was not serving the nations well at all. The section that had become a marketplace was known as the court of Gentiles, the only place in the temple where people of non-Jewish descent were permitted to come and worship God. But with all the busyness of a major marketplace, how could anyone worship there? The temple authorities who allowed this traffic were showing little concern for Gentile believers who came to Jerusalem to worship God. The second application takes us to the principle for our personal lives. We are the “temple of God”. Our lives should reflect a concern and grace for all nations. Our attitude must be a reflection of God’s concern and love for all people.
We should also see Jesus grieved by the fact that these people whom the Father loved couldn’t worship there free of distractions. For Jesus, the temple symbolized the Father’s passion to connect with the nations of the world. But that wasn’t happening. That mission had been forgotten. I wonder how much of a distraction our churches present to people today with our practices. Now that Jesus has died for us and risen from the dead, we who are Christians have become the temple of God, with the Holy Spirit living in us (cf. 1 Corinthians 3:16). So, let’s remember that we are now made holy and that God calls us to connect with the nations for Jesus’ sake.