Activity: With your parent's permission, find a cupboard, a dresser drawer, or a toy box that could use a good cleaning and sorting. Clean everything out. Start sorting. Put back only the things that belong. Throw out the trash. Put the items that do not belong back where they do. Presto! You have a clean cupboard that can be used as it was intended!
The same thing happened not once, but twice during Jesus' time here on earth. When He first began his ministry, He found his Father's house, the Temple, had turned from being a place of prayer into a place of cheating would be worshippers. He decided to clean house (John 2:13-25).
The day after Palm Sunday, Jesus returned to the Temple once again and found that merchants had overtaken parts of the Temple that were meant for people to come to God. Not only that, they were once again cheating people in His Father's house! Time to clean house again. He made a whip and began to clear out the places where thieving merchants were stealing and deceiving people. Once again, His Father's house, and this special area, was restored to prayer. What was so special about this place? This is where those who weren't Jewish could freely come and worship God. Jesus came to seek and to save the lost, Jewish and Non-Jewish Gentiles.
And once again, As Jesus stood there seeing His Father's house restored to prayer, as the the sweat poured out, the scent of the nard from a few days ago began to fill the space around him. Now His Father's house was as it should be: cleaned out! Now the place for sinners to come to pray and worship had been restored. I'd like to think He smiled 😊
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