Cleansing Monday

Montana Bible College Dean of Students & Discipleship Carter Knight composed a series of short devotionals for Holy Week. We hope they encourage you and help prepare your heart for worshiping our risen Savior! 

And Jesus entered the temple and drove out all who sold and bought in the temple, and he overturned the tables of the money-changers and the seats of those who sold pigeons. He said to them, “It is written, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer,’ but you make it a den of robbers.”And the blind and the lame came to him in the temple, and he healed them.

- Matthew 21:12-14

These sacrificial pigeons would have been sold to the poor in particular. Indeed, God had charitably provided this secondary option for sacrifices as a provision for the poor in the law of Moses. This allowed for low-income families to substitute a pigeon for the typical but higher priced sacrifices which would have been beyond their means.

When Jesus entered the temple precincts and overturned the chairs of those who sold pigeons, he was putting the essence of God's law into practice. As a result of corruptive greed, the pigeon provision had been turned into a low-startup and high-yield business venture. Instead of righteously providing a seat of honor for the poor at God's table, these pigeon-peddlers sat at ease while likely charging them exorbitant rates. For, of course, these were “temple-approved pigeons.”

Jesus’ family were themselves poor and could only afford pigeons when Joseph and Mary came to present him in the temple as an infant. Perhaps this gave Jesus a particular passion to oppose this unjust business. Yet, even beyond defending the cause of the poor, Jesus was distressed to see the lack of prayer in God's house. Why would anyone allow the caged pigeon’s incessant coos to drown out the sacred silence of that space? Its sole purpose was to provide a place to call upon the name of the Lord. What good is the physical sacrifice of a pigeon without the spiritual sacrifice of true religion?

Praise be to Jesus upon whom the Holy Spirit descended as a dove. For after cleansing the temple, he uncaged our prayers and gave them wings like eagles. As he overturned the tables and chairs in that den of thieves, now there is not one physical stone left upon another at that old temple. Instead, he has made us into living stones, joined together as a new spiritual temple. Here the Holy Spirit dwells within and teaches us to pray as we ought, crying unto God as “Abba, Father,” like an infant cooing while cradled in paternal arms. Here there is no bartering, nor busyness, or barriers.

Before this, were we not like the blind and lame who immediately came to Jesus after he cleansed the temple? There was no room for us before Jesus cleaned house. Though we were previously blind to his glory before, we now see the Lord as high and lifted up on his mercy seat. Though we were previously lame to obey his call, we now leap to serve in his inner sanctuary. Now, welcomed into his Most Holy Presence, we have found a resting place like a bird of the air finding a place to nest on the sacred altar of God, as if it were a large bush of the field where we will never be consumed.