Cleaning House and Real Business
Luke 19:45-48
The business of men was being carried in the stead of kingdom business. Corrupt priests, instead of serving the people and facilitating good relations between the people and the Lord, made profits from sacred activities. Rituals designed for God’s glory and the good of His people had been turned into ways and means for making money. Those who were primarily concerned with taxing, tithing, and dishonest trading trampled the needs of believers desperately wanting to pour out their hearts in praise and pleading for help.
But in the midst of the money making and profiteering entered the real Prophet of God… ready to clean house. Meet unreasonable Jesus. He does not care about your neatly stacked coins; He just turned your table over. Angry Jesus don’t care about how you are going to get your doves and sheep back; He is highly animated and venting a lot of angst as He uses a whip to drive derelict leadership and their cattle out of the temple. Even his disciples are not prepared for what they are seeing. But if He had not had the audacity and zeal to clean house he would not have been able to bring much needed care to the weary; the profiteering was a barrier to God’s best.
And that is the point, brother. If we are unwilling to have our house cleaned we are also unable to receive the bulk and best of the Lord’s ongoing ministry. He wants to teach us daily but is often checked and inhibited by distractions… and some of them look REAL religious. But at their core they are activities that do not promote God’s glory or the good of His people. After the house cleaning the Christ is able to conduct real business:
47 And He was teaching daily in the temple; but the chief priests and the scribes and the leading men among the people were trying to destroy Him, 48 and they could not find anything that they might do, for all the people were hanging on to every word He said. (Luke 19:47-48, NKJV)