Daily Lesson for April 11, 2022

 Today’s Daily Lesson comes from Mark chapter 11 verses 15 through 17:

15 Then they came to Jerusalem. And he entered the temple and began to drive out those who were selling and those who were buying in the temple, and he overturned the tables of the money-changers and the seats of those who sold doves; 16and he would not allow anyone to carry anything through the temple. 17He was teaching and saying, ‘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.’ 

According to Mark, on Monday of Holy Week Jesus threw the money changers out of the Temple in protest against the religious exploitation that was taking place there. 

It was an act of nonviolent, direct action against the Temple and a major disruption to business. All Jerusalem ran on the profits from pilgrims coming there (and still does). Jesus’ invention in the Temple was a calculated action, meant to dramatize what Jesus and his followers saw as a wrongful act of exploitation done in God’s name. 

The cleansing of the Temple was not a boycott. It was back to business as usual for most probably before the day was out. 

But, it did make a point.  Certainly it caused a scene.  And, in the end, it was what marked Jesus that week. 

Many continue to follow and listen to Jesus that week. But many others grew leery, thinking he had gone too far. 

We can decide in our own hearts which camp we would have been in at the time. 

Ryon Price is Senior Pastor of Broadway Baptist Church in Fort Worth, Texas.