My Dear Friends,
When we read of Jesus’ cleansing of the temple we probably assumed that this was the first time in Jewish history that the temple had been defiled and needed cleansing. But that isn’t the case. In 2 Chronicles 36:14 we read, “All the leading priests and the people also were exceedingly unfaithful following all the abominations of the nations; and they polluted the house of the Lord that he had consecrated in Jerusalem.”
This is the tragedy of Israel’s history. The nation that was supposed to be a holy nation had become unholy. The temple, the dwelling place for God, became an abomination. In spite of this God did not give up on them. He sent messengers to bring them back to faithfulness because he had compassion for his people.
Still they were faithless, they kept mocking the messengers of God, despising his words and scoffed at his prophets. Therefore the wrath of God against them became so great that there was no remedy. Sometimes when things get too bad they have to be cleaned out. Remedies won’t work because there is need of total cleansing. Therefore God uses their enemies to pursue his will. They burned the house of God, broke down the walls of Jerusalem, burned all its palaces with fire and destroyed all its precious vessels.
In the Bible the negative is always in search of the positive. Whenever negative things like exile happened to the Israelites they always remembered their God and turned back to him. They remembered to pray, to fast and to live by the statutes and ordinances of the Lord.
Sometimes we can interpret negatives in our lives as a time for cleansing – loss of a job, a broken relationship and moving to live in a new location. Sometimes negatives give cause for some purifying and some clarifying. In the destruction of the physical temple the spiritual temple in the hearts of the people was revived. May God help us to interpret when events in our lives are a means of cleansing.
Rev. Christopher Roberts
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