Jesus Gets Angry: You Become a Billboard

Let’s pretend you just spent $30,000 of your hard-earned money to remodel your house. Old walls were taken down, new ones put up. New flooring, new paint, new furniture, new decorations, new everything. Your new “man cave” or “she shed” is finally completed and it’s your own little, tiny piece of Heaven. It’s perfect! And the construction crew even got everything done a week before your scheduled dream vacation. Life just couldn’t be better.

            Then cousin Eddie shows up (yes, like the character in National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation) TWO days before you are due to leave on the perfect cruise. You can’t turn him away; after all, he’s your cousin. Eddie assures you everything will be just fine until after you get back ten days from now and he’s happy to watch your house while you are gone.

            Except that while you’re away, Eddie in his “helpfulness” and “because you were so kind,” decides to move the new furniture around, surprise you with even better paint color on the walls and adds new wall-to-wall orange and green shag carpeting to match. He tops off his new creation with lavender decorations he bought including the new pet snake in the aquarium tank!

            You return home to find your little piece of Heaven gone—demolished, ruined, destroyed! How could Eddie do such a thing? He told you he would take care of your … oh my, what about the $30,000!? Home insurance doesn’t cover “cousin Eddies.”

            How would you feel? Would you feel sick? Numb? In shock? Sad? Sorrowful? Angry? Furious? Would you toss Eddie out of your house? Would you end all relationship and contact with your cousin?

            I think this is how Jesus must have felt with the merchants and moneychangers in the Jerusalem Temple, don’t you? You might recall the story in Matthew 21:12.

“Jesus entered the Temple and began to drive out all the people buying and selling animals for sacrifice. He knocked over the tables of the money changers and the chairs of those selling doves.”

Similar to you trusting cousin Eddie, Jesus trusted that the Temple would be a House of Prayer to honor God, but instead, what did He find? Not a house of worship; not a sacred house of God. He returned to find a den of thieves, a “flea market”, so-to-speak. People claimed to be spiritual, but were corrupt, price-gouging wheelers-and-dealers. There was no spirituality, no sacredness, no honor to God. No wonder tables got tossed! Jesus was furious, just like you were at cousin Eddie, right?

The result of cousin Eddie’s transgression only cost $30,000. How much did it cost to desecrate God? (in the temple back then…or in our hearts today?)

            Like the fig tree that could no longer bear fruit, this Temple could no longer bear fruit. “A good tree can’t produce bad fruit and a bad tree can’t produce good fruit.” (Luke 6:43)

So, the Temple got moved!

“Don’t you realize that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, who lives in you and was given to you by God? You do not belong to yourself, for God bought you with a high price. So, you must honor God with your body.” (1 Cor 6: 19-20)

            This is supported in two additional passages—1 Cor 3:16, “Don’t you realize that all of you together are the temple of God and that the Spirit of God lives in you?” and in Romans 8: 11, “The Spirit of God who raised Jesus from the dead, lives in you.”  (Oh, my!)

We are God’s walking, talking billboards! His Marketing Directors.

Yet we are imperfect humans. We can ask for forgiveness of our shortcomings as we humbly and frequently do during worship. (Thank you, all church leaders!)

Asking forgiveness is part of the Lord’s Prayer, but have we ever had a long conversation with God to show us the transgressions within us that we cannot see? The money-changers were doing what was culturally accepted before Jesus came along. So… what to do now?

As Christians, we should constantly self-assess for spiritual improvement and moving closer to God, honoring Him as Jesus taught. We are the “…light of the world…” (Matt 5:14) so others may come to know and love God by the Heavenly Father and through Jesus Christ and the power of the Holy Spirit.

All His divine love now radiates through us, if we foster the flame with God’s help and let it shine! We are God’s earthly advertisements.

Accept this humble and glorious assignment. The rewards are fantastic! And I am happy to talk with you about it!