Flip the Tables of Sin in your Own Life
Main Scripture: Matthew 21:12-13
For the past week Transformed Student Ministry has been blessed with our devotionals being written by incredible guests writers. Each one of them has written and shared with us an incredible yet challenging devotion. I can’t wait to see how God will continue to use even more of our guest writers in the coming days. I (Brady) will still be writing devotionals periodically but the majority will continue to come from our guest writers. Many you have heard from already and others you will in the coming days.
Yesterday, Sunday, started Holy Week for us as Christians. Yesterday on our zoom call we looked at the triumphal entry of Jesus into the city riding on a donkey as people in the crowd shouted “Hosanna” which means “save us, we pray”.
Today’s devotional focuses on what is believed to have happened on Sunday afternoon of Holy Week after Jesus had ridden in on the donkey. This biblical account of this story is found in the Gospel of Matthew 21:12-13. According to many biblical scholars this is believed to have happened on Psalm Sunday, although a similar biblical account can be found in the beginning of Jesus’ ministry in John 2:13-17. These could be the same biblical account or two very similar ones, we are not exactly sure. But for today’s devotion we are focusing on what happened on Sunday Afternoon in the temple at the start of Holy Week.
“12 Jesus entered the temple courts and drove out all who were buying and selling there. He overturned the tables of the money changers and the benches of those selling doves. 13 “It is written,” he said to them, “‘My house will be called a house of prayer,’[a] but you are making it ‘a den of robbers.’[b]”-Matthew 21:12-13
When we think of Jesus we so often think of him as healing the lame, making the blind see, walking on water, feeding the 5,000 and spending time with the children and the least of these. Very rarely in scripture do we see Jesus in the way he acted in Matthew 21:12-13. Many of you may say Brady, in this passage it seems as if Jesus is angry? Is this True? Yes, it is true Jesus is angry. Now you may pose the question, But don’t you tell us that anger is a sin? Anger is a sin, but we know that Jesus NEVER sinned because he is the Son Of God. He cannot sin. Therefore, the anger that Jesus showed in the temple area in the biblical passage above is something called righteous anger.
In this passage Jesus was exhibiting extreme displeasure over sin. He was upset that people were using the house of God, the temple, to buy and sell goods! That’s why he overturned the tables! The King of Kings and Lord of Lords could not stand the fact that others were taking lightly the fact they were in God’s house on the Lord’s day buying and selling! The Lord’s house is not to be a store, where we buy and sell and make a name for ourself, but it’s to Glorify God! On the Sabbath! See, what Jesus shows us here is that we must not tolerate sin. Even if it means flipping the tables of the money changers like he did, we can’t tolerate sin. This was righteous anger, that Jesus was displeased with the actions of the Bible that day and even tells this people that they have made the temple into a den of robbers.
So how does this relate to you and I? Especially as we continue into Holy Week. Well I believe there is one main point that God has showed me that I want to show you from this passage today.
- Jesus does not tolerate the sin in our lives so why should we?
Yes, Jesus gives us grace and forgiveness of our sin. But sin that is not repented and turned from can not be tolerated by God! Why is this? Because God is not sin, he cannot be around sin! That’s why we must accept Jesus through salvation so that we can become clean and forgiven through Jesus who makes us so! But, if Jesus doesn’t tolerate sin and didn’t tolerate it in the temple in Matthew 21:12-13, then why do we?
If your anything like me I’m sure you have struggled with sin in the past to where we try to justify it, make it seem better than it really is or even hide our sin. But if Jesus Christ can’t stand sin and he even died FOR our sin that we shouldn’t tolerate it in our own lives.
I want to encourage you today to flip the tables of sin in your own life. I want you to spend time with Jesus today, on the first day of Holy Week, and just ask him one question. Ask him if there is any sin in your life that is holding you back from what God has in store for you. Are there any tables today that you need to flip in your own heart and give back to Jesus. Do you need to exhibit righteous anger within your own self today? I encourage you to move how God would lead you too.
All throughout Holy Week on GroupMe I will share what happened on that particular day. I encourage you to keep up with the scripture readings I will be sharing daily. I love you all.
Love and Blessings,
Brady Henderson
Student Pastor
Transformed Student Ministry
Transformed Student Ministry 