Mark 11:15-19 A House of Prayer for All Nations
Format for Your Devotions
Instructions: Do not read my example devotion until you have completed your own devotional time in the scriptures. Reading my thoughts first may limit your own understanding. Let the Holy Spirit speak to you alone before looking to see what anyone else has to say, whether it is me, a Bible commentary, or a friend. Let God speak to you before you let another person speak to you. I have provided a format, but modify it to fit your needs. For example, I usually combine my application and prayer together talking to God about the application to my own life. You can go through this devotion process mentally, speaking out loud, or in writing as you wish. Don’t worry if you are not following this process exactly. Sometimes, I add extra information and sometimes I emphasize one part more than others. However, you should always think about what you learn about God from this passage.
Step 1: Pray–Ask for the Holy Spirit’s guidance first of all and that God may reveal the lessons that He wants you to have that day. Request that God protect you from Satan’s distractions (and the devil will try to distract you whether it is pinching the baby or putting you to sleep). Ask to see God more clearly as you read and think about the passage.
Step 2: Read the passage–Read to get an overview of the information first. Then start looking at specific parts after the first reading. You may read a larger or smaller section than I have here because you do not have to follow my organization at all.
Step 3: Understand the passage–You can summarize, ask and answer your own questions about the passage, visualize the story, analyze the characters, and relate this passage to other scriptures and personal experiences.
Step 4: What does this reveal about God?–What do you learn about the Father, Son, and/or Holy Spirit from this passage?
Step 5: Apply this to your own life.
Step 6: Prayer
My Example Devotion: March 20, 2018, Mark 11:15-19
Note: In the devotion examples, I leave my questions and thought processes in the text because I am trying to demonstrate that a devotional time is a dialogue with God about what you are reading from His word. As such, any questions or ideas that you have should be explored by talking it out with God. These example devotions are not my attempts to teach you what the meaning of a particular scripture is. They are an attempt to teach you the process of devotions, which is a combination of prayer and Bible study where you explore ideas with God as you read His word.
And they came to Jerusalem. And he entered the temple and began to drive out those who sold and those who bought in the temple, and he overturned the tables of the money-changers and the seats of those who sold pigeons. And he would not allow anyone to carry anything through the temple. And he was teaching them and saying to them, “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.” And the chief priests and the scribes heard it and were seeking a way to destroy him, for they feared him, because all the crowd was astonished at his teaching. And when evening came they went out of the city.
(Understanding the Text) Jesus drove out everyone who was doing business from the Gentile court, not just the sellers but the buyers also. He overturned the inanimate objects such as chairs and tables that were used by the sellers and money changers. It says that He would not let anyone carry anything through the temple. At first, I thought that meant the sellers and buyers, but maybe He was preventing looters from trying to take stuff also.
Then, other people came in–some to see the rabbi but some to probably look at the destruction inside the temple. They all stayed to listen to Jesus’ lessons. Jesus explained why He had done what He had done. The scriptures said that the temple would be a place where people from all nations, the Gentiles, could worship God, but the priests had taken the Gentile’s court and made it a marketplace. Thus, there was no place in the temple for people of other nations to worship God. Instead the temple had become associated with cheating and greed. Malachi describes another time where the priests had allowed greed to cheat God. “A son honors his father, and a servant his master. If then I am a father, where is my honor? And if I am a master, where is my fear? says the LORD of hosts to you, O priests, who despise my name. But you say, ‘How have we despised your name?’ By offering polluted food upon my altar. But you say, ‘How have we polluted you?’ By saying that the LORD’s table may be despised. When you offer blind animals in sacrifice, is that not evil? And when you offer those that are lame or sick, is that not evil? Present that to your governor; will he accept you or show you favor? says the LORD of hosts” (Mal 1:6-8). The priests of Jesus’ day would claim that they had reversed this situation by being picky about the offerings given to God, but in fact, the underlying greed, which is what God was complaining about, was still present in full. Outward actions may change, but if the inward motivations remain the same, the new outward action will be just as twisted as the old. The priests of Jesus’ day were despising the name of God, just as much as those of Malachi’s day. They had not changed their inward motivations in those hundreds of years between Malachi and Jesus.
(Revelation of God / Application) God looks on the inward man, and yet we always focus on the outward behavior. God says that this behavior is wrong because of an inward problem, yet we don’t focus on the inward problem. Instead, we say that we are going to stop the behavior. We look at the example instead of the general principle that we are being pointed to. If we are not transformed inside, our new behaviors will reflect the same greed and selfishness that caused the first behavior. Instead, we need to pray to be new creatures who love God and love people.
(Understanding the Text) The day before a huge crowd of people had proclaimed Jesus the Messiah, the king of the Jews. This day, Jesus had thrown the moneychangers and sellers out of the temple and taught a large crowd to respect the house of God. In doing this, Jesus had challenged the power of the priests and made them look bad to their own powerbase, the people. It is not as though the people did not know of the priests’ greed, but they had accepted it as normal and not thought about the neglect of teaching about God to the Gentiles. Now, they knew that the actions of the priests were not normal or righteous, and they were beginning to have an inkling that God wanted worship from more than just the Jews. All this caused the priests to hate Jesus and want to get rid of Him. They knew that if He was King, they would be thrown out of their positions of influence as surely as Jesus had thrown out the moneychangers and buyers and sellers.
(Revelation of God) Why did Jesus cleanse the temple a second time here? He had taught in the temple at other times without cleansing it. He was about to leave it forever. Why bother? Maybe, to give one last witness to the Jews of what the temple had been meant to be. Maybe, it needed to be clean to represent the heavenly temple as He offered the final sacrifice. God’s complaint in Malachi’s day was that the temple did not reflect the perfection of heaven to the people. That it was not a fitting example of the sacrifice that Jesus would make. Maybe, Jesus knew he had to set people straight on the archetype before they could understand the type that it pointed to. I’m not sure.
(Understanding the Text) He stayed in the temple all day and left when it was evening to go back to Bethany and the home of Lazarus. Maybe He stayed in the temple all day to keep the sellers and moneychangers out and to ensure that they would wait a while before filling up the court again. I wonder if the temple remained cleansed for the final week. When Jesus was looking over the temple the day before, was He deciding which parts needed cleansing and planning what He would do the next day?
This was Monday of the last week of Jesus’ life on sinful earth. There were only four more days until the last sacrifice, and Jesus had checked another item off of His prophetic list.
(Prayer) Teach me to never accept religious traditions that contradict Your word and will. Help me to worship You in the truth of Your beauty and to never obscure that beauty with my own sinful tendencies or the world’s ideas. Then transform me so that those who do not know You, will want to come close to You because they know that worshipping You has given me such beauty in my life.