JESUS PURGED HIS HOUSE OF LEAVEN

Yesterday we talked about the two prophetic actions as signs Jesus gave during the triumphal entry into and through Jerusalem on the Day of Presentation.  

But as He drew near to the city of Jerusalem itself but across the Kidron Valley from it. He began to weep about the hardness of their hearts, the blindness of their eyes. That they missed the obvious spiritual significance of the things happening all around them, during their day of visitation.  

41 Now as He drew near, He saw the city and wept over it, 42 saying, “If you had known, even you, especially in this your day, the things that make for your peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes. 

43 For days will come upon you when your enemies will build an embankment around you, surround you and close you in on every side, 44 and level you, and your children within you, to the ground; and they will not leave in you one stone upon another, because you did not know the time of your visitation.” Luke 19:41-44 

So even though the people were excited at the moment, waving palm fronds and laying their clothes out in the streets, they did not realize what He was really saying by His actions, they did not recognize Him as their LAMB or their KING!

Yesterday, we left you hanging with a question about how the procession ended. Traditionally it should have ended at the outer courts of the temple. This is the pattern that the lamb would travel to the altar in the outer courts of the temple. Jesus follows this pattern to the very end except he goes to the eastern gate, the golden gate, and once inside to the gate of the Prince of Israel also called the Gate beautiful.    

It would be good to remind us here that these four days, as well as the ten days since the first day of the first month, were spent removing all leaven from the house so there would be no leaven anywhere in the house by the end of the day of preparation.  

18 In the first month, on the fourteenth day of the month at evening, you shall eat unleavened bread, until the twenty-first day of the month at evening. 19 For seven days no leaven shall be found in your houses...

Look at this passage from that day. This is Jesus acting as the KING, not as the Lamb. This takes place even before his death and resurrection. It is as if he rose up from the back of the donkey and immediately began to cleanse the temple, as His first act of Kingship. 

"My house is a house of prayer." 

45 Then He went into the temple and began to drive out those who bought and sold in it, 46 saying to them, “It is written, ‘My house is a house of prayer,’ but you have made it a ‘den of thieves.’”  Luke 19:45-46 

Jesus was cleansing His house of the leaven of the money changers and merchandisers. 

He said, My house is a house of relationship (prayer) 
but you have made it a house of religion (mere transactions)
as such you are thieves robbing people of their relationship with God and reducing it to a long list of religious lifeless obligations. 

Check back here tomorrow at sundown for EXAM DAY ONE...