Welcome back to Verity Podcast, friends. You are joining me for our Holy Week series, and this

episode is Holy Monday. Now, most evangelical Christians are familiar with Palm Sunday,

Good Friday, and Easter Sunday, or Resurrection Day, but they're not familiar with all of the other days

that make up Holy Week. And so each episode this week will walk you through those days that we

aren't as familiar with, and one of those is Holy Monday. Now, if you don't have our Holy Week

guide that goes along with these videos,

you can head to Felicia Masonheimer.com to our free resources tab, and there you will find the

Holy Week guide. It's completely free. You can just enter your email to download it. I can't wait for

you to use that as we walk through each of these videos this week together. So let's learn what

happened on Holy Monday. We're going to be reading in Matthew 21, verses 12 through 13, which says,

And Jesus entered the temple area and drove out all those who were selling and buying in the

temple grounds. And he overturned the tables of the money changers

and the seats of those who were selling doves. And he said to them, it is written, my house will be called a

house of prayer, but you are making it a den of robbers. This is called the cleansing of the temple,

and this is actually the second time that Jesus cleansed the temple in his ministry. He cleansed

it at the beginning and now he's cleansing it at the end. This is significant because what he's doing

here is he's kind of starting his ministry by cleaning house and here he is ending his ministry

by cleaning house again. And he's pointing out that the sanctuary

of God is to be a place focused on God himself, not to be focused on selfish ends. He is

cleansing out those who are participating in the sacrificial system as if it were something for

their own personal benefit

and personal gain. The money changers who are in the temple were doing literally just that.

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