Matthew 21:13
He said to them, “It is written, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer,’ but you make it a den of robbers.”
Bible Reading for A Year: Psalm 81; Luke 2; Jeremiah 7-8
We surely remember how surprised Jesus was when He went into the temple in Jerusalem. Jesus saw the place where His presence come down, the place where people came to worship and listen to His words had been misused for trading or buying and selling.
Jesus got angry, so that ‘He turned over the four-footed tables of the money changers and the chairs of those who sold doves” (v. 12b) and cast them out. Jesus rebuked them loudly by saying, “My house shall be called a house of prayer; but you have made it a den of robbers.”
However, His reprimand apparently made the chief priests and scribes to be offended so they try to find a way to destroy Jesus (Mark 11:18). It shows that they did not really do the words of God. God’s temple shall be a house of prayer and is not made as a den of robbers or sins.
His words affirm that “For God's temple is holy, and you are that temple" (1 Corinthians 3:17b). Therefore, our body is His holy temple. God wants our body always in the state of being holy and become a house of prayer! Have we already used our body as a house of prayer? Let us honor our body since it is a house of prayer.