Intentional

            Sometime after His triumphal entry into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, Jesus walked into the Temple to cleanse it. He did not enter quietly. He not only disrupted the buying and selling, He disrupted how the people approached God and how they maintained their right standing with Him.

            The Temple had become a place of exchange. For a temporary sense of peace, those who came paid something, received something, offered something. The Temple had developed into a marketplace, not just in reality, but in the minds of the people. Because of that, they related to God through exchange, rather than through relationship.

            Jesus didn’t come to make the system better. He came to finish it. He was telling the people God couldn’t be approached through negotiation. Every sacrifice offered in the Temple pointed to something greater that had not yet been completed. Think about the significance of the event. The One standing there amidst the overturned tables was the fulfillment of everything the system  pointed to.

            Jesus knew the cross was days away, and that His shed blood would accomplish what no sacrifice in the Temple ever could. “Day after day every priest stands and performs his religious duties; again and again he offers the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins. But when this priest (Jesus) had offered for all time one sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God...” (Hebrews 10:11-12 NIV).

            Jesus demonstrated He would become the new Temple, and turn His followers into carriers of the presence of God. “Do you not know that your body is the temple (the very sanctuary) of the Holy Spirit Who lives within you, Whom you have received [as a Gift] from God? You are not your own...” (1 Corinthians 6:19 AMPC).

            Right in front of the people, Jesus confronted the system they trusted in to provide access to God. He made them uncomfortable. But he wanted them to see the reality that what could not produce life or secure access was about to be replaced by the true life that only He could bring. He’d already told them,  “...I am the [only] Way [to God] and the [real] Truth and the [real] Life; no one comes to the Father but through Me” (John 14:6 AMP).

            Jesus walked through the week before Resurrection Sunday with intentionality because He saw the cross clearly before Him. He was moving toward what He was coming to complete. “...(Jesus) saw the joy ahead of him, so he endured death on the cross and ignored the disgrace it brought him. Then he received the highest position in heaven, the one next to the throne of God” (Hebrews 12:2 NOG).

            Although He unsettled the people by removing the familiar, He was not removing their hope, but taking away what never could fulfill it. He walked toward the cross with certainty, knowing all it would accomplish. That is why our salvation is based on completion. It is not dependent on what we maintain, but on what Jesus finished.

            As believers in Jesus, our salvation is not fragile. It is secured with His precious Blood and finished work on the cross.