Welcome to Holy Week 2024! What is Holy Week? Holy Week is the remembrance of the week between Palm Sunday where Jesus triumphantly entered Jerusalem and Easter Sunday where Jesus was marvelously resurrected in Jerusalem.

Yesterday was Palm Sunday. Today is what I call Zealous Monday. It’s the day that Jesus cleansed the temple there in Jerusalem. We read in Matthew 21:12–13, “And Jesus entered the temple and drove out all who sold and bought in the temple, and he overturned the tables of the money-changers and the seats of those who sold pigeons. He said to them, ‘It is written, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer,’ but you make it a den of robbers.”

Now, this wasn’t the first time Jesus had done this.  Apostle John tells us in John 2 that Jesus cleansed the temple early in his ministry as well and notes that Jesus was motivated by zeal for God’s house.  And this second time when he cleansed the temple during Holy Week, it was no different. Zeal consumed him, hence the name Zealous Monday. It was zeal for God’s house that moved Jesus to get all the junk out of the temple that didn’t belong.

But on this Zealous Monday, it’s important for us to realize that Jesus isn’t just zealous for the old temple. He’s zealous for the new temple, which is you and me, everybody who is a Christian. Apostle Paul teaches in 1 Corinthians 6 that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you. So, just as Jesus was zealous about having a holy temple there in Jerusalem, He’s zealous about your body and your life being a holy temple today.
Beloved, in light of this truth, here is the question we must ask ourselves:  is there anything in the temple of our life that doesn’t belong? Is there anything that Jesus would be zealous to cleanse out and get rid of? Today is the perfect time to repent of that and throw it out.

God, in this Holy Week, would you make your people holy?

Change begins in you!