Day 2 - Monday, Cleansing the Temple

I.
When I read of Christ cleansing the temple I thought of Paul as he said, “Know ye not that ye are the temple of God?”
1 Corinthians 3:16



A. How do we Cleanse our Temples?

• Christ gives us the answer to this vital question as he finishes out the week. He died, that we might live again. Through the atonement, his suffering and death, we can repent. Repentance will cleanse our soul of all unrighteousness. 
•  “The invitation to repent is rarely a voice of chastisement but rather a loving appeal to turn around and to “re-turn” toward God. Repentance is a blessing to all of us. The Savior is there, reaching out to each of us, bidding us: “Come unto me.” We can repent. We can!” - Elder N.L. Andersen, Matthew 11:28-30

II.
 As Christ was cleansing the temple he called out, “My house shall be called the House of Prayer”
Matthew 21:13


A. How do we become a House of Prayer?

• Do I hold a prayer in my heart? Does my body house a prayer each day? If we went around with a prayer in our heart would we act the way we do? Would we be a little bit better? I think that perhaps the people there in the temple during Christ’s time would have acted differently had they been housing a prayer in their hearts.

B. Because of Christ’s Prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane, we can all be cleansed. Our prayers now have meaning because of His prayer that day.

“Now therefore ye are no more strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens with the saints, and of the household of God; And are built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief corner stone; In whom all the building fitly framed together growth unto an holy temple in the Lord: In whom ye also are builded together for an habitation of God through the Spirit.”

Ephesians 2:19-22