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Holy Monday | Holy Week Day 2
734 Plays39 minutes ago
Most of us know Palm Sunday, Good Friday, and Easter — but what about the days in between? Holy Monday is the day Jesus cleansed the temple, and it carries a theme I think we all need: cleanse your heart. In this episode, I walk through what happened, why it matters, and what it looks like to let Jesus do that same work in us today.
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Transcript
Introduction to Holy Monday
00:00:00
Speaker
Welcome back to Verity Podcast, friends. You are joining me for our Holy Week series, and this episode is holy Monday. Monday.
00:00:12
Speaker
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.
00:00:26
Speaker
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 feliciamasonheimer.com to our free resources tab, and there you will find the Holy Week guide. It's completely free.
00:00:46
Speaker
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.
Jesus Cleanses the Temple: Significance and Symbolism
00:00:55
Speaker
So let's learn what happened on Holy Monday.
00:00:58
Speaker
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 on 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.
00:01:21
Speaker
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.
00:02:04
Speaker
The money changers who are in the temple, were um doing literally just that. They were changing out money. So if you are American and you use dollars and you travel to Europe, you need to use euros so you can see a money changer to get euros instead of dollars. So what's happening here is they are doing the same thing But the money changers were actually adding on extra fees. They were making money off of the people who were exchanging their currencies. On top of this, they had lambs and doves and, you know, cows all available for sacrifice in the temple courtyard. But they were at inflated prices. So you could bring your own sacrifice to the temple to be sacrificed, but if you forgot it or you didn't want to travel all that way with it, you could buy one right on site for just the discount price of however many shekels. And it was a much increased price. So when Jesus is cleansing the temple, he's seeing this cheating happening right in the house of God. He's seeing this injustice happening right here where God's holiness dwells.
00:03:20
Speaker
And he's enraged by it. And write rightly so. And so as we go through the rest I have to share with you today about the cleansing of the temple and Holy Monday and and how we should observe Holy Monday, I have a theme for you. Just as I've told you, I'll have a theme for each day of Holy Week that I want you to think about. And the theme for today is cleanse your heart.
00:03:44
Speaker
Cleanse your heart. Because of what Jesus did on the cross and the Holy Spirit we've been given, we now have the holiness of God dwelling within us, not just in the temple built by hands, but in the temples of human bodies.
00:03:57
Speaker
So this means that the Spirit of God, the holiness of God is dwelling right here. how How many things do I have in my heart that are full of injustice?
00:04:09
Speaker
Am I cheating anyone in my behavior, my thoughts, my actions? Am I living with resentment, with um indignity towards other people that I need to bring to the Lord?
00:04:22
Speaker
What does Jesus want to drive out of my heart today?
The Lesson of the Fig Tree and Spiritual Fruits
00:04:27
Speaker
That's what you can be thinking about on Holy Monday. Now, we know that Jesus cleansed the temple, but he also did something else. He cursed fig tree on Holy Monday. And if you go down in Matthew 21 to verse 18, Jesus had been outside the city and he's returning to it and he was hungry and he saw a fig tree by the road, but he came to it and found nothing on it. And so he cursed it and it withered.
00:04:52
Speaker
This points out another thing that many of us can struggle with, something that's a heart issue, fruitlessness, saying that we follow Jesus, but bearing no fruit.
00:05:03
Speaker
Now, if you're listening to this and you are a child, you are, maybe you're seven, maybe you're 10, maybe you're 15, you're You've probably been taught the fruits of the Spirit. Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. These are things that naturally grow on someone who is following Jesus, who who Jesus is their King, He's their Lord.
00:05:30
Speaker
These are fruits of the Holy Spirit in you. So as Jesus' Spirit dwells in you, you will, like a healthy fig tree, bear these fruits of love and joy and peace.
00:05:41
Speaker
So when Jesus is angry at this tree for not producing fruit, he's not saying that when you make mistakes, you know, this text is not saying that when you make mistakes or you're not loving one day or not joyful, that he no longer loves you or that you're cursed.
00:05:59
Speaker
But he is saying that someone who says they follow Jesus and never bears any fruit of love or joy or peace or kindness, they aren't growing towards Jesus, that those people should seriously consider whether the interior of their heart is actually submitted to Jesus.
00:06:19
Speaker
And so today, our theme is to think about how do we cleanse our hearts? And we do that by turning back to Jesus or turning to Jesus for the very first time and saying, Lord, I don't have love in my heart. I don't have joy. I don't have peace. I need your Holy Spirit to do that work in my heart.
Jesus Teaches in the Temple Amidst Rising Tensions
00:06:39
Speaker
And if you are a Christian and you have been walking in a way that's unloving or not joyful, not peaceful, you can turn to him now and say, Lord, I'm coming back to you. I want these things to be made right with you and I want to bear that fruit.
00:06:55
Speaker
It's that easy. The Lord wants to cleanse your heart and bring you closer to him. Now, what we also see happen on Holy Monday is that Jesus, after cleansing the temple, went back and he taught in it.
00:07:08
Speaker
And isn't that encouraging? Because he didn't cleanse the temple and then abandon it. He cleansed it and then he came back and he taught the truth of God in it. And that's what he does for us. Yes, he cleanses our hearts, but he doesn't leave us alone. He comes back by his Holy Spirit and teaches us the right way, the right way to walk.
00:07:26
Speaker
Now, in the midst of all this, the Jewish leaders who are seeing Jesus do these things, they see that he is he is risking the relationship that Israel has with Rome.
00:07:37
Speaker
Israel had some protections by the Roman government, and Jesus was kind of upsetting that apple cart. He was causing a lack of equilibrium. There was suddenly an imbalance going on, and they were getting worried about the people and about unrest in the city. And so they said, Jesus is the threat here.
00:07:55
Speaker
Let's kill Jesus. So they start to conspire and figure out a way that they can kill Jesus. This is a real bummer because they're about to enter this festival, the Passover, that is commemorating God's rescue of Israel from slavery.
00:08:12
Speaker
Way back in the book of Exodus. That's what the Passover remembers. But instead of seeing that the God who saved them back then is among them in the form of Jesus Christ, they're thinking about killing him, killing their Savior.
Traditions of Holy Monday: Cleansing and Reflection
00:08:29
Speaker
Historically, Holy Monday has been a day in the church calendar where people would do their spring cleaning. it' So Holy Monday and Holy Tuesday, they would clean their houses. They would get everything taken out and cleaned up as they're moving towards church. the end of Holy Week, so Good Friday, Holy Saturday, and Easter Day, preparing for that. They would do all their baking, all their cleaning, and I think that this is such an interesting parallel to what we're talking about here, that just as Jesus cleansed the temple on Holy Monday and
00:09:04
Speaker
And people are cleansing their houses in church history. We are to cleanse our hearts. So that's what I'm going to leave you with today on Holy Monday to think about and to pray through.
00:09:15
Speaker
Don't forget to use your Holy Week guide and read through the devotion for today on Holy Monday and answer those questions. And I'll see you tomorrow on Holy Tuesday.