"My house shall be called the house of prayer."--_Matt. 21:13._
THE first thing our blessed Lord did at Jerusalem was to go into the
Temple; and there, in the courts, He found people keeping shop, selling
the lambs that were wanted for the Passover, and doves for other
services, and changing the coin that strangers brought for Jewish money.
This was very disrespectful to God, and He was angry. He had driven
them all out once, and they had come back, and now they were doing it
again. So He drove them all out, and told them His Father's house was a
house of prayer, but they had made it a den of thieves.
No one dared to answer Him, and all that day and the next He stood
in the Temple, teaching the people, and showing the wickedness of
the chief priests and Pharisees. It seemed as if all the people of
Jerusalem were ready to follow Him, and as if He might begin His reign
directly; but this was not what He came for, and, as He well knew, the
Pharisees were planning against Him.
[Illustration: JESUS DRIVES OUT THE MONEY-CHANGERS.--Matt. 21:13.]
They wanted to get Him to say something that they could say was against
the Law, so they asked Him many hard questions, but His great wisdom
put them all to silence, and made them ashamed; but they were so hard
and wicked that they only hated Him the more.