The gospel record focuses in more detail on the last five days, the last 120 hours, of Jesus’ life as he 

approached the cross and in that record we discover the things that really mattered to him. One of the 

focused events is the second cleansing of the Temple by the deeply offended Son of God. He had 

performed this same type cleansing three years earlier but time brought a slipping back into the old 

dishonoring of the very purposes of the Temple by the people who ought to know better. In this 

cleansing Jesus defines for us his Father’s divine purpose for the Temple and in turn God’s purpose for 

the church. The Temple was to be a profound spiritual intersection where humanity encountered God at 

a personal level. He intends the same purpose for the church.

Warming Up

Question: If you knew you faced a certain death in 120 hours from know what would you do? What

would you stop doing?

We all feel a sense of urgency in our lives from time to time. Certainly there are different levels of urgency that require more of our attention than others - for example, getting all those presents bought and wrapped for Christmas versus finding out you may have only six months left to live. Both are urgent on their own specific level, but clearly we would all agree that one is far more critical and urgent than the other. 

Maybe one of the more challenging aspects of “urgency” is learning to place those things that we deem so important in their proper perspective. What are your urgencies? Do they have an impact on your faith or others? Do you even feel a sense of spiritual urgency in your daily life? Did Jesus challenge us to have a spiritual urgency to our faith? I think these are vital questions for those who follow after Christ.

My prayer for you this morning is that we can open up the door a bit wider in order to understand the importance Jesus placed on what is urgent to Him and His Church.