John Bradshaw - Cleansing the Temple of Your Life
When biologists start using words like "Dread" and "Devastating" things are getting serious. The National Park Service has discovered smallmouth bass have made it south of the Glen Canyon Dam and the Colorado River, and to say they're concerned would be an understatement. Smallmouth bass had been kept out of the river south of the dam, but now they are south of the dam it's expected they will devastate endangered fish, including the humpback chub, for which the scientists say it's now basically game over.
And that's how sin works. You want to keep it out, because once it gets in, it can be hard to eradicate, and it will do huge damage. You start to love it, it can be addicting, and hard to wind back the clock on. And then a sin of one kind will open the floodgates to sins of other kinds. Thankfully there's a remedy for sin, for all sin, and that remedy is Jesus.
Jesus went to the temple in Jerusalem, and found it full of people selling animals and changing money. It was open desecration of the Temple. Of course it was inappropriate, but once something like that gets established, it requires real effort to turn things around, to get rid of it.
It says in John Chapter 2 that Jesus, "When He had made a scourge of small cords, He drove them all out of the temple, and the sheep, and the oxen; and poured out the changers' money and overthrew the tables; and said unto them that sold doves, "Take these things hence; make not my Father's house and house of merchandise".
Jesus in the temple cleansed the temple. When sin gets into you, the solution is the same: invite Jesus into the temple of your life. You bring him right in. Bring him right into where the sin is, and just like he did two thousand years ago in the temple, the presence of Jesus in you will drive the sin right out of you. That's what the presence of Jesus does. I'm John Bradshaw for It Is Written.