Bible Study: October 14, 2026

Prayer

As always, we'll begin with a prayer. Is there any great thing from the past week you'd like to mention for us to praise/pray about? Perhaps a prayer was answered since our last meeting, or maybe something wonderful happened that you want to praise God for by sharing with us? Afterwards, we can also discuss prayer requests for any challenges and for the people we know who are close to our hearts.

Praise

Holy Sonnet XIV

Batter my heart, three-person’d God; for you

As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend;

That I may rise and stand, o’erthrow me, and bend

Your force to break, blow, burn, and make me new.

I, like an usurp’d town to another due,

Labour to admit you, but oh, to no end;

Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend,

But is captived, and proves weak or untrue.

Yet dearly I love you, and would be lov’d fain,

But am betroth’d unto your enemy;

Divorce me, untie, or break that knot again,

Take me to you, imprison me, for I,

Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,

Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.

-John Donne

Passage

 Jesus Cleanses the Temple

¹³ The Passover of the Jews was near, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. ¹⁴ In the temple he found people selling cattle, sheep, and doves and the money changers seated at their tables. ¹⁵ Making a whip of cords, he drove all of them out of the temple, with the sheep and the cattle. He also poured out the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables. ¹⁶ He told those who were selling the doves, “Take these things out of here! Stop making my Father’s house a marketplace!” ¹⁷ His disciples remembered that it was written, “Zeal for your house will consume me.”

¹⁸ The Jews then said to him, “What sign can you show us for doing this?” ¹⁹ Jesus answered them, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” ²⁰ The Jews then said, “This temple has been under construction for forty-six years, and will you raise it up in three days?” ²¹ But he was speaking of the temple of his body. ²² After he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this, and they believed the scripture and the word that Jesus had spoken.

²³ When he was in Jerusalem during the Passover festival, many believed in his name because they saw the signs that he was doing. ²⁴ But Jesus on his part would not entrust himself to them, because he knew all people ²⁵ and needed no one to testify about anyone, for he himself knew what was in everyone.

Ponder

1. What first grabs your attention or stirs your feelings in this Passover scene (or Donne's poem)? Is it the sounds? The sights? Maybe it’s the words/tone of Jesus? What do you notice without yet trying to explain it yet?

2. Where do you feel the main tension of the passage: Jesus’ forceful action, the commerce in a worship space, the demand for a sign, or his cryptic reply about ‘this temple’? What questions does that tension raise for you?

3. Jesus makes a whip of cords, drives out the animals and sellers, and overturns the money changers’ tables. What do you think this action reveals about Christ’s character and priorities? How does it align (or not) with other pictures of Jesus we often look at?

4. Jesus says, “Stop making my Father’s house a marketplace!” What does “my Father’s house” mean here, and what was the temple supposed to be for God’s people? Where do we see similar tensions today: between genuine worship and commercial or self-serving activity?

5. If our lives are temples of where God means to dwell, what clutter might Jesus be eager to overturn or drive out?

6. Verse 25 says Jesus “knew what was in everyone.” How does this knowledge of human hearts shape the way we read both the temple cleansing and people’s responses to Him? What comfort or challenge does it bring for us as believers?

Purposeful Prayer

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