Family Holy Week DevotionalSample

READ TOGETHER

Yesterday we read about Jesus being welcomed into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday. After all of that excitement, Jesus and his disciples returned to a small town called Bethany, about 2 miles outside of the city, to spend the night. On Monday morning, they walked back into the city of Jerusalem. You might not know this, but back in ancient Israel, the most important building in Jerusalem was the Temple. The Temple was very special to all of the Jewish people. It was the place where they came to worship God and the place where God would meet with his people. The Temple building was very special to Jesus, too. He even called it “my Father’s house.”

On this day, when Jesus entered the Temple, he found it loud and noisy and very crowded. There were people and animals everywhere! Can you imagine animals being in your church? Before Jesus died for our sins, people had to bring animals as a sin offering so God would forgive them. It seems strange to us now since we have Jesus in our lives! These people would have traveled a long way to Jerusalem and couldn’t always bring animals with them. So other people decided they wanted to make money by selling the animals people would need inside of the Temple courts.

The worst part of all of this is that the sellers tried to cheat the people. Some of the people selling animals pretended that an animal that someone brought into the Temple wasn’t good enough so the people would then buy another one. Or the sellers charged too much money and tricked people so that they could make themselves rich. They were mean and greedy. And they did it all inside of God’s special house! This made Jesus VERY upset. He was so upset that he started chasing people out of the Temple! He knocked over tables and wouldn’t let anyone bring what they were selling back inside of the Temple.

And do you remember the Pharisees from yesterday? The ones that were upset about people calling Jesus their king? Well, some of those religious leaders were at the Temple when Jesus was doing all of this. They decided that they needed to start looking for a way to kill Jesus because they were scared of what he taught and how all of the people were following him. They did not understand that he was the Son of God.

Jesus wants our hearts to be like a Temple too, a place where we honor God. He didn’t want people selling things to make money at the Temple because he wanted God to be the most important thing! God should be the most important part of our hearts and our lives. 

TALK TOGETHER

1 - What would you have thought if you were at the Temple when Jesus started knocking over tables?

2 - What does it look like when God is the most important part of our lives? At home? At school? In our neighborhood?

PRAY TOGETHER 

Dear God, we want to always make sure you are the most important part of our lives! Remind us when we are not living that way. Show us how to make you the center of everything we do. Help our family work together to honor you in our home and everywhere we go. We love you. In Jesus’ name we pray, amen.