When Christ comes to cleanse a man, it is no spa day. His purification is less like a bubble bath and more like grandma working away vigorously at the stuck on grease, this being that grandma who was more than happy to take a bar of soap to your back molars. The human problem is that everybody wants to be cleansed, but nobody wants to be scrubbed. Everybody wants purification but nobody wants their tables flipped (except the children, as we will see, they like the excitement).

Because that is precisely how Christ cleansed the temple upon His triumphal entry into Jerusalem. And there were two responses. His whip cracking and table flipping troubled the chief priests but inspired the children. His hot dealings with the moneychanges made the children looking on cry out, “Hosanna to the son of David” (Matthew 21:15), which angered the scribes all the more. No doubt this development had to worry a mom or two. Their boys were making little whips of their own and following their Master. This was no ordinary day at church.

When the LORD comes to rearrange the furniture of your inner man, you must become like a child to follow your King in the wild and ill-mannered business of confessing sin.