Starting With Jesus' Baptism, Testing, and Cleansing Translates Into Your Unity, Defeat Slander, and Purify Your Worship (Starting Today)

Matthew 3:13-17; Mark 1:12-13; Luke 19:45-46; John 2:14-16(NRSVUE)

The Baptism of Jesus

13 Then Jesus came from Galilee to John at the Jordan, to be baptized by him. 14 John would have prevented him, saying, “I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?” 15 But Jesus answered him, “Let it be so now, for it is proper for us in this way to fulfill all righteousness.” Then he consented. 16 And when Jesus had been baptized, just as he came up from the water, suddenly the heavens were opened to him and he saw God’s Spirit descending like a dove and alighting on him. 17 And a voice from the heavens said, “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.”

The Testing of Jesus

12 And the Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness. 13 He was in the wilderness forty days, tested by Satan, and he was with the wild beasts, and the angels waited on him.

Jesus Cleanses the Temple

45 Then he entered the temple and began to drive out those who were selling things there, 46 and he said, “It is written,
‘My house shall be a house of prayer,’
but you have made it a den of robbers.”

 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!”