"Zeal for Your House"

Lent • Sermon • Submitted 3 years ago

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Goal: That the hearer believe more fully in the fact that our own bodies are a temple to the Lord, and Jesus cleanses our body/temple of the Holy Spirit of the spiritual defilement of sin by His crucifixion and resurrection three days later

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Before the opening day of pheasant season, two city-dwellers who aspired to be hunters bought a bird dog, having heard that such a dog would make for much more enjoyable and profitable hunting. When the big day came, they were up bright and early. They hunted all day, but as dusk began to overtake them, they hadn’t fired a single shot. The hunters were exhausted and frustrated over the poor performance of their bird dog. Finally one said, “Okay, Joe, throw him up once more and if he don’t fly this time, I’m gonna shoot him!”

These two hunters had a zeal for something they really knew little to nothing about. I personally have never hunted in my life, but I do understand that it takes a lot more than just having zeal, the right equipment and the right dog, and knowing how to use a trained dog. One thing these city-dwellers should have known is that dogs can’t fly. Solomon penned these words in Proverbs, “It is not good to have zeal without knowledge, nor to be hasty and miss the way.” (19:2).

The text this morning is the reading from John’s gospel read just a moment ago. To set the stage, this is the first year of Jesus’ ministry. He had just been in Cana where Jesus had performed His first miracle, changing water into wine at the wedding banquet. The ending of the section just prior to our text today says that after that miracle in Cana, they went “to Capernaum, with His mother and His brothers and His disciples, and they stayed there for a few days.” (2:12).

“The Passover of the Jews was at hand and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. In the temple He found those who were selling oxen and sheep and pigeons, and the money changers sitting there.” (vv 13-14). Passover is one of the greatest holidays in all Judaism. It is a rite that is to be adhered to every year. For as you know, the Passover was instituted by God for His chosen people the night all the first born in Egypt were slain. That was the last plague that God hit Pharoah and all the inhabitants of Egypt, all except for the Israelites. For that night, Moses commanded all of Israel to slaughter a lamb a year old without spot or blemish, and paint the blood on the door posts and the lintel of their homes. And when the angel of destruction came to kill the first born, it would see the blood on the door posts and pass over that house to the next. That night Egypt was decimated as from Pharoah to the lowest servant lost the first born of their families and of their livestock. Of course, all this was a foreshadowing of what Christ would do on the cross.

It was a time for Israel to remember the Lord’s redemption of His chosen people from a house of slavery. God, through Moses, brought out His people from Egypt and set them on a journey to the land that God had promised to Abraham and his descendants. It was a promise several hundred years in the completion of, yet another promise kept by our Lord.

So here we are, several hundred years after that event and we get a glimpse into the corrupted worship life of God’s chosen people, His spiritual house. There are now vendors in the Temple area selling animals for sacrifice. This was no well managed marketplace, mind you. It was noisy, chaotic and smelly.

Jesus comes into the temple and makes a whip of cords and drove out all the vendors, money changers and animals from the Temple saying, “Take these things away; do not make My Father’s house a house of trade” (v 16). The Temple was to be a place of worship, and the Jewish religious leaders turned it into a common marketplace where more than likely they were fleecing the Jewish people who traveled from other countries for the Passover, let alone their own.

“Zeal for your house will consume Me.” This is a quote from Psalm 69:9 where the Psalmist is lamenting over becoming a reproach to his own people. David has a zeal for the house of the Lord. But it is far beyond just a zeal for the “Temple” or “Tabernacle”, the zeal is more for the spiritual house of Israel, for the chosen people of God.

So, Jesus comes in and cleans out the Temple of what was partially defiling it, this hideous market inside the Temple with its noise, chaos and profit. The text goes on to say that the “Jews said to Him, “What sign do you show us for doing these things? Jesus answered them, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” Of course, the Jewish leaders could not comprehend what Jesus was telling them. They were so wrapped up in the here and now of life, the temporal, the material, the external, that they were blinded by the spiritual. Jesus was speaking about His own body, but they were blinded to the heavenly meaning Jesus was conveying.

The Jewish leadership of the Temple were leading God’s house astray. They allowed for such things to occur in the Temple during the Passover celebration. If they were allowing such things as this to happen in God’s house, what other sorts of things were they allowing?

One of my mother’s favorite sayings was “Give him an inch and he’ll take you a mile.” From what I can gather from this saying is sort of a two fold message. The first being, ‘there are those in life that will take you for all your worth’. Another way of looking at this would be that if someone allows a person to erase the line in the sand, they will continue to do so until they are satisfied. Or, if a person is allowed to sin, he will continue to do so until his/her sinfulness is satisfied, if that were ever to happen.

The marketplace in the temple had defiled it for those who came to actually worship. To use God’s house as a house of prayer and worship was severely hindered with this noisy and smelly atrocity happening in the Temple. And the example being set by the Jewish leaders allowed people to miss the mark in regards to their own spiritual worship. It had become nothing but an external show and an attempt at extortion. These things defiled the Temple and the worship life of God’s house, Israel.

But let’s step outside the here and now, the temporal, the physical. Let’s take a look at this from the eyes of God. The Jews said, “It has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and will you raise it up in three days?” (v. 20). The status quo was all the religious leaders were concerned about; their authority, their power, their status in this life. They liked their position in society, they liked the money flowing in. The issue at hand is sin. The religious leaders were leading God’s house in a wrong direction. They were comfortable in what they had and they didn’t want to lose it. Their love of themselves out weighed their desire to do what was right in God’s eyes.

But what about us? We too have defiled houses. Sin still affects us all. As long as we live in this life, the Old Adam still clings to us and defiles us. Remember what Jesus said to the religious leaders, “Hear and understand: it is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person, but what comes our of the mouth; this defiles a person” (Mt. 15:10b-11). He goes on to explain to His disciples that “what comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart, and this defiles a person. For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander” (Mt. 15:18-19). And we have all fallen into one of these things or another or even a combination of these things. We have become like Isaiah says, “…like sheep have gone astray; we have turned—every one—to his own way...” (53:6a). That leaves us in a pickle. Instead of doing good for our brothers and sisters in the faith there are some who backbite, who label others with horrible nicknames, those who complain about everything and everyone, and those who sit back and watch it all happen and do nothing. St. Peter reminds us ,“As obedient children, do not be conformed to the passions of your former ignorance, but as He who called you is holy, you also be holy in ALL YOUR CONDUCT, since it is written, “you shall be holy, for I am holy.” (1 Pet. 1:14-15). There are definitely times in our present lives that we are anything but holy, but are swept away by the Old Adam as he rears his ugliness and shame.

The fact of the matter is that sin gets the upper hand at times. Sin in our lives is much like the defilement of the Temple by the money changers and marketplace atmosphere. We hunger for what we want and disregard others. What are we to do?

Well, for starters, we won’t do what the Jewish religious leaders did, we will not reject Jesus and what He has come to do for us. “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.”

Jesus has a zeal for God’s house. It has nothing at all to do with the building, but it has everything to do with you. You are God’s house. And Jesus has a zeal for you that brought Him here in the first place. Christ’s zeal for you led Him to the cross where His temple was destroyed. Nailed to the cross with blood pouring forth He prayed for people like you and I, “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.” Even though this prayer was prayed for those who were in the act of crucifying Him, the sad fact remains that each of us are holding a hammer and nails. Our sinfulness is what crucified Christ. We are the ones whose sin Jesus had to die for. We are the ones, for whatever reason, God has chosen to be His. Regardless of our sin and shame, Christ Jesus died for you…He has died for me; and the blood of Christ cleanses us from all sin, from all shame, from all defilement.

As they destroyed His temple on the cross, Jesus picked it back up again. In His resurrection, Jesus validated every thing He said about Himself and the mighty gift of salvation that He procured for us through His sacrificial death. In His resurrection, Jesus has destroyed our final enemy, death itself. And so now, all who look upon Him, all who believe in His name, will overcome sin and death and will rise again to new life, an eternal life. When Christ returns, we who have trusted in His cleansing blood on the cross will be raised with new bodies that will never ever see the defiling power of sin. We will no longer be defiled…EVER!

“Zeal for Your house will consumed me” (v. 17b). Yes, God’s zeal for you all has consumed Him on the cross, emptying Himself of life itself for you. His temple has been raised and you and I are baptized into His death and resurrection. Our defilement has been dealt with and through faith in Jesus, we have a bright future to look forward to. A future where everything is as it should be, being perfectly holy as our Father is Holy.