JOHN 2:13\u201317<\/b><\/p>\n
Take these things away! Do not make My Father\u2019s house of merchandise<\/i><\/p>\n
(John 2:16)<\/i>.<\/p>\n
At the time of the Passover, Jesus went up to Jerusalem to keep the feast. When He arrived, He found the temple filled with merchants and money changers. Many of the people had turned religion into a motivation for profit. Some scholars have speculated that unfair trading was going on in the temple, that the religious leaders, abusing their authority, would not accept any animal as being truly unblemished unless it was purchased from those in the court. But even if all the trading was honest, it should not have been practiced in the temple, which had been set apart as a place of worship.<\/p>\n
Fulfilling His role as the Messiah (see 2 Sam. 7:13\u201314) Jesus made a whip and drove the animals and merchants from the house of God. Notice that no one seemed to resist Him, thus fulfilling the prophecy, \u201cWho shall stand when He appears?\u201d (Mal. 3:2\u20133).<\/p>\n
The disciples wondered at Jesus\u2019 actions, but then they remembered a verse: \u201cThe zeal of Your house consumes me.\u201d This is a quote from Psalm 69, in which David acts as a prefigure of Christ. David loved the Lord so fully, he felt consumed by affection for the temple, which beautifully and majestically symbolized God\u2019s very presence. Surely, then, David was jealous for the temple\u2019s purity. As was Christ.<\/p>\n
Christ is our model\u2014we too should be zealous for God\u2019s house. Any corruption within our own soul, which is the temple of the Holy Spirit, and any corruption in the church at large, should grieve us. We should not tolerate sin in our own lives or the church; instead, we should seek purification through repentance. If zeal for the Lord is true in our hearts, we will be rightfully angry about gross sin in our own lives and in the life of the church.<\/p>\n
But zeal for the Lord\u2019s house entails something more than sorrow for sin. Like the guests at the wedding in Cana, our hearts should be filled with love for today\u2019s temple: the church of the living God. As we grow in love for the church, we will grow in zeal for its purity.<\/p>\n
CORAM DEO<\/b><\/p>\n
Exodus 34\u201336<\/p>\n
Matthew 23:23\u201336<\/p>\n
A growing zeal for the house of God, for its purity, for its thorough reformation, and for its commitment to the truth of God is a mark of a mature Christian. Do you care about the spiritual health of your church? Pray that your love for fellow believers would grow\u2014and that your church would be purged from corruption and sin.<\/p>\n
For further study: Ps. 69; 119:139 \u2022 Luke 2:49 \u2022 Rom. 10:1\u201313<\/i><\/p>\n
wednesday<\/p>\n
february<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
JOHN 2:13\u201317 Take these things away! Do not make My Father\u2019s house of merchandise (John 2:16). At the time of the Passover, Jesus went up to Jerusalem to keep the feast. When He arrived, He found the temple filled with merchants and money changers. Many of the people had turned religion into a motivation for … Continue reading “CLEARING THE TEMPLE”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12906","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sermons"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12906","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12906"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12906\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12906"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12906"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12906"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}