Zeal for You Consumes Him
John 2:12-25
Pastor Jim Luthy
After this he went down to Capernaum with his mother and brothers and his disciples. There they stayed for a few days. When it was almost time for the Jewish Passover, Jesus went up to Jerusalem. In the temple courts he found men selling cattle, sheep and doves, and others sitting at tables exchanging money. So he made a whip out of cords, and drove all from the temple area, both sheep and cattle; he scattered the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables. To those who sold doves he said, "Get these out of here! How dare you turn my Father’s house into a market!" His disciples remembered that it is written: "Zeal for your house will consume me." (John 2:12-17, NIV)
Let me say right up front that John did not include this story in Jesus’ life to give you permission to lash out when you are angry. I know you would like it to be so! So would I. When I’m frustrated with my kids and I want to yell at them, I want to justify it as “righteous anger.” When I, the pastor, don’t have the cooperation I would like from you, I am tempted to exercise my “righteous anger.” Of course we all know that would not be right. Taken to extremes, “righteous anger” has been used to justify all kinds of inequity, like spousal abuse and killing abortion doctors. Jesus did not say he was angry. Nor did John ever comment that Jesus was angry. That’s not what this story is about.
This story is about a very fierce love. It is a jealous love. It is all about Jesus’ love for the Father and the things that were meant for the Father. Ultimately, that means it is about his love for you. He is consumed with love for you. Let me explain.
Look carefully at what the disciples remembered had been written: “Zeal for your house consumes me.” King David inked those words nearly 600 years earlier in a prophecy about the Messiah. “Zeal” does not mean passion alone. It means jealousy. One of the marks of the Messiah would be jealousy for the house of God. The disciples remembered that when they saw Jesus clearing the temple.
Clearing the temple was the act of one who is very passionate, but in complete control. He drove out the sheep and cattle with a whip. Do you know why? Was it because he was angry? No. He used a whip (now get this, it is very profound) because whips make sheep move! The animals used for sacrifices were not to be sold in the temple courts. Jesus moved them. He scattered the coins of the moneychangers because there was no place for profiteering in the temple courts. Then he rebuked those who sold doves, saying, “Get these out of here! How dare you turn my Father’s house into a market!”
Jesus was motivated with a jealous love. He was jealous for the Father’s dwelling place—the temple—to be a place for the Father, not a place for profiteers and swindlers. David prophesied that this jealousy would consume the Messiah. That means the jealousy of Jesus for his Father’s house ate at him. It never stopped filling his mind and capturing his attention. It wasn’t a zeal that came and went. It was his never-ending passion to see the Father’s house to be a place of worship and a place of reverence and purity in which the Father could dwell.
Have you ever been really jealous? I’m not talking about envy or coveting. Nor am I talking about being suspicious. I’m talking about being consumed with jealousy because the one you love has given his or her affections to someone or something else. The wife whose husband spends more time at the bowling alley than home with her is jealous. The husband whose wife has left him for another man is jealous. The person who is consumed with jealousy will act drastically to restore that love. When we respond to our jealousy in the flesh—without the Spirit of God—we tend to drive a deeper wedge between us and our loved one.
My first year out of high school I dated a girl quite seriously. I think I loved her and we even talked about marriage. I had a great relationship with her parents. Her mom helped me find a job at the restaurant where she worked. When that girl broke up with me because she was attracted to a guy she met at the Kentucky Fried Chicken where she worked, I was really jealous. That jealousy consumed me for more than a year, even until after that other guy was out of her life and she had moved on to college at Central Washington University. One time her mother learned that I was heading over to visit some friends at Central and asked if I would take her daughter a care package. Happy to oblige, I took the package and headed over the mountains. Later that evening, with a few beers and a lot of bitterness in me, I decided to check out what was in the package. The chocolate chip cookies were pretty good. The bra didn’t fit me though. Do you think I had any chance of restoring that relationship after I ransacked her personal package? No way. That’s how jealousy can consume us. It’s also how that zeal can cause us to do things we regret. In Shakespeare’s Othello, Iago told the noble Moor, “0! beware, my lord, of jealousy; It is the green--eyed monster which doth mock the meat it feeds on.”
Acting in the Spirit, though, we can do the right things to demonstrate our passion, our forgiveness, our love—our jealousy.
Exodus 34:14 says, “Do not worship any other god, for the LORD, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God.” Jesus was being a visible expression of God, simply demonstrating his fierce love for the Father’s house.
Let’s read on:
Then the Jews demanded of him, "What miraculous sign can you show us to prove your authority to do all this?" Jesus answered them, "Destroy this temple, and I will raise it again in three days."
The Jews replied, "It has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and you are going to raise it in three days?" But the temple he had spoken of was his body. After he was raised from the dead, his disciples recalled what he had said. Then they believed the Scripture and the words that Jesus had spoken. (John 2:18-22, NIV)
Let’s stop for a minute and discover two foundational truths by which Jesus was operating that everyone around him did not understand. The first thing the crowd at the temple courts and even his disciples did not yet understand was the idea of the body being a temple. When Jesus said, “Destroy this temple,” he was talking about himself. The Jews didn’t understand that. Neither did his followers. John understood later. By the time he wrote this account several years after Jesus’ death, he was able to comment, “the temple he had spoken of was his body.”
The other thing the people around Jesus did not yet understand was that the miraculous sign Jesus would give was that he would die and then rise again on the third day. If they knew then what we know now, that Jesus was the temple they would destroy and that he would rise up from the grave, they might have better understood why Jesus cleared the temple. You and I can look back and know, and when we do, we ought to rejoice in what it says about God’s love for us.
In 1 Corinthians 3:16, Paul asks, “Don’t you know that you yourselves are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit lives in you?” You are now the temple of God. He has chosen to reside in those who put their faith in him. Your body is meant to be a place of worship—a place of reverence and purity in which the Holy Spirit of God resides. With the same jealous love that Jesus cleared that temple of the self-seeking, God-neglecting salesmen and moneychangers, Jesus wants to clear the things out of your life that keep God from being revered within you. He is passionate about residing in you. When he cleared the temple, it was a radical act of godly jealousy meant to restore the temple. When he died on the cross, it was the most radical of all acts, and it was meant to restore you. Jesus went to the cross to demonstrate his love for you. He went to the cross to drive out those other loves—the love of money, the love of self—that keep you separated from God. He went to the cross to drive out the disobedience in your heart that keeps your body from being a temple of worship.
Jesus died to make you a place where the living God could dwell. Isn’t that amazing? Here’s the rest of the story…
John 2:23-25
Now while he was in Jerusalem at the Passover Feast, many people saw the miraculous signs he was doing and believed in his name. But Jesus would not entrust himself to them, for he knew all men. He did not need man’s testimony about man, for he knew what was in a man. (NIV)
Jesus went from there doing more miraculous signs, and just like when he turned the water into wine, the people believed in him when they saw the signs. They believed Jesus and followed, but he knew better than to entrust himself to them. Jesus knew the wickedness that was in them. He knows the wickedness that is in you. But Jesus is more concerned with expressing his love for you than worrying about what he knows about you. He let the people follow him long before they understood him.
That’s the way Jesus’ love is. You may not understand all the doctrines of the faith, but zeal for you consumes him. You may not know what he is yet to do, but zeal for you consumes him. You may not always be the model kingdom citizen in whom he can entrust himself and his reputation, but zeal for you consumes him. You don’t have to arrive for his love to fall on you. His love has arrived and he desperately desires for it to fall on you.
My question to you is this…Are you sold out or are you selling out? Are you sold out with belief, ready to say “All for Jesus,” even if you don’t fully understand what Jesus has done for you? If we can learn anything from these disciples of Jesus, it would be that you don’t have to know it all to drop your nets and follow him. The alternative is selling out, defiling you body in ways that are contrary to the worship and reverence and purity of God? Either way, his love for you remains. Would you let him—in that passionate, jealous love—drive out all the other loves and other self-serving agendas that keep your body from being a temple in which he can dwell?
His love endures forever. It is a jealous love—a fierce love. Zeal for you consumes him. Will you respond by selling out or by being sold out?
