The Master Cleaner Series

Our Theme for this weekend is Heart Improvement…

Scripture tells us that Christ dwells in our hearts by faith. Eph 3:17

In the Old Testament the temple was the dwelling place of God. Well since Christ came as a sacrifice for sin, he has made it possible for God to live in our hearts.

That is why 1 Corinthians 6:19-20 tells us that we are the temple, the Holy Spirit dwells in our bodies in our hearts. We are the dwelling place of God.

I dig on that, have for a long time. The fact that Jesus Christ the Son of God lives in me. If you cut me open you wont find him, he is not some little man that lives inside my chest. The word tells us that God is Spirit. Cant see him can’t touch him here on earth. But you can see the effects. And the Spirit of God lives in me and through me. That gets me ampped. To think that the God that Created the world lives in me. He is present in me. And he wants to live in the hearts of His creation. Let that blow you away a little bit. Because if that doesn’t something is wrong. If you have received Christ, GOD LIVES IN YOU.

I discovered something that I want to share with you. God loves us mucho, much more than we can ever know here walking on this globe. Everything God is he is to the fullest: loving he is 100% loving, gentle: he is 100% gentle, peace: he is all the peace there is, holy: He is the definition of holy. But as much as God loves us, keep in mind: that is some big love…. to that same degree He hates sin. Absolutely hates it, he has hated it since the garden. He didn’t say Adam and Eve, you did a little messy wessy, but I tell you what I want you to be better. OK? He didn’t tell Noah, “Noah, I am going to make everybody tread water for a couple of minutes…He didn’t just turn the heat up in Sodom and Gomorrah to 95 degrees, God Hates Sin and He punishes Sin. He has hated sin since page 1 and he hates it all the way to the maps. Romans 6:23.

Illustration: A family had a pet boa constrictor, and one night as everyone was sleeping the boa escaped from its glass cage and slithered three rooms down the hall to where the family’s 10-month-old child was sleeping. That snake crawled into the crib and crushed that child. When the father went to get his baby the next morning he found the snake in the crib with the mangled baby. That Father took the snake out in the back yard and proceeded to hack that snake with a pickaxe until it was far beyond dead.

I think it is big that we understand God’s hate for sin. It was why Jesus hung on the cross. God’s feelings about sin are pretty evident in John Chapter 2.

12After this he went down to Capernaum with his mother and brothers and his disciples. There they stayed for a few days.

13When it was almost time for the Jewish Passover, Jesus went up to Jerusalem. 14In the temple courts he found men selling cattle, sheep and doves, and others sitting at tables exchanging money. 15So 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. 16To those who sold doves he said, "Get these out of here! How dare you turn my Father's house into a market!"

17His disciples remembered that it is written: "Zeal for your house will consume me."

All the locals knew Jesus well; I imagine that they knew him as the best carpenter around. But now he had stepped out of bounds. He had already accepted John the Baptist’s claim that he was the Son of God and now he had stirred the city up by booting all the moneychangers and cattle dealers from the temple. Think about it, for 30 years Jesus had been to the temple and watched those men pollute the house of God. He was furious at their disrespect and greed. He was disgusted that the floor was carpeted with the animal manure and the smell of urine burned his nostrils. THIS IS MY FATHER’S HOUSE. The sin of the cheating moneychangers and the greed of those men broke his heart. So he cleansed the temple…he drove them out. He told them to “Get out!”

The only way to explain the cleansing of the temple is that a “Zeal for your house will consume me”

Jesus had zeal.

What is zeal? Zeal is passion, it is love on fire. It is a consuming dedication to a purpose. Jesus was passionate about the Father. He was passionate about purity. He was passionate about the things of God.