John 2:13-22
13 When it was almost time for the Jewish Passover, Jesus went up to Jerusalem. 14 In the temple courts he found people selling cattle, sheep and doves, and others sitting at tables exchanging money. 15 So he made a whip out of cords, and drove all from the temple courts, both sheep and cattle; he scattered the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables. 16 To those who sold doves he said, “Get these out of here! Stop turning my Father’s house into a market!” 17 His disciples remembered that it is written: “Zeal for your house will consume me.”
18 The Jews then responded to him, “What sign can you show us to prove your authority to do all this?”
19 Jesus answered them, “Destroy this temple, and I will raise it again in three days.”
20 They replied, “It has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and you are going to raise it in three days?” 21 But the temple he had spoken of was his body. 22 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.
Jesus’ All-Consuming Zeal
A couple years ago – around this time of year, actually – Lydia and I were able to travel to Germany. It was amazing. We saw Neuschwanstein. We saw the Wartburg. Almost every city we went to had its own castle and its own cathedral.
It was amazing to sit in those cathedrals – during Lent, no less – and read a devotion in a different sanctuary every day. But, at the same time, it was a little depressing, because we were about the only ones there who were interested in prayer or worship. Most of the visitors were more interested in the building than the reason it had been built. Most would rather read the cathedral’s history than read the book the church was built upon.
Of course, it wasn’t always like that. When Martin Luther was roaming the German countryside in the early 1500s, going to church is just what you did. Those cathedrals would be packed with worshipers, and not just on Sundays.
But, in the fall of 1510, Luther took a trip quite like mine. While he was still a monk, Luther traveled to Rome. He was excited. He was eager to climb the scala sancta, the very steps that Jesus climbed on his way to see Pontius Pilate. Luther was anxious to see relics that supposedly held the bones of St. Peter and St. Paul. He wanted to say prayers and worship at all the holy places.
But when Luther arrived, the “holy city” left him feeling dirty. Literally. There was no public sanitation in Rome at the time. People would empty their chamber pots in the street, sometimes just tossing their human waste out the window. There was a stench that clung to the city, and what may have stunk worse than the sewage in the streets was the morality of its people. It was a cesspool of prostitution and greed. It was hardly what you would expect the capital of Christianity to look like.
Some things never change. Long before I – or Luther – could be disappointed in the beautiful but empty buildings, the outwardly attractive but the morally bankrupt lifestyles, the shallow and superficial religiosity – long before us, Jesus confronted the same thing in Jerusalem.
Jerusalem was the capital city of Judaism. Its crowning jewel was the temple on Mt. Zion. It was even being restored and renovated to new heights of beauty and majesty. But if you were to walk through the gates, before you noticed the gilded columns carved from massive pieces of stone and before you felt any sense of the vast and important history of that place, the first thing you probably would have sensed was the sound and smell of a stockyard.
Where there was supposed to be room for visitors to come and worship God, there were stalls that were crammed with sheep and cattle. Where there was supposed to be the sweet smell of incense rising to heaven with the prayers of faithful worshipers, there was the stench of manure and stale urine. Where you were meant to come to hear the Word of God from the mouths of priests, you heard merchants bartering with tourists and selling sacrificial animals for four times what they were worth.
It was a sham. It was a disgrace. It made Jesus’ blood boil with righteous indignation. So, he grabbed some ropes, made a whip, and began to thrash his way through the crowd, driving out the dishonest and greedy merchants.
Jesus was fired up for his Father’s house. Or, as the disciples remembered the prophetic words of Psalm 69, “Zeal for [God’s] house [would] consume [him].”[1] In other words, Jesus felt all the feels when he visited the temple that day, and this emotional outburst tells us how serious God is about sin.
And it wasn’t just that these people were ripping each other off, or taking advantage of tourists to make a profit. They were doing it in the temple! They were perverting the purpose of that place. They were bringing into God’s house their own greed for gain. So, Jesus drove them out at the tip of a whip.
Now, John doesn’t write this story as a cautionary tale for us about how to use the entryway of our church. God doesn’t even condemn all transactions that take place in the church. It was God himself who demanded sacrifices and commanded that Jews from other countries exchange their foreign money. So, you could say that those merchants and money changers were even necessary. But what this story does tell us is how zealously Jesus wants us to guard our time with God’s Word.
He wants us to be as zealous and jealous as he is when it comes to worship, so that we don’t turn God’s house into a place for our own gain. He wants us to be sincere when we come to hear his Word, and not just to go through the motions or maintain a shallow religiosity.
So, let me ask, what do we bring into the church that doesn’t belong here? It’s certainly not livestock, but maybe it’s an attitude that’s as stupid as sheep and as clueless as cattle. Maybe it’s a mindset that stinks like their manure, i.e. a mentality like those merchants in the temple that asks, “What’s in it for me?”
What should we drive from the church the way Jesus drove the dove sellers out? Is it a zeal for something other than what Jesus is zealous for? Is it an ideal that turns the church into a political weapon or a way to crusade for your pet social project? That’s not what God’s house is for.
Jesus is so zealous for our obedience, especially when it comes to what we do in and with his Father’s house, because this is where we hear his Word. This is where we learn his Law. This is where we see our sin and the many ways we break his commandments.
But Jesus is also zealous for this place, because this is where we hear the gospel of God. This is where we meet our Saviour. Where we often neglect worship and prioritize other parts of our lives over spending time in God’s Word, Jesus fulfilled every expectation, faithfully going to Jerusalem for every festival required by the law of God; he never missed a Sabbath Day. Where we can so often turn our time together into merely a social outlet or mostly an opportunity to campaign for or against the latest piece of news, Jesus loved his Father’s house for what it was – a place of prayer and worship, to hear God’s Word and grow closer to him.
Jesus is zealous for God’s house, because this is where we see the true sacrifice for sins. We don’t need to offer sheep or cattle as the payment for sin anymore, because Jesus is the sinless Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. Jesus paid the price for our sin with his life on the cross. Because of Jesus – no matter how we’ve broken God’s law, no matter how we’ve neglected or misused his house – we’re forgiven. Our sins are washed away. Our guilt is gone.
That’s why Jesus is so zealous for this place. That’s why Jesus wants us to value it the way that he did, to be fiercely protective of the proclamation of God’s Word. And the fact is that we can do that anywhere and in so many ways. We can do it with masks on our faces. We can do it over multiple services on a Sunday; our seats don’t need to be full. It doesn’t even have to be this building. We could go back to when our church was known as “The Bunker.” We could tear it down. Because our worship isn’t centered around a building; it’s built upon the cross of Christ.
And even though the Jews would tear him down and take his life, they couldn’t keep him down. Three years before it happened, Jesus predicted his resurrection three days after his death, and even though his disciples didn’t remember it until after the fact, that promise fulfilled gave them hope. It gave them the confidence to continue and persevere no matter what. It gave them the reassurance that their sins were in fact forgiven, that their Saviour lives, and that because he lives, we too will live forever with him in heaven.
I’ll always remember my time in Germany. I’ll look back fondly at the pictures of those big, beautiful churches. But spending 45 minutes here with you is better than 45 years there, because here, at least, we still hear God’s Word. Here we meet our Saviour and here we see his zeal – for his Father’s house, and for your soul.
God give you the same zeal as Jesus as you treasure his Father’s house. Amen.
[1] John 2:17