Zeal for Our Father’s House

When it was almost time for the Jewish Passover, Jesus went up to Jerusalem. In the temple courts he found people 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 courts, 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! Stop turning my Father’s house into a market!” His disciples remembered that it is written: “Zeal for your house will consume me” (John 2:13-17).

The verses above paint a picture of Jesus that you won’t find in a nice frame on some back wall of a church. (At least, it isn’t one I’ve ever seen in a church.)

But maybe it should be.

I remember teaching this account from John to a group of seventh and eighth graders. After reading the verses, we watched a video on YouTube that portrayed what this scene might have looked like.

The actor who played Jesus was clearly distressed. Shouting at people and brandishing a whip of cords. Running around, overturning tables, and scattering coins in all directions. Opening animal pens and driving off sheep and cattle.

Of course, we don’t know what this looked like in real life. We don’t know what our Savior’s expression was or how he went about driving off the livestock, overturning tables, and scattering coins. John doesn’t go into that much detail. What he does tell us is enough. Again, it isn’t a picture we commonly associate with our Savior so meek, our Savior so mild.

I remember the classroom being filled with shocked faces. Uncomfortable. Upset even. I reminded my students that this was just a portrayal of what this might have looked like, but I understood why they reacted the way they did. It’s how I felt too. That wasn’t how we normally picture Jesus. Then I asked them why they thought Jesus reacted the way he did. What was the point of Scripture showing us this side of our Savior?

A student raised her hand. “Well, it’s God’s house.”

There it was.

God’s house—the temple in Jerusalem—was the place where his people could go to worship him, where they could offer sacrifices and receive forgiveness for their sins. It was the place where they praised God with hymns and psalms, where they heard God’s salvation preached to them: the good news about the promised Messiah, Jesus, and what he would do to save his people.

Instead, God’s house was filled with the distracting sounds of money changers, the bleating of sheep, the lowing of cattle, vendors calling out to potential customers to sell their wares at the highest price, and customers bartering with them for lower prices on firstfruit sacrifices to get the best deal. . . as if they were in the marketplace and not in a place of worship where people needed to hear a lifesaving message from their God.

That’s why Jesus reacted the way he did when he saw what was being done in God’s house. We’re told that zeal—wholehearted dedication and devotion—for his Father’s house consumed him. And thank God it did!

Does it consume us?

Not always.

Our lives are filled with so many looming distractions all vying for our attention and other “more important things” than being in God’s house every week or regularly studying God’s Wordy, which tells us everything we need to know about him and what he’s done to save us from our sins. We struggle with those things as sinful people.

We’re convicted because we don’t always get it right.

Instead of fashioning a whip of cords and driving distractions out of our lives so we can focus on what really and truly matters, we sit back, stay silent, and let the distractions win out over time spent listening to God.

We’re filled with shame because so often zeal for our Father’s house and dedication to growing in God’s Word don’t even come close to consuming us.

But as God’s children, we want them to.

Dear Christian, when you feel that conviction and shame, picture Jesus. Picture the Jesus consumed with zeal for his Father’s house—the Jesus who didn’t sit back and stay silent but instead drove out sheep and cattle, overturned tables, and scattered coins with perfect dedication and devotion to his God in his heart. He did that for you and me.

Now picture the Jesus we more commonly see depicted—the Jesus wearing a crown made of thorns with a bloodied, ruined back and arms stretched out wide, hands and feet nailed to a wooden cross. See him suffering the wrath of God with the sins of the world upon his back. That too was for you and me. For all the times we aren’t consumed with zeal for God’s house and his Word—and for all of our sins.

Christ’s love and forgiveness—the assurance that all of our sins have been removed from us and that we are at peace with God—enable us to live each day for God, to grow and strengthen in us the desire to be in God’s house and his Word, and to daily drive out distractions from our lives as we focus our attention on God with wholehearted devotion.

Dear Lord, fill us with zeal for you every day. Amen.

---