Grace mercy and peace to you from God our Father through our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen. Our text today is the Gospel lesson, with special emphasis on verse 17 “His disciples remembered that it was written, 'Zeal for your house will consume me.'”
Brothers and Sisters in Christ. Have you ever been really zealous for something? You all know that I am zealous for Nebraska football and Dark Chocolate. Some of my other sermons have made that pretty clear. What about you? Are you a zealous for the South Dakota State Jackrabbits? Are you zealous about a particular political cause? Do you get really zealous about cooking, or if not cooking then about eating what someone else has cooked? Most of us are zealous about something or another.
Today, in today’s Gospel lesson, Jesus too is zealous. He displays a great passion for something. So much so that The apostle John quotes psalm 69, saying that Christ’s zeal would even consume him. That it would eat him up. Christ was zealous for something, even to the point of death. This zeal causes Christ to over turn the tables in the temples courts and drive out the money changers and those selling animals for sacrifice. Jesus’s zeal causes him to cleanse the temple of all that was unholy. What is the point of this? What is Jesus’ zeal really accomplishing?
The temple in Jerusalem was the central point of Jewish worship at the time. It was a huge structure, dominating the city of Jerusalem. The actual temple itself was 150 feet tall and 150 feet wide. It was built on top of a mountain which had been built up to a 35 acre flat space which was covered with different courts and huge pillared buildings. The temple was the crown jewel of Jerusalem. Not only were the buildings impressive, but the temple itself was holy because they were the dwelling place of God. In side the Temple, in a room that was 30 feet cubed was the Holy of Holies. The place where God dwelt on Earth. In the Holy of Holies, God promised to be among his people. It was where Sacrifices for the forgiveness of sins were supposed to take place. It was the place where you went to be in the presence of God.
You would think that the place where God was supposed to live would be a place revered as holy and treated as such. But it wasn’t. In today’s text we see that the temple grounds had become filled with sin. People were selling animals for sacrifices, and charging more than they were worth. At first glance, this doesn’t seem like a big deal does it? I mean we here are Americans, we don’t mind people making a profit off of something. But these people are not making an honest profit. Instead they are making a profit off of the forgiveness of sins. To be forgiven of sins, a person
To be made right before God, one needed to sacrifice an animal. They needed blood to be shed. They needed to buy a sacrifice to be killed. And so there were booths set up in the temple for people to buy these animals. The problem was that they charged much more for these animals than they would anywhere else. These people were taking advantage of God’s holy presence to make themselves rich.
No longer was God’s house holy. NO longer was God’s house a place of prayer, instead it was now a place of market, as today’s text says. Instead of a place to freely receive the forgiveness of sins, the temple instead became a “Den of thieves”. A place of God’s holiness had now become a place of sin, of guilt. Not because God abandoned it, but instead because those who were there in it were themselves full of sin. People, even in the temple of God had lost sight of God.
Even in today’s world, churches have at times lost sight God. They preach universalism, not the Trinity. They preach wealth and prosperity, but not Chirst. They teach decision theology, not Grace.
While these things are not problems here at Mt. Calvary, we still have our own struggles. Those of us who come here are also full of sin. Those of us who come here are also guilty before God. This sin falls upon each one of us. There is not one of us who is not guilty.
Scripture tells us that our bodies themselves are temples to the Holy Spirit in 1 Corinthians 6:9. Each and everyone of us here is a temple. But we often times lose track of God and follow our own selfish devices instead of Christ. Instead of being temples to the Holy Spirit, we often times would rather be temples to other things. We set up our own little booths, altars to our own pet sins.
Each one of us has that pet sin. That one sin we just can’t give up. Maybe it is gossiping. Maybe it is that four letter word that pops up in daily conversation. We each one of us pollute the temple of our bodies with sin. We turn away from the one true god and instead trust in those other things.
In the catechisms, Luther tells us that an idol is anything that we trust in more than God. What is your idol? Be honest with yourself. In what do you trust more than God. Your family? Your job? Your retirement account. These subtract from God. These take our eyes of Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith. These turn us into unholy temples.
So we see, we are much like the temple in Jerusalem was. We are filled with the filth of sin. We are thieves who even being in the presence of God take our eyes of the cross of Jesus. We, like the temple are not holy.
Our text today quotes Psalm 69 when it says, “Zeal for his house shall consume him.” This psalm describes how the holy one of God will suffer, in fact it is the psalm that is refered to while Jesus is on the cross when he receives wine mixed with myrhh to drink and spits it out. This psalm refers to the crucified Christ.
This Christ went zealously, with out turning to the left or the right, all the way to the summit of a hill called Golgotha on a Friday we call good to suffer and die for you and for your sin. He did this willingly. He did not turn and run from this cruel death, but instead faced it knowing the pain and agony that went with it. He did this to cleanse the world of all of its sin. He did this to take the sin and remove it from you as far as the East is from the West.
This same Jesus Christ, who went to the cross, in todays text begins his work of cleansing. He went into the temple and overturned the tables of those who would make a profit off the Gospel. He kicked out those who would make God a god of human prosperity. He drove out those who would make God into a god of demands, and made God back into a God who gives grace freely. Christ drove the sin out of the temple.
So too does Christ cleanse the temples of our bodies. Christ does this by covering us with his own blood. He poured it out upon us in the waters of Baptism. He pours it out upon us here today in the hearing of His word. Christ zealously poured out his blood to forgive you of your sin.
He drove out all the sin out of the temples of our body. Don’t get me wrong, we are still sinful. The Catechism teaches of our need to daily die to sin and raise with Christ. That is what we do. Christ drives out the sin, and we immediately try to put it back again. He knocks down our altars and immediately we rebuild them. But have no fear, Christ is the one who wins this battle.
You see Christ’s himself is also the temple of God. He is the place where God dwells on earth. He is God hidden in human flesh, Deus Obscondus. In our text He says “Destroy this temple” meaning his own body, “and I will raise it again on the third day. Christ has done this. He died, and he rose, so that one day we too will die and rise with him again for eternity. Then the temples of our bodies will be free from sin forever. Then we will have all of God’s gifts. Then we will finally be pure and holy temples to God almighty. We might be zealous about things, maybe football, maybe the SDSU Jacks, but we are not as zealous as Christ is for taking away our sin. Zeal for Christ’s house will consume him. Christ’s zeal is for you, and giving you life.
Amen!
