Monday, November 9, 2020

9 November 2020 - zeal for your house


Zeal for your house will consume me.

Jesus knew that his Father's house was meant to be so much more than a marketplace. It was he because understood the great good that the temple was meant to be that he responded so violently to its abuse.

He made a whip out of cords
and drove them all out of the temple area, with the sheep and oxen,
and spilled the coins of the money-changers and overturned their tables,
and to those who sold doves he said,
“Take these out of here, and stop making my Father’s house a marketplace.”

Jesus was not being petty. It was not that he simply wanted to see that liturgical rules be observed correctly. Rather he saw that those rules were meant to protect a place where man could come without hindrance come into the presence of God. He knew that the temple was meant to "be called a house of prayer for all peoples" (see Isaiah 56:7). He knew that this could not be the case while people were thinking primarily about turning a profit. It could not be the case while some felt inferior because they could afford less and some prideful because they could afford more. All of these things detracted and distracted from the encounter the temple was meant to empower.

If it was true that the purpose of the old temple was worthy of the zeal of Jesus, how much more true it is that our hearts are worthy of zealous care.

Do you not know that you are the temple of God,
and that the Spirit of God dwells in you?
If anyone destroys God’s temple,
God will destroy that person;
for the temple of God, which you are, is holy.

Jesus sought out a people to worship, not in the temple, but in Spirit and truth (see John 4:23-25). The presence of God in the temple was limited by sin, limited by the veil separating God from man. But Jesus went through the veil to make possible for us an intimacy with God that simply could not happen otherwise.

Therefore, brothers, since we have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus, by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain, that is, through his flesh, and since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water (see Hebrews 10:19-25).

Let us be zealous that nothing takes precedence over the encounter with God in our lives. For it is from this encounter than any other good things come, that any other blessings flow.

Wherever the river flows,
every sort of living creature that can multiply shall live,
and there shall be abundant fish,
for wherever this water comes the sea shall be made fresh.
Along both banks of the river, fruit trees of every kind shall grow;
their leaves shall not fade, nor their fruit fail.
Every month they shall bear fresh fruit,
for they shall be watered by the flow from the sanctuary.
Their fruit shall serve for food, and their leaves for medicine.

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