Today, I would like to concentrate on a passage in the Gospel of John chapter 2. I want to be with you to listen to a passage of John chapter 2, and I would like to concentrate on one particular verse. I want to focus on one particular verse, and that is the 17th verse of John chapter 2. And these are the words: "Zeal for thy house will consume me." As I was waiting on the Lord as to what He would have me say on this first meeting here in Pai Tau village, these words kept coming back to me. "Zeal for thy house will consume me, will eat me up." Even as I was traveling around in Malaysia and Australia, every time I thought about this meeting today and what the Lord would have me say, these words kept coming back.
I would like to make some preliminary remarks. In the past two years, during my preaching in Hong Kong, you will have noticed that I tried to preach at a very much simpler level. Especially those who were used to my preaching in Montreal were struck by the fact that my message seemed to be very much simplified in Hong Kong. So sometimes when dealing with a complex subject in Hong Kong, I would break them up into very small sections and deal with them little by little.
But over the past two years, many of you have received various kinds of training in the church, such as basic training, intermediate training. So today's preaching will be slightly more difficult, that is, at a deeper level. Now if any of you did not go through any kind of training, maybe the exegetical part of this message you might find a little bit difficult to follow. But I hope that the conclusion will all the same be clear to you, and I hope that you will be able to benefit.
Now in this message, I will have to take a number of steps. First, I will look at this passage in the word of God and show why a superficial understanding of the passage, which is the common understanding of it, will not be able to grasp what the Lord wants to say to us. The second step will be to see what is the adequate understanding of this text. I particularly want you to see the connection between the church and the resurrection of Christ. The reason partly is that nowadays the connection is generally made between the church and Pentecost, and this understanding is scripturally erroneous. We have to go further back. We must go back to the resurrection.
Now, the importance of this passage in John chapter 2 should be clear to us. Because in chapter 2 verse 19, Jesus answered them and said, "Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up." This verse is so important that we notice that at the trial of the Lord Jesus, when He was being condemned to death, this verse was raised again. These words were used as an accusation against Him. You see that in Mark chapter 14 and verse 58. At the trial of the Lord Jesus, He was accused of having said, "I will destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up."
We were in Israel only two months ago with the second team and visited this area where the temple stood, which no longer stands. It has been destroyed. And when the Lord Jesus was being crucified, these same words in John chapter 2 were used in order to ridicule Him: "You are the one who said that you will destroy the temple and raise it up in three days. Now you try and save yourself." That we find in Mark chapter 15 and verse 29.
These words of the Lord Jesus in John chapter 2 were used a third time. This time to put Stephen to death, the first martyr of the church. You can read that in Acts chapter 6 and verse 14. He was accused of being a follower of the Lord Jesus who said that he would destroy the temple, which of course the Lord Jesus never said. This is a false quotation. Because the Lord Jesus had never said that He would destroy the temple. What He actually said is here in these words in John chapter 2 verse 19: "Destroy." He didn't say "I will destroy the temple." He said, "Destroy this temple and I will raise it up in three days."
Now let us focus particularly on the words: "Zeal for your house, for your temple, has eaten me up." These are the words that today we want to concentrate on. Now, in order for you to get the picture, I just ask Pastor Joe to read for us in Chinese from verses 13 to 22 of John chapter 2.
I'll picture in your mind what happened on that day. The Lord Jesus comes into the temple in Jerusalem. And there are crowds of people. And there are people buying sheep and goats and pigeons. They're all crowded in the temple area. I suppose today if you went to a local temple, you would see something similar — crowds of people burning incense, buying this and offering that. The temple had become what is said here in verse 16, a house of merchandise, a place to buy and sell things. The world was not conquered, victoriously overcome, but the world had conquered the temple, had conquered the church. To think about faith being the victory would become a joke in such a context.
The church had become, the temple had become dominated by the world, by commerce, by merchandise. And those of us who have been Christians for some time are familiar with this thing happening within the Christian church as well. What God needs in these days are people who are able to say with the Lord Jesus, "Zeal for your house." It's eating me up. The love for God has to be translated into intense concern for His people.
Immediately, this type of Christianity is different from the kind that wants to lock itself away in some monastery and just spend your time doing quiet time, doing Bible study, and couldn't care less if the world and the church is going to pieces. There are some Christians who are only concerned about themselves, the improvement of their own spiritual life, how many times they can read their Bible and boast to others how many times they've read it. Nor is it the desire that all we do is spend time going from one training to another training, simply for our own personal benefit. We have missed the point of joining any training if it is not in order to serve God and His church more effectively.
"Zeal for your house." The word "zeal" comes from a Greek word which means to boil or to burn. And the word goes on: not just boil, but boil to the extent, burn to the extent where it eats me up. The word says, "It consumes me." How many people here could even reflect a small degree of this kind of intensity? Intensity where the life of God working in us literally burns or consumes us.
The degree in which the Lord Jesus Himself was consumed by this intensity could be seen even by His appearance. People looked at Him and thought He was very much older than He actually was. Because the Bible says that He was about 30 years old. But as Pastor Joe rightly said, in John chapter 8 verse 57, it is said, "You are not 50 years old." They thought He was nearer 50 than 30.
When I was in Australia recently, I read a very strange thing in the newspaper. There was a picture of a girl who was about 11 years old. But when you look at the picture of this girl, she looks like 100 years old. She had all the symptoms of an extremely old person. Why? Because something happened in her system which causes her life, her body to work at 10 times the speed of a normal person. It is regarded as a disease, a very, very rare disease. And nobody can understand why her biological processes go 10 times faster than in other people. Apparently there are two such cases in Australia.
The result is that this girl who was actually 11 years old looks like somebody who is, and is physically of the age of, 111 years old. In fact, when she is tested biologically, her body is the body of a 111-year-old person. So she sits in school where 11-year-old children sit, but she is actually a 111-year-old person. What is more, it is estimated by the physicians that her life expectancy is now left with one or two years. She will die very soon. Remarkable, isn't it? Something has happened in her system that the intensity of the life processes have speeded up by 10 times.
Put in another word, her life, the kind of life she is having, is consuming her. It's eating her up and she is dying very quickly at the age of 11 or 12. So in medical language, it is often used of a certain type of intensively progressing disease. It's called a consumptive disease. It eats you up. The word "consume" — that's the word we have here. Some people, for example, get consumption, which is a kind of tuberculosis, consumptive tuberculosis, which eats a person up quickly and progresses so fast that the person dies more quickly than normal tuberculosis. That is how the Lord Jesus lived. This is the way God expects us to live.
That's what we find in the well-known verse in Revelation chapter 3, that most Christians today are neither hot nor cold. They don't burn with any fire, the holy fire of God. So today as we start the first worship in this church, that is, in this building, I would like that God will grant to us a holy fire coming from above that will consume us with zeal — zeal for His house, for His church.
Now to the exegetical part, on which I must spend a few moments. It is normally supposed that zeal for His house refers to what? In what way was the Lord Jesus concerned with God's house? And what is this house with which He was concerned? When we look at the passage, it seems to be referring to the temple, that building standing there where God was worshipped. To understand it in this way creates all kinds of exegetical problems.
The next thing is, He says, "Destroy this house, and I will raise it up in three days." Now if He is consumed with concern for the temple, why destroy it? And why raise it up again in three days? Why destroy it? Just cleanse it out, as He was doing. Drive out all these money changers and all these merchants. Cleanse the temple. Why destroy it? Clearly also there's a connection between "destroy" and "raise it up," because if it is not destroyed, how is He going to raise it up in three days? And this that is going to be raised up — what is it going to be raised up? Are we still talking about the temple? Are we not talking about the temple anymore?
Of course in the context, we are talking about the temple. But the passage goes on in verse 21 to say that what He will raise up in three days is His body. We are beginning to lose the connection. He is on fire for the house of God. This house of God, He says, let it be destroyed. And in three days I will raise it up. "It" being what? The "it" should be the temple. And yet in verse 21 it says, "The temple of His body."
And the next verse goes on to say that when the disciples, after the Lord's resurrection, saw His resurrection, they remembered what He said. And it goes on to say in verse 22, they believed the Scripture — singular in the Greek, "Scripture." Not "the Scriptures," the whole Bible, but "the Scripture," the one Scripture. But in this passage, there is only one Scripture being quoted. And the verse being quoted is the verse: "Zeal for thy house will consume me." That is a quotation from Psalm 69 verse 9, where it certainly refers to the temple.
And there it says that the psalmist is being persecuted even by his closest people, his closest friends and family members, because of his zeal, his intense zeal for the temple. That is to say, his fellow Jews, who are also committed to the temple, persecute him because of his extraordinary intensity of concern for the temple. I'm concerned that you can remember this word: "intensity." This "consumed" — I want you to remember this word.
We live in an age where people are afraid of zeal. We are afraid of radicalism. We are scared of these things. We want to be more moderate. I'm sure that if you've become a Christian and your parents are not Christians, you'll understand what I mean. They say, "All right, maybe you want to get baptized. No problem. Go get baptized. It's good to be a nice guy." It's good for children to go to Sunday school, learn how to be nice. And then they hear something about basic training. "Oh, basic training. OK, no problem." And then you see something like intermediate training — "Intermediate" meaning this is getting a little bit too far now. By the time anybody says they want to go to full-time training — whoa, that's the limit. This is too radical. This is too intense. This is going too far now.
I mean, you be a Christian, just be a sort of lukewarm Christian. That's no problem. But wait till the fire burns, and not even your closest friends can understand you anymore. That's what this verse comes from in Psalm 69, that when the psalmist began to burn with concern for God's house, even his closest friends became his enemies. But let's try to understand this thing more clearly.
Normally, we have the connection: the Lord Jesus is zealous for God's house. The house turns out to be His own body, the temple, according to verse 22 — the superficial understanding of it. So this means, if you are understanding things correctly, the intensity of His zeal for God's house turns out to mean the intensity for His own resurrection. I think even if you are not a great Bible scholar, you begin to see there's some problem here. And yet, this is the normal understanding of the passage. Most people suppose that by "I will raise it up on the third day" means simply that He is going to rise from the dead. So the intense zeal is for what? It is for His own resurrection. You begin to wonder whether this after all is selfish or unselfish, this kind of zeal. It begins to sound like many Christians.
# Zeal for Thy House (John 2:17) - Part 2
Intensely for their own salvation — just as many Christians' zeal and concern is nothing more than their own salvation. Now this does not seem to be on the right track, does it? But that is the standard understanding of the passage. Now I want to show you that this understanding is incorrect. What are the reasons for this?
When you study the word of God, you must look very carefully at what is being said here. Anyone who studies the Bible, even though you have not studied it very deeply, will immediately be aware of the fact that there is nowhere in the Bible that the Lord Jesus Himself is spoken of as a temple of God. The temple of God is never said to be Jesus Himself. So any exegete of this passage should have been a little bit careful.
But the second exegetical problem is even more serious than this. You will notice it says, "I will raise it up." "I, Jesus, will raise up that temple." He says, "I will." "I will raise it up" is in the active tense. He will do it. But nowhere in the Bible does it ever say that Jesus raised Himself up from the dead. In fact, even this passage tells us this. The raising of Jesus from the dead is always in the Bible in the passive tense, never in the active tense. You see that in verse 22 right at the next verse: "When therefore He was raised from the dead" — passive. "When He was raised," then they recognized what He meant.
So look again very carefully. In verse 19: "In three days I will raise it up" — that is in the active. But in verse 22 it is in the passive: "When He was raised." He didn't raise Himself up. It was God the Father who raised Him up. Now there are lots of verses and references, but since this is not a Bible study, I will not go into all of them. But if you want to carefully examine the facts that I have stated, just take a concordance and study it for yourself. It is always God who raises the Lord Jesus up, not Jesus raising Himself up from the dead. You see that especially in Acts chapter 13 verse 13 and many, many such verses. It is God who raised Him from the dead.
That is why I find we have a great problem in the churches today. We read the Bible in a very careless and superficial manner, and then we come up with an inadequate or utterly false conclusion. Now when we read within the context of John's Gospel, we do read Jesus raising the dead. But He is raising the dead among others, and of course not Himself. We can look at just one passage in John 5:21. The Father raises the dead and He raised the Lord Jesus. But the Father also gave to the Lord Jesus the power to raise those who believe in Him. We find this also true: here He raises us up spiritually. Jesus raises us believers from the dead. He will also in the last day raise us up physically from the dead. We see that for example in John chapter 6 verses 39 and 40. That is in the Scriptures, and especially in John's Gospel, it is always the Lord Jesus who raises, not Himself, but the believers.
Now once we grasp these exegetical points, we begin to see what He is driving at. What is this body? What is this temple that He is concerned about? What will He raise up? What will He build up? We read from Matthew 16 for example: "I will build up My church. On this rock, I will raise up My church." Now here we begin to see very important and significant things.
What is more, we see that in this passage the word "temple," "house," and "sanctuary" — three different Greek words — are used, sometimes translated rather interchangeably in English or in Chinese. We have the word "house," for example. There we see that "you have made My house," the house of God, "a place for merchandise" in verse 16. There you have the word "house." But in verses 19 and 20 you have the word "temple," which strictly speaking is the word "sanctuary" in Greek. It refers to the inner part of the temple where God dwells. And when we study how these words are used in the rest of the New Testament, we find they always refer to the church as the temple of God.
So let us be clear: what is the house for which the Lord Jesus' zeal is burning? It is not His physical body or the raising of His physical body. It is the temple of God where God dwells. And when we study the Scripture, we find that that always refers to the church. You find that in 1 Corinthians 3:16 for example, or 1 Corinthians 6:19, or 2 Corinthians 6:16, and so on and so forth. These are exactly the same Greek word as is used here for temple. And in each place it refers to the church — you and I as the temple of God. This is where God dwells. The New Testament tells us that either God dwells here in you and in His people, or He doesn't dwell anywhere at all. We are the temple.
Now there are many such points, but I see our time is going fast and I must quickly wind up what we have been saying. Not only the word "temple" is applied to the church, the word "body" — the body of Christ — is applied to the church. And I think you are very familiar with this too. 1 Corinthians 12:27, where Paul says, "You are the body of Christ."
Now it is a very important thing to understand that the apostle Paul bases his teaching and derives his teaching from his Master and Lord, the Lord Jesus Himself. It is a common fallacy in modern theology to think that the apostle Paul more or less invented his own theology and the terms that he used. This is simply not true. The more I study the Scriptures, I see that the apostle Paul derived his teaching and all its essential elements from the Lord Jesus' own teaching. But exactly where did he get this term "body of Christ" as a reference to the church? I am quite certain he got it right from here, because Paul was a far better exegete than we are. He clearly saw among the points that I have already mentioned that nowhere in Scripture does it say that Jesus raised Himself by His own power. But what He raised up is the church. Through the power of the resurrection, He raised us up to a new life by the Holy Spirit, who is also called the Spirit of Christ.
Now this is the important thing to understand. And because Paul understood this perfectly, that's why he derived the teaching of the church as the body of Christ. But there is something even more significant. I have often wondered where Paul got his teaching about the church and Christians being a new creation. Jesus never used the term "new creation." But being the marvelous exegete that Paul was, he got it from the Lord's teaching, as I began to see.
To do this we have to take several exegetical steps. First of all we notice here it says, "I will raise it up in three days." Now if we compare this with Mark chapter 14, we have a very interesting result. What do we read in Mark chapter 14 and verse 58? This is what I refer to as the passage which was used against the Lord Jesus in His trial. "We heard Him say, 'I will destroy this temple that is made with hands, and in three days I will build another, not made with hands.'" Very interesting. There is something more said which is certain that the people who accused Him did not invent these words because they are from Scripture: "In three days I will raise up another temple not made with hands." This last part is almost certainly a genuine quotation, a direct quotation of what the Lord actually said, because the accusers have no point inventing this second part that this new building is not made with hands. Now we are sitting in this building, and this building certainly was made with hands. But the building the Lord would raise up is not made with hands.
What does that mean? The next exegetical step is to compare it with a passage in Hebrews. Hebrews chapter 9 verse 11 reads: "But when Christ appeared as a high priest of the good things that have come, then through the greater and more perfect tent, not made with hands, that is, not of this creation." Now a building not made with hands means that it is a spiritual building, not of this world, not of this creation. It is a new creation. It says here "not of this creation," which means that it has to be of a new creation. That's exactly the term that Paul uses: "a new creation."
Now we know where Paul got that terminology from. In 2 Corinthians 5:16-17: "You, if you are in Christ, are a new creation." You are the temple of God, not made with hands, not belonging to this creation, but to a new one.
Let's try to sum up all that we have been talking about, the important things that the Lord wants us to learn. What can we conclude? We begin to see what it was in John chapter 2 that was eating up the Lord Jesus. He looked at the temple with all these people coming in and out selling goats and pigeons and what have you, and His heart within Him was burning with intense grief. This building was going to be destroyed. He prophesied that in Mark chapter 13 and Luke 21 and so on. But even before this building would be destroyed, that temple on the mount of Zion, on the temple mount, a new building would be raised up. And this new building would be the new creation of God, brought into existence by His own resurrection. Through His death and resurrection, the new temple would come into being. This would be the body of Christ on earth, that when people look at us, they can see Jesus, that they would manifest the glory of Christ. That was His vision.
What a glorious vision this is! I wonder if this burns within your heart. I wonder whether this is what will speak to your heart.
Let us finally consider the characteristics of this new creation. It is linked inseparably with His resurrection, as I have noted. All through the New Testament, the church comes into being with the resurrection. It is for this reason that many people, especially our charismatic friends, are surprised to find that Pentecost is never spoken of in the New Testament in relation to the establishing of the church. Look through the teaching of Scripture. For example, Romans chapter 6 says: when does a person become a Christian? When through baptism he dies with Christ and is raised with Christ, he becomes a Christian. In other words, if the resurrection life of Jesus is not operating in your life, you have no part in the new creation.
How do you know whether the power of the resurrection is at work in you? Paul makes this so clear that it is beyond understanding how anyone can miss the point in Romans 6. In dying with Jesus, we died to sin. We died to the old way of life. When you become a Christian, the power of the resurrection through the Holy Spirit becomes active in your life. What does that mean in practical terms? It means in practical terms that the power of sin and of death is broken in your life. Exactly as the Lord Jesus said in John chapter 8 and verse 36: "When the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed."
What is the power that breaks the power of sin? It is the power of the resurrection applied into your life by the Holy Spirit. That is the power of the resurrection which you can experience here and now. I cannot preach these things with any degree of conviction unless I have experienced them to be true. That is why John says in 1 John chapter 5: "Faith is the victory." Victory over what? Over sin, of course. Over the world and the sin that governs this world. If you say you believe in Jesus and live in defeat, you don't know what faith is. Faith is the victory — victory over every power of sin.
Do you know this kind of life? If you are not living victoriously, you don't know what the Christian life is about as far as the Bible is concerned. This thing burns in my heart, because as I look around in the church today, in the churches today, what do I see? I see Christians living in sin. They are beaten every day. Every single day they are beaten — beaten by pride, selfishness, greed, not to mention slander, lack of harmony with one another, tension between one another, between husband and wife, parents and children, friend and friend.
Do you have joy in your life? Do you have satisfaction in your life? Is it wrong to talk about satisfaction in the Christian life? What did the Lord Jesus say? "If any man drink of the water that I shall give him, he shall never thirst again." That is, he will be totally satisfied. Do you live with the sense of satisfaction that in Christ you have found all you want? What the world cannot give you, which certainly cannot give you, you have found in Jesus.
When you go back to work after the holidays, do people say to you, "There is some richness about your life. There is some kind of power about your life. I wonder what it is that I long for but I don't have"? Does your life have that effect upon the people you meet? Or is there a conclusion that you are no different from any non-Christian — you are just the same as the rest of us? What's the use of talking about the Bible? What's the use of coming to this church or any church or any new building, unless you can live in the truth of these words — the power of the resurrection life?
So I want to say to you, each one, especially to the leaders of this church: does zeal for God's house burn within you? When Jesus spoke these words, the body had not yet been born. But now the body of Christ is alive. It has been raised up. Anyone here who has been through baptism has died and been raised with Christ. If you are not living by this resurrection power, what kind of Christian are you? It is a contradiction to be such a Christian. It brings shame to the name of God. If Jesus were to meet you today, He would drive you out just as He drove out the merchants on that day.
But I can tell you, when His resurrection life works in you, not only will you live in the power of the resurrection, not only will you experience every day the victory over sin, more than that, you are freed from yourself in such a way that you become concerned for others, so that you are burning that that new life should be seen in them. We talk about what we know. If you have not been raised by the resurrection power of the Lord Jesus now, spiritually, in your daily experience, on what do you base your assurance of a future salvation?
I met somebody from another church recently. He was talking about assurance. I asked him, "On what is your assurance based? Tell me, what is your assurance based on?" He couldn't come up with anything like a meaningful answer. He was talking about assurance, but it's not very appropriate. You are always talking about assurance, having assurance in Christ. On what is your assurance based? He gave me some vague answer about it's based on the Bible. Based on the Bible? The Bible tells us that people who do not live in the center of His will will go to perdition. They will perish. The Bible tells us that one who lives in the power of God is able to be victorious over the world. His outcome is life.
I am filled with assurance, not because I am anything better than anyone else, but because by the grace of God, He has granted to me this power of a new life, the resurrection life, making of me a new creation. Do you think Paul just used words like "new creation" for the fun of it, so that it sounds nice? Or is this newness of life something we can experience? And when you experience the marvelous power of God enabling us to live over the power of sin, you are experiencing a power from God, for the simple reason that nobody can live victoriously over sin except by God's power. It's very simple. Paul tried living a good life and failed. He tried living by the will of God. He tells us in Romans 7 he couldn't do it. So if you can live victoriously, you are experiencing God's power.
We are talking about life. We are not talking about doctrines. We are not talking about Christianity. We are talking about life — life from God. That is what you must experience. And if you experience it, then let God's fire burn in you and not rest until the whole church lives in the power of the resurrection.
When I was in Canada recently — and with this I must close — I read about, I actually was on the news, a girl who looked very, very strange. Why did she look strange? Because she had plastic surgery done all over her face and a large part of her body. Her face had received surgery. I think you know that if somebody has been in a terrible accident and had surgery done to their face, you would know that they look quite strange. They have to take skin from another part of the body and patch it onto the face.
What happened to her? Well, she fought for democracy, for freedom, for human rights in Argentina. And one day she was in a protest march. That's the kind of thing you don't do in South America if you value your life. Well, the police got hold of her and they poured kerosene all over her and set her on fire. She was really set on fire — literally. The result of that was that 80% of her body was burned with fire. Any of you who have a little bit of basic medical knowledge will know that when 80% of your body is burned, your chance of survival is very, very poor.
Well, thanks to advanced techniques, she was rushed off to Canada through the concern and sacrificial giving of her friends. And there they used the latest techniques to try to save her life. Through many months of fighting for her life, she survived. But her face was burned, her body was burned — all because of what? She was consumed with zeal for her people and for her country.
But as though all that was not yet enough, the reason she was on the news was this: having recovered mostly from the surgery and from the burns, she was returning to Argentina to continue the battle for human rights. And she was prepared to die this time. When I look at people like this, who burned within — and also externally she was burned too — for the sake of something called human rights, she was prepared to lay down her life indeed to be burned to death again. Does it not put us Christians to shame? Does this kind of person not make us examine ourselves? Do we think that she is too extreme, too radical, too intense? Or is it that we are so lukewarm that intensity of this kind frightens us?
But that is how the Lord Jesus burned — for something much greater than human rights, not just political freedom, important as that is too, but for the freedom from sin which makes slaves of all mankind. So I ask that God will ignite this fire among us all. I ask Pastor Joe to close us in prayer.