Jean 2:17

The zeal of Thine house hath eaten Me up

I.

ZEAL FOR THE STRUCTURE OF THE HOUSE.

1. It is the duty of the Church to provide convenient places for the public worship of God. Over-building is a lamentable waste of strength; but under-building is a sin. The Church who neglects to provide proper accommodation for the fast growing population of the country, is guilty of a grievous breach of Christian trust.

2. The house of God should be in consonance with the most chastened taste. Beauty is as cheap as ugliness. The fiat roof was prevalent in antiquity, but Christianity, elevating the human mind, has given us the dome and the spire. Our conscience, like David’s, should smite us when our house is better than God’s.

3. The same zeal which prompts us to build and beautify should prompt us to pay, and not leave a burden of debt to coming generations; but those who inherit the burdens should believe in the strength of God and remove them. Many have been obliged to go through the bankruptcy court because of too much liberality in the cause of the devil; none through over liberality in the cause of God.

II. ZEAL FOR THE ORDINANCES OF THE HOUSE.

1. The means of grace, the ordinary services; if we neglect the means we shall not have the grace. God promised to be a “small sanctuary” to the Babylonish exiles; so He will be to those who are in sore captivity through affliction. But if in health, God expects you to be in the assembly of His people. The social character of Christianity must be thus maintained.

2. Two institutions in particular go under the name of ordinances. About these there has been much controversy. Extremes are to be avoided

(1) That they are miracles.

(2) That they are empty ceremonies. True zeal shuns both extremes.

3. There must be zeal not only for but in ordinances. Warmth is always attractive and contagious. One of the objects of the gospel is to warm man’s natural frigidity. Fervour in the pulpit, in the prayer-meeting, etc., imperative. “But it is not respectable!” God preserve us from respectability, then. But there is enthusiasm enough in political and social gatherings and in business.

III. FOR THE DISCIPLINE OF THE HOUSE.

1. Wickedness should be rebuked. Purity must be maintained at all costs. Some churches need the scourge of small cords to drive out the men who, by their negligence or immorality, disgrace the altars of God.

2. Virtue should be fortified. In the family and the Church, discipline should aim at the development of goodness, so that the doctrine of God our Saviour may be adorned in all things.

3. Our interest in the holiness of the Church should be all aflame with sacred zeal. In proportion as we are zealous for God, He will bless our efforts at evangelization.

IV. FOR THE DOCTRINES OF THE HOUSE. It is the Church s vocation, not that of the ministry as an official order to defend the faith.

1. Zeal for the doctrine implies mental hostility to error. The tendency of to-day is to tolerate not only heretics, which is right, but heresy, which is wrong.

2. Whilst opposing heresy, our chief concern should be the vindication and exposition of truth. Zeal not for sect and party, but for the truth--particularly the cardinal truth of the cross. (J. Cynddylan Jones, D. D.)

Christ’s zeal

I. ITS SPHERE. We cannot confine it to the temple or any other ecclesiastical structure.

1. The universe, in all the glory of its interminable spreadings, is the house of God. There is not a lonely spot which is not full of Deity.

2. And when we divide this universe into sections we know that there is some scene hououred above others with the Almighty’s presence--where angels cluster, and where the Creator may be said more emphatically to dwell.

3. The whole company of the faithful upon earth constitute “the house of God”--builded together for a habitation of God through the Spirit.

4. Nay, there is not a solitary individual, over whom the great change has passed, who is not tenanted by the High and Lofty One.

II. CHRIST’S ZEAL WORKING IN THIS SPHERE. Zeal devoured the spirit of our Saviour, and in driving out the traffickers from the temple we can recognize the workings of the principle, but we cannot limit it to this. We gather from the expression

1. That Jesus was consumed with a lofty desire to benefit the denizens of the universe.

2. Over the inhabitants of heaven Christ poured His amazing solicitudes.

3. An ardent longing to rescue this world from its degradation, and to build up its desecrated fragments into s temple of the living God, throbbed in the heart of Jesus of Nazareth. Confined, as it might have seemed, to a single race, its effect branched out into every quarter of the house of God, and orders of intelligence which needed not to be brought to the Saviour might have been confirmed and sustained by that which put man within the circles of acceptance.

4. Viewing God’s house as including the believing remnants of Adam’s descendants, we see Him entering on His course as the sun enters on his march in the firmament. His soul yearned over those who had destroyed themselves. He entered into the nature on which rested the awful curse; and when the race He had come to redeem rejected Him, the zeal of God’s house kept Him fast on His pathway of pain. (H. Melvill.)

Christ’s zeal

I. The OBJECT of zeal--“Thy house.” The Jewish temple as symbolizing

1. The Old Testament Church.

2. The world of sinners.

3. Corrupted Christian communities.

II. The NATURE of zeal. True and godly zeal, says Bp. Jewell, eateth and devoureth up the heart, even as the thing that is eaten is turned into the substance of him that eateth it; and as iron, while iris burning hot, is turned into the nature of the fire, so great and just is the grief that they which have this zeal conceive when they see God’s house spoiled, or His holy name dishonoured.

III. The MANIFESTATION of the zeal.

1. In rigidly expelling the defiling and the false.

2. In replacing and building up the pure and the true.

The zeal of Christ

It is said that sometimes when a crowd see a vessel that is going to pieces, and hear the cries of the drowning men, they seem as if they were all seized with madness, because, not being able to give vent to their kindness toward the perishing ones by any practical activity, they know not what to do, and are ready to sacrifice their lives if they might but do something to save others. Men feel that they must work in the presence of so dreadful a need. And Christ saw this world of ours quivering over the pit. He saw it floating, as it were, in an atmosphere of fire, and he wished to quench those flames and make the world rejoice, and therefore He must work to that end. He could not rest and be quiet. (C. H. Spurgeon.)

The zeal of our Lord to be imitated

Let the zeal of the house of God ever eat thee. For example: seest thou a brother running to the theatre? stop him, warn him, be grieved for him, if the zeal of God’s house hath now eaten thee. Seest thou others running and wanting to drink themselves drunk? Stop whom thou canst, hold whom thou canst, frighten whom thou canst; whom thou canst, win in gentleness: do not in any wise sit still and do nothing. (Augustine.)

Commendable zeal

The most remarkable examples of zeal are found in the records of the early itinerant ministers. Richard Nolley, one of these, came upon the fresh trail of an emigrant in the wilderness, and followed it till he overtook the family. When the emigrant saw him he said, “What? a Methodist preacher! I quit Virginia to be out of the way of them; but in my settlement in Georgia I thought I should be beyond their reach. There they were; and they got my wife and daughter into their church. Then I come here to Chocktaw Corner, find a piece of land, feel sure that I shall have some peace from the preachers; and here is one before I have unloaded my waggon!” The preacher exhorted him to make his peace with God, that he might not be troubled by the everywhere present Methodist preachers.

Christian zeal necessary

A young Brahman put this question to the Rev. E. Lewis, of Bellary--“Do the Christian people of England really believe that it would be a good thing for the people of India to become Christians?” “Why, yes, to be sure they do,” he replied. “What I mean is this,” continued the Brahman, “do they in their hearts believe that the Hindoos would be better and happier if they were converted to Christianity?” “Certainly they do,” said Mr. Lewis. “Why, then, do they act in such a strange way? Why do they send so few to preach their religion? When there are vacancies in the Civil Service, there are numerous applicants at once; when there is a military expedition, a hundred officers volunteer for it; in commercial enterprises, also, you are full of activity, and always have a strong staff. But it is different with your religion. I see one missionary with his wife here, and one hundred and fifty miles away is another, and one hundred miles in another direction is a third. How can the Christians of England expect to convert the people of India from their hoary faith with so little effort on their part?” (Chronicle of London Missionary Society.)

Consuming zeal

When Baxter came to Kidderminster there was about one family in a street which worshipped God at home. When he went away there were some streets in which there was not more than one family on a side that did not do it; and this was the case even with inns and public-houses. While some Divines were wrangling about the Divine right of Episcopacy or Presbytery, or splitting hairs about reprobation and free-will, Baxter was always visiting from house to house, and beseeching men, for Christ’s sake, to be reconciled to God and flee from the wrath to come. (Bp. Ryle.)

Zealous, but not furious

It is in the matter of religion as with the tending of a still; if we put in too much fire it burns, if too little, it works not: a middle temper must be kept. A heat there must be, but a moderate one. We may not be like a drowsy judge upon a Grecian bench, who is fain to bite upon beans, to keep himself from sleeping; neither may we be like that Grecian player, who acted mad Ajax on the stage; but we must be soberly fervent and discreetly active. St. Paul’s spirit was stirred within him at Athens because of its idolatry, and it breaks out of his mouth in a grave reproof: I do not see him put his hand furiously to demolish them. And if a Juventius and Maximinian, in the heat of zeal, shall rail on wicked Julian at a feast, he justly casts their death, not on their religion, but on their petulancy. It was a well-made decree in the council of Eliberis, that if any man did take upon him to break down idols, and were slain, he should not be reckoned amongst the martyrs. There must then be two moderators of zeal, discretion and charity, without either and both of which it is no other than a wild distemper; and with them, it is no less than the very life-blood of the Christian. (Bp. Hall.)