And his disciples remembered that it was written, The zeal of thine house hath eaten me up.
The disciples saw fulfilled in Jesus a consuming earnestness that devoured Him with devotion to the holiness of His Father's house. It belonged to the first cleansing of the temple at Passover near the opening of His ministry, when as founder of its services pointing to Himself as the great Offering He entered His own temple. With a scourge of small cords He overthrew the tables, drove out traders and animals, and left the courts in solemn silence, revealing divine majesty in holy wrath unlike His usual meekness. The outer court had been made unholy traffic by extortionate prices, fraudulent exchange, and gain for priests and rulers that burdened distant travelers and the poor and broke up worship. That cleansing announced that God means human hearts to be His temples again through saving grace, foreshadowed His final purification of church and world before His return, and calls all who serve Him to share that fervent zeal for souls and for cleansing from selfishness and defilement.
Cleansing Setting and Action
This was the first cleansing of the temple, at Passover near the beginning of earthly ministry, with a second cleansing near its close. He entered as originator and founder of the whole Jewish economy, whose sacrifices were types of Himself as the great Offering now standing in His temple. The outer court had been turned into unholy traffic dishonoring to God, with very large sales because many sacrifices were offered at Passover. Priests and rulers had bought cattle and other animals at very low cost and sold them at exorbitant prices to those who had come from a distance and were compelled to buy animals for sacrifice, and fraudulent money-changing enriched priests and rulers while sharp bargaining, clinking of coin, angry disputation, lowing of cattle, bleating of sheep and cooing of doves mingled together. He took in the unfair transactions and the distress of the poor who believed there could be no remission of sins without shedding of blood, and saw that something must be done, for this corruption disrupted worship against the temple's sacred purpose.
In consuming zeal with fervor and severity never before manifested, unlike His usual meek and lowly demeanor, He gathered a scourge of small cords on entering the enclosure and ordered the bargaining company to depart from the temple precincts. He overthrew the tables of the money-changers, so that coin fell and rang sharply on the marble pavement, and drove traders, brokers, priests, rulers, cattle, sheep and birds beyond the sacred portals. He did not strike people with the whip, but the simple scourge in His hand seemed terrible as a flaming sword and as gleaming swords. His divine majesty and authority left the courts free from unholy commerce in deep solemn silence, made sacred as sanctified ground as when the Lord's presence sanctified the mount.
No one questioned His authority and no one dared stop to gather ill-gotten gain, even the most hardened and avaricious fleeing without resistance. Officers of the temple, speculating priests, rulers, brokers and cattle traders with sheep and oxen rushed out in panic, guilt and confusion with the one thought of escaping the condemnation of His presence, overwhelmed by the vast throng's awe. Even the disciples quaked and were awestruck in awe at the sight. His holy wrath and severity and righteous indignation against pollution exposed the priests' hypocrisy and their failure to understand true worship, and fearlessly exposed their dishonest practices of making worship a means of extortion. The priests and rulers feared that opposing Him would repeat their ancestors' rejection of warnings and bring calamity on the nation.
News of that act, with His healings, reached Galilee and helped prepare people to receive Him. Many resented and lamented the abuse of the temple and the priests' arrogance, and hoped He might drive the rulers out and prove to be the promised Deliverer who would free them. His appearance, words, power and authority in condemning the practices there led many to believe He was the long-awaited Messiah. This report of driving the desecrators from the temple led the centurion to believe Jesus had power to heal his dying son, and together with the changing of water into wine encouraged the nobleman to believe the same.
During the entire day after that cleansing He healed the sick and relieved the afflicted, receiving the poor and the oppressed with pitying fatherly compassion like a loving father toward suffering children, working cures and removing sorrow with no suppliant sent unrelieved. He instructed the restless curious people, reasoned with the scribes, and silenced the caviling of the haughty rulers by the wisdom of His words. Those words, with the prophecies pointing to Jesus as the looked-for Messiah, convinced Nicodemus that He was sent of God. Worn by long-continued labors until pale with weariness, when night came He sought retirement and repose in the Mount of Olives where Nicodemus found Him.
Zeal Meaning and Fulfillment
The zeal of God's house was a deep, consuming earnestness that took hold of Christ and spent itself in action. It was lofty zeal and severity, unlike His usual meek and lowly demeanor, moving Him to holy wrath against the pollution of what was sacred. That wrath drove Him to command the traders out, to overthrow the money-changers' tables so that coin fell and rang sharply on the marble pavement, and to drive priests, rulers, brokers, cattle, sheep, and birds beyond the sacred portals. His divine majesty overwhelmed the vast throng with panic, guilt, and confusion, so that even the most hardened and avaricious fled without resistance and without stopping for gain, seeing the simple scourge of cords as gleaming swords, while even the disciples quaked in awe before they remembered what was written. His presence made the courts free from unholy commerce in deep solemn silence, as sacred as sanctified ground where the Lord's presence had sanctified the mount.
The disciples recognized in that forceful defense of the temple's holiness the fulfillment of what was written about the Messiah being consumed by zeal for God's house. They understood the words applied to Him, revealing divine authority and wholehearted devotion to its sacred purpose. What prompted their remembrance was His righteous indignation at unholy traffic in the temple courts and His command to stop treating His Father's house as a place of trade.
His zeal was shown in rebuking the desecration caused especially by the temple authorities and the priesthood, who had made worship a means of extortion. It was expressed in fearless exposure of their hypocrisy, dishonest practices, and failure to understand true worship. Although priests and rulers accused Him of profaning the temple, His opposition to their conduct proved Him its truer friend than they were, for outward richness and beauty could not make worship holy when those claiming to serve God desecrated it.
Prophetic Pattern and Future
The cleansing at the beginning of the public ministry and the cleansing almost at its close together foreshadow the final work of warning the world. That last warning includes two distinct calls to the churches. They are the second angel's message and the voice from heaven calling God's people out of Babylon because her sins have reached unto heaven and God has remembered her iniquities.
At the first advent He cleansed the temple because commercial work had been brought in and God had been forgotten, with hurry leaving no time to think of heaven. The same work will be done again before the second advent, when God in His displeasure will cleanse and purify His temple. The scene of indignation also represented the coming dispersion of the Jewish nation for its wickedness and impenitence.
His care for the church likewise leads Him to purify it through tests and trials for its present and eternal good. God permits no affliction except what is essential, using trials and obstacles as chosen discipline. That discipline reveals concealed defects and gives opportunity to overcome earthliness. It produces deeper piety and greater strength, strengthening His people and advancing their work of carrying the gospel throughout the world and carrying forward the triumphs of the cross.
Temple Truth and Human Heart
The sacrifices of the temple were ordained to teach that sin could be met only by the shedding of blood and to direct minds forward to His own death, yet priests and rulers had lost sight of that purpose. The temple itself stood as an object lesson of God's design that created beings should be temples for His indwelling presence. Through sin humanity became defiled and ceased to reveal His glory, but through the incarnation of the Son of God, God dwells in humanity, and saving grace makes the human heart His temple again. The cleansing announced that restoration at the very beginning of His messianic work.
To substitute gain, outward show, and worldly business for godliness and inward purity is to defile what is sacred. The lesson reaches the Christian directly, for the human heart is God's temple, which Jesus must occupy each day and cleanse from defilement. Outward richness and beauty could not make worship holy while those professing to serve God were desecrating it. Those driven out claimed to be children of Abraham and were zealous to appear holy, yet they neglected holiness of heart, thereby revealing their need for new birth, cleansing from sin, and renewed knowledge and holiness.
The temple is His people, who are prone to say the temple of the Lord are we while claiming authority to do what the word of God forbids. The cleansing therefore calls for humbling as little children, learning what it means to be temples of the Lord, and receiving saving grace. It calls also for putting away the dissension that weakens effort.
Earnest Service and Reform
The zeal of God's house that consumed Christ was deep, consuming earnestness, and those who represent Him are to share that same earnestness and heartfelt concern for souls. That sharing takes the form of fervent appeals urging people to forsake sin and turn to Christ. It also condemns popular sins and promotes practical godliness.
Zeal for God's house requires ministers to learn true health reform and to teach its principles both by precept and by quiet, consistent example. That teaching is to be given at large gatherings and then followed up by publications to arouse intellect and conscience. The same zeal is linked to preserving physical powers in the best possible condition so the body can be used in acceptable service to God.
The same Christ who while on earth cleansed the temple courts from selfish gain out of zeal for its holiness will surely cleanse the publishing house and the Review and Herald office at Battle Creek. As the temple needed cleansing in Christ's day, so the office needed to be cleansed, and if Christ were on earth He would cleanse the publishing office as He cleansed the temple, removing its hidden wrongdoing. The reason is that commercial work has grown too large, selfishness and covetousness have corrupted principles, unsanctified judgment has controlled the work received, and the institution is not producing the results for which it was established. The men in the office are not under control to God, are not walking in the light, and do not sense the difference between handling the sacred and the common.
God will surely cleanse His temple, meaning His institutions and the representative workers standing in high places who manipulate the work. These scheme for higher wages and greater authority, appropriate to themselves their own estimate of their labor, make an unequal distribution that cuts down ministers and missionaries, and refuse means to advance into cities and places where the truth has never been heard. Grasping for higher wages is soul-ruining selfishness with which judgment and equity cannot enter and with which God will not work, and it must be cut off or the whole plant will be uprooted and destroyed. He will turn and overturn until the unconverted elements are cleansed out, so that spiritual advancement can go forward, new ground can be broken, the gospel standard can be planted where it has not been heard, and unity and truth and righteousness can go forth.
That same cleansing will soon be done to the publishing house when its leading men are without the working of the Holy Spirit on their minds, do not take time to talk with God, and are not led by justice, integrity, and love, but display unsanctified individuality and perversity and do not follow a straightforward, upright course. The longer men practice iniquity the harder and more unimpressible their hearts become, until the Lord will no longer bear with them and must cleanse. The judgments that have fallen upon the two largest institutions are God speaking to the workers in them and to all in the other institutions, declaring that there is to be a reformation among them. Unless men's ideas of right and wrong are entirely changed, there is cause to tremble for the future.
The church must likewise be purified from defilement as Christ in zeal purified the temple. The cleansing at His first advent is an example of how the truth, when introduced into new fields, confronts prejudice and the hostility of clergy and rulers and brings needed purification and reform.
The disciples saw fulfilled in Jesus a consuming earnestness that devoured Him with devotion to the holiness of His Father's house. It belonged to the first cleansing of the temple at Passover near the opening of His ministry, when as founder of its services pointing to Himself as the great Offering He entered His own temple. With a scourge of small cords He overthrew the tables, drove out traders and animals, and left the courts in solemn silence, revealing divine majesty in holy wrath unlike His usual meekness. The outer court had been made unholy traffic by extortionate prices, fraudulent exchange, and gain for priests and rulers that burdened distant travelers and the poor and broke up worship. That cleansing announced that God means human hearts to be His temples again through saving grace, foreshadowed His final purification of church and world before His return, and calls all who serve Him to share that fervent zeal for souls and for cleansing from selfishness and defilement.
Cleansing Setting and Action
This was the first cleansing of the temple, at Passover near the beginning of earthly ministry, with a second cleansing near its close. He entered as originator and founder of the whole Jewish economy, whose sacrifices were types of Himself as the great Offering now standing in His temple. The outer court had been turned into unholy traffic dishonoring to God, with very large sales because many sacrifices were offered at Passover. Priests and rulers had bought cattle and other animals at very low cost and sold them at exorbitant prices to those who had come from a distance and were compelled to buy animals for sacrifice, and fraudulent money-changing enriched priests and rulers while sharp bargaining, clinking of coin, angry disputation, lowing of cattle, bleating of sheep and cooing of doves mingled together. He took in the unfair transactions and the distress of the poor who believed there could be no remission of sins without shedding of blood, and saw that something must be done, for this corruption disrupted worship against the temple's sacred purpose.
In consuming zeal with fervor and severity never before manifested, unlike His usual meek and lowly demeanor, He gathered a scourge of small cords on entering the enclosure and ordered the bargaining company to depart from the temple precincts. He overthrew the tables of the money-changers, so that coin fell and rang sharply on the marble pavement, and drove traders, brokers, priests, rulers, cattle, sheep and birds beyond the sacred portals. He did not strike people with the whip, but the simple scourge in His hand seemed terrible as a flaming sword and as gleaming swords. His divine majesty and authority left the courts free from unholy commerce in deep solemn silence, made sacred as sanctified ground as when the Lord's presence sanctified the mount.
No one questioned His authority and no one dared stop to gather ill-gotten gain, even the most hardened and avaricious fleeing without resistance. Officers of the temple, speculating priests, rulers, brokers and cattle traders with sheep and oxen rushed out in panic, guilt and confusion with the one thought of escaping the condemnation of His presence, overwhelmed by the vast throng's awe. Even the disciples quaked and were awestruck in awe at the sight. His holy wrath and severity and righteous indignation against pollution exposed the priests' hypocrisy and their failure to understand true worship, and fearlessly exposed their dishonest practices of making worship a means of extortion. The priests and rulers feared that opposing Him would repeat their ancestors' rejection of warnings and bring calamity on the nation.
News of that act, with His healings, reached Galilee and helped prepare people to receive Him. Many resented and lamented the abuse of the temple and the priests' arrogance, and hoped He might drive the rulers out and prove to be the promised Deliverer who would free them. His appearance, words, power and authority in condemning the practices there led many to believe He was the long-awaited Messiah. This report of driving the desecrators from the temple led the centurion to believe Jesus had power to heal his dying son, and together with the changing of water into wine encouraged the nobleman to believe the same.
During the entire day after that cleansing He healed the sick and relieved the afflicted, receiving the poor and the oppressed with pitying fatherly compassion like a loving father toward suffering children, working cures and removing sorrow with no suppliant sent unrelieved. He instructed the restless curious people, reasoned with the scribes, and silenced the caviling of the haughty rulers by the wisdom of His words. Those words, with the prophecies pointing to Jesus as the looked-for Messiah, convinced Nicodemus that He was sent of God. Worn by long-continued labors until pale with weariness, when night came He sought retirement and repose in the Mount of Olives where Nicodemus found Him.
Zeal Meaning and Fulfillment
The zeal of God's house was a deep, consuming earnestness that took hold of Christ and spent itself in action. It was lofty zeal and severity, unlike His usual meek and lowly demeanor, moving Him to holy wrath against the pollution of what was sacred. That wrath drove Him to command the traders out, to overthrow the money-changers' tables so that coin fell and rang sharply on the marble pavement, and to drive priests, rulers, brokers, cattle, sheep, and birds beyond the sacred portals. His divine majesty overwhelmed the vast throng with panic, guilt, and confusion, so that even the most hardened and avaricious fled without resistance and without stopping for gain, seeing the simple scourge of cords as gleaming swords, while even the disciples quaked in awe before they remembered what was written. His presence made the courts free from unholy commerce in deep solemn silence, as sacred as sanctified ground where the Lord's presence had sanctified the mount.
The disciples recognized in that forceful defense of the temple's holiness the fulfillment of what was written about the Messiah being consumed by zeal for God's house. They understood the words applied to Him, revealing divine authority and wholehearted devotion to its sacred purpose. What prompted their remembrance was His righteous indignation at unholy traffic in the temple courts and His command to stop treating His Father's house as a place of trade.
His zeal was shown in rebuking the desecration caused especially by the temple authorities and the priesthood, who had made worship a means of extortion. It was expressed in fearless exposure of their hypocrisy, dishonest practices, and failure to understand true worship. Although priests and rulers accused Him of profaning the temple, His opposition to their conduct proved Him its truer friend than they were, for outward richness and beauty could not make worship holy when those claiming to serve God desecrated it.
Prophetic Pattern and Future
The cleansing at the beginning of the public ministry and the cleansing almost at its close together foreshadow the final work of warning the world. That last warning includes two distinct calls to the churches. They are the second angel's message and the voice from heaven calling God's people out of Babylon because her sins have reached unto heaven and God has remembered her iniquities.
At the first advent He cleansed the temple because commercial work had been brought in and God had been forgotten, with hurry leaving no time to think of heaven. The same work will be done again before the second advent, when God in His displeasure will cleanse and purify His temple. The scene of indignation also represented the coming dispersion of the Jewish nation for its wickedness and impenitence.
His care for the church likewise leads Him to purify it through tests and trials for its present and eternal good. God permits no affliction except what is essential, using trials and obstacles as chosen discipline. That discipline reveals concealed defects and gives opportunity to overcome earthliness. It produces deeper piety and greater strength, strengthening His people and advancing their work of carrying the gospel throughout the world and carrying forward the triumphs of the cross.
Temple Truth and Human Heart
The sacrifices of the temple were ordained to teach that sin could be met only by the shedding of blood and to direct minds forward to His own death, yet priests and rulers had lost sight of that purpose. The temple itself stood as an object lesson of God's design that created beings should be temples for His indwelling presence. Through sin humanity became defiled and ceased to reveal His glory, but through the incarnation of the Son of God, God dwells in humanity, and saving grace makes the human heart His temple again. The cleansing announced that restoration at the very beginning of His messianic work.
To substitute gain, outward show, and worldly business for godliness and inward purity is to defile what is sacred. The lesson reaches the Christian directly, for the human heart is God's temple, which Jesus must occupy each day and cleanse from defilement. Outward richness and beauty could not make worship holy while those professing to serve God were desecrating it. Those driven out claimed to be children of Abraham and were zealous to appear holy, yet they neglected holiness of heart, thereby revealing their need for new birth, cleansing from sin, and renewed knowledge and holiness.
The temple is His people, who are prone to say the temple of the Lord are we while claiming authority to do what the word of God forbids. The cleansing therefore calls for humbling as little children, learning what it means to be temples of the Lord, and receiving saving grace. It calls also for putting away the dissension that weakens effort.
Earnest Service and Reform
The zeal of God's house that consumed Christ was deep, consuming earnestness, and those who represent Him are to share that same earnestness and heartfelt concern for souls. That sharing takes the form of fervent appeals urging people to forsake sin and turn to Christ. It also condemns popular sins and promotes practical godliness.
Zeal for God's house requires ministers to learn true health reform and to teach its principles both by precept and by quiet, consistent example. That teaching is to be given at large gatherings and then followed up by publications to arouse intellect and conscience. The same zeal is linked to preserving physical powers in the best possible condition so the body can be used in acceptable service to God.
The same Christ who while on earth cleansed the temple courts from selfish gain out of zeal for its holiness will surely cleanse the publishing house and the Review and Herald office at Battle Creek. As the temple needed cleansing in Christ's day, so the office needed to be cleansed, and if Christ were on earth He would cleanse the publishing office as He cleansed the temple, removing its hidden wrongdoing. The reason is that commercial work has grown too large, selfishness and covetousness have corrupted principles, unsanctified judgment has controlled the work received, and the institution is not producing the results for which it was established. The men in the office are not under control to God, are not walking in the light, and do not sense the difference between handling the sacred and the common.
God will surely cleanse His temple, meaning His institutions and the representative workers standing in high places who manipulate the work. These scheme for higher wages and greater authority, appropriate to themselves their own estimate of their labor, make an unequal distribution that cuts down ministers and missionaries, and refuse means to advance into cities and places where the truth has never been heard. Grasping for higher wages is soul-ruining selfishness with which judgment and equity cannot enter and with which God will not work, and it must be cut off or the whole plant will be uprooted and destroyed. He will turn and overturn until the unconverted elements are cleansed out, so that spiritual advancement can go forward, new ground can be broken, the gospel standard can be planted where it has not been heard, and unity and truth and righteousness can go forth.
That same cleansing will soon be done to the publishing house when its leading men are without the working of the Holy Spirit on their minds, do not take time to talk with God, and are not led by justice, integrity, and love, but display unsanctified individuality and perversity and do not follow a straightforward, upright course. The longer men practice iniquity the harder and more unimpressible their hearts become, until the Lord will no longer bear with them and must cleanse. The judgments that have fallen upon the two largest institutions are God speaking to the workers in them and to all in the other institutions, declaring that there is to be a reformation among them. Unless men's ideas of right and wrong are entirely changed, there is cause to tremble for the future.
The church must likewise be purified from defilement as Christ in zeal purified the temple. The cleansing at His first advent is an example of how the truth, when introduced into new fields, confronts prejudice and the hostility of clergy and rulers and brings needed purification and reform.