12 After this, He went down to Capernaum with His mother and brothers and His disciples, and they stayed there a few days.13 When the Jewish Passover was near, Jesus went up to Jerusalem. 14 In the temple courts[B] He found men selling cattle, sheep, and doves, and money changers seated at their tables. 15 So He made a whip out of cords and drove all from the temple courts, both sheep and cattle. He poured out the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables. 16 To those selling doves He said, “Get these out of here! How dare you turn My Father’s house into a marketplace!”17 His disciples remembered that it is written: “Zeal for Your house will consume Me.”REFLECTIONSWritten by Stephen SheadTwo thoughts struck me as I reflected on this famous episode when Jesus made a mess of the furniture and the livestock in the temple courts. Both thoughts relate to zeal for God’s house.Before I get to the two thoughts, it’s good to remember how the concept of God’s “house” grew and changed as God revealed himself more fully in Jesus. In the Old Testament, it was the temple – the holy space, God’s dwelling place, where people could (in theory) draw near to God, find forgiveness, and worship him. As tomorrow’s passage will make clear, Jesus himself replaced the temple. He is the true dwelling place of God, through whom we can draw near, find forgiveness, and worship God. And as we come to Jesus, we – the church, the people of God – become God’s “house” (1 Timothy 3:15; Hebrews 3:6).My first “zeal” reflection is about the temptation of money in ministry. Originally, the system of providing sacrificial animals for worshippers to buy had a good purpose. If you were a pilgrim travelling to Jerusalem from far away, it would have been very difficult to bring a live animal with you on the journey to sacrifice – and what if you didn’t have one that qualified? However, over time the religious authorities became greedy and corrupt, and they moved the temple market from outside to within the temple courtyard itself, and started looking to maximise their profits.Jesus was consumed by an unwavering zeal for the honour of God’s name, and wanted nothing to get in the way of people approaching God to find forgiveness and new life – especially not the corrupting influence of money, profits and greed. I’m so thankful that the Anglican Church has fantastic processes and systems for protecting financial integrity and guarding against ministers or church members being greedy … but that doesn’t “cure” the temptation itself. Pray for me, for our staff, for our wardens, and for all those who deal with our finances, that God would give us an unwavering zeal for Jesus’ name, and that we would always long for nothing more than people to come to Jesus and find new life in him.My second “zeal” reflection is this: As I was reading, it dawned on me that Jesus’ zeal for God’s house is not just his zeal for God’s honour. It’s also his zeal for … us. He was consumed by a pure, perfect, never-wavering desire to bring sinners like us to his Father so that we might find new life. That was what drove him not just to make a whip and drive out sheep and cattle from the temple, but to offer his back to a far more vicious whip and stretch out his arms to cruel nails, so that we might become holy, consecrated to God – his own house, “a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit” (Ephesians 2:22). Praise Jesus for his amazing love!





























ABOUT THE AUTHORStephen is our senior minister.

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