Matthew-081

Today, I would like to concentrate the message particularly on one verse, John 2:17, “Zeal for your house will consume me.” As I was waiting on God as to what he will have me say on this first meeting here in Pai Tau Village, these words kept coming back to me, “Zeal for your house will consume me.” Even as I was travelling around in Malaysia and Australia, these words kept coming back every time I thought about this meeting today and what the Lord God would have me say.

Now I would like to make just 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 much simpler level. Those who are used to my preaching in Montreal were struck by the fact that my messages seemed to be very much simplified in Hong Kong. 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 and Intermediate Training. So today’s preaching will be at a deeper level. Now if any of you did not go through any kind of training, you might find a little hard to follow the exegetical part of this message, but I hope that the conclusion will be clear to you all the same, and I hope that you will be able to benefit.

See the connection between the church and the resurrection of Christ

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 help us grasp what the Lord Jesus wants to say to us.

The second step will be to see what is the adequate understanding of this text.

And the third step will be to see what is the importance of these words to us today. I want you to see particularly what God wants to say to us concerning his church in these last days in which we now live.

I also particularly want you to see the connection between the church and the resurrection of Christ. The reason partly is that nowadays, the connection is made generally between the church and Pentecost, and this understanding is Scripturally erroneous. We have to go further back to the resurrection.

Notice John 2:19,

This verse is so important that at the trial of Jesus when he was being condemned, these words were used as an accusation against him. We see that in Mark 14:58, that at the trial of Jesus, he was accused of having said, “I will destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up.” The temple in Jerusalem no longer stands; it has been destroyed. Only two months ago, the Second Team and I were in Israel, and we visited this area where the temple stood. And when the Lord Jesus was being crucified, these same words were used in order to ridicule him: “You are the one who said you will destroy the temple in three days and raise it up again, so now, try and save yourself.” (Jo. 2:19 // Mk. 15:29) These words were used a third time in Ac. 6:14, this time to put to death Stephen, the first martyr of the church. He was accused of being a follower of the Lord Jesus who said that he would destroy the temple, which the Lord Jesus never said. This is a false quotation. He did not say, “I will destroy the temple.” What he said were actually these words in John 2:19, “Destroy this temple and I will raise it up in three days.”

God’s holy fire consumes you as you love God and his people

Today, let us particularly focus on John 2:17, “Zeal for your house (temple) has consumed me (eaten me up).” We will read the passage John 2:13-22 in order to get the picture:

Now picture in your minds what happened on that day. The Lord Jesus comes into the temple in Jerusalem, and there are people all crowded in the temple area, buying sheep and pigeons. If you went to a local temple today, you would also see crowds of people burning incense, buying this and offering that. The temple had become what is said in verse 16, “a house of trade,” a place of merchandise to buy and sell. In Matthew 21:13, the Lord Jesus said the temple had become “a den of robbers.” The temple had become dominated by commerce, by merchandise, by the world and its vices. Those of us who have been Christians for some time are familiar with this hap­pening within the Christian church as well. Faith being the victory would become a joke in such a context. Look at your Christian life. Can you say that your faith helps you to overcome?

This is closely linked to the question of whether zeal for God’s house consumes you. God needs people who are able to say with the Lord Jesus, “Zeal for your house is 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 time quieting, studying the Bible, and can’t care less if the world and the church are going to pieces. There are some Christians who are only concerned about the improvement of their own spiritual life, and boast to others how many times they have read the Bible. As for us, we don’t only desire to spend time going from one training to another simply for our own personal benefit. We have missed the point of joining any training if it’s not in order to serve God and his church more effectively.

The word “zeal” in “zeal for God’s house” comes from a Greek word which means to boil or burn to the extent where it eats up. The Lord Jesus says zeal “consumes” him. How many Christians could even reflect a small degree of this kind of 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. The Bible said he was about thirty years old, but the Jews said in John 8:57, “You are not fifty years old.” People thought he was nearer fifty than thirty, because he looked much older than he actually was.

When I was in Australia recently, I saw a picture of a girl in the newspaper. She looked like a hundred years old but she was only about eleven. What is the reason? It’s because something happened in her system which causes her body to work at ten times the speed of a normal person. No one can understand why her biological processes go ten times faster than in other people. It is regarded as a very, very rare disease. Apparently, there are two such cases in Australia. In fact, when she is tested biologically, her body is the body of a one-hundred-and-eleven-year-old person. So she sits in school with eleven year olds, but she is actually a one-hundred-and-eleven-year-old person! What is more, the physicians estimate that she is now left with one or two years of life expectancy. She will die very soon. Isn’t it remarkable? Something has happened in her system that the intensity of the life processes has sped up ten times. In other words, the kind of life she is having is consuming her, and she is dying very quickly at the age of eleven or twelve. She has a “consumptive” disease, which means it is a type of intensively progressing disease that eats up a person. That is the word “consume” that we have here. For example, some people get consumption which is a kind of consumptive tuberculosis, and it progresses so fast that the person dies more quickly than normal tuberculosis. So it is said to eat up a person.

So John 2:17 says, “Zeal for your house eats me up, burns me up.” The word, “consume” in the Septuagint, the Greek Old Testament, is used of sacrifices being offered up which are consumed in fire. That is how the Lord Jesus lived, and this is the way God expects us to live. Most Christians today, are neither hot nor cold, as we find in the well-known verse in Revelation 3:16. They don’t burn with the holy fire of God. So today, as we start the first worship in this building, I would like that God will grant to us a holy fire coming from above that will consume us with zeal for his house, for his church.

Was Jesus intensely concerned about the resurrection of his body?

Now I must spend a few moments on the exegetical part. What does “his house” normally refer to? And in what way was the Lord Jesus concerned with this house? When we look at the passage, it seems to be referring to the temple, the building standing there where God was worshipped. To understand it in this way creates all kinds of exegetical problems as I shall try to show you in a moment.

The next thing is he says, “Destroy this house and I will raise it up in three days.” If he is concerned for the temple, why destroy it? And why raise it up again in three days? Just cleanse the temple by driv­ing out all these money changers and merchants as he was doing. Why destroy it? Clearly, there is also a connection between destroy and raise it up because if it’s not destroyed, how is he going to raise it up in three days? What is going to be raised up? Are we or aren’t we still talking about the temple? Of course, in the context, we are talking about the temple.

The passage goes on in verse 21 to say that what he will raise up in three days is his body! Now we are beginning to lose the connection. He said, “I am on fire for the house of God, but let it be destroyed, and in three days I will raise it up.” The “it” should be the temple and yet verse 21 says “the temple of his body.”

Verse 22 says that when Jesus was raised from the dead, “the disciples remembered that he had said this, and they believed the Scripture.” The Greek word is singular, “the Scripture”, the one Scripture not the Scriptures, the whole Bible. In this passage, only one Scripture verse is being quoted. “Zeal for your house will consume me” is a quotation from Psalm 69:9 where it certainly refers to the temple. There the psalmist is being persecuted even by his closest friends and family members because of 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 am concerned that you remember these words, “consumed with zeal,” this intensity. We live in an age where people are afraid of zeal. We are afraid of radicalism. We want to be more moderate. I am sure that if you have become a Christian, and your parents are not Christians, you will understand what I mean. They will say, “Do you want to get baptized? No problem! Get baptized! It’s good to be a nice guy!” Parents know it’s good for children to go to Sunday School and learn how to be nice. Then they hear about “Basic Training” and they still agree to it. But when you talk about “Intermediate Training,” they think this is getting a little bit too far. By the time their children say they want to go to full-time training, that is the limit! This is too radical! This is too intense! This is going too far! There is no problem just being a lukewarm Christian, but wait until the fire of God burns in you, then not even your closest friends can understand you anymore. In Psalm 69:8-9, the psalmist says when he began to burn with concern for God’s house, even his closest friends became his enemies.

Incorrect understanding of John 2:17

Let us try to understand John 2:17 more clearly. Normally, the connection is supposed to be the Lord Jesus is zealous for God’s house, and the house turns out to be his own body according to verse 21. This is the superficial understanding of it. So 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 will begin to see there is 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 what is the intense zeal for? It’s for his own resurrection! You will begin to wonder if this kind of zeal is unselfish after all. It begins to sound like many Christians who care intensely for their own salvation. Now this doesn’t seem to be the right track, does it? But this is the standard understanding of the passage. I want to show you that this understanding is incorrect. What are the reasons for this?

Exegetical problems:

1. The Bible never speaks of Jesus’ physical body as the temple of God

Anyone who studies the Bible, even though you have not studied it very deeply, will immediately be aware that there is no passage in Scripture that says that his physical body is the temple of God. So any exegete of this passage should have been careful about what is said here.

2. The Bible says God the Father raised Jesus up, not Jesus raised himself

The second exegetical problem is even more serious than this. You will notice verse 19, “I will raise it up,” that is, “I, Jesus will raise up that temple” is in the active tense. But nowhere in the Bible does it ever say that Jesus raised himself from the dead. The raising of Jesus from the dead is always in the passive tense in the Bible, never in the active tense. Even verse 22, “when therefore he was raised from the dead” is in the passive tense So look again very carefully, verse 19 “I will raise it up” is in the active, but verse 22 is in the passive. He did not raise himself up. It was God the Father who raised him up.

Now there are lots of references, but since this is not a Bible study, I will not go into 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, not Jesus raising himself from the dead. You will see that especially in Acts 13:30 and many, many such verses, it is God who raised him from the dead. 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.

3. The Lord Jesus raises the believers, not himself by God’s power

When we read within the context of John’s Gospel, we do read Jesus raising the dead but he is raising the dead among the people, not himself (cf. Jo.11:43-44).

We can look at just one passage, 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. Jesus raises us believers spiritually from the dead, and he will also raise us up physically from the dead on the last day in John 6:39-40. In the Scriptures, and especially in John’s Gospel, it is always the Lord Jesus who raises the believers, but not himself.

What temple will Jesus raise up? The church

Once we grasp these exegetical points, we will begin to see what Jesus is driving at. What is this temple that he is concerned about? What will he build? We read from Matthew 16:18 for example, “On this rock, I will build my church.” Here we begin to see very important things.

What is more, we see that in this passage in John 2:15-20, three different Greek words are used: “house” (oikos), temple” (hieron), and “sanctuary” (naos), sometimes translated rather interchange­ably in English or in Chinese.

You have the word “house” oikos in verse 16: “You shall not make my Father’s house (the house of God) a place for merchandise.”

In verses 14 and 15, the word “temple” is the Greek word hieron, which means the whole of the temple area, all its courtyards, storehouses, walls, porches, gates, and so on, as well as the temple structure itself.

Finally, in verses 19 and 20, the word translated as “temple” is the word naos in Greek, which means “sanctuary.” It refers to the inner part of the temple, the Holy Place and the Holy of Holies where God dwells.

When we study how these words are used in the rest of the New Testament, we find they always refer to the church, the temple of God. So grasp carefully what is the “house” for which the Lord Jesus’ zeal is burning. It is not his physical body and the raising of his physical body. It is the temple of God where God dwells.

We will also find in studying, that the Greek word naos meaning the “temple” or “sanctuary” of God used here, always refers to the church – you and I, as in 1 Corinthians 3:16, 6:19; 2 Corinthians 6:16 and so on. This is where God dwells. The New Testament tells us that either God dwells in you and in his people, or he doesn’t dwell anywhere at all. We are the temple.

The “temple” is the church, also “the body of Christ”

Now not only is the word “temple” applied to the church, but also the phrase, “the body of Christ.” In 1 Corinthians 12:27, Paul says, “You are the body of Christ.” It’s very important to understand that the apostle Paul derives his teaching from his Master and Lord, the Lord Jesus. 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, the more I see that the apostle Paul derived his teaching and all its essential elements from the Lord Jesus’ teaching.

Where did he get his term “body of Christ” as a reference to the church? I am quite certain he got it right here from John 2:21, “the temple of his body” because he was a far better exegete than any of us. And he certainly did not make the kind of mistakes that most Christian preachers are making today. He clearly saw that nowhere in Scripture does the Lord Jesus raise himself from the dead, but what he raised up was the church. He raised us up to a new life by God’s power of resurrection. Paul understood this important point perfectly, and that is where he derived the teaching of the church as the body of Christ.

“A new creation” is “a temple not made with hands”

However, there is something even more significant. I have often wondered where Paul got his teaching about a Christian being “a new creation” because it doesn’t seem that the Lord Jesus ever used such terminology. But being the marvelous exegete that Paul was, he got it from the Lord Jesus’ teaching, as I begin to see. We have to take several exegetical steps to trace this.

First of all, we notice here in John 2:19: “I will raise it up in three days.” If we compare this with Mark 14:58, we have a very interesting result. Mark 14:58 is the verse I referred to as what was used against the Lord Jesus in his trial:

Something more is said here. The second part about this new building being not made with hands is a quotation of what the Lord Jesus actually said, because there is no point for the accusers to invent it. This is almost certainly a genuine quotation. This building we are sitting in now is certainly made with hands, but the building the Lord Jesus will raise up is not made with hands. What does that mean?

The next exegetical step is to compare it with another striking verse in Hebrews 9:11, where indeed, it speaks about a building not made with hands:

Now a building “not made with hands” means that it is a spiritual building, it is not of this world, “not of this creation.” Here “not of this creation” means that it has to be of a new creation. That is exactly the term that Paul uses: “a new creation” that is not made with hands. Now we know where Paul got that terminology from in 2 Corinthians 5:17.

If you are in Christ, you are a new creation. You are the temple of God, not made with hands, not belonging to this creation but to a new one.

Christ’s vision: The glory of God seen in him is also seen in his disciples

Let us try to sum up the important things that God wants us to learn. What can we conclude? We begin to see what was eating up the Lord Jesus in John 2:17. He looked at the temple with all these people coming in and out selling sheep, goats and pigeons, and many other things for sacrifice offerings, and his heart was burning with intense grief. This building was going to be destroyed. He prophesied that in Mark Chapter 13 and Luke Chapter 21.

The temple on the temple mount would be destroyed, and a new temple would be raised up. Through his death and resurrection, the new temple, the new creation of God would come into being. This would be the body of Christ on earth, the church. And when people look at us who follow Christ as his disciples—the church—they can see in us the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ (2 Cor. 4:6). That was his vision. What a glorious vision this is! I wonder whether this will speak to your heart now, and burn within your heart someday soon!

Characteristics of the new creation

1. Power of the resurrection through the Holy Spirit of God

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 Christ’s resurrection. It is for this reason that many people, especially our charismatic friends, are surprised to find that Pentecost is never spoken of in relation to the establishing of the church. Look through the teaching of Scripture and you will see this clearly. In Romans Chapter 6 for example, when does every person first become a member of the body of Christ? At his baptism, when he dies and rises again with Christ Jesus in new life.

Let me put it in another way. If the power of the resurrection of Christ does not work in you, you are not part of the body of Christ. 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 Chapter 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 of God becomes active in your life.

What does that mean in practical terms? It means that the power of sin and of death is broken in your life, exactly as the Lord Jesus said in John 8:36, “When the Son will make you free, you will be free indeed.” What is the power that breaks the power of sin and of death? It is the power of the resurrection applied into your life by the Holy Spirit of God. That is the power of resurrection that 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 5:4, faith is the victory over 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 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 as far as the Bible is concerned. This victory over sin burns in my heart because what do I see as I look around in the churches today? I see Christians living in sin! They are beaten every single day! They are 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.

2. Joy and satisfaction

Do you have joy in your life? Do you have satisfaction in your life? Is it wrong to talk about satisfaction in Christian life? What did the Lord Jesus say? If any man drink of the water I shall give him, he shall never, never thirst again. That is, he will be totally satisfied. Do you live with a sense of satisfaction that in Christ you have found all you want? Have you found in Christ what the world certainly cannot give you? When you go to work after these holidays, when you go to school after these holidays, do people say to you, “There is some kind of richness, 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 the conclusion that you are no different from any non-Christian? 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 the power of the resurrection life?

3. Zeal for God’s church

So I want to ask each one of you, and to the leaders of this church this question: Does zeal for God’s house burn within you?

When the Lord Jesus said these words, his body had not yet come into being through the power of resurrection. But now, the body of Christ lives; it has been raised. And if any of you who have been baptized—who have died with Christ and been raised with him—are not living in the power of this resurrection, I ask you what kind of Christian are you? That kind of Christian is a disgrace to God! If the Lord Jesus met with you, he would drive you out in the same way as he drove out the money changers and merchants!

I can tell you that when the power of Christ’s resurrection life works in you, not only will you experience victory over sin by that power every day, more than that, you are freed from the self so that you become concerned for the others. You are burning that the new life should also be burning in them!

4. Assurance of salvation by spiritual resurrection

We talk about what we know. If you have not been spiritually raised by the resurrection power of God in Christ now in your daily expe­rience, on what do you base your assurance of a future salvation?

I met someone from another church recently. He was talking about assurance, so I asked him, “If you are always talking about your assurance in Christ, on what is your assurance based?” He gave me some vague answer that it is based on the Bible. Based on the Bible? The Bible tells us that people who do not live in the center of God’s will, will go to perdition, they will perish.

I am filled with assurance not because I am any better than anyone else, but because by the grace of God, He has granted to me the power of Christ’s resurrection life, making me a new creation. Do you think that 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 overcome the power of sin, you are experiencing a power from God for the simple reason that no one can live victoriously over sin except by God’s power. Paul tells us in Romans 7 that he tried to do good but failed. He tried living by the will of God, but he couldn’t do it. So if you can live victoriously, you are experiencing God’s power.

Are you willing to burn with God’s fire for freedom from sin in the church?

We are talking about life from God, not about doctrines or about the religion of Christianity. You must experience God’s power! If you experience it, you will 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, I saw on the news a girl who looked very strange. She had plastic surgery done all over her face and a large part of her body because she had been in a terrible accident. Doctors had to take skin from another part of the body and graft it to the face. What happened to her? She fought for freedom, for human rights in Argentina, and she was in a protest march. That is the kind of thing you don’t do in South America if you value your life. The police got hold of her, poured kerosene all over her and set her on fire. Talking about being on fire, she was literally set on fire! The result was that 80% of her body was burned. When 80% of your body is burned, your chance of survival is extremely poor. She was rushed off to Canada, through the concern and sacrificial giving of her friends, and they used the latest medical techniques to try to save her life. Through many months of fighting for her life, she survived.

She was so consumed with zeal for her people and country that having almost recovered from surgery and burns, she was returning to Argentina to continue the battle for human rights, as though all that suffering were not enough! And she was prepared to die this time. This is the reason she was on the news.

When I look at people like this who burned internally as well as externally for the sake of human rights, and she was prepared to be burned to death again, doesn’t it put us Christians to shame? Do we think she is too radical, too intense? Or are we so lukewarm that intensity of this kind frightens us? But that is how the Lord Jesus burned intensely—not just for political freedom, important as that is—but for our freedom from sin, because sin makes all mankind its slaves. So I ask that God will ignite this fire among us all.