For I am Devoured by the Zeal of your House

"For I am Devoured by the Zeal of your House" (Psalm 69:9; John 2:13,17 Zeal for God is so little understood by the men of the world that it always attracts opposition (resistance, competition) over those who are inspired by Him; they are always sure to be accused of sinister motives, or of hypocrisy, or of being out of the senses.

I. When zeal devours us (eating its prey, swallowing eagerly and hastily, consuming, "destroying").

A. The wicked seek to devour us as well.

1. This is preeminently the case of our Lord, because His holy zeal was preeminent.

2. This is an expression with which they try to make it clear (descriptive memory aimed at explaining, it is composed of a description = "explainable"), that to stand out, that the zeal of the Lord was what stood out in His passion for the temple.

3. The thing Jesus loved most was the temple, reason, God established it, for Him, to worship Him and His glory to descend, was the only place on earth.

4. The cloud enveloped and was the only holy place, because it had to be holy.

5. Jesus did it because He sanctified that place.

6. How diligent Calvin was in the vineyard of the Lord!

7. When his friends wanted to persuade him to "slacken" a little in his work for the sake of health, he answered, "Would you like the Lord to find me idle when He comes?"

8. Luther is said to have spent three hours a day praying.

9. Saint Bradford is said to have preached, read, and prayed, and that this was his whole life. (he was a martyr).

10. "I rejoice that my body is exhausted in the labors of my holy calling," said Bishop B. Jeurel (Yuril).

11. How energetic were the holy martyrs!

12. They wore their chains as ornaments, they took the "torments" as crowns and embraced the flames with joy, as Elijah climbed into the chariot of fire that came to fetch him to take him to heaven.

13. "Let colts, fires, pulleys, and all kinds of torment come, as long as I can win Christ," Ignatius said.

14. These pious souls "resisted even blood."

15. How this should stir us up to zeal!

16. Try to imitate these examples. Thomas Watson

17. Zeal, reproaches (it is to unmask false certainties, to disarm false reasons, to protest against the inadequate excuses that are behind erroneous behaviors).

18. I remember Moulin, who, speaking of the French Protestants, said, "When the papists did us harm for reading the Scriptures," "we burned with zeal." To read them more; but now the 'persecution is over' and our Bibles are like old almanacs."

19. In times of the greatest affliction and persecution for the sake of holiness a Christian has, first, a great Captain to guide and encourage him; second, a just cause to impel and

inflame him (arrive, inflame) him; third, a merciful God to relieve and succor him; four, a glorious heaven to receive and reward him; and certainly these things cannot but rise and inflame him under the greatest opposition and persecution. Thomas Brooks

20. (John 2:17) When "his disciples" saw what was happening, they remembered Psalm 69:9, where it was foretold that when the Messiah came, He would be consumed (disappeared) by the "zeal for" the things of God.

21. Now they saw that Jesus manifested an intense determination that the worship of God "should be pure," and they realized that this was the One of whom the psalmist had spoken.

22. The (69:9) Lord Jesus was consumed (destroyed, finished) with "zeal for the house" of His Father. My Beloved so sweet to the Father."

23. When He heard men speak in insulting terms about God, He took it as a personal insult.

24. That day in Jerusalem when He chased away the money changers who were in the temple, His disciples remember Him in Psalm 69:9, "Zeal for Your house consumes Me"; Jesus is one with God, because He knew which God is, so he knew such profanation (disrespectful, disrespect for something sacred) that they did in the temple, because holiness is in God, as Jesus is, because He was aware of what is sanctified.

25. We should remember that every Christian's body is also a temple of the Holy Spirit.

26. Just as the Lord Jesus was anxious that the temple of "Jerusalem" "be kept pure," so we must be anxious that our bodies be given to the Lord for continual cleansing.

27. Let us take care of the temple so that it may be pure and clean, so that God may dwell in it. Amen