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‘And when He had made a scourge of small cords, He drove them all out of the temple.… The zeal of Thine house hath eaten me up.’
Joh_2:15-17
I. We, who are necessarily so much material, and so mixed up with material things, can scarcely conceive how a perfectly spiritual being can look on things on this earth.—But, remember, a spirit deals with spirit; and therefore God, I would almost say, deals more with the spirit of people’s minds than He does with that which, being outward, is tangible and visible to creatures like ourselves. And, to a spirit, thoughts, affections, feelings, are almost really more seen than that which is outward and substantial. Therefore, thoughts in this house are as real to our heavenly Father as any act can be. And if a man or woman should come to this house, and, while apparently listening to a sermon or even, perhaps, when on their very knees in prayer, should think of worldly transactions, if their thoughts should go to their business, to matters of loss and gain, then those people, though they do not actually, with their hands, pass the material substance, yet their thoughts being thus gone after it, those thoughts are as verily guilty before God as were those actions of the market-men in the Temple at Jerusalem, because they are as real in the sight of a spirit. And which of us must not be brought in guilty? If, when within sacred walls, to think of secular transactions be so reprehensive in the sight of God, which of us is not brought in guilty before His omniscient eye?
II. But it is not only in the letter that we are to study this passage, we ought to look at it rather in its spirit.—Now, in the spirit of it, the first thing that strikes us is the love which Christ had to the Church—‘the Church’ commonly so called; to the actual building. He made His first visit there, and, as we know, spent most of His time there when in Jerusalem; and even in His last holy week He spent most of His days there, even though He spent His nights in the house of Martha. How dear to Christ was His ‘Father’s house’! Such a house—though not so simple—as the one in which we are now assembled. And what a blessed thing is sympathy with ‘the mind of Jesus’! Do you love to be here? So did Christ. You could not have much of ‘the mind of Christ,’ if you did not love these holy courts. There are some who think it a very indifferent matter whether they attend their church or no; who think and speak as if to read and pray at home was the same as engaging in the public service. But He, Who had the Spirit ‘without measure,’ did not do so! He, then, who has most of the mind of Christ, is he who loves most the house of his God.
III. But it was not only ‘the house’ that He loved, He was anxious for the purity of its worship.
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Rev. James Vaughan.