Where Is Your Zeal?

May 5, 2013
Where Is Your Zeal?
John 2:13-22
Scott Howard

ZEAL = A burning passion

It's this deep love that sets your priorities, fuels your actions, determines your decisions.  In other words:  Your Zeal will consume you.

If you have zeal for something, it will consume your thoughts, your time, your efforts, and your resources.  Which zeal, which passion, dominates in your life? You will lose yourself to your greatest zeal.  There is one proper place to put this kind of zeal, and that is God.

A zeal for God's house consumed Jesus.  He was passionate about the fact that people could come to the temple to worship God; could experience His grace, love and mercy.  It made him passionate to turn the temple back into a house of worship and not a shopping center.

"When it was almost time for the Jewish Passover, Jesus went up to Jerusalem.  In the temple courts he found men selling cattle, sheep and doves, and the others sitting at tables exchanging money.  So he made a whip out of cords, and drove all from the temple area, both sheep and cattle; he scattered the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables.  To those who sold doves he said, 'Get these out of here!  How dare you turn my Father's house into a market!'  His disciples remembered that it is written, 'Zeal for your house will consume me.'"   --John 2:13-17

The people in this passage were passionate about making money, not worrying about the fact that their commerce was getting in the way of worship.

When you are zealous for God...

• You will be zealous to know and to love and to honor God, above all else.
• The zeal you have for something is equal to the estimate of greatness and value that you place on that something.
• Zeal for God is a response to the greatness of God.
• Zeal for God is awakened when we see His zeal for US!
• You will have zeal for others to come to know and love God.  You would want others to taste and see that the Lord is Good.
• The supernatural power of God working among the people of God so that those who are far from God would come to know God.
• Zeal for God will consume you, and it will also be the death of you. (spiritually speaking)

Live the life that you are going to one day wish that you have lived: zealous for God, responding to His greatness, responding to His grace.  And then be zealous to see others come and know Him, as you, the people of God, experience the power of God at work in you so that those outside of you might come to know your God.