SNT 0969 Zealous for His House
Zealous for His House
June 10, 1979
SNT 969
Format: audio, doc, pdf
Publication Date: 06-10-1979
Pages: 5
Victor Paul Wierwille was a Bible scholar and teacher for over four decades.
By means of Dr. Wierwille's dynamic teaching of the accuracy and integrity of God's Word, foundational class and advanced class graduates of Power for Abundant Living have learned that the one great requirement for every student of the Bible is to rightly divide the Word of Truth. Thus, his presentation of the Word of God was designed for students who desire the in-depth-accuracy of God’s Word.
In his many years of research, Dr. Wierwille studied with such men as Karl Barth, E. Stanley Jones, Glenn Clark, Bishop K.C. Pillai, and George M. Lamsa. His formal training included Bachelor of Arts and Bachelor of Theology degrees from Mission House (Lakeland) College and Seminary. He studied at the University of Chicago and at Princeton Theological Seminary from which he received a Master of Theology degree in Practical Theology. Later he completed his work for the Doctor of Theology degree.
Dr. Wierwille taught the first class on Power for Abundant Living in 1953.
Books by Dr. Wierwille include: Are the Dead Alive Now? published in 1971; Receiving the Holy Spirit Today published in 1972; five volumes of Studies in Abundant Living— The Bible Tells Me So (1971), The New, Dynamic Church (1971), The Word's Way (1971), God's Magnified Word (1977), Order My Steps in Thy Word (1985); Jesus Christ Is Not God (1975); Jesus Christ Our Passover (1980); and Jesus Christ Our Promised Seed (1982).
Dr. Wierwille researched God's Word, taught, wrote, and traveled worldwide, holding forth the accuracy of God's "wonderful, matchless" Word.
(Act 2:3); Joh 2:13-16
Joh 2:15-17; Psa 69:9
Zealous for His House
Dr. Victor Paul Wierwille
Sunday Night Teaching – 0969
Take your Bibles tonight, please, and go to the Gospel of John. I've a very simple little message for you tonight that I think will bless you as I think most of the messages are simple that are taught from the greatness of the Word from this location.
There’s a record in the Gospel of John that changed many things in my life, and I thought tonight I’d share that with you.
Again, my background, my life is just like a lot of peoples. Like yours. You can’t go beyond what you’re taught. And we have pictures in our mind, things we have seen that have been pictured to us. We had a major discussion this week, this past week that had . . . It centered around the symbol of the holy spirit. Because we just finished Pentecost, and here I’ve been teaching this for years and I thought everybody understood it. And then Mrs. Wierwille came to see me for breakfast one morning, and we got to talking about it and she didn’t understand it. And I thought, oh my God, I live with that woman, you know. {laughter} And I teach this to every class, you know, how in Acts 2 the, “tongues… as of fire, and it sat upon each [one] of them.”[1] And then when we got to talking about it, she had just never seen that, the greatness of the tongues of fire.
And I got to thinking, well, my goodness we’re so conditioned by pictures. You see, every time you see Pentecost, it’s the flame going up. But in the Word of God, it’s the flame coming down. That fire, “like as of fire . . .” it says in Acts, “sat upon each of them.”
Right? How many ‘each’ were there? {twelve} Twelve. So it’s the splitting. It’s the cloven tongues like as of fire. It came down this way. It didn’t go up that way, it came down this way and it split out into 12 – 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12. All the front row. There it is, coming down, splitting out.
“Cloven tongues like as of fire.” That’s Pentecost. And of course, when you tie this all back together with the greatness of the Word, you go back in the Old Testament where, oh my goodness, you know, God covered Israel with a cloud by day and a pillar of fire by what? Night.[2]
Okay. And that pillar of fire, Moses saw the day of Christ as the rock.[3] And you . . . this all ties together even back with the days of Jacob. When Jacob got his name changed, the morning afterward he set up a pillar, it says. The word ‘pillar’ is rock. It isn’t pillar like you people or us in America think, southern colonial houses that have pillars on the outside. But this is a pillar. He set it up. He poured oil on it and so forth, it says in I think it’s Genesis.[4]
Well, Jesus Christ is the rock. Moses saw his Day. He believed in that rock. And when the children of Israel I think crossed the Red Sea, that they sang about tonight, they set up a place of worship with 12 stones,[5] I think it was.
Well, the cloud by day is the covering. The pillar of fire was the light of God. The warmth, the heat of God. The light of God. And on the Day of Pentecost when they were born again, the thing that happened was the cloven tongues was their clue that, when it would be completely available, then they would see this. And it… the cloven tongues like as of fire sat upon each one of them. All twelve. And it’s this way down. It’s God coming to man, meeting man’s needs.
So that record of course in Acts changed a lot of my life, but the one in John did also because the pictures I had always seen – and they’re still available today – is that, when Jesus Christ came into the temple, there were these moneychangers and everybody else there, so Jesus Christ made himself a whip with thongs at the end of it. And the picture shows Jesus Christ driving the men out of the temple by laying the whip on them. And of course, those who are highly in favor of Christians killing everybody else who do not agree with them, they like that story because that gives you the privilege to beat up on everybody.
And that took me many years to get out of my mind, because I hadn’t seen the greatness of the Word in the college or seminaries. It was only after I got into the Word and worked the Word that again I saw these great truths that changed the picture in my mind. And it’s that or those truths that I want to share with you tonight from John Chapter 2. Verse 13.
John 2:13-15a:
13. . . Jews’ passover was at hand, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem,
14 [verse 14] And found in the temple those that sold oxen and sheep and doves, and the changers of money sitting:
15 And when he had made a scourge of small cords, he drove them all out of the temple,
. . .
And that’s usually where the picture stops. That is what they show – driving them all – the people and then oxen and everything else running ahead of them. But it’s the people they lay the whip on. And the people move out then the oxen move out and stuff, or ahead of them. But the word ‘and’ following ‘temple’ is in the same verse and it must be read. The word is ‘both’, B-O-T-H, instead of ‘and’. “Drove them all out of the temple . . . ”
John 2:15b-16:
15. . . .[both] the sheep, and the [what? The animals. And he drove the animals, sheep and oxen out of the temple]; and [this ‘and’ is absolutely accurate here. And] poured out the changers’ money, and overthrew the tables;
16 And [verse 16] said unto them that sold doves, Take these things hence; make not my Father's house an house of merchandise.
Now, look at it very carefully. It’s real simple. He drove them all out of the temple. Okay. What? Both the sheep and the oxen. Sheep and oxen who do not understand reason . . . You can’t say to the old sheep, “Now, look sheepie . . . Let’s talk about this little old oxey. What you doing in here?” They don’t understand that. So, on the sheep and the oxen, that’s what he would use the cords, the whip on. The inanimate objects, the changers’ money. Overthrew the what? Tables.
The tables that . . . You know, you can use a whip on a table all day, that won’t move it out of the door. So what did he do with the inanimate objects? He flipped them over. He overthrew the what? Tables.
Then comes verse 16. “And said unto them . . .” Said unto them “that sold.” Said to those who sold. Those human beings that you can reason with, you can talk to. To those he SAID. He didn’t whip them, he said to them, “Take these things hence; make not my Father's house an house of merchandise.”
And there is that very difficult section made very simple. On the animals that can’t understand reason, he used the whip. That’s why he made the whips of the cords. That he drove those, both the sheep and the oxen, out of the what? Temple. He drove those out with the whip. But the tables that the money changers were using badly and shouldn’t have been doing, he took the tables and he did what with the tables? Overthrew them. But to the people, the men that were doing it, to those he said . . . He didn’t whip them. He said. He “said unto them that sold doves, Take these things hence; [and] make not my Father's house an house of [what?] merchandise.”
There you have it all put together, and it’s real simple. And you get a new picture in your mind, which is the accurate one. Driving the sheep and the oxen out, overthrowing the tables, but saying to the people, “Let’s get out of here. This isn’t right on. Let’s move it.”
They’d even taken this scripture erroneously in some groups, and they don’t even have an abundant sharing or an offering in a meeting. Because they think this is God’s house or something and he would overthrow them and whip them or something. So they just don’t even take any offering. They handle no money within the church building itself, so to speak. But that’s all due to wrong teaching and wrong dividing of the Word.
Then verse 17 is uniquely interesting.
John 2:17:
And his disciples remembered that it was written, The zeal of thine house hath eaten me up.
This is the quotation from Psalm 69, and I’d like you just to look at Psalm 69. Psalm 69, and verse 9.
Psalms 69:9:
For the zeal of thine house hath eaten me up; and the reproaches of them that reproached thee are fallen upon me.
This is the quotation in John from the Book of Psalms. The accurate, literal translation according to usage from the Aramaic that I have worked out to the best of my ability is as follows: “My zeal made me courageous to defend your house.”
And that is accurate. His disciples remembered that it was written, “My zeal made me courageous to defend your house.”
If you will put that translation into the Psalm in 69, verse 9, “For the zeal of thine house hath eaten me up; [made me courageous to defend your house. My zeal made me courageous to defend your house] and the reproaches of them that reproached thee are fallen upon me.”
Then it will fit like a hand in a glove in the United States. The zeal made me very courageous, or made me courageous, to defend your house. The disciples remembered that. Jesus Christ coming back into the temple, he was very courageous. Courageous to defend the house, the temple.
You and I certainly could not do less regarding God’s Word today. And that is that our zeal should defend. Be very courageous about defending, holding forth the greatness of God’s Word.
The temple at the time of Jesus, was there with the fulfilling of the law. And Jesus Christ coming into that temple, seeing how devilish they were using it, how just contrary to God’s will they were utilizing it. He drove the sheep and the oxen out, overthrew the tables of the money changers, and he said to the men, “Get out of here, this is my Father’s house. Don’t make it a den of thieves.”
What they were doing was they were cheating. They were selling second-rate animals at first-rate prices. They were selling animals that were maimed at high prices. And God had demanded that the animals that would be sacrificed, for instance, had to be male lambs of the first year and without any imperfection in it. But they were selling older lambs, sheep, and they were imperfect. They couldn’t get the top dollar for them on the market, but they could get the top dollar out of the people. And therefore they were selling them.
And again, it’s an oriental custom like Tom was talking about. I thought about this. In the Bible, whenever there . . . In the Bible lands, whenever there was a man who was looked upon as a man of God or representing God, no matter what he said, people carried it out. So if they brought the bad animals, sell it for top price, the people wouldn’t say anything. They should’ve. Jesus Christ came in and he said something. And he was very courageous, very courageous to defend God’s house.
In the Book of Nehemiah, there’s a prophecy by a prophet who wasn’t really a prophet. He was a prophet, but for the wrong side. And Nehemiah had to take a stand against him, and Nehemiah said his prophecy was erroneous. And the people so loved the prophecy of that erroneous prophet, for that prophet that was giving the erroneous prophecy – they loved that prophecy so much that they all got together and said, let’s kill Nehemiah. Nehemiah was very courageous to defend the truth that God had showed him.[6]
So Jesus Christ was very courageous to defend the house, the temple. That, my people, ties together John 2 along with Psalm 69 and records like you will find regarding men of God like in Nehemiah Chapter 28 and following. So when you put truths all together, you see that our Lord and Savior took a real stand. Any man of God – any man of God, any woman of God today who really loves God, you’ve got to take a stand in our country and our day and in our time. And I’m real grateful and thankful that God allows us to do this. But that’s the way this Word works itself from the text, and then you have no contradiction anyplace, and it just fits like a hand in a glove.
Well, that’s what I wanted to teach. That is it.
Thank you, Father, for the wonderful privilege of sharing your Word with your people a little tonight, and opening their hearts and their lives to see the greatness of it again. I’m real grateful, Father, to you tonight for men like Tom and Gary who know these things, and others of our people who are moving the Word in all of its accuracy as best we understand it in an interdenominational, non-sectarian way. Non-political. Just moving the Word, Father. And I thank you that we can be very courageous and that our zeal can be accurately built upon the Word. And therefore, I thank you for the outreach of your ministry this night to all believers everywhere throughout the world. In the name of Jesus Christ our Lord and our Savior. Amen.
[1] Acts 2:3
[2] Exodus 13:21: And the LORD went before them by day in a pillar of a cloud, to lead them the way; and by night in a pillar of fire, to give them light; to go by day and night:
[3] 1 Corinthians 10:4: And did all drink the same spiritual drink: for they drank of that spiritual Rock that followed them: and that Rock was Christ.
[4] Genesis 28:18: And Jacob rose up early in the morning, and took the stone that he had put for his pillows, and set it up for a pillar, and poured oil upon the top of it.
[5] Joshua 4:8: And the children of Israel did so as Joshua commanded, and took up twelve stones out of the midst of Jordan, as the LORD spake unto Joshua, according to the number of the tribes of the children of Israel, and carried them over with them unto the place where they lodged, and laid them down there.
[6] Nehemiah 6:10-13