Section 5
nothing may purge you. On the one hand, you may daily enjoy the Lord as a feast, but on the other hand, the Lord will send a scourge a num ber of times to purge you. Many times the Lord will even use the brothers and sisters in the church as a whip of cords to purge away the merchandise and the moneychangers that exist within you.
THE LORD'S ZEAL FOR GOD'S HOUSE
Verse 17 says, "His disciples remembered that it was written, 'The zeal of Your house shall devour Me.'" Within the Lord Jesus there was a zeal for the house of God. This zeal devoured Him, ate Him up, consumed Him. He was absolutely for the Father's house. The Father's house was His heart's desire. When He saw the corrupted situ ation within the temple, He could not tolerate it but cleansed it, even with a whip. He was driven by zeal for His Father's house to drive all the defilement out of it. His heart was pure for the Father. He could not suffer to see that the temple, His Father's house, was defiled, contaminated by the things of man's greed, so He cleansed it.
Satan tries his best to defile and to contam inate the church life with so many sinful and worldly things. But praise the Lord that Satan's contamination brings in the Lord's cleansing. The