The Best of the Portals of Prayer

Read: 1st Kings 8:22–30

“His disciples remembered that it was written, ‘Zeal for Your house will consume Me.’ ”
John 2:17

Zealous in Worship

Jesus had just done a sensational thing in the temple. He had driven out the sheep and oxen. He had upset the tables of the money-changers and thrown their money onto the floor. Jesus was deeply moved. The beautiful temple of God, intended alone for the worship of God, had been turned into a house of merchandise. The Christian Church, like the ancient temple, is the house of God, and we Christians go there to worship and to pray. Both the teaching and the symbolism of the Church are there to build us up in our precious faith. The altar is there to assure us of God’s presence. On it, in sacred vessels, lie the bread and the wine, the earthly elements of the Lord’s Supper, which convey to us the merits of Christ’s suffering and death. The open Bible is “a lamp to [our] feet and a light to [our] path” (Psalm 119:105). And the pulpit brings us the Good News of the Gospel that “God so loved the world, that He gave His only Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16). Our duty as Christians is to be zealous in our worship, and to insist that the church remain the house of God’s Word and Sacraments. When we attend the divine services in such a church, we receive spiritual blessings that satisfy the longings of the human soul. Christ is held up as the loving Savior of the world, and by receiving Him as our personal Savior, we receive peace and hope and the assurance of salvation.

January 06, 1942