Sermon for Trinity 10
1 Corinthians 12:1-11 + Luke 19:41-48
On this day in the Church Year, the Church remembers the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70, prophesied by Jesus some 40 years before it happened. Why do we remember it every year? First, because the prophecy of Jerusalem’s destruction is recorded for us in the Word of God, by inspiration of the Holy Spirit—here in today’s Gospel, and in other passages, too. God wanted all future generations of His people to remember it.
We remember it, neither to gloat nor to mourn, nor to call for perpetual hatred of or violence toward the Jews. No, we remember it, that we may learn from it, not to repeat Jerusalem’s grave mistake. As we heard in last week’s Epistle, this is the reason why God had much of Old Testament Israel’s history recorded for us, so that we might learn from it, learn from their tragic examples of rebellion and apostasy, so that history doesn’t repeat itself among God’s chosen people today, that is, among His Christians. We remember Jerusalem’s destruction to learn this enduring lesson: This is always the fate of those who reject the Christ.
As Jesus drew near, he looked at the city and wept over it. You may recall that this drawing near to the city of Jerusalem is taking place on Palm Sunday, at the same time Jesus is riding into the city on a donkey to songs of praise, with people waving their palm branches in celebration of His arrival. It’s the beginning of Holy Week, which, tragically, marks the beginning of the end for the city that’s about to crucify its Christ.
Seeing the city’s tragic future, Jesus wept over it. He knew that the praise He was receiving from the crowds on that day would soon turn to silence, and then to cries of “Crucify Him!” He knew that, except for a few faithful followers, the people of the city would reject Him as the Christ, not only on Good Friday, but in the decades after Good Friday, even after the apostles would preach repentance and forgiveness of sins to all who would believe. His tears for the city, shed on Palm Sunday, show us that, even though God knew this would happen, it’s not what He wanted to happen, not what He caused to happen. God wants all men to be saved and to come to repentance. That included first century Jerusalem. And the knowledge that the city would refuse to repent and be saved through Him filled the Lord with sadness.
He said, If only you knew, yes, on this very day—your day!—what would make for your peace! But now it is hidden from your eyes. What would make for their peace? Pray for the peace of Jerusalem, the Psalm says. How could Jerusalem have had peace? Actually, Jerusalem could have had it all—earthly peace and heavenly peace, peace with God and peace with men. It was all there in the covenant God made with Israel at Mt. Sinai, where He promised to give them perpetual victory over all their enemies, freedom from sickness and disease, freedom from famine, freedom from oppression, a long life, and His own favor—if they had kept His covenant, if they had followed all His laws and statutes, from the heart, and most of all, if they had welcomed the Christ when He came to establish a new and better covenant with them, a covenant in His own blood, a covenant of forgiveness, a covenant of peace.
Why was it “hidden from their eyes”? Because they didn’t want to see it, they didn’t want to believe it, that this Jesus was the Messiah God had promised, that He was the Lamb of God who would take away their sins and shelter them from the coming wrath. They refused to believe that they deserved God’s wrath, just like their forefathers at the time of Jeremiah and Ezekiel, who boasted, “We have the temple of the Lord! The temple of the Lord! The temple of the Lord is here! Nothing bad can happen to Jerusalem! We’re safe!”
But they weren’t safe. They weren’t safe in Jeremiah’s day, when the Babylonians came in and destroyed the first temple. Nor would they be safe later on in the first century, when the Romans would come in and destroy their temple and their city.
Jesus describes that coming destruction: For the days will come upon you when your enemies put up an embankment around you and surround you and besiege you on every side. And they will raze you to the ground, you and your children within you; and they will not leave one stone upon another within you, because you did not know the time of your visitation. Here Jesus reveals, once again, that He and the God of the Old Testament are one. It’s not as if the God of the Old Testament was vengeful, while the Jesus of the New Testament was soft and forgiving toward the impenitent. God has a reliable record of punishing and destroying the wicked who refuse to repent, who put their trust in other gods and commit spiritual adultery with them.
So all the voices today that refer to the modern Israelis and Jews who reject Christ as, “God’s chosen people! God’s chosen people!” are lying voices, demonic voices. Israel was that, was God’s chosen people. But chosen for what? Chosen to be the people to whom God would reveal Himself, which He did, throughout the Old Testament. Chosen to trust in Him as their only God, and to keep His covenant, which they didn’t. Chosen to be the ancestors of Christ, according to the flesh, which they were. Chosen to receive Him and welcome Him when He came, which they didn’t. Chosen to be ground zero for the expansion of the Church to include all the “goyim,” all the Gentiles, all the nations who would receive the Christ and would thereby become part of the Holy Christian Church. As John says, the Son of God came to His own, and His own did not receive Him. But, he goes on, to those who did receive Him, who believe in His name, to them He gave the right to become children of God, born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.
So the “people of God,” or the “chosen people of God” are those who receive Jesus, the Christ, not those who reject Him. The fate of those who reject the Christ is always the same, and will always be the same: destruction, and condemnation. Because sin condemns us all, and Christ is the only solution God has provided to wash away our sin and to make us acceptable again to God. And it doesn’t matter who your ancestors were. It doesn’t matter what traditions you’ve received or practice. It doesn’t matter if you were once baptized, or once trusted in Jesus the Christ and once listened to His Word. If you reject Him now, if you reject Him even now as He comes to you in His Word to warn you about what happens to those who reject Him, then your condemnation will be deserved, as was the condemnation of Jerusalem in the first century AD.
But here’s a question that deserves our attention: What did Jesus do with the knowledge that the Jews were going to reject Him? Our Gospel continues: And he went into the temple and began to drive out those who were buying and selling in it, saying to them, “It is written, ‘My house will be a house of prayer.’ But you have made it a ‘den of thieves.’” He goes to the temple, not to destroy it yet, not to drive all the people out, but to drive out those who were defeating the purpose of the temple. And He had every right to do it, because that temple belonged to Him. He was the God who commanded it to be built. He was the God to whom that very temple had been dedicated, and who had given it its purpose, which was not to conduct business in, which was not to create noise so that no one could pray. It was to be a house of prayer, a house of teaching about God, a house of sacrifice, a house that was intended to symbolize the coming Christ Himself. The temple was always a shadow, pointing to Christ.
And so He cleansed it of the things that didn’t belong there, and then it says that he taught daily in the temple. And the chief priests and the scribes and the leading men of the people were looking to kill him, but they could not find a way to do it, for all the people were hanging on his words. Five more days before the crucifixion. One last chance to teach, to correct, to rebuke those who were in error, to comfort those who repented. The temple was not for business, or for entertainment, but for teaching.
And so, through His Church and through the ministry that He has instituted, the Lord Christ continues to teach in the world, exposing the sins of all mankind, calling all men to repent, revealing the grace of God that sent His only-begotten Son into the flesh, to redeem mankind from sin, death, and the power of the devil. Through faith in Christ Jesus, God offers forgiveness, life, and salvation to the world, not because of anything we have done, but purely by His grace. There is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.
But for those who are and remain outside of Him, there is only condemnation. The fate of those who reject the Christ now will be the same as that of Jerusalem in the first century. May God grant that all who are now believers in Christ may cling to Him in faith until the end. And may God also grant that many who now reject Him may be brought out of their darkness and into the light of Christ, into the safety of those who are marked by the blood of the Lamb. Amen.
