| Sermon | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Download Sermon | |||||
| Service | ||
|---|---|---|
|
| ||
To download this video, press here to go to the download page. You may need to scroll down to see the download button. |
Download Service Folder | Download Bulletin |
Sermon for Trinity 10
1 Corinthians 12:1-11 + Luke 19:41-48
Last week, we heard St. Paul recount some of the terrible punishments that came upon Old Testament Israel when they stubbornly disobeyed God’s commandments. Today, we hear Jesus speak of a destruction that would be far worse. On the 10th Sunday after Trinity Sunday, the Church has traditionally remembered the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70, which Jesus foretold in today’s Gospel. We remember it; we don’t celebrate it or rejoice over it. Jesus didn’t, either. He wept over it, before it happened, and His tears are recorded in today’s Gospel, which took place on Palm Sunday. No, we remember, and we learn from Jerusalem’s destruction, and from what Jesus said about it and did about it in the Gospel. When He saw the destruction coming, inevitable though it was, He worked all the harder with the time He had left during that Holy Week to save those few within Jerusalem who could still be saved, before the coming destruction. As He had said to His disciples on another occasion, I must work the works of Him who sent Me while it is day; the night is coming when no one can work. As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world. And so we learn from Jesus to do the same, to work while it is day, before the coming night, before the destruction that once came upon Jerusalem comes upon the rest of the world, as it most certainly will.
First, a little background. Jesus is riding into Jerusalem from the Mt. of Olives on a donkey’s back, in fulfillment of Zechariah’s prophecy, Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion! Shout, O daughter of Jerusalem! Behold, your King is coming to you; He is righteous and having salvation, lowly and riding on a donkey. It should have been a day of rejoicing for Jerusalem, and, in fact, many were rejoicing that day as Jesus, whom many thought to be the Messiah and the King of the Jews, was riding into the holy city. They were singing His praises and celebrating His arrival to do…something important (they didn’t really know what). To “save” them, somehow. And Jesus accepted their praises and was glad for them. But He also saw past them, saw how the leaders of the city would seek to kill Him, and would be successful. But He saw past that, too, past His resurrection, and ascension into heaven, past the Day of Pentecost. The real tragedy He foresaw was that, even after His Christians would spend the next 40 years preaching the Gospel in Jerusalem, calling the Jews to repentance and faith in the name of Jesus for the forgiveness of their sins, the Jews, as a nation, Jerusalem, as a city, would never receive Him as their Savior from sin, as the King of the kingdom of heaven.
Foreseeing that, He also foresaw the dreadful punishment God would send upon Jerusalem, as a testimony to the world of what happens when you turn down God’s gracious offer of salvation through Christ. As he drew near, he looked at the city and wept over it, saying, “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. 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.
It’s not that God forced the Jews to reject Jesus as the Messiah. It’s not that God failed to tell them what the Messiah would be like, what He would do, what His message would be. On the contrary, God gave the Jewish people every benefit, every opportunity, all the invitations they could ever ask for. No, as Jesus had said earlier in Luke’s Gospel, O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those who are sent to you! How often I wanted to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, but you were not willing! Receiving Jesus as their King, as their Messiah—that would have made for their peace. But they were not willing.
As a result, after 40 years of rejecting Jesus, both before and after they killed Him, Jerusalem was rejected by God. Permanently. They no longer had, no longer have, a place of prominence in God’s plan of salvation. They received the just punishment for their rejection of their Messiah at the hands of the Roman armies. We should take note of that. While it was God’s will to punish and to destroy Jerusalem, it wasn’t His will that Christians should have a hand in it. He didn’t call upon His Christians to take up arms against the Jews—then, or at any time in history. Nor, as we said, does He expect His Christians to celebrate or to rejoice in the suffering of the Jews, then, or now, as Jesus Himself didn’t rejoice in it, but wept over it. No, God, in His sovereign rule over the kingdoms of the world, sent in a pagan army, the Roman army, to carry out His fearful justice against Jerusalem.
And, as I said, that destruction, that rejection of Jerusalem by God, is permanent. The covenant God made with Israel at Mount Sinai, the covenant God made with Abraham, stands fulfilled in Christ Jesus and is no longer in effect. Contrary to the demonic lies flooding the airwaves and being preached by politicians and from the pulpits of any number of churches that claim to be Christian, there is no spiritual fellowship between Christians and Jews who reject Jesus. There is no covenant between God and the nation of Israel. There is no divine mandate for Christians to support Israel or to defend Israel at all costs. No one who rejects Jesus as the Christ can claim any part among “God’s chosen people.” That includes modern Jews. It also includes Muslims, and all unbelievers. Only faith in the name of God’s only-begotten Son, Jesus Christ, rescues a person from sin and death, and brings a person into the chosen people of God, which is the body of Christ.
So today’s Gospel, and its fulfillment in the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD, should make it perfectly clear to everyone that Jerusalem no longer belongs to the Jews (or to anyone) by divine right, even if it belongs to them by human arrangements. But there’s something else that our Gospel alludes to as well. If God was willing to utterly destroy Jerusalem and her children, if He was willing to abandon the Jewish people who stubbornly rejected His Son, who were, in fact, descended from Abraham and whom He had once called the “apple of His eye,” then truly the rest of the world is doomed. What happened to unbelieving Jerusalem will happen to the whole unbelieving world. Permanently.
That destruction is coming. It’s inevitable. So what do we, who are Christians, do about it? We don’t fret. We don’t hate. We don’t try to prevent it, nor do we try to bring it about. We leave Judgment Day in God’s hands. And then, we do what Jesus went on to do in our Gospel.
After weeping for Jerusalem and her coming demise, what do we see Jesus doing? He goes straight to the temple, to teach the people, to work while it is day, while there’s still time to teach people to know God rightly, to repent, to trust in Jesus, the Son of God, as their Savior and King, to know the will of God and the ways of God as He has revealed them in His word.
And what was the very first thing He taught them? That God’s temple had a sacred purpose. 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.’” God’s temple was not to be used for secular business, or for playing around. It was supposed to be a place for prayer, for sacrifice, for the ministry of God’s priests, and for the teaching of God’s Word. In fact, you might say that God’s entire purpose for preserving Jerusalem for a thousand years was for the sake of this temple, the one place on earth where God had promised to be present for all who sought Him there.
And then, after cleansing the temple of its secular influences, we’re told that Jesus taught daily in the temple, and the people were hanging on His words. He only had a few days left before His crucifixion. So He used them. He worked while it was day. Because while most of Jerusalem would still end up rejecting Him, while most of Jerusalem would face destruction, some would escape, some would hear and believe and be saved—saved from the permanent destruction that’s coming upon mankind for their sins against the Judge.
What do we learn from Jesus’ determination to teach in the face of coming destruction? We learn to do the same. Judgment is coming on the world. We don’t celebrate it or rejoice over it, though we do pray for it to come soon, because even believers couldn’t hold out forever against all the evil of the world, if God didn’t cut it short. But even as we pray for Jesus to return and bring that judgment, together with our redemption, we work while it is day to teach those who can still be taught.
We learn from Jesus that the Church, which is the modern equivalent of the temple in Jerusalem, is not a place for doing secular business, or for playing around. And when I say, “the Church,” I don’t mean any single church building, but wherever Christians gather around Word and Sacrament. That’s the Church. That’s the true temple of God. And we have an advantage over Jesus, in a sense. He was able to teach in one place at a time, just as the temple of Jerusalem was in only one place in the world. But now, the Church gathers in every nation, and the Word of Christ is preached, and the Sacraments are administered around the world. We don’t have to go to “the temple” to teach. We are the temple that teaches.
So we need to be doing it, and seeing to it that it is done among us. We can’t cleanse all the churches out there, the ones that are corrupted with secularism and marketing, playing around with bands and flashing lights, and with all the false doctrines and vile practices that have invaded churches around the world. But we can see to it that our church is clean of those things, and that we keep it that way. And then we make it our business to work while it is day, to teach and to preach, to gather and to invite, to study and to learn the Word of God, as if our lives depended on it, which, of course, they do! And yet Jesus didn’t devote Himself to teaching the people because His life depended on it, but because theirs did, and that’s a fine reason for us to devote ourselves to the teaching of God’s Word that happens in this little place, where we have some control over it. The world still needs the Gospel, even though most don’t want it. The world still needs a place where the Word of God can be heard clearly, where they can see the zeal of Christians who love God, love one another, and hang on Jesus’ words.
In His mercy, God has provided the world with such a place here among us. So let us work while it is day, before the coming night. Already God has punished the world for its stubborn unbelief by removing the light of His pure gospel from most places. Already the darkness is falling, and judgment looms. But there’s still a little time left, and God knows there are still a few out there who are willing to be taught, who will repent and believe and be saved. As long as it is day, let’s work together to let the light of Christ shine from this place, that sinners may see the light and find safety and shelter, as you and I have, from the coming storm of destruction. Amen.
