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You don’t have to be a part of the Church’s demise

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Sermon for Trinity 10

1 Corinthians 12:1-11  +  Luke 19:41-48

On the 10th Sunday after Trinity, the Church has historically remembered the fall of Jerusalem in AD 70, because Jesus prophesied it in today’s Gospel. Speaking to Jerusalem from the back of the donkey on Palm Sunday, Jesus wept and said, The days will come upon you when your enemies will put up an embankment around you and will 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. As the all-knowing Son of God, Jesus could see where things were headed for Jerusalem, not just in general, but very specifically He could see some 36 years into the future, as Jewish rebels began to revolt against the Roman government and eventually overtook the city of Jerusalem. He could see some 40 years into the future as the patience of the Romans with the Jewish rebels ran out. And the armies of Titus besieged the city in April of the year 70, resulting in the city’s inhabitants resorting to violence toward one another, murder, and even cannibalism. By the end of August, the Romans were ready to enter the city. And they tore down the walls, and the temple, and burned the city to the ground. And so ended a thousand years of Jewish occupation of Jerusalem (minus the 70 years of captivity in Babylon, of course). So ended the Jewish priesthood, and the temple worship, and the rites and rituals of the Law of Moses, never to be resurrected again. Jesus saw it all coming, as clear as day. The destruction of the city was inevitable, from God’s perspective.

Why? Why was it inevitable? Because God sees beforehand everything that everyone will do. And Jesus saw what the people of Jerusalem would do. If you only knew, in this your day, the things that would bring you peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes…You did not recognize the time of your visitation. What would have brought peace to Jerusalem? Acknowledging their sinfulness before God. Repenting of their wickedness. Seeking mercy from the God of Abraham instead of relying on their family tree. Believing in Jesus, the Christ sent from God to redeem them from sin, death, and the devil. That’s what would have brought them peace.

And they had multiple opportunities to obtain that peace! They could have not crucified the Son of God at the end of that Holy Week. But that was only one opportunity. For the next 40 years or so, the Gospel would be preached in Jerusalem. The Christian Church would have a presence there, gathering in the temple and in other places, showing from the Old Testament Scriptures how Jesus had fulfilled the prophecies about the coming Christ, preaching repentance and the forgiveness of sins through Jesus, even to those who had crucified Him.

But over and over again, they refused to recognize the time when God visited them for salvation, first through Jesus directly, and then through the apostles whom He had sent. They heard the Word of God…and then ignored it, or stoned those who preached it, or put them in jail, or put them to the sword, or chased them around from one city to the next, trying to stir up the whole world against these horrible, terrible Christians who were preaching the Gospel of free salvation and eternal life for all people of all nations through faith in Christ Jesus.

And so, after giving them 40 years to acknowledge and receive the crucified and risen Christ whom God the Father had sent to Israel, God worked through the government of the Romans to bring final destruction on the city of Jerusalem and to remove His ancient people from their homeland for good. The people who reside on that piece of land today are not the covenant people of the Old Testament. They’re foreigners to the covenant God made with Abraham and with Moses, regardless of whether they can trace their earthly ancestry back to Abraham or not. No, God saw to it that Jerusalem, with its Old Testament significance, was permanently destroyed.

I said at the beginning of the sermon that the Church remembers the destruction of Jerusalem on this day of the Church Year. And we do. But we don’t celebrate it, as in, rejoice over it. Because our Lord Jesus didn’t rejoice over it. He wept over it! As he drew near, he looked at the city and wept over it. Their rejection of the Messiah wasn’t God’s doing. It was theirs. Their destruction was inevitable from God’s perspective, because He knew what they would do. But from their perspective, it was entirely avoidable. The Holy Spirit called out to them through the preaching of the apostles. He even gave miraculous signs in His early Church, as St. Paul discussed in today’s Epistle, as proof to the Jews that the preaching about Jesus was from God. They weren’t prevented by God from believing. They owned their unbelief. And Jesus wept over it, because God wanted to save them. But they didn’t want to be saved by Jesus.

It’s useful for us to reflect on these things. Because what happened to the Jews and to Jerusalem will also happen to the Christian Church in its outward form. Jesus predicted the infiltration of many, many false prophets and false christs into His Church. He predicted that weeds (false Christians) would be sown by the evil one right in the midst of the wheat (the true Christians). He predicted that the love of most would grow cold, that many would be deceived and would abandon the true teaching of His Word. He predicted the working of the Antichrist, not outside the Church in some world government somewhere, but right in the midst of the Church, and He predicted the great apostasy, the great falling away, the great rebellion within the Church, leaving her just as desolate as Jerusalem was left by the Roman armies.

Does God want to see things turn out this way? Of course not. As little as He wanted to see Jerusalem rejecting the Christ and suffering the consequences. But He knows the choices that people will make, and He allows His word to be opposed and His warnings to go unheeded. He doesn’t force people into submission and obedience during this time of grace between His first and second comings.

So, why preach on this text? Why meditate on this text or pay any attention to it, if the Church, in its outward form, is going to end up in ruins, just like Jerusalem did in 70 AD? Because! It doesn’t have to happen to you! Jerusalem, as a city, perished for its unbelief. But many people in Jerusalem heeded Jesus’ warning and repented and were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. Many of those Jewish Christians got out before the destruction came. Just because the Church in its outward form will perish doesn’t mean that the true Church, in its true form, will perish. On the contrary, Jesus assures His disciples that the gates of hell will not prevail against My Church. That isn’t a promise that the large institutionalized Christian Church on earth will be victorious in the end. It’s a promise that there will always be a faithful remnant of true believers within His Church, and that they will be victorious against the devil and every enemy.

And how does Jesus preserve this faithful remnant within His Church? By doing the very thing He did after He predicted the demise of Jerusalem. He pressed onward. He entered Jerusalem. And He cleansed the temple there of all the distractions and all the wickedness and all the things that were getting in the way of people hearing His teachings and praying to God. And then He taught. He taught, right there in the temple that would eventually be destroyed. He taught all those who would listen. And even His enemies couldn’t prevent Him from teaching. Because while Jerusalem would eventually perish, not everyone in Jerusalem had to perish. Some could still be saved. And the only way for them to be saved was for them to be able to hear and meditate on His Word.

And so, even though we know that the outward Church, influenced as it is by the Antichrist, will be destroyed together with the rest of the world, we press onward. We don’t get drawn in by the outward Church with its prestige and glory. We don’t get depressed when we see the outward Church failing. No, we press onward, as we are able, to make sure that the Church among us, the Church where we gather, is clean of outside distractions, clean of wickedness, clean of false doctrine, clean of lovelessness. We make sure that the Gospel is taught here where we gather, that the truth is spoken, and that lies are exposed. And those who are able gather around the Word and Sacraments of Christ. And those who aren’t able to gather here among us gather with whoever will join them wherever they are to hear the Word of God and to put His Word into practice in whatever ways they can. We make sure that we who gather together around the ministry of the Word are living in humble repentance and genuine faith, and that we’re living in the world as the light of the world and as the salt of the earth that Jesus made us to be.

When we do that, we have the Lord’s assurance that He won’t remove His Gospel from us, nor will He remove us from that faithful remnant that will remain after the outward Church is destroyed. When we see to it that our own church is continually cleansed, and that the Word of God is taught rightly among us, and that we, as Christians, are praying diligently and leading holy lives in the world, then we have nothing to fear from the impending destruction of the outward Church and of the world. We can simply go about our business here, joyfully worshiping the Lord, looking for opportunities to serve our neighbor, to encourage one another, and to be a witness in the world that Jesus is the Christ, and that there is a Jerusalem here on earth that welcomes Him into our midst, a Jerusalem that will not be destroyed, a little gathering of a faithful remnant, which all people are invited to join. Amen.

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The King weeps for the Church lying in ruins

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Sermon for Trinity 10

1 Corinthians 12:1-11  +  Luke 19:41-48

Today’s Gospel is from Palm Sunday. But today we don’t focus on the donkey ride and the songs of praise Jesus heard from the crowds outside Jerusalem. Today we remember, not the joy, but the tears of Palm Sunday, the tears of Jerusalem’s King for His beloved city as He foresaw its eventual destruction.

Unfortunately, the demise of Jerusalem and the Old Testament Church of Israel wasn’t an isolated incident. It was a harbinger of the eventual demise of the New Testament Church as well, for which the King also surely wept. As Jesus Himself prophesied on other occasions, false doctrine would eventually tear His Christian Church apart as Christians stepped away from His Word, and many would eventually perish. But as we also see in our Gospel, there is a solution for the few who will accept it by God’s grace, a solution provided by the King Himself after He wept for His Church in ruins.

The palm branches had already been waved. The Hosannas had been sung. And the Pharisees had just been rebuked by Jesus for urging Him to rebuke His disciples for welcoming Him as “He who comes in the name of the Lord.” Then, still presumably mounted on that famous donkey, the King looked at the city of Jerusalem as He drew closer to it, and He wept over it. This was supposed to be your time, O city of God, the time of your visitation, the moment when 2,000 years of God’s careful attention and provision and instruction reached their climax in the actual visitation of God, the arrival of the promised Savior. This was supposed to be your hour of glory, when not just a small percentage of your citizens, but the whole city came out to welcome your King, and to praise Him, and to acknowledged Him as your Lord and Savior who makes peace between God and man through His own suffering and death. But now the things that bring you peace are hidden from your eyes.

The hiding of those things from their eyes was God’s doing, and at the same time, it wasn’t God’s doing. Let me explain.

For hundreds of years the Spirit of God had been revealing His Law and Gospel to Israel, showing them their sins through the preaching of the Law and through the daily necessity of bringing sacrifices to atone for their sins, and showing them His grace in accepting all those sacrifices that pointed ahead to the great sacrifice of the Christ who was to come. God didn’t hide His grace from them or prevent them from believing the truth. But most did not believe that fundamental truth of their utter sinfulness and neediness before God, and most did not believe in God’s promise to save them by His grace alone, free of charge, by the work of the coming Christ. Their unbelief was not God’s doing. It was their own. Matthew records these words from Jesus to Jerusalem during Holy Week, How often I wanted to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing.

And so, since they stubbornly rejected God’s promise in unbelief, God hid the details from them, too, about Jesus’ identity as the Christ, about His Palm Sunday ride on the donkey as the fulfillment of Old Testament prophecy, and about the salvation He was coming to bring.

Now, Jerusalem had to reject the Christ initially, and cause Him to suffer, and crucify Him. That was part of God’s plan of salvation. But that still wasn’t the real tragedy for the Jews. They could have come back from that. They could have repented of that on the Day of Pentecost or even later. But the vast majority of them didn’t—hundreds of thousands of Israelites, and millions of their descendants through the ages. Almost 40 years God gave them to repent, but they wouldn’t. And so, as Jesus rides into the city, He foresees, not only their rejection of Him later that week, but their persistent, stubborn unbelief over the next 40 years, their refusal to accept that their sins against God were their biggest problem, not the Roman occupiers; their refusal to accept Jesus as Lord and Christ, risen from the dead; and their blasphemy against the Holy Spirit who was calling them to repentance through the apostles’ preaching, all of which would lead to the atrocities of the First Jewish War, to the siege of Jerusalem by the Roman armies, and to the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70.

Yes, the King foresaw His Old Testament Church lying in ruins, and He wept over it. He was deeply saddened and troubled by it. But as mentioned earlier, the fall of the Old Testament Church of the Jews was a harbinger of the fall of the New Testament Church, made up of Jews and Gentiles. The King’s tears weren’t just for Jerusalem.

As of that first Palm Sunday, God had created and cultivated and carried the Hebrew people on eagle’s wings for about 2,000 years, since the time of Abraham. Does it strike you that He has been creating and cultivating and carrying His New Testament Church for about the same length of time, for about 2,000 years? What did the King see when He looked ahead at Christianity over the centuries?

He foresaw Christians allowing themselves to be led astray from His Word, until the Church would be fractured into dozens of different denominations and sects. He foresaw that the ministers of His Church would take far too much power to themselves over the centuries, until their voice became louder than the voice of Scripture. He foresaw that His honor as the only Mediator between God and man would eventually been transferred to Mary and the saints. He foresaw His eternal truth being traded in for human wisdom and lies, and His Word being treated as fallible and changeable. He foresaw that the central doctrine of justification by faith alone would be twisted and denied. He foresaw that “Christian worship” would degenerate into the worship of man, into concerts that focus on what people like to hear or like to feel, instead of the ministry of the soul-saving preaching of the Gospel and the administration of the holy Sacraments. He foresaw countless Christians, much like the first-century Jews, more tied to their heritage, their traditions, and their family connections than to the pure Word of God. He foresaw baptized Christians walking away from their Baptism, being deceived by the world, behaving like pagans, without repentance, without genuine faith, and yet still calling themselves by His name. He saw it all on Palm Sunday. And His tears for Jerusalem in ruins flowed also for His New Testament Church in ruins, knowing that Jerusalem would be utterly destroyed, and that a large part of His Christian Church would also be destroyed at His second coming, knowing that it was all avoidable, and yet knowing at the same time that it wouldn’t be avoided.

But through the tears, the King also saw that not all was lost. He foresaw a remnant that would still be saved and He knew exactly how to save them. The solution, for those who will receive it, is the same for the Old and for the New Testament Church. The solution is Christ, ridding His temple of the things that shouldn’t be there; Christ, restoring His temple as a house of prayer; Christ, preaching and teaching daily in His temple.

Where did Jesus go when He got to Jerusalem? He went to Temple. And we’re told what He found there. The buying and selling of animals for sacrifice, and moneychangers exchanging currency. It isn’t wrong to do those things. It is wrong to do those things in God’s temple. They don’t belong there. God made His temple to be a house of prayer, where people could focus on the worship of God and on the meaning of the sacrifices that were being brought, where people could sing God’s praises, where people could hear His Word, where people could seek God’s help, both for their sins and for their other important needs. So Jesus, the Owner of the house, drove out those who were buying and selling there and restored peace so that men could pray and His Word could be heard. And then, in the few days He had left before His betrayal, arrest, and crucifixion, He taught daily in the temple, and all the people were hanging on His words. As a result, there was a remnant of the Church of Israel that believed and was saved, even while the majority ended up in ruins.

The Lord Christ does the same thing in His New Testament Church as it rushes to its own ruin. He still comes into His Temple, not a single building anymore, but wherever two or three (or more) come together in His name throughout the world, wherever the Gospel still is preached and wherever the Sacraments are still rightly administered, and, through the ministry of the Spirit, He drives out the things that don’t belong there: commercialism and worldliness, impenitence, selfish ambition, anger, pride, false doctrine, faith in man, fear, and despair. And then He fills His Temple with the preaching of the truth, with His Word, with the gifts of His Spirit, with prayer, and with the virtues of faith and hope and love.

And by His Spirit, by His preaching, by the Sacrament of His very body and blood, the Lord Christ preserves for Himself a remnant, a leftover bunch of believers who will not be caught up in the ruin of the visible Church, because they are the true Church, the invisible Church, the Church against which the very gates of hell will not prevail, because her members hear the Word of Christ, and heed the warnings of Christ, and live in daily contrition and repentance.

Always make certain you are part of that remnant, part of the true Church that escapes the ruin and remains forever, not here on this earth, but in the new heavens and the new earth, in the New Jerusalem that will come down from heaven with Christ when He returns. May the King’s tears for earthly Jerusalem cause you to see just how earnestly He wants you to be found in the Jerusalem that will never come to ruin. Amen.

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Remember Jerusalem

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Sermon for the Tenth Sunday after Trinity

1 Corinthians 12:1-11  +  Luke 19:41-48

Palm Sunday saw much celebration as Jesus rode that famous donkey into Jerusalem. But it wasn’t all celebration. While the crowds met Jesus with joy, the leaders of Jerusalem met Jesus with hostility. While the crowds sang praises to Him who came in the name of the Lord, some of the Pharisees called to Him from the crowd, “Teacher, rebuke Your disciples.”

As always, wherever Jesus was, some believed, but many disbelieved. Jesus knew that. He knew that some in Jerusalem would believe and be saved, but He also knew that the city as a whole would never believe in Him as the Christ, the Son of the living God.

So, on that otherwise joyful Palm Sunday, Jesus wept over the Jerusalem. If you had known, even you, especially in this your day, the things that make for your peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes. The rest of the world could be excused for not recognizing Jesus as the promised Savior from sin. But Israel was the nation that God had nurtured like a mother nurtures and raises her children from infancy. Jerusalem was the capital city that God Himself chose for Himself and graced with His presence, where He placed His temple and His altar, where He listened to prayer, where He accepted sacrifice. You, even you, Jerusalem, God’s daughter, do not recognize your God, do not want to recognize Jesus as your God. You, even you, will crucify your God at the time of His visitation.

And yet, that’s not why Jesus wept over Jerusalem. All of that, even crucifying the Son of God, could have been forgiven, would have been forgiven. But even after His resurrection, after His ascension, when Jesus sent Peter and the other apostles to preach repentance and the forgiveness of sins to Jerusalem, holding out Holy Baptism to them as a gift, as a means of salvation, they still would not repent and believe. They still would not be baptized. Jerusalem would play its awful part in the crucifixion of the Son of God, and then, rather than trust in the atoning sacrifice made by Christ, they would leave God standing there with His arms open, like a Husband whose wife left Him for another man, like a Father whose daughter would rather live as a prostitute than live in the same house with Him.

Jesus knew all that. You, even you, who persecuted the prophets of old, will again resist the Holy Spirit and persecute those who are sent to you and thus bring on yourself the just punishment for your sins: the bitter siege of Jerusalem that the Romans would bring against the city, and its total annihilation by the Romans some 40 years after Jesus’ death and resurrection.

In 70 A.D., God abandoned Jerusalem for good. Notice that He never sent His Christian people against Jerusalem to wipe out the Jews, even though the Jews were responsible for the slaughter of Christ and of Christians. No, God sent the pagan Romans against Jerusalem and Judea, who had their own evil reasons for what they did. God never calls upon His Christians to use violence against those who reject Christ. Instead, He places the sword of the Word of God into our mouths, to warn the Jews—and the Muslims and all unbelievers—of their impending destruction, and to call them to repentance and faith in Christ. That’s the role of the Church.

The destruction of Jerusalem was just. But understand this: the Jews were not condemned by God and Jerusalem was not destroyed by the Romans because the Jews were responsible for Jesus’ crucifixion. The Romans were responsible for that, too, as we confess in the Creed, “He was crucified under Pontius Pilate.” No, those Jews were condemned and slaughtered and eternally damned because of all their sins, which all men have in common with them. You don’t have to call for Jesus’ death or pound the nails into His hands in order to earn God’s condemnation. You just have to be born, born of a sinful man and a sinful woman. You just have to break one of the Ten Commandments in your thoughts, words, or actions. And you’ve done that, too. The sins of the Jews, the sins of all men, have already earned God’s condemnation. He delays it, giving men time to hear the Gospel and repent. He delays it, so that His Holy Spirit might work through the Gospel to bring sinners to faith in Christ, which is the only divinely provided way of escape from punishment. But most of Jerusalem, most of the Jews resisted the Holy Spirit. They refused to believe.

Now Jerusalem’s destruction stands for all time as a harbinger of the destruction that awaits all those who stubbornly refuse to repent of their sin and trust in Christ Jesus for salvation. Neither Jews nor Gentiles will escape. And as for you who have been made to see the light of Christ, to repent and be baptized in His name for the forgiveness of your sins, remember Jerusalem, God’s chosen city. Remember Jerusalem and its destruction and know that, there but by the grace of God go we. Remember how she fell, how she became so good and upright in her own eyes that she no longer cared about her sins, no longer looked for a righteousness from above, no longer looked to her Lord for forgiveness, life and salvation. What happened to Jerusalem can happen to Christians, too, if we are not vigilant.

So remember Jerusalem. But more than that, remember the Lord who wept over her—over her who was about to put Him to death. Still with no bitterness. Still with no grudge. Still wanting to take her back as His bride and forgive her her sins, even after she crucified Him, if only she would take the help from the hand stretched out to her by her God. See Jesus weeping and know that He doesn’t delight in anyone’s destruction, but yearns for every sinner to repent and be saved.

Remember the Lord who wept over Jerusalem and turn to Him in faith.

And then remember Him driving the buyers and sellers out of the temple with their wares. This is the side of Jesus that modern “Christianity” would rather forget. It’s not “nice” enough. It’s not mild-mannered and mushy-gushy enough. But it’s real.

Now, why was He so upset with the buyers and sellers in the Temple—upset enough to overturn their tables and drive them out of God’s house? It wasn’t only because of how it dishonored God’s name. It was mainly because the proclamation of God’s name was the only thing that would rescue those who would be rescued from the coming destruction. Zeal for His neighbor drove Jesus to do something about this buying and selling in the temple. How could anyone think with all that commerce taking place all around them? How could anyone pray? How could they know the true God and hear His Word when, apparently, even the priests and religious leaders were perfectly fine with the Temple being turned into a marketplace? How could anyone focus on their sin and on the atoning sacrifices for sin? And how could anyone hear the words that Jesus would so urgently teach over the next few days of that Holy Week? So Jesus cleansed the Temple and cleared a place for the crowds to come and listen to God’s Word one last time before He, the Lamb of God, would be offered up for the sins of the world.

Then, after the Temple was quiet again, He sat down and taught them—large crowds who still were willing to listen. And in spite of all the opposition, in spite of all the hatred of the Jewish leadership toward Jesus, He sat down in their midst and taught for the sake of the elect, for the sake of those who would still hear and believe the Gospel.

Such is the role of the Church still today. To remember Jerusalem, in humility and in fear, so that we never become proud or complacent toward God and His Word. To weep and lament over the lost, as Jesus did, but not only that. To drive out of the Church all the worldly things that would hinder the truth of the Gospel from being proclaimed and heard, and then to teach those who will listen, because there will always be some who listen, some who repent, some who believe, even as there will always be many who rage against Christ and His Church.

The Church, the communion of saints, will be just fine. The tears Jesus shed were not shed over how terrible things will be for His Church or how hopeless the situation will be for His believers. His believers are not the ones who will be punished by God. His Christians are not the ones who will be destroyed on the Day of Wrath, for there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. Remember Jerusalem and take comfort in the Lord’s mourning. He mourns over those who will punished for their unbelief. But He continues to rejoice over His holy people who have been cleansed from their sins by faith in His blood. And the Day of Wrath that is coming on the wicked will be a day of salvation for those who put their hope in Christ Jesus. Amen.

Source: Sermons