Sermon for Trinity 25 – Third-to-last Sunday

1 Thessalonians 4:13-18  +  Matthew 24:15-28

We’ve come to one of my favorite Sundays of the Church Year. Not because its Scripture lessons are especially foundational to our religion, but because it describes so well the odd situation in which we find ourselves in the Church, the ecclesiastical chaos all around us, the outward disunity we find in the Christian Church. Sometimes it almost feels like our little independent Lutheran church is a church without a home in the larger world of Christianity. But, as Jesus describes today, that’s exactly how it has to be in the days leading up to His return. In today’s Gospel, Jesus predicts this apparent “homelessness” for the faithful, but He also gives us good reasons not to worry about it, but to take comfort in His promises and to follow His instructions so that we may escape the terrible destruction that’s coming upon those who fail to flee from their home when their home is invaded by the abomination that causes desolation.

It was the end of the day on Tuesday of Holy Week, and Jesus had some final instructions for His disciples. He had just finished telling them about the destruction of Jerusalem that was going to take place. Looking back, we know it took place about 40 years after Jesus predicted it. The disciples, assuming that the destruction of Jerusalem must mean the end of the world and Jesus’ coming again at the end of the age, asked Jesus, Tell us, when will these things be? And what will be the sign of Your coming, and of the end of the age? As it turns out the destruction of Jerusalem would not be so closely tied to the end of the world. But it would foreshadow the eventual apostasy and destruction of the Church, leading up to the return of Christ and the end of the age. So the things Jesus says about Jerusalem’s destruction, and the warnings He attaches to them, are not only intended for the Christians living at that time, but for us as well.

In answer to His disciples’ questions, Jesus first goes on to describe the New Testament period and the signs of His coming, including the sign that the gospel would be preached to all nations, and then the end will come. Then He goes back and describes the conditions leading up to the destruction of Jerusalem, which are similar to the conditions leading up to the end of the world. He says that they will see the abomination of desolation, spoken of by the prophet Daniel, standing in the holy place. 550 years before Jesus was born, the prophet Daniel prophesied an abomination of desolation, an idol that would cause desolation and destruction, being set up in the temple in Jerusalem. That was partially fulfilled about 160 years before Jesus was born when the Syrian ruler Antiochus set up an altar to Zeus on top of the altar to God in the temple and sacrificed pigs on it. But Jesus says that wasn’t the only fulfillment. Another abomination causing desolation would be set up in the temple.

That was fulfilled in the years after Jesus’ ascension, when Jerusalem refused to believe the Gospel. The Jews kept offering their sacrifices in the temple. Those sacrifices once pointed ahead to Christ’s all-sufficient sacrifice for the sins of the world. But now they were being offered in rejection of the Christ. So the very sacrifices that once were pleasing to God had become an abomination in His sight. By rejecting Jesus as their Messiah, the Jews had become idolaters. The more entrenched they became in that anti-Christian idolatry, the worse their behavior became, until they engaged in open revolt against Rome, and then the Roman armies besieged Jerusalem, and finally went in and destroyed the city.

But Jesus knew that something similar would happen to the temple of the outward Christian Church, the Visible Church. Idolatry would take root in the Church and become an abomination in God’s sight, causing the desolation of the outward Church. That happened with the various forms of idolatry that were promoted under the Roman papacy, all of which pushed Jesus and His Word to the background and replaced Gospel with Law, faith with works, and forgiveness with constant guilt. But it has also happened throughout Protestantism, and even within Lutheranism. Idols are set up in the Church. Jesus is pushed to the background, and all sorts of other things are pushed into His place, so that His Word is twisted, so that His Gospel is minimized, so that preserving the institution of the church that a person grew up in becomes more important than preserving the Word of God itself. And hearts that are supposed to be clinging to Jesus begin to cling instead to manmade things. All of that is an abomination in God’s sight, and it has caused untold desolation within the Visible Church, to the point that it’s basically now every man for himself when it comes to interpreting the Bible and understanding the truth. This is all part of what Jesus refers to as the great tribulation. Jerusalem lived through it in the first century. And the Christian Church has been living through it for quite some time.

Other conditions during this great tribulation include false christs and false prophets performing great signs and wonders that will deceive many, that will come close even to deceiving the elect. In other words, these false prophets and their “signs” will not be easy to detect as false, or at least, will be so widely accepted that it will take great courage to denounce them as false. That can include the supposed apparitions of the virgin Mary. It can include the miracles that the Pentecostals claim they can do. It can also include “science” as the teaching of evolution, for example, has almost entirely supplanted the teaching of God’s Word, not only out there among the atheists, but among most who call themselves Christians as well. How many people have been led astray from the Word of God by that idolatrous teaching! And then there are the other false doctrines that become so popular in their various churches and church bodies that practically no one is willing to challenge them anymore. False doctrine becomes “settled doctrine,” and then the abomination has truly taken hold.

But the days will be shortened, Jesus says, for the sake of the elect. And Jesus will return before it becomes impossible to hold onto faith. But He won’t return in secret. He won’t return two or three times. He won’t be coming to perform some kind of rapture and then going away again for a while. No, He’ll return once, at the end of the age. And everyone will see Him at once. His return will be public and visible to all.

Those are the conditions that will exist in the Church and in the world in this New Testament era. Now, given these conditions, what instructions does Jesus leave for us?

First, very simply, let the reader understand. In other words, search the prophets, search the Old Testament Scriptures and study the Bible, whether it’s the prophet Daniel or the prophet Isaiah or the Psalms or the five books of Moses. Read and think about what you read. Read and pray for the Holy Spirit’s enlightenment and spiritual insight.

Second, when you see the abomination of desolation standing in the holy place, that is, when you see idolatry begin to take root in the holy place of the Church, Flee! Flee to the mountains! Flee from your “home.” And do it sooner rather than later! That’s what those references mean about, if a person is on the housetop, not coming down to get anything out of his house, or a man in the field not turning back to get his clothes. It’s also what that reference means when Jesus bemoans the poor women who are nursing or pregnant, or those who may have to travel on the Sabbath day. Those were literal impediments to fleeing leading up to Jerusalem’s destruction. But the urgency in Jesus’ words still applies very much to our situation.

What does it mean to “flee to the mountains”? It means getting away from idolatry in all its forms. Whether that idolatry is set up within a given church or a given church body, leave it behind, and do it quickly. Get out of that visible church. Leave your “home.” That doesn’t mean get out of the Christian Church entirely, of course! But it means you may not be able to stay in the church of your youth. You may have to spend months or years searching for a little church up in the mountains, that is, disconnected from the big and powerful church bodies in the world.

Practically all of you here, in our little “church in the mountains,” have already done this, so you know what it entails. You know what it is to be “homeless” in a spiritual sense. Here in Las Cruces we’ve still been mercifully blessed with a beautiful church building, but not all of our members live close enough to enjoy it. You know what it is to not have a big and impressive church body to take comfort it, or to have a big church with choirs and multiple musicians and all kinds of programs, to not have a voice in the world or a seat at the table with prestigious religious leaders. And why would we expect any of that, if we’re being faithful to Jesus’ instruction? Why would anyone who is in the process of fleeing from his home expect to have all the comforts of home?

Third, Jesus tells His fleeing Church to keep praying that our flight may not be hindered or delayed. God alone provides the ministry of His Word. And God alone provides the strength and the courage we need to live in away from “home.” Our sinful flesh would love nothing more than to stay where it’s comfortable, or even to return to a comfortable home, in spite of the abomination that may be there. But, Jesus says, “Remember Lot’s wife!” She started to flee from her home in Sodom, but turned back toward it in longing and suffered a tragic end. So keep praying that the Lord would guide and protect us as we flee, and guide and protect and strengthen all His children throughout the world, that all may flee from every abomination before the desolation comes.

Jesus’ final instruction to His fleeing Church is this: When people try to convince you that Christ is to be found here or over there, don’t believe it. Don’t be deceived. Don’t go out. It’s easy to grow impatient as we wait, especially in the midst of the great tribulation. So it can be tempting to go looking for Jesus and His salvation wherever anybody tells you you can find Him. In this place, in that practice, in this novel doctrine, like the rapture or the millennium or the real absence of His body and blood in the Lord’s Supper. But Jesus’ instruction is, don’t believe any of that. Hold onto His Word and wait patiently for His very public return. Look for the true Church in the marks of the Church: in the pure preaching of the Gospel of Christ and in the proper administration of His Holy Sacraments. And be content with that until He comes.

St. Paul told us a little bit about that coming in today’s Epistle, with everything taking place in quick succession. First He’ll raise from the dead those who have fallen asleep in Him. And then He’ll bring the still-living believers up into the heavens to join the newly raised believers, all safely and joyfully gathered around our Lord.

So, in the midst of this great tribulation, in the midst of fleeing from idolatry in the Visible Church and living as those who have no earthly home, keep watching for the Lord’s return, as eagles carefully scan the countryside for the meal they so eagerly desire, and then all converge on it as soon as they spot it. So set your hearts on the Lord Jesus Christ and be watching diligently for Him. In the midst of the tribulation, in the midst of our flight, Jesus will preserve His homeless Christians. He will shorten the days of this tribulation as much as necessary, so that not a single one of His believers has to miss out on the salvation He’s coming to bring. Amen.

Source: Sermons

Sermon for Third-to-last Sunday (Trinity 25)

1 Thessalonians 4:13-18  +  Matthew 24:15-28

Today the lectionary begins turning our thoughts to the end times, to the state of the world and of the Church leading up to Christ’s return. It isn’t a pretty picture. But there is hope in it! Not the hope of a better world here, but the promise of God’s protection and help as we live through the dark days of the great tribulation. Alongside that promise, though, comes a warning from the Lord Jesus, an urgent warning to flee from the idolatry that will afflict the Church as we wait for Him to return.

Jesus is talking with His disciples about the signs leading up to His coming at the Last Day. He foretells a horrible event from the beginning of the New Testament period—the destruction of Jerusalem in the first century. And He uses that same event as a metaphor for the last days.

Therefore, He says, when you see the abomination of desolation, spoken of by the prophet Daniel, standing in the holy place (let the reader understand), then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains. The Old Testament prophets often refer to idols as abominations, things that God truly hates. A desolation is something that lays waste to an area. Daniel, who lived about 600 years before Christ, prophesied that an idol would be set up in the holy place, in the innermost part of the temple in Jerusalem, right next to the place where God had promised to dwell. That prophecy was partially fulfilled some 400 years later when Antiochus Epiphanes, the commander of the Greek forces in Syria, would oppress the Jews over the course of about three years, banning their religion and literally setting up an idol in the temple. But Jesus applies Daniel’s prophecy to another event yet to come, to the idolatry of the Jews who would reject Him, who would still use the temple in Jerusalem to make sacrifices for sin, mocking the sacrifice of Christ that had already been made once for all on the cross. That idolatry was the reason why God allowed the Roman armies to come in in 70 AD to cause desolation, to besiege and finally destroy Jerusalem.

Just as Scripture often uses the literal kingdom of Israel in the Old Testament as a figure of the spiritual kingdom of Christ in the New Testament, so Jesus uses that literal idol in the literal holy place and the resulting desolation in the literal city of Jerusalem to represent a spiritual abomination, a spiritual idol (or idols) in the spiritual temple of God, which is the Holy Christian Church. As He says here when he refers to the “holy place,” let the reader understand. There’s something figurative in this saying that Jesus wants us to notice.

The idolatry that grew in the holy place of the Holy Christian Church over the centuries was the papistic idolatry, the idolatry of the Roman Church, as the hierarchy began to set the saints and their merits next to Christ in the holy place of the Church, setting the penances and satisfactions of the Christian next to the atonement made by Christ, setting the pope and the Church’s hierarchy next to Christ and actually above Christ because the pope’s teaching contradicted the word of Christ, and yet he was to be believed instead of Christ, which is why Lutherans refer to the papacy as the Antichrist, or at least as the ultimate Antichrist. Because not all the idols that have been set up in the Church can be traced directly to the papacy.

Or maybe they can, in a way, if “popery” is considered more generally. Every time a teaching is set up in the Church that contradicts the Word of Christ and is supposed to be believed instead of Christ, you have a little pope there, don’t you? Every time a man (a pastor or a priest or a minister) insists on being obeyed in the Church when he’s teaching something other than the word of Christ, you have a little pope there. Every time a synod or a church body or diocese demands your loyalty, regardless of the Word of Christ, or every time Christians give their loyalty to a synod or a church body or a minister, regardless of the Word of Christ, you have a little pope there, a little antichrist, an idol, an abomination that will cause desolation.

So, “Flee!” Jesus says. Fleeing ahead of the Roman armies was a physical fleeing, and all those who listened to Jesus’ warning were able to escape Jerusalem before the desolation came. Fleeing from all these other idols is a spiritual kind of fleeing, although there may be some physical fleeing involved, too. Run away from that church or that church body that has set up an idol where only Christ belongs. Get out of the assembly where idolatry, even secret idolatry, is being openly practiced. Run away in your heart from every idol that you might fear, love, or trust in more than God.

Flee! And do it without delay! That’s what Jesus’ instructions boil down to. Let the one who is on the housetop not come down to get anything out of his house. And let the one who is in the field not turn back to get his clothes. But woe to the women who are with child and who are nursing in those days! Pray that your flight is not in the winter or on the Sabbath! In other words, anything that hinders your flight from where idolatry has taken hold in the Church will harm you! Getting away from it is urgent, and all the more urgent as the Last Day approaches, when the tribulation will be at its greatest.

You see, fleeing from Rome and from all the idols that are set up within the visible Church is essential to avoid the desolation it will cause—the desolation of souls! But it doesn’t get you out of the great tribulation. Jesus says, For then there will be great tribulation, such as has not happened since the beginning of the world until now, nor will there ever be. Indeed, if those days were not shortened, no flesh would be saved. But for the sake of the elect those days will be shortened. The Book of Revelation talks about the saints who were even then “coming out of the great tribulation.” So, in a sense, it’s been going on since the first century. But just as the first abomination of desolation was literal and the second is spiritual or figurative, so might the tribulation be. The great tribulation of the first century involved severe physical persecution and torture of the saints. The great tribulation near the end of the world may be much more of a spiritual tribulation, trouble and affliction of the spirit, the trouble of being surrounded and assaulted by false doctrine, the trouble of having a hundred different Christian church bodies, the trouble of a world that completely and thoroughly rejects God’s Word, natural law, and justice. The public schools of our country (and in most of the world) teach a sort of “gentle atheism.” They don’t come right out and say God doesn’t exist, or that all religion is evil. They just unteach everything the Bible teaches and replace it with a false history, false morality, false authority, and a false purpose for mankind. They train generations of citizens not to rely on God’s word, but on “science” and the ingenuity of the human race. Practically all the world powers deny Christ, if not by name, then by policy and by action. This is all part of the great tribulation, the work of the Antichrist, and it would be too much even for the elect to withstand, if God didn’t shorten the days for us. But Jesus promises here that those days will be shortened.

Now, sometimes He shortens the days by giving us a brief reprieve, a few moments of sanity and normalcy. But those reprieves are temporary. Sometimes He shortens the days by bringing believers out of this life, so that we finish our race in faith and win the battle by leaving the battle with our faith intact. But in the end, only the coming of Christ will truly shorten the days of the great tribulation.

Jesus has further warnings for those who live in the great tribulation: “Then if anyone says to you, ‘Look, here is Christ!’ or ‘There!’ do not believe it. For there will arise false christs, and false prophets, and they will perform great signs and wonders, so as to deceive even the elect, if that were possible. See, I have told you ahead of time. False prophets pointing to false christs. Isn’t that exactly what we see in the Church at large? False prophets pointing to evolutionary Jesus, who didn’t create the world in six days; pointing to LGBT Jesus, who didn’t create them male and female and institute marriage between a man and a woman; pointing to socialist Jesus who compels people to charity by force; pointing to tolerant Jesus who would never dare judge anyone for anything—except for intolerance.

That’s the false Jesus on the liberal side. But then there are plenty of false prophets on the more “conservative” side who point to American patriot Jesus; or to contemporary worship Jesus on the one hand or to strict traditionalist Jesus on the other; or to the Jesus who forbids the little children to come to Him through Holy Baptism; or to rapture Jesus who still supposedly calls on Christians to support the Israel that rejects Him as Lord. The list goes on.

Therefore, if they say to you, ‘Look, he is in the desert!’ do not go out; or, ‘Look, he is in the inner rooms!’ do not believe it. For as the lightning comes out of the east and is visible in the west, so also will be the coming of the Son of Man. There is only one true Jesus Christ, who has ascended into heaven and will not return until the very Last Day of this world when every eye will see Him. Until then, He has left a sure and dependable witness of His teaching: His words faithfully recorded in Holy Scripture and faithfully confessed in the ancient creeds of the Church. And He has left a ministry of the Word that carries His blessing and His authority. If you go seeking Jesus apart from His Word and the ministry of it, you will only find a false christ.

Our Gospel concludes with that rather strange saying: For where the carcass lies, there the eagles will gather. It’s actually a paraphrase from the book of Job, where God is scolding Job for thinking himself wiser than God. And God has to remind him that God is the one who gave the eagle the nature and the ability to spy out the landscape from afar, to pinpoint where the dead body is, and to gather there. So it is with God’s children. We won’t miss Jesus at His coming. We won’t miss out on the eternal life He will bring. Instead, St. Paul describes the scene of the Last Day beautifully in today’s Epistle, when both those believers who have died and those believers who are still alive on that day will all be gathered around the Lord Jesus: For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trumpet of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive and remain will be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will always be with the Lord.

Such is the wisdom of God, to allow His visible Church to falter and to embrace the idol, and to allow His true believers, His invisible Church, to suffer much during this great tribulation. But rather than question God’s wisdom as Job did, let us embrace it and acknowledge that God knows far better than we do what is right and necessary for this world and for His beloved Church, including each one of His dear children. Trust in Him. Watch out for idols and flee from them, wherever they are set up. Seek Him in His word and the ministry of it during this great tribulation. And eagerly expect His coming! Amen.

Source: Sermons