Trinity X - St. Luke 19:41-48 - August 9, 2015
Order of Service - Pg. 15
Hymn#239 Come, Thou Almighty KingHymn#473 The Church's One Foundation
Hymn#258 Lord of Our Life and God of Our Salvation
Readings
Collect
O God, Who declarest Thine almighty power chiefly in showing mercy and pity, mercifully grant unto us such a measure of Thy grace that we, running the way of Thy commandments, may obtain Thy gracious promises and be made partakers of Thy heavenly treasure; through Jesus Christ, Thy Son, our Lord, Who liveth and reigneth with Thee and the Holy Ghost, ever one God, world without end. Amen
Sermon on the Holy Gospel
1) Approaching
Jerusalem, the holy city, Jesus weeps. He weeps out of sorrow for what will
happen to this blessed place. About forty years from the time Jesus shed tears
over her, Jerusalem would be sieged by the Romans. The city would be razed to
the ground. Jews would be sold into slavery and shipped all over the known
world. Men, women, and children would be killed in the streets, if starvation
from the siege hadn’t killed them already. Anyone Jew who did survive the Roman
siege would be barred by entering Jerusalem and living there. The Temple, the
place where the Lord dwelt, would be laid waste. Sacrifices would cease forever
and the songs of the Temple choir would no longer be heard. Jesus weeps
because, being the prophet that Moses foretold, He would look at the beautiful
city and prophesy her end. He
laments and says, 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. For days will
come upon you when your enemies will build an embankment around you, surround
you and close you in on every side, and level you, and your children within
you, to the ground; and they will not leave in you one stone upon another,
because you did not know the time of your visitation. (Luke 19:42-44) As the true
prophet, Christ prophesies not only what will happen to Jerusalem but why these
things will happen to it. The things that make for her peace are hidden from
her eyes. God has not hidden the things that make peace from them. God came
down from heaven in the person of Jesus. God assumed human flesh in order to
teach the people the Gospel and atone for their sins so that all who believe
and are baptized will be saved. But they will have none of it. Christ and the
Gospel is hidden from their eyes not because God hides it from them, but
because they turn their eyes away from Him, reject His Gospel, and judge
themselves unworthy of salvation.
2) For this reason Jesus laments and weeps. He sees the judgment they
collect for themselves. It is not one sin. It is a multitude of sins. As in the
days of the prophet Jeremiah, prophesying immediately before the original
temple was burned by the Babylonians, so it was in the days of Christ. To the
eyes of flesh the city is beautiful. She has the temple, the dwelling place of
God on earth. Walking through Jerusalem, the smell of the smoke from sacrifices
fill the nostrils and the faint music of Levitical choirs chanting David’s
psalms penetrate the ear. Externally it is wonderful. But Jesus sees
a city of idolaters, men claiming to worship the true God while in their heart
they seek to satisfy the god of wealth. He sees men worshiping in the Temple
who only worship their own righteousness and good deeds. Christ sees men in the
holy city worshiping the god of honor and reputation at the expense of others. These men have set up their idols in their
hearts, and put before them that which causes them to stumble into iniquity. (Ezekiel 14:3) Christ sees
men who possess the Word of God, men who have been given the oracles of God
Himself, and they despise His Word, think it a little thing, and ignore it all
while giving it lip service. They blind themselves with carnal security,
relying upon these external things of temple, sacrifice and worship while in
their heart the reject the Lord whom they confess with their lips.
3) This incident of Jesus weeping over Jerusalem is written for our learning,
so that we might heed its warning and example. The sinful human flesh is always
convinced that God will not judge its sin. When judgment for a particular sin
does not come immediately, the flesh jumps at the instance of God’s silence in
order to spur us on to more sin. The flesh interprets God’s patience as
permission, just as Jerusalem had done for generations. But Jesus’ prophesy was
clear and He is proven true by the events of 70 A.D. when Rome flatted
Jerusalem to the ground. Judgment will come. The Lord does not tolerate sin
because He is holy. It must and will be punished. This threat of judgment for
our sins should move our stubborn hearts to sorrow over our sins and repent of
them while there is still yet time. We should not say in a false sense of
security, “I don’t sin that often!” or “My sins are not that grave or heinous.”
We must not make excuses for them. To excuse them is to love them. Neither must
be fool ourselves by pretending that we fear, love, and trust in God above all
things at all times, that we are as diligent in prayer as He commands us to be,
and that we esteem His Word as highly as we ought. So we must also learn from
this example of the destruction of Jerusalem that spiritual pride is the chief
sin, for it leads us to despise the Word of God in Holy Scripture and take the
Sacraments of God, which are visible Words, lightly, thinking them small, and
eventually trampling over them.
4) But there is another thing we ought to learn from this example in Holy
Scripture. That is the mercy of God in Christ Jesus. Jesus does not flippantly
wave off Jerusalem and say, “She’s damned, oh well.” He cares for the holy
city. He cares for her inhabitants. He desires their earnest repentance, that
they turn from their sins and amend their ways with the power of the Holy Ghost.
It is Christ’s will that all be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth.
The Lord does not desire the death of a single sinner, but that every sinner
turns from his ways and by turning from sin and to God in faith, live. He is
not a mean spirited God, like the God of John Calvin, who consigns many to Hell
from eternity simply to demonstrate His almighty power. No, His almighty power
is declared chiefly in showing mercy and pity. That’s what we said to Him in
the Collect of the Day, isn’t it? God’s Word of Law is meant to condemn us so
that we sorrow over our sins, repent of them, and then believe the Gospel that
are sins are forgiven for Christ’s sake! Yes He is a God of Law. But He is also
a God of Gospel. Psalm 101:1 says, I
will sing of mercy and judgment: unto thee, O LORD, will I sing. David
sins of mercy first because that is how God wants chiefly to be known by us. He
condemns our sins, yes. But we confess them and repent of them because we know
He is merciful towards sinners in Christ Jesus.
5) He
demonstrates that mercy is a simple way in the second part of today’s gospel
lesson. He enters the Temple and began to drive out those who bought and sold in it, saying to them,
"It is written, 'My house is a house of prayer,' but you have made it a
'den of thieves.' And He was
teaching daily in the temple. (Luke
19:45-47) Christ clears the Temple and restores it to its God-ordained purpose:
teaching sinners the Word of God. Christ clears out the Temple, dethroning the
false God of mammon, so that He can teach about the true God who loves the
world enough to send His Only-Begotten Son into the world to bear its sin and
be its savior. Christ teaches the people because He is gentle and humble of
heart. He teaches because He has compassion on them, they were getting no
teaching before, only a stewardship sermon and talk about money in the church!
Now the gospel is brought to them and they lap it up because they are thirsty
for salvation. The leaders despise the word taught by Jesus, but all the people were very attentive to hear
Him. (Luke 19:48)
6) Christ’s mercy is shown in His death and resurrection, in
His perfect life lived on our behalf. Christ’s mercy is shown in this as well,
that He still teaches His church through faithful pastors and bishops, for
pastors are sent to teach just as Christ Himself taught the Gospel. Christ’s
mercy is shown in that He has not let His gospel pass over us like a fleeting
cloud because of our sinfulness, but rather He has kept it among us in these
days of distress. And whether we meet here in this beautiful building, in the
home of a shut-in member, or in a home in Leander, the trappings make no
difference. All that Christ uses to teach us His Gospel is the Word. Through
that preaching and teaching of the Word Christ is teaching you His Gospel and
giving and strengthening faith in your heart, so that you repent of your sins
daily, believe the Gospel, and fight temptation, mortifying the flesh and
cultivating good works for your neighbor. Jesus teaches and the people soak it
up, they listen attentively. So we should learn from their example as well that
this is how we are to hear the Gospel, attentively and gladly. This is in fact
what Luther urges us to do in His explanation of the Third Commandment, We should fear and love God so that
we do not despise preaching and His Word, but hold it sacred and gladly hear
and learn it. If we despise God’s Word, either in gross
external ways or within the secret recesses of our hearts, we run the risk of
losing our faith and ending up under judgment as the Jews did. If we despise
God’s Word in our hearts, thinking lightly of it, we will easily heap more and
more sin upon our backs. By the grace of God may we hold it sacred and gladly
hear and learn it whenever we have opportunity, and make opportunity if we it
is not readily available.
7) These
are stern words Jesus gives today, but they are to serve as a warning to His
faithful. Sin will not go unpunished, so repent and believe in the one who has
been punished for your sins already upon the tree of Calvary. Let us be careful
and vigilant in how we hear the Word of God, that we not despise it or treat it
as a little thing, but that we magnify it for what it is, the Word of God given
to sinners so that may have Christ, and by having Christ have life by faith in
His death for us. Amen.