Trinity 10 + Luke 19:41-48 + August 20, 2017
Order of Holy Communion - Pg. 15
Hymn # 239 Come Thou Almighty King
Introit
(Antiphon)
As for me, I will call upon God, and He shall hear my voice.
He has redeemed my soul in peace from the battle that was against me.
God will hear, and afflict them, even He who abides from of old.
Cast your burden on the Lord, and He shall sustain you. (Psalm 55:16a, 17b, 18b, 19a, 22a)
Give ear to my prayer, O God,
And do not hide Yourself from my supplication.
My heart is severely pained within me,
And the terrors of death have fallen upon me.
Fearfulness and trembling have come up on me,
And horror has overwhelmed me.
I will pray, and cry aloud,
And the Lord shall save me. (Psalm 55:1, 4–5, 17b, and 16b)
He has redeemed my soul in peace from the battle that was against me.
God will hear, and afflict them, even He who abides from of old.
Cast your burden on the Lord, and He shall sustain you. (Psalm 55:16a, 17b, 18b, 19a, 22a)
Give ear to my prayer, O God,
And do not hide Yourself from my supplication.
My heart is severely pained within me,
And the terrors of death have fallen upon me.
Fearfulness and trembling have come up on me,
And horror has overwhelmed me.
I will pray, and cry aloud,
And the Lord shall save me. (Psalm 55:1, 4–5, 17b, and 16b)
Collect for the 10th Sunday after Trinity
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.
Readings
Sermon
Grace and peace be unto you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
1) Today we see the great sadness which fills our Lord’s heart. Approaching Jerusalem for the final time during His earthly ministry, Jesus weeps. He weeps because, being fully Divine, the second person of the Holy Trinity, He knows Jerusalem’s fate. Roughly forty years after He utters this prophecy, Roman armies will surround Jerusalem and raze it to the ground, along with every living resident of the city. The coming destruction of Jerusalem caused His heart to sorrow, but his true sorrow is from the cause of this coming destruction. They have neglected the Word of God for generations. They have treated it with disdain and contempt. They have urged their manifold interpretations of God’s Word upon themselves. They have put their trust in the commandments of men rather than the commandments of the Lord. To make matters worse, they have done with an air of piety and spiritual pretension. They have exalted the temple and the Word with their mouths but with their doctrine and their lives they have rejected the Lord’s truth. For this reason Jerusalem will fall. This lip-service to the Word and false belief mourn Christ our Lord. In their rejection of the Word of the Lord for so long, they fail to recognize the day of their Visitation. This visitation of Christ was supposed to be gracious and merciful as He atones for the sins of the world. Instead it will be one more judgment heaped upon their heads in the end.
2) In Jesus we see the true heart of God Himself towards sinners. In Christ’s tears we see a visible manifestation of His Word to the prophet Ezekiel spoken to the exiled Judahites. He calls out to stubborn Israel in Ezekiel 33:11, “As I live,' says the Lord GOD, 'I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from his way and live. Turn, turn from your evil ways! For why should you die, O house of Israel?” It is not the Lord’s will that any should perish eternally for their sins. This is why Christ assumed human flesh, to be the “lamb of God that takes away the sins of the world.” (John 1:29) He has no pleasure in the death of the wicked. It is His will that the wicked repent and thereby live. The tears of Jesus also point us to the words of St. Paul spoken to Bishop Timothy in 1 Timothy 2:3-4, “For this is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Savior, who desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.” His heartfelt desire is that all men be saved. But we must note from these verses that God has ordained only one way for mankind to be saved: that is through repentance of their sins, as Ezekiel tells us, and through the knowledge of the truth, which is revealed in Jesus Christ, since He says of Himself, “I am the way and the truth and the life, no one comes to the Father except through Me.” (John 14:6) God wants to save mankind from its sins, but only through faith in Christ.
3) Christ the Lord makes this apparent when He commissions His apostles to go into the world. He tells them at the end of St. Matthew’s Gospel to preach to “all nations” (Matthew 28:19) and at the end of St. Mark’s Gospel, to preach to “all creatures.” (Mark 16:15) There is no man, woman, or child for whom Christ did not die. There is no man, woman, or child, from who, the Gospel message is to be concealed. The gift was one for all. Christ wants it distributed and given to all by the preaching of the Gospel and its acceptance in true faith. This should warm our hearts. We are never outside of God’s desire for salvation. It is His will, His good and gracious will: that we be saved from our sins, from death, and from the power of the Devil. When we feel our sin oppress us in temptation we know that we have a God who is for us and not against us. When we feel the guilt of past sins weigh down heavy upon our hearts and minds, we know that Christ has died for all sins, no matter how gross and extensive that sin may be. That God wants and desires us to be saved through faith in Christ should be a great comfort to us, for in the Gospel we are taught over and again that God does not abandon us, but sends His Son for our salvation, and that no matter what the Devil, the world, or our flesh tell us, the Scriptures tell us that He died for all, and I am part of the “all,” therefore He has died for my sins to win my atonement, so that I may believe and be justified.
4) But all are not saved. This dark reality is the reason which Jesus’ tears flow freely as He approaches Jerusalem. It is good for us to know that this greatly vexed the Lord, even to the point of tears, because this very question vexes all Christians: “Why Some and Not Others?” The ancients called this the Crux Theologorum, the Theologian’s cross, for this is the great question which burdens all theologians, professional and lay. We see from the Scriptures, and the tears of Jesus, that God does want all men to be saved. Yet many, and I am serious when I say many, are not saved. Some theologians, both professional and lay, have had their backs broken by bearing the theologian’s cross. In their unwillingness to accept the mystery presented in the Scriptures, they have invented new words of God to try to explain this away. Some have reasoned that God, in His secret counsel before the foundations of the world, elected some to salvation and others to perdition, that is, damnation. And all of this He did arbitrarily. Other says he did this in view of who would accept His salvation and who would not. Either way, this reasoning invents a new word of God, unheard of in the Scriptures, that God has two wills. Some He wants to save but others He wants to damn. This makes God a liar for He says He wants all men to be saved through Christ and He does not enjoy the death of the sinner. The Lord hates wickedness and deceit and will not let it dwell with Him, as He says in Psalm 101:7. This reasoning, of God having two wills, can only inject panic into the heart of the Christian, so that He asks, “But how do I know if I am truly saved and elected to salvation?”
5) But the Scriptures are very clear why not all are saved, and it has nothing to do with a hidden will of God that we do not know of. It has everything to do with man. Sinful man, bent and twisted by original sin, can reject the Gospel and the working of the Holy Spirit in His heart through that preached Gospel. St. Luke records that, “The Pharisees and lawyers rejected the will of God for themselves.” (Luke 7:30) St. Stephen, in His only recorded sermon, chides the Pharisees, “You stiff-necked and uncircumcised in heart and ears! You always resist the Holy Spirit; as your fathers did, so do you.” (Acts 7:51) St. Paul and Barnabas, while preaching to the hard-hearted Jews in Antioch of Pisidia, told them, “It was necessary that the word of God should be spoken to you first; but since you reject it, and judge yourselves unworthy of everlasting life, behold, we turn to the Gentiles.” (Acts 13:46) So it is clearly not because of the Lord that many are damned, being hardened in unbelief. It is possible for humanity to reject the Gospel and the Holy Spirit’s work in their hearts through the Word and the Sacraments. This is what Jesus saw in Jerusalem as He approached the city. He saw their persistent and willful unbelief. He saw their rejection of Him. Jesus tells His apostles in Luke 10:16, “He who hears you hears Me, he who rejects you rejects Me, and he who rejects Me rejects Him who sent Me.” To reject the Gospel ministry to reject Christ and to reject Christ is to reject the Father. We see this in our own day as Christ and the apostles saw it in their day.
6) It is a great mystery that the Scriptures set before us. If we are saved from our sins through faith in Christ, that is solely the work of God the Holy Spirit working through the means of Grace. But we also see that if anyone is damned it is because of His rejection of the Holy Sprit working through His appointed means. If one is saved, it is the Lord’s doing, 100% grace alone. If one is condemned, it is 100% His own most grievous fault because He has not believed. This mystery is not given to us so that we concern ourselves with it. In fact, the worst thing we can do is to attempt to plumb the depths of God’s mysteries. If we try to go beyond what God has told us in His holy word we only walk with Moses did on Sinai, “into the thick darkness where God was.” (Exodus 20:21) So what is the point of giving us this mystery of “why some and not others?” It is actually to encourage our faith. This mystery makes us want to ask, “But how do I know if I am truly saved?” Do you believe the Gospel that your sins are forgiven you for Christ’s sake and not by your own merit? Do you believe that God has justified you by faith, that He has declared you to be righteous before His heavenly tribunal? Has the Triune God baptized you and brought you to Himself through the “washing of regeneration and renewal” (Titus 3:5) that is Holy Baptism? Has the Lord placed His very body and blood, crucified and resurrected for you, onto your lips for the forgiveness of all of your sins? If so then you are among the elect of God. This mystery is to encourage you to seek out the means of grace so that you remain steadfast in hearing the preached Word and receiving the Sacrament of Christ’s true body and blood. This mystery is to drive you to daily repentance as well, so that you sorrow over your sins and desire to be rid of them because you know that the sinful flesh’s tendency is to reject the Gospel and lead you to judge yourself unworthy of everlasting life in that rejection and unbelief.
7) Those who believe that their sins are forgiven for Christ’s sake are justified before God in heaven. Those who believe have nothing to worry about regarding their election and in faith can rejoice in the fact that the Lord desires their salvation and saved them through the knowledge of the truth: that is through faith in Christ Jesus. God desires all men to be saved, yet many reject the will of God for them in their sinful rebellion. We know though, that the Lord truly desires all men to be saved and has procured atonement for the sins of the world so that all who believe may have everlasting life. Take comfort in that, dear saints, that your Lord desires your salvation and has made a way for you through Christ Jesus our Lord. Amen.
May the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus our Lord. Amen.