Third Last Sunday of the Church + Matthew 24:15-28 + November 12, 2017

Grace and Peace be unto you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

1)         At the beginning of Matthew 24, Jesus and His disciples are at the Jerusalem Temple. The disciples admire the beauty of the Temple and enjoy all the visible trappings of that blessed place. Jesus does not sit in awe of the external appearance of the Temple. He foretells its destruction. “Assuredly I say to you, that not one stone shall be left here upon another, that shall not be thrown down” (Matthew 24:2). Later that day, while they are on the Mount of Olives, outside the city limits, the disciples approach Jesus privately and ask, “When will these things be? And what will be the sign of your coming, and of the end of the age?” (Matthew 24:3). The disciples think they are asking one question when they’re really asking two. They assumed that the temple would endure until the Last Day of the world, when in reality, it wouldn’t. Jesus takes the opportunity to teach them about both the end of the temple and the end of the age. But He does so in way that conflates the two events into one, even as the disciple’s question had conflated the two ideas into one. By doing this, Jesus makes the destruction of Jerusalem into a prototype of end of the age. If we understand the signs that came before the Holy City’s fall, then we can better understand the signs that precede the Last Day and see them for what they truly are and act accordingly.

2)         First Jesus tells them, “When you see the abomination of desolation spoken of by Daniel the prophet, standing in the holy place, then let those who are in Judea flee the mountains.” The Jews had seen this sort of thing before. In the year 165 B.C. the wicked Seleucid ruler, Antiochus IV, entered Jerusalem and “set up the abomination of desolation upon the altar, and built idol altars throughout the cities of Juda on every side” (1 Maccabees 1:54). That abomination that been an idol of the false god Zeus. In those days the Lord raised up Judas Maccabeus and his brothers to defeat the Seleucids and rededicate the altar and temple to the true God. The Lord willed that they cleanse the Temple from the abominable idolatry of the Syrians. When Jesus tells the disciples that they will see another “abomination of desolation” standing in the holy place of the Temple, He was prophesying that what happened in the days of the Maccabees would happen again. An idol would sit in the Holy Place of the temple and defile it. When Christians saw this happen, they were not to stay and fight for the Temple as the Maccabees had done. The abomination that causes desolation was the sign that the end of Holy City of Jerusalem and her temple was near. Christ told his Christians simply to flee to mountains immediately without looking back. He says, “Let him who is on the housetop not go down to take anything out of his house. And let him who is in the field not go back to get his clothes.” The Christian who truly believed the word of Christ, and truly prized it, at that moment had to flee the mountains and leave so much behind, a beautiful temple, all the trappings of the Old Testament worship, their own property, everything then knew. Such was the cost of one’s life in that day. All else had to be forsaken for the sake of Christ.

3)         The tribulation that followed the establishment of the abomination of desolation was then quite gruesome. Jesus said that it would be a “great tribulation, such as has not been since the beginning of the world until now.” The destruction of Jerusalem proved to be far worse than the end of Sodom and Gomorrah when it was scorched with fire and brimstone from heaven. Jerusalem, the once holy city and dwelling place of God on earth, would be besieged by the Romans. During the siege the Jews would turn on each other and murder each other, even in the Temple itself. The famine that resulted from the long siege was so devastating that many within the city walls resorted to cannibalizing their young. Then at the proper time, the Romans entered the city and razed the temple to the ground just as Jesus said, so that not one stone was left upon another. This was God’s judgment upon Jerusalem and the temple. The once magnificent city had become no better than Sodom and Gomorrah. She rejected its long-awaited Messiah. She murdered the saints. She persecuted the apostles. She entertained false christs and welcomed false prophets with all false beliefs. For this rejection of Christ and His Word, she would be utterly destroyed. There would be no hope for the city, as she had in the days of the Maccabees. She had already rejected her Redeemer and God’s final call to repent through the apostles. Therefore Christians had no choice but to simply flee.

4)         All of these things took place and culminated in 70 A.D. when the Lord used the Roman general Titus as the rod of His wrath against Jerusalem. And if that were the end of it, then this text would be no more than a simply history lesson. But it is more than that because the fall of Jerusalem is a prototype of the end of the age and the Last Day. In the New Testament, the Israel of God, the New Jerusalem, is the Church. The temple of God is no longer a physical location, but it is Christ Jesus Himself. The temple is present wherever Christ is truly present, and Christ is present in the Holy Christian Church. There are no more prophecies of the Old Testament dealing with the physical city of Jerusalem or the political entity known as Israel. Jerusalem, the temple, Israel is the church. Although the physical city would be rebuilt by the Romans, to this day, not quite two thousand years later, the city of Jerusalem is but a shadow of her former glory. She has no prophet. She has no temple. For rejecting her Lord and refusing to repent, she is no longer the city of God, nor does God dwell within her walls. When we see that, Jesus’ words about the fall of Jerusalem then become a prototype for the end of the world, so that Christians can be warned and flee to save their eternal lives even as the Christians then fled to save their physical lives.

5)         So Christians are to watch for the abomination of desolation within the visible church, which is the Antichrist. St. Paul says that the antichrist “opposes and exalts himself above all that is called God or that is worshiped, so that he sits as God in the temple of God, showing himself that he is God” (2 Thess. 2:4). Who is this but the Roman Papacy, who has exalted himself as to the position of “Vicar of Christ on earth” and demands that all who call themselves Christians live under his rule? The Papacy has set up new forms of worship that re-sacrifice Christ each Sunday upon the altar. The Papacy sits in the temple of God, the Church, and teaches men to seek salvation in their own merits and the merits of the saints and the Virgin Mary. This steals men’s salvation from them even as it robs Christ of His glory as the sole mediator between God and man. This is why after Luther was excommunicated, the rest of the reformers fled from the Papacy, for they saw that there was not the slightest desire for reform. They fled to the mountains, so to speak. They broke communion with Rome and gathered together to simply preach the Word of God and administer the sacraments according to Christ’s institution.

6)         There’s more to it than that though. St. John writes in 1 John 2:18, “Little children, it is the last hour; and as you have heard that the Antichrist is coming, even now many antichrists have come, by which we know that it is the last hour.” So we must flee the Papacy, THE antichrist, and its abominations on the one side, and we must flee the abominations of the antichrists on the other side who left Rome but preach a false Christ and false doctrine of Christ. So Christians must be guard against the Reformed teachings, which removes Christ’s true presence from the Lord’s Supper in the name of human reason, which denies salvation to children by snatching the gift of baptism away from them, and which preaches a false gospel that says Christ only died for those he elected from eternity, rather than for the sins of the whole world. Christians must be on guard against the false prophets preaching revivalism, which leads Christians to seek God’s Word in their own hearts, which teaches men that God communicates to them directly, without the Word, and which leads many into the error of judging doctrine by emotion rather than by the words of Christ. So we must also be on guard against those who claim to teach the truth, and do in many cases, but err as the Lutheran synods due, in ways which are subtle yet dangerous to one’s soul. What is the Christian to do? Flee to mountains. Flee to Christ and His Word, and do so by fleeing to place where it is taught in its truth and purity and His Sacraments are administered as He instituted them. God has graciously given us those here, and in His mercy He has kept His Word and Sacraments pure among us, praise be to God.

7)         But let’s be honest, fleeing from the antichrist sitting in Rome and from the antichristian spirits of the Reformed and the Revivalists, especially the ones that call themselves by the same name as us, makes for a lonely spot in the world. It means that we won’t necessarily see large numbers in our pews, for “wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction, and there are many who go in by it” (Matthew 7:13), and few find the narrow gate. Fleeing from antichristian teachings means that we’re not always in communion with our loved ones because of different beliefs and different confessions. It means that there’s not a church on every corner that we can worship, trusting that we’ll be nourished with the pure doctrine of Christ. For many it means having to drive a great distance for a pure confession, communion, and fellowship. It means that our homes must once again become incubators of the true faith. But this is not a new thing, nor is it abnormal in the history of the Church. Consider those Christians living in Jerusalem in the first century, who saw the abomination of desolation and heeded Jesus’ word. They left behind family, a beautiful temple, and the protection of the seemingly sturdy walls of Jerusalem. They fled to the mountains to save their lives, for they prized the pure Words of Christ over and above all the trappings of the visible church and fellowship with false teachings. In doing so, they saved their lives by clinging to the Church’s one foundation, Jesus Christ, her Lord. Let us follow in their steps in our age. Amen.

May the peace of God which passes all human understanding guard your hearts and your minds through faith in Christ Jesus our Lord. Amen.