Sermon - Trinity X - Luke 19:41-48

Far too often when Jesus is depicted today in contemporary Christianity we get the picture of a weak, sissy, feminine man. Someone who simply complies with all people, and goes along to get along. In the same way, God the Father is no more than a senile grandfatherly type who just wants all his kids to get along. Ultimately, God is no more than a powerless figure who affirms people in their sins.

As such, scripture lessons such as we heard today are quite unpopular. Namely, because the wrath of God is quite plainly shown. Jesus predicts the destruction of Jerusalem and the terrible agony the Jews will suffer because of their unbelief. Jesus drove out the moneychangers in the temple, not unlike He did at the beginning of His ministry. The Lord in Jeremiah promises that “therefore they shall fall among the fallen; when I punish them, they shall be overthrown.” The lessons today reveal that the wrath of the Lord burns hot, and yet His zeal for compassion and mercy burns far brighter.

Renowned Christian author C. S. Lewis depicted our Lord Jesus Christ in his fictional narnia series as a lion. Of this lion, Lewis wrote that He is not a tame lion. That is to say, God is not a pet beholden to our every whim, but He bites. God, He is wrathful over sin and evil. The wages of sin is death, and Christ Jesus is the judge who metes out the punishment upon the evildoer. 

But just as in Jeremiah’s day and in Jesus’ day, there are false prophets among us today who want you to believe that the Lord is a tame lion. They want you to believe that there is peace and security in your sin and you have no reason to be ashamed or even blush at your wrong doing. In fact, they want you to take pride in your sin, whatever it may be. These false prophets want you to rejoice and celebrate your iniquity. They desire to lull you into false sense of security, “They have healed the wound of my people lightly, saying, ‘peace, peace’ when there is no peace.”

For if you think of your sins but lightly, and presume to have peace with the Lord when you’re not repentant, you do not have peace, my friend. Dear Christian, take a hard look at your life, for the days have already come when your enemy the devil has set up a barricade around you and has surrounded you and hemmed you in on every side and seeks to tear you down to the ground, you and your children with you!

We need to consider our sins, everyone of them, and repent of them all. I’m not just talking about those “really bad sins” that everyone else does, I’m talking about those sins of which you and I are guilty. Those sins which we consider to be such a little thing that God will forgive, no problem. I’m forgiven, this is just a little sin, no one’s getting hurt… those sins are the sins I’m urging you to look at today and repent. For the wrath of the Lord burns hot, and they will not leave one stone upon another in you. We can’t hide them, those hidden sins, not from the Lord who sees all.

Yet as great as the Lord’s wrath may be, His compassion for us far overshadows His anger. For on Palm Sunday, when the crowds were rejoicing with loud shouts of praise, hosannas to the Lord; when the crowds greeted Jesus with more excitement than a presidential parade, laying palm branches and cloaks upon the road; “when Jesus drew near and saw the city, He wept over it.”

Jesus didn’t weep for Himself and the pain He would endure at the end of the week. Jesus wept for the people who even on that day, standing there crying out that the Lord would save them, didn’t know on that day the things that make for peace. They still didn’t know that Christ was the was the one who would bring peace by the blood He would soon shed.

Out of great compassion and mercy, Jesus wept for the people. The Lord doesn’t take delight in the death and destruction of any of His dear people whom He has made. But He weeps for them, He mourns for them, he laments their doomed fate. So when He sternly rebukes sinners and warns them of their impending destruction, He does so with sorrow and great sadness, out of compassion that they would turn around and return to Him.

In fact, because God’s mercy so outweighs His wrath, He is patient and long-suffering for His people, waiting and waiting for them to repent until the very last moment. It would have been just and righteous if the Lord burnt up this whole earth eons ago, yet He has relented from His anger out of mercy for us. 

Out of His great compassion, God the Father mete out His full wrath and punishment upon God the Son. Our merciful Christ took the all-consuming fiery wrath upon Himself in order to spare us and give us true lasting peace. The only way that we could be cleansed and purified of our sin is through the fiery condemnation of God. Yet, that just judgement, that cleansing fire, hasn’t been mete out upon us but Christ became our sacrificial offering so that through Him we might be purified of all wickedness.

We will not find peace anywhere else in this life, but only in Christ whose blood was shed in order to drive out the evil that dwells deep within us. In Jesus, you have been cleansed and purified of all of your sin. The wrath of God has been diverted from us so that we may stand forever in His presence without shame or guilt, not because we deny it and hide it, but because it’s gone for good. 

Therefore we don’t need to rejoice in our sin and celebrate that we are sinners. Instead, we can rejoice in Christ Jesus who has shown us mercy by giving us peace because our punishment was carried out on Him. The blood of Jesus has cleansed us and made us whole again so that we need not despair. God may be wrathful, we don’t need to deny that, but His wrath shall never be upon us for we are bound to Christ and purified in Him.

So let us cling to Him who purifies us and mercifully rescues us from His wrath. The purity that Christ earned for us on the cross He continues to deliver to His church through His Word. It’s remarkable that Jesus begins His earthly ministry by cleansing the temple, and He concludes His earthly ministry by cleansing the temple. For Christ declares “My house shall be a house of prayer.” How does He make it as such? For the remainder of Holy Week until His arrest, “He was teaching daily in the temple.” Through the Word of God Jesus continues to cleanse and purify His church. 

The Word of God, which reveals both His wrath and His mercy, is given to us in order to cleanse us each and every day. So the church is always gathered around the Word. Or as St. Luke so succinctly put it, “all the people were hanging on His words.” Let us hang upon the word of God as well.

 Let us not forsake it, even when it proves unpopular and disingenuous to the eyes of the world. Because you know God’s Word will prove unattractive to the world. They will hate it because everywhere the Gospel is preached, it purifies their sin which they hold so dear to them. The world will despise it because it declares the wrath of God against them and their sins. Yet we Christians are still hanging onto His Words.

We don’t hold onto it because of the wrath it reveals, but because of the mercy which shines so brightly therein. Heed the Word of the Lord, not only on Sundays which are dedicated to God’s Word and the gathering together of His holy people, but daily. Hang onto His Word that He teaches to us daily.

From His Word Christ’s compassion flows like the stream of water and blood from His side. His tears and His blood together flow for you for His mercy and His wrath have met one another and His mercy has won. Jesus, our God, is merciful and loving. His wrath may burn hotter than a thousand suns, but His tears of compassion quench all His anger.

God loves you. He doesn’t hate you, He isn’t angry at you; rather He weeps for you, He dies for you. He forgives you.