Sermon - Trinity X 2020 - Luke 19:41-48

A handful of generations after God created the world, He looked at the state of man and saw that “the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And the Lord was sorry that He had made man on the earth, and it grieved Him to His heart.” So the Lord warned man, and said that in 120 years He would blot out every man and animal on the earth, unless they repent. 

At the conclusion of 120 years, out of billions of people, only eight faithful souls were found living lives of repentance. Thus the prophecy which our Lord had given about the great flood came to fruition. “Everything on the dry land in whose nostrils had the breath of life died...only Noah was left, and those who were with him in the ark.”

We see a similar thing foretold in our Gospel today. Jesus drew near to Jerusalem and wept over it, saying “Would that you, even you, had known on this day the things that make for peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes. For the days will come upon you, when your enemies will set up a barricade around you and surround you and hem you in on every side and tear you down to the ground, you and your children within you. And they will not leave one stone upon another in you, because you did not know the time of your visitation.”

In 30AD our Lord prophesied that Jerusalem would be besieged and flattened to the ground because of their grievous sins and utter faithlessness. They didn’t fail to repent for lack of warning either! Long before Christ had come, the Lord had sent many prophets to call the people to repentance and back to faith in God. 

But what did they do to the prophets? They killed them. Jesus, earlier in Luke’s gospel, laments: “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it!” Even up unto the last of the prophets, John the Baptist, they arrested and killed. 

Those who called themselves God’s people, the Israelites, even the most religious of the bunch, the chief priests and scribes, when come face to face with the Messiah they threw stones at Him until He was crucified. As our Lord marched through the city on His way to the place of the skull to be crucified, some women wept for Him. So He warned the city again of their impending destruction. “Daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for me, but weep for yourselves and for your children. For behold, the days are coming when they will say, ‘Blessed are the barren and the wombs that never bore and the breasts that never nursed!’”

Jesus didn’t weep and warn the city in vain. The ancient Jewish historian Josephus recorded the horrors that took place in Jerusalem 40 years after Jesus had warned them. In 70 AD, chaos and fury, rebels and tyrants, came to an abominable crescendo of death and desolation in that city.

Jesus had prophesied that their enemies would come upon them, set up a barricade around them and surround them. So the city was besieged, the people locked inside, and their food supply soon depleted. Starved, people gobbled up their own belts and shoes. That refuse which not even the dogs would eat they turned into food. Jesus had said those women who were barren were blessed, because mothers, filled with madness, ate their own. Thus, hundreds of thousands of people in Jerusalem died of starvation, those few survivors were made into slaves.

Just as the people were destroyed, so was the temple of God and the city itself razed to the ground, like a cornfield after a gale of a storm. Like Jesus said would happen, they didn’t leave one stone upon another. 

But Jesus, even knowing what would happen in that city and temple just four decades later, He continued to have compassion and cleanse the temple. “He entered the temple and began to drive out those who sold, saying to them, “It is written, ‘My house shall be a house of prayer,’ but you have made it a den of robbers.” And he was teaching daily in the temple.”

With prayer and preaching, Jesus cleansed the temple and those faithful few who remained to hear His Word. Christ, knowing the judgement awaiting this world on the last day, continues this work even now as He draws near to cleanse the spiritual temple of each and every Christian’s heart.

Yes, the temple in Jerusalem has been destroyed. But, “do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you? If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy him. For God’s temple is holy, and you are that temple.” Through water the Holy Spirit entered into you, you who had previously been made a den of robbers, a hideout for that thief Satan, and you were cleansed, sanctified, made holy to the Lord! You are God’s temple.

“It is written, ‘My house shall be a house of prayer.’” Christians are to be temples of prayer; houses devoted to God in faith. Our hearts and minds are to be filled with God’s Word, since Jesus came to teach in the temple. Just as the temple was repeatedly defiled and cleansed through the scriptures, so are we continually going through the same process. 

We defile God’s temple when we continue in our sins. We defile this temple when we fill ourselves up with worldly treasures instead of God’s treasure of His Word. But the cleansing process is simple for us. Jesus was crucified and died, and through His suffering our filth is cleansed away. Because we daily sin much, and defile this temple, this cleansing washing of Christ’s crucifixion is delivered to us each day through the Word.

His Word and baptism. His Word and absolution. His Word and the Lord’s Supper. His Word is always a cleansing Word, once again restoring us to the true beauty He has planned for us and ultimately awaiting us in paradise. His word truly is that thing which makes for peace. 

However, if on the last day Christ returns and He finds us still defiled in our sins and our worldly passions, then the judgements of the Flood and the Destruction of Jerusalem are only a shadow of the destruction yet to come. 

We look around the world today at all of the death and destruction, Covid and Marxist tyrants are notably relevant for us at the moment. But there’s something worse than death and all of these miseries in this life, something that never garners attention in the news, something that we hardly even feel badly about; namely, living without faith in God.

There’s something greater at stake here in our world than sickness and death. God makes that evident when He destroys thousands and billions of people, who had already died eternally, in order to save a remnant unto eternity. Our Lord makes it plain that unbelief is far worse than temporal death when He takes up the mantle of suffering and death so as to deliver us the things that make for peace.

Let these things that make for peace not be hidden from our eyes! Rather, let Christ, the Prince of peace, and His ugly death be our peace. From a world of suffering and shame, from a world paved with a wide and easy road to everlasting destruction, let us know on this day the Christ and His death and resurrection which make for our eternal peace. 

Dear Christians, you who are God’s temple, do not be afraid of sickness nor death, not of tyrant nor Covid, not of war nor famine, only fear the Lord. Fear Him who draws near to His beloved temple, for there is a greater judgement coming and it’s greater than any before it.

From that judgement you faithful will be spared. Christ has already entered into you and begun to drive out the thieves and demons from your heart. He’s cleansed you every devil and sin, every spot and wrinkle, by scrubbing you clean with His blood. He cleanses you to this day with prayer, since you are a house of prayer. He cleanses you with His teaching, since this temple is filled with His Word. So let us, that faithful remnant, hang on His every word which cleanses us and delivers to us peace.