August 28, 2011: Jeremiah 8:4-12, Psalm 92, Romans 9:30-10:4, Luke 19:41-48
“And when He drew near and saw the city, He wept over it, saying, ‘Would that you, even you, had known on this day the things that make for peace!’” Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, Amen.
Christ Jesus, Luther says, uses two ways to preach of those who neglect and abuse the Word of God. That on the one hand, Christ uses threats and warnings, such as He did to the Pharisees, calling them hypocrites and brood of vipers and other such terms. But on the other, as He does here today in Luke, Christ preaches to a world through His weeping over them, showing His sympathy in their blindness of missing God’s Word of what He was doing in the world over their own ideas of what God should be doing according to their understanding.
But don’t let the weeping of Jesus today wash away the fact that His are tears are still of a righteous indignation here-He is sorrowful in the most gravest of terms. For He knows that Jerusalem, and finally Israel’s, destruction at the hands of the Romans in 70 AD (roughly 40 years from his speaking), would result from the refusal to truly hear and receive the Word of God-the Word which declared that He, Jesus, was the very Son of God, given to take away the sins of the world. He is regretful that the people of God, those whom Paul spoke of having stumbled over the Stone laid in Zion, would not receive Him as their salvation; that they would not recognize the time of their visitation by God to bring them His peace.
And this then also explains Jesus’ next move to the Temple-the locus of worship for the Jewish people-and to cleanse it, to clear it out of everything which distracts one from the true desire of God. For in their turning it into a “den of robbers,” as Jesus calls it today, they had taken what their sacrifices to God were to mean, and turned it into nothing more than a common street meat market. That they had forgotten why they were offering up to God their animals by focusing on the buying and selling of the animals themselves. They had, in the words of the Psalmist, exchanged the wisdom of God for a foolishness of their own thoughts and desires.
Thus, as Jesus so wept and work over and in Jerusalem, He reminded them just what the wrath and anger of God, spoke of in Jeremiah, finally looks like. That just as Israel had once forgotten their first love for the allurement of idols and so were exiled to Babylon during Jeremiah’s life, so once again, Jesus said, would Israel and finally all the world, suffer the result of rejecting God, and the One He gives, for their eternal salvation. And Paul succinctly summarizes this lament over the fact that the Gentiles were being saved because of their faith in Christ, while his Jews were still lost in their sins over their rejection of God’s righteousness.
Which is why it is so crucial for even you to hear this Word of God and so believe it with everything you have. For what does one receive who seek and follow their own thoughts, ideas and desires? God says in Jeremiah that when one says, “Peace, peace,” where there is no peace, they are placing themselves outside of God’s Truth and Word. For it is arrogance to believe that God still no longer acts as He has in the past. Do you not believe that the trial and travails that we suffer from are not the judgment of God upon a world lost in itself? Do you not understand that, as Paul wrote previously in Romans 8, the creation groans with storms and earthquakes under the tribulation of God toward sin? And do you not see that the death we all fear and will undergo, is because God’s wrath is poured out toward sin in that His beloved creation is doomed to destruction at the hands of our rebellion?
But yet, Paul attests, Christ Jesus is the end of the law which always accuses and the beginning of a righteousness which forgives, saves and redeems. Thus, if you take leave of yourself, turn to God and hold onto His Word as your life, so you will find the very heart of the Father given in Christ Jesus the Son for the redemption of your body, life and soul. That it is here-where God’s Word is preached and taught in it’s truth and purity; where God comes and makes you His very child in the waters of baptism; where your Savior gives of His very body and blood in the bread and wine of the Supper-in which you find the very reason for the tears Christ once shed over Jerusalem.
For, Christ wept over Jerusalem and cleansed the Temple because this was the very week in which the Father’s will would be revealed as He would be hung between the two thieves on Calvary. His lament came precisely because He knew that His death and resurrection would bring an end to Israel’s, and all people’s, captivity to the eternal exile-the exile to the slavery to sin, death and the power of the devil. His indignation over the corruption of His people’s worship was simply built upon His Word that only by faith in Him and His crucifixion, could the world be saved from death, hell and damnation.
And so, Jesus did and still does call a world to repentance to bring about the forgiveness of sins-and the sign of such a thing will soon fill your ears and your mouth with the Body and Blood that was broken and given for you. That He gave up of His life so that you no longer must follow the understandings of this world, but to now live planted and rooted, as the Psalmist sung, in the house of the Lord, flourishing in His courts of righteousness. That He was given to suffer the very wrath and curse of the Father, all so that you might know that regardless of what you and this world might suffer under, there is a time to come, and it is happening even this day, in which all will be created anew for the glory of God the Father.
Thus, learn to hang upon every word which falls from your Redeemer’s mouth this day, and so be forgiven of your sins and be given the promise that you will one day rise triumphant over your death. Know that in Christ, the visitation of God’s eternal grace, love and mercy has come near and now peace-true, heavenly peace-is found only where Christ and all His glory abide. Believe that in this One, given and destroyed upon the cross, was there killing and redeeming you from your sin, all so that you might be brought close to Him and the Father, all in the power of the Holy Spirit, both now and forever. Amen.
Christ Jesus, Luther says, uses two ways to preach of those who neglect and abuse the Word of God. That on the one hand, Christ uses threats and warnings, such as He did to the Pharisees, calling them hypocrites and brood of vipers and other such terms. But on the other, as He does here today in Luke, Christ preaches to a world through His weeping over them, showing His sympathy in their blindness of missing God’s Word of what He was doing in the world over their own ideas of what God should be doing according to their understanding.
But don’t let the weeping of Jesus today wash away the fact that His are tears are still of a righteous indignation here-He is sorrowful in the most gravest of terms. For He knows that Jerusalem, and finally Israel’s, destruction at the hands of the Romans in 70 AD (roughly 40 years from his speaking), would result from the refusal to truly hear and receive the Word of God-the Word which declared that He, Jesus, was the very Son of God, given to take away the sins of the world. He is regretful that the people of God, those whom Paul spoke of having stumbled over the Stone laid in Zion, would not receive Him as their salvation; that they would not recognize the time of their visitation by God to bring them His peace.
And this then also explains Jesus’ next move to the Temple-the locus of worship for the Jewish people-and to cleanse it, to clear it out of everything which distracts one from the true desire of God. For in their turning it into a “den of robbers,” as Jesus calls it today, they had taken what their sacrifices to God were to mean, and turned it into nothing more than a common street meat market. That they had forgotten why they were offering up to God their animals by focusing on the buying and selling of the animals themselves. They had, in the words of the Psalmist, exchanged the wisdom of God for a foolishness of their own thoughts and desires.
Thus, as Jesus so wept and work over and in Jerusalem, He reminded them just what the wrath and anger of God, spoke of in Jeremiah, finally looks like. That just as Israel had once forgotten their first love for the allurement of idols and so were exiled to Babylon during Jeremiah’s life, so once again, Jesus said, would Israel and finally all the world, suffer the result of rejecting God, and the One He gives, for their eternal salvation. And Paul succinctly summarizes this lament over the fact that the Gentiles were being saved because of their faith in Christ, while his Jews were still lost in their sins over their rejection of God’s righteousness.
Which is why it is so crucial for even you to hear this Word of God and so believe it with everything you have. For what does one receive who seek and follow their own thoughts, ideas and desires? God says in Jeremiah that when one says, “Peace, peace,” where there is no peace, they are placing themselves outside of God’s Truth and Word. For it is arrogance to believe that God still no longer acts as He has in the past. Do you not believe that the trial and travails that we suffer from are not the judgment of God upon a world lost in itself? Do you not understand that, as Paul wrote previously in Romans 8, the creation groans with storms and earthquakes under the tribulation of God toward sin? And do you not see that the death we all fear and will undergo, is because God’s wrath is poured out toward sin in that His beloved creation is doomed to destruction at the hands of our rebellion?
But yet, Paul attests, Christ Jesus is the end of the law which always accuses and the beginning of a righteousness which forgives, saves and redeems. Thus, if you take leave of yourself, turn to God and hold onto His Word as your life, so you will find the very heart of the Father given in Christ Jesus the Son for the redemption of your body, life and soul. That it is here-where God’s Word is preached and taught in it’s truth and purity; where God comes and makes you His very child in the waters of baptism; where your Savior gives of His very body and blood in the bread and wine of the Supper-in which you find the very reason for the tears Christ once shed over Jerusalem.
For, Christ wept over Jerusalem and cleansed the Temple because this was the very week in which the Father’s will would be revealed as He would be hung between the two thieves on Calvary. His lament came precisely because He knew that His death and resurrection would bring an end to Israel’s, and all people’s, captivity to the eternal exile-the exile to the slavery to sin, death and the power of the devil. His indignation over the corruption of His people’s worship was simply built upon His Word that only by faith in Him and His crucifixion, could the world be saved from death, hell and damnation.
And so, Jesus did and still does call a world to repentance to bring about the forgiveness of sins-and the sign of such a thing will soon fill your ears and your mouth with the Body and Blood that was broken and given for you. That He gave up of His life so that you no longer must follow the understandings of this world, but to now live planted and rooted, as the Psalmist sung, in the house of the Lord, flourishing in His courts of righteousness. That He was given to suffer the very wrath and curse of the Father, all so that you might know that regardless of what you and this world might suffer under, there is a time to come, and it is happening even this day, in which all will be created anew for the glory of God the Father.
Thus, learn to hang upon every word which falls from your Redeemer’s mouth this day, and so be forgiven of your sins and be given the promise that you will one day rise triumphant over your death. Know that in Christ, the visitation of God’s eternal grace, love and mercy has come near and now peace-true, heavenly peace-is found only where Christ and all His glory abide. Believe that in this One, given and destroyed upon the cross, was there killing and redeeming you from your sin, all so that you might be brought close to Him and the Father, all in the power of the Holy Spirit, both now and forever. Amen.
posted by Weekly sermons at 9:10 AM
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