Grace, mercy and peace be to you from God our Father, and from our Lord Jesus Christ.
Text: (Luke 19:41-48)
And [Jesus] was teaching daily in the temple.
Prayer: Heavenly Father, we come to you in boldness and confidence as your dear children, calling on you, our dear Father. Let your Word be taught in its truth and purity, and help us to lead holy lives according to it, through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Our Gospel reading today has three parts to it: first of all, Jesus weeps over the city of Jerusalem and threatens its destruction. Secondly, Jesus drives out the traders from the temple. And thirdly, he teaches in the temple daily and the priests and scribes seek to destroy him.
And it’s strange: These three different things don’t seem to have much connection with each other, but in actual fact they are very strongly linked.
So let’s take our text for today one piece at a time.
We read: When [Jesus] 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! But now they are hidden from your eyes. For the days will come upon you, when your enemies will set up barricades 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.”
Jesus is drawing near to the city, on Palm Sunday. Immediately before our reading today, we read about Jesus coming towards the city on the donkey. Already before he entered the actual city itself, he had gathered a large crowd of followers. And so as he is riding along on the donkey and coming towards the city, we read: “He wept over it.” And then he speaks a prophesy of judgment about the destruction of Jerusalem.
This is very similar to when John the Baptist was in the wilderness. He said: “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” Here, in our reading today, the call goes out to the whole city of Jerusalem: “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” Many people thought that the outward city of Jerusalem itself was the location of God’s kingdom of heaven on earth. And it was the place where God promised to come and reside in the temple among his people. People could come to the temple, present offerings, and have access to God.
But the kingdom of heaven is not actually these outward things. The kingdom of heaven is righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit, as St Paul says in Romans 14. And when Jesus rides into Jerusalem on the donkey, he has come to bring the kingdom of God there: not to be enthroned in the city of Jerusalem itself, but to be enthroned in the hearts of those who believe in him. Jesus is entering the city to bring the righteousness which comes through his sacrificial death. Jesus in entering the city to bring the peace which comes through his blood on the cross. Jesus is entering the city to bring joy which comes from the boldness and confidence which we have through him in praying for the world to the Father.
And so Jesus enters the city of Jerusalem to bring the kingdom of God: righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit. And we read later on in the gospels that he is tried and sentenced in the city of Jerusalem, he does pour out the Holy Spirit on his disciples in the city of Jerusalem.
But John the Baptist doesn’t weep—but Jesus does weep. You see, he gave the city of Jerusalem to King David all those many years ago, before his incarnation, before he took on flesh from the Virgin Mary. Jesus Christ, the second person of the Trinity, was there in the beginning with God, and he was God. And so, Jesus Christ himself spoke through the prophets by the Holy Spirit all those many years ago when the city of Jerusalem was founded. So you can see the city of Jerusalem was close to Jesus’ heart. Even when Jesus was a little boy, his parents found him in the temple talking to the rabbis. And Jesus says: “Why were you looking for me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?”
Jesus enjoyed being there in the temple, in the city of Jerusalem, and now as he enters the city, he perceives the hardness of the people’s hearts there in receiving him as their king, who will bring them the kingdom of the Holy Spirit. And so he speaks a prophecy against it. He says: “Would that you, even you, had known on this day the things that make for peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes.”
You see, there are two kingdoms: there is the kingdom of the world, of temporal things, of government, of politics, of money and possessions, of mammon, and there is the kingdom of the word of God, of eternal things, of the church, of the Holy Spirit, of the mysteries and sacraments of God. God is king over both kingdoms and both kingdoms are necessary, but they must not interfere with each other. In the history of our church, we often say that God rules the kingdom of temporal things with his left hand, and the kingdom of eternal things with his right hand.
The world has no authority to interfere with the church. It must allow the church and the kingdom of God to flourish freely. If the world tries to surpress and hinder the free course of God’s Word, then it is acting outside of its authority. For example, the worldly government has no authority to require Christian clergy to marry gay couples. It also has no authority to legalise the murder of human beings, including unborn babies and giving lethal injections to sick people. The Word of God allows the state to punish criminals with corporal punishments, but unborn babies and sick people are not criminals. The state has no authority to tell the church who it can and can’t ordain as a pastors, and it also can’t tell pastors of the church what they can and can’t preach—as is the case with vilification laws.
But also, the church has no authority except for the Word of God. Everything it does and says must be done with the command or allowance of the Word of God. It must not use force to do anything, but must let the Word of God have free power. Luther understood this well at the time of the Reformation. Many people see Luther as a revolutionary, but this is completely untrue. He never incited a revolution against the state or against the Roman Catholic Church, for that matter. All he ever did was preach—and preaching the word of God in its truth and purity is always the only way a reformation in the church can take place. Of course, this takes great patience. During Luther’s life, one of his colleagues, named Carlstadt, became fanatical when Luther was in hiding, and he threw all the statues and things out of the churches. This is the same as when European missionaries went and destroyed the idols of pagan people. When Luther came out of hiding, and realised what a mess his friend had made, he criticised this very strongly. He said that the statues shouldn’t be thrown out just because some people misuse them. He said, “Just because some people worship the sun, the moon and the stars, doesn’t mean we go and pluck them out of the sky.” Instead, he said, we should preach against the idols, and the idols will fall down by themselves.
This is the same with the missionaries: preach against the idols, and let the people themselves destroy them when they realise their sin. Then nothing is done by force, and it requires great patience—sometimes years of patience—on the part of the missionary.
And so, Jesus threatens the destruction of Jerusalem. He preaches against the city’s idols. And threatens to destroy the city. He says: “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.”
We have to keep in mind here that God never promises punishment: he only threatens it. Also, God never threatens to forgive us our sins, he only promises it. If people repent, then there’s no reason why God can’t change his mind. Remember when Abraham went and argued with God and bargained with him. Jonah also went into Nineveh and said, “40 days and Nineveh will be destroyed!” But then we read that the people repented and it says: “When God saw what they did, how they turned from their evil way, God relented from the disaster that he said he would do to them, and he did not do it.”
So God is gracious and merciful. Even though he threatens to punish, he doesn’t always carry it through if he doesn’t want to, and when there is repentance.
But then there’s the temptation to say: “He doesn’t really mean it. He won’t really destroy the city. It won’t really happen.” But that attitude is not repentance. The only reason why Jesus didn’t destroy the temple straight away was because he gave them an opportunity to repent. When we don’t take God’s threats seriously, then we start to hear the evil serpent’s voice: “Did God really say, “You shall not eat of any tree in the garden”?”. Temptation, and hardness of heart begins when we try to avoid the exact words of God in their truth and purity, in their simplicity and in their clarity.
So what does Jesus do when he enters the city: He casts out the traders. He drives them out with whips. He loves his Father’s house, he himself gave the house to the people and he won’t tolerate anyone erecting golden calves there. He says: “It is written, ‘My house shall be a house of prayer,’ but you have made it a den of robbers.” In John’s gospel we read that Jesus says, “You have made it a house of trade.”
And with these words and with this action, Jesus bans all fundraising in the church and all actions of the church where it gathers money for itself. The temple was God’s gift to the people, and he promises to keep it open as long as he deems fit. All the fundraising in the world won’t prevent the foreign invaders from Rome squashing the temple flat in the year 70 AD. All the trading in the world won’t prevent the temple curtain being ripped in two at the precise moment that Jesus died.
And people may have complained to Jesus at the time and said, “We’re doing this for the right reasons.” “We’re promoting your work.” “We’re serving God through this.” But Jesus has got no time for pretexts: the more the people speak their pretexts to him, the more the people feel Jesus’ whips.
Instead, contributions must be made to the temple as free-will offerings and donations, from a glad and cheerful heart, and from nothing else. Remember the widow who put in her last few coins. Jesus gives to his church all the money it needs at a particular time in history, and the church never has any need (or any right) to covet the houses of unbelievers.
Arthur Carl Piepkorn, a professor at the Lutheran seminary in St Louis, Missouri, who died in the 1970s, once wrote: “The life of God in the parish implies an end of commercialism in the financial affairs of the parish. If we cook, it will be for the hungry; if we sew, it will be for the needy; if we collect clothes, it will be for the ill-clad; if we eat, it will be for the joy of being together as children of God and not to raise funds for Him who is the Creator and Owner of the world’s wealth. The kingdom of God is not buying one another’s pies, but in being faithful stewards of the gifts with which God has bountifully endowed even the poorest. The problem of parish finance is not getting into people’s purses, but of getting God into people’s hearts.”
And so now, what does Jesus do, now that he has unleashed his whips on the traders? We read: “He was teaching daily in the temple. The chief priests and the scribes and the principal men of the people were seeking to destroy him, but they did not find anything they could do, for all the people were hanging on his words.”
Do you see? He teaches. He speaks his words of comfort. He encourages the people. He strengthens them. He gives them the boldness and confidence to pray to God as their heavenly Father. He speaks the word of God to them in its truth and purity. He teaches them the forgiveness of their sins. He teaches them about baptism and the Lord’s Supper.
He warns them against the worship of mammon and building their spirituality up around money-making. He teaches them about godliness, about the kingdom of God. He speaks the kingdom of God into them through the Holy Spirit right into the centre of the hearts, and he teaches them about the power that comes from godliness, the great gain that comes through godliness. He teaches them that he is the creator of the world and that he has come to redeem them. He sings the psalms together with them. He points to his suffering and death and his resurrection.
He creates all things new, simply by speaking his word.
And then the separation begins: there are those who listen to him, and then there are the chief priests and the leaders of the people who seek to destroy him.
There are those who repent at Jesus’ threat of punishment.
And there are those who seek to kill him.
Those who repent are eventually persecuted and thrown out of the city of Jerusalem into nations throughout the Gentile world, while the politicians, the money-makers, the false teachers are left to endure the mighty punishing sword of the angel of God, through the hands of the Romans.
And to this day, the old temple of Jerusalem still stands destroyed with a Muslim mosque built on top of it.
The kingdom of God is the teaching church. Where the church doesn’t teach the true and clear words and works of Jesus, the church dies, and the kingdom of mammon is destroyed by God’s grace so that its lies can no longer be promoted in God’s name.
And we might think that there are all sorts of churches around the place that don’t teach that are flourishing well enough? Many Australian churches have done fundraising and they are still standing.
Well—the threat still looms over their heads.
The old Presbyterian Church and the old Methodist Church decided to stop teaching the word of God and join into one political financial institution called the Uniting Church, and now the Presbyterian Church in Traralgon has been turned into a restaurant and the Methodist Church in Warragul has been turned into an art gallery, standing as a testimony to the truth of Jesus’ prophecy.
Churches are being laid bare and laid waste all throughout the country because they have stopped teaching Jesus’ words and become financial institutions.
The Lutheran Church in Germany united into one financial institution with false churches in the 1830s, and now we can see all the old Lutheran lands throughout Europe gutted of parishioners, and the empty church buildings only still standing because of a government tax that so-called “Evangelicals” begrudgingly pay. These buildings are still standing by the mercy of God as a testimony of the sword of God’s angel that has been unleashed upon false doctrine and mammon-worship.
Yes, many big-wigs and so-called “bishops” and church leaders are still trying to kill Jesus, ruling the church with dodgy politics, and persecuting faithful pastors and all those who hear the word of God, all in the name of keeping churches open, “keeping the peace”, and preserving their kingdom of mammon.
And so Jesus says: Would that you, even you, had known on this day the things that make for peace!
His pure and clear word, his holy gospel, his wonderful, precious sacraments make for peace. His blood makes for peace. His body given for us makes for peace. And when the word of God is preached in purity and believed in simplicity, the angels rejoice over the sinners who repent and sing: “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among those with whom he is pleased.”
Amen.
Lord God, heavenly Father, let us take to heart the clear, simple words of Jesus and build our lives on this solid rock. Let our idols fall down in the presence of your Son Jesus Christ, and encourage us with his words of forgiveness, in whose name we pray. Amen.
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