Grace, mercy and peace be to you from God our Father, and
from our Lord Jesus Christ.
Text: (Matthew
24:15-28)
For then
there will be great tribulation, such as has not been from the beginning of the
world until now, no, and never will be.
Prayer: Let
the words of my mouth and the meditation of our hearts be acceptable to you, O
Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.
The last three Sundays of the Church Year focus on the
last times, the judgment of the world and Christ’s return.
God’s judgment and the Last Day, which we call the Day of
Judgment, is something that many modern Christians simply don’t think about all
that much. Many Christians don’t believe in the Day of Judgment. And this is a
very, very dangerous thing in our church today.
Preparing the world for God’s judgment is the whole
mission of the church. It’s the only reason we’re basically here. A church that
doesn’t equip people with the truth that they need to hear concerning God’s
judgment is a church that is preaching a false message. People would be happy
and comfortable if Christianity were just a nice helpful myth, but in fact God
does his work in history and actually cares about our lives.
Every Sunday when we come to the Divine Service, we
present ourselves to God’s judgment. God’s living presence and his living
judgment go together. We begin our service with confession and absolution. We
confess our sin before God’s throne and before his judgment, and because of
Christ’s death and Christ’s blood, we receive God’s verdict of complete
forgiveness spoken over us through the pastor, just as if it were Christ
himself who spoke those words. In fact, it is Christ who speaks these words
through the pastor, because Jesus promises, “If you forgive anyone their sins,
they are forgiven.”
The whole purpose of Christ’s death was to present his holy
body and his precious blood before his Father’s judgment seat so that the
sentence and the punishment which we deserve against us would be removed and
cancelled and that we could enter God’s holy and living presence, clean and
pure, not because we see the cleanness and the purity in ourselves, but because
of Christ’s own purity, and because Christ himself died for us, in such a way
that our sins are no longer held against us and accounted to us before God’s
judgment.
Even when we come to the Lord’s Supper, we come to receive
Christ’s body and blood for the forgiveness of our sins. Christ comes to be our
forgiving judge. Martin Luther said: “When you come to the Lord’s Supper, come
to it as if you were going to your death, so that when you die, it will just
like going to the Lord’s Supper.” Christ comes into the world, into our own
church, Sunday after Sunday, not to condemn the world, but in order that the
world might be saved through him. This is what Christ does week after week and
day after day in his own church.
We have to understand this sort of thing if we are going
to make sense of our Gospel reading today.
Today Jesus is teaching us about the end of the Jewish
temple in Jerusalem, but also he is talking about the end of the world. He
speaks about the one thing and then the other.
First of all, he says:
So when you see the
abomination of desolation spoken of by the prophet Daniel, standing in the holy
place (let the reader understand), then let those who are in Judea flee to the
mountains. Let the one who is on the housetop not go down to take what is in
his house, and let the one who is in the field not turn back to take his cloak.
And alas for women who are pregnant and for those who are nursing infants in
those days! Pray that your flight may not be in winter or on a Sabbath.
Many Christians today don’t believe that the end of the
world is upon us and that we are living in the end times. But as Christians, we
have already been living in the end times ever since Jesus’ death,
resurrection, his ascension and the pouring out of the Holy Spirit on the day
of Pentecost.
The days of the Christian Church are always the days of
the end times. Christ has paid the one sufficient sacrifice for our sins, and
we are simply waiting now for his appearing at the end of the world.
On the day of Pentecost, St Peter preached on the words from
the prophet Joel which say: “In the last days, I will pour out my Spirit on all
flesh.” This is exactly what happened on the day of Pentecost. And the prophecy
says that this will happen “in the last days.”
On the other hand, there are all sort of crazy people
around today, who in the name of Christianity, want to predict the date of the
end of the world. When Jesus ascended into heaven, the apostles said, “Lord, will you at this time restore the
kingdom to Israel?” [Jesus] said to them, “It is not for you to know the times
or seasons that the Father has fixed by his own authority.”
Of course, we are living in the end times, and Christians
should always be living with the expectation that Christ may return at any time
and on any day. This should not be a reason for us to panic, but it should be a
great joy for us, because of the Christ’s promise to us of the forgiveness of
sins, his great love for us, and his power to save us.
Now, in the Gospel of John, Jesus speaks about himself as
the temple of God. For us, Jesus is a place where we meet together. He says:
“Abide in me, and I in you.” When we come together as a church, we don’t come
together to meet in a building, but we come to meet together in Christ himself.
All throughout the letters of St Paul, Paul says that the baptised people are
“in Christ”, and says that we were baptised “into Christ.” St Peter even says
that we are built as spiritual stones into a spiritual house, with Christ as
the cornerstone.
So you see that Jesus is our temple. Every Divine Service
begins with the words of Baptism: “In the name of the Father and of the Son and
of the Holy Spirit.” We gather within Christ our temple, where the Father
promises to dwell and where we receive the Holy Spirit.
So what about the Jewish temple, which was made with
stones and bricks? Jesus prophesies that it would be destroyed, and that a
great abomination would be set up in the sanctuary. This happened when the
Romans invaded Jerusalem in 40 AD and the Roman Caesar, Caligula, ordered for a
statue of himself to be placed in the sanctuary of the Jewish temple. Now this
man was a true tyrant and was known to indulge in ruthless killings and sex
parties. So in the most holy place of God’s temple in Jerusalem is set up the
exact opposite of holiness: a sinful man, a tyrant, inflamed by power and lust
and corruption.
But Jesus is the temple. So what does it matter too much
what happens to the old Jewish temple?
Well, if you read the book of Acts, you can see that in
the early days of the Christian Church, the apostles and disciples of Jesus
used to go and worship in the Jewish temple. But what happened is that the
high-priests forbade the apostles to preach in the name of Jesus. They even
locked the apostles up in prison. And so Peter preaches against them, and says:
“This Jesus is the stone that was
rejected by you, the builders, which has become the cornerstone.”
So you can see that the Church was kicked out from the
established Jewish religion, meaning that the two things became separated. You
can see here in history that Jesus Christ himself is exercising his judgment
through his church in such a way that leaves the Jewish temple abandoned. Still
until this day, the Jewish temple has been unable to be built.
The high-priests and such like thought that the temple
would always stand. Jeremiah, years before, had said, “Do not trust in these deceptive words: ‘This is the temple of the
Lord, the temple of the Lord’.”
And so Jesus says, after this abomination of desolation
spoken by the prophet Daniel, there will
be great tribulation, such as has not been from the beginning of the world
until now, no, and never will be.
Many people will look at the church and think that it is a
big joke. People aren’t going to church like they used to, to unbelievers the
church is obviously full of sinners and hypocrites, and then the church has
continuously compromised its beliefs time and time again, in such a way that
many Christians think that it doesn’t matter what you believe any more, as long
as you’re sincere about it.
But your good intentions won’t save you—only Christ’s good
intentions, his works, his death, his resurrection will save you.
Christ prophesies that the church is always going to be a
suffering church. Jesus never promised that the true church will always
necessarily be the largest church. Large numbers of people in church does not
necessarily mean that Jesus blesses the church. Jesus says: “Where two or three
are gathered in my name, there am I among them.”
In many situations, the church has been pushed out of old
institutions that have failed to be faithful to Christ’s pure and clear word,
and have pushed out the church from its midst, because they have replaced
Christ and his true living presence in the church with some other abomination.
At the time of the Reformation, the old established church forced out and
excommunicated those who were faithful to God’s word. And even today, faithful
Christians are being forced out of various old churches which have now become
unfaithful, hollow religious institutions.
Today, the great false teaching that is spreading in the
church is what is called “The Church Growth Movement.” This is basically a
teaching that says, the most important thing about a church is not what it says
or believes, but how many people are coming, how people feel, and how much
money is in the plate. And so churches see their mission as all about how to
entertain people. So Christians throw out Christ’s real gifts—his words, his
sacraments of Holy Baptism and the Lord’s Supper—and replace it all with things
that are seemingly attractive to the world. Now of course Christians love to
see their church grow, but just because people are attracted to a certain church,
doesn’t mean that they have been attracted to the crucified Jesus, or that the
Holy Spirit called them there. And then so-called experts make all sorts of
categories that judge whether certain churches are “healthy churches” or not.
Who cares about their judgment? What about Jesus’ own judgment? What about
faithfulness to Jesus? Has that ever mattered to people?
So many churches are just waiting for the latest expert to
write the latest book to come off the shelf so we can all mess around and fail
to implement their latest hair-brained idea in Christ’s own church. And that’s
not to mention false prophet after false prophet who claims to speak for God
himself, performing miracles and so-called “faith-healings” around the
back-blocks of towns and cities all throughout the world, calling upon everyone
to trust in them as God’s newest and latest Messiah, and to give
them all of their money. As Psalm 2 says: “He who sits in the heavens laughs.”
Right in the midst of God’s temple, even in Jesus’ name, the exact opposite it
set up—human efforts, human works, and the latest thrills and novelties.
Jesus in our Gospel reading says: “And if those days have not been cut short, no human being would be
saved. But for the sake of the elect those days will be cut short. Then if
anyone says to you, ‘Look, here is the Christ!’ or ‘There he is!’ do not
believe it. For false christs and false prophets will arise and perform great
signs and wonders, so as to lead astray, if possible, even the elect. See, I
have told you beforehand. So, if they say to you, ‘Look, he is in the
wilderness,’ do not go out. If they say, ‘Look, he is in the inner rooms,’ do
not believe it. For as the lightening comes from the east and shines as far as
the west, so will be the coming of the Son of Man. For where the corpse is,
there the vultures will gather.
We cannot be smug. We cannot afford to point to finger at
others and say that other churches are the ones with all the problems. We are
just as much at fault as any other.
But the church was never put here to make people feel
comfortable or smug or holier than other people. The Holy Bible is not even
there first of all to edify you, but to stand as a testimony to God’s truth.
Jesus himself says all sorts of things that could be misunderstood in the worst
way, like “If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother
and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be
my disciple.” Is Jesus teaching us to hate our parents? But it also doesn’t
seem to bother Jesus that his words could be misunderstood, and he doesn’t take
it as his fault when people do.
When God sent out the prophet Ezekiel, he told him ahead
of time that the people wouldn’t believe what he said, but that he should go
and prophecy anyway. He says: “The house of Israel will not be willing to
listen to you, for they are not willing to listen to me. Because all the house
of Israel have a hard forehead and a stubborn heart.”
But you see—God’s word still stands. People often don’t
take notice of Jesus’ words of judgment, but his words in our Gospel reading
today still stand. There will be people who call themselves Christians who are
always drawn away from the cross to glitz and glamour and the latest fad. But the
times of the church really are times of great
tribulation, and there will be many false
prophets, who will perform many miracles and wonders and draw large crowds
and build big churches, and Jesus says: “Do
not believe it.” Wherever the corpse
is, there the vultures will gather.
Friends, we are not gathered around a corpse like
vultures. We are gathered around a living master, a living Jesus. He is risen
from the dead, with the holes still in his hands and feet and side, and comes
and breathes his own Holy Spirit upon us, and forgives us our sins. He is
present here on earth, and we are also waiting for him. And so he forgives us
our sins, so that when we see him face to face, and he comes like lightening
stretching from the east to the west, we will not run from him, but to into his
loving arms.
Lord Jesus, lead us not into temptation but deliver us
from evil. Amen.
Lord God, our heavenly Father, bless us as we gather
around your Son, and let the fact that your Son is present here in the flesh be
the most important thing to us. Don’t let us be sidetracked by how many people
are here or not here, or how many people go to other churches, but let our
trust and hope be on your Word and your word alone. Sanctify us by the truth.
Your word is truth. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.
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