Jeremiah 7:1-11; Romans 9:30-10:4; St Luke 19:41-48
In the Name + of JESUS. Amen.
And when He drew near and saw the city, Jesus wept over Jerusalem. This is the second recorded instance of our Lord Jesus weeping. The other is at the tomb of His dear friend Lazarus, the brother of Mary and Martha, who had died. Jesus loved Lazarus. He weeps at his passing. God weeps at death. For it is not a part of life; not just another journey. Death is the very antithesis of life and the infectious result of the sickness of sin, inflicted upon the world by the devil, that enemy and hater of God, through Adam and Eve. All men die, even the very young, because all are commonly infected with sin and death, as you sing in the hymn.
More than that, Jesus weeps at the tomb of His friend Lazarus because of the unbelief of the people. He had just told them that He is the Resurrection and the Life and whoever lives and believes in Him shall live even though he dies. He is about to raise Lazarus from the dead! But still He weeps because the people do not believe.
He raised Lazarus in Bethany, a suburb of Jerusalem. The town lived in the shadow of the Temple. Jesus had come from Bethany, down the Mount of Olives, riding into Jerusalem atop a borrowed donkey, entering to shouts of praise; to joyous Hosannas. His ears are greeted with cries of peace in heaven and glory in the highest. But upon seeing the city, Jesus weeps 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.
He weeps on account of their unbelief. Our Lord Jesus weeps for those who would not have Him. He weeps for those who reject and ridicule Him. He weeps for those who refuse the Pax Domini that He enacts and trade it for the Pax Romana. A transaction that costs them their souls.
Jesus weeps for all the poor lost souls who do not, who will not, believe. He weeps. But He does more than that. He dies for them. He dies for those who reject Him. He sheds His Blood for those who cry for it in vengeance. He gives His life over to those who seek to destroy Him. But He is not a victim. He is not forced. He lays down His life willingly. No one takes it from Him. And He does it because He loves them.
He loves Jerusalem, the city that stoned the prophets and killed those sent to her. Would that you, even you, had known. He does not weep for what is to come. For His own suffering and death. But because this ancient, glorious, chosen city and her inhabitants, ought to have known. They had the protection of the Lord God. They had the Temple, the physical, geographic location of the glory of the Lord dwelling among His people. They had the sacrifices and the shedding of blood pointing to the coming Messiah. He has now come, but they refuse to see.
For they are like the people in Jeremiah’s day who enter the Temple to worship the Lord, but pay only lip service, all the while their hearts are far from Him. They trust in deceptive words, boasting of the glory of this place, but closing their ears to the preaching of the Word that calls them to amend their lives; to repent and change their ways. God weeps over their unbelief.
Are we any different? Have we not received our Lord with our lips, but our hearts are far from Him? Have we not boasted of the Church, her purity of doctrine, her rightness of practice, but trusting in deceptive words to no avail? Will you gossip, covet, lust, curse, compromise your confess and your ethics, justify your sins, and then come and stand before the Lord your God in this House which is called by His name, and say, We are delivered! - only to go on doing all these abominations?
Repent dear ones. Fear the Lord and His wrath against sin and unbelief. This is not a joke. In desperate love our Lord’s weeping over Jerusalem is a warning to us. Like the prophet Jeremiah before Him, Jesus weeps over the destruction of Jerusalem and the desecration of the Temple. He knows its coming. He knows what will happen. The devastation. The destruction. The terror and horror. Men at their most base, most grotesque. Worse than Charlottesville. Think Auschwitz, only in the 1st Century.
The siege of Jerusalem and the destruction of the Temple in AD 70 is a warning. God does not play around with sin. He is jealous for you. He fights for you. This is why Christ Jesus enters the Temple and clears it of the money changers and the dealers, of all the animals and the blatant merchandising. He clears out the Court of the Gentiles, that special place in the Temple campus where you can enter. He clears it out to make room for you and for all nations. As St Paul writes to the Romans concerning the ingrafting of the Gentiles who did not pursue righteousness but have attained it by faith.
It is the same for you. You do not earn a righteousness according to the Law, nor do you have it merely by pedigree or rote recitation of ceremonies, rituals, and rubrics. It is yours by faith in the promise of the One to whom all those blood sacrifices pointed. The Temple in Jerusalem is founded upon the Word and promise of the Lord God to send His Messiah who will take into Himself your sin and death and in exchange give you His righteousness and life as free gift through faith.
But it doesn’t stop there. Jesus drives out the oxen and sheep and doves because He is the Once for all Sacrifice, the very Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. He drives out the money changers because He will purchase and redeem you not with gold or silver, but with His holy precious blood and His innocent suffering and death. It is His bleeding and dying, His bloody death that makes for peace. He reconciles you to the Father and opens the way back to fellowship with Him through the curtain of His flesh, into the Holy of Holies.
For recall that upon His death the curtain in the Temple was torn in two from top to bottom. That is, from God to man. The way is open to the Ark and the Mercy Seat. According to Levitical code no one but the high priest could approach the Most Holy Place behind the curtain. Now, in Christ, your Great High Priest and Perfect Sacrifice, sprinkled clean with His blood, you are made priests by grace through faith and so have complete access; not only in the Court of the Gentiles, but all the way up to the Altar and the Ark.
This is why God allowed the Temple to be destroyed on account of the unbelief of the people; for Christ has come, the Temple made with our hands, and has broken down the hostility between God and man, Jew and Gentile, and has united them as one in His own Body on the Altar of the Cross. Beloved this is the holy visitation of which Jesus speaks. Jeremiah and Isaiah spoke of it as a devastating event, the terror of the final judgment. Well that wrath and judgment has been poured out upon Christ Jesus as your sin was imputed to Him. The Temple of His Body was torn to the ground in death. But it is raised up and you with Him. For as the Head goes, so the Body follows. Christ out of death and the grave, and you with Him.
Therefore that final day, the Day of Visitation foreshadowed in the destruction of the Temple, ought not terrify or surprise you. St Peter quoting the same Psalm as St Paul, says it this way: For it stands in Scripture:
“Behold, I am laying in Zion a stone,
a cornerstone chosen and precious,
and whoever believes in him will not be put to shame.”
So the honor is for you who believe, but for those who do not believe,
“The stone that the builders rejected
has become the cornerstone,”
and
“A stone of stumbling,
and a rock of offense.”
They stumble because they disobey the word, as they were destined to do.
But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. Once you were not a people, but now you are God's people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.
Beloved, I urge you as sojourners and exiles to abstain from the passions of the flesh, which wage war against your soul. Keep your conduct among the Gentiles honorable, so that when they speak against you as evildoers, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day of visitation (1 Peter 2:6-12).
Beloved, today in your midst you receive the holy visitation of your Lord Christ. He comes not in judgment or in fierce anger, but in mercy and in love. His Absolution is the verdict of the Last Day spoken and bestowed upon you in the present. The doors to His House are flung wide for you as He loves to hear and answer your prayer. Hang on His Words, for they are life. And come, you priests of the Lord, anointed in Holy Baptism, enter into the Holy of Holies and partake of the food of the Sacrifice; receive the visitation of Christ in His Body and Blood for the forgiveness of your sins, the strengthening of your faith, and your preservation in both body and soul unto life everlasting.
In the Name of the Father and + of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
In the Name + of JESUS. Amen.
And when He drew near and saw the city, Jesus wept over Jerusalem. This is the second recorded instance of our Lord Jesus weeping. The other is at the tomb of His dear friend Lazarus, the brother of Mary and Martha, who had died. Jesus loved Lazarus. He weeps at his passing. God weeps at death. For it is not a part of life; not just another journey. Death is the very antithesis of life and the infectious result of the sickness of sin, inflicted upon the world by the devil, that enemy and hater of God, through Adam and Eve. All men die, even the very young, because all are commonly infected with sin and death, as you sing in the hymn.
More than that, Jesus weeps at the tomb of His friend Lazarus because of the unbelief of the people. He had just told them that He is the Resurrection and the Life and whoever lives and believes in Him shall live even though he dies. He is about to raise Lazarus from the dead! But still He weeps because the people do not believe.
He raised Lazarus in Bethany, a suburb of Jerusalem. The town lived in the shadow of the Temple. Jesus had come from Bethany, down the Mount of Olives, riding into Jerusalem atop a borrowed donkey, entering to shouts of praise; to joyous Hosannas. His ears are greeted with cries of peace in heaven and glory in the highest. But upon seeing the city, Jesus weeps 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.
He weeps on account of their unbelief. Our Lord Jesus weeps for those who would not have Him. He weeps for those who reject and ridicule Him. He weeps for those who refuse the Pax Domini that He enacts and trade it for the Pax Romana. A transaction that costs them their souls.
Jesus weeps for all the poor lost souls who do not, who will not, believe. He weeps. But He does more than that. He dies for them. He dies for those who reject Him. He sheds His Blood for those who cry for it in vengeance. He gives His life over to those who seek to destroy Him. But He is not a victim. He is not forced. He lays down His life willingly. No one takes it from Him. And He does it because He loves them.
He loves Jerusalem, the city that stoned the prophets and killed those sent to her. Would that you, even you, had known. He does not weep for what is to come. For His own suffering and death. But because this ancient, glorious, chosen city and her inhabitants, ought to have known. They had the protection of the Lord God. They had the Temple, the physical, geographic location of the glory of the Lord dwelling among His people. They had the sacrifices and the shedding of blood pointing to the coming Messiah. He has now come, but they refuse to see.
For they are like the people in Jeremiah’s day who enter the Temple to worship the Lord, but pay only lip service, all the while their hearts are far from Him. They trust in deceptive words, boasting of the glory of this place, but closing their ears to the preaching of the Word that calls them to amend their lives; to repent and change their ways. God weeps over their unbelief.
Are we any different? Have we not received our Lord with our lips, but our hearts are far from Him? Have we not boasted of the Church, her purity of doctrine, her rightness of practice, but trusting in deceptive words to no avail? Will you gossip, covet, lust, curse, compromise your confess and your ethics, justify your sins, and then come and stand before the Lord your God in this House which is called by His name, and say, We are delivered! - only to go on doing all these abominations?
Repent dear ones. Fear the Lord and His wrath against sin and unbelief. This is not a joke. In desperate love our Lord’s weeping over Jerusalem is a warning to us. Like the prophet Jeremiah before Him, Jesus weeps over the destruction of Jerusalem and the desecration of the Temple. He knows its coming. He knows what will happen. The devastation. The destruction. The terror and horror. Men at their most base, most grotesque. Worse than Charlottesville. Think Auschwitz, only in the 1st Century.
The siege of Jerusalem and the destruction of the Temple in AD 70 is a warning. God does not play around with sin. He is jealous for you. He fights for you. This is why Christ Jesus enters the Temple and clears it of the money changers and the dealers, of all the animals and the blatant merchandising. He clears out the Court of the Gentiles, that special place in the Temple campus where you can enter. He clears it out to make room for you and for all nations. As St Paul writes to the Romans concerning the ingrafting of the Gentiles who did not pursue righteousness but have attained it by faith.
It is the same for you. You do not earn a righteousness according to the Law, nor do you have it merely by pedigree or rote recitation of ceremonies, rituals, and rubrics. It is yours by faith in the promise of the One to whom all those blood sacrifices pointed. The Temple in Jerusalem is founded upon the Word and promise of the Lord God to send His Messiah who will take into Himself your sin and death and in exchange give you His righteousness and life as free gift through faith.
But it doesn’t stop there. Jesus drives out the oxen and sheep and doves because He is the Once for all Sacrifice, the very Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. He drives out the money changers because He will purchase and redeem you not with gold or silver, but with His holy precious blood and His innocent suffering and death. It is His bleeding and dying, His bloody death that makes for peace. He reconciles you to the Father and opens the way back to fellowship with Him through the curtain of His flesh, into the Holy of Holies.
For recall that upon His death the curtain in the Temple was torn in two from top to bottom. That is, from God to man. The way is open to the Ark and the Mercy Seat. According to Levitical code no one but the high priest could approach the Most Holy Place behind the curtain. Now, in Christ, your Great High Priest and Perfect Sacrifice, sprinkled clean with His blood, you are made priests by grace through faith and so have complete access; not only in the Court of the Gentiles, but all the way up to the Altar and the Ark.
This is why God allowed the Temple to be destroyed on account of the unbelief of the people; for Christ has come, the Temple made with our hands, and has broken down the hostility between God and man, Jew and Gentile, and has united them as one in His own Body on the Altar of the Cross. Beloved this is the holy visitation of which Jesus speaks. Jeremiah and Isaiah spoke of it as a devastating event, the terror of the final judgment. Well that wrath and judgment has been poured out upon Christ Jesus as your sin was imputed to Him. The Temple of His Body was torn to the ground in death. But it is raised up and you with Him. For as the Head goes, so the Body follows. Christ out of death and the grave, and you with Him.
Therefore that final day, the Day of Visitation foreshadowed in the destruction of the Temple, ought not terrify or surprise you. St Peter quoting the same Psalm as St Paul, says it this way: For it stands in Scripture:
“Behold, I am laying in Zion a stone,
a cornerstone chosen and precious,
and whoever believes in him will not be put to shame.”
So the honor is for you who believe, but for those who do not believe,
“The stone that the builders rejected
has become the cornerstone,”
and
“A stone of stumbling,
and a rock of offense.”
They stumble because they disobey the word, as they were destined to do.
But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. Once you were not a people, but now you are God's people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.
Beloved, I urge you as sojourners and exiles to abstain from the passions of the flesh, which wage war against your soul. Keep your conduct among the Gentiles honorable, so that when they speak against you as evildoers, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day of visitation (1 Peter 2:6-12).
Beloved, today in your midst you receive the holy visitation of your Lord Christ. He comes not in judgment or in fierce anger, but in mercy and in love. His Absolution is the verdict of the Last Day spoken and bestowed upon you in the present. The doors to His House are flung wide for you as He loves to hear and answer your prayer. Hang on His Words, for they are life. And come, you priests of the Lord, anointed in Holy Baptism, enter into the Holy of Holies and partake of the food of the Sacrifice; receive the visitation of Christ in His Body and Blood for the forgiveness of your sins, the strengthening of your faith, and your preservation in both body and soul unto life everlasting.
In the Name of the Father and + of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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