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+ + + In Nomine Jesu + + +
Please join me in prayer: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ. (Amen.)
A number of leaders of the modern State of Israel this past week called on the United States Congress to officially recognize the Jewish people’s historical and religious connection to the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. The Israeli leaders pointed out to the members of Congress that the Temple Mount was the place where both Solomon’s Temple stood until it was destroyed by the Babylonian empire and Herod the Great’s Temple stood until it was destroyed by the Roman empire, and the Israeli leaders claimed that, to the Temple Mount, the Jewish people have an “eternal and inalienable right”. (7INN.) The Israeli leaders’ claim is clearly false in light of both today’s Old Testament Reading (Jeremiah 26:8-15) and today’s Gospel Reading. In today’s Old Testament Reading, the prophet Jeremiah called the Jews of his day to repent or else face the desolation of Solomon’s Temple and the city of Jerusalem, and, in today’s Gospel Reading, Jesus similarly called the Jews of His day to repent or else face the forsaking of Herod the Great’s Temple, the city of Jerusalem, and arguably to some extent even the Jewish people themselves. Through both Readings, the prophetic voice of the Lord calls for us in our time to repent or else face losing the Lord’s presence among us, both now and for eternity. This morning, we consider primarily today’s Gospel Reading, directing our thoughts to theme, “The Prophetic Voice of the Lord and His House”.
Just before today’s Gospel Reading in St. Luke’s Divinely‑inspired Gospel account, Jesus was journeying through towns and villages, teaching and making a journey toward Jerusalem already (Luke 13:22-30). Jesus had answered someone’s question whether those who are saved would be few, by telling the crowd to strive to enter through the narrow door before it is too late, and Jesus seems to have indicated that Gentiles would join the patriarchs at table in the Kingdom of God but other Jews would not. Then, as we heard, at that very hour, some Pharisees told Jesus to go out and journey away from there, for the son of Herod the Great supposedly willed or wished to kill Jesus. That the Pharisees were trying to help Jesus is hard to accept, as is Herod’s willing to kill Jesus! Jesus told the Pharisees to tell Herod that Jesus would cast out demons and heal people day by day until He was completed. So, Jesus said that His journeying day by day to Jerusalem was Divinely necessary, for that a prophet die in connection with Jerusalem was fitting. And finally, Jesus “lamented” over Jerusalem, speaking of His having willed to gather together its people but the people’s not being willing to be gathered and so their suffering the consequences of their stubbornness.
By nature, we all are equally stubborn. We are turned away from and hostile to even God’s will to save us, deserving death here and now and torment in hell for eternity. Because of humankind’s fall into sin, our understanding and reason are blind. On our own, no matter our age or ability, we cannot understand, believe, accept, or assent to the Gospel of salvation, the forgiveness of sins by grace through faith in Jesus Christ. Our wills are so bound in sin that everything about our salvation, from beginning to end, is due to God’s graciously acting to save us. God provides “The Prophetic Voice of the Lord and His House” in order for us to be sorry for our sins and to be forgiven of our sins. Yet, working through His Word and Sacraments, God allows Himself to be resisted, with the result that some people are not sorry for their sins and are not forgiven of their sins. But, when we who are sorry trust God to forgive us for Jesus’s sake, then God does forgive us. God forgives our sinful nature and all our sin, whatever our sin might be.
As you probably know, Jesus eventually completed His journey to Jerusalem and there as prophesied He perished. Because of God’s love for even fallen humankind, Jesus was ready and willing to suffer a prophet’s “fate”. But, Jesus was no ordinary human prophet, He was the Son of God in human flesh, sent into the world in order that the world might be saved through Him (John 3:17). Not human beings such as the Pharisees or Herod but God determined the time and place of Jesus’s death. As St. Luke’s account uniquely reports, when Jesus was in Jerusalem, Herod had an opportunity to kill Jesus but did not kill Him (Luke 23:6‑16). Though Jesus was convicted by the Jewish religious leaders, He was sentenced by the Roman secular governor, and so Jesus was not stoned to death but crucified. As we sang in the Introit (Psalm 74:1-3; antiphon: Psalm 69:9), zeal for God’s house consumed Jesus (confer John 2:17 and Mark 11:18). But, as Jesus had prophesied, on the third day He was raised (Luke 9:22). He Himself is the eternal Temple, God’s presence among His people; they had destroyed it, but in three days He had raised it up (John 1:14; 2:18-22). Now, Jesus continues to will sincerely—and through His Word and Sacraments effectually call—all people, including us, to be saved.
God gives us evidence of His will to save us and works in order to save us through His Word and Sacraments. Here in His House, His Church, we find “The Prophetic Voice of the Lord” not only in His Word read and preached but in all of its forms. In Holy Baptism, God’s Word with water brings us into His Kingdom. In Holy Absolution, we who confess the sins that we know and feel in our hearts are forgiven by our pastor as by God Himself. And, in the Holy Supper, we eat bread that is the Body of Christ given for us, and we drink wine that is the Blood of Christ shed for us, and so we receive the forgiveness of sins and also life and salvation. In some sense already now we are at table in the Kingdom of God with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and all the prophets, as well as all others who have gone before us and will come after us in the faith. Yet, we look forward to an even greater appreciation of the joy and peace of the communion of saints in the eternal marriage supper of the Lamb (Revelation 19:9).
By His Word and Sacraments, God turns un‑willing people into willing people. He works through our new redeemed natures in order to will and to begin to do the good works of His Commandments according to our various callings in life, including our supporting the work of God’s Kingdom in this place with our first-fruit offerings of what God has entrusted to our use. At times, like St. Stephen and others after him, we have to speak against those who resist the Holy Spirit (Acts 7:51), and, like St. Stephen and others after him, we may be persecuted to the point of death. We in the United States barely hear of the Christians who recently were essentially martyred in places such as Nigeria and Syria, much less do we think that such things do or even could happen here. To be sure, as we are the Lord’s brood gathered together under His wings, He protects and delivers us, spares and rescues us (Isaiah 31:15). No matter what happens here and now, in the life to come we have the greatest physical and spiritual healing, with the resurrection of the body, if necessary, and its certain glorification. As today’s Epistle Reading reminded us, the Lord Jesus will transform our lowly bodies to be like His glorious body (Philippians 3:17-4:1). And, in the new heavenly Jerusalem, the Temple is the Lord God, the Almighty, and the Lamb (Revelation 21:22).
Since the fulfillment of Jeremiah’s and Jesus’s respective prophecies against Solomon’s Temple and Herod the Great’s Temple and the city of Jerusalem, there were several failed attempts to build a new Jewish Temple on the Temple Mount, before the Al-Aqsa Mosque was constructed there in the seventh century. In a 20‑18 speech in Jerusalem that has received renewed attention since his confirmation, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth said that there was no reason why the re‑establishment of the Temple on the Temple Mount is not possible and that it could happen. (Christian Post.) We do not share Hegseth’s wrong religious views about the need for another Temple; we honor “The Prophetic Voice of the Lord and His House” and trust Christ to abide with us, both now and forever.
Amen.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +