Trinity 10
Dear friends in Christ. How often have you heard people saying things like: if only I knew there was a God; or, if only somehow God would show Himself to me, or any other similar thought. The idea is that somehow God is hidden, unknown and unreachable. So what does that mean? —That God is some sort of mean ogre who messes with us and makes Himself inaccessible to us and then sits in judgment over us. But that is the last thing that God is and does! He has done just the opposite. Not only did God leave His fingerprints all over the creation to reveal something of Himself there, but He also wrote on our hearts that He is so that we would then seek Him out. Not only did He leave it at that, but from the beginning He is intimately involved in the world in a most wonderful way—as the apostle puts it [Heb. 1.1-2]: Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets—God revealed Himself in word and deed to the people so that there would be no mistaking that there is one true God and who He is, the holy Triune God. But then in grace upon grace, not only did God reveal Himself through the OT prophets, but He Himself—the Second Person of the Holy Trinity, the Son—came to this earth, as the apostle continues saying: but in these last days He has spoken to us by His Son. Jesus Christ is the fullest and best revelation of God because Jesus is God—to have seen and known Christ is to have seen and known the Father, as Jesus tells the disciples [Jn. 14.9]: Whoever has seen Me has seen the Father.
Long story short, if you want to know God, if you want to know what God is like, look at Christ because He is God. And where do we find out about Christ? —in the pages of Holy Scripture, from the Spirit inspired words of the apostles.
1. And what do we read in our text: And 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. With His tears, His sobs, Jesus calls us to repentance. We see His earnest desire that people recognize and repent of their sin. Here we see the truth of what God says through the OT prophet, Ezekiel, fleshed out: ’As I live,’ says the Lord God, ‘I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from his way and live. Turn, turn from your evil ways’.
Do we want to know what God thinks of us and our sin? Not only do we have his word telling us that He has no delight in punishing the sinner—He has no sadistic pleasure in it; He doesn’t create people so He can later take joy in tormenting them in hell—but we have Him actually sobbing because people continue on in their sin, unrepentant, and are earning for themselves damnation in hell. Jesus’ tears drive home to us the point that our sin is a serious matter, that sin is an affront to the holiness and righteousness of God and must be punished. But that is something that brings God great sorrow.
The fact that Jesus weeps over people’s impenitence shows both that sin is a serious matter and that God will punish that unrepented sin and that punishment is severe. If sin were no big deal or if God were not really serious about punishing sin, then He wouldn’t have wept. So, yes, Jesus’ tears call us to repentance by showing us how serious they are and that even though God has no joy in punishing us, it is something that He, a holy God, will have to do.
But precisely because our sin is a serious matter and God has no delight in punishing us, that’s why He gave us the way out/ rescue/ deliverance from sin. That’s why He sent His Son to the earth to become also true man and in our place keep the holy law of God, obey for us all of God’s commandments; that’s why Jesus was charged with all of our sins and went to the cross to pay for the sins of all. By keeping the law of God for us and giving God the holiness/ righteousness that He demands of us and by paying with His suffering and death for our sins and enduring all of God’s righteous wrath over our sin being poured out on Him, we have rescue from sin. The holiness God demands of us that we can’t do, Jesus did for us; the wrath of God over sin has been stilled, being poured out on Jesus instead of us. Now, in Christ, we poor sinners are reconciled to God.
Here, let Jesus’ tears move us to recognize our sin and its severity, and to see that He is our rescue from sin and that He wants to give us rescue from our sin. Think back to Jesus’ words of lament over Jerusalem: Would that you, even you, had known on this day the things that make for peace! Jesus’/ God’s desire was that they would have heard the word/ preaching of Christ and received it with a believing heart. But what happened? Most rejected Jesus; most rejected the divinely appointed way of salvation. Most rejected Jesus, the very God, as He came and preached in their midst and confirmed that message with the miracles.
What does this mean? It means that even though God seeks out our salvation, even though God offers us grace, people more often than not reject it. Would that you, even you, had known on this day the things that make for peace! But why do people not realize what makes for their peace and salvation? But now they are hidden from your eyes. It’s not like Jesus and His work were foreign to the people of Jerusalem. Remember: they heard Him preach; they saw His miracles. But the things that make for peace were hidden from [their] eyes—not because God hid them; after all, He proclaimed them in His OT word; He sent His Son to them who preached and brought these things about. Rather their own unbelief hid from them that Jesus is the long-promised Savior; that in Him there is peace and reconciliation with God.
Jesus’ tears here call us to repentance because they teach us that God’s grace can be rejected. And when His grace, Christ’s word and work, are rejected then there is no help or hope. The only way of rescue and deliverance from sin is gone and that means only damnation awaits. If Jesus had not wept over Jerusalem perhaps there would be some other way back to God. But there isn’t and He, in love and pity, wept over the final fate that would happen to Jerusalem in a mere 40 years and the eternal damnation of those who rejected Him.
Because the Lord’s grace can be rejected now, let each of us examine our hearts and lives to make sure that we are recognizing the Lord’s coming to us in grace now and that we are receiving it. That’s why we daily examine our hearts and lives in the mirror of God’s holy Law to recognize our sin. The more that we recognize our sin, the more we recognize our need for a Savior from that sin. Let us see, with the eyes of faith, Christ lamenting over us and our sin; but then let us run to Him in faith, recognizing Him as our Savior from sin and as giving us peace with God, the forgiveness of sins, eternal life, etc. This is the main part of confession—faith receiving the forgiveness of sins from Christ. We do so as we believe the words of the absolution…; we do so as we cling to our baptism and daily reclaim the gifts God gave us in our baptism, and, here being strengthened by His Holy Spirit, we fight all the more against sin; we receive the forgiveness of sins from Christ in the Blessed Sacrament as we eat and drink His very body and blood which were given and shed to bring this peace between God and man.
When Jesus comes to us in His holy word and sacrament, let us rejoice and make full use of His gracious visitation, receiving Him and His gracious gifts. Through the word and sacrament alone does the Spirit create and preserve faith. Jesus’ tears over Jerusalem teach us both the seriousness of our sin and His desire to save us!
2. Jesus’ main purpose in coming was not to bring judgment. Scripture is clear on that. The holy evangelist writes [John 3.17, 18]: For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through Him. But there is a consequence of rejecting Him who came to save, as the evangelist continues: Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God. How clearly we see this in our text. If Jesus’ main purpose in coming was to condemn the world, how quickly He would have destroyed Jerusalem here. Instead, He weeps over those very ones who reject and condemn Him. Not only does He not condemn/ destroy then and there, but He shows grace as He goes into the temple, cleanses it—by this stern preaching of the Law showing the people their sin and that by this cleansing of the temple showing that He is their long awaited Savior. Not only does He cleanse it, but, as 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. Jesus was again preaching so that through His word people might be brought to faith. Not only did He preach these few days of Holy Week but also through His apostles and their successors His word sounded in Jerusalem and beyond. He came in grace—but when the time of grace comes to an end He has to come in judgment.
Although when our Lord comes in grace, seeking out our salvation He can be rejected, His coming in judgment and punishment cannot. It will come. That’s why His tears over the unrepentant Jerusalem. 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.” In other words, our Lord’s fiery zeal also calls us to repentance.
We dare never emphasize one characteristic/ quality of our Lord over another. That’s why our text is so vital. The first half is His lament over Jerusalem. But we dare never emphasize that so that we come out saying that in the end God will save all people, regardless, because He is too loving to condemn anyone.
That’s why the threatened punishment and cleansing of the temple. Against those fire and brimstone sort of Christians who think only of God punishing, as if He takes delight in it, we see Christ weeping over Jerusalem and its rejection of Him and consequent destruction.
This is nothing other than applying the Law and the Gospel. This is the vital thing in our lives as Christians. When our conscience accuses us of sin/ bothers us, we dare never think that God is our enemy and out to get us and there is no help for us. Instead, we look to Christ and there see Him weeping over Jerusalem’s rejection; there let us see how earnestly He wants us sinners to repent; there we run to Christ the Savior of sinners! On the other hand, if we don’t feel our sin, aren’t bothered by our sin, thinking they are no big deal because “Christ will forgive that one too;” think we can live any way we want because “after all I’m baptized and my passport to heaven is stamped” let us see Christ in the temple: And he entered the temple and began to drive out those who sold, saying to them, “It is written, ‘My house shall be a house of prayer,’ but you have made it a den of robbers.” Let us then see that our Christian faith, the Church, is not a refuge for sinners to come to be safe with their sin. Instead, Christ’s fiery zeal calls us to repentance as His coming to us “throws our life around” leading us to hate sin and fight against it and by the power of the Holy Spirit, strengthened by word and Sacrament, to live a life more and more in accord with God’s holy will. Jesus calls us to repentance and faith both by His tears and His fiery zeal; He is a holy and righteous God and a gracious and merciful God. INJ Amen.