Trinity 10
Dear friends in Christ. In our catechism review in church we are now going through the Lord’s Prayer and Luther’s explanation of each of the petitions. What we are discovered from Luther’s explanations of the Second Petition last week—Thy Kingdom come—and as we will discover today in the Third Petition—Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven—is that the Lord’s Prayer has a very strong emphasis on missions and mission work.
Last week we heard that God’s kingdom comes when our heavenly Father gives us His Holy Spirit, so that by His grace we believe his holy Word and lead godly lives here in time and there in eternity. We are praying that God would continue to give us His Holy Spirit who created faith in Him in our hearts in the first place and who now strengthens and keeps us in the faith, for without the Holy Spirit we wouldn’t remain a Christian for a second; and we are praying that the Lord would bring many others into His Church and even use us as His instruments in doing so.
Today’s catechism section teaches us that when we pray, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven, we are also praying for mission work because God’s good and gracious will is that His name be kept holy and His kingdom come, that is, that His Word is taught correctly and that sinners are brought to faith in Christ and lead godly lives. That’s mission work and growing in faith.
But it seems God is not answering our prayers because of the billions of times throughout history that the Lord’s Prayer has been prayed not everybody is a Christian. And what’s even worse, Christians fall away from the faith.
We have the account in today’s Gospel of Jesus weeping over Jerusalem because in His divine omniscience He knows that in a mere 40 years it would be utterly destroyed: 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. And why? because you did not know the time of your visitation, the time when Jesus, the very God Himself came and announced that He, the long promised Savior had come; that in Him is the forgiveness of sin and peace and reconciliation with God. Jesus comes upon the city and sobs, 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.
As we will see as we examine our text from St. Isaiah: the reason these things are hidden from your eyes is not because God hid these things from the people but because they themselves shut their eyes to the things and word of God. In other words, don’t blame God that all people aren’t Christians, or especially that some fall away from the faith. He wants to save all but people don’t want it. As Jesus would lament a short time after the events of today’s Gospel [Mt. 23.37]: O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the one who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her! How often I wanted to gather your children together as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing!
1. Just as Jesus here during Holy Week calls out in heartfelt love and tender emotion: O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, so also in our text He, too, calls out in love to Jerusalem, using its other name, Ariel: Ah, Ariel, Ariel, the city where David encamped! Here, too, He laments: that city once so loved of God was ripe for destruction. It was the city that David had encamped around and captured and then made his capital city and became the city where the temple was built. God had shown special grace to Jerusalem: He delivered it from a people that worshipped false gods and then He had His saving name and works proclaimed in it instead. It was a city from which His saving name and work were to be spread into all the world. It was the city set on a hill so all could see the grace and blessing of the Lord to the Israelites and so be drawn to the true God, as St. Isaiah had prophesied earlier [2.3]: For out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. In Jerusalem, Ariel, we see God’s grace and mercy mightily at work. It was a city that showed beyond any shadow of a doubt that the Lord wants to save, wants to rescue all people from their sin.
“Add year to year; let the feasts run their round,” says the Lord about Jerusalem. Here we see, again, so clearly the grace and mercy of the Lord as He gave Jerusalem, her people, the various feasts. Not only were there feasts like harvest festivals, which, also pointed to the goodness and mercy of the Lord; but they were the religious festivals that pointed people forward to the coming Savior and to His saving work. That’s why, in grace, the Lord had the temple built in Jerusalem so that with all the various sacrifices that would be offered up, the people would have a continual reminder of that one perfect sacrifice for the sins of the world. These sacrifices were to spark and strengthen people in faith in the coming Savior, Jesus. In this temple the word of the Lord would be proclaimed and the promises of the Savior and His saving work would resound in the ears of the people.
How can there be any doubt about the Lord’s desire to save people? So great were the mercy and blessings He showered on OT Jerusalem. And now extend this to the blessings He showered upon us in and through the Jerusalem of the NT—the Church. He has rescued us in the waters of holy baptism, washing away our sin and giving us His Holy Spirit and has brought us into His Church. He has given us His holy word and sacraments through which He not only tells us about Jesus and His saving work, but in the Gospel, in the absolution, in baptism and the Holy Supper actually gives us the gifts and blessings and benefits of Jesus’ saving work—the forgiveness of sin and eternal life. There is nothing lacking us for our salvation. The holy Triune God has done it all! That’s why when St. Paul [1 Ti 2.3-4] writes that God our Savior…desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth, it’s not the image of God desiring and wringing His hands, hoping against hope that people will be saved. No! He’s done everything—just like He did everything for OT Jerusalem. There’s nothing left to be done. Our salvation is, in Jesus, certain. His NT Church is that beacon, that city set on a hill, through which the Lord is calling to all people to come for salvation. Jesus has entrusted to His Church His holy word and sacraments through which He creates faith and through which He gives us the blessings He won for us on the cross. That’s why we pray for mission work and the spread of the holy Christian faith and pray that the Lord use us and makes us aware of ways we can tell others the Good News about Jesus so that His kingdom comes and His holy will be done.
2. So, yes, it is crystal clear: our holy Triune God wants all to be saved. How often I wanted to gather your children together as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings. And since He has done everything to rescue us from sin, death, devil and hell, He alone gets all the credit for our salvation. Therefore He cannot be blamed if someone is lost. But then, why aren’t all saved; why don’t all continue on in the faith? Again, as Jesus continues: but you were not willing. So, who then, is to blame if we are ultimately lost? We are. What’s vital to remember is that what the Lord says in our text through St. Isaiah is said to Jerusalem, Ariel, people who had the word and promises of God in their midst, who were outwardly part of the OT Church. In today’s Gospel, Jesus weeps over the destruction of Jerusalem, where the temple was, where the believers in the coming Savior were supposed to be found. The warning here for us is clear: we Christians of the NT Church can become like those of Jerusalem—cold and faithless.
People use God’s mercy against Him. Sadly, because God is merciful and gives people time to repent, people so often think that they don’t need to repent or that God is unwilling or unable to punish sin. They think that there’s always time to repent later and so now is the time to serve sin and flesh. What sort of convoluted logic is that? St. Paul writes [Rm 6.21 AAT]: What was your advantage then in doing the things that make you blush now? Or people think God is so merciful that in the end all will be saved so faith and works, the fruit of faith, do not matter.
The Lord wants to save but people are not willing, the graces and gifts of God are hidden from their eyes, they do not recognize the time God comes to them in grace. Why not? Because they do not take seriously or rightly their true condition. Add year to year; let the feasts run their round. A lot of time had passed from when St. David captured Jerusalem and Solomon built the temple. A lot of grace of God had been shown and people had a false sense of security. God’s grace had wrongly been interpreted as God giving His ok. They thought that as long as they would carry the festivals year after year and did the other works God had prescribed in His law, God would be placated and they would be ok. This kept them from recognizing their true condition as sinners and their need for His grace and mercy. Sadly, whatever they figured they did was “working” and so they carried on in unrepentant sin. There was no willingness/ desire to repent because they relied on their own supposed righteousness. The thought they had no need of God’s mercy and did not know…the things that make for peace. But the feasts and other works of the law, outward acts of worship without inner repentance of the heart, without a plea for mercy and without surrender of the heart is an outrage against God. And God is not mocked when His means of grace are desecrated. And here in our text, we see God’s wrath at this: Yet I will distress Ariel, and there shall be moaning and lamentation, and she shall be to me like an Ariel. And I will encamp against you all around, and will besiege you with towers and I will raise siegeworks against you. And you will be brought low; from the earth you shall speak, and from the dust your speech will be bowed down; your voice shall come from the ground like the voice of a ghost, and from the dust your speech shall whisper. But the multitude of your foreign foes shall be like small dust, and the multitude of the ruthless like passing chaff. And in an instant, suddenly, you will be visited by the LORD of hosts with thunder and with earthquake and great noise, with whirlwind and tempest, and the flame of a devouring fire.
This is the vital thing for us Christians to hear and to take to heart as we see the OT example in our text and Jesus’ weeping over Jerusalem’s destruction. Both readings today are calls for each of us to examine his/her own life and heart, to recognize sin, sorrow over that sin and to trust in Jesus for the forgiveness of that sin. By rightly recognizing and lamenting our sin, we then look for and treasure the things that make for peace and hold on to them by faith—Jesus and His work.
Scripture doesn’t tell us everything here, but when someone does not come to faith or if in the faith falls away from faith, don’t blame God. He does not want the death of the sinner and wants all to be saved, but people are not willing; the person is to blame. If there is ever any doubt in your mind that God takes sin and the despising/ desecrating/ rejection of His holy word and sacraments seriously, look at the destruction of Jerusalem. That’s just a prelude to the judgment of the Last Day. If there is ever any doubt in your mind that God wants to save you/ has saved you from sin, death, devil and hell, look at Jesus’ tears over Jerusalem. There see how dearly He wants our repentance, for He wants all to be saved. INJ