Beware of idols in all their forms

Sermon for the Third-to-Last Sunday of the Church Year (Trinity 25)

1 Thessalonians 4:13-18  +  Matthew 24:15-28

We began our service today with a happy thing, with the baptism of another soul into our Father’s family, into Christ’s kingdom, into the Holy Christian Church. The Gospel you heard today from Matthew 24 wasn’t filled with happy things, though, was it? Jesus didn’t always speak happy and comforting words. He has lots of things to teach His disciples (then and now) after they are brought into His kingdom through Baptism and faith, things that aren’t happy and joyful but serious and urgent, so that we can be happy with Him for eternity. We have to hear everything He says, and that includes the hard things.

It was a hard saying of Jesus that He spoke to His disciples during Holy Work as He warned them about things to come. Some of those things would come to pass literally, in the actual city of Jerusalem, within the next several years. But some of them would happen figuratively, within the figurative, spiritual Jerusalem that is the Christian Church on earth. To sum it up, an abomination will be set up in Jerusalem and a time of great tribulation will come upon God’s people. We must be ready to flee from the abomination and endure the tribulation until Christ returns at the end.

An abomination is something that God hates, and throughout the Old Testament it’s used as a synonym for an idol and for the practice of idolatry. We’ve been talking about this particular abomination for several weeks now in Bible study. Daniel is the one who first prophesied this “abomination of desolation” in chapter 9 of his book, an abomination that would be set up “on the wing,” which we’ve identified with the most famous wings in Jewish history—the wings of the cherubim overshadowing the ark of the covenant in the heart of the temple in Jerusalem. Jesus confirms that interpretation by saying that this abomination will be set up “in the holy place.”

The idolatry that was literally set up in literal Jerusalem, in the literal temple, were the sacrifices, prayers, and offerings that the Jewish people made to God after the Day of Pentecost, in rejection of Jesus as the Christ. After His death on the cross, as the one divinely accepted payment for sin, after His resurrection from the dead, after the Gospel of salvation through faith in Christ was preached, Jerusalem as a whole said, “We don’t want it. We don’t want any of it. We want to approach God under the covenant He made with Moses, on the basis of our obedience to the Law. We want nothing to do with this Jesus.” And so their worship became the worst kind of idol in God’s sight. An idol that bears God’s name, but that bears it falsely. An abomination. The destruction that the Roman armies brought on Jerusalem in 70 AD was the desolation that was caused by the abomination that was Jerusalem’s rejection of Jesus.

The Lord foresaw all of that, and so He warned His dear Christians to flee Jerusalem, to flee to the mountains, to flee urgently from the city when they saw that the abomination (the idolatry of Jewish worship that rejects Jesus as the Christ) was firmly set in place, because He knew how bad things were going to get when the Romans finally came in with their armies. He also knew that fleeing wouldn’t be easy, that leaving the holy city would be hard, that life “in the mountains” wouldn’t be pleasant or comfortable, because a great tribulation was coming on the world over the next few centuries, not only in the destruction of Jerusalem, but in the Great Persecution of Christians and in the rise of all kinds of false teachers over those next few centuries. The Christians at that time needed to be prepared for how bad things were going to be. And they needed to be reassured that those days would be cut short for their sake; it wouldn’t go on like that forever.

And, to be sure, there was widespread peace for the Church after Constantine legalized the Christian religion in 313 AD. The Great Persecution was over. But, as often happens in times of peace and prosperity—as happened over and over again in the Old Testament—the people of God grow soft and complacent. They begin to enjoy this life and the things of this life too much. They move away from their dependency on God’s Word and Sacraments. And that’s when error and corruption and all kinds of evil are allowed to spread.

And so the stage was set for another abomination of desolation to be set up in the holy place. This time, not Jerusalem or its temple, but in the Holy Christian Church, which is God’s true temple on earth. Idolatry was officially promoted in the way Christians were taught to pray to the saints who have fallen asleep, to expect help from the sleeping saints, to sacrifice the body and blood of Christ in the Mass, to view the Roman pope as the Head of all Christians and to view his teaching as more authoritative than Holy Scripture, to believe that sinners are not saved by faith alone in Christ Jesus. These are just some of the idols that were set up in the holy place of the Holy Christian Church. They are the abominations of the institution referred to in Scripture as the Antichrist.

But the Antichrist isn’t a single person. For some five hundred years, Lutherans have identified the primary manifestation of the Antichrist in the Roman Papacy that endorses and promotes those forms of idolatry I just mentioned, and that, centuries ago, persecuted and killed those who disagreed. And so, for some 500 years, we are those who have fled from Rome to the mountains. We couldn’t stay in communion with Rome, nor can we go back to Rome. We can’t stay and share in her prestige or her glory, because destruction is coming upon her.

But the influence of Antichrist isn’t restricted to the Papacy. It’s all the setting up of idols that takes place within the Christian Church, where faith in Christ and the Word of Christ are substituted with something else. Protestants, who have no outward allegiance to the pope, have set up plenty of idolatries in the Christian Church, too. Women pretending to serve as pastors, contrary to God’s Word. Homosexuality endorsed and approved as acceptable and God-pleasing. Denying the saving, regenerating power of Holy Baptism. Denying the Real Presence of the body and blood of Christ in Holy Communion. The worship of man, the worship of personal preference, the rejection of the holy ministry, and the elevation of church bodies and synods to the place of God in people’s hearts. These are just a few of the abominations that have been set up in the Christian Church. All of these things are antichristian idolatries. To remain in communion with those who promote any of these idolatries is to remain in Jerusalem after the abomination of desolation has been set up.

And so we must always be as those who are fleeing to the mountains. That doesn’t mean we stop going to church, though. On the contrary, it is still God’s will to create faith and to forgive sins only through the ministry of the Word, through preaching and through the Holy Sacraments. It is still God’s will to save sinners by proclaiming Christ crucified for their sins and by sustaining faith through His Means of Grace. And it’s still God’s will that Christians gather together to encourage one another, and all the more as we see the Day of Judgment drawing nearer. God will most certainly keep us safe from death and the devil as we flee from the idolatry of the Antichrist in all its forms.

But fleeing to the mountains means we have to give up all our idolatries, too, and keep giving them up, because idolatry is like the mole in the whack-a-mole game. Smack it down in one place, and it pops up in another. We’ve given up the prestige and the comforts and the conveniences of a larger church in order to remain faithful to the Word of Christ. But we could easily start to exalt ourselves and become prideful, or loveless, or we could cling desperately to the external things we still have. We could easily grow more attached to the things of this world than to the Word of Christ, which would mean forfeiting all the benefit of fleeing the abomination of desolation in the first place.

But to guard us against that, God continues to provide for us here in our flight. The Gospel is still being proclaimed in our midst, where the Holy Spirit calls us daily to repentance through His Law, comforts us and forgives us through His Gospel, hedges us in with His warnings to beware of all those false christs and false prophets who will seek to distract us along the way. “Here is Christ! Over here! Over here!” You know how confusing the religious scene is in our world. So confusing, so lonely, and so disheartening that even the elect are close to being deceived, as Jesus said we would be.

That would be more disheartening if we were truly alone. But we aren’t. Not only does the Lord Jesus accompany us always, to the very end of the age, but there are countless others around the world who have also fled Jerusalem and are living as spiritual refugees. Some of them we know, some of them we don’t. But we give thanks for them all, for the true believers in the world.

And all of this would be scarier, too, if Jesus hadn’t told us it would be this way beforehand. But He did. Right here in our Gospel. And He promises that it will be all right, and better than all right for those who cling in faith to Him above all things. We may be living as those who are fleeing, but God is with us as we flee, our Captain, our Defender, our Savior. He hasn’t sent us out of the city empty-handed, but has poured His love into our hearts by His Holy Spirit, and has given us His Word and His body and blood for food, and His righteousness for a cloak.

And at just the right time, the carcass will appear—the body of Him who was dead, but now lives again forevermore. And when He appears, the eagles will gather around Him, all those who have longed for His appearing. Paul described that in today’s Epistle: The Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of an archangel, and with the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And thus we shall always be with the Lord.

The words of Jesus today paint a frightening picture, but not so frightening when He promises His help and a blessed ending for His Church, for His believers, for His saints. Cling to that promise! Beware of idols! And wait patiently here in the mountains for the Lord’s return! Amen.