Flee from idolatry in all its forms

Sermon for Third-to-last Sunday (Trinity 25)

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

Today the lectionary begins turning our thoughts to the end times, to the state of the world and of the Church leading up to Christ’s return. It isn’t a pretty picture. But there is hope in it! Not the hope of a better world here, but the promise of God’s protection and help as we live through the dark days of the great tribulation. Alongside that promise, though, comes a warning from the Lord Jesus, an urgent warning to flee from the idolatry that will afflict the Church as we wait for Him to return.

Jesus is talking with His disciples about the signs leading up to His coming at the Last Day. He foretells a horrible event from the beginning of the New Testament period—the destruction of Jerusalem in the first century. And He uses that same event as a metaphor for the last days.

Therefore, He says, when you see the abomination of desolation, spoken of by the prophet Daniel, standing in the holy place (let the reader understand), then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains. The Old Testament prophets often refer to idols as abominations, things that God truly hates. A desolation is something that lays waste to an area. Daniel, who lived about 600 years before Christ, prophesied that an idol would be set up in the holy place, in the innermost part of the temple in Jerusalem, right next to the place where God had promised to dwell. That prophecy was partially fulfilled some 400 years later when Antiochus Epiphanes, the commander of the Greek forces in Syria, would oppress the Jews over the course of about three years, banning their religion and literally setting up an idol in the temple. But Jesus applies Daniel’s prophecy to another event yet to come, to the idolatry of the Jews who would reject Him, who would still use the temple in Jerusalem to make sacrifices for sin, mocking the sacrifice of Christ that had already been made once for all on the cross. That idolatry was the reason why God allowed the Roman armies to come in in 70 AD to cause desolation, to besiege and finally destroy Jerusalem.

Just as Scripture often uses the literal kingdom of Israel in the Old Testament as a figure of the spiritual kingdom of Christ in the New Testament, so Jesus uses that literal idol in the literal holy place and the resulting desolation in the literal city of Jerusalem to represent a spiritual abomination, a spiritual idol (or idols) in the spiritual temple of God, which is the Holy Christian Church. As He says here when he refers to the “holy place,” let the reader understand. There’s something figurative in this saying that Jesus wants us to notice.

The idolatry that grew in the holy place of the Holy Christian Church over the centuries was the papistic idolatry, the idolatry of the Roman Church, as the hierarchy began to set the saints and their merits next to Christ in the holy place of the Church, setting the penances and satisfactions of the Christian next to the atonement made by Christ, setting the pope and the Church’s hierarchy next to Christ and actually above Christ because the pope’s teaching contradicted the word of Christ, and yet he was to be believed instead of Christ, which is why Lutherans refer to the papacy as the Antichrist, or at least as the ultimate Antichrist. Because not all the idols that have been set up in the Church can be traced directly to the papacy.

Or maybe they can, in a way, if “popery” is considered more generally. Every time a teaching is set up in the Church that contradicts the Word of Christ and is supposed to be believed instead of Christ, you have a little pope there, don’t you? Every time a man (a pastor or a priest or a minister) insists on being obeyed in the Church when he’s teaching something other than the word of Christ, you have a little pope there. Every time a synod or a church body or diocese demands your loyalty, regardless of the Word of Christ, or every time Christians give their loyalty to a synod or a church body or a minister, regardless of the Word of Christ, you have a little pope there, a little antichrist, an idol, an abomination that will cause desolation.

So, “Flee!” Jesus says. Fleeing ahead of the Roman armies was a physical fleeing, and all those who listened to Jesus’ warning were able to escape Jerusalem before the desolation came. Fleeing from all these other idols is a spiritual kind of fleeing, although there may be some physical fleeing involved, too. Run away from that church or that church body that has set up an idol where only Christ belongs. Get out of the assembly where idolatry, even secret idolatry, is being openly practiced. Run away in your heart from every idol that you might fear, love, or trust in more than God.

Flee! And do it without delay! That’s what Jesus’ instructions boil down to. Let the one who is on the housetop not come down to get anything out of his house. And let the one who is in the field not turn back to get his clothes. But woe to the women who are with child and who are nursing in those days! Pray that your flight is not in the winter or on the Sabbath! In other words, anything that hinders your flight from where idolatry has taken hold in the Church will harm you! Getting away from it is urgent, and all the more urgent as the Last Day approaches, when the tribulation will be at its greatest.

You see, fleeing from Rome and from all the idols that are set up within the visible Church is essential to avoid the desolation it will cause—the desolation of souls! But it doesn’t get you out of the great tribulation. Jesus says, For then there will be great tribulation, such as has not happened since the beginning of the world until now, nor will there ever be. Indeed, if those days were not shortened, no flesh would be saved. But for the sake of the elect those days will be shortened. The Book of Revelation talks about the saints who were even then “coming out of the great tribulation.” So, in a sense, it’s been going on since the first century. But just as the first abomination of desolation was literal and the second is spiritual or figurative, so might the tribulation be. The great tribulation of the first century involved severe physical persecution and torture of the saints. The great tribulation near the end of the world may be much more of a spiritual tribulation, trouble and affliction of the spirit, the trouble of being surrounded and assaulted by false doctrine, the trouble of having a hundred different Christian church bodies, the trouble of a world that completely and thoroughly rejects God’s Word, natural law, and justice. The public schools of our country (and in most of the world) teach a sort of “gentle atheism.” They don’t come right out and say God doesn’t exist, or that all religion is evil. They just unteach everything the Bible teaches and replace it with a false history, false morality, false authority, and a false purpose for mankind. They train generations of citizens not to rely on God’s word, but on “science” and the ingenuity of the human race. Practically all the world powers deny Christ, if not by name, then by policy and by action. This is all part of the great tribulation, the work of the Antichrist, and it would be too much even for the elect to withstand, if God didn’t shorten the days for us. But Jesus promises here that those days will be shortened.

Now, sometimes He shortens the days by giving us a brief reprieve, a few moments of sanity and normalcy. But those reprieves are temporary. Sometimes He shortens the days by bringing believers out of this life, so that we finish our race in faith and win the battle by leaving the battle with our faith intact. But in the end, only the coming of Christ will truly shorten the days of the great tribulation.

Jesus has further warnings for those who live in the great tribulation: “Then if anyone says to you, ‘Look, here is Christ!’ or ‘There!’ do not believe it. For there will arise false christs, and false prophets, and they will perform great signs and wonders, so as to deceive even the elect, if that were possible. See, I have told you ahead of time. False prophets pointing to false christs. Isn’t that exactly what we see in the Church at large? False prophets pointing to evolutionary Jesus, who didn’t create the world in six days; pointing to LGBT Jesus, who didn’t create them male and female and institute marriage between a man and a woman; pointing to socialist Jesus who compels people to charity by force; pointing to tolerant Jesus who would never dare judge anyone for anything—except for intolerance.

That’s the false Jesus on the liberal side. But then there are plenty of false prophets on the more “conservative” side who point to American patriot Jesus; or to contemporary worship Jesus on the one hand or to strict traditionalist Jesus on the other; or to the Jesus who forbids the little children to come to Him through Holy Baptism; or to rapture Jesus who still supposedly calls on Christians to support the Israel that rejects Him as Lord. The list goes on.

Therefore, if they say to you, ‘Look, he is in the desert!’ do not go out; or, ‘Look, he is in the inner rooms!’ do not believe it. For as the lightning comes out of the east and is visible in the west, so also will be the coming of the Son of Man. There is only one true Jesus Christ, who has ascended into heaven and will not return until the very Last Day of this world when every eye will see Him. Until then, He has left a sure and dependable witness of His teaching: His words faithfully recorded in Holy Scripture and faithfully confessed in the ancient creeds of the Church. And He has left a ministry of the Word that carries His blessing and His authority. If you go seeking Jesus apart from His Word and the ministry of it, you will only find a false christ.

Our Gospel concludes with that rather strange saying: For where the carcass lies, there the eagles will gather. It’s actually a paraphrase from the book of Job, where God is scolding Job for thinking himself wiser than God. And God has to remind him that God is the one who gave the eagle the nature and the ability to spy out the landscape from afar, to pinpoint where the dead body is, and to gather there. So it is with God’s children. We won’t miss Jesus at His coming. We won’t miss out on the eternal life He will bring. Instead, St. Paul describes the scene of the Last Day beautifully in today’s Epistle, when both those believers who have died and those believers who are still alive on that day will all be gathered around the Lord Jesus: For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trumpet of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive and remain will be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will always be with the Lord.

Such is the wisdom of God, to allow His visible Church to falter and to embrace the idol, and to allow His true believers, His invisible Church, to suffer much during this great tribulation. But rather than question God’s wisdom as Job did, let us embrace it and acknowledge that God knows far better than we do what is right and necessary for this world and for His beloved Church, including each one of His dear children. Trust in Him. Watch out for idols and flee from them, wherever they are set up. Seek Him in His word and the ministry of it during this great tribulation. And eagerly expect His coming! Amen.