Hallowing God’s name by cleansing God’s House

Sermon for the Festival of the Reformation

2 Chronicles 29:12-19  +  Revelation 14:6-7  +  Matthew 11:12-15

Last year was the big Reformation celebration, the 500^th anniversary of Martin Luther nailing the 95 Theses to the church door. We celebrated here. We gathered at the park. We put up a big banner: Reformation 500. Where are the banners for 501? There aren’t any. And that’s OK.  Whether we acknowledge it or not, celebrate it in a big way or in a small way, even while we sleep, the Reformation goes on. Because the Reformation of the Church is nothing else than God’s answer to the Church’s praying of the First Petition of the Lord’s Prayer. We say it daily as Christians, weekly as a congregation. We pray, “Our Father, hallowed be Thy name!” What does this mean? Martin Luther gave us a neat summary in the Small Catechism: God’s name is certainly holy in itself; but we ask in this prayer that it may become holy among us also. For that to happen, a Reformation is always in order.

How is this done?, Luther asks. How does God’s name become holy among us? He gives this answer: When God’s Word is taught purely and correctly, and when we, as the children of God, also lead holy lives according to it. Help us to do this, dear Father in heaven! But whoever teaches or lives differently than God’s Word teaches, he profanes God’s name among us. Guard us against this, O heavenly Father!

Two things must happen for God’s name to be hallowed, sanctified, made holy among us. His Word must be taught purely and correctly, and we, as the children of God, must lead holy lives according to it. But neither of those things was happening in 715 B.C. when King Hezekiah of Judah took over for his father, King Ahaz.

The Church of God, which, at that time, was synonymous with the nation of Israel, had fallen into a state of disrepair—a spiritual disrepair which was visibly represented by the physical disrepair of God’s house, the temple in Jerusalem, which had been filled with trash and left to decay. King Ahaz, like his neighboring kings to the north in Israel, had led his people astray into all kinds of idolatry and immoral behavior. Everyone worshiped the god of their choice, while the true God was all but forgotten.

This was the same King Ahaz who heard Isaiah’s prophecy about the sign of the virgin giving birth to a Son named Immanuel. The king and the leaders in Judah were largely responsible for the spiritual rot. But the king had plenty of help from the average Israelites. They didn’t want to make any waves. They didn’t want to speak up and risk the king’s wrath. So many simply joined him in his idolatry. Most of Judah was to blame. The Chronicler tells us that “they had forsaken the God of their fathers.” And that King Ahaz had “encouraged moral decline” in Judah.

So it was that the Word of God was no longer being taught purely and correctly. And the children of God were not leading holy lives according to it. Instead of hallowing God’s name, they were profaning it.

Then Ahaz died, and his son Hezekiah took office at the age of 25. Hezekiah was very unlike his father. He wanted to serve the Lord.

So what do you do when you find the house of the Lord in disrepair? You have three options, really. You can live with it, wringing your hands over the sad state of the Church, thinking that there’s nothing that can be done. It is what it is. We’ll just make do with what we have. Or, you can leave it, grow disgusted with the Church, try to worship God in your own way, by yourself.

But what’s the right thing to do when you find the house of the Lord in disrepair? You do what Hezekiah did. You cleanse it. You cleanse it, because it matters. You cleanse it, because God loves it. You cleanse it, because in reality you can’t live without it. It’s the place God Himself has established to save sinners. So you use all the power at your disposal to cleanse it. Because your life depends on it.

So the very first thing King Hezekiah did, in the very first month of his reign, was to send people in to repair God’s house. It took the Levites two weeks to cleanse and to sanctify the Temple in Jerusalem. And then the people returned to it, after a long time away. They repented of their sins. They offered sin offerings and thank offerings to the Lord, and Israel prospered again for a time, and God’s name was hallowed in Israel, until the newness of the cleansing wore off, until the very next generation came along and abandoned the Lord again.

What did Luther do when he found the Church in disrepair? Oh, the buildings were gorgeous. St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome was being rebuilt on a grand scale. But the state of the Church was horrendous, both in the teaching and in the living. Salvation by works was being taught. Purgatory had been invented out of thin air, a place for people to make satisfaction for their sins after they died so they could still get into heaven—an insult to Christ. Indulgences were being sold, giving people false hope of a forgiveness that was not by faith in Christ, but by paying out money. Papal authority was placed over Biblical authority. The Gospel of God’s promise of free forgiveness through faith alone in Christ was silenced. So no, the Word of God was not being taught purely and correctly. Nor were the people—neither priests nor laity—leading holy lives according to it. You had the same moral decay among the priests back then that you hear of today. And you had a similar moral decay of the laity, too, who didn’t know and for the most part didn’t care to know even the most basic texts of Christianity. God’s name was most certainly not being hallowed.

What do you do, if you’re Martin Luther? You’re not the king. You’re not the pope. But you are a priest, a minister in God’s house, charged with preaching and teaching and administering the Sacraments. What do you do? Live with it? That’s what Christians had been doing for centuries, unfortunately, even the priests who knew better. Don’t rock the boat. Don’t make waves in the Church. There’s no use complaining or trying to change things. Just live with it. Or, what do you do? Leave it? No, Luther knew better than that. Outside the Church there is no salvation. God has established the ministry of His Word, the preaching of the Gospel and the administration of the Sacraments, and no Christian can abandon it and remain safe.

So what do you do? You cleanse it! And they did. Luther and his followers couldn’t change Rome. They couldn’t cleanse the capital of false doctrine. They simply preached the Gospel of Christ crucified. They cleansed their own preaching of the false doctrines of Rome. And they cleansed their own lives on a daily basis, by daily contrition and repentance. They didn’t make any sacrifices for sin, as the Israelites did in Hezekiah’s day. Because the one sacrifice of Christ had already been made, which made satisfaction for all sins. But they did use the sacrifice made by Christ. They used Him as their Mediator. They put their faith in Him and preached faith in Him. And so God’s name was hallowed in the Church. And it all started with 95 theses nailed on a church door 501 years ago.

People, drawn by the Gospel and the pure preaching of Christ, returned to the Church for a time, long enough to spread the Gospel again and to give it a firm foothold in the world, so that we’re still confessing the same Gospel that Luther confessed. Free salvation, by grace alone. Justification by faith alone, with Scripture alone as the foundation of all doctrine in the Church.

But within a couple of generations, the newness wore off, the doctrine started going downhill again, and with it, the lives of God’s children also decayed, so that modern day Germany is a spiritual wasteland, like the rest of Europe.

If we were to analyze the state of the Church in America today, what would we find? I think you know. Utter chaos. Debris everywhere. Impure and incorrect teaching of God’s Word. And unholy lives that are led unchecked.

But it isn’t really our business to cleanse the Church throughout the world or throughout our country. It is our business to pray that God’s name may be hallowed among us. And so it is our business to attend to our teaching and our living, to cleanse it and to keep it clean.

We prayed, Hallowed be Thy name! And about six years ago, that meant attending in earnest to the teaching of justification by faith alone, getting rid of the debris of “universal justification.” But we’re not home free. We must remain vigilant about the doctrine that’s proclaimed from this pulpit. And we must continually be on guard against the false doctrine that surrounds us in the world, lest we be drawn in by it. That means we have to take the time to read the Bible, to meditate on God’s Word, to learn it and to grow in it. God has given us the treasure of His Gospel, the truth of His love for sinners, the willing sacrifice of His Son on the cross, the ministry of Word and Sacrament by which He feeds us and forgives us and strengthens us against the devil, the world, and our flesh. And so we pray, Hallowed be Thy name! Let this truth continue to be preached among us purely and correctly!

But even when the teaching is pure and correct, remember that each of us carries around with us the name of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and all of us, as the children of God, affect the hallowing of God’s name among us. If we live as the people of the world live, focused on this life, living to please our flesh, ignoring the Word of God when it’s preached, refusing to learn it and to grow in it, refusing to repent of our sins and to mend our ways, then God’s name is profaned among us. Guard us against this, O heavenly Father!

But if, with our Father’s help, we live the holy lives we have been called to live, if, with our Father’s help, we see to it that the teaching among us is pure and correct, then not only will His name be hallowed, but our neighbor will be helped, too. Understand what a blessing God is holding out to our community through this tiny church of ours! Where else is the Word of God purely and correctly taught, without any debris of false doctrine? Where else is sin so clearly identified and the forgiveness of sins so freely proclaimed? Let the Gospel shine forth as beacon from this place, both from the pulpit and from your daily lives out there in the world!

That’s how we cleanse God’s house in our time. That’s how we hallow God’s name in our midst. That’s how the Reformation goes on in our day. We have our own small part in it. We have work to do. And we most certainly have thanks to give! Amen.