Emmanuel Lutheran Church

Sermon for Trinity 11

1 Corinthians 15:1-10  +  Luke 18:9-14

Take a moment this morning and consider the priorities in your life. That’s helpful to do, once in a while, because your priorities will determine your decisions and your behavior. The word, priority, by the way, comes from a Latin word that means “to come first, to come before other things.” You could make a list of the things in your life that come before other things. The fact that you’re here today (or watching the service today) would suggest that hearing God’s Word is a priority for you. It obviously came before any of the other things you could be doing at the moment. Surely your family’s happiness and wellbeing is a priority. Hopefully your health makes the list. And serving your neighbor in love, that should be a priority for you, as a Christian. I’m sure you could come up with other things. But what’s at the top of the list? What’s your top priority in life? And a different question, which may or may not have the same answer, what should be your top priority? Well, if there is a God, and if He takes any interest at all in human affairs—and it’s obvious to any thinking person that there is and that He does—then the top priority has to be being right with God; to have His favor, both for this life and for the next. It’s more important than family. More important than health or wealth. More important than life itself.

Now, if it’s true that being right with God should be the top priority, then the most important thing to know is how a person can be right with God. And there are two basic answers to that question, illustrated for us today by Jesus in the parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector. How can you have God’s favor? We have the Pharisee’s answer: “Be a good person! Be right with God by doing the right things and avoiding the wrong things!” And we have the tax collector’s answer: “Flee in faith to God’s throne of grace! Be righteous before God by faith in His promised mercy!” You already know which answer is the right answer. But you still need to hear it again from Jesus’ lips, because the Pharisee’s answer—the wrong answer—is the one that your natural heart always wants to go back to.

If even you Christians need to hear Jesus’ answer again, and again and again, then the unbelieving Pharisees certainly needed to hear it. Luke tells us that Jesus told the parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector to certain people who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and despised others. That describes very many people in today’s world, too, people who think very highly of themselves, because they think they’ve done some very good things, things that, if there is a God, will certainly put them in good standing with Him.

The Pharisees knew there was a God. They knew many things about Him, true things, the things He had revealed about Himself in the creation as well as the things He had revealed about Himself in the Old Testament Scriptures. They knew His commandments; they knew His Law. One thing they didn’t know—because they passed right over it whenever they came across it in God’s Law—was that God’s Law demands, not only outward obedience, but perfect love for God first, and then for our neighbor, love that comes from the heart and shows itself with the hands and with good deeds. Sins of the heart and a lack of love in the heart are just as damning before God as any evil deed of the hand. The other thing they didn’t know—again, because they passed over it in the Old Testament Scriptures—was that none of their good deeds could erase, or make up for, any of their bad deeds.

And so we have this Pharisee in Jesus’ parable, a man well-respected and honored in the Jewish community, who went up to the Temple in Jerusalem to pray. How would we describe him, based on his behavior in the parable? He’s smug. Proud. Full of himself. And he’s so confident that he’s right with God already, because of how many good things he’s done, that he has no word of praise or thanks for what God has given him, no word of confession, not even a word of supplication, seeking God’s merciful help with anything. On the contrary, we see only a self-congratulatory “thank you” that I am not like other men—extortioners, unrighteous, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week, I give tithes of all that I possess.

Now, he’s an extreme version of a self-righteous person, apparently admitting no flaws in himself whatsoever. There are less extreme versions out there that fall into the same category. There are people who will admit that they aren’t perfect. In fact, they see the very act of admitting they aren’t perfect as one of their praiseworthy virtues! But ask them if they consider themselves good people, and most will answer, yes. Most will point to something good they’ve done, some deed of kindness or obedience, or at least how hard they try to be good. If nothing else, some will hope that, no matter how many bad things they’ve done, God may yet accept them because of some really bright, shiny moment of goodness.

This is how the world sees things. This is how all the religions of the world (except for Christianity) teach people to gain God’s favor, by doing good, by being honorable, by showing “love.” This is how people normally comfort themselves when a loved one dies. “He or she was such a good person. He must be in heaven. She must be with God.”

On the other hand, there’s the tax collector of Jesus’ parable, respected by no one, referred to as a “good person” by no one, including himself. His career was synonymous with extortion and thuggery, not to mention the regular betrayal of their countrymen in service to the Romans. How would we describe him, based on his behavior in Jesus’ parable? The tax collector, standing at a distance, would not so much as lift up his eyes toward heaven, but beat his breast, saying, ‘God be merciful to me, a sinner.’ He’s humble. Contrite. Sorrowful over his sins. He knows he doesn’t deserve even to look up toward heaven. He offers God no list of accomplishments, no excuses. Instead, he seeks something from God. He seeks God’s mercy. And he uses a special word for mercy in Greek. “Be favorable to me! Be propitious to me! Be merciful! Be gracious!”

Now, that word is related to the Temple itself. Within the innermost part of the first Temple—Solomon’s Temple—was the ark of the covenant, and the lid of it was called in Greek the Propitiation Place, or the Mercy Seat, or the Throne of Grace. It’s where the blood of atonement was sprinkled once a year by the high priest. It’s where God promised that He would be present with His people and would be gracious toward His people who sought Him there, because of the blood of atonement. But after Solomon’s Temple was destroyed, there was no longer an ark of the covenant in the Temple. It’s as if God no longer wanted His Throne of Grace to be enclosed in the Temple, as if He wanted Israel to start seeking it somewhere else.

Sure enough, the Apostle Paul, in Romans 3, refers to Christ Jesus Himself as the Propitiation Place or the Throne of Grace. He was the true ark of the covenant. His blood shed on the cross truly made atonement for the sins of all. And now all who flee to Christ as the Throne of Grace, all who seek God’s favor through faith in Him, receive God’s forgiveness. Or in other words, they are justified before God, they are right with Him, they have His favor.

This is truly the top priority, that which should be “first and foremost” in your life, what comes before everything else. As Paul also said in today’s Epistle: For I delivered to you first and foremost that which I also received, that…you have to be a good person? No, that’s not what he said. That you have to make atonement for your sins? No. That…what? What was first and foremost? That Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures. That’s first and foremost. That’s the most important thing, fleeing to Him in faith as the Throne of Grace, as the one who died for our sins and rose again.

That’s what the tax collector did by seeking mercy from God in the temple where He had promised to be merciful. That was his answer to the question, How can I be right with God? Not by finding righteousness within himself, but by seeking it by faith, as a gracious gift promised by a merciful God. And so Jesus shocked the self-righteous Pharisees with His conclusion: I tell you, this man went down to his house justified rather than the other. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but whoever humbles himself will be exalted. The Pharisee who tried to be righteous by himself failed, while the tax collector was counted righteous by God, through faith.

The same was true of the Apostle Paul. He had a sordid past, not as a thief or tax collector, but as a self-righteous Pharisee, as a religious fanatic, as a persecutor of Christians, until he learned that what the Prophet Isaiah had written hundreds of years earlier was true: All our righteousnesses are like filthy rags. As Paul wrote to the Philippians, Whatever things were gain to me, these I have counted a loss for Christ. Indeed, I count all things a loss for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in Him, not having my own righteousness, which is from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which is from God by faith.

And so the apostle humbled himself. You hear it in today’s Epistle: For I am the least of the apostles. I am not even fit to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. But in humbling himself, there was finally room for God to exalt him. As he says, But by the grace of God I am what I am.

But notice this about the Gospel: It teaches us what our top priority must be, to be justified through faith in Christ. But the Gospel then gives us other priorities that flow down from the top one. Those who are righteous by faith are then called to be righteous in their deeds, in their works, to care for our families, to keep God’s commandments. The difference is, we’re no longer working to earn the favor of God. We’re working to serve the God who has already favored us in giving His Son into death for our sins, and in justifying us by faith in His Son, so that even the righteous things we now do are really being done in us by Him, as Paul also concludes about all his hard work as an apostle: yet not I, but the grace of God which was with me.

Of the two answers we’ve considered today to the question, how can I be right with God?, Jesus reveals clearly what the Christian answer is: only by fleeing in faith to Christ, the true Throne of Grace, for mercy and forgiveness. Let that be your top priority! And then arrange all your other priorities around it. Trust in the mercy God has promised you in Christ Jesus! Flee to Him in faith! And you will not only go down to your house justified; you will also have everything you need to get through all the trials of this life and to lead a good, honorable, godly life of humble obedience to the God who has justified you by faith. Amen.

Sermon for Trinity 10

1 Corinthians 12:1-11  +  Luke 19:41-48

On the 10^th Sunday after Trinity, the Church has historically remembered the fall of Jerusalem in AD 70, because Jesus prophesied it in today’s Gospel. Speaking to Jerusalem from the back of the donkey on Palm Sunday, Jesus wept and said, The days will come upon you when your enemies will put up an embankment around you and will surround you and besiege you on every side. And they will raze you to the ground, you and your children within you; and they will not leave one stone upon another within you. As the all-knowing Son of God, Jesus could see where things were headed for Jerusalem, not just in general, but very specifically He could see some 36 years into the future, as Jewish rebels began to revolt against the Roman government and eventually overtook the city of Jerusalem. He could see some 40 years into the future as the patience of the Romans with the Jewish rebels ran out. And the armies of Titus besieged the city in April of the year 70, resulting in the city’s inhabitants resorting to violence toward one another, murder, and even cannibalism. By the end of August, the Romans were ready to enter the city. And they tore down the walls, and the temple, and burned the city to the ground. And so ended a thousand years of Jewish occupation of Jerusalem (minus the 70 years of captivity in Babylon, of course). So ended the Jewish priesthood, and the temple worship, and the rites and rituals of the Law of Moses, never to be resurrected again. Jesus saw it all coming, as clear as day. The destruction of the city was inevitable, from God’s perspective.

Why? Why was it inevitable? Because God sees beforehand everything that everyone will do. And Jesus saw what the people of Jerusalem would do. If you only knew, in this your day, the things that would bring you peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes…You did not recognize the time of your visitation. What would have brought peace to Jerusalem? Acknowledging their sinfulness before God. Repenting of their wickedness. Seeking mercy from the God of Abraham instead of relying on their family tree. Believing in Jesus, the Christ sent from God to redeem them from sin, death, and the devil. That’s what would have brought them peace.

And they had multiple opportunities to obtain that peace! They could have not crucified the Son of God at the end of that Holy Week. But that was only one opportunity. For the next 40 years or so, the Gospel would be preached in Jerusalem. The Christian Church would have a presence there, gathering in the temple and in other places, showing from the Old Testament Scriptures how Jesus had fulfilled the prophecies about the coming Christ, preaching repentance and the forgiveness of sins through Jesus, even to those who had crucified Him.

But over and over again, they refused to recognize the time when God visited them for salvation, first through Jesus directly, and then through the apostles whom He had sent. They heard the Word of God…and then ignored it, or stoned those who preached it, or put them in jail, or put them to the sword, or chased them around from one city to the next, trying to stir up the whole world against these horrible, terrible Christians who were preaching the Gospel of free salvation and eternal life for all people of all nations through faith in Christ Jesus.

And so, after giving them 40 years to acknowledge and receive the crucified and risen Christ whom God the Father had sent to Israel, God worked through the government of the Romans to bring final destruction on the city of Jerusalem and to remove His ancient people from their homeland for good. The people who reside on that piece of land today are not the covenant people of the Old Testament. They’re foreigners to the covenant God made with Abraham and with Moses, regardless of whether they can trace their earthly ancestry back to Abraham or not. No, God saw to it that Jerusalem, with its Old Testament significance, was permanently destroyed.

I said at the beginning of the sermon that the Church remembers the destruction of Jerusalem on this day of the Church Year. And we do. But we don’t celebrate it, as in, rejoice over it. Because our Lord Jesus didn’t rejoice over it. He wept over it! As he drew near, he looked at the city and wept over it. Their rejection of the Messiah wasn’t God’s doing. It was theirs. Their destruction was inevitable from God’s perspective, because He knew what they would do. But from their perspective, it was entirely avoidable. The Holy Spirit called out to them through the preaching of the apostles. He even gave miraculous signs in His early Church, as St. Paul discussed in today’s Epistle, as proof to the Jews that the preaching about Jesus was from God. They weren’t prevented by God from believing. They owned their unbelief. And Jesus wept over it, because God wanted to save them. But they didn’t want to be saved by Jesus.

It’s useful for us to reflect on these things. Because what happened to the Jews and to Jerusalem will also happen to the Christian Church in its outward form. Jesus predicted the infiltration of many, many false prophets and false christs into His Church. He predicted that weeds (false Christians) would be sown by the evil one right in the midst of the wheat (the true Christians). He predicted that the love of most would grow cold, that many would be deceived and would abandon the true teaching of His Word. He predicted the working of the Antichrist, not outside the Church in some world government somewhere, but right in the midst of the Church, and He predicted the great apostasy, the great falling away, the great rebellion within the Church, leaving her just as desolate as Jerusalem was left by the Roman armies.

Does God want to see things turn out this way? Of course not. As little as He wanted to see Jerusalem rejecting the Christ and suffering the consequences. But He knows the choices that people will make, and He allows His word to be opposed and His warnings to go unheeded. He doesn’t force people into submission and obedience during this time of grace between His first and second comings.

So, why preach on this text? Why meditate on this text or pay any attention to it, if the Church, in its outward form, is going to end up in ruins, just like Jerusalem did in 70 AD? Because! It doesn’t have to happen to you! Jerusalem, as a city, perished for its unbelief. But many people in Jerusalem heeded Jesus’ warning and repented and were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. Many of those Jewish Christians got out before the destruction came. Just because the Church in its outward form will perish doesn’t mean that the true Church, in its true form, will perish. On the contrary, Jesus assures His disciples that the gates of hell will not prevail against My Church. That isn’t a promise that the large institutionalized Christian Church on earth will be victorious in the end. It’s a promise that there will always be a faithful remnant of true believers within His Church, and that they will be victorious against the devil and every enemy.

And how does Jesus preserve this faithful remnant within His Church? By doing the very thing He did after He predicted the demise of Jerusalem. He pressed onward. He entered Jerusalem. And He cleansed the temple there of all the distractions and all the wickedness and all the things that were getting in the way of people hearing His teachings and praying to God. And then He taught. He taught, right there in the temple that would eventually be destroyed. He taught all those who would listen. And even His enemies couldn’t prevent Him from teaching. Because while Jerusalem would eventually perish, not everyone in Jerusalem had to perish. Some could still be saved. And the only way for them to be saved was for them to be able to hear and meditate on His Word.

And so, even though we know that the outward Church, influenced as it is by the Antichrist, will be destroyed together with the rest of the world, we press onward. We don’t get drawn in by the outward Church with its prestige and glory. We don’t get depressed when we see the outward Church failing. No, we press onward, as we are able, to make sure that the Church among us, the Church where we gather, is clean of outside distractions, clean of wickedness, clean of false doctrine, clean of lovelessness. We make sure that the Gospel is taught here where we gather, that the truth is spoken, and that lies are exposed. And those who are able gather around the Word and Sacraments of Christ. And those who aren’t able to gather here among us gather with whoever will join them wherever they are to hear the Word of God and to put His Word into practice in whatever ways they can. We make sure that we who gather together around the ministry of the Word are living in humble repentance and genuine faith, and that we’re living in the world as the light of the world and as the salt of the earth that Jesus made us to be.

When we do that, we have the Lord’s assurance that He won’t remove His Gospel from us, nor will He remove us from that faithful remnant that will remain after the outward Church is destroyed. When we see to it that our own church is continually cleansed, and that the Word of God is taught rightly among us, and that we, as Christians, are praying diligently and leading holy lives in the world, then we have nothing to fear from the impending destruction of the outward Church and of the world. We can simply go about our business here, joyfully worshiping the Lord, looking for opportunities to serve our neighbor, to encourage one another, and to be a witness in the world that Jesus is the Christ, and that there is a Jerusalem here on earth that welcomes Him into our midst, a Jerusalem that will not be destroyed, a little gathering of a faithful remnant, which all people are invited to join. Amen.