What to do for the Church that is doomed

Sermon for Trinity 10

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

I want you to think about the state of the Christian Church today. Think about all the Christian churches you know of here in Las Cruces, in New Mexico, in the U.S., around the world. Think of the message you hear from churches, about churches. Think of the worship practices you have heard of, and about the public stance Christians have taken on doctrinal issues or societal issues. How much is focused on Christ crucified and risen from the dead? How much is rooted in the preaching of repentance and the forgiveness of sins in His name? How much is grounded in the absolute truth of His holy Word? How much is centered on Word and Sacrament? In preparing people to bear the cross patiently, to face death bravely, and to prepare for eternal life with God earnestly? Honestly? Not much.

Does it make you weep? It should, at least on the inside. The Christian Church, in its outward form, is God’s house, God’s city. But it’s crumbling, and it’s destined to crumble. It’s doomed. The Scriptures foretell the great apostasy, the great falling away, the growing number of false teachers and those who believe them. As Paul writes to Timothy, the Spirit expressly says that in latter times some will depart from the faith, giving heed to deceiving spirits and doctrines of demons, speaking lies in hypocrisy, having their own conscience seared with a hot iron, forbidding to marry, and commanding to abstain from foods. And again, The time will come when they will not put up with sound doctrine, but according to their own desires, because they have itching ears, they will heap up for themselves teachers; and they will turn their ears away from the truth, and be turned aside to fables. My friends, that time is upon us.

A similar time was upon the Jews and the capital city of God’s Church at that time, the city of Jerusalem. We can learn a lot about our own times from Jesus’ tears and words for Jerusalem, and also from His actions afterward, because the same actions are called for in our time. Today in the Gospel we learn what to do for the Church that is doomed.

As Jesus approached the city of Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, five days before the leaders of that city would successfully bring about His crucifixion, we’re told that he looked at the city and wept over it, saying, “If only you knew, on this your day, the things that would bring you peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes. For 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, because you did not recognize the time of your visitation.”

Jesus wept, not because Jerusalem was about to crucify Him, but because, after crucifying Him, the people of Jerusalem, the Old Testament visible Church, would not repent, would not acknowledge their sins, would not believe in Him, would not make use of the atonement He was about to provide with His death. And so the city, less than forty years later, would be mercilessly attacked by the Roman armies and utterly destroyed, not because God truly wanted it that way, not because God chose them for destruction or predestined them to it, but because you did not recognize the time of your visitation. God sent the Messiah to Jerusalem, as promised. God the Holy Spirit made it absolutely clear, both by Jesus’ words and by His deeds, that this was the promised Savior. But they shut their eyes and closed their hearts to the Spirit’s work. And so only the remnant, stragglers, a small number of leftover Jews, would be saved.

But that remnant would indeed be saved. Some members of the Old Testament Church would repent and believe in Christ Jesus and would escape not just the destruction of Jerusalem, but eternal condemnation in hell. Jesus saw those people, too. He wasn’t paralyzed by the sadness He felt for Jerusalem or by the certain knowledge of the doom and destruction of the city and the people as a whole. Instead, He went on to do the only things that would save the remnant.

First, He went to the temple and cleared it of the things that didn’t belong there. He went into the temple and began to drive out those who were buying and selling in it, saying to them, “It is written, ‘My house will be a house of prayer.’ But you have made it a ‘den of thieves.’” Buying and selling are not sinful activities. But the house of God is no place for them. Zeal for God’s house—for His house—consumed Jesus, and He drove out the things that distracted from prayer, and from the ministry of the priests, and from the architecture and the furnishings and the sacrifices that all pointed to Him.

And then, He sat down in the temple daily, for the next few days, for His last few days before His death, and taught the Word of God to all who would listen. And then, as we know, on that Thursday evening, He instituted the New Testament in His blood. On Sunday morning He rose from the dead and commissioned His apostles to do as He had done, to preach and teach until the end of the world. Fifty days later, a relatively small church of 3,000, a New Testament Church, was born, just a few decades before the Old Testament Church was destroyed, after having existed for some 2,000 years, since the first Testament was made with Abraham.

Well, now it’s been almost 2,000 years since then, about 1,988 years since 33 AD, when Christ died and rose again and the Church of the New Testament was born. The Christian Church has lasted almost as long as the Church of the Old Testament. And we see it in about as bad a shape as Jerusalem was in when Jesus wept over it. The Church, in its outward form, has become a den of thieves, filled with teachings and practices and activities that only distract from Christ, whether it’s the so-called “speaking in tongues,” or Millennialist teaching, or social justice, or manmade rules, or entertainment based, man-centered worship, and on and on and on. Christians who believe and teach the Gospel rightly, and who use the Sacraments devoutly, according to Christ’s institution, are scattered all over the world, gathering in small pockets here and there. Some we know of, some we don’t. They’re stragglers. They’re a remnant. Jesus looks out at what the Church that bears His name has become in the world, and He weeps, because He knows destruction is coming, and He knows it’s the fault of the preachers who preach lies in His name, and the fault of the Church members whose itching ears have driven them away from His Word and to the nice-sounding-but-deadly doctrines of men.

So it shouldn’t surprise us that there is always turmoil within the Church. It shouldn’t surprise us that church bodies come and go, rise and crumble, that they remain faithful for a while, and then go astray, including Lutheran ones. It’s the history of the whole Church. It’s painful to watch it unfold. And I have often been close to real tears for the downfall and the impending destruction of Christian churches and Lutheran church bodies.

But we learn from Jesus not to be paralyzed by such knowledge or by such pain. We learn that the godly remnant’s survival doesn’t depend at all on the larger church’s survival. It depends only on Christ and His Word. And there will always be a remnant on earth. The only question is, will we be a part of it?

And so we learn from Jesus in the Gospel to do the only things that will still save some, including us.

We learn to drive out the things among us that distract from prayer, from hearing God’s Word, from focusing on the Sacraments. We learn, by daily contrition and repentance, to get rid of things that don’t belong, either in Church, or in our private Christian lives, like false doctrine, like willful sin and pride, like hatred and bitterness, backbiting and cruelty. We learn to toss out man-centered worship practices, and also an overemphasis on politics and public policy, as if the Church existed to fix human society instead of becoming the society that will prosper beyond this world, as this world crumbles.

And we learn to keep teaching the Word of God to all who will hear. Both in the Church and in our private lives as Christians, the Word of God has to take priority, to hear it, to know it, to learn it, to put it into practice, and to support its ministry in the world. The Lord Jesus still sits down in His temple, in His house, in the Holy Christian Church, to teach. Only He now does it through men who have been called by His Spirit, through the Church, to do it. Preachers aren’t Jesus, but, if they are legitimately called by Him and if they teach according to His Word, they are His ambassadors and His instruments for gathering and for preserving the remnant in the world.

Yes, the Church, by and large, is doomed. But we don’t have to be. We can mourn over the downfall of outward Christianity. But we can’t be paralyzed by it. The Lord Jesus has given us all we need to escape the eternal destruction that will come upon the apostate Church. He has given us vital tasks to be doing. And He will continue to give us the strength to do them, through His Word and through His Sacraments. Let us be devoted to using this house of prayer for prayer, and for receiving the instruction and the strength we need to keep doing what needs to be done for the salvation of the remnant in the midst of the Church that is doomed. Amen.