God Is Your Helper
Luke 19:41-48
In the name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit.
St. Luke 19:41 Now as He drew near, He saw the city and wept over it, 42 saying, “If you had known, even you, especially in this your day, the things that make for your peace!
Dear fellow redeemed in Christ our Lord… People love to blame God for the world’s problems. There’s a fire, either in the mountains or when a building burns? It’s God’s fault. There’s war and bloodshed? It’s God’s fault. Abject poverty? It’s God’ fault. Sickness? Hunger? Death? It’s all God’s fault. “Why, If God is so powerful and loving, why does He make these things happen; why doesn’t He stop them from happening? How unfair and cruel!” Because God is all-powerful, He is very easy to blame; no tragedy is beyond His power to prevent. So, many people then erroneously conclude that God must be out to get us.
But you and I know the root of all our problems. It goes all the way back to the fall of our first parents in the Garden of Eden and the curse under which all of creation lives as a result. And we know something else, too: God is not out to get us, no matter what gross and disgusting lies the devil may whisper into our ears. God is the One who is trying to help us out of the mess that we human beings have created for ourselves.
But here’s the thing: God does not force us to love Him; He does not force us to thank Him; He does not force us to believe in Him. He does not compel us to accept His help. And so, tragically, even though He reaches out to us with His powerful Word to warn us about our sins and to call us to repentance and faith in Christ in whom He holds out to us the promise of the forgiveness of sins and eternal life – even though He sends disasters and tragedies on the world to reinforce for us the seriousness of sin and the urgency of repentance – most people still will not turn to Him for help.
And sadly, it has always been that way. Sinful, corrupt mankind turns away from the only One who can help and who is trying to help. And Old Testament Israel is the prime example.
The prophet Jeremiah stood in the gates of the Temple in Jerusalem, as we heard in the First reading for this morning. Israel had gone astray. They had been straying for hundreds of years. They had ignored the warning of the Northern Kingdom’s destruction and were headed to their own. But once more God sent His prophet to warn them. But they didn’t listen. They hated Jeremiah for telling them they were doing something wrong.
And eventually, within Jeremiah’s own lifetime, the Israelites were practically obliterated by the Babylonian armies. And that very temple in which Jeremiah stood and warned them was wiped out, just as God said it would be. And it happened simply because Israel didn’t want His help; they didn’t want to admit they were the ones in the wrong. All along, God was the One trying to help them. But their own stubbornness and sinful desires kept them from repentance.
Still, because of the warnings of Jeremiah and all the other prophets, a handful of people were brought to repentance or were preserved in the faith. A remnant of penitent believers did return to the land of Israel from Babylonia, and they rebuilt the temple, they rebuilt the walls of Jerusalem, and they waited for the Christ to come.
And then, finally, He did come. He rode up to Jerusalem on a donkey. He was there to help them. But Jerusalem, as a whole, rejected Him, put Him to death, and still refused to repent even after He rose from the dead and kept sending His apostles to them for another 40 years.
This is exactly what Jesus foresaw as He rode up to Jerusalem on that very first Palm Sunday. And we see in today’s Gospel how it moved Him, how it moved God Himself, to tears: “As He drew near, He saw the city and wept over it, saying, “If you had known, even you, especially in this your day, the things that make for your peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes.” Jesus was the One who made for their peace. Being sorry for their sins and looking to Him for refuge and salvation – those were the things that made for their peace. But they refused to see them. They “did not know the time of their visitation.” That is, they refused to acknowledge that God had come to visit them for salvation by sending His Son to be their Redeemer. Jesus volunteered to answer for all their sins before God, so that they could go free. But they rejected Jesus. And because of that, they would have to answer for all their own sins.
The joy of that first Palm Sunday was mingled with great sadness and tears. That shows us that God did not want the Jews to reject Jesus; He didn’t want, first and foremost, to destroy them. He desired their salvation. But they didn’t want God’s help; they just wouldn’t have it.
So, as Jesus prophesied in our Gospel, Jerusalem would be obliterated 40 years later at the hands of the Roman armies. And not just that, but a worldwide plague against the Jewish people would begin, a plague that has lasted until this day and will last until the end of the world.
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But most importantly, when we consider Israel’s destruction, we must take God’s warning to heart for ourselves. God is serious about your salvation, too, and He desires your daily repentance. Once you have come into His kingdom through Holy Baptism, as all the Israelites once had by virtue of the covenant of circumcision, He sends out warnings when you turn away from His commandments and go your own way.
And when such warnings come from hearing the Law, from hearing the Ten Commandments, don’t be like Israel and harden your ears to God’s truth. The Jeremiah who stands at the gate and warns you is sent by God, the One who is trying to help you, so that you continue in repentance and faith, so that you may avoid the destruction that is coming on the world.
Last week we heard St. Paul’s warning to the Corinthian Christians to learn from Israel’s examples of impenitence followed by destruction: “Let him who thinks he stands take heed lest he fall” (I Cor 10:12). Take St. Paul’s warning to heart; know that all the hardships and tragedies of this life are not coming from a God who is out to get you, but from a God who, first and foremost, desires your salvation and is trying to help you. Learn that from Jesus’ weeping over Jerusalem. //
The second part of today’s Gospel also shows God trying to help Jerusalem, even though some people thought just the opposite. We see it in our Lord’s zealous cleansing of the Temple.
It likely happened on the very same day, Palm Sunday, or possibly the next day. Jesus arrived at the Temple and saw people buying and selling, right there in God’s house, right there where they were supposed to meet God and bring sacrifices of atonement for their sins and give thanks to God and ask Him for help. What’s more, Jesus had teaching to do; it was His last few days of teaching before His crucifixion. There were still believers in Jerusalem, and there were some who would become believers through His teaching. But who could teach, who could listen, who could mourn their sins and ask God for help with all this noisy buying and selling going on? So, Jesus made some people very angry. He drove out the people who had turned His house into what He called a “den of thieves.”
Now, some people saw that minor bit of destruction on Jesus’ part as overly aggressive and mean. But that assessment of Jesus’ actions is patently absurd. This was the love of Jesus on display! This was our Lord’s zeal for the people to whom He was sent by the Owner of that house, of which He Himself, as the Son of God, was also co-Owner. It was God Himself trying to rid His temple of the distractions of bleating animals and loud salesmen in order that the people could hear and learn and focus on their sins and on God’s great plan to redeem them by the blood of the Passover lambs which would be slaughtered later that week – Passover lambs which pointed to the blood of The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. See our Lord’s seriousness in trying to help His people, even though His actions seemed harsh and were mistakenly received.
Dear friends, Jesus is serious about your salvation, too. He is the One who is trying to help you. He wants you to hear what He has to say to you through His Word and through His called servants. He wants you to be able to receive His body and blood without the distraction of worldly interruptions; and by worldly interruptions, I don’t mean crying babies or fidgety children. I mean, forms of worship that distract from the Gospel. Or worldly distractions that are brought into this sanctuary. Or the worldly distractions that keep people from this sanctuary. And so sometimes God comes with a bit of destruction or earthly trouble to cleanse our lives of such things and to refocus our attention where it belongs – on Christ our Helper, and on His holy Word and Sacraments.
God does this because He desires your salvation; He desires to keep you from falling where so many people, even His chosen people Israel, have fallen. He desires to preserve you from the judgment and destruction that are coming on the world. When you are tempted to turn away from God’s warnings and from His urgent pleas to stay with Him – when you are tempted not to receive His gifts of love because they aren’t the things you want to hear – remember Israel, remember Jerusalem, remember Jesus’ tears and His urgent cleansing of the temple, and know that it still isn’t too late.
Listen to Him now. He has ridden into our building again this morning to teach and preach and to hand out His gifts. God is not your enemy; He doesn’t want to be. He is the One who is trying to help you. Look to Him for help, and you won’t be disappointed. Look to Him who loved you to the degree that He died for you in Christ. Jesus took the whip lashes and the blows and the mocking and the scourging and the suffering and the dying that your sins brought upon you…but instead, all that was put on Jesus. And in exchange, God blesses you with Christ’s forgiveness and life.
And through God-given faith and trust in Christ, God has cleansed the temple of your heart where He dwells in deepest love for you. And He has given you this place – this temple – where on every Lord’s Day He delivers to you all of what He purchased for you in His suffering, death, and resurrection. He has lavished you with His grace and regeneration in the waters of Holy Baptism. He has delivered forgiveness of your sins through the preached Gospel and the word of Holy Absolution which is forgiveness from the pastor as from God Himself.
And He has blessed you with regular opportunities to receive more and more of His forgiveness through His precious body and blood under the bread and wine in His Supper.
God is your helper. God is your refuge. God is your strength. He is your life and your salvation.
In the name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit.
