Bible Text: Luke 19:41-48 | Preacher: Pastor Andrew Richard | Series: Trinity 2022 | When we think of Palm Sunday, we usually think of a joyful occasion with the crowds waving branches and praising Jesus. But as today’s reading notes, while Jesus was sitting on the donkey surrounded by the joyful crowds, he wept. He wept when the procession drew near to Jerusalem and he saw the city. And he wept because he foresaw its utter destruction. When we think of Palm Sunday, we usually think of the children praising Jesus in the temple, singing, “Hosanna to the Son of David!” But we also hear in today’s reading that Jesus entered that same temple on Palm Sunday and began overturning tables and driving out those who sold. It is a shocking event, and what we must understand is that when Jesus was throwing tables and scattering coins and shoving moneychangers, he was not acting out of character and he had not lost his temper. He drove them out because they stood in the way of the pure preaching of his Word, and his Word alone would save people from destruction. Jesus acted zealously in love, to spare people from the wrath that he saw coming on Jerusalem.
It was about another 40 years before Jerusalem would be destroyed, but on Palm Sunday Jesus saw it all plainly. He saw the barricades and the fire and the slaughter and the city being leveled to the ground. In his work The Jewish War the historian Josephus records exactly what happened when Jerusalem was destroyed. He was in fact witness to much of it. Interestingly, when C. F. W. Walther, the first president of the Lutheran Church – Missouri Synod put together our synod’s first hymnal, he included excerpts from Josephus’ account of the destruction of Jerusalem in the hymnal, which were to be read on this, the Tenth Sunday after Trinity. Walther included the account of Jerusalem’s destruction because it is good for God’s people to see that Jesus’ words about the destruction of Jerusalem came to pass, and it is good for God’s people to fear his wrath so that we do not despise his Word.
Here’s what Jesus foresaw on Palm Sunday and what came to pass in the year AD 70: He saw the Roman commander Vespasian coming to Judea with his son Titus and besieging Jerusalem during the Passover. Ordinarily the city would have been full of people. During the Passover it had many, many more inside its walls. And the Roman army besieged them all. The famine was severe. Some took to robbing other people’s homes for food. Some tried to escape the city and were killed. The leaders of the various factions made stockpiles for themselves and their followers. As the siege wore on, the situation became more desperate. The homes were full of dead families. The bodies of the aged littered the streets. Children and youth wandered about the marketplaces like shadows, bloated from the famine, dropping dead as they drifted along. The robbers who survived turned mad: plundering the same houses two or three times a day, searching the bodies of the dead for food, and chewing on leather pieces from their shoes and shields. One woman was so desperate for food after being continually robbed that she cooked and ate her own nursing son.
One day a false prophet within the city told the people to gather atop the temple, for God was going to give them signs of their coming deliverance. That very day the Romans made the final breach and the temple burned, killing those who had gathered on top of it. The Roman army destroyed the city and dealt with those who were still alive. Josephus estimates that 97,000 Jews were sold as slaves during this war and that 1.1 million perished in Jerusalem during the siege.
Jesus sees all this as he rides toward Jerusalem. He sees the place where he had chosen to put his name, the place to which his people could come to worship him and receive his grace―he sees that place burning and torn down. He sees his people, to whom he had made great a blessed promises, for whom he was coming to lay down his life, that they might receive the forgiveness of sins through faith in him―he sees his people starved and slain. And Jesus weeps.
Jesus knew full well why this was going to happen. He says it was because they did not know the things that make for peace. It was because they did not know the time of their visitation. In other words, Jerusalem would be destroyed because the people had rejected Jesus and his Word. If we are going to have peace, it is going to be through Christ alone, as it says in Romans 5, “Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.” Or in Isaiah 53, “Upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace.” Or Ephesians 2, “For [Christ] himself is our peace.” If we are to have peace, we will have it through Jesus and his Word and through no one and nothing else.
And yet the peace that Jesus brings offends many people, because the peace that he brings is the peace of the forgiveness of sins, and that means that the preaching of true peace involves the preaching of repentance. True peace only comes to the man who says, “I have done wrong. I have sinned.” Now certainly mere regret is not what makes for peace. Judas regretted selling Christ for 30 pieces of silver, and he went and hanged himself in his regret. That was not peace. Peace is properly speaking the blood of Jesus, his resurrection, his absolution. Yet the man who sees no problem with himself seeks no such remedy. It is not the healthy who have need of a physician, but the sick. The lost sheep who knows he’s lost is nearer to peace than the 99 who think they have no need of repentance. The tax collectors and sinners entered the kingdom of heaven ahead of the scribes and Pharisees because the tax collectors and sinners were saying, “I have done wrong. I have sinned,” and they were receiving grace and peace in Christ, whereas the scribes and Pharisees thought that they had peace from elsewhere, thought that they had no need of Jesus, and thus they forfeited peace and forfeited life.
The same thing happened right before Jerusalem was destroyed the first time, back in 586 BC when the Babylonians came. The Babylonians had already exiled people from Judah, and those who remained wanted to believe that the trouble with Babylon was over. Their wishful thinking told them that they weren’t bad, they were the people of God, nothing could ever take them from the land they inherited from their fathers. Their wishful thinking told them, “If we’ve done something wrong, well now we’ve suffered for it, and we can continue life as it has been.” Meanwhile they set up idols, even in the temple, and they mistreated one another and blatantly disregarded the commandments of the Lord with no regret.
They surrounded themselves with false prophets, who preached to them what they wanted to hear, scratching their itching ears. “All will be well now,” the false prophets said, just as the false prophet prophesied a lie, gathered the people on top of the temple to receive signs of their deliverance, and ended up being the death of them. The Lord lamented to Jeremiah shortly before Jerusalem was destroyed the first time, “[From prophet to priest] they have healed the wound of my people lightly, saying, ‘Peace, peace,’ when there is no peace” (Jer. 6:14, Jer. 8:11).
This false security in a false peace led the people to despise the Word of God and scorn his true prophets, as it says in 2 Chronicles, “The Lord, the God of their fathers, sent persistently to them by his messengers, because he had compassion on his people and on his dwelling place. But they kept mocking the messengers of God, despising his words and scoffing at his prophets, until the wrath of the Lord rose against his people, until there was no remedy” (2 Ch. 36:15-16).
Today’s reading serves as a warning to us. We should fear God so that we do not despise preaching and his Word, but hold it sacred and gladly hear and learn it. And so we should welcome Christ when he barges into the temple of our hearts through the preaching of repentance and starts overturning tables and saying, “What is this doing in here? Out with it! Out with this sin! Out with this idol!” You’ve no doubt felt that before when listening to a sermon or receiving pastoral care. You’ve felt the pangs of guilt. You’ve felt indignation at being told you’re wrong. You’ve felt the desire to hold onto something that vaguely felt like peace simply because it was familiar and comfortable, even though it was in fact no peace at all and was a sin in the sight of God.
And there are two paths from there. You can storm off and plot the death of Christ, harden yourself against his Word, and suppose that no harm will come to you. Or you can sit down at Jesus’ feet and hang onto his words and recognize that he alone is your peace.
Consider the destruction of Jerusalem and the way forward is clear. Those who presumed to have peace apart from Jesus were besieged and killed. Those who heeded the Word of Christ received warning in advance to flee to a place called Pella, where they escaped God’s wrath. Those who avoided repentance and hardened themselves against pangs of conscience and the Word of God perished miserably. Those who confessed their sins met with grace and salvation. Remind yourself of this when the sinful flesh wants to resist the Word of Christ in favor of sin and its own passions. We should fear God so that we do not despise preaching and his Word.
But more than considering the destruction of Jerusalem, consider the tears of Christ. Yes, Jesus overturns tables. But as Jesus overturns tables, at the same time he has tears in his eyes: tears because he desires all men to be saved (1 Tim. 2:4), tears because he takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from his way and live (Eze. 33:11), tears because he does not wish that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance (2 Pet. 3:9), tears because he wants to remove all things that stand in the way of his saving Word. Jesus’ tears show his love for you, just as his zeal to hinder falsehood and preach the truth shows his love for you, just as his lifeblood that he shed shows his love for you. Why ever would we distance ourselves from such a gracious Lord? If he shows us our wounds through the preaching of repentance, it is only so that he can heal us. If he shows us the death due our sin, it is only so that he can show us his death for our sin. And therefore we not only fear God so that we do not despise preaching and his Word. We also love God, hold his Word sacred, and gladly hear and learn it, for Christ is our peace, and his Word saves us from wrath.
We have a very sobering warning before us today, the destruction of Jerusalem, which men brought on themselves by rejecting Christ and his Word. Now this is simply a warning. Jesus is not calling your salvation into question or saying that this is going to happen to you. He presents the warning so that such destruction won’t happen to you, so that you will heed his Word, even when that Word is a rebuke. It was in love that Christ entered the temple and drove out those who sold. He drove them out because they were a hindrance to sound doctrine and right living. He likewise comes to you at times, through your pastors, through the Scriptures, and points out things that are wrong and out of place in your life and he corrects you. And I beg you by the tears of Christ to take such correction well. Christ turned over a few tables in the temple to correct his people, and I’d much rather have Christ turn over my table than starve me to death or burn me alive or give me over to my enemies. His rebuke for my sin is infinitely kinder than the license and permission the false world would give me to continue in sin.
We are baptized, and that means we are sons of God. “What son is there whom his father does not discipline?” as it says in Hebrew 12. And therefore it is written, “‘My son, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord, nor be weary when reproved by him. For the Lord disciplines the one he loves, and chastises every son whom he receives.’ It is for discipline that you have to endure. God is treating you as sons” (Heb. 12:5-7, Prov. 3:11-12). We welcome the correction and rebuke and discipline of our Lord, for we know that he does not discipline in malice, just as he did not overturn tables in the temple in malice. He desires your salvation, so that when the Last Day comes and the unbelieving world must suffer wrath, you will be safe and secure in him. God grant it for Jesus’ sake. Amen.