Bible Text: Luke 19:41-48 | Preacher: Pastor Christian Preus
When Jesus weeps over Jerusalem He is not simply weeping over a city as some political center. He isn’t interested in politics here. He had no special fondness for any political state then, and He isn’t particularly fond of any political state now, whether that be the modern state of Israel or the United States of America. He cared and He cares about His Church wherever she is. She is the apple of His eye. He loves her. He is devoted to her. He lays down His life for her and when He rises again He gives His life to her so she will live forever with Him. It was Jerusalem as Church that He wept over. She was apostate. She had abandoned the true faith. Her Savior had come to her, lowly and riding on a donkey, and she did not know the time of her visitation. She rejected her Savior. She did not know what made for her peace. That’s why He weeps. That’s what He cares about. He has seen a million nations fall and there is no record of God ever crying over it. Not Sodom and Gomorrah, not the Amalekites, not even the whole world deluged in Noah’s flood, no record of God weeping. But He does weep over Jerusalem.
Because she is going to be destroyed. But why? Jerusalem was no hotbed of immorality. She wasn’t a Gomorrah, or a Sodom. She’s wasn’t especially know for abortion or infanticide or sexual license. If you compared her to Rome then or San Francisco now, she would stand out as the moral exemplar, the upholder of marriage, the city that doesn’t allow pagan displays, the nation that upholds the worship of one God. But she is going to be destroyed, Jesus says, and she is going to be destroyed for one reason and one reason only. Because she rejected her Savior. And that’s why Jesus weeps.
Jesus isn’t near as interested as we are in the political state of this country. He isn’t. He doesn’t weep over the fall of America. But He does weep over the unfaithfulness of His Church in America. He cares about us. Cares about His Bride. His focus is locked on us. Whether our country or any other country succeeds politically matters to Him only insofar as it matters for His Church. Everything is for her sake.
This is hard for us to understand but when we understand it we will be filled with a joy and peace that surpasses everything worth calling good in this life. It matters more to Jesus whether you hear the Gospel today and believe it than who gets elected president in November. It matters more to Jesus whether you take in faith His body and blood than the security of the southern border. It matters more to Jesus whether you say your prayers tonight than who wins the war in Ukraine. The almighty God who governs all things in heaven and on earth, cares more that you just confessed the Nicene Creed than any and all decisions ever handed down by the Supreme Court.
If Jesus still sorrows in His exaltation, if He still weeps, it is when His Church abandons the truth of His Word. Look at our Gospel. He has all power in heaven and on earth and what does He do? He goes into His Temple to His people and teaches them the Word of God. He drives out the false teachers. Four days later, He institutes the Lord’s Supper. The next day, He suffers and dies for His Church. Three days later, He rises again and gives her the ministry of reconciliation.
If He weeps now it is because so many churches who claimed the name of Christian are being destroyed because they abandoned His Word, because they compromised the truth that sets them free in exchange for getting along in a world that can never give them peace. And so the world is swallowing them up. If He weeps now it is for those who fall away from His Church. And if He rejoices now, and we know He does rejoice, it is over one sinner who repents, and all heaven joins Him. It is over the little children who are baptized in His name, over the old man who is dying but clinging to the body and blood of Jesus that has saved him, over the young man or young lady who cries out to Him for forgiveness and then receives it in His Church, over the parents who pray at home with their children to the Savior of mankind, over the schoolboy who laughs at evolution because it denies the Creator of heaven and earth, over His people who love His Word and will fight for it and die in it, because He is their life and their salvation.
If you know this then you know that to care about doctrine is what matters most in your life. And to compromise one bit of it is unthinkable. We live by the voice of our Shepherd. He gives us peace, reconciles us to God, teaches us what is good and precious in His sight, unites us to Himself in Baptism, promises us everlasting life, and one word from Him is more precious than heaven and earth which will pass away, but His word and His Church will never pass away.
Jesus cares about His Church. Of course He cares about the rest of the world too. He is the world’s Creator. He establishes the nations. He cares whether we have laws protecting innocent babies or not. He cares whether nations respect His institution of marriage between one man and one woman. He cares whether the poor are oppressed by inflationary policies. In that sense He’s very interested in politics, in what nations do. But He cares about this because He cares about His Church. And in caring about His Church, He is not excluding anyone from His care, not because everyone belongs to the Church, obviously that’s not the case, but because He calls everyone by His Gospel to His Church. Whether nations fall or rise, this is His world and He governs it solely to bring the people of this world to His Church, so they know Him and confess Him and have everlasting life in Him, and that happens not by political machinations or by the power of a military, but by the pure preaching of Christ crucified for sinners. That’s what Jesus cares about and that’s what we His Church care about.
Jesus loves the world. Every single person in it. What did Jesus do after He wept over Jerusalem? He went and cleared the Temple court of money changers. Do you know where those money changers were? They were in the court of the Gentiles, the court of the nations, where anyone could come, whether Jew or not, of all races of all the world, to pray to the true God. But they couldn’t pray there, because the money changers were there. So Jesus clears the money changers out with whips and shouts, because He wants everyone of every nation to hear the truth that He taught at that Temple. That’s how He loves the world. He loves them by taking all their sins on Himself, paying for them with the suffering of God, and winning for them the right to become sons of His Father through faith in Him. And He gives this victory over sin and death and hell in His Church. He loves everyone by keeping His Church pure and sending out the invitation to one and all to come and pray to Him.
When He says, “It is written, ‘My house will be a house of prayer,’ but you have made it a den of robbers,” He is quoting from the prophet Isaiah. And Isaiah doesn’t just call it a house of prayer. Listen to what Isaiah says, “Even them [even the nations] I will bring to My holy mountain, and make them joyful in My house of prayer. Their burnt offerings and their sacrifices will be accepted on My altar; for My house shall be called a house of prayer for all nations.” You want to see God’s love for the world, you see it here in His Church, where He calls all nations, of every race and tribe and people, to feast on the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. This is why Jesus fights for His Church, fights for us to remain true to His Word. Why what we do here, staying true to His Word, is the greatest event, the greatest occurrence in all the world. This is God loving the world.
We often talk in our Christian conservative circles about how the world and our country need the Christian Church. And what people usually mean by this is that without the Christian Church we’d lose sanity in the world, because it’s Christians insisting still on common sense, that a man is a man and a woman is a woman, that family is actually a good thing, that hard work is a virtue, all these things that make a country work, the Christian Church teaches as virtues. So the country needs us. But that is not, in the end, why the world needs the Christian Church. We are not a means to a political end. The Church is the goal, because Christ is the goal and He is found in His Church. The world needs the Christian Church because it is a world full of sinners who need a Savior from sin. The world needs the Christian Church because they need Jesus, who reconciles them to God by His blood. The world needs the Christian Church because only here will they find the things that make for their peace with God and with each other, now and forever, in the forgiveness of sins.
Jesus describes His Church as the light of the world. She is a centripetal force, drawing all people to the light of the Gospel. So we let that light shine. And know that as much as you do this for yourself, because you are a sinner, and you need the uncompromised word of God to shine, because it tells you that your sins are removed from you, and your death is conquered, and your God reconciled to you, and your life precious in God’s sight; and when you insist on this for yourself, you are loving the world, because they need this uncompromised word of God. The most loving thing you can do, for God and for your fellow man and for yourself, is to stay true to Christ’s Word, to cling to it, in good times and in bad, to confess it and sing it and depend on it, to mimic those people in the Temple long ago, who were hanging on the words of Jesus. God grant it for Jesus’ sake. Amen.