St. Luke 19:41-48

When [Jesus] drew near and saw the city, he wept over it, saying, “Would that you, even you, had known on this day the things that make for peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes. For the days will come upon you, when your enemies will set up a barricade around you and surround you and hem you in on every side and tear you down to the ground, you and your children within you. And they will not leave one stone upon another in you, because you did not know the time of your visitation.”

And he entered the temple and began to drive out those who sold, saying to them, “It is written, ‘My house shall be a house of prayer,’ but you have made it ‘a den of robbers.’ ”

And he was teaching daily in the temple. The chief priests and the scribes and the principal men of the people were seeking to destroy him, but they did not find anything they could do, for all the people were hanging on his words.

The theme you see on the bulletin’s cover: Renewed Obedience, is a reminder of the need we have. Our Old Testament lesson certainly reflects it. The prophet Jeremiah speaks the Lord’s words to Israel as they enter the Temple:

Amend your ways and your deeds, and I will let you dwell in this place. Do not trust in these deceptive words: ‘This is the temple of the LORD, the temple of the LORD, the temple of the LORD.’

He meant by it, that people must be sincere in their worship—not just saying the words. It’s only really the Temple of the Lord if His Word and Name are being honored there; otherwise it’s just a building. Penitence (sorrow over sins) and being in God’s House kind of go together. People aren’t going to benefit from being in God’s House if they aren’t sorry about their sins—then, there’s always something between them and God. He’s offering them everything; but their guilt is standing in the way of them receiving it with joy. This occasion being in His house won’t be to them what He’s meant for it to be.

God wants people to benefit from being in His house; so he reminds them of how things need to be for that to be the case.

But then our sinful nature might run with that, and say, “Oh, well, I’m not feeling entirely sorry at this moment; so I’ll stay away…for now. When I’m feeling more sorry, I’ll come back.” Of course, that’s Satan’s work in us when we think that way. He’s gotten us to forget about the great need we have to be restored to God, to have the peace that comes from His grace. The worst thing we could ever do is stay away. Instead, we need to come sincerely, with a desire to have the Spirit change us by means of God’s Word and Supper. Amend your ways. We return to our Baptism in which God received us to Himself in grace.

It’s unusual for us to imagine Jesus driving people out of a place, isn’t it? I came that they may have life and have it abundantly (John 10:10)—that’s one of the things Jesus said one time. Another time, He said He came to seek and to save the lost (Luke 19:10). That’s the way we’re used to seeing Jesus portrayed in the Bible; so we must imagine something very wrong is happening in our text to necessitate what we see Him doing on this occasion (might even remind us of God driving the first people out of the paradise of the Garden after they’d sinned—Genesis 3).

In our text, there is a need for people to amend their ways that lead to their harm, for someone to shake them out of a pattern they’ve developed, to make them see what’s happening to them before it’s too late.

In the beginning of the text, Jesus isn’t driving anyone out of anywhere; He’s weeping at the condition of His people. They aren’t getting the fact that they’re in great danger. John’s preaching of repentance for the forgiveness of sins has had some impact, with many coming to be baptized; they’ve been directed to the Christ (even hanging on his words—Luke writes here). But the message of the Chief Priests and scribes—a message of opposition to the Christ—has been impactful too. The peoples’ religion in many ways has been an empty thing, a show without beneficial substance. The way the selling of sacrificial animals in the Temple is being conducted illustrates it. It has come to look more like business than anything related to eternal salvation. People are going through the motions; they’re doing something because it’s what they’ve always known, not because it’s so very meaningful to them.

I always value “fresh eyes” around here. We get so used to seeing things the way they are with our facilities and our property. We even get used to disrepair and ugliness, sadly. We lose the ability to see ourselves as someone coming in from the outside sees us. We can be blind to things that would give people pause about coming to our church and school. That’s certainly the last thing we’d want. “Fresh eyes”—a new person coming in, seeing things for the first time gives us a perspective that we’ve no longer had.

Jesus’ “fresh eyes” at the temple are necessary to alert the people to a spiritual complacency that has set in among them, that endangers their souls. His weeping confirms that they’re in this situation (in case there would be any question of it). They haven’t known the things that make for peace—peace with God, that means. They’ve lost perspective on what it means to be God’s people, and under what circumstances a person inherits His kingdom.

Amend your ways and your deeds. The Lord’s words are for you, too. They speak to your own tendency to come to a place like this, where so much is supposed to happen—the very things of God being offered to you for salvation (In every place where I cause my name to be remembered I will come to you and bless you [God’s words from Exodus 20:24]). People can come to this place, though, and leave empty, having carried out a meaningless exercise.

It isn’t that for you, though, is it? We said you have that tendency; but it hasn’t really become the case…has it? You aren’t here just out of habit, just because…it’s what you do… You’ve never allowed yourself to be distracted as you sat among God’s things, with the cares of this life, or a typo in the bulletin, or some other thing going on in the room. You haven’t let your resentment of someone cause you to hear only little parts of what was being said. Amend your ways and your deeds, the Lord says to you, too, this morning.

The solution to this need that all of us have, is made known in the these words from the last portion of our text: And [Jesus] was teaching daily in the temple. That earlier quote from Exodus comes from the portion just after Moses’ giving of the Ten Commandments from Mt. Sinai. God says to the people who are just beginning their forty-year journey through the desert to the Promised Land, that they must not make fancy silver and gold representations of imagined other gods. Rather, they will build altars of earth on which to make sacrifices to Him. In these sorts of places He will cause His Name to be remembered among them, and will bless them. He’ll do what He really wants to do; He’ll give them His Word, and through the Spirit’s work in it, strong faith in Him that concludes in eternal life in His kingdom.

That’s the sort of environment Jesus is trying to preserve in our text—that place in which God will be present with His Means of Grace for the people.

But the people who come there are sinners. It’s necessary for them—for you—to hear: Amend your ways and your deeds. “Prepare your hearts” is another way to say it. Repent. Jesus’ daily teaching in the Temple was most certainly the message of God’s grace for sinners. He’s the One Who has brought it. This One Who, with perfection, has honored God stands in the place of those who have failed in it—stands in your place. This One Whose heart has no need of amending stands in the place of those who are guilty of empty, meaningless, rote, distracted worship. He lived perfectly for you; He died, also, for you on a cross in payment for your sins.

In this place—this house of prayer, this temple of the Lord, this place where God causes His Name to be remembered—we hang on Jesus’ Words, because in Him we have forgiveness and salvation. In His Words we come to know the things that make for peace. For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes, St. Paul writes (Romans 10:4). That’s the sort of message He was teaching daily in the Temple. In Him, you no longer have any hopeless need of making a case for yourself before God. Your case has been made in the perfect life and sacrificial death of the Christ. You are perfect before God in Him. That knowledge is not hidden from your eyes. You have known the time of your visitation. Now is the time. Now, you hear this message of salvation through which God intends to preserve your faith unto eternal life. There isn’t any other message. You come into a place like this, on a morning like this, with a heart prepared in penitence to receive the gifts of God’s grace.

Among those gifts, also you receive the Sacrament—the true body and blood of Christ along with bread and wine. Recognize in that, God’s peace given for your nourishment and strengthening during the time in which you remain in this world. It is the body that was given to be destroyed in this world so you could be remade. And you are that. You are Christ’s new creation by water and the word, as our hymn says. With His own blood He bought you. And for your life He died. To Him be glory, both now and forever. Amen.

Jeremiah 7:1-7

The Word that came to Jeremiah from the LORD: “Stand in the gate of the LORD’s house, and proclaim there this word, and say, Hear the word of the LORD, all you men of Judah who enter these gates to worship the Lord. Thus says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel: Amend your ways and your deeds, and I will let you dwell in this place. Do not trust in these deceptive words: ‘This is the temple of the LORD, the temple of the LORD, the temple of the LORD.’

“For if you truly amend your ways and your deeds, if you truly execute justice one with another, if you do not oppress the sojourner, the fatherless, or the widow, or shed innocent blood in this place, and if you do not go after other gods to your own harm, then I will let you dwell in this place, in the land that I gave of old to your fathers forever.”

Romans 8:12-17

Now concerning spiritual gifts, brothers, I do not want you to be uninformed. You know that when you were pagans you were led astray to mute idols, however you were led. Therefore I want you to understand that no one speaking in the Spirit of God ever says “Jesus is accursed!” and no one can say “Jesus is Lord” except in the Holy Spirit.

Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; and there are varieties of service, but the same Lord; and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who empowers them all in everyone. To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good. For to one is given through the Spirit the utterance of wisdom, and to another the utterance of knowledge according to the same Spirit, to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing by the one Spirit, to another the working of miracles, to another prophecy, to another the ability to distinguish between spirits, to another various kinds of tongues, to another the interpretation of tongues. All these are empowered by one and the same Spirit, who apportions to each one individually as he wills.