READINGS FROM HOLY SCRIPTURE:
Jeremiah 8:4-12
1 Corinthians 12:1-11
- St. Luke 19:41-48
To you all, the Elect Exiles of the Dispersion; may Grace
and Peace be multiplied to you (1 Pet)
Who speaks to you today, from His Gospel heard in His
Church, saying:
“And he entered
the temple and began to drive out those who sold”
False idols have a nasty habit of constantly popping up in
our lives, keeping us from the perfect relationship we need with God, and
forcing Jesus to come “clean house”. We think they are outside forces housed in
pictures or graven images, when its our hearts creating them for us especially
when we try to eliminate them.
As we said last week, you can’t get to Jesus unless you go
through His Mother, St. Mary, so too this week you can’t get to Jesus until you
get tossed by Him, heard in our Gospel today. An unsettling thought to be sure.
One which has been metamorphized by “christian teachers” to mean “align
yourself with God”. Whatever that means.
For today, Jesus is not only raising the standard and bar on
holiness and what it actually is, He is throwing it at you, as you sit
comfortably at your self-righteousness table. Which He also then takes, flips,
and tosses at you, as well.
At you, mind. For, Jesus does not just overturn tables and
drive out people randomly in a fit of blind rage. He’s doing it because they
deserve it and so do you, as He said. You can almost hear His words spoken
through Joshua, “choose this day whom you will serve”! This from
everyone’s favorite verse in Joshua 24, because it finishes with Joshua’s
heroic declaration, “as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord” (v. 15).
Jesus is showing us that we do not choose to serve the Lord.
That we have false idols in our life that must be cleansed, daily. Since our
body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, we allow dealers and sellers to squat on
holy ground. Especially because Jesus’ Body is the true Temple, it must be free
from all unrighteousness or it will not be the pure place of joy He promised it
is.
So what is your choice today? Will you serve God? Or will
you continue to serve your idols? Which idols, bars, or tables get in your way
of serving God with all your heart?
In our days, you can pick your poison. One idol can even be
blaming others, such as social media or taking the stance of, “well my
generation was never taught that”. But the path always leads to yourself.
Whether you find that you are being self-righteous, in other words idolizing
yourself, or you point out self-righteousness in another, the blame lies
squarely on you.
Now, our modern day “teachers” will tell us we suffer from
these false idols because we are too self-focused. We self-worship and we trust
in our feelings, Luke, to determine right from wrong. Comfort can be an idol.
In order to counter-act this, they will tell you to focus
instead on rooting yourself in the truth and then live it out so others can
see. They ape Jesus’ words and teach, “die to yourself”. What they really mean
is “deny yourself” because that’s what Jesus said, not “die to self”, but we’ll
let it slide for now.
Forgiving others, is a part of that “dying to self”. You
must “do” when God says “Do” and “don’t do” when God says “Don’t”. Any
distraction from what the Lord is calling you to do and how He’s calling you to
live needs to go. Produce change in your life. Allow the Holy Spirit to work in
you. God is patient, keep trying.
Repent. It all sounds good doesn’t it? If a tree is in my
way, while I’m driving on the road, just remove it, and I can continue my
journey. Well guess what? There is not just a “tree in the road” to God, there
is a whole forest. And not just a forest, but a rock slide. A rock slide from
many mountains. And not just all those things, you don’t even see a path
towards God anymore, in your sin.
While all that “putting away false idols by not being
self-focused” sounds good, in order to accomplish any of that, you have to
focus on yourself! You are right back where you started! In your attempt to
cleanse your life of sin, you have run in circles, inviting more sin into it,
because you were looking at your precious table in front of you to do so.
What is missing from all these false teachings? Jesus. We
haven’t heard about Jesus once. All we have heard is “I, me, my, we, mine”. I
need to die to self. I need to root myself in truth. I need to live out my
faith. I need to allow the Holy Spirit to transform me. I need to change. I
need to align.
Romans 8:7, “the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile
to God, for it does not submit to God's law; indeed, it cannot.”
To get rid of sin that is manifest in your flesh, you need
to focus on your flesh. To give evidence of God’s work in your life, you need
to focus on the flesh. To change, you need to focus on the flesh. To sin you
need flesh, to not sin you need flesh. Our own sin, death, and the devil back
us into this corner. Every. Single. Time. And still get us to think we are
winning.
Instead, own up to your “tables”. Don’t try to dodge the
things Jesus is throwing. He is not throwing them away, but throwing them to
get your attention. He says, “These are the things that need to be tossed out,
and yet you continue to keep them inside you.”
Second of all, the devil is real. He is alive and well and
lies in wait, prowling around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour (1
Peter 5:8). He is not lazy or careless, and our flesh is all too active and
eager to sin and inclined to oppose the Holy Spirit (Tappert, 126). The devil
has an inside man, so to speak, in seeking our destruction: us. “The devil is a
master at finding the spot where it hurts most” (Tappert, 100).
But First of all, and most important, Jesus is real and He
is greater than the devil and our self-worship. If the devil lies, Jesus is the
Truth. If the devil is a strong man, Jesus has tied up the strong man as the
stronger man. If the devil is an accuser, Jesus has taken all his accusation
upon Himself, for you.
The Tables that Jesus tosses is His Law, which has been meet,
right, and salutary since the beginning. They are the things for which we stand
guilty of in front of God. Our sins, our transgressions, our debts for which we
try to sell whatever we can to appease that vengeful and wrath-filled God we
think we worship.
“But Lord”, we say, “we have set up these tables in Your
Name. We are investing our talent that you gave us in Your Name. We are
hustling for the wonders You do, in Your Name. Stop being so unreasonable!”
Jesus says, “Do not think that I have come to abolish the
Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them”
(Matthew 5:17). Jesus will be the one to purchase the sinner at the price
of His Body and Blood. Jesus will be the One to set up the Table, the Only
Table needful, upon which His Body and Blood will be offered for free. Jesus
will be the one to purify, to cleanse, and to sanctify, not you.
You attempting to take on that role will send Christ to the
cross a second time, condemning yourself for all eternity. Trusting in your own
works, you commune with the devil, “crucifying once again the Son of God to
[your] own harm and holding Him up to contempt” (Heb 6:6).
However, the clean heart and The Holy Spirit that has been
given to us, do not allow for such nonsense. The Spirit declares, “And when
he had taken the scroll, the four living creatures and the twenty-four elders
fell down before the Lamb… And they sang a new song, saying, ‘Worthy are you to
take the scroll and to open its seals, for you were slain, and by your blood
you ransomed people for God from every tribe and language and people and
nation, and you have made them a kingdom and priests to our God, and they shall
reign on the earth’” (Rev 5:8-10).
And verse 12: “Worthy is the Lamb who was slain, to
receive power and wealth and wisdom and might and honor and glory and
blessing!”
And Psalm 115:1 “Not to us, O Lord, not to us, but to
your name give glory”
And finally, Isaiah 42:8 “I am the Lord; that is my name;
my glory I give to no other”
Grace is no longer grace if we earn it. Glory is no longer
glory if it is fleshy.
Jesus does both. He both earns grace, not for Himself, for
you and makes it possible for God’s eternal Glory to show up in the flesh. And
since He does that, these false men from the Gospel and false idols in your
heart can no longer stand, because they do not face a whimsical spirit, but a
man.
This God-man, Jesus Christ, then continues to cleanse His
own Body, the congregation of all believers. He will not leave spot or wrinkle
upon His beloved Baptized believers. He will not allow corruption to continue
for eternity to plague them. Our prayers are answered in Christ Crucified and
Risen again from the dead and our idols die at His feet.
From the Gospel, Jesus also emphasizes how important this
life is. We are not to just be super-spiritual and wait for the end. We are to
have a full life of faith now. We are to cleanse our own hearts and throw out
our own sins.
And we will, but only by the grace of God. He is active, we
are passive. He suddenly enters His Temple while we are busy living in sin or
trying to rid ourselves of sin. He barges in, unexpected and uninvited. We
resist thinking our time is up, but He passes us by, instead heading to His
cross.
There to purchase and win salvation on our behalf, since we
could not and would not do it on our own, He completes and perfects the Law
Himself only to hand over all the credit to those who believe and are
baptized.
There is an intimate, mysterious union between Jesus’ Body
and His Temple on earth. There is also the intimate union God has with us, in
Christ. This is the Sacramental worldview that we hold on to and this is the
Sacramental faith that saves us. For, in the Body and Blood of Christ, all
idols disappear as a vapor.
There can be no idol where God says, “Baptism now saves
you”. There can be no idol when Christ says, “Take and eat; take and
drink for the forgiveness of sins.” There can be no idol when our Lord
declares, “In the stead and by the command…I forgive you all your sins.”
Church is an idol safe-space. Checking in here marks you
safe from idol worship today. How? Because it is here that God does all the
work. Here is where you take your sabbath rest, set aside the work you do, and God
works in you. God’s Word and God’s Promises are always God’s and never false.
Your idols come from your heart. You can only blame others
and other things for so long, before the jig is up. In the face of this
constant sin there is only one option: confess. When the devil throws our false
idols up to us and declares that we deserve death and hell, we ought to speak
thus:
‘I admit that I deserve death and hell. What of it? Does
this mean that I shall be sentenced to eternal damnation? By no means. For I
know One who suffered and made satisfaction in my behalf. His name is Jesus
Christ, the Son of God. Where he is, there I shall be also (Tappert, 87).
“you must not believe your own thoughts nor those of the
devil. But believe what we preachers say… Be content and confident. Your sin is
forgiven. Rely resolutely on this… for it is God himself who speaks to you
through them” (Tappert, 103).
On top of speaking to you, He also communes with you in
order to make the deal double sealed. Jesus not only talks, but acts. He
declares your heart to be the source of evil, and takes your stony, unbelieving
heart, and replaces it with His own. He then hooks you up to an I.V. drip of
Divine Service and Body and Blood to strengthen and preserve you, as you face
your world of idols, to life everlasting.
Tappert, T. G., Luther:
Letters of Spiritual counsel.
Westminster Press. Philidelphia. 1960
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