Sermon: Wittenberg Academy – Nov 7, 2023

7 Nov 2023

Text: Matt 24:1-28

In the name of + Jesus.  Amen.

The destruction of the temple was both a divine judgment and an act of mercy.  It was punishment against those who rejected our Lord – especially among those in leadership positions who really knew better – as it was destruction on an Old Testament level.  And like all similar judgments in the history of the children of Israel, it was preceded by prophecy and calls to repentance that went unheeded.  In fact, Jesus gave them forty years to change their hearts and minds – the same amount of time as the children of Israel wandered in the desert – with the same result that almost none of them made it to the promised land.

But the destruction of the temple was also an act of mercy, like the destruction of the bronze serpent which had become an idol (2 Kings 18:4). For the temple was no longer needed, and its continued existence – along with the priests and Levites and sacrifices – would have simply been the false worship of a false god.  The true God made it clear at the cross that the physical temple had been fulfilled by the physical Jesus.  His blood fulfills the blood of the animal sacrifices, which were a “shadow of the good things to come” (Heb 10:1).  Jesus is now our priest (Heb 5:1-10).

For even believers continued to gather in the temple.  It took an act of God to sever those ties completely, and to avoid the temptation to continue engaging in useless sacrifices.  The sacrament of the altar is a sharing, a communion in the one all-atoning sacrifice, “once for all” (Heb 7:27). 

As St. Peter teaches us, the church is the new temple, “you yourselves like living stones are being built up as a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ” (1 Pet 2:5).

And so, instead of one temple where God is present, requiring the mediator of a hereditary priesthood, we now build Christian altars upon which Christ Himself comes to us, our High Priest in the flesh of His body and blood.  The priests of this New Covenant are not mediators between God and men, but are rather preachers of the Good News, servants who wash the feet of the saints – saints who are themselves the priesthood of the baptized, the cleansed, the ones who are fed the body and who drink the blood. 

This abiding presence of our Lord in His Word and in His sacraments will hold us in the faith, even through the “tribulation” to come and the hatred “by all nations for [His] name’s sake.”  For this is the unbelieving world’s reaction to our Lord’s commission to “go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name” (Matt 28:19).  “God so loved the world,” (John 3:16), and “He was in the world, and the world was made through Him, yet the world did not know Him” (John 1:10).  And as John also reports our Lord’s words: “If the world hates you, know that it has hated Me before it hated you” (John 15:18). 

And our Lord’s promises still stand, come what may, even the “abomination of desolation” which we will understand when the time comes.  For hear this good news: “The one who endures to the end will be saved,” and “this gospel of the kingdom will be proclaimed throughout the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come.”  And for us, dear friends, the end of this world will be like the end of the temple: both a divine judgment, and an act of mercy.

And we pray with St. John and with Christians around the world, from the very end of revealed Scripture itself, “Amen, come Lord Jesus” (Rev 22:20).

Amen.

In the name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.