Jesus Visits, Cleanses, and Brings Peace to His people

August 21, 2022

Luke 19:41-48 – Trinity 10

 

INI

The Church cannot be safe-haven for unrepentant sinners.

That’s what makes it a ‘den of robbers’ as our Gospel and Old Testament texts say.

For Jeremiah, the Temple was filled with hypocritical worship.

The people claimed deliverance while they continued to steal, murder, commit adultery, make offerings to false Gods, even ones they didn’t know of.

For Jesus, the Temple was filled with powerful people oppressing the poor.

 

This cannot stand.

The Temple must be cleansed.

We must be cleansed.

The place of God’s presence cannot remain in the soils of sin,

lest the day of God’s visitation be met with wrath instead of peace.

 

So God must step in and re-establish Himself as the center of the Temple,

But also as the center of our lives too.

Jesus visits, cleanses, and brings peace to his people.

 

I.

Jesus visits His people.

He was the promised one of old who comes to be the Messiah,

To save His people from their sins.

Yet, when Jesus drew near to the holy city of Jerusalem,

the place where God’s people lived,

This was His reaction:

 

Luke records, “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 […] they will not leave one stone upon another in you, because you did not know the time of your visitation.”

 

Jesus wept.

He was sad for the city,

Because they didn’t know Jesus was coming.

Jesus foresaw the rejection and destruction that was to come – and it saddened him.

He was their Messiah, their Savior, but he knew they wouldn’t have him.

 

They didn’t know the things which made for peace –

A true peace that lasts to eternity.

They didn’t know the peace of God that Christ came to bring.

 

They sought peace from the Messiah.

Though, they rejected the Messiah God had sent.

They sought a political Messiah to bring down the Romans,

A political leader to free them their captivity.

Someone to make them a sovereign nation again.

That’s the sort of peace they sought.

 

But that’s not the peace that God sought to bring,

And so they completely missed the day of visitation from God.

It was hidden from their eyes.

 

There was a commercial add that ran in London to promote awareness of cyclists on the road.

The commercial had a group of 4 in white shirts with a basketball and a group of 4 in black shirts with a basketball.

Before they start passing the ball, they ask you to count how many passes the team in the white shirts has.

So, they start passing the ball and get to 13 passes.

But then it asks, “Did you see the moonwalking bear in the background?”

It rewinds and when your attention is directed towards finding the bear,

He’s easy to spot.

The point is, if you’re paying attention to one thing,

it’s easy to miss another thing right in front of you.

 

This happened to those in Jerusalem.

They were expecting one type of Messiah and got another.

But what made Jesus sad isn’t that they were tricked,

It was that God had been telling them of the coming Christ all along,

Who comes to heal the blind, sick, and lame,

Who has the Spirit of God anointed on Him,

Who came to bring peace to the nations!

Yet, this Christ was hidden from their eyes, –

Not because of some awareness test trick like in the commercial,

But because they ignored God’s Word about this coming King.

 

II.

After Jesus visited His people and came into the city,

Jesus then began to cleanse the impurities of His people.

When He first came to the city, He was sad.

Then He came to the Temple, and His sadness turned to anger.

Because those who sold in the Temple were doing so unjustly,

Selling things higher than what’s needed to profit greatly.

They swapped Roman money for the Temple coin at unfair exchange rates.

They were furthering the poverty of their own people.

 

Luke writes, “Jesus entered the temple and began to drive out those who sold, saying ‘It is written, ‘my house shall be a house of prayer’, but you have made it into a den of robbers’”

 

The temple was supposed to be a place of sacrifice –

where sins of the people are met with forgiveness through the shedding of blood.

Yet, the Temple had become soiled and dirtied by the greed of man against each other.

The money changers abused His poor ones who could hardly afford what was needed for sacrifice.

Certainly, Jesus gets ticked off at sin.

But Jesus is especially set off here,

because committing sins yourself is one thing,

But it’s quite another thing if your sin brings others down along with you.

They’ve robbed their fellow brothers and sisters,

God’s own people!

And so, they’ve turned a meeting place between God and man –

A place of prayer, of sacrifice, of peace –

Into a place of greed, abuse, and impurity.

 

We have temples too.

Paul in 1 Corinthians 6 tells us that our bodies are temples for the Holy Spirit –

God comes to be within us through the forgiveness of sins.

As we continue on in our imperfect Christian life, our Temples get soiled.

We sin. And the Lord gets angry at sin.

Whatever our sin may be –

Maybe it’s those sins Jeremiah talks about – stealing, murdering, sexual immorality, pornography,

telling lies, making sacrifices of our time to the false gods in our pockets, wasting our days away in mindlessness.

Whatever our sins, it dirties the temple of our bodies –

our hearts, our minds, our eyes, our ears, our souls.

The darkness of sinful man is served willingly by our sinful flesh.

 

And Jesus particularly gets angry when instead of letting His light of holiness and truth shine through us,

We use our darkness to drag down others as well.

That could be abuse, gossip, destroying other’s reputations.

Most sins don’t take place in a vacuum.

They don’t only destroy our relationship with God,

They destroy our relationship with others.

 

God gets angry, yes.

But His anger has a purpose – the purpose is for love.

His passionate love for you, and love for others.

 

Jesus love for His people led Him to cleanse the Temple.

The word for “drive out” in the text is the same Greek word to describe exorcisms.

This shows what Spirit resided in the Temple,

And the necessity for it to be cast out.

The impure had to be thrown out so that God could dwell there.

 

Now that the demonic work was absent from the Temple,

Who was left?

Jesus. And He re-established Himself in temple.

Luke says “He was teaching daily in the Temple.”

He established God’s true teachings, seeking to cleanse the place of the wrongdoings of the den of robbers.

 

This is what the Lord does with us, in the Temples of our bodies.

Our sins never cease, and that’s not good.

That’s why the Christ comes to cleanse us weekly in the Divine Service.

He gives His body and blood to us for the forgiveness of sins.

He instructs us in His Word.

He comes to visit, cleanse, and bring peace between us and God in heaven.

His anger towards our sin has led Him to the point of casting it away from us.

 

III.

The chief priests and scribes were seeking to destroy Jesus –

To sacrifice Him to preserve their wicked ways.

Little did they know, they would put to death the Lamb of God,

Who takes away the sin of the world.

 

Jesus willingly allowed Himself to be offered up to God as a sacrifice on the altar of the cross.

Because by this sacrifice, Jesus visits, cleanses, and brings peace not just to brick and mortar Temples.

But by this sacrifice, Jesus visits, cleanses, and brings peace to flesh and blood temples.

And so with Jesus in the midst of you,

He brings peace.

 

God’s anger on your sin is requited in the sacrifice of His Son.

Wrath has been satisfied,

Propitiation for your sin has been made.

The sacrificial animals sold in the Temple marketplaces where never enough to truly satisfy God’s wrath on the sins of mankind.

Man Himself had to pay for it.

But we aren’t worthy sacrifices – we’re blemished.

But without the perfect sacrifice, there can’t be peace!

That’s why Christ stepped in, to be the pure sacrifice, when we could not.

With this sacrifice, eternal peace is ours in Christ our Lord.

 

Christ’s sacrifice not only brings peace between us and God –

But also us and each other.

Just as those who sold with unjust practices in the temple were cleared out,

So is the evil and unrighteousness between us and each other.

This is why when we come together to receive cleansing in the Lord’s Supper,

There’s no room for strife between God’s people.

Matthew 5 says, “if you’re offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift at the altar and go. Be reconciled with your brother, and then come and offer your gift.”

So, God brings peace – not only from Himself,

but a peace between us and each other.

 

The Church can’t be a safe-haven for sin.

Because Christ casts it away.

He visits us in our Temples,

Cleanses us of the sin that is there with His means of grace,

And brings peace between us and God,

Which carries us in peace towards each other.

INI