O
Jerusalem, Jerusalem,
which
killest the prophets, and stonest them that are sent unto thee;
how
often would I have gathered thy children together,
as
a hen doth gather her brood under her wings, and ye would not!
Behold,
your house is left unto you desolate:
and
verily I say unto you, Ye shall not see me,
until
the time come when ye shall say,
Blessed
is he that cometh in the name of the Lord.
It
is easy to look back on 1st century Israel condescendingly, for
having missed all the signs and wonders prophesied by the ancient Prophets
which were fulfilled in the coming of Jesus Christ. How could they have had the responsibility of
guarding and living by the Holy Scriptures written by Moses, Joshua, Samuel,
David, Solomon, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and all the other Prophets and historians who
by God’s Holy Spirit composed the Hebrew canon, and missed the great Messiah
whom they all pointed to? How could the
people of God miss and reject the foretold coming of God Himself, in the Person
of His Beloved Son sent to save them from sin, death, hell, and the power of
the devil through His Vicarious Atonement for them? Indeed, how can a people who call themselves
by the name of the only true God, bound together by His Eternal Word and Spirit,
be unwilling to receive His Word Made Flesh for their very salvation?
As
those questions circle in our minds, they spiral closer and closer to our own
souls. If these questions can be asked
of the ancient Israelites, they can be asked of us as well, because the people
of God today descend through the same history as those who have come
before. How is it that Adam and Eve,
created without sin, chose to reject God and His Word, bringing death and
slavery upon the whole world? How is it
that Cain rejects God and His Word, so as to murder his brother? How is it that the whole world rejects God
and His Word, so that it is destroyed in the deluge, saving only Noah, his
family, and a nucleus of all the kinds of animals through the Ark? How is it that the people led by Moses out of
slavery in Egypt reject God and His Word, so that an entire generation is left
to wander and die in the wilderness? How
is it that the Israelites settled in Canaan reject God and His Word by
embracing the pagan gods of the land, bringing cycles of destruction upon
themselves in successive generations from Philistines, Assyrians, Babylonians,
Greeks, and Romans?
They
did so in the same way that the people of God rejected Him and His Word in the
time of the Apostles and thereafter, creating schisms, heresies, and apostasies
through tyranny, pride, and every sort of vice.
In every age of the people of God, that same community has found ways to
reject Him and His Word as they constructed and surrendered empires, built and
looted sanctuaries, waged victorious and hopeless wars, raised and lost fortunes. The reason it happened across our entire
history down to our day, and why it will continue to occur until the Lord comes
on the Last Day, is that the people of God are sinful and broken creatures just
like everyone else in the world. It is a
universal human condition to be fallen and tempted to every kind of evil, with
none greater than our nearly irresistible temptation to reject God and His saving
Word.
But
the love of God presses through our sin, our temptation, and our pride to
breathe life and love into His people.
That same saving Word that become flesh and dwelt among us, which was
nailed to a Cross by His own people so that He might be the Lamb of God who
takes away the sins of the world, comes to every soul in this broken world to
bring His healing gifts of forgiveness and eternal life. He knows that there will be those who will
continue to reject Him, to dishonor Him, and to persecute the ones He sends in
His Name by His Word. But in the midst
of all the pain and suffering and death, He knows that His Word is still the
only hope this sin-sick world has to escape eternal hell. He knows that neither politics, nor philosophy,
nor science, nor art, nor literature, nor any other human pursuit will lift
mankind out of their hopeless estate, because what is born of sinful man cannot
rise above its parents. But His Word,
which is the ground of all truth and existence, of all life and good and virtue,
can reach down into every human heart so that they might have a new life born
from above—a life which is breathed out by the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit,
transcending the brokenness of a fallen world and enduring forever by His grace—a
life that can only be received by faith in the One who speaks it into
existence, and maintains it by grace unto eternity.
As
it was from the beginning of our fallen creation even unto our own day, the
most hostile place in the world to be is where the Word of God is preached,
believed, and confessed. There the Word
comes to save sinners, and there the Word condescends to be abused, persecuted,
and rejected by those it has come to save.
There you will find the ruins of Jerusalem, like an icon of dead and
dying churches, where the bodies of the saints and martyrs lie entombed beneath
the feet of the people who murdered them for their witness. There you will find broken families and
broken nations, where the blood of the faithful has watered the grass of
forgotten meadows or been washed down the sewers of forgotten streets. But there, in the midst of the calamities of
rejection and the murder of innocents, you will also see the Word of God do its
most amazing work. There, in the blood
of the martyrs and the proclamation of the persecuted saints, you will see the
Holy Spirit breathe new life into dead hearts, inspiring a living faith in the
Savior which has eyes to see beyond the suffering and death of a fallen world,
to a new dawn of a new creation built upon divine love and forgiveness and
compassion. There you will see Almighty
God heal the sick, give sight to the blind, hearing to the deaf, speech to the
dumb, and life to the dead. There, in
His Word and Spirit, you will see Christ both dead and risen for the salvation
of the whole world, coming again in glory to bring to completion what He won for
us on Calvary and declared before the cosmos on Easter morning.
Do
you look around you, and wonder why your Jerusalem seems left to you abandoned
and desolate? Do you wonder why your
nation, or your church, or your family, or even your own soul is dying? It is not because your God has abandoned you,
but because you have abandoned God. His
Word never left you—it still calls you away from the paths of dead and into the
paths of eternal life, where there is forgiveness and pardon for all who will
repent and believe the Gospel. Turn and
hear Him speaking to you by His Word and Spirit. Lift your eyes to see the Word Made Flesh who
comes to seek and to save even you.
There you will behold the miraculous mystery of His salvation, and the
life He has given for the life of the whole world. Hear Him.
Believe, and live. Amen.
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