“Bringing Down The House”

Text: Luke 21:5-19

What I would like to focus on for today is the beginning part, verses 5 and 6. ⁵When some were speaking about the temple, how it was adorned with beautiful stones and gifts dedicated to God, he said, ⁶“As for these things that you see, the days will come when not one stone will be left upon another; all will be thrown down.” Here we listen to Jesus talking about the destruction of the temple. Now follow along with me. The temple was considered to be God’s home on earth. Jesus is God. So, God is talking about destroying His own house. That should sound a bit surprising, a bit… odd. Why would God do such a thing?

Sometimes there is no fixing, you just have to start over. What probably comes to mind first is a car or some home repair. In my family, nowhere have the words “this can’t be fixed we have to start over” become more notorious then in plumbing. O plumbing how I love it when it works and hate hate hate it when it does not. There is no such thing as a simple fix when plumbing and I are involved in the same sentence. Its either broken far worse then anyone has realized or in the process of my trying to fix it, it gets destroyed. I go to the hardware store only to find out I have an old model, hasn’t been made in years, there is a place an hour away that might have it, they are only open 3 hours a day, closed on weekends, and its going to cost a lot of time, effort, money, frustration and it may still be impossible! Have any of you ever experienced something like this? Time to start over.

But how does this relate to God and the temple? There are 3levels that I can see of this that we all can experience. So I am going to move from the individual to the entire church. The most basic and personal instance of when we have to just scrap everything and start over is when we approach Jesus and fully confess our sins. Do we even remember to look at our prayer of confession that way? We go to God and say, God I have made a mess. I have done a lot of things, thought a lot of things, that I am not proud of. And I have realized they are wrong and I’ve tried to fix them. And for every attempt a failure. My failures are so bad that if the people around me knew how bad I messed things up, they would probably sell my story to make one of those really depressing Lifetime made for tv movies based on me. I can’t fix it Lord. “You will be betrayed even by parents and brothers, by relatives and friends…” I get that too Lord. If they knew what was inside…I’d turn my back on me too. Please, won’t you give me a clean slate, a new start? But the part of the good news is, is if that could be your prayer, then your in the right place. We all love an underdog and a comeback story, but no one loves one more than God. That what this is all about, in Him we can be forgiven and in Him we can all be made a new creation. You can always start over.

2, our relationships. Our relationships with others are among the most important things in our lives. However…However… it is only our relationship with Jesus Christ which is essential. For some relationships, there is no fixing to be had, we must start over. Some relationships are just acid. We can stick it out but if we aren’t helping people up, if instead they are pulling us down, then we must know when to break ties. And while Jesus can redeem anything, we must remember that it is Jesus who can redeem anything, not we who can redeem anything. We must admit in humility that we can’t fix other people then we often want to. And while no one is ever beyond hope, sometimes we aren’t the instrument that God is going to use to bring all lives back to Him. Just like in a growing season, there is the person who tills the land, the person who plants the seed, the person who nurtures the plant, and the person who reaps the fruit. We often want to see the whole process unfold before us. But that isn’t always the way it works. And we have to know when to back off, and let someone else take up the chores of the field.

3^rd, is our church. Now I must confess, this next part scares me. Lets jump back to the time when Jesus was with the disciples. Was God’s temple so corrupted that the whole thing had to go? It was. This nation which was to be a beacon of hope to the world, not only had it failed to live up to expectation, it had become a dark shadow to the world. It was full of corruption. Jesus calls Jerusalem the city which slays its prophets. God had sent many to them… and they heeded none of them. This people who had been chosen to bring God to the world had kept God to themselves. They refused to share God with anyone. Instead, they lorded what they had over everyone else. Jews > slave to a Jewish family > from a tribe somewhat related to a Jewish group > live stock > Gentiles. We would be 5^th class citizens. Does that sound like they were trying to bring people out of darkness? The system of sacrifice which was supposed to help people with their sins had been taken over by corrupt businessmen who were in league with the corrupt priests. It was like in this temple, this house of God, rats had come through the wall and eaten all the food, ants picked up the scraps, termites had eaten out all the walls and flouring, wasps were on the ceiling stinging anyone they could, and the sewage had long since backed up so the place stunk so bad that God couldn’t stand to be in it. It was time to bring down the house and start over. And this stands as a great warning to us, to make sure that the church does not become as the temple was. Jesus said He had to be about His Fathers business. As Christians we too must be about our heavenly Fathers business. Do we dare look at in the mirror and tell ourselves “I must be about my Father’s business…or I am out of business.”

However, the good news is that God loves us so much that He isn’t content to leave us. Instead, our relationship is filial, it is as a parent to their beloved child. God loved us so much that rather than us trying to find a way to get to Him, God found a way to come to us. Immanuel, literally God With Us. God with us!

· Psalm 46:7 “The LORD Almighty is with us; the God of Jacob is our fortress.”

· Jeremiah 15:20 “I will make you a wall to this people, a fortified wall of bronze; they will fight against you but will not overcome you, for I am with you to rescue and save you," declares the LORD.”

· Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are… with me

St. Patrick’s prayer into our hymn as closing prayer:

· Christ with me

· Christ before me – He is showing me the way

· Christ behind me- He has my back

· Christ in me- He has given me a new heart

· Christ beneath me- He is removing the snares and pitfall ahead of me

· Christ above me- He is covering me from the elements

· Christ on my right, Christ on my left… - He is holding my hands so that I do not fall