Judica Mid-Week – Wednesday 20 March A✠D 2024
✠ Psalmody: Psalm 43:1-2a;43:3-5;143:9a, 10a;18:48a, c;129:1-4
✠ Lection: Leviticus 19:1-2a, 10b-19a, 25b; St. John 10:22-38
In the Name of the Father and of the ✠ Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Those who believe Jesus, follow Jesus. They say rightly that He is a king. For this cause He was born, and for this cause He has come into the world, that He should bear witness to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth hears the voice of Jesus. As He taught truth, He was confronted, He was surrounded by those who question Who He is, thus showing by their words and actions that they neither believed nor followed Him. The stubborn, unbelieving heart of man is opposed to the Christ, the Son of God, in every breath, in every thought, in every deed. Be on your guard, for the ultimate fruit of unbelief is condemnation; a condemnation rightly attributed only to ourselves if it comes to be.
But we do not gather under such a cloud this evening, for Christ shines even brighter in the darkness of death. We see the dark winter of unbelief and wisely respect its potency and lure, just as we acknowledge that of our devious foe the Devil and his companion, the wicked world, which enjoys the temporary dainties of riches and pleasures at the cost of the Truth being followed. We see the world, yet by God’s grace hear the truth about it and desire to be less and less of it by our sanctification. That is where we are; in the blessed life of repentance and faith, growing in both by the works done in us in the Father’s Name. We’re not where we are in spiritual blessedness by our doing, but by Christ’s, for just as only we can take credit for our destruction, only He can take credit for our salvation, for our very belief itself. Thus, we rejoice in Lent as we visit Jerusalem with our Savior yet again and are further prepared joyfully to celebrate the upcoming paschal feast in sincerity and truth. Those who believe Jesus, follow Jesus everywhere He leads them; they follow His voice that promises eternal life, never perishing, and not being snatched out of His hand.
He is the Lord of our life and in the hour of deepest need, He always shines forth brighter than even a 30-foot menorah lit at Hanukkah, for His glory is not dependent upon our words and works to glorify Him, but it stands on its own. We are welcomed to join in with angels and archangels and with all the company of heaven, because His Name is holy in itself. He is holy in Himself, for Jesus is both the Christ and the Son of God. This is an important dual confession, not just saying the same thing twice; a good confession of which Martha proclaimed in the presence of Jesus just as He was about to raise her brother, Lazarus, from the dead in the very next chapter of John. Mary, Martha, and most definitely Lazarus in the clutches of death, hear the voice of Jesus and follow Him. But our text has us just earlier in Jerusalem amid unbelieving hearts that reject Him as Christ, that reject Him as the Son of God, that have for too long, for generations, rejected God’s call to repent and believe.
Hanukkah is the now better-known name for The Feast of Dedication, a celebration that originates from the inter-testamental prophetically silent period post-Malachi and pre-Christ. Recall that the magnificent temple that Solomon had built for the LORD nearly a thousand years before the Incarnation was destroyed when the Jews were judged for their unbelief and exiled by God into Babylon in 587 BC. The LORD restored them in mercy and upon their return after 70 years of captivity, they rebuilt and rededicated the temple, with Solomon’s porch a remnant from the first one. But then, around 170 BC, Antiochus IV, an extremely wicked Greek ruler, became king of Judea and essentially outlawed the worship of the God of Israel and the sacrifices that took place at His temple. On top of torturing and murdering tens of thousands of the people, Antiochus also defiled the temple by setting up idols in the Holy of Holies, sacrificing pigs on the altar, and other atrocities. Not all Jews opposed him though, for just as many today bend the knee and their own personal morality to the power du jour, so did many from among the people of Israel follow the defiled religion of Antiochus. In order to prolong their earthly lives, preserve their possessions, maintain position, they pledged allegiance to a man who claimed to be God, giving himself the title Epiphanes, which means manifest god. And upon his coinage he placed his icon with the words King Antiochus, God.
Thanks be to the true God that eventually a righteous rebellion against this false one was successfully waged and the holiness and function of the temple was restored through a time of cleansing, consecration, and rededication to the divine service of God Almighty. The feast that commemorates that dedication of the temple put back to its godly purpose is The Feast of Dedication. But there is no Happy Hanukkah without belief in the true Temple of God in the flesh of Jesus dedicated to destruction and raised again on the third day.
Around 200 years after the original Hannukah, it was the Feast of Dedication in Jerusalem, and it was winter. And Jesus walked in the temple, in Solomon’s porch. Thus, the important setting of this Son of David’s confrontation with the Jews is during this feast, in Jerusalem, in the temple, surrounded by the coldness not of winter only, but that worse of unbelieving hearts. On one hand, in light of the tyranny of the man Antiochus entering the temple and claiming to be God, the Jews were somewhat understandably skeptical of this Man, Jesus, entering the temple and claiming to be God. The important difference though is that Jesus’ claim is good and it is true and is the fulfillment of all the good things of Israel’s history; not a repeat of the evil, for the evil of the heart of man is what this True Temple constantly reveals. The Jews are then without excuse, because the Word made flesh was teaching the Kingdom of God clearly, doing heavenly works, and the Jews detested both. And not only is He true manifest God, He is also the true Temple that the Jews tear down when they have Him lifted up to death, even death on a cross. In so doing, they show themselves to be not of the Father in heaven, but of the world who desecrate the Holy Temple of Christ by not believing Him and taking up stones again to stone Him, because He not only claims to be the Christ, but also the very Son of God. I and My Father are one. The Father is in Me, and I in Him.
The Christ, the Anointed One, has come as that Davidic King, the promised Son of Man, the compassionate Shepherd calling out to His sheep in truth. It is a most desirous and beneficial identity, to be numbered in the Anointed’s flock, for a change of identity is what happens to you when in your baptism you exchange your filthy rags of sin for the spotless robe of Christ and put on His righteousness. The truth in His voice that this Good Shepherd says about those that belong to Him is this: I give them eternal life. This means that if you are in Christ, you are a new creation; old things have passed away; behold all things have become new. Have become. The eternal life promised to Christ’s sheep is a fulfilled one, not one that requires a wait. The life that He gives is instant, a true treasure possessed by all those baptized into His Holy Name. The Son of God also says that His sheep shall never perish. They shall not encounter any danger in this life or beyond that poses more danger than Jesus is God. There is no threat of which Christ’s sheep are to fear more than God and this Man is manifest God. This Man is Shepherd. This Man is Savior. It is He Who redeems the lost and condemned person. It is He Who purchases and wins His sheep from all sins, from death, and from the power of the devil, that you may be His own. It is He Who cleanses the temple of unbelief and plants Himself firmly in the ground upon the mountain to show that He is your eternal Temple not made with hands, the very One in Whom and by Whom you are reconciled to the Father. There is no need for an earthly temple any longer, defiled or dedicated. He is the One.
Neither shall anyone snatch them out of My hand, says the One Who is to come into the world, for there is none mightier that He and His Father Who are one. Hear and be confident in the manifest God’s power and authority to keep you in the one true faith unto life everlasting. Though appearing meek and lowly before this surrounding pack of wolves, the eternal Temple in Whom you trust, Whom you follow, cannot be cast down again. Behold and rejoice at the grace of God in coming to follow Him, for this is not by your supreme intellect that you have been smart enough to choose Jesus; this is not by your strength of will to defy your own sinful heart, but it is only by this Good Shepherd’s mercy that you go not the way of the Jews in rejecting Him. We’d like to give ourselves the credit, to be like God, to think that we’re among the wiser bunch that have figured it out that Jesus not only claims to be the One fulfilling the promise of the Son of David, but that He Who comes also has a Father in heaven, with Whom He is One and that the smart ones believe in Him. How you come to not only hear but to believe His words and hear His voice when He says, “I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; neither shall anyone snatch them out of My hand,” is thankfully by His doing alone. If it is God alone Who does this, then His gift of confidence in His word, in His works, in His truth cannot be surer. You have not willed this to be, but He has, thus your confidence is immeasurably more joyous as well. Take comfort in His word as you press on through Passiontide, into its startling and majestic conclusion of this Temple crashing down into the earth to rest and bring about the new, eternal day. Take comfort that it is He Who does the work in you in His Father’s Name. Take comfort that you follow Him not down a dark path, but upon one of light, His light. You follow by His doing. He creates His sheep and you follow Him not because you know Him, but because He knows you. If He knows you it means that He knows you to be His sheep and you hear His voice and joyously follow Him.
In ✠ Jesus’ Name. Amen.
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