Judgment and Salvation Begin at the Household of God

Trinity 10| Luke 19:41-48| Pastor James Preus| August 9, 2026

“For it is time for judgment to begin at the household of God” 1 Peter 4:17

Jesus’ lament over Jerusalem is remarkable for a couple of reasons. First, because He predicts Jerusalem’s destruction precisely as it happened just forty years later. In the year AD 70, the Roman general Titus besieged Jerusalem, tearing down her walls, destroying the temple, and killing hundreds of thousands of Jews. Jesus’ prediction is so accurate, skeptics simply deny Jesus made it. They claim the Gospels must have been written after 70 AD, because Jesus’ prediction is too perfect. But if you believe that our Lord has the power of prophecy, you recognize that Jesus’ prediction proves that God’s Word always proves true.

Second, Jesus’ lament is remarkable, because He speaks of the destruction of God’s Holy City and of the temple where Jesus Himself confesses God dwells (Matthew 23:21). We are often taught that Israel or Jerusalem in the Old Testament represents the Christian Church of the New Testament. And so, we apply a spiritual interpretation to many Psalms and prophesies that mention Jerusalem, Zion, and Israel. Yet, Jerusalem goes beyond simply representing the Christian Church, but in a very real sense, Jerusalem was the Christian Church. In Jerusalem was the temple of God. There, in the Holy of Holies God dwelt upon the Mercy Seat. There the high priest, the descendent of Aaron offered sacrifices prescribed by God through Moses. There the priests and Levites taught the people God’s precepts. There the people of Israel gathered to worship God. There is a reason the Psalmist declares, “If I forget you, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget its skill!” (Psalm 137:5)

Yet, if Jerusalem is not merely a representation of the Christian Church, but it was the Christian Church, how could God destroy it? To understand this, we must understand the distinction between the church visible and the church invisible. There is only one Church. Yet, we consider it in two ways: visible and invisible. The Church visible is the church that we see with pastors preaching and administering the Sacraments, and people gathering around to worship. Yet, within this church visible are hypocrites and false Christians, including false prophets among the pastors, bishops, and popes. The church invisible is the true remnant of believers within the church visible, who are not only baptized, hear the preaching of the Word, receive the Sacraments, and worship Christ openly, but they truly believe in their hearts and will be saved on the Day of Judgment. It is called the church invisible, because you cannot see a person’s faith in his heart.

And we see this in Scripture with Jerusalem. On the one hand, God says of Jerusalem, “Those who trust in the Lord are like Mount Zion, which cannot be moved, but abides forever. As the mountains surround Jerusalem, so the Lord surrounds his people, from this time forth and forevermore.” (Psalm 125:1-2) Yet of Jerusalem the prophet also sings, “Zion stretches out her hands, but there is none to comfort her; the Lord has commanded against Jacob that his neighbors should be his foes; Jerusalem has become a filthy thing among them.” (Lamentations 1:17)

Jerusalem was God’s city. The daughters of Zion were His people. The service of the priests was His divinely ordained worship. Yet, many of the high priests were scoundrels. The city was filled with false prophets and unbelievers and ruled by wicked kings. And so, God destroyed Jerusalem, once by the hands of the Babylonians, and then about six-hundred years later, after the priests and scribes crucified Jesus and rejected His apostles, by the hands of the Romans. Yet, in both cases, God preserved His remnant. Remnant means fragment, or that which is left over. Although Jerusalem and Israel were filled with many hypocrites and unbelievers, God preserved a remnant of true believers. They are often referred to as the seven-thousand, because God told Elijah that He had kept His seven-thousand from bending the knee and kissing Baal (1 Kings 19:18). And so, from age to age, God has always preserved His remnant. There has never been a time in the history of the world when there were not some who worshipped God in their hearts, even as the church visible was filled with abominations, even as the walls of Jerusalem tottered.

And so, the destruction of Jerusalem and of the temple gives the Church today a solemn warning. As surely as Jerusalem was destroyed according to the prophesy of our Lord Jesus, so will judgment come upon this earth. And judgment will begin with the household of God. As God tore down the pillars of the temple and killed the wicked priests who forsook His Word and rejected His Christ, so will God carry out judgment against every false prophet within the church visible and every hypocrite and fake Christian. Yet, the remnant, that is, the true church invisible, will be saved. Before the Romans besieged Jerusalem, the Christians within the city gave heed to Jesus’ warning, “But when you see Jerusalem surrounded by armies, then know that its desolation has come near. Then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains, and let those who are inside the city depart” (Luke 21:20-21) And those Christians fled to Pella and escaped the destruction of Jerusalem. And so, every true Christian will escape the judgment that will come upon the world and upon the Church.

And so, we Christians should recognize that God will judge not only the world, but the church. And we should see that we are not simply members of the church visible, but that we are true members of that remnant, which holds fast to Christ in true faith, the true daughters of Zion, who welcome their King who comes to them in humility through Word and Sacrament. As Jesus cleansed the temple with a whip, so should we cleanse the church of false doctrine and our hearts from sinful vices.

There is a false doctrine prevalent in many churches today, which claims that we must bless the nation of Israel if we want God to bless us. Instead of recognizing God’s promise to Abraham in Genesis 12, that He would bless those who blessed Him and curse those who cursed Him to be a promise to bless His Church from age to age, they think this is a mandate to Christians to support the political state of Israel. This is wrong. Not all who are descended of Israel belong to Israel (Romans 9:6), and it is those of faith who are blessed with Abraham (Galatians 3:9). Christians are under no obligation by God to support the nation of Israel.

Yet, there is another false doctrine today, that we should hate the Jews and the people of Israel. This too is wrong. Jesus wept over Jerusalem. We should weep too. St. Paul warns us not to be arrogant, because if they were cut off, so could we if we reject Christ (Romans 11:17ff). Rather, we should make Jesus’ tears our own. And we should mourn for the Jews and pray for their conversion. And we should mourn for those in the church visible, who ignore God’s Word and have fallen away from the faith and pray for their conversion as well.

Jesus tells Jerusalem that this destruction will come upon her, because she did not know the things that made for peace and because she did not know the time of her visitation. Peace can come only from the Prince of Peace, Jesus Christ, who died for our sins and won for us God’s forgiveness which gives peace that the world cannot give or understand (Isaiah 9:6; John 14:27; Philippians 4:7). And so, the church on earth is not the true Church of God, which will stand forever, unless it proclaims the peace, which Christ Jesus has won for us through His suffering, death, and resurrection, and which He gives to us through the preaching of the Gospel, through Baptism, the Absolution, and the Lord’s Supper.

Many false prophets have gone out into the world, Scripture warns (1 John 4:1). In the name of Jesus, they utter blasphemies. They lead people to sin, following their own hearts, the course of this sinful world, and of the wily devil. Yet, the worst crime false prophets do is hide the peace of God which Jesus gives us. They turn Jesus’ gracious visitation into an institution of manmade rules. And so, people learn not to flee to Christ for refuge, not to find peace and rest in His Gospel and Sacraments, not to trust in His atoning Sacrifice for their sins and His promise of full forgiveness to all who call upon Him, but rather they learn to trust in their own goodness and piety. God’s peace is then hidden from their eyes. Though His visitation comes to them through the preaching of the Gospel and the Sacraments, they do not recognize this visitation for what it is. They see only rules and regulations or excuses and affirmations. They do not see the precious blood of Christ poured for them and given to them to save their souls.

While it might be dreadful to consider that God’s judgment will come first to the church, there is great comfort in the fact that Christ continued to preach in the soon-to-be-destroyed temple. Think of it. Jesus announces that this temple will be destroyed! And then He cleanses it! Do you wash your car before junking it? Jesus announces that not one stone will be left upon another, and then he sits among those stones and preaches to the people. And the people cling to His words!

This lesson distinguishing the church visible from the church invisible does not mean that the church visible is bad! Rather, only in the church visible will you find Christ, His peace and visitation! Only in the church visible, where the Gospel is proclaimed, where sinners are baptized and fed the true body and blood of Christ does the true remnant gather to be saved! And so, Jesus preaches the Good News in the temple that will soon be destroyed, because only in the church on earth is the Gospel proclaimed on earth.

I hear it often from people who recognize the great evils in this world, “Who would want to bring a child into this wicked world?” They think they sound pious. They recognize how the world has rejected God. But consider this. Immediately before Jesus predicted the destruction of Jerusalem, children were singing to Jesus, “Hosanna to the Son of David!” (Matthew 21:15) and “Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord! Peace in heaven and glory in the highest!” (Luke 19:38) to which the scribes and Pharisees chastised Jesus saying, “Teacher, rebuke your disciples.” Jesus responded, “I tell you, if these were silent, the very stones would cry out.” This means that if these Jewish children stopped praising Christ, God would raise up Gentiles to praise Him, as John the Baptist preached, “And do not begin to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father.’ For I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children for Abraham.”

The point is this, even as Jesus predicts the destruction of Jerusalem, He still desires children to be brought up to praise Him in the temple. We cannot use God’s impending judgment as an excuse to withhold children from Christ, or to stop preaching the Gospel. Rather, God’s impending judgment gives us all the more reason to cling to His Word, to baptize our children and teach them the Gospel so that they praise Him. And as the saints in Jerusalem escaped the slaughter of Titus, so all God’s children, that faithful remnant, will escape God’s judgment.

God promised Peter concerning His Church, “The gates of hell shall not prevail against it!” (Matthew 16:18) This means that the gates of hell shall not prevail against God’s remnant, the church invisible, who trust in the forgiving blood of Jesus. Steeples may crumble, churches may close, pride flags may be erected upon churches that once preached the Gospel, and false doctrine be preached throughout the land, but the remnant of faithful sheep will still gather to hear the voice of their Good Shepherd. Jerusalem, the city of peace, may be surrounded by war, but the remnant will still have peace in their hearts which the world cannot take away. Judgment may start with the Household of God, but so does Salvation. The faithful shall escape disaster. The heavenly Jerusalem shall stand forever. Amen.