Tenth Sunday after Trinity — Sermons of Martin Luther

TENTH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY.

And they said: have not the prophets praised this house, and Christ himself says here, that it is a house of prayer, and you Apostles say, he will destroy it.

25. Cut we must rightly understand this expression, that the city of Jerusalem, the temple and the people, should remain until the time of Christ.

With this agree all the prophets, who have given all things into the hands of Christ; as he would then dispose of it, so it should be and remain. Hence the passage in Isaiah goes no further than unto the times of Christ, as also all the prophets say, that after that there shall come a kingdom extending over the whole world, as in Malachi 1:10-11 we read:

"For from the rising of the sun unto the going down of the same my name shall be great among the Gentiles; and in every place incense shall be offered unto my name, and a pure offering; for my name shall be great among the Gentiles, saith Jehovah of hosts."

Here the prophet speaks of the spiritual kingdom of Christ, who shall build himself a house of prayer as extensive as the whole world.

26. It is true that God himself has established the tempie at Jerusalem, not because it consisted of beautiful stones and costly buildings, or because it was consecrated by bishops, as at present men employ such foolery and jug¬ gling tricks; but God himself had consecrated and sancti¬ fied it with his Word, when he said:

This house is my house! for his Word was preached in it.

God's Word is preached, there is God's own true house, there God most certainly dwells with his grace. Wherever his Gospel is, there is a house of prayer, there men shall and may truly pray, and God will also hear their prayer, as Christ in John 16:23-24 says: "If ye shall ask anything of the Father, he will give it you in my name.

Hitherto have ye asked nothing in my name; ask, and ye shall re¬ ceive, that your joy may be made full." Here again, where the Word is not found, there the devil has full sway.

27. That we have imitated the Jews and built so many churches, would be well enough, if we had done it in order that the Word of God might be preached there; for where

Still Waters Revival Books - All Rights Reserved - www.PuritanDownloads.com the Word goes there God is present, and looks down from heaven and pours out his grace. Therefore he says to the I will not that you should make out of my house a den of robbers. For there were money changers in it who sold sheep and oxen, that strangers might buy them for their offerings in divine service.

Why then does he call it a den of robbers? Surely, he gives it a scandalous name.

He does it however because they no longer appredate the house as the house of God, but as a market house; that is, the priests did not inquire how the Word of God was preached in it, although they sang, they babbled and read the prophets and Moses; but God cares nothing for such a murmuring of Psalms; that belongs to children.

28. They did just as our priests and monks do now, who have also made dens of robbers of our churches and clois¬ ters, and have preached poison, and held masses only that the people might give them money and presents for holding them that they might thus fill their stomachs.

They made the church a market house, in which they car¬ ried on their idle talk, corrupted and destroyed the sheep of God's pastures by their scandalous false doctrine, that it may well be called a robber's den for the soul. This title we should write on all churches in which the Gospel is not preached, for there they mock God, destroy souls, banish the pure Word and establish dens of murder; for he who listens to their words must die.

Oh, how shamefully we have been deceived! Now, however, we should praise God, that this Word again brings us life, drives out the mur¬ derers, and teaches us how to pray aright; for an honest heart must pray, not with the mouth, but with the heart.

29. Thus we have heard the second part of our Gospel, how Christ drove out the merchants that pandered to base appetites, and made room for his Word.

It would be a good thing, in this same way to cleanse our cloisters, and turn them into schools or preaching places; if this is not ilone they will be and continue to be nothing but dens of Still Waters Revival Books - All Rights Reserved - www.PuritanDownloads.com

T E N T H SUNDAY A F T E R TRINITY. robbers; for if Christ calls his own house a den of robbers, how much more will our churches and temples, not con¬ secrated by God, be called dens of robbers ?

30. I have often requested you to pray God to turn his wrath and restrain the devil now in the world. For you have undoubtedly heard of the great calamity, how many have been slain in the insurrection. We fear they have all been lost, for God requires obedience, and has himself pro¬ nounced the sentence, Mat. 26:52: "For all they that t ä t e the sword shall perish with the sword."

The devil has taken possession of the world, who knows when our turn will come. Therefore let us pray that God's kingdom may come and Christians may be multiplied, that he send wise and intelligent ministers to care for the people and listen to their wants. He who knows the gift of God prays for others who have not jet heard the Word, it is high time to do so.

[Pray the Lord's Prayer.] 31. Well, wherever this calamity begins and prevails, that the people maliciously despise the day God visits us with his Word and grace, for the sake of the belly and a little temporal benefit and advantage; there must follow as a consequence of such treatment the final punishment and wrath of God, who will utterly destroy them, remove the foundation of their trust, and overthrow the country and the people, so that both temporal and eternal interests go down together.

For how shall he otherwise treat us, be¬ cause of our scandalous ingratitude for his great love and mercy which he publicly declared unto us by his gracious visitation?

How shall or can he do more for us, while we with wantonness and defiance spurn his help, and ever struggle and strive after wrath and destruction? For if those are not free of punishment who transgress the law and sin against the ten commandments ; how much less will he permit those to go unpunished, who blaspheme and despise the Gospel of his grace, seeing the law by far does not bring as many good things as the Gospel?

L U T H E K ' S CHURCH permit us to see and experience nothing but the dark and terrible night of all affliction and misfortune.

And since we will not hear this precious Word and the proclamation of peace, we will be forced to hear the devil's cry of murder ring in our ears from every direction. Now is the time for us to know the day, and well employ the rich and golden year, while the annual fair is before our very doors, and acknowl¬ edge that he has severely punished us. If we neglect it and allow it to pass, we can never hope for a better day or expect any peace; for the Lord, who is the Lord of peace, will be with us no longer.

33. But if Christ be no longer with us, our hope will vanish; and wherever this beloved guest is rejected, and his Christians no longer tolerated, government, peace and everything shall perish, for he too desires to eat with us, to rule and to provide bountifully.

However, he desires also to be known as such a Lord, in order that we may be thankful to him, and also permit this guest and his Chris¬ tians to eat with us, and give him his due tribute; if not, we will then be forced to give it to another, who will so thank and reward us for it, that we shall not be able to retain a bite of bread or a penny in peace.

But the world will not believe this, just as the Jews also would not believe it, until they experienced it, and faith came to their assistance.

For God has ordained, that this Christ shall be Lord and King upon the earth, under whose feet he has put all things, and whoever would have peace and good days, must be kind and obedient to him, or he will be dashed to pieces like a potter's vessel.

T H E SECOND P A R T O F T H I S G O S P E L .

"And he entered into the temple, and began to cast out those that sold, saying unto them:

It is written, And my house shall be a house of prayer, but ye have made it a den of robbers."

34. Here he shows the aim of his great activity, and what concerns him most of all, which was also the cause of his weeping.

T E N T H SUNDAY A F T E R TRINITY.

300η can change and come forth in great anger, (for our beloved Lord burns with great devotion and zeal), and goes into the temple as in a storm, and strikes with his uplifted arm as the Lord of the temple, of course with an excellent and warm spirit by which he is moved, beholding the chief cause of distress and the destruction, of which he spoke and over which he wept; namely, that the chief govern¬ ment, which should be God's own and be called his temple, is all perverted and desolate, God's Word and true worship entirely suppressed and corrupted, even by those who would be leaders and teachers of the people, on account of their disgraceful greed and their own glorj

He would say by this:

Yes, it is this, that will completely bring on the calamity, and make an end of everything among this people.

35. Therefore, as merciful and compassionate as he showed himself to be to the poor multitude of people who are so wretchedly misled to their destruction; so great was the anger he showed against those who are the cause of this destruction.

Otherwise he did not often resort to physical force and cause an uproar, as he does here, so that it is a strange act for an excellent and kind man, so full of love. But the cause of it is the great and powerful zeal and fervency of Spirit, which sees whence all affliction and sorrow come, namely, because the true worship of God is abolished and the name of God is so blasphemed that it is used merely for a show.

36. For the temple and the whole priesthood were or¬ dained for the purpose of enforcing God's Word, to praise his grace and mercy, etc.; and to testify to this and thank him for his Word by an external worship of offerings.

However, they did not teach praise and thanksgiving to God, but instead they perverted it into the docirine of monks and works, so that with such offerings one merited the grace of God, and if they only offered a great deal, God would give them heaven and every good thing on earth.

And hence they built their hopes for everything, which they ought to look for out of pure grace and mercy of God, on their own works and merits. And besides they were misled

Still Waters Revival Books - All Rights Reserved - www.PuritanDownloads.com so far in the devil's name, that their avarice set π ρ there in the temple tables for bankers and counters for traders in doves and all kinds of cattle used for offerings, so that those coming from distant lands and cities could And enough there to purchase, or if they had no money, the^ might barter for or borrow it, so that there might by all means be as many and as great offerings as possible.

Thus under the name of divine worship the true worship of God was overthrown and rooted out; and they substi¬ tuted for God's grace and goodness their own merits, and for his free gift their own works, which he was obliged to accept from us and thank us for them, and allow himself to be treated as an idol, compelled to do what pleases us, be angry or laugh, just as we wish it; and besides satiate their outrageous greed, by such idolatrous doings, and with¬ out any sense of shame carry on a public annual fair.

37. Just as our Pope's crowd, priests and monks, also did, who taught nothing but to trust in human works, and on this doctrine constructed everything in their church government, so that the people are compelled to purchase these things from them, who thus established a daily public fair over the whole world. And nothing was omitted that could be made to serve their greed, and for money they sold

God, Christ, the Sacrament of the mass, absolution, and for¬ giveness of sins, the losing and binding key. And to this must be added their own invented human nonsense, which they pretend is divine worship, such as the brotherhood of monks, and their own superfluous merits; yea, even to put upon the dead a monk's hood and cords; likewise the bishop's and priest's nasty oil, all kinds of bones of the dead which they call holy, letters of indulgence to eat but¬ ter, married women, children of priests and the like. All this had to bring and yield them money daily.

38. And especially the great rat king at Rome with his Thich is the great money gulch that in the name of Christ and the church has appropriated to itself all the possessions of the world. For he has reserved unto himself the power to forbid whatever he pleased and again

Still Waters Revival Books - All Rights Reserved - www.PuritanDownloads.com T E N T H SUNDAY A F T E R T R I N I T Y . to allow it for money, even to take and give kingdoms, whenever and as often as he pleased, and taxed lords and kings as it suited him.

This is a much more infamous and barefaced perversion of the temple of God into a house of merchandise, than was perpetrated by the Jews at Jerusalem. For it be¬ longed to Antichrist, as is prophesied of him, to levy and collect for himself the treasures of the world; and St. Pet or• speaking of such a hoard in 2 Pet. 2:3 says:

"And in covetousness shall they with feigned words make merchan¬ dise of you: whose sentence now from of old lingereth not, and their destruction slumbereth not."

39. Therefore Christ is justly angry at such desecration of his temple by these bloated misers, who do not only despise and forsake the true worship of God, but also per¬ vert it and trample it under their feet. And thus they truly make out of the temple which God ordained for the purpose of teaching the people the Word of God and guiding them to heaven, nothing but a den of robbers, where nothing but the destruction and the murder of immortal souls take place, because they silence God's Word, through which alone souls can be saved, and instead they are fed on the devil's lies, etc.

This is truly the chief sin and principal cause, wby the Jews with their temple and all they had, deserved to go to destruction and ruin.

For, as they destroyed the kingdom of God itself, he will no longer build up their kingdom for them. Wherefore he says: Because you go to work, and instead of my kingdom you build the king¬ dom of Satan, so will I also work against you, and will destroy everything utterly, that I have built for you.

This is an example he began to do on that very day wh^n he rushed among them in the temple, as his last public act before his death, which after his departure the Romans would effectually complete; namely, they with all they had would be totally swept away, as he cleanses his temple of them, that they may no more possess either their worship, temple nor priesthood, country or people.

Still Waters Revival Books - All Rights Reserved - www.PuritanDownloads.com L U T H E R ' S CHURCH 40. He has, God be praised, even commenced to over¬ throw our idols and spectres, and Popery's abominable mer¬ chandise of perfidy, and to purify his churches through the Gospel, also as a prelude, that it may be seen that he will also make an end of them, as before our eyes they have already begun to fall, and they must daily fall more and more, and they will be much more horribly dashed to the earth and everlastingly destroyed, than the Jews were destroyed and exterminated, because theirs is still a much more shameful abomination.

This shall first properly be¬ gin when the Gospel has departed on account of their dis¬ graceful, horrible blasphemy; but it will finally come to an end on the last day and be completely and forever de¬ stroyed.

41. Let Germany, which, praise to God, now has the Gos¬ pel, beware, that she may not meet the same fate, as it already so strongly everywhere indicates she will.

For we dare not think that the contempt and unthankfulness, which are gaining control among us as great as among the Jews, will remain unpunished.

After that he will let the godless world complain and cry: If the Gospel had not come, such things would not have come upon us; just like the Jews at Jerusalem blamed all their calamities to the preaching of the Gospel, and they themselves at the risk of their own necks prophesied that if Christ with his Gospel should continue, the Romans would come and take away their place and nation.

And afterward also, even the Romans blamed their destruction to this new God and new doctrine.

Just as it is said at present, since the Gospel has appeared things have never been right.

42. And thus it will also go with the world; as its people despise and persecute God's Word, and become so hard¬ ened and blinded, they will blame no one as the cause and merit of their destruction but the precious Gospel itself; which nevertheless alone preserves, thank God, what is still preserved; otherwise all things would long since lay in one common heap of ruins.

And yet it must bear the blame for everything that the devil and his clans transact.

Because people continue to blaspheme and will not recog¬ nize what our sins deserve and the grace and mercy which we have in the Gospel, God must thus repay such biasphemers, so that they become their own prophets, and for a double wickedness receive a double reward.

This premonition has already gone forth, except that it is yet withheld on account of the faithful few; just as he beforehand admonished the Jews by this example when he cast those that sold and bought out of the temple, and afterwards went into the temple himself and finally taught until the day of his death, and yet for a time withheld as long as he could, and afterwards by his Apostles until they would no longer tolerate them; so now w

Christ, restrain punishment as long as we live; but when these too shall lay down their heads, then the world will realize what it once had.

This sermon appeared first in the year 1522 under the title: A of the Church Postil, that the Erlangen Edition gives the text of this first print among the miscellaneous sermons for the year 1522.

A medium position between the first edition and the Church rostil is held by this sermon as printed in the collection of 27 sermons, on which account we take notice of it here, as well as of the reissues of the first copy. This sermon is also printed in the selection of 11 sermons and in the writing: "Passion or Suffering," etc. Also, "A Luke 18:9-14• And he spake also this parable unto certain who trusted in themselves that iliey were righteous, and set all others at nought: Two men went up into the temple to pray; the one a Pharisee, and the other a publican. The Phari¬ see stood and prayed thus with himself, God, I thank thee, that I am not as the rest of men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this publican. I fast twice in the week; I give tithes of all that I get. But the publican, standing afar off, would not lift up so much as his eyes unto heaven, but smote his breast, saying, God, be thou merciful to me a sinner. I say unto you,

This man went down to his house justified rather than the other: for every one that exaltcth himself shall be humhled; but lie that humbleth himself shall be exalted.

CONTENTS: A PICTURE AND AN EXAMPLE OF A TRUE SAINT AND A REAL I I Y r O C U I T E .

Luke in general writes as though righteousness came through works. 1.

I. THIS P I C T U E E AND EXAMPLE 1. The main thought to be consid¬ ered in this picture and exampie. 2-3.

2. How this picture and example teach the nature of the judg¬ ment of men. 4.

II. THIS P I C T U E E AND EXAMPLE A. The picture and example of the truly pious, in the person of the publican, where we find :

1. That the publican believed tlia Word of God, and thus became pious, of.

E L E V E N T H SUNDAY A F T E R T R I N I T Y .

2. That the publican proved hie faith by his good fruits. 7f.

Concerning faith and good works : a. Where faith is good works surely follow. 8-11. b. The difference between faith and good works in regard to salvation. 9-10. c. Why the Holy Spirit insists so much on good works in hie Word. 11. d. How people in the doctrine of faith and works go to extremes on both sides, and how we should keep the golden mean. 12. e. To what purpose should good works serve. 13-14.

3. That the publican Is justified in a twofold way. 15.

Where the natural man judg¬ es a sinner according to his sin, he blunders very greatly.

B. The picture and example of the hypocrite, in the person of the Pharisee, where we find :

1. That the Pharisee blasphemes and sins against God. 17-20.

2. That he sins against the love of his neighbor. 21.

3. That he annuls all command¬ ments. 21-22.

C. The comparison of the truly pious and the hypocrite.

How the civil authorities should proceed in their offices to punish.

SUMMARY OF THIS GOSPEL:

1. Luke the evangelist ex¬ plains to us this parable in his introduction, when he says:

"And he spake also this parable unto certain who trusted in them¬ selves that they were righteous and set all others at nought."

2. In the Pharisees you see an example of those who have no faith, and yet because of their works they esteem themselves the most holy.

3. The Publican is justified without any merit on his part, alone through faith, by which he appropriates righteousness from God alone, and doubts not the goodness of our loving, gracious Father.

4. Therefore this parable shows that we are justified through faith alone without any work and merit whatever on our part

1. Here again we have a picture and an example of the divine judgment on saints and good people.

Two extraor¬ dinary persons are presented to us in this Gospel ; one thor¬ oughly good and truly pious; and one hypocritically pious.

But before we take up the example and consider the terrible sentence, we must first notice that Luke here makes the impression as though righteousness came by works. For Luke is most accustomed to do this, as when we at present preach that faith alone saves, he observes that people are led to desire only to believe, and to neglect the power and fruit of faith.

This John also does in his Epistle and James, where they show that faith cannot exist without works.

Thus Luke, in the beginning of his introduction, would speak as follows:

I see indeed that many have preached how faith alone saves, by which they have brought the peoStill Waters Revival Books - All Rights Reserved - www.PuritanDownloads.com pie to strive for a fictitious faith; hence I must also speak of works by which they can be assured of their faith, and prove it to the people by their acts.

Consequently it sounds as though Luke everywhere taught that righteous¬ ness came by works; as you have recently heard: Forgive, and ye shall be forgiven; and, make unto yourselves friends of the mammon of unrighteousness.

And here it appears as though the publican had obtained his goodness by pray¬ ing and smiting his breast.

So this Gospel appears as though we should become good or pious by our works.

2. Now you have heard that a man, before he can do any¬ thing good, must by all means first be good. For the truth must always stand : "A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit;" and again, "An evil tree cannot bring forth good fruit." Thus a man must first be good, before he can do good.

So he also firmly concludes that the publican smote his breast, which proves the conclusion, that he had been good3. This has taken place and has been written to the end that we should open our eyes and not judge the people according to their outward appearance. To do this in this instance it is necessary to examine the hearts of both, and not judge according to mere external works. For when the heart is good, the whole man is good. For if I judged the publican according to his works, my judgment would soon be false.

For nothing appears in him but sin. Again, if I judge the hypocrite or Pharisee according to his works, Τ will also miss the mark.

For he stands at the holy place, makes the best prayer imaginable, for he praises and thanks God with grand works, he fasts, gives the tenth of all his goods, harms no one; in short, everything, both outwardly and inwardly, appears well with him.

4. As he judges, all men judge; no one can condemn such an upright and virtuous life.

Who dare say that fasting is not good; or that to praise God and give everyone what we owe them is evil? When I see a priest, monk, or nun with such apparent noble conduct, I regard them as pious.