Robbing God
Luke 19:41-48
August 9, 2026 anno Domini
It’s Bible Quiz time. Let’s see how well you know the Scriptures. Name a Biblical character who wept over Jerusalem. I’ll give you a hint. His name starts with the letter J.
No doubt you went with the number one answer Jesus but Jeremiah the prophet also wept tears over Jerusalem and her impending destruction.
Jerusalem was destroyed twice. Once in the days of Jeremiah, in 587 B.C., by Nebuchadnezzar and the Babylonians. The second time in 70 A.D. by Titus and the Romans.
Both Jesus and Jeremiah preach that God’s judgment is coming upon Jerusalem for her sins. The accusation – they have turned God’s house into a den of robbers. What does that mean? How do you rob God and risk His judgment?
In the days of Jeremiah, the people were not living holy and decent lives. They were oppressing the sojourner, the fatherless, and the widow, shedding innocent blood, and running after false gods. Sounds like the United States in 2026.
Jeremiah asks his congregation point blank – will you steal, murder, commit adultery, swear falsely, make offerings to Baal, and go after other gods which you have not known, and then come and stand before me in this house, which is called by my name, and say “We are delivered!’ only to go on doing all these abominations. They were continuing in sin, thinking God’s grace would abound.
How does that rob God? God wants one thing from you. He wants you to receive His gifts. He wants faith. He wants you to know what He has done for you, to believe that He loves you, and to trust His word.
Think about that Old Testament congregation Jeremiah was preaching to. You know their story. God chose them out of all the people of the world. He delivered them from slavery and destroyed their greatest enemy Pharaoh in their Red Sea baptism. He vowed His faithfulness to them – I will be your God and you will be my people. That was His covenant with them at Sinai. He carried them over the threshold of the Jordan and brought them home to the promised land. He gave them Kings and built a temple where He would dwell with them and for them.
If that sounds like a marriage it should. That’s what Jeremiah and other prophets called it. The Lord loved Israel unconditionally and asked for her love in return. He was faithful to her alone and asked her to be faithful to Him alone. She was to act like His beloved, chosen, and redeemed people. And that’s how she robbed Him. She did not love as He had loved. She chased after the false gods of the Canaanites – the Baals and Asherahs. She looked to other gods to give what only He could give. She did not act like His bride, but still showed up at His house expecting His love, His protection, His providence, without faith, without deeds of love. During the week she acted like she didn’t know Him, but when she showed up on the Sabbath came into the temple, she expected Him to know her.
Jesus also uses that Word know to describe how the Jerusalem of His day was robbing God. Would that you, even you, had known the things that make for peace! And later “You did not know the time of your visitation.”
In Luke’s Gospel to know is synonymous with faith. Jerusalem did not know the things which make for peace. She did not know the time of her visitation.
Luke’s Gospel is full of visitations. An angel visits Zechariah in the temple to announce the birth of John the Baptist to Elizabeth. The angel Gabriel visits Mary and the Holy Spirit conceives Jesus in her womb. Mary visits Elizabeth. Joseph and Mary visit Bethlehem. The angels visit shepherds and what do they proclaim? Glory to God in the highest and on earth peace among those with whom he is pleased. (2:14). The Lord has visited them in Jesus and brings them peace. The Shepherds visit the manger. Jesus, Mary, and Joseph visit the temple at 40 days, and Jesus visits again when He is 12, and now as He visits Jerusalem for the last time, He weeps because she does not know Him and will not know Him.
If you’re keeping track Jesus visits the temple three times in Luke’s Gospel. If you read about the temple in the Old Testament (and you should) you’ll learn that the temple is where God dwelt for His people. God put Himself in a box and on a box. His glory dwelt in the most Holy Place of the temple and as He sat on the Ark of the Covenant. There the priests offered blood to atone for the sin of God’s people. The temple was where God visited His people, and where peace was made between God and man.
The temple was the shadow of Christ. Where does God now dwell with His people? In the person of Jesus. Where is peace now made between God and man? In the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross, in the shedding of God’s blood for the sin of the world – for your sin. Do you remember the common accusation brought against Jesus during his trial and death? This man said he would destroy the temple and rebuild it in three days. The Gospel writers make clear that He wasn’t referring to the temple of stones in Jerusalem, but the temple of His body – the real, full, and final dwelling place of God with man.
What would have saved Jerusalem? If they would have known the things that make for peace and the time of their visitation, that Jesus is God in the flesh, that He is the One who makes for peace, that if you want God to visit you His visitation happens in Jesus.
Did Jerusalem know Jesus? Yes, everyone in Jerusalem knew Jesus of Nazareth. The Palm Sunday crowds welcomed Him with shout’s of Hosanna and declared Him blessed because He came in the name of the Lord. Everyone who visited the site of His execution read the sign, “Jesus of Nazareth – King of the Jews.”
But to know His name is not to know Him. To know Jesus is to believe He is God in the flesh. To know Jesus is to trust that His death forgives you all your sins. To know Jesus is to live a holy and decent life in what you say and do, not just for an hour on Sunday, but in your family, with your neighbors, in your work. To know Jesus is to visit with Him when He visits with you – when He comes in His Word, when He gives you His body and blood in the Lord’s Supper. The things of Jesus are the things that make for peace.
This is the paradox, another mysterious truth of Scripture — you rob God when you don’t receive His gifts. You rob God not by taking something from Him, but by not receiving what He gives you. God’s glory is to give and to love. He visits the world in His Son to give love to the loveless, forgiveness to sinners, healing to the sick and to restore the broken. When you receive Jesus by faith, when you trust His Word, when you delight in His forgiveness you give glory to God. The highest worship you can give God is to receive His gifts in Christ.
When you treat those gifts as nothing, when they have no effect on your life, when you are like the money changers in the temple – simply conducting transactions in the Lord’s house – I showed up, give me credit, well then you rob God of His glory. When you do not receive Him when He visits you in Christ, you rob Him.
This is what Jesus desired of Jerusalem and desires of you. That you receive His visitation, that you delight in His gifts, that you, like those people at the end of the text, hang on His every Word, for then you will have thing things that make for peace. in the name of Jesus. Amen.