In this age of information, the messages are often conflicting. There are so many messages that you’re often confused. What is true, what is deceiving, and what is misleading? How can you possibly know? If only you had an angel from God, a holy messenger, to come and tell you what is really real. But you have angels sent by God to speak the Word of Jesus authoritatively.
Why is this happening? What is real? Who should I trust? How did we get so confused? Have we lost our collective minds? I keep asking these and similar questions. We are mixed up. We don’t know up from down. We can’t figure out who is telling the truth and who is lying. We’re back on our heels and disoriented. We are overwhelmed with information, misinformation, and disinformation.
Our Lord wept over Jerusalem for the destruction that would soon come upon her. For she did not recognize the time of God's visitation in Christ, who had come to bring her peace (Luke 19:41–48). Through His prophets God had consistently called His people to turn from their deceit and false worship. “But My people do not know the judgments of the Lord” (Jer. 8:4–12). They sought to establish their own righteousness rather than receive Christ's righteousness through faith (Rom. 9:30–10:4). So it was that God was in His temple to cleanse it, a precursor to the once-for-all cleansing from sin which He would accomplish in the temple of His own body on the cross. God grant us to know the things that make for our peace—His visitation in the Word and Sacraments—that by the Holy Spirit we may penitently confess “Jesus is Lord” (1 Cor. 12:1–11).
