Alas, that I am compelled against my will to be a prophet of ill to
Germany. Yet it is not I, but the prayer of my Lord and your Lord;
for according to its teachings he will say: "You neglected my Word.
Unwilling to tolerate it, you persecuted and starved out its
messengers. Therefore I will withhold your daily bread and give
instead famine and war and murder, unto utter desolation; for you
wish to have it so. Then when you cry for forgiveness of sins and
deliverance from the evils come upon you, I will hear you as you
heard my Word, my entreaties. I will leave you in your misfortunes as
you left me and my Word."
17. In fact, no one for a moment thinks of how God has signally,
richly and graciously blessed us; how we are in possession of actual
paradise--yes, the entire kingdom of heaven--if we only recognized
the fact: and yet we shamefully, ungratefully and unreasonably reject
the kingdom; as if it were not enough for us to overstep the Ten
Commandments in our disobedience, but must even trample under foot
the mercy God offers in the Gospel. Then why should we be surprised
if he send down wrath upon us? What else is he to do but fulfill our
Gospel passage for today, which threatens every individual rejecter
and persecutor of God's Son and his servants, by whom we are invited
to the marriage--what else is God to do but send out a divine army of
servants to arrest the career of such murderers and to terminate
their existence? We are given a special illustration--an example to
the world--in the instance of the fate of Jerusalem, and in fact of
the entire Jewish nation. They sinned unceasingly against all God's
commandments, and when he proclaimed grace and offered forgiveness of
sins, they trampled upon his mercy. Should Christ not revenge himself
when they shamed and mocked his precious blood?
18. Unto all the abominable sins mentioned, we must heap blasphemies;
for when wrath and punishment come upon us we make outcry,
complaining that the Gospel--or the new doctrine, as it is now
called--is responsible. The Jews blame us Christians alone for the
fact that they are scattered throughout the world. Their prayers day
and night are directed against us, in blasphemies and reproaches
inexpressible. Nevertheless, it was not the Christians who harassed
and scattered them, but the heathenish Roman emperor.
But whom other than themselves have the Jews to blame for their
condition? for they would not tolerate Christ, when he brought them
only help and boundless grace. Refusing to accept him whom God gave
and in whom he promised all blessings, they necessarily lost their
daily bread from God, except as they rebelliously extort it by usury
and wickedness. They had also to suffer the loss of their national
life, their priesthood and public worship, forgiveness of sins and
redemption, and so remain eternally captive under the wrath and
condemnation of God. Such is the just and inevitable punishment of
the unwise--the foolish--who refused to recognize their opportunity
when Christ was with them.
19. With this terrible example before our eyes, we are still
unrepentant, pursuing the same course the Jews followed, not only in
disobedience to the will of God, but in rejecting his grace. For that
grace we should earnestly long and pray, striving to secure to our
children after us baptism, the ministry and the sacrament, in their
purity. In return for our perversity, it will eventually be with us
as with the Jews and other ungrateful persecutors and rejecters.
20. Then let him who will receive advice and help, faithfully heed
Paul's counsel and redeem the time, not sleeping away the blessed
golden hour of grace; as Christ earnestly admonishes in the parable
of the five foolish virgins. Mt 25, 13. The foolish virgins might
have made their purchases in season, before the bridegroom's arrival;
but failing to attend to the matter until time to meet the
bridegroom, they missed both the market and the wedding.
21. The ancient poets and sages make use of a similar illustration at
the expense of the cricket or grasshopper. As the fable runs, when
winter came the grasshoppers, having nothing to eat, went to the ants
and asked them to divide their gathered store. "What did you in the
summer time that you gathered nothing?" asked the ants. "We sang,"
the grasshoppers replied. "If you sang in the summer, you must dance
for it in the winter," was the response. Similarly should fools
unwilling to learn the will of God be answered. Terrible and alarming
is the wrath of God when with scorn and mockery he turns away a soul.
In Proverbs 1, 24 and 26 he threatens: "Because I have called, and ye
have refused; I have stretched out my hand, and no man hath
regarded.... I also will laugh in the day of your calamity; I will
mock when your fear cometh."
22. Some may ask what Paul means by adding to the phrase, "Redeeming
the time," the modifier, "because the days are evil"; if we are to
regard the present opportunity golden, why are the days evil?