[Sermon Archive] - [Weekly Devotional Guide]
|
This Week's Sermon PALM SUNDAY 05 April 2009 "A Lamb Alone Bears Willingly"
Soli Deo Gloria!
|
|
|
This Week's Sermon PALM SUNDAY 05 April 2009 "A Lamb Alone Bears Willingly"
Soli Deo Gloria!
|
|
The Passion narrative begins simply:
"It was now two days before the Passover and the Feast of Unleavened Bread. And the chief priests and the scribes were seeking how to arrest him by stealth and kill him," (Mark 14:1, ESV)Passover was at hand, the great saving act of God in the Old Testament. Throughout his earthly life Jesus kept all the observances of the Old Testament, and now he was about to fulfill the greatest of them. He would bring Passover to perfection so that no more Passovers would ever need to be celebrated. He would combine in himself all of the sacrificial lambs and goats of the Old Covenant.
Look at the cover of today's worship folder, Grünewald's Crucifixion. This is part of the altarpiece at the hospital chapel of Saint Anthony's Monastery in Isenheim in Alsace. The Isenheim Altar is a complicated structure with four layers of painted surfaces - that is, two sets of folding wings, like a double cupboard, enclosing the final altarpiece, which consists of three carved wood statues of saints. There are also two side panels and a predella. Of great importance is the figure of John the Baptizer in the right half. John is holding the Old Testament Scriptures in his left hand while pointing to Jesus. John is saying that this one hanging on the cross in all its gruesome reality is the fulfillment of everything the Old Testament foretold about the Lamb of God. Standing beneath John's feet is a little lamb which embraces a cross. The lamb's blood is being drained into the holy chalice as a way of depicting the true blood of Christ shed for us and distributed to us in the Sacrament for the forgiveness of our sins. It is John the Baptizer who proclaims the meaning of this event:
""Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!"" (John 1:29, ESV)
Everything that happens in Holy Week, everything described in the Passion narrative, fulfills what God the Holy Spirit foretold in his Word. So it is that the prophet Isaiah wrote so graphically:
"He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth; like a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent, so he opened not his mouth." (Isaiah 53:7, ESV)Silently, without complaint, alone, Jesus went to the altar of the cross to offer up himself as the sacrifice for the world's sins, for your sins.
That Jesus is the true Lamb of God means that he "takes away the sin of the world," as John proclaimed. All human sin has been heaped upon this one Lamb. It's crushing enormity could not be carried by a mere man, but only the Son of God who took on human flesh and blood could bear this load. There is, perhaps, no more elegant description of this scene than the one that Paul Gerhardt gives us in the Hymn of the Day, "A Lamb Goes Uncomplaining Forth," Hymn 438 in your hymnal.
A Lamb goes uncomplaining forth,
The guilt of sinners bearing
And, laden with the sins of earth,
None else the burden sharing;
Goes patient on, grows weak and faint,
To slaughter led without complaint,
That spotless life to offer,
He bears the stripes, the wounds, the lies,
The mockery, and yet replies,
"All this I gladly suffer."Text (sts. 1-4): © 1941 Concordia Publishing House Used by permission: LSB Hymn License .NET, number 100010193.
None of the countless lambs sacrificed throughout the Old Covenant ever forgave a single sin. All of them pointed forward to this One, this Lamb of God, the Lamb from God, the Lamb provided by God. Jesus dies alone, shorn of all human dignity as he hung naked on the cross for all the world to see. Yes, naked. Victims of crucifixion were not clothed but were fully exposed to the humiliation and degradation of this horrible death. Jesus offers his spotless life because he is
"a lamb without blemish or spot." (1 Peter 1:19, ESV)as the Apostle Peter writes. Jesus is the perfect, once-for-all sacrifice for your sin and for the sin of the whole world. In Holy Week we rehearse once again everything our Lamb of God has accomplished for us and for the world. We hear again how God's perfect plan of redemption was carried out, how nothing happened by chance, how God's saving will was not thwarted by Satan nor by sinful man.
This Lamb of God has gained God's favor for you. His blood is eternally effective at removing the guilt of your sin. The writer to the Hebrews says:
"he entered once for all into the holy places, not by means of the blood of goats and calves but by means of his own blood, thus securing an eternal redemption." (Hebrews 9:12, ESV)
And having completed this once-for-all redemption Jesus has opened heaven for all. He has not merely made redemption a possibility dependent upon something you must do, but his blood has secured an eternal redemption so that there is nothing for you or for any other person to do-ever. It is done. It is complete.
Jesus is not an unwilling victim. Holy Scripture makes it clear that Jesus is the Lamb who offers himself willingly. Gerhardt's hymn makes it crystal clear:
"Yes, Father, yes, most willingly
I'll bear what You command Me.
My will conforms to Your decree,
I'll do what You have asked Me."Text (sts. 1-4): © 1941 Concordia Publishing House Used by permission: LSB Hymn License .NET, number 100010193.
The Father loves the world in his Son who offers himself in place of the world. He is the sacrifice that truly atones for sin and gains the Father's favor so that the angel of death passes over you. Jesus is the lamb of burnt offering of the Old Testament who secures God's favor, as Moses wrote in Leviticus:
"And the priest shall burn all of it on the altar, as a burnt offering, a food offering with a pleasing aroma to the Lord." (Leviticus 1:9, ESV)
Jesus is the pleasing aroma for the world in the nostrils of the Father, a sweet-smelling sacrifice by which sin is removed.
The observance of Holy Week should not been compartmentalized, that is, broken into pieces, because it is a unit, especially the Triduum-the Three Days. In particular, Holy Thursday, Good Friday, and the Great Vigil of Easter are taken together as one event, the New Testament Passover. It explains why you leave the Divine Service on Holy Thursday and Good Friday without having the Benediction spoken or by greeting each other as on Sunday. The Benediction is not spoken until the completion of the Great Vigil of Easter when all the central events of our salvation have been completed.
Brothers and sisters in Christ, we are now ready to approach the great mysteries of our faith once again in these events of the Passion History. Receive the body and blood of Christ, the true Lamb of God, given and shed for you for the forgiveness of your sins. Meditate on this Lamb who alone bears willingly all your sins.
O wondrous Love, what have You done!
The Father offers up His Son,
Desiring our salvation.
O Love, how strong You are to save!
You lay the One into the grave
Who built the earth's foundation.Text (sts. 1-4): © 1941 Concordia Publishing House Used by permission: LSB Hymn License .NET, number 100010193.