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March 21, 2008
Pastor: Paul D. Nolting
INI
During this past Lenten Season we have considered various texts from the Epistle to the Hebrews under the general theme—JESUS CHRIST OUR GREAT HIGH PRIEST! As our High Priest Jesus offered Himself upon the cross as the one sacrifice needed to remove our sins. In so doing He shed His holy, precious blood and served as our divine substitute. As our High Priest Jesus spoke seven times from the cross. Today we will listen to Him as He addresses seven topics of great significance to our daily lives. May our High Priest be with us and guide us as we worship in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Hymn: “We Sing the Praise of Him Who Died” (TLH 178)
Text: Luke 23:33-34
And when they had come to the place called Calvary, there they crucified Him, and the criminals, one on the right hand and the other on the left. Then Jesus said, ‘Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they do.’
For whom did Jesus pray, as He spoke these words of forgiveness? One might be tempted to think immediately of all those present that day—the soldiers who drove the spikes through His hands and feet, or the chief priests and scribes who so cruelly mocked Him, or perhaps the Jewish mob, who had earlier cried out as they stood before Pontius Pilate: “His blood be on us and on our children” (Matthew 27:25). But such thoughts are far too limited. Jesus died to remove the sins of the whole world. That includes every person of every age of every era, including you and me! Let us never stand as did the self-righteous Pharisee of Jesus’ parable and say: “God, I thank You that I am not like other men…” (Luke 18:11). Rather, may we humbly approach our Savior God confessing our every sin and seeking His mercy and forgiveness.
Hymn: “Jesus, in Thy Dying Woes” (TLH 180)
Text: Luke 23:39-43
Then one of the criminals who were hanged blasphemed Him, saying, ‘If You are the Christ, save Yourself and us.’ But the other, answering, rebuked him, saying, ‘Do you not even fear God, seeing you are under the same condemnation? And we indeed justly, for we receive the due reward of our deeds; but this Man has done nothing wrong.’ Then he said to Jesus, ‘Lord, remember me when You come into Your kingdom.’ And Jesus said to him, ‘Assuredly, I say to you, today you will be with Me in Paradise.’
On Good Friday we remember Jesus’ death on the cross. Jesus was falsely accused, mocked, scourged, ridiculed, sentenced, and then crucified. He died and was buried—all on Good Friday, and yet Good Friday—the day that Jesus died—is all about the securing of life!
The thief on the right had initially joined the others in mocking Jesus, but apparently when Jesus spoke words of forgiveness even for those who were harming Him, the Spirit began convicting his heart. First he ceased uttering his blasphemies and then began reflecting upon the grossness of his own sin. As the other thief continued his mockery, this man was moved to rebuke him and then to confess his faith. The Spirit convinced him that here beside him hung the promised Christ—the holy and righteous Lamb of God. Perhaps he did not understand completely what was going on, but he did understand that before him hung the promised Christ, concerning whose kingdom the Old Testament Scriptures had testified. “Lord, remember me when You come into Your kingdom,” he cried. Jesus responded by revealing to this thief the real meaning of Good Friday. In view of Jesus’ atoning death and the fact that His blood would wash away that man’s sin, Jesus our High Priest could say, “Assuredly, I say to you, today you will be with Me in Paradise.”
My dear friends, the uninformed may well consider the cross a depressing symbol, for the cross was an instrument of cruelty in the days of Rome’s empire, but for you and for me—the empty cross is a symbol of God’s passionate love for our souls and the extent of Jesus’ devotion to the task of saving those souls. By promising the thief on the right the gift of everlasting life, our High Priest reminds us that the fruit of Good Friday is eternal life for all who are led by the Spirit to believe in Jesus!
Hymn: “Jesus, Pitying the Sighs” (TLH 181)
Text: John 19:25-27
Now there stood by the cross of Jesus His mother, and His mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene. When Jesus therefore saw His mother, and the disciple whom He loved standing by, He said to His mother, ‘Woman, behold your son!’ Then He said to the disciple, ‘Behold your mother!’ And from that hour that disciple took her to his own home.
Jesus, on Maundy Thursday evening, had given His disciples a “new commandment.” He had told them: “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; as I have loved you, that you also love one another” (John 13:34). The disciples had certainly already failed to keep that commandment perfectly by the time Jesus spoke these words. Only hours after the commandment had been given, they fell over each other trying to flee for safety from the Garden of Gethsemane. One later denied even knowing Jesus amidst emphatic curses, while all but one were now in hiding. But Jesus, who in word had given the commandment, now in the midst of His suffering by word fulfilled it—His words bespeaking love!
There before Him stood His mother, Mary…the words of aged Simeon finally coming to pass—“a sword will pierce through your own soul also” (Luke 2:35a). She was grieving for the One she bore, raised, and watched now fulfilling His “Father’s business” (Luke 2:49). John, Jesus’ disciple and maternal cousin, was with her. Jesus, seeing them, said to His mother, “Woman, behold your son,” and then to John, “Behold your mother.” In this very simple way Jesus fulfilled His duty to His mother, providing for her future—both her physical future, for John took care of her physical needs from that time forward, but also her spiritual future, for John from that day forward also provided for her spiritual needs.
Our High Priest Jesus, however, was not simply fulfilling a personal duty by speaking so lovingly to His mother and providing for her needs. He was also continuing His work of fulfilling the laws of His Father on our behalf—loving in our place and thereby providing us with a righteousness that covers our sins and enables us by faith to stand before God as His saints. As Paul would later explain to the Roman Christians: “By one Man’s obedience many will be made righteous” (5:19b). Dear friends, let us listen to our High Priest and then love, even as He loved us!
Hymn: “Jesus, Loving to the End” (TLH 182)
Text: Matthew 27:45-46
Now from the sixth hour until the ninth hour there was darkness over all the land. And about the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, ‘Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?’ that is, ‘My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?’
Herein lies the mystery of the atonement—that God the Father could and would forsake His Son in order to save you and me! God forsaking God for man’s sake! It was as if all of creation shuttered at the thought and nature hesitated to look, for darkness covered the earth. Jesus’ words were audible for all present to hear—words reflecting the torture of abandonment. Jesus suffered the judgment of God upon sin during those hours on the cross. Countless individuals were crucified as penalized by Rome. Countless individuals have suffered excruciating pain physically and mentally over the centuries as men have sinned against men, and men have endured the effects of sin. But no individual ever suffered like our High Priest on Calvary’s cross, when God the Father made Jesus, the One who “knew no sin to be sin for us”—all in order that “we might become the righteousness of God in Him” (2 Corinthians 5:21).
Here our High Priest offered Himself as our divine Substitute, fulfilling a plan already identified in eternity, but now finding fulfillment in time. The apostle Paul wrote the Ephesian Christians: “God the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,…having predestined us to adoption as sons by Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will, to the praise of the glory of His grace, by which He made us accepted in the Beloved. In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of His grace” (1:3a, 5-7).
We can never fully understand how Jesus, our High Priest, could undergo the punishments of hell in order to provide us the gift of heaven! Yet, this is what the Bible assures us He did! Dear friends, let us never take the sufferings of our Savior for granted by unholy living, but rather let us kneel before Him with repentant hearts and seek to follow Him faithfully!
Hymn: “Jesus, Whelmed in Fears Unknown” (TLH 183)
Text: John 19:28-29
After this, Jesus, knowing that all things were now accomplished, that the Scripture might be fulfilled, said, ‘I thirst!’ Now a vessel full of sour wine was sitting there; and they filled a sponge with sour wine, put it on hyssop, and put it to His mouth.
Jesus, having fulfilled His Father’s plan for our redemption, now spoke to fulfill the Old Testament prophetic record. The Psalmist David had foreseen this circumstance. He had written of the Savior a millennium before: “My strength is dried up like a potsherd, and My tongue clings to My jaws; You have brought Me to the dust of death” (22:15).
Yes, our High Priest was thirsty—thirsty for reunion with His Father, but even thirstier for the blessing of our souls! Yes, He was thirsty to fulfill all Old Testament prophetic verse, for that would be the evidence the Spirit would use to convince the skeptical hearts of men and women that Jesus was indeed the Christ—their Savior from sin and death.
Jesus would provide the example Himself, when on that first Easter Sunday He would lead Cleopas and his companion on the way to Emmaus all the way through the Scriptures to the conviction that “the Christ (was) to have suffered these things and to enter into His glory” (Luke 24:26).
My dear friends, we too, having reached that conviction of faith, now thirst for communion with God and the reassurance of His great love for our souls. This is in part why Jesus instituted His Supper, so that by giving us His own body and blood in, with, and under the bread and wine, we might eat and drink up the confident reassurance that we are no longer separated from God by our sins, but rather are His redeemed children. As we approach His table, He does not offer the sour wine given to victims of Roman wrath in order to numb the approach of death, but rather the sweet wine of the ultimate victory over death that we have by God’s grace through faith in Jesus, our High Priest!
Hymn: “Jesus, in Thy Thirst and Pain” (TLH 184)
Text: John 19:30
So when Jesus had received the sour wine, He said, ‘It is finished!’
We live in a throw-a-way society of one-year warranties and broken promises. We tend, therefore, to be rather skeptical about the claims of anyone. What about our High Priest’s words regarding completion? What do they actually mean? How far do they extend? When Jesus said, “It is finished,” He was referring to the work required by God to atone for our sins. The apostle Paul told the Christians in Galatia: “Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us (for it is written, ‘Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree’)” (3:13). Jesus had paid the price in full to redeem our souls—to buy them back from sin, and thereby to overcome death and its salesman, Satan!
But those words, “It is finished,” speak not only to the completion of a task, but also to an eternity of benefits, for the underlying idea of these words is that this completed work has ongoing and abiding results! The punishment merited by all of the sins, of all people, of all times had been endured. That means that your sins and mine—past, present, and future--are dissolved by the blood of Christ! We have been reconciled to God by His grace and through the redemptive work of Jesus Christ!
The blessings of that reconciliation are received when you and I are led by the Spirit to place our faith in Jesus—to believe in Him, to entrust ourselves to Him, and then in love to follow Him!
Hymn: “Jesus, All Our Ransom Paid” (TLH 185)
Text: Luke 23:46
And when Jesus had cried out with a loud voice, He said, ‘Father, into Your hands I commit My spirit.’ Having said this, He breathed His last.
Notice how that when Jesus died, His life was not taken from Him. Rather He gave it up willingly—committing His spirit into His Father’s hands. Jesus, in the powerful tenth chapter of John’s Gospel assures us: “My Father loves Me, because I lay down My life that I may take it again. No one takes it from Me, but I lay it down of Myself. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again. This command I have received from My Father” (10:17-18).
Why did Jesus die? It was not that Satan killed Him! A created being, and Satan is a created being gone bad, could never kill its Creator. No, not at all! Rather, the writer to the Hebrews tells us that Jesus “by the grace of God…tasted death for everyone” (2:9c). He did so in order that “through death He might destroy him who had the power of death, that is, the devil, and release those who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage” (2:14b-15). Jesus died willingly in order to blaze the trail for us—to remove any need for fear as we, His believing brothers and sisters, approach the inevitable end of this life on earth. We do not need to fear, for death is not a dreadful end of anything other than the pain and suffering of this life. Jesus Christ is “the Door” (cf. John 10:7) and in view of His death, from which He was raised, our death becomes simply a door to everlasting life in heaven!
My dear friends, we observe Good Friday to remember Jesus’ death, but in so doing we review God’s eternal plan to restore to all who believe the gift of eternal life! May we ever rejoice in the blessings that flow from the redemptive work of our Savior and High Priest, Jesus Christ!
Hymn: “Jesus All Thy Labor Vast” (TLH 186)
| Immanuel Lutheran Church 421 North Second Street Mankato, Minnesota 56001 |
Church Office: (507) 345-3027 Pastor Nolting: (507) 387-7035 Pastor Eichstadt: (507) 344-0898 |