Click Here for the Audio of this Sermon
Click Here for the Propers for Quinquagesima
Click Here for this Sunday's Bulletin
Taking the twelve, [Jesus] said to them, "See, we are going up to Jerusalem, and everything that is written about the Son of Man by the prophets will be accomplished. For he will be delivered over to the Gentiles and will be mocked and shamefully treated and spit upon. And after flogging him, they will kill him, and on the third day he will rise." But they understood none of these things. This saying was hidden from them, and they did not grasp what was said.
I believe that Jesus Christ, true God, begotten of the Father from eternity, and also true man, born of the virgin Mary, is my Lord. With these words the Christian Church confesses the fact that our Lord Jesus Christ is, at the same time, both God and man.
Because He is truly a human being, the same as us in every way, except He was without sin, He is able to do two things for us. First, He did for us according to His human nature what we could not do for ourselves according to our human nature, that is He kept God's Law perfectly in our place, never sinning even once even when tempted directly by the devil.
Second, in His human body He bore for us the punishment and just anger of God that or sins deserved. Our guilt was charged to Jesus and, because He was truly human, He was able to make the blood sacrifice required as the pure Lamb of God to make full payment for our sins.
Because Jesus is truly God, of the same nature and power as the Father and the Holy Spirit, He was able to do for us another two things. First, because the blood He shed on the cross was the blood of God, His death was enough to pay for the guilt of all people – the whole world. That's why God tells us in the Bible that He was reconciling THE WORLD, that is, all people, to Himself through Jesus. The blood of God was shed to forgive the sins of all people and because it was the blood of God it was sufficient to the task.
Second, Jesus had to be God in order to destroy death and the devil. If Jesus were just a man His death would have been no different than ours, but because He is also God, He was able to raise Himself from the dead, thus destroying death, and He was able to take away all of Satan's power to accuse and damn us, thus silencing that great Accuser. Our God, Jesus Christ, destroyed death and the devil for us.
During the days of His earthly ministry, Jesus clearly showed people both of His natures: Divine and human. In today's Gospel we see clearly His human nature because He is walking around and can be seen and heard and touched in His human body. We also see His human nature in the warning of His own suffering and death. Who but a normal human be spit upon and flogged and killed?
We also see clearly His divine nature in the very fact that He accurately predicted His own suffering and death. More than that, He also predicted His resurrection, and who but God can raise Himself from the dead. Who but God can heal a blind man?
The very heart and center of our faith, without which you cannot have the Christian faith, is the fact that it is this God-Man, Jesus Christ, who suffered and died under our sins and rose again on the third day. Jesus truly was, and is, the Messiah promised by the Old Testament prophets, He is the true God Who came to seek and save the lost, to open the eyes of the blind, to give life to the dead; to be the perfect sacrifice for all, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.
He is the true Man who came to live under the Law as we must and die as all people must die. He is the true God and true Man, whose resurrection from the dead gives us the victory over death has changed everything for us in this life and in eternity. Only in Jesus is there new life now and salvation for eternity. The Bible tells us: “God has given us eternal life, and this life is in His Son. He who has the Son has life; he who does not have the Son does not have life” (1 Jn. 5:11-12).
But no one would know this about Jesus if it were not preached to them. People don't naturally understand Jesus, they don't naturally believe He is God and Man come to sacrifice His life to save all people. Even the disciples found it hard to believe. That's why Jesus kept showing them He was the true God, by performing His miracles, and that's why Jesus kept reminding them of His true humanity and the reason He came to this world, by preaching to them His suffering and death. There are five separate places in the Gospels where, during the last few weeks of His earthly work, making His way toward Jerusalem and Golgotha, Jesus tells His disciples about His coming suffering, death, and resurrection, always the same message: See, we are going up to Jerusalem, and everything that is written about the Son of Man by the prophets will be accomplished. For he will be delivered over to the Gentiles and will be mocked and shamefully treated and spit upon. And after flogging him, they will kill him, and on the third day he will rise.
The message was always the same because His disciples needed to be reminded of it over and over again ... just like us. You come to church and every week you hear the same Gospel, you hear over and over again that Jesus went up to Jerusalem and suffered and died and on the third day He rose from the dead. You keep hearing this same message because this is the message you need to hear, if you don't hear it constantly, over and over again, you will slowly forget it, drift away from its certain promises, and become like the disciples and not understand at all what Jesus is about, blind to God and to salvation in Jesus. So God keeps on giving you the same sermon, the same message, the same Gospel, the same Jesus. He keeps on preaching Christ crucified to you because that is what you need to hear. God gives you the Gospel every week the same because the Gospel brings you Jesus and without Jesus you have no comfort or hope in the disasters and sorrows of this mortal life and you have no glory and resurrection unto eternal life after this mortal life is done.
God preaches the Gospel to you over and over and over again because He wants you to see Jesus, who He really is, and what He has done for you. Why did Jesus keep on preaching His death and resurrection? So the disciples would see who Jesus really is. Why did Jesus heal the blind man? So the blind man could see who Jesus really is. Why did Jesus raise the dead and heal the sick? So the people could see who He really is. Why does He keep on preaching to you the same message over and over again? So you can see Jesus and believe and in believing you are saved.
That’s what we receive when we come to church every week - the same old sermon about the God who is man who came to this world to suffer and die and rise to free us of our sin and give us a new life. God never changes the message because He knows that if we don’t hear it over and over again we will soon forget it and the eyes of our soul will become blinded. So we see Jesus in our Baptism, where He has wrapped us in His own perfect righteousness and protecting us from the just anger of God; we see Jesus in His Word of absolution, forgiving our sins and declaring us to be the children of God; we see Jesus in the bread and wine of His holy Supper, feeding us His very body and blood as a foretaste of the feast to come in His kingdom which has no end.
It is for this reason, to show lost sinners Jesus so they may be saved, that God established the Holy Christian Church, where this same message is preached week after week and day after day. In the explanation of the Third Article of the Creed in the Large Catechism, we confess this about the Church:
I believe that there is upon earth a little holy group and congregation of pure saints, under one head, even Christ... I am [brought into this group] and incorporated into it by the Holy Spirit through having heard and continuing to hear God’s Word, which is the beginning of entering it. In the past, before we had attained to this, we were altogether of the devil, knowing nothing about God and about Christ.
So, until the Last Day, the Holy Spirit abides with the holy congregation or Christendom. Through this congregation He brings us to Christ and He teaches and preaches to us the Word. By the Word He ... [causes] this congregation daily to grow and to become strong in the faith and its fruit, which He produces.
We further believe that in this Christian Church we have forgiveness of sin, which is wrought through the holy Sacraments and Absolution and through all kinds of comforting promises from the entire Gospel... which also must be preached and taught without ceasing. God’s grace is secured through Christ, and sanctification is wrought by the Holy Spirit through God’s Word in the unity of the Christian Church. Yet because of our flesh, which we bear about with us, we are never without sin. Everything, therefore, in the Christian Church is ordered toward this goal: we shall daily receive in the Church nothing but the forgiveness of sin through the Word and [Sacraments], to comfort and encourage our consciences as long as we live here. So even though we have sins, the ‹grace of the› Holy Spirit does not allow them to harm us. For we are in the Christian Church, where there is nothing but ‹continuous, uninterrupted› forgiveness of sin. This is because God forgives us and because we forgive, bear with, and help one another.
But outside of this Christian Church, where the Gospel is not found, there is no forgiveness, as also there can be no holiness. Therefore, all who seek and wish to earn holiness not through the Gospel and forgiveness of sin, but by their works, have expelled and severed themselves ‹from this Church›.
In a very real sense, the Church, this congregation where we gather as the Saints of God, is the road to Jericho, where poor blind sinners like us gather and cry out for the mercy of God: “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on us!” And in Word and Sacrament our Lord stops, forgives our sins, gives us faith by the Word and the water and the bread and the wine, and in these holy Means our eyes are opened to see our Savior and in Him our eternal salvation in the same old story, which is new every day: Jesus Christ, true God and true Man, came into this world to save sinners, of whom I am chief.
“Open our eyes Lord, to see our sin and see our Savior,” and Jesus says, “See, we are going up to Jerusalem, and everything that is written about the Son of Man by the prophets will be accomplished. For he will be delivered over to the Gentiles and will be mocked and shamefully treated and spit upon. And after flogging him, they will kill him, and on the third day he will rise.”
Thank God that this saying is not hidden from our eyes, but that by the power of the Holy Spirit our cry for mercy has been heard, our Savior has come to save us, and we see Him and the salvation He worked for us in Jerusalem, and we rejoice.
In Jesus’ name. Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment