"THE SACRIFICE"
Midweek Lenten Worship IV
March 14, 2018
Bethel Evangelical Lutheran Church
Glenshaw, Pennsylvania
TEXT:
When they came to the place that is called the Skull, there they crucified Him, and the criminals, one on His right and the other on His left. It was now about the sixth hour, and there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour. Then Jesus calling out with a loud voice, said, "Father, into Your hands I commit My spirit!" And having said this, He breathed His last.
Luke 23:33; 44; 46 (ESV)
Tonight we reach the climax of the way of the cross. Jesus is crucified and dies. This event is so rich in meaning that I suppose a pastor could preach on it his entire career and never run out of things to say. The crucifixion and death of Jesus make up the height of God's judgment against sin and the depth of His love for sinners. The crucifixion and death of Jesus is God's wrath against our sin forever being put to rest. The crucifixion and death of Jesus is our salvation being accomplished once and for all. Aside from these most important themes there are countless others that could be considered. For example, we see here just how cruel human cruelty can be, and how sadistic a crowd of people can become under the right circumstances. Here we see how God can speak through miracles in nature to draw attention to His righteous wrath against sin. We see in the crucifixion and death of Jesus the grief of His mother, the fear of His disciples, the mockery of the religious leaders, the savagery of the Roman soldiers, and a host of other human characteristics and emotions.
I'd like us to focus tonight on one of these secondary themes. The one that I have in mind is the example of our Lord in how He handled His death. His death was far more traumatic and far more unpleasant than what is normally experienced by the average person. You and I must experience death as a fact of life--the ultimate consequence of sin. It is inevitable for all of us--something that we all have coming to us, so to speak. We might be taken by surprise as to the timing, the cause, and/or the circumstances of the death of a friend, a loved one, or an acquaintance, but we can't really say that we are surprised by the fact that that person has died. In fact, we are so confident that we're going to die that we spend a lot of our hard-earned money on life insurance to provide for those who survive us. We may even go so far as to make pre-arrangements for our funeral and burial. But Jesus' death was different. As the perfect Son of God death was not a fact of life for Him; it was a voluntary act on His part. Yet in His death the Savior showed us how to die. Especially important in this example is the fact that He died without struggle or complaint and that even in dying Jesus recognized life as a gift of God to be returned to God.
In this age of great medical technology death has become a lot more complicated than it once was. We are confused by being encouraged on the one hand to hang onto life for as long as we possibly can and on the other to give up when the so-called "quality of life" isn't what we'd like it to be.. Because of this, people these days have to struggle with themselves over whether they should hold onto life or to "let nature take its course," as they say. People don't seem to be willing to face the fact that their longevity is beyond their control--that matters of life and death rest in God's hands and no one else's--and they can't do anything about it. People may die older than they used to on the average, but I'm not so sure that they die any more gracefully than they used to.
By contrast, look at the death of Jesus. In spite of the fact that He was being executed as a common criminal--in spite of the humiliation of it all--in spite of the fact that He was suffering under God's judgment against the sin of all humanity for all time--He still died gracefully and willingly. No one snatched His life from Him; He willingly laid it down as a sacrifice to God to make atonement for our sin. But He is not in any way guilty of suicide or masochism, as if He wanted to die like that and enjoyed the experience. In Gethsemane He pleaded with His Father to find some other way to deal with man's sin. But there was no other way to be found. Since there was no other way and since He loves us with an everlasting love and was wholeheartedly devoted to the cause of our salvation, He willingly did whatever was necessary for you and me to be redeemed, even if it meant going all the way to the cross bearing our sin. If only we could handle that kind of crisis with that kind of grace!
Related to the matter of how gracefully we surrender our lives is the matter of what (or whose) we consider our life to be. In an age when we struggle with such things as abortion and genetic engineering and physician-assisted suicide, can we honestly say that we really see our life as a trust from God--something that belongs to God--or do we see it as our own personal property? Since our life is the most valued of everything that we have, it is only natural that we are extremely possessive and protective of our lives. We constantly hear people say things like "What I do with my life is my own business and nobody else's" or "Why should it matter to you what I do? It's my life, isn't it?" These statements and others like them indicate a belief on the part of those who make them that their life is their own very personal and very private territory--that it is theirs and theirs alone--that what they do with it should be of no concern to anybody else.
Consider the final words of Jesus before His death: "Father, into Your hands I commit My spirit." He spoke as One who was returning something to its rightful Owner. He was not possessive even about this most precious of all of God's gifts. In word and deed our Savior taught us that everything that we have--even our very life itself--is a gift of God--a gift for which we can give thanks by dedicating it to the One who gave it, using it to the glory of the One who gave it, and finally returning it to the One who gave it. We hear this message of our Lord nowhere more clearly than we do here at Golgotha, as He lays down His life willingly for our salvation with a prayer of thanksgiving to the One who gave it.
Death is inevitable. It looms in the future of all of us and there isn't a thing that we can do to avoid it. But how we handle it is up to us. We can struggle against the inevitable or we can accept it as a fact of life. We can guard our life as our own personal and private property or we can willingly return it to the One who entrusted it to us for a time and we can do so with a confident prayer of thanksgiving. In His death Christ has shown us how to die. What's more, in His resurrection He has shown us that death is not the end. In all of this He has made it possible for us to die not in despair but in hope. In His Gospel He gives us His peace and confidence in life and even as we face "the last enemy" (1 Corinthians 15:26), so that we, like Him, may commit ourselves into the loving care of His Father and ours.
Amen.
May the One who loved us and washed us from our sins in His own blood, making us kings and priests before His God and Father, lead you to a life of repentance and trust. May He also be glorified in the lives of you, His people. He who calls you is faithful, and He will do it. Amen.