Grace
to you and peace from our Lord and saviour Jesus Christ. Amen
The
texts for this meditation are written in
Isaiah: 52: 13 – 53: 12 &
John 18: 1 – 19: 42
God’s first
and most important instalment of His Law was given to Israel through Moses with
fire and billows of smoke on Mt. Sinai.
God did not do this so that they could save themselves through it, that
we know is impossible, but to reveal the sin that already dwelled in all
mankind. The Ten Commandments are held up as a mirror showing how far short all
mankind fall of God’s standard of love for God and love for our neighbour.
Israel
misused the Law, abused the Law. They broke the Law with idolatry and adultery
and trust in man rather than trust in God, but worse, they kept trying to save
themselves by means of a broken Law.
Isaiah
was one of the prophets whom God sent to Israel to call them to repentance and
to point them away from themselves to the great Servant of the Lord, the
Messiah, whom the Lord would send, the Servant of the Lord who would save the
Lord’s people, from captivity of sin, death, and the devil. We hear about that
Servant in the Book of Isaiah, a Servant of the Lord who would come from Israel
and to Israel, and yet would be despised and rejected by Israel, wounded,
bruised, slaughtered and killed.
The
same Isaiah announced how He would come: “The virgin will conceive and give birth to a Son, and will call His
name Emmanuel, God with us”.
Finally,
some 2,000 years ago, the virgin, a descendant of King David, did conceive. “God sent His Son, born of a woman, born
under the Law, to redeem those who were under the Law, that we might receive
the adoption as sons.”
He was
Abraham’s Seed, according to the flesh, He was the Son of David according to
the flesh, but He was also the eternal Son of God, the very Word of God by whom
the heavens were made. He came to His own, but His own received Him not.
Hence,
we come to Good Friday, where we see the Servant of the Lord serving right down
to His last breath, when He declared in a loud voice, “It is finished.” Jesus
came preaching and teaching, healing people and doing miracles. He did not come
to mock the Law of Moses; He was, after all, the author of Law of Moses. He
came as the Righteous One, the sinless One, to fulfil the Law, even as He
pointed out to the Jews that they hadn’t fulfilled the Law, nor could they. He
had come to save them and to give them the Sabbath rest that they never knew,
rest from their labour at trying in vain to keep the Law, rest from their work
of trying to atone for their own sins, and yet failing miserably every time. He
had come to save sinners by calling them to repent of their sin and to trust in
Him as their true Rest-Giver. “Come to
Me, all you who labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.”
The
Jews would not have it; they would not have Him. They had their precious Law
and their precious heritage from Abraham, even though they didn’t actually keep
the Law or imitate the faith of Abraham. Their leaders conspired to put Jesus
to death, and Jesus willingly yielded at His arrest as we witness in the words
of St. John; “Shall I not drink the cup
which My Father has given Me?”
In so
doing, they were unwittingly fulfilling every prophecy in their own Scriptures.
In so doing, they were unknowingly slaughtering the true Passover Lamb,
offering up the one sacrifice that does atone for sin, shedding the one Man’s
blood that is holy enough, that is precious enough, that is worth enough to
make up for the sins of all mankind. This Jesus is not merely a man. He is the
only sinless Man, the promised Seed of the woman, the Seed of Abraham, Isaac
and Jacob, the lion of the tribe of Judah, the Son of David, the Son of God.
Here we
come to the reality that each of us must face. The Jews handed Jesus over to be
crucified. The Roman governor, Pontius Pilate, perverted justice and allowed
them to do it. None of us were there. We don’t have to apologise for what
people did to Jesus 2,000 years ago. No, whether Jew or Gentile, we have to
answer for our own sins, and they are just as real and just as damning, because
Adam is our father, too, and we, like those present of that first Good Friday,
are just as guilty.
The Law
still cries out condemnation from Mt. Sinai, and each one of us will have to
answer on the Day of Judgment for our own sins. However see what God has done
on Good Friday: He has set up another mountain, Mt. Calvary, another place of
judgment where the only one who is condemned, where the only one whose blood is
shed, is Jesus, the Christ, the Righteous One. Although, He isn’t
condemned for His sins; He’s condemned for ours. His blood doesn’t atone for
His sins, but for ours. As Isaiah said, “We
esteemed Him stricken, Smitten by God, and afflicted. But He was wounded
for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities; The chastisement for
our peace was upon Him, and by His stripes we are healed. All we like sheep
have gone astray; We have turned, every one, to his own way; And the LORD has
laid on Him the iniquity of us all.”
Here on
Mt. Calvary stands God’s own answer to sin. He hates it. He punishes it. He
destroys the sinner and condemns him to death. On this mountain the Righteous
One dies so that the sinners can go free. It’s love that caused God to send His
Son, His Servant, to this mountain, to this cross, that by His suffering and
death, the Law might lose its power to condemn us, because God’s Son has
already been condemned for us.
Then,
as we will celebrate on Sunday, God has also raised this Jesus from the dead,
and Jesus has sent His Holy Spirit in this Gospel to proclaim to the world what
the Apostle Peter proclaimed to his fellow Jews in Antioch about the crucified
and risen Jesus: Acts 2: 29-33 “Fellow Israelites, I can
tell you confidently that the patriarch David died and was buried, and his tomb
is here to this day. But
he was a prophet and knew that God had promised him on oath that he would place
one of his descendants on his throne. Seeing
what was to come, he spoke of the resurrection of the Messiah, that he was not
abandoned to the realm of the dead, nor did his body see decay. God has raised this Jesus to
life, and we are all witnesses of it. Exalted
to the right hand of God, he has received from the Father the promised Holy
Spirit and has poured out what you now see and hear.
We must
be wary, lest we fail to believe in this Messiah, for then we will have to answer
for our own sins. God doesn’t want us to answer for our own sins. He only wants
to see Christ. He only wants us to plead the blood of His Son. In this Gospel
that we hear again today, we hear the voice of God calling us to abandon Sinai,
to flee in faith to Calvary, to the Mercy Seat, to the Throne of Grace that is
Jesus Christ, who gave His life for us. If God is for us, who can be against
us?
On Good
Friday, of all days, there can be no doubt that God is for us. Here we see the
depth of His love for the world in His willingness to give His Son for our
redemption. John 3: 16-17 “For
God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever
believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. For God did not
send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through
Him might be saved.” Amen.
The
love and peace of our Great Triune God that is beyond all human understanding,
keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus in His death, resurrection and into
eternity. Amen
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