Title: Sin, death, and the devil are finished in Christ!
Text: John19:17-30
Facebook live: Sin, death, and the devil are finished in Christ!
29 A jar full of sour wine stood there, so they put a sponge full of the sour wine on a hyssop branch and held it to his mouth. 30 When Jesus had received the sour wine, he said, “It is finished,” and he bowed his head and gave up his spirit.
In May of 2018 Historic Trinity Lutheran Church in Milwaukee burned as fire consumed the old beams of a roof built in 1878 during restoration of the building. As a final shock to the loss, the steeple spire that had stood high for 140 years fell into the ruins of the burning building.
I remember the fire and what looked to be a total loss.
But an engineering study showed that the building was stable and restoration soon began. Four years after the fire the Milwaukee church in one its way to full recovery as a new roof is in place and interior work looks to be completed in 2023.
One commenter to the event on Facebook asked,
“Why didn’t God put the fire out?”
Ultimately, God did - like he always does - working through the means provided;
Firemen and water this time,
doctors and nurses at other times,
moms and dads so many times,
and his only Son our Lord on Good Friday!
In Christ, it is finished and death has given way to the spire of Christ’s cross!
17 and [Jesus] went out, bearing his own cross, to the place called The Place of a Skull, which in Aramaic is called Golgotha. 18 There they crucified him, and with him two others, one on both side, and Jesus between them.
As our opening illustration pointed out … there can be great value in disaster. It can bring people together. It can turn us in a way we might not expect. For the followers of Jesus this was to be, for a time, a disaster of great proportions.
The one in whom they had trusted and believed, who they had thought was the one, the Messiah, was now tried, crucified, and dead and in a manner not expected as that of a common criminal.
“But how can it be?” they might think.
“In Him we were sure that the Kingdom would be restored and the power of the Romans broken.
Now, we see only the one in whom we placed our hope gone;
killed by the raging of the Jewish leaders, the scourging of the Roman guards, and the cross of humiliating crucifixion.”
Maybe even asking: “Why didn’t God put the fire out?”
As the anger burned against Jesus?
Even Pilate got his digs in for he wrote an inscription and put it on the cross.
It read,
“Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews.”
Those responsible for turning Jesus over to Pilate cried:
“[Don’t write that!] ‘The King of the Jews,’ but rather, ‘This man said, I am King of the Jews.’” “But Pilate had written what he had written and in the languages of Aramaic, Latin, and Greek so there was no mistaking what was said of him.”
“Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews.”
The dead King of the Jews may have been the response that they all felt.
The world that we live in today also mocks this Jesus.
The question asked on Facebook, “Why didn’t God put the fire out?” was really a question mocking God and those who have faith and have placed their trust in him. Saying in a sense, if your God is real why didn’t he save this beautiful church from the destruction of the flames?
In Luke’s narrative of the crucifixion he writes:
35 And the people stood by, watching, but the rulers scoffed at him, saying, “He saved others; let him save himself, if he is the Christ of God, his Chosen One!” 36 The soldiers also mocked him, coming up and offering him sour wine 37 and saying, “If you are the King of the Jews, save yourself!” Luke 23:35-37
The name of Jesus and his cross remains an offense.
Why?
Well, what if it is true?
What if this Jesus is God and we are sinners as the bible says?
What if there is no hope apart from trust in him?
What if there is really a place called Hell and when we reject Him and His love, we receive the eternal separation and torment promised?
These and many other questions about Jesus and the cross, cause anger to boil over in our world, because it brings sinners sins to light and the light of the law, shows us the reflection of our brokenness.
Anger rails against the word of God made flesh in this Jesus.
Who is your God?
Why didn’t he save the church?
Why did he let your loved one die?
21 Martha said to Jesus, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”
Saving in a sense, “You Jesus let this happen, Jesus!”
But she responds in Faith:
22 But even now I know that whatever you ask from God, God will give you.”
23 Jesus said to her, “Your brother will rise again.”24 Martha said to him, “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day.”
25 Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, 26 and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die. Do you believe this?”
The One who need not have been bound by chains and cords was bound by men who sought His death.
The One who was the power of God, refused to let that power bring Him rescue.
The One who had no fear of death became subject to death.
The One who had no vices wrapped Himself in ours that He might free us from them.
The One who is the triumphant King suffered His own skin to be nailed upon the stake as the trophy of His triumph over death.
The One who hunted down death, allowed Himself to be devoured by it.
The One who was bound by the nails is bound that He might bind us to Himself through faith in Him.
We, who might be bound to Him by force, are bound rather by His love for us; and that binding is the more powerful because it is His.
Bound to Him by His passionate and bloody embrace, we no longer fear the bonds of death in our own lives.
Punishment cannot hold us, for He long ago took our punishment.
Suffering cannot overwhelm us, because He suffered for us on the tree.
Fear cannot defeat us, for there is nothing to fear that can harm us.
The cross is the instrument of His death, and the source of our life.
Rev. Scott Murray, devotion edited
As we today remember the cross:
let us look to Jesus the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God. Heb. 12:2
May the Love of God the blessings of Christ and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be and abide with you now and forever.
In the name of the Father and of the Son + and of the Holy Spirit
Amen
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