Sermon for 4/7/23: Good Friday (Lord's Supper series)

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The Cup of Wrath, the Cup of Blessing
Isaiah 52:13–53:12

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.  Amen.
 

There are two things that are made crystal clear on Good Friday. The first is that God takes sin seriously; His wrath toward sinners is real. The death of His Son on the cross proves this beyond all doubt. The second is that His love for sinners is also real. The cross of Christ also shows the extent of His love, the price He is willing to pay to redeem the fallen sons of Adam. This is why you need Good Friday: it is your nature to underestimate God’s potential for wrath when it comes to your sin; it is your nature to doubt God’s favor when things go badly in your life. Scripture is full of evidence that God despises sin and punishes it, yet we often take His patience as proof of the opposite. We look around and see how much wickedness seems to go unpunished, and we conclude that God must not be all that concerned about sin.

Our culture doesn’t offer much help in this regard. Today, no one really likes to talk about God’s “wrath.” He is a God of love, and that is as far as some churches and teachers will go. In many pockets of Christianity, people have fashioned for themselves a tame god, a god that winks at sin, a god who will allow anything for the sake of what we call love. Think about it: if you really considered your daily violations of God’s Commandments as deserving of death and damnation, wouldn’t you run to your pastor for Confession? If you simply took God at His Word and believed Him when He says that “the wages of sin is death,” wouldn’t you seek to be free of your guilt and obey His Commandments?

With Good Friday in view, we cannot believe that God ignores our sin. We can no longer brush off our sins and say, “Oops, I did it again.” We are forced to face the reality of what God thinks about sin and what our sin deserves. If ever there was proof that God takes sin seriously, it was hanging on the cross on Calvary. It was there in the beaten, bloody, bruised, dead body of His Son. There God showed the world that He meant it when He said to Adam and Eve: “In the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.” When you see Christ hanging on the cross, you are compelled to see what God really thinks of your lying, your lustful thoughts and actions, your covetous desires, your gossip—every sin you take for granted. But God did not send His Son to the cross to make you feel bad. Good Friday is not a “feel sorry for Jesus” day. Christ willingly drank the cup of suffering for you.

What you ought to see most clearly in the cross of Christ is the extent of His love for sinners. If ever there was proof of God’s love, proof of His mercy toward sinners, proof of His desire to save, it hung there on Calvary. There the holy God was taking out His wrath and anger toward your sin on His innocent and holy Son so that you would not have to face His wrath for eternity.

But apart from faith, you would not know this merely by looking at the cross. It is only by divine revelation through the mouths of prophets and apostles that you know what was actually taking place on that day. Without this, you would be like those who believed Him to be “stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted.” You would not know just by looking at the cross that He was “wounded for our transgressions” and “bruised for our iniquities.” You would not have known, unless it had been revealed to you in the Word, that in Christ, “God was reconciling the world to Himself.” This is why Christ made known to His disciples the purpose of His sacrifice in the words by which He instituted the Sacrament of the Altar: “This is My blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.”

So it is through the words of Jesus and His prophets and apostles that you know and believe that everything that happened on Good Friday was according to God’s own will. As the Prophet Isaiah declared: “Yet it pleased the LORD to bruise Him; He has put Him to grief.” Every whipscore, every jeer, every nail driven into the hands and feet of Jesus turned God’s fierce anger away from your sin. As long as we remain united to Christ by faith, we are safe from God’s all-consuming anger toward sin and unbelief. This is why we run to Christ when we are overcome by our sinful urges. This is why we remember our Baptism, where God buried us and raised us with Christ. And this is one of the reasons why there is such comfort for Christians in the salutary gift of the Lord’s Supper. This is one of the reasons our Lord desires for you to receive His Supper frequently, why the Lutheran Confessions encourage us to receive it every Lord’s Day.

Through participation in this sacrificial banquet, you receive the benefits of Good Friday, especially pardon for all your sins, won for you on Calvary. God declared all sin forgiven in Christ’s death. But this gift is graciously delivered to you and made available to you here and now in tangible things like bread and wine. And since Christ has turned away the wrath of His Father toward you by His sacrificial death, now the Father turns to you in love when you come to His holy Table. Your merciful and faithful High Priest, Jesus Christ, has made full atonement for your sins. “Surely He has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows.” 

Today, you can breathe a sigh of relief that divine judgment swept past you and stuck in the innocent flesh of Jesus. You can thank your gracious Father for unleashing His wrath toward your sin on His Son, thereby canceling your debt. You can wake up and go to work each morning, secure in the forgiveness of your sins won for you on the cross and given to you in Holy Communion. You can approach your Father boldly, having been cleansed of your sins through Holy Baptism, knowing that you stand innocent before Him by faith.

That is how the Church looks at the death of the Son of God. That is why we call this day “Good.” It was good that God placed His own Son under a curse, good that the nails were driven into His flesh, good that the spear pierced His side, good that blood and water flowed from Him, good that His head was bowed in death for us. And it is good that He has turned the cup of His Father’s wrath into a cup of overflowing blessing for us, which we receive with grateful hearts in His Holy Supper. In faith we cry out, “His blood be on us and on our children!” In the name of the Father and of the Son (+) and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
    

The peace of God which passes all understanding will keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus always.  Amen.