Sermon for 3/20/24: Midweek Lent 5 (Psalm 22 series)

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“He Has Done It”
Psalm 22:25-31

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

It is not too much to say that the entire Passion of our Lord and its outcome is pictured in the words of Psalm 22. The Psalm begins with those words of distress and despair: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” As we said before, for that brief time, it was necessary that the Father hide Himself from His Son so that the Son’s hellish suffering would be genuine. Then Jesus identifies His own utter humility by calling himself a worm, one who was scorned and despised, so that He might endure what was necessary to turn aside the Father’s wrath against the sin of all mankind. We are then told of His suffering, the excruciating pain and absolute helplessness as He bore that wrath. Last week we heard how deliverance finally came, and Jesus could commend Himself with certainty into the hands of His gracious Father. Now, finally, the Psalm ends with a look beyond. What was the point of all the suffering, the humiliation, the anguish, and the deliverance? What the psalmist commends to us is a continuing remembrance of the faithfulness of our God in delivering His Son, but also in delivering us from sin and death through His Son. It is a reminder that we must always keep this faithfulness of God before our eyes.

This portion of the Psalm takes us beyond the crucifixion. Jesus has been delivered from His enemies; even death itself could not hold Him. As St. Paul told the Romans, “[He] was declared to be the Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness by His resurrection from the dead.” Life had returned! And the return to life enables the Son to praise His glorious Father among the people of God. Jesus says, “My vows I will perform before those who fear Him.” In those days, the paying of vows included a feast to which many were invited. And this is exactly what our Lord has done. The Holy Supper which He instituted on the night before His crucifixion would be the remembrance, and His apostles and the pastors who followed after would continue this remembrance, as it is to this day. St. Paul reminds us, “As often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until He comes.”

The Psalm continues, “The afflicted shall eat and be satisfied; those who seek Him shall praise the Lord!” Who are the afflicted? Certainly the sick and destitute are afflicted, along with those who suffer and those who mourn. But there is an affliction which surpasses all of these: the affliction of sin and the death that sin deserves. These are the very afflictions our Lord bore to the cross. But out of His suffering comes relief and the answer to our afflictions. All who are burdened by sin can eat and be satisfied. His word of forgiveness refreshes and satisfies us as we “read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest it.” But even more to the point, the very body and blood given and shed for the remission of sins is served to us as the great Feast of forgiveness, life, and salvation. And this Feast on earth is merely a foretaste of the heavenly Feast yet to come, where, as the Psalmist tells us, “hearts live forever” in the presence of the Lamb of God who has taken away this sins of the world and opens the kingdom of heaven to all believers.

The Psalmist goes on to say, “All the ends of the earth shall remember and turn to the Lord, and all the families of the nations shall worship before You.” Truly, all the world knows what the Savior has done. Even those who hate the Gospel know about it. Even those who would not even for a second entrust their souls to Jesus know what He has done. But the memory of the Church is completely different. For the Church, to remember is to participate. We listen every year to the retelling of those saving events, and they become as real to us as the original because they are as real. We do not need to be transported back in time. We don’t need to be there. The great saving benefits of Christ are brought to us in His Word and Sacraments. Receiving what His passion offers us requires us to travel no farther than the altar, for here the same body given and blood shed for the forgiveness of sins is offered and given to those who live in faithful remembrance of what the Son of God has done. This same remembrance, which has gone before us in time, will go on as long as life is lived on earth, as long as the Church remains.

Even scoffers and unbelievers will have no choice but to remember what Jesus has done. “Before Him shall bow all who go down to the dust, even the one who could not keep himself alive.” They will bow before the One who purchased their lives from sin and destruction. Great and small, haughty and humble—all will acknowledge that Jesus gave His life for them. On the Last Day, as St. Paul writes, “Every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”

And in the end, every generation shall serve Him by remembering and telling every new generation what our loving Lord has done. Even those not yet born, to the very end of days, shall know and remember and confess what Jesus has done: bearing our sins to the cross in our place, dying the death we deserved, and then rising again to win for us new, eternal life. The work is complete. “Tetelestai,” Jesus cried out: “It is finished!” This “one little word,” as Martin Luther said in his most famous hymn, has felled Satan. Death has been destroyed. The graves will be empty. And we will remember for all eternity and praise our God for all that our Lord Jesus has won for us, for indeed, “He has done it.” In the name of the Father and of the Son (+) and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

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

Sermon for 3/13/24: Midweek Lent 4 (Psalm 22 series)

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Not Far Off After All
Psalm 22:19-24

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

There’s an old and not-so-nice story about a father who is teaching his son about trust. The father has his son stand on a kitchen counter and then says to him, “Jump, and Daddy will catch you.” His son says to him, “No, you won’t. You’ll let me fall.” “I’ll catch you!” the father insists. “Just jump!” The son says, “But Daddy, I’m scared!” The father replies, “Don’t you trust your Daddy, son? I promise I’ll catch you.” This went back and forth for a few minutes, the father holding out his hands to his son, and the son scared of what his father will do either way. Finally the son lifts his eyes toward the ceiling in surrender and says, “Okay, Daddy. Here I come.” The son gathers himself and takes a mighty leap towards his father. As soon as his son’s feet leave the counter, the father steps back, and he watches as his son hit the floor hard. The son, crying, says, “You promised, Daddy. You promised you’d catch me.” The father replies, “This will teach you not to trust anybody.”

          I have no idea whether or not this is a true story—I hope it’s just a tale told to scare children—but it brings forth the point. We are conditioned from an early age to doubt everyone. If it’s not a story like this, then it’s a story of betrayal, a time when a friend or brother did something wrong and then blamed you for it. Maybe it’s the teammate that missed the last-minute shot. Maybe it’s the parent that forgot about the piano recital. Or it could be the mentor who said what you didn’t want to hear. It doesn’t even necessarily have to be a cruel action. But we take these things very personally, and eventually we think that the only person we can rely on is ourselves.

          At first glance, the Psalm that we have been looking at these past four weeks seems like another story of a trust betrayed. The Son of God is hanging on the cross, dehydrating, bleeding, suffocating, dying. The taunt earlier from the antagonists was this: “He trusts in the Lord; let Him deliver him; let Him rescue Him, for He delights in Him!” The innocent, sinless Son of God cries out for that rescue, that deliverance, and yet He remains nailed to that cross. The Son of God was seemingly betrayed by His own Father! Is there nobody that can be trusted? Can we not trust even God? Is it true that He merely “watching us from a distance,” as Bette Midler would claim?

          Up to this point in the Psalm, we see the psalmist crying out for deliverance for his body and his soul. “But you, O Lord, do not be far off! O you my help, come quickly to my aid!” And up to this point, we have no indication at all that God was even listening to these pleas. But then the whole tone of the Psalm changes. We see the psalmist singing the praises of the Lord. Why the sudden change?

          Looking at our Lord as He hung upon the cross, it’s not immediately obvious what has happened. But if you look closely, you see the change in attitude there, as well. Look at what He says there. First He cries out to the Father, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” He cries out that He is thirsty. He is making very human pleas for help and deliverance. But at the end we see Him finally crying out, “Into your hands I commend my spirit.” This is no longer a cry for help, but a cry that He has been delivered, and that, through Him, we have been delivered. Jesus knows that He has not been betrayed by the Father, or else He would not be able to commit His spirit to the Father. The Father has not betrayed Him. The Father knew was necessary all along, and He did exactly what was necessary all along.

          You can see it in the Psalm. It says, “He has not despised or abhorred the affliction of the afflicted.” What was the affliction of Jesus? He was afflicted by our sin. We were the cause of Christ’s affliction on the cross. Were it not for us, there would be no reason for Him to be on the cross. He had no sin of His own to atone for; He hung there for our sake, bearing all our sins, suffering the wrath of God which humanity had earned in our sin—the wrath we so rightly deserved.

Have we been betrayed by God? No, never: not His Son, and certainly not us. Even in the darkest moment, even in the pain and suffering of Jesus Christ, even when He rightly should have done so, God did not turn away from us. “He has not hidden His face from Him, but has heard when He cried to Him.” He never turned away from His Son, and He has not hidden His face from us. “O Lord, do not be far off.” And He’s not. He is not watching us from a distance, leaving us to wallow in our own filth, leaving us to bear our shame and scorn. Thanks be to God, for He is always near to us. He is always with us, bringing us the comfort of sins forgiven, bringing us the joy of eternal life in His presence. In the name of the Father and of the Son (+) and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

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

Sermon for 3/6/24: Midweek Lent 3 (Psalm 22 series)

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The God Who Suffers
Psalm 22:12-18

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

The Nicene Creed was forged in the fires of heresy, in demonic attempts to separate God from man and man from God in the person of Jesus. The Reformation was a battle fought centuries later on the same ground: first when Luther opposed the Roman church, who in practice denied that the death and resurrection of Jesus applied salvation to penitent sinners, and then Luther and his colleagues had to fight battles against those within Protestantism who denied that Jesus was present in His flesh and blood in the bread and wine of the Holy Supper. Every attack on the true Christian faith is an attempt by the enemies of Christ to discredit His one Person in two Natures and thus discredit His saving work. So if we are to understand this Psalm correctly in this season of Lent, we must confess that Jesus Christ is both God and Man in one Person. We must confess that this God-Man suffered and died to pay the blood debt of all mankind. And we must place all our comfort and find all our hope in His work for us and our salvation.

This particular portion of our Psalm describes our Lord’s intense suffering: physical, emotional, and spiritual suffering all at once. His enemies are described as strong, vicious bulls, ready to crush the Victim they encircled, making escape impossible. They are described as roaring, ravenous lions, seeking to devour their Victim. Imagine what fear must come upon someone facing those circumstances. As a Man, our Lord felt all the danger and horror of the situation. All of the enemies of Christ in all their demonic malevolence face off against our Jesus, with Satan, that roaring lion, seeking to devour both Him and us. To defeat and devour the Son of God would be an unparalleled victory.

The sufferings our Lord endured were awful in the extreme. We will never comprehend how awful they were. He was “poured out like water.” His sufferings brought Him weakness and a sense of utter helplessness that would completely overwhelm anyone. The excruciating pain that accompanied His crucifixion made Him feel as though His bones were “out of joint.” Imagine as best as you can what it would have been like to hang on the cross, and all your weight was supported only by the nails in your hands and feet. It is no wonder His heart became like melted wax within His breast. His strength was completely dried up. You might recall how He cried out from the cross, “I thirst,” as He lacked the moisture to keep His tongue from sticking to His jaw. He was ready to be laid into “the dust of death.”

But even then, note the confession from His lips: “You lay Me in the dust of death.” Even in this grave situation, our Lord confesses that it is the Father who controls all that comes upon His Son. We just heard these words from Isaiah 53: “Surely He hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows: yet we did esteem Him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. But He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon Him; and with His stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the Lord hath laid on Him the iniquity of us all.” His enemies surround Him, ready to pounce. Even those who should have pitied Him only gaze heartlessly upon Him. They gloat over Him, their eyes feasting with delight on what they have done to Him. Indignity upon indignity is heaped upon our Lord’s outstretched arms and shoulders. Even His clothes were divided among His enemies. The Man was overwhelmed. But all of this is told to us to bring comfort to us, because it was the Father who heaped all of this upon His own Son instead of upon us.

 

If it were a mere man being described here, then, as St. Paul said, “We are of all people most to be pitied.” If Jesus is only a man who suffers, then—at best—He alone can benefit from His suffering; there is no blessing therein for us. If it is only a man who suffers, then it is best that we turn our eyes away from Him and gather what little comfort we can from the fact this His suffering is not ours…at least, not yet. But what truly sets apart the sufferings of Jesus is that it is not only a man who suffers; it is a Man who is also God. And since that is the case, suffering is transformed.

It is like a scale and weights. On one side are all the sins of the world; on the other side is all the sufferings of men. The burden of human sin is so heavy that the sufferings of mankind have no effect. But when the sufferings of the God-Man are placed in the balance, the burden of sin is lifted away! When we are surrounded by the enemies of our soul, when there is no escape to be seen, we need not fear. When Satan seeks to devour us, we know that, to get to us, he must first deal with Jesus. When our sufferings are so extreme that we wonder whether or not we can beat them, we know with certainty that they are momentary, that they cannot be compared with the glory which awaits us with the One who suffered in our place. When we look upon Him whom our sins have pierced, we are seeing the One who said, “And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.” And seeing Him, we know that He has drawn us in faith.

When we confess the Nicene Creed, it can no longer be a dry, lifeless reciting of the faith it sometimes seems to be. It will be a remembrance and a thanksgiving for the life-giving and life-sustaining work of our Lord Jesus, which we find in these words: “who for us men and for our salvation came down from heaven and was incarnate by the Holy Spirit of the virgin Mary and was made man; and was crucified also for us under Pontius Pilate. He suffered and was buried. And the third day He rose again according to the Scriptures…” God grant that this thanksgiving would always be the mark of our confession of faith. In the name of the Father and of the Son (+) and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

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

Sermon for 2/28/24: Lent Midweek 2 (Psalm 22 series)

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The Worm of God
Psalm 22:6-11

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

We have all sorts of names and descriptions for the Second Person of the Holy Trinity: Jesus, the Christ, Immanuel, the Son of God, Son of David, Son of Man, Redeemer, Savior, Lord, and many others. We also have any number of pictures of Christ: the brown-haired, fair-skinned young man with the well-trimmed beard who looks like someone we’d want our daughters to bring home to meet us; the ferocious Lion of Judah; the butterfly; the adorably meek Lamb of God. But our text speaks of Christ in a different way.

          Last week, we were reminded that, to understand a Biblical text, we must first ask the question: “What does it say about Christ?” So…what does this passage say about Christ? Maybe the more appropriate question here is: What does Christ say about Himself in this passage? It’s not our pretty picture of Him—not even close. You’re not going to see beautiful paintings or drawings depicting our Lord this way, for the Son of God calls Himself a worm.

          Why would Jesus call Himself a worm? Well, maybe to answer that, we should look at what a worm is. Worms are generally slimy little creatures that look a little like snakes. They usually live under rocks or in the soil. And they are weak: weak and helpless. Children cut them in half to see if they really do become two worms. People step on them without even noticing. Prospective fishermen dig them up by the can-full to use them as bait, shoving hooks through them. Easy to see how the Lord could think of Himself as a worm, right?

          The sad thing is that it’s all too easy for us to see the Lord as a worm. We treat Him that way. We grudgingly give Him “one bitter hour” each week, as if the words of the hymn are a timer to limit the length of the Divine Service. We disregard our worship of Him and our obedience to His commands when it suits us. We use His name in vain as a curse against our neighbors and the rest of His creation. We give Him what we have left as an offering instead of designating the first fruits of our labors. You might remember the old spiritual where the singer asks, “Were you there when they crucified my Lord?” Well, when they nailed Jesus to the cross, laughed at Him and spat on Him, we were there, laughing and spitting on Him, making jokes about His pain, driving in the nails all the deeper. To us, He is a worm. And just like we treat any other worm, we killed Him. And we don’t even care. It’s just a worm. It’s just our Savior.

          What a contrast between the mighty “I AM” who delivered Israel from slavery in Egypt on the one hand and “I am a worm” on the other. But this is a true confession of the Second Article of the Creed. Being so far above men, Jesus became a Man, and He was treated as the lowest of men. Our Lord Jesus Christ, who as God was deserving of all praise and glory, received as a Man all the scorn and hatred mankind could produce. With those tormenting the Psalmist, we shout at our Savior: “He trusts in the Lord; let Him deliver Him; let Him rescue Him, for He delights in Him!” The truth is, the Father indeed does delight in His Son. He delighted in Him, and yet the Father let Him be crucified. And for what? The very people who condemned Christ were the ones who benefited from His agony.

          Jesus called Himself a worm. He became a worm, but He was a worm for our sake. The condition that made Him worthy of scorn was our sins heaped upon Him. This Worm’s filth and slime was the filth and slime He took upon Himself so that we would not be buried under it. He let Himself be mocked, beaten, and killed so that Satan would not have us to mock and torture in eternal death. He suffered all of the Father’s wrath against sin so that we would enjoy eternal life in the presence of our God.

          Think again of the purpose of a worm in the hands of a fisherman. Lancelot Andrewes, an Anglican theologian and preacher, described it this way:

A fisherman, when he casts his angle into the river, does not throw the hook in bare, naked, and uncovered, for then he knows the fish will never bite; and therefore he hides the hook within a worm, or some other bai; and so the fish, biting at the worm, is caught by the hook. This Christ, speaking of Himself, says, “I am a worm, and no man.” He, coming to perform the great work of our redemption, did cover and hide His Godhead within the worm of the human nature. The grand water-serpent, Leviathan, the devil, thinking to swallow the worm of [Christ’s] humanity, was caught upon the hook of His divinity. This hook stuck in his jaws and tore him very sore. By thinking to destroy Christ, he destroyed his own kingdom and lost his power for ever.

Our Lord Jesus Christ, the almighty Son of God by whom all things were made, became a worm. And as a worm brings the fish into the boat, our Lord gathers all the faithful into the boat, this holy Ark which is His Church. Thanks be to God, for the Son’s humiliation lifts us up, bringing us into eternal life. In the name of the Father and of the Son (+) and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

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

 

Sermon for 2/21/24: Midweek Lent 1 (Psalm 22 series)

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God in Hiding

Psalm 22:1-5

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

The words of the Benediction which we hear Sunday after Sunday are a great comfort to us. “The Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make His face shine on you and be gracious to you. The Lord lift up His countenance upon you and give you peace.” While it may be triggering to those who live in unbelief, the fact that God rests His face upon us is pure joy to the Christian, for we know that the face of God is our Lord Jesus Christ. When we see Jesus, we have seen the face of our heavenly Father in all His grace and love; He is directing all His favor and good will toward us. So what must the opposite of this be? What does it mean when God turns His face away? Or, in the terms of our text, what must it mean to be forsaken by God? Our Lord Jesus knew, for He had reason to ask, “My God, my God, why have You forsaken me?”

The Psalms speak of Jesus. To rightly understand any text in Scripture, we must first ask, “What does this say about Jesus?” Of the entire Psalter, Psalm 22 is perhaps the most descriptive because it prophesies the Messiah’s suffering and death, the means by which He won the victory over sin, death, and the power of the devil. During these midweek gatherings, we will look at this Psalm in its entirety to see how this is so. In the section set aside for this evening, we consider in particular the words our Lord Jesus spoke from the cross: “My God, my God, why have You forsaken me?”

We have likely all felt what it is to be forsaken…or if you haven’t, it is more than likely that you will have the experience at some point in your life. Death will separate you from a loved one. Your father or mother will be gone, unable to help you. A friend or coworker will betray you. All of us have had experiences similar to what Jesus experienced. But no one has experienced forsakenness like Jesus did, for He suffered being forsaken in a way far greater than any mere mortal has experienced: The Son of God, who exists in perfect union with the Father, was forsaken by the Father.

And like Jesus Himself, we must ask that all-important question: WHY? Just a few weeks ago at the Transfiguration, we heard the Father proclaim, “This is my beloved Son.” What has changed? Why was Jesus forsaken by the heavenly Father? How could God the Father forsake His Son? To understand how this can be, we must first understand that, from the time of His conception in Mary by the power of the Holy Spirit, Jesus is at the same time True God and True Man. Jesus, true Man, performed miracles and even rose from the dead. Jesus, true God, suffered and died. What this means is that Jesus Christ, who is from eternity, the One by whom all things were made, the One who is sinless and perfect and holy, was at the same time the single greatest sinner the world has ever known. This is true, not because He ever committed any sin of His own, but because He so completely identified with the human race that He took upon Himself the sin that saturates humanity. As St. Paul wrote in his Second Letter to the Corinthians, “For our sake, [God] made Him to be sin who knew no sin…” Because Jesus took on every sin ever committed by any person who ever lived, His cry was not merely a symbol; it was a cry of deepest anguish, for the sinless Son of God bore in His flesh the full punishment which every sinner of all times and all places deserved: He was completely forsaken by His Father. He who is God Himself was bearing the torment of hell—for what else is hell than to be completely separated from the Father?

When His Son cried out from the cross, the Father went into hiding. He would not show Himself even to His own Son, for the righteous God cannot abide the presence of sin. It is here above all else that Jesus stands in our place. He was forsaken so that we would never have to know the forsakenness of God. The torment of hell assaulted Him so that we would never need to know that experience for ourselves. The hidden God is to us the God of greatest blessing, for He hid Himself so that He might save us!

In fact, this is something He still does. God continues to hide Himself from us. Though forgiven of sin, we are yet sinners, and sinners cannot bear the glorious presence of God. So God continues to hide Himself from us. But this is no longer a sign of His wrath or displeasure, as it was at the cross. Instead it is a sure sign of His desire to bless us because of the cross. He hides Himself in simple water, so that, when it is combined with the Word of God, that water eternally cleanses our souls, making us spotless so that we may stand in righteousness before Him. He conceals the very body and blood of Jesus, given and shed for the forgiveness of sins, in and under mere bread and wine. He even hides behind the voice of His called servant who speaks the holy word of forgiveness to us, as we confess in the Small Catechism, speaking with us through the voice of our pastors “as if Christ our dear Lord dealt with us Himself.”

So it is that the words that close out this portion of Psalm 22 become our joyful confession: “In you our fathers trusted; they trusted, and you delivered them. To you they cried and were rescued; in you they trusted and were not put to shame.” God hid Himself from us to save us. That He does so is our joy and delight, our great eternal reward. In the name of the Father and of the Son (+) and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

 

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