Sixth Wednesday in Advent Service

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Alright, I would like to welcome you all to Kongsfinger Lutheran Church.
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This is our sixth and final midweek Lenten service.
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Technically, next week we're into Holy Week, so it's a whole different thing altogether.
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Tonight we'll be following the Order of Vespers on page 229 in the hymnal, and the psalm, which you should probably put a little bookmark there, will be
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Psalm 27, and we will be using psalm tone G as in Guggenheim. G as in Guggenheim.
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So, alright, and if you are physically present here at Kongsfinger, please rise.
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O Lord open my lips, make haste
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O God to deliver me. Psalm 27.
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The Lord is my light and my salvation, whom shall I fear?
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When evildoers assail me to eat up my flesh, though an army encamp against me, my heart shall not fear.
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One thing I have asked of the Lord, that will I seek after, for he will hide me in his shelter in the day of trouble.
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And now my head shall be lifted up above my enemies all around me, and I will offer in his tent sacrifices with shouts of joy.
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Hear O Lord when I cry aloud, you have said seek my face.
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Hide not your face from me, turn not your servant away in anger, for my father and my mother have forsaken me.
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Teach me your way O Lord, give me not up to the will of my adversaries.
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I believe that I shall look upon the goodness of the Lord. Wait for the
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Lord. Glory be to the
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Father, and to the Son, and to the
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Holy Spirit, as it was in the beginning, is now, and will be forever.
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Amen. Hymn 438, you may be seated.
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Please rise for the gospel. The Holy Gospel according to St. John the 19th chapter.
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So they took Jesus and he went out bearing his own cross to the place called the place of a skull, which in Aramaic is called
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Golgotha. There they crucified him with him and two others, one on either side, and Jesus between them.
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Pilate also wrote an inscription and put it on the cross. It read, Jesus of Nazareth the king of the Jews. Many of the
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Jews read this inscription for the place where Jesus was crucified was near the city and it was written in Aramaic, in Latin, and in Greek.
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So the chief priests and the Jews said to Pilate, do not write the king of the
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Jews, but rather that this man said I am the king of the Jews. Pilate answered, what
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I have written I have written. When the soldiers had crucified Jesus they took his garments and divided them into four parts, one part for each soldier and also his tunic.
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But the tunic was seamless, woven in one piece from top to bottom. So they said to one another, let us not tear it but cast lots for it to see whose it shall be.
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This was to fulfill the scripture which says, they divided my garments among them and for my clothing they cast lots.
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So the soldiers did these things but standing by the cross of Jesus were his mother and his mother's sister,
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Mary the wife of Clopas and Mary Magdalene. When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple whom he loved standing nearby, he said to his mother, woman behold your son.
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And then he said to the disciple, behold your mother. And from that hour the disciple took her to his own home.
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O Lord have mercy on us. We'll sing the response.
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Deliver me O Lord my God for you are the God of my salvation.
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In you O Lord do I put my trust. Leave me not O Lord my
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God. Deliver me
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O Lord my God for you are the God of my salvation. You may be seated.
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In the name of Jesus. Now Jesus is on the cross as we continue our study of Christ's passion.
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I think it's important to note we'll obviously end up on Good Friday. That will be the last part of this.
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It just so happens the Gospel of John is the primary reading for the Tanabray service on Good Friday. So we will consider the last part when we get there.
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But here we are. Jesus has been crucified and in order to really get in kind of, how do
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I say it, like suck the marrow out of this text and really dig deep into its meaning, we first have to go back in time.
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Remember the movie Back to the Future? We've got to go all the way back in time. How far back? All the way back to the beginning.
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There's some themes in the book of Genesis chapter 3 which I think are very important in our look at this text of Christ's suffering on the cross.
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And so let me read the account from Genesis chapter 3. It's a little long but I don't think you guys mind having too much
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Bible do you? It's not like I have anything better to do on a, you know, on a Wednesday night.
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You know, I just find it fascinating. Some pastors find, you know, well we got to apologize if we're going to read too much
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Bible. We don't need to apologize for that. We just need to do it, right? So Genesis 3, 1. The serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the
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Lord God had made. And the serpent said to the woman, did God actually say you shall not eat of any tree in the garden?
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And the woman said to the serpent, well we may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, but God said you shall not eat of the tree that's in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it lest you die.
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And the serpent said to the woman, you will not surely die for God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened.
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You'll be like God knowing good and evil. So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food and that it was a delight to the eyes and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate.
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And she also gave some to her husband who was with her and he ate. And then the eyes of both were opened and they knew that they were naked.
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And so they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths. And they heard the sound of the
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Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day. And the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the
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Lord God among the trees of the garden. But the Lord God called to the man and said to him, where are you?
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He said, I heard the sound of you in the garden and I was afraid because I was naked and I hid myself.
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And he said, who told you you were naked? Have you eaten of the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?
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And the man said, the woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me the fruit of the tree and I ate. And then the
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Lord God said to the woman, what is this that you've done? And the woman said, the serpent deceived me and I ate. And the
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Lord God said to the serpent, because you have done this, cursed are you above all livestock and above all the beasts of the field.
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And on your belly you shall go and dust you shall eat all the days of your life. I will put enmity between you and the woman and between your offspring and her offspring.
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He shall bruise your head and you shall bruise his heel. To the woman, he said,
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I will surely multiply your pain and childbearing and pain you shall bring forth children. Your desire shall be contrary to your husband, but he shall rule over you.
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And then to Adam, he said, because you have listened to the voice of your wife and have eaten of the tree of which I commanded you, you shall not eat of it.
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Cursed is the ground because of you. In pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life. Thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you.
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And you shall eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread until you return to the ground.
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For out of it you were taken, for you are dust. And to dust you shall return. The man called his wife's name
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Chava. That's actually kind of how the Hebrew works, Chava. If you've ever known a Jewish woman named
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Chava, she's actually named after Eve. So yeah, so named her Chava. And she was the mother of all the living.
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And the Lord God made for Adam and for his wife garments of skins and clothed them.
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And then the Lord God said, behold the man has become like one of us in knowing good and evil.
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And now lest he reach out his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat and live forever.
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And then I would note something. If you have the ESV opened, you'll note that verse 22 ends with a big old long dash.
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There's a reason for that. And that is that this Hebrew sentence is incomplete, right?
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In fact, if there was a grammar teacher nearby, she'd go, nope, this is an incomplete sentence.
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But I want you to think about that. It's kind of a big deal when God has an incomplete sentence. Because look what the
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Trinity is saying among themselves, right? Or themselves because it's one God, three persons.
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You kind of have to work that out. So listen again to what it says. Behold the man has become like one of us in knowing good and evil.
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Now lest he reached out his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat and live forever.
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And you can just see it. What a horrible, awful thought this is. Man has fallen into sin.
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He's corrupted. And rather than having great power and knowledge of good and evil.
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You can kind of see Adam and Eve sitting there going, oh I can't wait to see what happens when we bite into this thing, right?
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And what they expected and what they got, two different things. Because what they expected was great knowledge of good and evil and things like this.
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And the first thing they recognized is, whoo, we're not wearing any clothes, right? And so you'll note that nakedness is a big deal now.
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It wasn't when Adam and Eve were first created. The text says that they were both naked and neither of them were ashamed.
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This is the way God made them. It was no big deal at all. It didn't even cross their minds. But now nakedness is a part of human shame.
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You really want to shame somebody? You really want to make a spectacle of them and really, really make them look terrible?
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Just strip off all their clothes and put a shackle around their neck and parade them through the city streets naked.
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It's one of the most terrible things you could do to a person, is it not? So nakedness is a sign of our shame.
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But here we are in the midst of this text and God is thinking now of the consequences of sin. And there's one little bit of business.
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If they ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, what's to keep them from eating of the tree of life? And if they ate from the tree of life, what would happen?
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They would live forever in sin. Believe me,
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I've only been on the planet for 55 years. 56 in May coming up.
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But already it's like, I'm tired. I'm tired. This world is for the birds, right?
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It is a mixture of good and evil. You'll note the good in this world can actually legitimately be good.
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I mean, what is better than a kiss or a hug or being with somebody that you love or having a kitten in your arms purring?
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Things like this. These are wonderful things. But then look at the great suffering and misery that there is in this world.
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And the suffering and misery that we all experience. Who of us does not mourn over those who are not here tonight?
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And I'm not talking because they're not in attendance, but because they passed and they died. Who of us cannot think back to the hard times in our lives and the difficult times and know that we've gone through great suffering?
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And there's great suffering ahead. And all of that being said, could you imagine being trapped forever with the sinful flesh?
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The only thing God could do was do something to make us a little more comfortable in our misery.
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But there would be no end to it. And so here the Trinity is thinking this through.
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And it's like, lest he take also the tree of life and eat and live. And they went, ah, they can't even finish their thought.
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So therefore, Yahweh Elohim sent him out from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he was taken.
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He drove out the man. And at the east of the Garden of Eden, he placed the cherubim and a flaming sword that turned every way to guard the way to the tree of life.
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Thus man's fallen to sin. Now, a little bit of a note here. We've already talked about nakedness. We'll talk a little bit more about it in a minute.
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But let's go back to our gospel text. John 19. We're part way through verse 16.
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So they took Jesus and he went out bearing his own cross to a place called the place of a skull, which in Aramaic is called
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Golgotha. This is a terrifying description of the location of Christ's crucifixion because you're gonna note here,
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Christ is carrying his cross. He's carried his cross, which is what? Made out of wood.
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Wood comes from trees. So as Paul says in Galatians, Christ, well, became a curse for us because cursed is everyone who is hung on a tree.
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Christ is going to be hung by a tree in, of all places, a place called the place of a skull. When you see a skull, what's the first thing you think of?
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Death. There is death all around here. It reminds me of that attraction that is no longer in Disneyland, but you could find it if you
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Google it. You know, the Country Bear Jamboree. There was this, it was a great little attraction, you know, kind of fun with all these upbeat country bears singing country songs and singing and dancing and all this kind of stuff.
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But there was this one bear that just wasn't, well, wasn't like the rest. I don't remember his name.
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Maybe it was Liver Lips or something like that. But this bear would come out and he had a guitar with one string and he would play that one string.
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He'd twang that thing. Twang. And here was the song he sang. Blood on the sidewalk.
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Twang. Blood on the ground. Twang. There was blood all around.
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What a terrible song, right? A good way to think about Christ's place of his crucifixion is it is all about death.
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Christ on a tree hung in a place called the place of a skull.
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Everything about this screams death. But think a little bit forward here.
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I'm gonna get a little bit ahead of myself. When Christ has finally died, where is he buried?
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In a garden tomb. And I would note some of the themes of Genesis 3 come screaming through here.
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Because you'll note that God has this amazing thing that he has done with the crucifixion as Christ.
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The ultimate evil ever committed by humanity. The crucifixion and the murder of our own creator.
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The architect of the world is laid in a tomb as a result of our murder. And what does he take with that death?
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He flips the whole thing around. And so you'll note where God had to ask the question and go, whoa, we don't want humanity to actually eat from the tree of life.
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That would be evil. Note then that Christ's cross, don't let the appearances fool you.
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Don't let the skull turn you away where he was crucified. Because although it reeks of death and it is a place of death, indeed a death occurred there.
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Christ takes that very place and turns it into the new garden of Eden. His cross then becomes of all things the tree of life.
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If you think back a couple weeks, we read through that text where Jesus was talking about the fact that his flesh is true food, his blood is true drink.
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Do we not, every divine service, when we have the Lord's Supper, eat of the fruit of the tree of life?
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The cross. And so here you have to see this through Genesis, but Genesis reversed.
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Genesis reversed through faith, not by sight. Because everything you see in the crucifixion, from the place he's crucified, to the implement of his death, to the soldiers there, to the other people dying, and the breaking of their legs, and the piercing of his body with the
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Roman lance and spear, all of it just screams with your visuals, death.
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But God here is working in this place of death, through Christ's death, our eternal life.
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You can't see it any other way when you see it through the eyes of faith, through scripture. So there they crucified
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Jesus. The two others on either side, Jesus between them, and John doesn't care to tell us the rest of the details.
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He'll leave that to Luke and to Matthew to give us the details of what's going on there. So Pilate then, and then we have kind of like three little vignettes, three little vignettes
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I think are very interesting, three little details worth focusing on. Pilate wrote an inscription and put it on the cross.
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And one has to wonder, what was Pilate's thinking here? Because what he wrote, and he had written above the cross in three languages,
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Latin, Greek, Aramaic, Jesus of Nazareth, the king of the Jews.
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Now if you were to ask me, do we have this artifact? I think we do.
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I know it's gonna sound a bit weird, but if you want to Google it, Google something called the Titulus.
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Alright, and you can see photos of it. Rome happens to have it. And archaeologists have taken a look at this particular artifact, and the early
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Christian Church actually spoke of having this thing. And so Rome has it. And oddly enough, the grammar in the
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Greek portion of this fits perfectly with what you would expect from first century
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Koine Greek in Judea. Had it been written later, the grammar would have been slightly different.
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And so, interesting thing, I personally think we might actually have this. I think we got the Titulus. Google it, you can see what it looks like if you want to see what this looks like.
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So there's the inscription, Jesus of Nazareth, king of the Jews. And one has to wonder, did Pilate put that up there because he really believed that?
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Maybe not. Did Pilate put it up there because he was basically trying to punk the Jews? Probably.
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He was not exactly keen on crucifying Christ, and so he's just gonna go with it.
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Regardless of his motivation, I would note what he said here is 100 % true.
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100%. The irony is thick if he did it to kind of be tongue -in -cheek, because what this is saying is absolutely true.
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And you'll note then that Jesus isn't like other kings. This is the coronation he has chosen for himself.
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He did not choose to be crowned with gold, but be crowned with a crown of thorns. He has not chosen for himself a regal and royal throne.
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He has instead chosen for his throne none other than the cross itself. And you'll note, something
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I've pointed out in the past worth mentioning again here, think about here in the United States. Every time a president is getting ready to leave office, what's his last thing that he does?
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He issues a slew of pardons. You know, the reason why he has to wait until it's like his last thing in office is because everybody would be in an uproar if they heard who he was pardoning, right?
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Because there's nothing more scandalous than letting the guilty off the hook, okay? So that being the case, presidents issue presidential pardons at the end of their term.
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Not Jesus. That's not how King Jesus works. His first order of business is to suffer, bleed, and die in the place of all of his enemies so that they can be pardoned and reconciled.
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Not just a small group of them, but all of them. And if you think about it, Christ's love, his mercy, his patience, his kindness, his grace comes screaming through with that little detail.
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Ah, Pilate got it right. Jesus is indeed the King of the Jews, and his first order of business is to pardon all of his enemies.
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Oh, what good news this is. The cross is full of grace. So is Christ. Next little point, and this is where we have to also consider what was written in Genesis 3.
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When the soldiers had crucified Jesus, they took his garments, divided them into four parts, one part for each soldier, also his tunic.
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But the tunic was seamless, woven in one piece from top to bottom. So they said to one another, let us not tear it, but cast lots for it to see whose it shall be.
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This was to fulfill the scripture which says, they divided my garments among them, and for my clothing they cast lots.
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This is from Psalm 22. But with all of those details, all of Jesus's clothing have been divided into four parts.
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One was a bigger part, that tunic, and they cast lots for it. What's Jesus wearing? Nothing.
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The nakedness of the garden has come back. And you'll note, we stripped
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Jesus of his clothing to put him to shame.
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It's a form of psychological torture if you think about it. It means that those who were standing at the foot of the cross had to find a way to look up a little higher, to not see, to not participate in this.
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Because there is nothing more shameful than for somebody to be paraded publicly in the nude. Nakedness is the first, first result of our shame.
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And so here Christ has no clothes to wear. And I would note that God himself didn't treat us that way.
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It says in Genesis 3, verse 21, that the Lord God made for Adam and for his wife garments of skins, plural, and clothed them.
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You'll note that despite Adam and Eve's nakedness and shame and guilt, rightly guilt, and even though God had given them indeed terrible punishments,
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God was kind enough, merciful enough to sacrifice at least two animals for the purpose of clothing
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Adam and Eve. So that they would not have to walk about naked.
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The gospel is on display here. Because you'll note that in Scripture, it over and again talks about salvation in terms of wearing robes of righteousness.
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And you'll note that in the book of Revelation, it even talks about the clothing that the saints wear.
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And the reason for that is simple, is because God in his mercy, in his great love for us, has clothed our nakedness.
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Not with skins, but clothed it with the very righteousness of Christ, who bore our sins, yours and mine.
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And so we'll note the fact that Jesus had no clothes while he was on the cross, again invokes
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Genesis. And then the last of the details, a little vignette detail here as well.
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When we talk about theology and Christ's obedience, oftentimes theologians will divide his obedience into two categories.
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First category, Christ's active obedience. This is where Christ is actively obeying
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God's commands, doing what is necessary so that he can be the sinless, spotless Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, right?
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He was tempted in every way that you were and I were tempted, and yet is without sin. He never broke a single command.
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And then there's the passive obedience of Christ. Obedience that he has to passively participate in, but not actively participate in.
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Think of it, Christ's suffering on the cross, from the time he's nailed to the cross until the time he dies, is nothing but passive obedience.
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The passive obedience to the will of the Father that he bear the sins of the world, that God lays on him the iniquity of us all, and he then is our atoning sacrifice, our substitute.
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But while on the cross, Jesus still has one commandment left to fulfill, and he must actively obey it.
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And he does. And it's beautiful if you think about it. I can't imagine what
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Mary went through that day, having to watch her son die. From time to time when
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I talk to my parents, you know, in fact I was recently speaking with my father.
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He talked about a friend of his who lost his son recently to cancer. And his comment was, no parent should ever have to bury their own child.
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No parent should ever have to do it. And there's Mary at the foot of the cross, never leaving, staying through the whole thing in all of its shameful ignominy.
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And she's already a widow at this point. You'll note that at no point after Jesus begins his ministry do we ever hear anything of Joseph.
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Nothing. And the reason for it is simple. He's gone. He's dead. She's a widow.
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And although Jesus has other brothers and sisters as the firstborn, the duty of caring for his mother and making sure that she is cared for falls on him.
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Not the secondborn. The first. And so Jesus must actively obey God's command to honor your father and mother.
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What does this mean? That we should fear and love God so that we do not despise or anger our parents or other authorities, but honor them, serve and obey them, love and cherish them.
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We learn from the Catechism. And Christ to his dying hours fulfills this command and loves, honors, cherishes his mother and obeys the will of God by making sure that she is cared for.
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His active obedience isn't finished even while he's passively obeying.
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So Jesus when he sees his mother says to the disciple whom he loved, and that's the disciple John, standing nearby, he said to his mother, woman behold your son.
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And one has to wonder how much effort it took to be able to speak those words. Crucifixion is a difficult thing to go through.
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And then he said to his disciple, behold your mother. And from that hour the disciple took her into his own home.
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Three little details from the cross but none of them are small. All of them are deep and profound and all of them point to just how great and awesome and loving and kind and holy
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Jesus is. All of this he's chosen for himself, who for the joy set before him endured the cross and shame, the joy of being reunited not only with the sinners of his day, but sinners like you and I who believe in him all of these millennia later.
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And indeed we are reconciled to God through his vicarious death on the cross. And so as we finish up our
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Lenten meditation on the sufferings of Christ, we're not done yet. We must go and finish the task.
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But that will be left until Good Friday. In the name of Jesus, Amen. We rise for the
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Magnificat. Let my prayer rise before you as incense.
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Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
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Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.
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And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever and ever.
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The Lord be with you. Almighty God, by your great goodness, mercifully look upon your people that we may be governed and preserved evermore in body and soul.
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Through Jesus Christ, your Son, our Lord, who lives and reigns with you in the Holy Spirit, one God now and forever.
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Amen. Oh God, from whom come all holy desires, all good counsels, and all just works.
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Give to us, your servants, that peace which the world cannot give. That our hearts may be set to obey your commandments and that also that we, being defended from the fear of our enemies, may live in peace and quietness.
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Through Jesus Christ, your Son, our Lord, who lives and reigns with you in the Holy Spirit, one God now and forever.
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Let us bless the Lord, the grace of our
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Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the communion of the