See the Salvation of the LORD

Welcome to the teaching ministry of Kungsvinger Lutheran Church. Kungsvinger is a beacon for the gospel of Jesus Christ and is located on the plains of northwestern Minnesota. We proclaim Christ and Him crucified for our sins and salvation by grace through faith alone.

And now here's a message.

From Pastor Chris Rosebrook. First reading is from the Gospel of John chapter 19. Then Pilate took Jesus and flogged him. And the soldiers twisted together a crown of thorns and put it on his head and arrayed him in a purple robe.

They came up to him saying, Hail, King of the Jews, and struck him with their hands. Pilate went out again and said to them, See, I am bringing him out to you that you may know that I find no guilt in him.

So Jesus came out wearing the crown of thorns and the purple robe. And Pilate said to them, Behold the man. When the chief priests and the officers saw him, they cried out, Crucify him, crucify him. Pilate said to them, Take him yourselves and crucify him, for I find no guilt in him.

The Jews answered him, We have a law, and according to that law, he ought to die because he has made himself the son of God. When Pilate heard this statement, he was even more afraid. He entered his headquarters again and said to Jesus, Where are you from?

But Jesus gave him no answer. So Pilate said to him, You will not speak to me? Do you not know that I have authority to release you and authority to crucify you? Jesus answered him, You would have no authority over me at all unless it had been given to you from above.

Therefore he who delivered me over to you has the greater sin. From then on Pilate sought to release him, but the Jews cried out, If you release this man, you are not Caesar's friend. Everyone who makes himself a king opposes Caesar.

So when Pilate heard these words, he brought Jesus out and sat down on the judgment seat at a place called the Stone Pavement, and in Aramaic, Gabbatha. Now it was the day of preparation of the Passover, and it was about the sixth hour, and he said to the Jews, Behold your king!

They cried out, Away with him! Away with him! Crucify him! Pilate said to them, Shall I crucify your king? The chief priest answered, We have no king but Caesar. So he delivered him over to them to be crucified.

So they took Jesus, and he went out bearing his own cross to the place called the Skull, which in Aramaic is called Golgotha. There they crucified him, and with him two others, one on either side, and Jesus between them.

Pilate also wrote an inscription and put it on the cross. It read, Jesus of Nazareth, the king of the Jews. Many of the Jews who 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.

So the chief priest of the Jews said to Pilate, Do not write the king of the Jews, but rather this man said, I am the king of the Jews. Pilate answered, What I have written I have written. Then the soldiers, when the soldiers had crucified Jesus, they took his garments and divided them into four parts.

One part for each soldier, also his tunic. But the tunic was seamless, woven into 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.

This was to fulfill the scripture which says, They divided my garments among them, and for my clothing they cast lots. So the soldiers did these things, but standing by the cross of Jesus were his mother and his mother's sister, 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. Then he said to the disciple, Behold your mother. And from that hour the disciple took her to his own home.

After this, Jesus, knowing that all was now finished, said to fulfill the scripture, I thirst. 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.

When Jesus had received the sour wine, he said, It is finished. He bowed his head, and he gave up his spirit. Since it was the day of preparation, and so that the bodies would not remain on the cross on the Sabbath, for the Sabbath was a high day, the Jews asked Pilate that their legs might be broken and that they might be taken away.

So the soldiers came and broke the legs of the first and of the other who had been crucified with him. But when they came to Jesus and saw that he was already dead, they did not break his legs. But one of the soldiers pierced his side with a spear, and at once there came out blood and water.

He who saw it has borne witness. His testimony is true, and he knows that he is telling the truth, that you also may believe. For these things took place that the Scripture might be fulfilled. Not one of his bones will be broken.

And again, another Scripture says, They will look on him whom they have pierced. After these things, Joseph of Arimathea, who was a disciple of Jesus, but secretly for fear of the Jews, asked Pilate that he might take away the body of Jesus.

And Pilate gave him permission, so he came and took away his body. Nicodemus also, who earlier had come to Jesus by night, came bringing a mixture of myrrh and aloes, about 75 pounds in weight. So they took the body of Jesus and bound it in linen claws with the spices, as is the burial custom of the Jews.

Now in the place where he was crucified there was a garden, and in the garden a new tomb in which no one had yet been laid. So because of the Jewish day of preparation, since the tomb was close at hand, they laid Jesus there.

Fear Not, Stand Firm, and See the Salvation of the Lord

In the name of Jesus, Amen. One of the Psalms that many of us have memorized has a part of it that says these words, Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil. I never imagined the day would come when the shadow in the valley of the shadow of death would be my local grocery store, would be Hugo's, Walmart, Sam's Club.

It just seems unreal. And yet I keep a stat, I keep watching the stats, and how many people, what percentage of them across the country and even in my own state have contracted the coronavirus through community contact.

I was stunned when I went to the grocery store the other day to pick up a few items that we had been falling behind on, and was met by a masked woman at the door who gave me a Lysol wipe to wipe down my cart and to accommodate, to keep us all safe.

You know I keep saying it, I said it at the beginning of Lent and I'll keep saying it, we are afraid of death. Our old Adam doesn't want to die and is afraid to die. This is most certainly true. But we're gonna note this, is that you cannot die for your sins and propitiate the wrath of God.

The death that you suffer, that I suffer, is a consequence of our sin and therefore cannot atone for sins, for the wages of sin is death. And if you think about it, there are people out there who have given the ultimate sacrifice so that you and I can live.

Every year at Memorial Day we remember those soldiers who have fallen, those men who have given their lives and sacrificed themselves so that you and I can live. But live for how long? A few decades. Pretty much it.

Because after that, well, then death comes knocking for us all. And so even those men who have so valiantly laid down their lives so that we can live, even their deaths could not help us. Not in the long run, because death comes for each and every one of us.

But here we see in our Gospel text today the death of somebody who committed no sin. A death that actually does save. And save not temporally, but save eternally. And so because of this, because Christ has laid down his life, we all will live rather than die as we deserve.

As we worked our way through those portions of the Exodus from this past Wednesday, we heard these words from God, fear not, stand firm, and see the salvation of the Lord which he will work for you today.

For the Lord will fight for you, you have only to be silent. And it's very fascinating. God tells the people of Israel, they're in a panic on the shores of the Red Sea at the Gulf of Aqaba, tells them, you need to only be silent and I will fight for you.

And what does Jesus do for us this Good Friday? Jesus is the one who remains silent while he is on trial, and by being silent he silently goes to the cross, and in so doing he fights for us. He works salvation for us.

So many people, over and again, they think that Good Friday is kind of like, well, the funeral for Jesus. Every year we have a funeral for Jesus. Oh no, that's not it at all. Every year we stand and we hear the story again in awe, in awe that he defeated the devil, he defeated sin, and ultimately he defeated death itself.

How? By plunging headlong into the jaws of death. And that is the way you and I are saved. Without the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness of sins. But your blood cannot be shed to atone for your sins.

My blood cannot be shed to atone for my sins. But here in this Gospel text, the blood of Jesus Christ, not the one who made himself the Son of God, as the Pharisees claimed, but the one who is the eternal Son, God of God, light of light, very God of very God, begotten, not made, the eternal Son of God, he bleeds and he dies so that we can be forgiven.

Mercy, Baptism, and the Blotting Out of Sin

In our Psalm today, Psalm 51, we heard again this great plea for mercy that David penned for us, and a prayer that we pray along with him. Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love. But note what David pleads for and begs for God now provides.

And because Christ has laid down his life willingly, taken your sin and mine upon himself, we can now definitively say that God has had mercy on us according to his steadfast love. You see, God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, gave him into death so that you and I might have eternal life.

According to his abundant mercy, he has then blotted out our transgressions. The Apostle Paul so firmly says that all the record of death that stood against us has now been nailed to the cross. And our transgressions have not only been blotted out, not with whiteout, the pages that held them and recorded them are now nailed to the cross itself.

In our baptism, God has washed us thoroughly from our iniquity and he has cleansed us from all of our sins. And it is true every time we hear the law preached that we again know our transgressions and our sin is again laid before us and made front of mind.

And we come and we confess week after week that we have sinned against God and done what is evil in his sight and that God is just in his words and blameless in his judgment. In fact, we confess that we too, like David, was brought forth in iniquity and each and every one of us was conceived and born in sin.

But because of what Christ has done, because of his great victory on the cross, we now delight in truth. And God continues to teach us from the scriptures themselves, which are Theanoustas, which he's breathed out so that our minds can be transformed.

David prayed, purge me with hyssop, and Jesus had sour wine brought up to him on a hyssop stick. But we now have been purged and we have been made clean and we have been washed whiter than snow because Jesus bled.

So let me hear joy and gladness. Let the bones that you have broken rejoice. And note here that our bones that God has broken and crushed by his law and terribly made us to feel the guilt that we earned as a result of our rebellion, God now has allowed us to hear joy and gladness.

God has hidden his face from our iniquities. He's truly blotted every one of our iniquities out. And so you'll note then that as David had prayed, create in me a clean heart, O God, but because of what Christ has done for us, God now has created within us a clean heart.

He has removed that heart of stone and replaced it with a heart of flesh, and he has renewed a right spirit within you and within me, and he has not cast us away from his presence as we deserve. Instead, he has given us freely his Holy Spirit who continues to guide us, to convict us, and to comfort us.

So then, the joy of our salvation has truly already been restored, and God now upholds us by giving us a willing spirit. And because of this then, we have good news to proclaim to the whole world in calling them to come join us in the joy that comes from sins forgiven, transgressions pardoned, iniquity made white as snow.

And we can teach them the ways of the Lord so that sinners like you and like me can then tell other sinners so that they would repent and return to God. For he is the one who delivers us all from blood guiltiness.

He is the God of our salvation, and because of this our tongues will sing aloud of God's righteousness, of the righteousness given to us as a gift by grace through faith. It is then appropriate that at the beginning of our evening services, our Vespers services, and even our Matins services, we say, O Lord, open my lips and my mouth will declare your praise.

You see, we were born dead in trespasses and sins, but God has made us alive in Christ, and therefore he has opened our lips, and what do our lips then do but say thank you and praise and proclaim his wondrous mercy and grace.

God does not delight in sacrifice, or we too, like David would bring it. He's not pleased with burnt offerings, otherwise we'd be bringing those. It'd be a little weird to bring burnt offerings via the internet, just seems like a challenge to me.

But see, you'll note this, the sacrifices of God now are a broken spirit, a broken and contrite heart, O God you will not despise. You see, God humbles the exalted, but he exalts the humble. Those with a broken spirit who confess their sin, confess their iniquity, confess their guilt, God lifts them up.

He does not turn them away. He forgives them, renews them, strengthens them. So do good to Zion in all your good pleasure. Build up the walls of Jerusalem, O God, and then you will delight in right sacrifices and burnt offerings and whole burnt offerings, and then bulls will be offered on your altar.

But this Good Friday, we note that Jesus was the bull who was offered on the altar of the cross so that we could be forgiven. Oh, you need only to remain silent, stand firm, and you will see the salvation which God has worked for you this Good Friday.

The Lord has fought for you and he has won. He has been victorious. You, all you have to do is sit silently by and watch as your Savior bleeds and dies in your place, and then praise God for his mercy.

In the name of Jesus, Amen.

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And again, thank you for listening.