In Love For You
Matthew 27:32-56
In the name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
St. Matthew 27:50-54 50 And Jesus cried out again with a loud voice, and yielded up His spirit.51 Then, behold, the veil of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom; and the earth quaked, and the rocks were split, 52 and the graves were opened; and many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised; 53 and coming out of the graves after His resurrection, they went into the holy city and appeared to many. 54 So when the centurion and those with him, who were guarding Jesus, saw the earthquake and the things that had happened, they feared greatly, saying, “Truly this was the Son of God!”
Dear fellow redeemed in Christ our Lord… When we hear the account of our Lord’s suffering and death – when we take into our ears the full weight of all that our Lord Jesus did and said and suffered on behalf of not only us, but on behalf of every single person ever to live up until now and who ever will live until our Lord’s glorious return – when we take all that in, we have to admit that it takes an awful lot of love to love those who make fun of you. Your first temptation, of course, is to make fun of that person in return, thereby putting yourself in the same category as the person who mocked you. But as you probably have found out from experience, this is a game you cannot truly win, for even if you think you win by being the better mocker, you lose by not loving others as Christ has loved you.
In spite of all our failures, and there are way too many to count, when it comes to accepting mockery or dishing it out, Jesus has loved us with a wondrous love. There is no place where we can see this love more clearly than on His cross.
Jesus wanted so much to rescue the lost sheep of Israel; He ached for it in His guts. But so many of those lost sheep wanted no part of Him, something that many expressed with hurtful, spiteful, even hateful comments as Jesus hung on the cross. One of those comments was expressed by the people who were walking near the cross, those who shook their heads at Him as a way of saying that He was a loser and that they wanted no part of Him: “You who are going to destroy the temple and build it in three days, save yourself! Come down from the cross, if you are the Son of God!” (v 40).
Jesus had wanted them to know He had the power to raise the temple of His body from the dead in three days. These Jews, however, taunted Him to come down from the cross before He died, that is, IF he really was the Son of God. What horrible blasphemy that the Son of God had to hear these people mock Him for being the Son of God by telling Him to save Himself. But of course, saving Himself would have kept Him from saving those people and us by dying for our sins. It was in love for you and me that Jesus did not come down from the cross and destroy their bodies with a powerful punishment from heaven itself.
Another of those mocking comments was made by the religious leaders of the Jewish people, the ones who should have known more than the others that they were the ones for whom Jesus came. These chief priests, teachers of the law, and elders of the people – the very ones, by the way, to whom people looked for leadership, faithfulness, and fairness – these were the ones who taunted Jesus by saying: “He saved others, . . . but He can’t save Himself! He’s the King of Israel!” (v 42). And then they also made fun of Him for claiming to be the Son of God by saying, “Let God rescue Him now if He wants Him, for He said, ‘I am the Son of God’” (v 43).
Jesus wanted them to know that His kingdom was something He wanted to establish in their hearts. Jesus wanted them to believe in the work He had come to do to set their hearts free from all the burdens of their sins. These Jewish leaders, however, did not feel the burden of sin in their hearts. Their only burden or pain was Jesus Himself. What horrible blasphemy it was for these people who studied the Scriptures – the ones who were supposed to know all the signs and prophecies about the coming Messiah – what horrible blasphemy it was for them to speak so abusively about the one to whom all those Scriptures that they claimed to know pointed. It was in love that Jesus did not come down from the cross and show what an all-powerful King He was by destroying all who mocked Him.
It is hard for us to wrap our brains around the fact that it was these very mockers for whom Jesus had come. Later on we see how true this was, even in these last moments, as the one thief on the cross came to faith in Jesus and asked Jesus to remember him when He came into His kingdom. For this penitent thief, the taunts about Jesus being the King of Israel turned into wonderful truth. Jesus was indeed the King of Israel. He came not to save Himself but those who put their trust in Him as the one who would allow them to live with Him forever in paradise.
Dear friends, our trust is in Jesus. Through the Gospel message we see the one who was so devilishly mocked on the cross as He who won the victory over Satan by that very same cross. But our trust is a very humble trust, because we know that His victory on the cross included the triumph over all of our mockings and tauntings and insults and failures – all of our sins.
Whenever we have insisted on having our own way in sin, we too have dared Jesus to come down from heaven and do what we want Him to do. How DARE we assume to be God and to know what is best for us!
But in love for you and me and all of mankind, He continues to rule over us by ruling in us with His love, by calling us to repentance, and by forgiving our sins. It is in love for you and me and all mankind that Jesus continues to rule in our hearts with His Word until we join Him in His heavenly kingdom.
When kamagra is there with you, your romantic moments with your partner end just with a sigh or embarrassment instead of fun and passion? Is that what is killing your happiness little by little? Do not worry if you have kamagra with you. buying viagra in uk try address As such, one has to make viagra no prescription usa sure that included ingredients will not cause any severe side effects if taken under medical supervision. Completing graduation and getting order viagra usa a good job is kind of outdated nowadays. generic cialis browse around now Men, who are unable to achieve a full erection at any point within this time period. In the second part of our Gospel lesson, Matthew describes the events leading up to Jesus’ death. While there are many things that are important to notice, perhaps the one thing that boggles our minds most is when Jesus cried out at the end of the three hours of darkness, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (v 46).
Jesus was quoting from Psalm 22, a psalm that prophesies very clearly the suffering Jesus would experience some 1,000 years after it was written, even down to the point that the soldiers would cast lots to see who would get His clothing.
During those hours of darkness, God the Father had turned away from His Son, leaving Him to suffer the full, unfettered onslaught of hell by Himself, because that is the only way our sins could be fully paid for. The curse of hell had to be fully suffered and endured. The perfectly sinless Jesus had to pay the price of being damned for the sins of those who should have been damned for their own sins. God had to be forsaken by God.
We cannot possibly even begin to grasp how this could happen… but we do marvel and rejoice that it did happen. And we have every reason to marvel and rejoice, because the One who was forsaken was truly sent by the One who forsook Him. He truly was, as the centurion exclaimed, “the Son of God.”
How obvious God the Father made it. He darkened the entire earth for three hours as His Son completed the task that had been promised and predicted and talked about and longed for, century after century. He darkened the earth to demonstrate the hellish darkness and damnableness of sin, and how completely it had to be dealt with.
God the Father allowed His Son to be invigorated with that drink of wine vinegar so that at the end of His excruciating suffering He could cry out with a loud voice, “It is finished,” (John 19:30), and then victoriously give up His life by saying, “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit” (Luke 23:46).
Once His Son bowed His head, God the Father had the temple curtain torn in two, meaning that there were no more restrictions about who could go to the other side of the curtain, to the room called the Most Holy Place. There was no more need for a Most Holy Place or for a high priest who alone could go in there on his once-a-year mission of making sacrifices on behalf of his people. Jesus is the once-and-for-all-time High Priest, because He had just offered the once-and-for-all-time sacrifice for sin, which never again had to be repeated in a ritual that pointed ahead to it. It was finished.
Once Jesus bowed His head, God the Father had some of the graves give up their dead. People who, we may assume, were already enjoying happiness with God, were being used by Him in another way. Not only was this a preview of the resurrection on the Last Day, God was also having these people be testimonies to His awesome power and to the fact that Jesus really had accomplished the work He had been sent to do. No one who saw one of these living dead people should possibly have come to any other conclusion than that the one whose death caused this resurrection truly was the Son of God.
Dear fellow redeemed, we will someday see those people who came out of the tombs on that Good Friday, and we will have the chance to talk to them about what that was like, because we have God’s Word that since Jesus was forsaken by His heavenly Father, we will never, ever be forsaken. In fact, not only will we not be forsaken, we will always be what we are right now – the treasured possessions of our God, who sent His Son to pay the price that makes us His very own. He has made us to be people who now show forth the praises of Him who has called us out of darkness and has told us we will be in His marvelous light for all eternity.
That future day when you and I will join Him in heaven is all due to that one past day on the cross when Jesus, in love for you, suffered and died to pay for all your sins.
Each and every time we are gathered here in this holy house, we are reminded of how our Savior Jesus Christ loves us. It is not how much He loves us, but how and in what way He loves us. John 3:16 doesn’t say, “For God loved the world so much that He gave,” it says “For God so loved the world that He gave.” The Greek is literally “Thus God has loved the world; THIS is how He loves:” Christ’s incarnation, conception, birth, life, suffering, death, and resurrection, all for you.
He has redeemed you with His holy precious blood and His innocent suffering and death. He has called you to faith in Himself, and He has called you by name in your Baptism. He bids you to be strengthened by the regular hearing of His Gospel. He bids you to be forgiven and strengthened by your regular use of Holy Absolution. He bids you to be strengthened and forgiven by your regular reception of His holy body and blood in the Sacrament of the Altar. As you regularly receive Him in this holy meal, know that He will strengthen and keep you firm in His Word and faith until you die. For this is His good and gracious will.
He gives you all His gifts and has demonstrated His love for you on the cross. Ours is to thank and praise, serve and obey Him. For this is most certainly true.
In the name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit.
