Jesus the Lamb of God: In Jesus, God Provides

Pastor Phillips’ Sermon

Good Friday Service, April 2, 2010

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

Thank God it’s Friday. Now that’s a popular saying we’ve used in the workweek. We’re looking forward to getting past that whole week of work that we’ve had ahead of us and finally, Friday arrives and we can begin to relax and look forward to all the fun things we have planned.

But how can we call this a good Friday? This is the day that Jesus was nailed to the cross. This is the day when He cried out in agony. This is the day when they whipped Him and scourged Him and mocked Him and spit on Him. How can we call this day good?

As a child, I had a real tough time with that because I wanted to hear good things about Jesus. I knew the stories, how He loved me and how He helped me with all kinds of things. And every night, we said our prayers and we heard all kinds of wonderful things about Jesus and His birth and I didn’t really want to hear the bad stuff. I didn’t really get it.

I can remember my dad and my mom were trying to impress upon us the seriousness of this day so on that Friday, of course, we would go to church and some of that I understood but my dad also told us, “I want you to stay in during the afternoon. I don’t want you to go out and play ball or do the things you normally do. I want you to stay in and think about all the things that happened to Jesus on this day.” And then we’d gather around the old black and white T.V. and watch one of the movies that was on at that time telling the story of Jesus. Very sad, very somber. And my little boy’s soul kind of rebelled against that. I didn’t want to stay inside and not play. I didn’t want to not be happy. I didn’t want to hear bad things that happened to Jesus.

But as I grew older, I began to understand that these bad things were important, that the sad things that happened on Good Friday ultimately were part of God’s plan. They were part of God’s plan to save the world from their sins. In fact, the people of the bible got this. John the Baptist, remember what he said when he saw Jesus? Now this is right after Jesus had been baptized by John in the Jordan and Jesus was walking in the distance and John said, “Look, the lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.” Now, as Christians, we can look at those words and kind of put the pieces together, lamb, sacrifice, okay, I get it. I know Jesus’ sacrifice and all that but why on earth did John call Jesus God’s lamb? It seems strange but I think what’s really going on is John is teaching the people around him their need for a Savior. He was talking to them about their sins and that they need to repent and turn to God, even the religious people, the religious leaders of the day because they had this tradition and it went all the way back to the time of the exodus when God’s people were slaves in Egypt and how God sent them Moses to deliver them and they had those different successive plagues and the last plague was the death of the firstborn. And God instructed the Israelites, each family, to take a lamb, to slaughter it, to take the blood from the lamb and put it on the doorpost and then to eat the meat roasted.

This was all part of God’s deliverance of Israel, the lamb, all part of the deliverance that had happened 1,400 years before Jesus came. And the people of that time knew exactly what that lamb meant. And so they would celebrate this Passover year after year as a festival remembering what God had done, how He delivered them from their terrible slavery and brought them to the Promise Land of prosperity and peace.

But through time, it kind of seemed to lose its meaning. Through time, they forgot that the lamb was a symbol of something else and so they were kind of proud of their religious behavior. They were proud of the things they did to honor God. They were proud of their sacrifice of their lamb. “Yep, we did the Passover feast the other night, sacrificed the lamb just like we’re supposed to, so we’re good.” They kind of got the impression that because of their performance of ceremonies and rituals or their observance of a feast that somehow that behavior made them right with God. But that’s not what God wants, some kind of superficial observance or mechanical obedience.

This is what Jesus said about those people, “These people honor me with their lips but their hearts are far from me. They worship me in vain. Their teachings are about rules taught by men.” So what began as a way to remember God’s love and compassion, His deliverance of them from slavery, what began with wonderful attentions, this lamb offered to God as a sacrifice, now became a formula for forgiveness, a formula for making sure they were okay with God. “Okay, took care of the Passover lamb. Got that done. Check that off the list.”

Think of it this way: How do you feel when somebody remembers your birthday? Just kind of out of the blue, sends you a card. How’s that make you feel? How do you feel when your children remember your anniversary and they write notes of thanks and encouragement to you? Or your spouse remembers your anniversary in a special and wonderful way? How do you feel when somebody recognizes your hard work and all the things you’ve done for them, to provide for them and to do your job well and to help other people? How do you feel when you get recognized for that? That’s the way God wants things to be with us. He doesn’t want some mechanical behavior that somehow impresses Him or pleases Him or goes according to His ways and rules. He wants our hearts. He wants a relationship with us. He wants us to remember Him and what He’s done for us.

It’s kind of like this: John is teaching His disciples, John the Baptist. They’re all gathered around him and he’s teaching them about sin and he’s teaching them their need for a savior and they need to repent and he’s preparing the way for the one who is promised by God, the Messiah. And it’s like this, he says, “You talk about your lamb, you talk about your religiosity, your obedience to God. You talk about what you do for Him. Well, you see that guy over there? You see that one walking over there? He is the lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.” Because it’s not about my lamb that I’m offering or my things that I’m doing, trying to make sure I’m okay with God or impress God, whatever that might be, going to church, participating in activities or putting money in the offering, whatever my lamb might be, it’s not about that. It’s about God’s lamb that He’s providing, not just for my sins but for the sins of the whole world.

I heard a story recently that kind of described it this way: Imagine that you baked a cake. You worked hard and put all the right ingredients in it and you put it in the oven, preheated oven, got busy doing other things, walked away and forgot all about it until you smelled something. “Something’s burning. It’s that cake I put in the oven.” So you hurriedly go back. Of course, it’s too late. You open the oven, smoke is coming out. You bring the thing out and you put it on the stove. “Oh, my gosh. What am I going to do with this cake?” And you look over at the can of frosting you have sitting there. “Ah, I have an idea. I’ll just smear this frosting all over, layer it on real thick and nobody will know the difference, right?” That’s not going to work. It’s not going to work. The bad is still there. The burnt is still there. I asked down the hall, “What’s it going to taste like?” A little girl raised her hand, “Burnt.” That’s right. Because all those good things that we might put on top aren’t going to take away that bad.

And it’s the same with our mechanical observance of our faith or our religion. Saying the right prayers, doing the right things are not going to take away our sin. Only the lamb of God can take away our sin.

It’s not about what we’ve done or what we offer to God. It’s about what He has done and what He has provided for us. It’s about what Jesus did when He came to be our Savior, how He celebrated the Last Supper with His disciples, how He went to the garden and He prayed and His sweat was like great drops of blood, how He was betrayed by His own disciple and how, as the mob led Him away with torches and swords and clubs, Peter followed after. But then when Peter was cornered and asked, “Weren’t you with Him?” he denied it. Peter, the one who swore he would die for Him, he denied it.

It’s about how He was falsely accused, how He was whipped and beaten. It’s about how He was condemned by a violent mob that was out of control. “Crucify Him,” they yelled. It’s about how He struggled to carry His cross. It’s about the agony of the nails being pounded in His wrists and feet. It’s about how He was mocked and ridiculed and then how He asked for all of them to be forgiven. It’s about how He gave up His spirit and how, as He hung there bleeding and dying, that He was thinking of you and me and the things that we’ve done called sin. It’s about the lamb of God, the sacrifice that God has provided for our sins.

I didn’t get it as a child, but I do now. And I think it’s good for us to think deeply about the great price that Jesus paid for our sins. Just think of it, those awful things and maybe even weep. It’s good for us this Friday to remember the great price because then we understand His great love.

So what do we conclude from all of this, knowing that Jesus is the lamb of God provided to pay for our sins? We conclude this: That we can find comfort knowing that God’s love doesn’t depend on what we do for Him but on what He has done for us already. We can find comfort knowing that God’s love and forgiveness is greater than any sin we have done. We can find comfort in knowing that the inconsistency of our behavior, the un‑kept promises, the pain and suffering of our lives and all the bumps and bruises that we find along the way do not diminish our value in God’s eyes. To Him, you are always worth dying for. Amen.

Copyright 2010 Gloria Dei Lutheran Church