Sermon: Judica (Lent 5) – 2023

26 March 2023

Text: John 8:42-59 (Gen 22:1-14, Heb 9:11-15)

In the name of + Jesus.  Amen.

Our Lord is having an ugly public confrontation with the Pharisees.  He had just forgiven the woman caught in adultery.  He called Himself the “light of the world.”  He made reference to God as His Father.  The Pharisees replied by asking Him who His father is, mocking Him that Joseph was not His biological father.  Jesus told them that they do not know His true Father, and as a result, they do not know the Son.  He also made reference to His approaching crucifixion, and what it means.

Jesus told some of the Jews, “who had believed in Him,” according to St. John earlier in this chapter, “If you abide in My Word, you are truly My disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”  And here is where these former Christians turned away from Jesus.  For they were more concerned about being “Abraham’s children” than Jesus’ disciples.  When Jesus said that He came to set them free, they were insulted – because they did not see themselves as sinners in need of a Savior.  And Jesus does not spare their feelings: “I know that you are offspring of Abraham; yet you seek to kill Me because My Word finds no place in you.  I speak of what I have seen with My Father, and you do what you have heard from your father.”

Jesus is telling them that because of their unbelief, their father is not Abraham, and not God, but the devil.

That is the set-up of this uncomfortable exchange that Jesus has with this group of Jews who wanted a different kind of Messiah than what God gave them.  They wanted a Christ who would be a political leader, who would exalt their ethnicity over the Gentiles.  They wanted to be taught how wonderful they were, not how sinful they were.  They thought they needed a king whose kingdom was of this world, when what they really needed was the “Lamb of God that takest away the sin of the world.”

The Word of God exposes our sin and leaves us wounded and desperate for help.  Jesus is the Word Made Flesh.  Those who are cut down by the Law follow Him, but those filled with pride follow their father the devil.  It is still like that today, dear friends.  You are a Christian because the Father felt pity for you.  He freed you from the devil.  He cleansed you in Holy Baptism.  He connected you to His Son, who died in your place, who called you to follow Him, who is the truth that sets you free.  And God doesn’t care whether you are a Jew or a Gentile.  God doesn’t care what color you are, what high school you graduated from, or what you do for a living.  For we were all slaves to sin, but now we have been set free by Jesus, by His blood.

So we can either respond by pushing Jesus away out of pride – whether it is pride of ethnicity, of nationality, of standing in the community, of church body, of our children’s accomplishments, of personal wealth, of politics, or a thousand other things that do not save us.  We can adopt Satan as our father, and join in the world’s mockery of Jesus.  Or we can humbly submit to God’s Word, recognize that we are sinners in need of a Savior, and confess that apart from Jesus, we are children of the devil, and slaves of our sinful nature.  We can confess Christ as the one who has set us free.  We can make this confession of Jesus the central thing about our identity, calling God the Father our Father, and looking to our baptism as the thing that truly defines us in this life: not our ethnicity, what country we live in, or what we believe about things of this dying world.

For listen to the promise, dear friends, the promise that Jesus speaks and offers even to those who hate Him: “Truly, truly I say to you, if anyone keeps My Word, he will never see death.”  And just so that we are clear, God is not saying that to have salvation you must keep the Law perfectly.  That is not what Jesus means here.  For you can’t do so.  To “keep” the Word means to hold onto it, to cling to it.  For the Word contains the promise – just like God’s promise to Abraham, which Abraham held on to for decades and decades – which was fulfilled only when he was a hundred years old and his wife gave birth to Isaac at the age of ninety.  Abraham kept the Word of God, not because he was perfect, but because he believed – even when it seemed impossible.  He kept the Word – and we too keep the Word by believing in Jesus, the Son of Abraham.  That is more important than being a biological descendant of Abraham.

Indeed, Abraham is our father – whether biologically as Jews or spiritually as Gentiles.  What matters is that, like our father Abraham, we hold fast to the Word, believe the promise, and confess Jesus: the true Son of Abraham.  We imitate our father Abraham when we believe our Father who is God, who is the true Father of Jesus, who called Abraham out of the wilderness to make a promise to him, and then keep it.

We heard of Abraham’s faith in the Old Testament reading.  God commanded Him to sacrifice his miraculous son Isaac.  Both father and son obeyed this Word of God, trusting in the promise that God would provide, that Isaac would yet again live, that the two of them would descend the mountain together, saying, “I and the boy will come again to you.”  And God did provide a substitute, dear friends.  And this ram, his head caught in the thorns, this substitutionary sacrifice, is a picture of Jesus.  God did provide.  God fulfilled His promise to Abraham.  His son Isaac was saved from death.  And his Son, his descendant, Jesus, the Son of God, is that ram, that substitute, who saves us.  We are Abraham’s children by faith, and we know the truth that sets us free: the Word Made Flesh who is confessed in the Word that we hear.  Let us keep this Word, hold fast to it, and refuse to let Satan draw us into ourselves and away from the Lamb.

For our Lord Jesus Christ, the way, the truth, and the life, the Son of God and the Son of Abraham, the Word Made Flesh, our Savior, is not only the victim of this sacrificial offering, but He is also the priest who offers Himself.  As the author of Hebrews teaches us: “Christ appeared as a high priest of the good things that have come.”  For “He entered once for all into the holy places, not by means of the blood of goats and calves but by means of His own blood, thus securing an eternal redemption.”

As we learn in this Word of God, the “blood of goats and bulls” are inferior to, but also point to, “the blood of Christ.”  He is “the mediator of a new covenant, so that those who are called may receive the promised eternal inheritance, since a death has occurred that redeems them from the transgressions committed under the first covenant.”

Dear friends, God the Father is your Father.  God the Son is your Savior.  God the Holy Spirit is your Lord and giver of life who called you.  You were baptized into this Most Holy Name, and made a child of Abraham, a child of promise, a child of God, and a child of paradise. 

He is the one who has come “to purify our conscience from dead works to serve the living God.”  For Jesus not only has an ugly confrontation with the sons of the devil, He confronts Satan Himself, defeating Him at the cross.  Jesus gives Himself to each one of us: in His Word, in the water, and in the blood, now and even unto eternity.

Amen.

In the name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.