Sermon: Judica - 2019

7 April 2019

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

In the name of + Jesus.  Amen.

“Whoever is of God hears the words of God.  The reason why you do not hear them is that you are not of God.”

Our Lord Jesus Christ has just told his listeners that God is not their Father, that they lack understanding, that their father is the devil, that they want to do the devil’s wishes, that they desire murder, and that they are a pack of liars – and that’s just in the first three verses.  

They did not know Jesus nor love Jesus because they did not know the Word of God – for Jesus is the Word of God made flesh.  Jesus is the fulfillment of all of the Word of God ever revealed by the prophets and written into the Scriptures.  It is impossible to know Christ without knowing the Word, and one cannot know the Word unless one hears the Word.  

St. Paul follows this to its logical conclusion, one cannot hear the Word without a preacher, for “faith comes by hearing, and hearing through the Word of Christ.”  We need to gather and hear the Word.  And that, dear friends, is why Christians are called “the church.”  The Greek word for “church” is “the assembly.”  Christians gather around the Word of God proclaimed, and the Word given to us in the Holy Sacraments.  And that is how we know Jesus.  That’s how we have faith.

But do we really know Jesus, dear friends?  Do we really hear the words of God?  Or are we distracted by other things.  For if we hear, if we really hear, the Word, it will be the single most important thing in the world.  Missing the Divine Service would be grievous to us.  And while the Scriptures are being read and proclaimed here in this holy house, nothing could steal away our attention – for in these words are life.  

Even in this day and age of unbelief, most Americans say they believe in God.  Jesus’ listeners said the same thing.  Jesus slammed the lid on their pretensions.  And that, dear friends, is why the Holy Spirit caused these shocking words of Jesus to be recorded in Scripture and read to you today.  You need to hear them too!  We need to hear them!  For we are in constant need of repentance of our idolatry!  We poor miserable sinners allow everything to become more important to us than our Lord, than His Word, than hearing and following Jesus.  

And this is why our Lord said that “Abraham rejoiced that he would see My day.”  For two thousand years before the birth of Jesus, Abraham worshiped Jesus.  Abraham trusted in the words of God that even if he were to obediently sacrifice his son, his only son Isaac, according to the Word of God, that Isaac would live.  And indeed, the Lord did provide.  He provided a substitutionary sacrifice to take the place of his son, a “ram, caught in a thicket by his horns.”  This sacrificial male lamb, with his head wrapped in thorns, was a picture of the Christ to come, the fulfillment of the promise “the Lord will provide.”  And the Lord provided, and Abraham rejoiced.  He rejoiced to see the day of Jesus.  He rejoiced to see the fruit of the cross, the salvation of Isaac and of all who believe on His name, who hear the Word of God and keep it.

Abraham did indeed “fear, love and trust in God above all things,” for he did not even withhold his son, his only son, from God.

How many of us, dear friends, turn our families into idols?  How many of us place our children’s wants, their education, their possessions, ahead of their need to hear the Word of God, to participate in the Sacrament of the very flesh of the Lamb of God that takest away the sin of the world?  How many of us would obey the Lord’s command to sacrifice our own children, trusting in God’s providence?

And how many other distractions do we have that keep us away from the Word?  How many other excuses do we give, how many unimportant things to we allow to take precedence over the Word of God?  

Abraham’s faithfulness was rewarded, dear brothers and sisters, by a substitutionary sacrifice.  In other words, by Jesus – who went to the cross so that Abraham’s son Isaac would live forever.  And if we really do love our children, our parents, our friends, our country, our world – we will pursue the Word of God above all things, with a single-minded focus that this is our very life.  For when we bear the Word to this world, we are bearers of eternal life.  When we are immersed in the Word of God, we are able to draw people in to eternal salvation by the blood of the Lamb, “who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without blemish to God,” in order to “purify our conscience from dead works to serve the living God.”

If there is anything in this world more important than that, dear friends, I would like to hear what it is.

The world gives lip service to Jesus, or more like, a cartoon parody of the real Jesus.  The world wants a tame Jesus, a controlled Jesus who will always affirm them and approve of them and include them ever and always.  The world does not want the divine Jesus who is willing to tell them that their father is the devil, that they do not know God, and that they are liars.  The world rejects that Word of God: the Word Made Flesh who calls them to repent of their sins and who bids them to take up their cross and follow Him.  And the world rejects us for bearing and proclaiming that Word of the cross.

Our Lord’s listeners accused Him of having a demon and being a Samaritan.  Jesus outright denies their claim that he is demonic.  But notice that He doesn’t deny being a Samaritan (which is a racial insult uttered by people who see their own ethnicity as superior).  Jesus is not biologically a Samaritan, but He is the Good Samaritan in the parable that He told.  For like the Samaritan people, He is hated by most of the Jews who are eager to follow their power-mad leaders: the political high priest and phony king, feckless collaborators with the Romans, men who would not know God even to look at Him right in the face.  And unlike the Jewish priest and Levite in the Good Samaritan story, who refuse to help a victim who is battered and bloody, the Good Samaritan who actually lives in the flesh, our Lord Jesus Christ, comes to save.  He offers His own blood, sweat, and tears to rescue the one in need: the one who has been beaten up in this fallen world.

Jesus has come to rescue us from our sins, from our lukewarmness to His Word, from our idolatry and misplaced priorities.  He is calling us back, dear friends, back to the Word, back to the Sacraments, back to “serve the living God,” back to our “promised eternal inheritance” as we gather to hear the Word of God.

Let us not fall into the trap of the Jews who believed that they had salvation apart from their hearing of the Word: because of their ethnicity, because their fathers were priests and Levites, because they belonged to the right bureaucracy, because they said that they love God.  Let us not prattle about the faith of our ancestors, or the fact that our relatives were members of this parish, or how we attended our parochial school, or were confirmed and made our first communion under this pastor or that.  Let us rather boast in Christ alone, and let us know Jesus by knowing His Word – not merely “reading the Bible” or saying we love Jesus, but rather by hearing the Word of God week in and week out – hearing it read and proclaimed, hearing the powerful and efficacious Word of the Lord – that declares you forgiven of your sins and actually transforms you supernaturally – the omnipotent and miraculous Word that consecrates the bread and the wine so that you partake of the true blood of Christ, our “high priest of the good things that have come.”

And let us call to mind that our Lord Jesus Christ is the great “I AM,” God in the flesh, the God who provides, whose flesh was sacrificed for our salvation.  Let us thank the eternal and living God that He has withheld nothing from us, not even His Son, His only Son, and that “on the mount of the Lord” it has indeed been provided: the Lamb of God that takest away the sin of the world, His head wrapped in thorns, by whose Word we have forgiveness, life, and salvation.

“Whoever is of God hears the words of God!”  Amen.

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