2020 Good Friday, the lamb of God
Notes
Transcript
This weekend is Easter weekend. A time that we celebrate the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus. Today we are celebrating Good Friday.
This year Good Friday finds us surrounded by stories of uncertainty, chaos, fear, and yes even death.
At the same time, we see signs of new life all around us. Everything is starting to green again.
We are living through events like nothing experienced in recent history. And this season is full of paradoxes.
As a society, we are experiencing loss together. For some, loss is the death of a friend or loved one made even more profound by the inability to gather and mourn that dear person’s passing.
For others, like students ready to graduate from high school or college and couples preparing to get married, long anticipated events that normally mark these significant milestones are now postponed or cancelled.
Families grieve these losses when they thought they would be celebrating.
Millions of people have lost jobs, at least temporarily. Many feel the loss of security that accompanies an uncertain economic future.
I’m here filming this in an empty church. I know many are feeling lonely and maybe afraid.
I’m grateful we can spend the next 4o minutes or so together. We’ll sing some song, I’m going to share some thoughts about Jesus the lamb of God. I normally build a cross on stage while I share this lesson. This year we went to the mountains and filmed it there, stick around till the end you don’t want to miss it. We will be taking communion together, I want to encourage you to participate and use whatever you have around, some crackers and juice works just fine.
I’d like to encourage you during this time to put down your phones, try to get rid of the distractions and really focus. I believe when we embrace good friday. It makes the celebration of Easter all the more special, when we understand and embrace that we were Bought with the precious blood of Christ
So do all you can to engage and lets sing together.
clap clap.
With this virus outbreak, we are up against something that human ingenuity and politics and ideology cannot fix. If you watch the news it can be frightening. The daily death toll, the maps of the spread and the possible worst case scenarios.
It can all be overwhelming. There is the stress of getting the virus. For some there is the frustration of feeling controlled by the government, for others there is frustration over people not following the guidelines to protect our most vulnerable. There is loneliness from the isolation and distancing. A good friend who is a nurse and who test positive with covid shared this on facebook.
“As someone who has recently tested positive for Coronavirus I have to say that there is nothing more depressing than waking up every morning and seeing in the news that X died from Covid19. Besides the physical symptoms, the emotional turmoil from this has been heavy. I cry daily thinking about people/patients I could have possibly infected, or family who could still show symptoms in the future despite our best efforts to stay away from each other. Thinking about people fighting for their lives in ICUs without being able to have comfort from family and friends is truly heart breaking.”
It’s one thing when its a number, but when its a friend. It impacts us differently.But the numbers are staggering as well, And the death count, just keeps going up and up.With all that is going on we may wonder.Where's God? With so many dying, with so many hurting and stressed, does life actually mean anything anyway? So how should we respond to this crisis? As a people who follow Jesus. Such questions always lead oddly to the cross where Jesus died To this place where we believe somehow suffering and God and death have met. People have died every day, over recorded history, and yet one death stands out in a way that is quite unique. One day a man died, and ever since then time has been divided up into the people who lived before him and the people who came after him.
The life of every human being now is dated from the death of that one man. Every day in our world, people die about two every second, 105 every minute, 56 million a year, in every way imaginable. murder, violence, disaster. Old age. Last year 154 people died of selfie related accidents, but one day a man died for you. To remove our sins, and cover over all our unrighteousness and save us from death.
Israel experienced the same situation when they left Egypt.
The Exodus affected them so profoundly that they changed their calendar, and remember passover to this Day.
You can read whole story in Ex 12.
God’s people were in bondage, slavery in Egypt. They were trapped and forced to work and their lives were controlled, they cried out to God and was going to save them. How did he save them? With the Blood of the lamb.
God instructed them, if they wanted to have this angel of passover their home and not take the first born of everything living there, this is what they were to do.
The perfect lamb, once chosen, was separated from the others. After 4 days its throat was slit & the blood caught in a basin.
They dipped hyssop in the blood & put some blood on the top and sides of the doorposts of the house.
This obedience saved everyone gathered inside form the last plague of Egypt, death of the firstborn. The blood was their insurance mark.
They were covered by the blood of the lamb.
This imagery is tough for us. We live in a pretty bloodless world. We stay pretty far away from butcher shops and we like our meat to look nothing like a live animal. Not a lot of heads attached to meat in store. It’s gross to us.
The same with the cross, People will sometimes find that imagery to be gruesome or distasteful and I understand, but the ancient world was the bloody place.
And they were saved by the blood of the lamb.
They were also nourished by the lamb
After being obedient putting the blood, on the doorposts, Next the families ate its body. The body & blood cannot be separated in thought or significance!
They ate the meat roasted over fire. And I’m guessing they ate with excitement and anticipation of finally being able to be free.
But then image them Listening to the shrieks arising from the Egyptian houses, the meal was solemn event, a meal mingled with hope and mystery.
They were also instructed to eat it, don’t leave anything left over.
I remember when I first became a christian. I just couldn’t get enough, I gobbled up all I could. In times of stress and darkness, I need to ask myself. am I just as hungry for God now as I was then? I can get busy and distracted, rather than focusing on the lamb of God.
God commanded Israel not to break any bones of the sacrificed lamb (verse 46).
At the crucifixion of Jesus, To speed up Jesus’ death, the Roman soldiers were going to break his legs. However, Jesus was already dead, so his bones remained unbroken (John 19:32-33).
We also read that Israel could not eat the lamb undercooked (v. 9).
Neither are we to have a half-baked faith. The Scriptures are clear. We cannot change the recipe! God expects complete obedience from His children. Jesus said that we must deny ourselves, take up the cross daily, and follow Him.
Then, they were commanded to throw out their leaven, anything with yeast.
This was a time of purification. Yeast and salt were added to dough to artificially inflate the bread.
God wants us to sweep out the house & get rid of anything man might add to what God offers. We cannot come up with any additive or substitute that can enhance what God has already done.
By listening to God and obeying him they were freed
They left the brick kilns forever; they marched out of Egypt with unleavened bread on their backs. They were delivered, they were emancipated; they were freed!
Christ is our Passover lamb, that saves us.
Therefore, with minds that are alert and fully sober, set your hope on the grace to be brought to you when Jesus Christ is revealed at his coming. As obedient children, do not conform to the evil desires you had when you lived in ignorance. But just as he who called you is holy, so be holy in all you do; for it is written: “Be holy, because I am holy.”
Since you call on a Father who judges each person’s work impartially, live out your time as foreigners here in reverent fear. For you know that it was not with perishable things such as silver or gold that you were redeemed from the empty way of life handed down to you from your ancestors, but with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect. He was chosen before the creation of the world, but was revealed in these last times for your sake. Through him you believe in God, who raised him from the dead and glorified him, and so your faith and hope are in God.
Jesus offers all this Salvation.
There is a difference between reading the Bible and having it in your heart. There is a difference between celebrating Easter and having a relationship with the one who saved you!
We all love a good hero story.
There is a story that keeps coming back is the story that one day a man died for, somebody else that he loved very much.
And that's the story of saving private Ryan, and Les Miserables and a tale of two cities and the thousand other stories.
I think about all the medical professionals, nurses, doctors and staff, who right now are going into to work, treating the sickest of the sick, knowing they could be exposed.
the EMT’s that are going into peoples homes and wheeling them to an ambulance to take them to the hospital. All these professionals, Putting themselves at risk, putting their families at risk, giving up their safety and their comfortability.
to care for others and meet their needs.
Thank you to all of you who are serving right now,
and the message of the cross is the reason this story is inescapable.
The reason that it is embedded in our literature is that it is embedded in our universe and it is embedded in our hearts, and the hearts of heros is that God put it there.
Paul said,
You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though for a good person someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
Jesus died for everybody while we were powerless, ungodly and full of sin.
Jesus died for the kind people that died from covid 19.
But, Jesus died for the evil person who murdered someone else today.
I don't understand that Love,
wherever you are, wherever you think you are on the moral scale of humanity, he died out of love for you
at the cross he exchanges his death for our life, out of his love.
Everything that happened at Passover also happens to those who come to Jesus Christ in the waters of Baptism.
We’ve eaten the bitter herbs of sin; been enslaved by our sins, choices and our doubts and fears.
But we don’t have to stay there we can be healed we can be made whole.
Passover is not just celebration of an ancient it is something That Jesus told his disciples to do in remembrance of him.
In a few moments we will take communion together.
Luke 22
you can read the story of the last meal that Jesus had with his disciples.
takes it a Loaf of bread, Blesses it , breaks it and gives it to them and says do this in remembrance of me.
Then he takes a cup. New Covenant written in my blood poured out for you.
He knew what was coming. What had to be done.
He knew someone would betray him.
We all convince ourselves that we are one of the 11 not the Judas.
Judas came having already decided what he was going to do, Jesus knew what he was going to do and Jesus invited him anyways.
None of us are worthy and yet Jesus invites us anyways.
Just as those door frames were covered in blood, We too need to be covered in the blood of the lamb.
Now it's kind of a strange image for us. if you know much about the Bible it is filled with references to the blood of Jesus,
The writer of acts tells us that the church was bought with his blood.
Paul says that we have been reconciled to God and each other through his blood.
The writer of Hebrews says that without the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness of sin
Jesus died for the sins of the world he offers himself freely to everyone.
The next day John saw Jesus coming toward him and said, “Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!
But we need to respond and obey.
Now that you have purified yourselves by obeying the truth so that you have sincere love for each other, love one another deeply, from the heart. For you have been born again, not of perishable seed, but of imperishable, through the living and enduring word of God. For,
“All people are like grass,
and all their glory is like the flowers of the field;
the grass withers and the flowers fall,
but the word of the Lord endures forever.”
And this is the word that was preached to you.
Just as at the passover the Israelites were saved and purified by the blood of the lamb.
We too are saved and purified by the Blood of the perfect lamb. Jesus.
Or don’t you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.
Just as Jesus, died, was buried and rose again we too can be raised to new life in Jesus.
I’d like to invite to explore this more. you can email the church at info@
or click the button in the notes or in the video description.
Jesus wants us to be secure in the our relationship with him. Baptism is a seal of the vow and covenant with God. Just as the isrealites covered the doorposts and the celebrated in the secure faith that God would deliver them.
We too can be obedient to God in Baptism and live a life secure that will be raised again with him.
Let’s pray for communion.