Matthew 27:45-46 - Good
Friday Tenebrae - April
18, 2014
Reconciled to God
Reconciled to God
In the name of the
Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.
Amen.
That portion of
Scripture which we consider this evening the Holy Spirit caused to be recorded
in the twenty-seventh chapter of St. Matthew’s Gospel, starting at the
forty-fifth verse, which we read as follows in Jesus’ name:
Now from the sixth hour until the
ninth hour there was darkness over all the land. And about the ninth hour Jesus cried out with
a loud voice, saying, “Eli, Eli, lama
sabachthani?” that is, “My God, My
God, why have You forsaken Me?”
These are your words,
holy Father; sanctify us in the truth; your word is truth. Amen.
The first thing that God created was light. He spoke his Word and there it was: light
shining in the darkness. All things that
God created were made by the Father through the Son. He is the eternal Word of God. Wherever the Son of God goes forth from his
Father, the Father accomplishes that for which he sent him. God sends his Son by speaking. The Son does what the Father says. God spoke, and there was light.
God did not create light for his own sake. He himself is light. He doesn’t need what he creates. We do. Light, the very first thing that God created,
was made for the sake of man, the very last thing that God created. He is the crown of God’s creation and love. Everything on earth was made for our sake.
But is there anything in creation, among all the things we
need, that is more basic than light? Nothing
can live without it. Not plants or animals,
nothing small or large. Without light,
everything that God made would be for naught.
It would be dead and useless the moment it was created. Every earthly blessing that God showers upon
us depends on this first fundamental gift.
One of the arguments that evolutionists make against the
biblical account of creation is that according to Genesis, God made light, and
even counted the days, four days before he created the sun and moon and stars. “How
primitive,” they say. “They didn’t
have the scientific knowledge that we do!” But this is really quite a silly objection,
and only goes to prove their stubborn impudence — as though anyone, let alone God,
would make such a blunder in inspiring the creation account so as to forget
that the sun produces light. No, the
reason God waited until the fourth day to create the sun and moon and other fixtures
in the sky was precisely to confound those who will not believe. It is because the sun and moon and stars and
planets are not and have never been the source of light on earth. God is.
Period. The sun is but a humble servant
of God, as are the other heavenly bodies.
Light comes before the one who bears it.
This means that in order for the sun to send light, God must tell it to. He must give it permission. He must provide the very light for the sun to
shine. And God does so, because what he
made is good.
God made everything by calling it forth by his word. But to man, he gave special attention. He formed him from the earth and gave him
life by breathing his Spirit into his nostrils.
All creation was called good. But
only man was created to share completely in God’s goodness. God made Adam and Eve in his own image. This
means that they were created to have perfect fellowship with their Maker. They had perfect righteousness and knowledge
of him who made them. They dwelt in the perfect,
uncreated light of his love. All
creation was there to give praise to God by serving man. And as all things showed traces of God’s
gracious character – the magnificent mountains, the gentle horse, the faithful
dog – so also the light that shone from the sun and moon only served as a
sacred reminder of the Light, which is God himself. Creation was perfect, because the
relationship between God and man was perfect.
But man lost his fellowship with God by rejecting God’s
word. He believed the devil who spoke a
different word – a lie that hurled Adam and Eve and all their children into
spiritual darkness, and that brought earth under their curse. The devil bore a false light. In fact, this is what his traditional name,
Lucifer, means: light bearer. He promised that light came from within them,
and that they could be like God. But by
rejecting God’s word, man rejected God’s Son by whom light and all things were
made.
The fact that God did not utterly destroy creation once Adam
fell is evidence that God had further plans to save us. The fact that he did not immediately tell the
water to stop being wet or seeds to stop sprouting life shows that, although
God cursed what he made, he also desired his creation to continue serving us to
some degree. And it does. Even the sun and moon and stars of heaven
continue to obey God’s command to shine light on his disobedient
creatures. But what accounts for such
kindness from God? What was God’s plan
to save us? This they could only know by
listening to God’s word.
God promised that the Seed of the woman would crush the
devil’s head. But this salvation also
required that the devil bruise his heel.
This means that in order to save us from the lie of the devil and from
the guilt of our sin, God would have to join his rebellious creation and suffer
the death that we deserved. What amazing
love! The crown of God’s creation, in
his sinful pursuit for the illusive light within, rejected the Light of God and
chose darkness instead. And so the Crown
of the Creator, that is Christ, chose to assume our flesh and blood so that he
might take the curse of God upon himself.
He who is himself the uncreated Light, by whom light first shone in the
darkness, descended into the darkness of our sin in order to take that darkness
upon himself. And he did. God’s curse is real. As Jesus hung on the cross paying for the
sins of Adam and all his children, he felt the full force of it. God the Father treated his own Son as we
deserved — so much that he even commanded the sun and stars to stop shining on
him. O darkest woe.
If you have ever been out of town in the country or forest on
an overcast night, where none of the stars could pierce through the cloud
cover, you know what darkness is. As a
child I remember up at our lake one time having to navigate through the woods
about 100 yards from one cabin to another in pitch-black darkness. You could feel the darkness. That’s how oppressive it is when all your
senses are heightened by fear, but you cannot see a thing. I got from point A to point B, I remember,
only by taking advantage of the intermittent flashes of lighting that would briefly
illumine the way. —
But when darkness covered the earth for three hours from noon
to three as Jesus hung on the cross, there were no such flashes of mercy. There was no relief to the darkness that
Jesus bore, because their was no lifting of the curse until Jesus paid the full
price for our sin. His Father created
everything through him; but now creation itself abandoned him and refused to
serve its Lord, because he bore our sin that rejected the light of God’s word. But much worse than the physical pain of
crucifixion and the abuse by men upon his created body, was the fact that he
was being forsaken by his eternal Father.
The physical darkness in the land only served to reflect the spiritual
darkness that overwhelmed his tender soul.
O darkest woe. There is no
mystery in all creation sadder than this: True God and true Man hung on the
cross. He was innocent in his own
Person. But in order to give his
innocence to us, he had to bear our sin.
Creation is cursed. We
experience the curse of creation everyday.
It comes not only in the form of hard, fruitless labor, but in seemingly
senseless pain. Mental exhaustion,
emotional stress and depression, loneliness, disease, poverty are all the
result of living in a cursed world. Often
we are able to trace what we suffer to our own foolishness and sinful
decisions. Other times we are left in
the dark as to why we must experience hardship and sadness. It is especially when we consider why God
cursed his creation in the first place that we learn the real sting of the
curse. It is our fault. Adam’s sin was not some ancestral blunder
that we unwillingly bear the shame of, like the unfortunate descendants of some
notorious criminal. It is the sin that
we willingly take part in every day.
In pain, it feels like God has abandoned us and that we must
bear the curse alone. This grief and
sadness often afflicts us Christians the most, because we actually have a
conscience that has been instructed by God’s holy law. Though the hedonistic world mocks us for it,
it is true that we have a heightened sense of guilt when we experience what our
sin has caused. But the reason God
shines light on our sin is not so that he might abandon us. It is precisely the opposite. He shines the light of his law as a bright
mirror to our corrupt nature in order that we might look to him who suffered in
darkness in our place. He teaches us our
sin to prepare us for the light of the gospel that brings us forgiveness.
The fact that the sun still shines – it sounds cheesy, but
it’s true – is proof that God does not want to leave us cursed. But we need more that what nature can teach
us. So we look to where the sun did not
shine to understand why the sun still shines today. And knowing what Christ bore for us enables
us to face our darkest hour. Our sin was
imputed to him so that it would not be imputed to us. He bore God’s anger so that he might shine
his face upon us. He died so that we
might live.
God cursed the earth to teach us that there is no light
within, because there is nothing within that can save us from dying. And so that’s not where we look. Instead we listen to the word of God. That is what Jesus did. Even in his death, although his Father had
turned his favor from him as he hung dying in the darkness, though there were
no flashes of lightning to cheer his soul, he held onto something brighter, the
promise of the word of God, which serves as a light shining in a dark place –
even for Jesus on the cross. Jesus held
to the words of our Easter Psalm:
Therefore my heart is glad, and my spirit
rejoices;
My flesh also will rest in hope.
For You will not leave my soul in death,
Nor will You allow Your Holy One to see corruption.
You will show me the path of life;
In Your presence is fullness of joy;
At Your right hand are pleasures forevermore.
My flesh also will rest in hope.
For You will not leave my soul in death,
Nor will You allow Your Holy One to see corruption.
You will show me the path of life;
In Your presence is fullness of joy;
At Your right hand are pleasures forevermore.
Jesus held to this. He
held onto the words of our Old Testament lesson this evening:
He shall see the labor of His soul, and be satisfied.
By His knowledge My righteous Servant shall justify many,
For He shall bear their iniquities.
Therefore I will divide Him a portion with the great,
And He shall divide the spoil with the strong,
Because He poured out His soul unto death.
By His knowledge My righteous Servant shall justify many,
For He shall bear their iniquities.
Therefore I will divide Him a portion with the great,
And He shall divide the spoil with the strong,
Because He poured out His soul unto death.
Jesus was abandoned, but even then he hoped in God. He lived the perfect life of faith in our
place. And by his death God reconciled
the world to himself. He then he sent
forth his ministers as servants. Just as
the sun and moon and stars serve as ambassadors of the light that was called
into being on the first day of creation, so also Christ sends ambassadors who
bring the light of the gospel that first shone on Easter morning, the first day
of the new creation.
And so in the darkness of our sin, we cling to the word of
God just as Jesus did. We trust in him
who was abandoned in our place so that we can rest our faith in the sure
promise that God will never abandon us.
We don’t wait for flashes of light from heaven. We stick to the word of God that pleads with
us to be reconciled for the sake of Christ and in fact, tells us that we
already are. In Christ we are a new
creation. By our Baptism, his death is
ours, and so we live and die in the same hope that was fulfilled when he
rose. A new sun now shines. It is glorious. And we will shine with him as stars in the
new heavens. And all things as
unpleasant as they may be – all things in heaven and on earth and under the earth
– all things in all creation that are passing away must serve us to this end
and purpose. Christ is with us in the
forgiveness of our sins. He will not
leave us. He who poured his soul into
death will divide with us the spoil of eternal life and divine favor. He will show us the path the path of life and
lead us to the right hand of the Father where there are pleasures
forevermore.
Let us pray:
The
radiant sun hath vanished,
His golden rays are banished
By night, the foe of day;
But Christ, the Sun of gladness,
Dispelling all my sadness,
Within my heart holds constant sway. Amen.
His golden rays are banished
By night, the foe of day;
But Christ, the Sun of gladness,
Dispelling all my sadness,
Within my heart holds constant sway. Amen.
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