SERMON SERIES 9: HOLY WEEK—A TIME FOR LOVE. LOVE ALWAYS HOPES
Last night at our Maundy Thursday service, we heard how God’s people were in slavery in Egypt. They were oppressed, abused, deprived and despairing and without any resources within themselves by which to overpower Pharoah and the Egyptian military and effect their escape. But where all hope in human strength was gone, God made a way of escape for them, on the night of Passover, so that his ancient promise of having their own land first made to Abraham was alive. That promise God made when he appeared to Abram was:
“…You will be the father of many nations. No longer will you be called Abram; your name will be Abraham, for I have made you a father of many nations. I will make you very fruitful; I will make nations of you, and kings will come from you. I will establish my covenant as an everlasting covenant between me and you and your descendants after you for the generations to come, to be your God and the God of your descendants after you. The whole land of Canaan, where you now reside as a foreigner, I will give as an everlasting possession to you and your descendants after you; and I will be their God.” (Genesis 17:4b-8)
Abram was 99 years old when God said this to him. For this promise to be fulfilled, Abraham would need to be a father. Yet Abram hoped in what God had said. In Romans 4, Paul gives this summary:
“Against all hope, Abraham in hope believed and so became the father of many nations, just as it had been said to him, “So shall your offspring be.” Without weakening in his faith, he faced the fact that his body was as good as dead—since he was about a hundred years old—and that Sarah’s womb was also dead. Yet he did not waver through unbelief regarding the promise of God, but was strengthened in his faith and gave glory to God, being fully persuaded that God had power to do what he had promised” (Romans 4:18-21).
Abraham’s hope was far more than a wish that things would turn out alright. Paul qualifies what Christian hope means: not wavering through unbelief regarding the promise of God, but fully persuaded that God has power to do what he has promised. That is hope. Let’s read our theme verse we have focused on throughout Lent and Holy Week: “Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonour others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes…” (1 Corinthians 13:4-7).
To love by living in hope is not to discount what God has said and walk by sight, but it is to be fully persuaded that God will do as he has said, and expect that which is unseen, even though the circumstances haven’t come to pass yet. This was the hope that Abraham had—when everything according to human sight, reason and logic would say it was ridiculous he would soon be a father, he was convinced God would bring about what he promised, and God did.
Can you imagine then, Abraham and Sarah’s joy to finally have a son, and the promise of descendants after him. Abraham was 100 years old when Isaac was born. Can you imagine then, what they were thinking and feeling when God later tested Abraham, and told him to sacrifice his son Isaac whom he loved as a burnt offering? (Genesis 22:1-2)
Abraham hoped in God—he was fully persuaded that he could count on God’s goodness. Early the next morning Abraham got up and loaded his donkey. He took with him two of his servants and his son Isaac. When he had cut enough wood for the burnt offering, he set out for the place God had told him about. On the third day Abraham looked up and saw the place in the distance. He said to his servants, “Stay here with the donkey while I and the boy go over there. We will worship and then we will come back to you.”
Abraham took the wood for the burnt offering and placed it on his son Isaac, and he himself carried the fire and the knife. As the two of them went on together, Isaac spoke up and said to his father Abraham, “Father?”
“Yes, my son?” Abraham replied.
“The fire and wood are here,” Isaac said, “but where is the lamb for the burnt offering?”
Abraham answered, “God himself will provide the lamb for the burnt offering, my son.” And the two of them went on together.
When they reached the place God had told him about, Abraham built an altar there and arranged the wood on it. He bound his son Isaac and laid him on the altar, on top of the wood. Then he reached out his hand and took the knife to slay his son. But the angel of the Lord called out to him from heaven, “Abraham! Abraham!”
“Here I am,” he replied.
“Do not lay a hand on the boy,” he said. “Do not do anything to him. Now I know that you fear God, because you have not withheld from me your son, your only son.”
Abraham looked up and there in a thicket he saw a ram caught by its horns. He went over and took the ram and sacrificed it as a burnt offering instead of his son. So Abraham called that place The Lord Will Provide. And to this day it is said, “On the mountain of the Lord it will be provided” (Genesis 22:3-14).
This was a precursor to what God the Father and Jesus his Son would do on Good Friday. Jesus was the Son who was bound and laid upon the altar, the wood of the Cross, as the burnt offering to take away the sin of the world. As hammer blows ring out on the iron spikes that pin Jesus to that altar, Jesus cries out the words of Psalm 22 and applies it to himself as the One who has fulfilled the Psalm:
My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
Why are you so far from saving me,
so far from my cries of anguish?
This time there is no ram provided in the thicket. Jesus is the ram for the sacrifice, trapped in the thicket, as it were…pinned to the Cross. Yet Jesus still expresses hope in God:
Yet you are enthroned as the Holy One;
you are the one Israel praises.
In you our ancestors put their trust;
they trusted and you delivered them.
To you they cried out and were saved;
in you they trusted and were not put to shame.
For he has not despised or scorned
the suffering of the afflicted one;
he has not hidden his face from him
but has listened to his cry for help.
From you comes the theme of my praise in the great assembly;
before those who fear you I will fulfill my vows.
The poor will eat and be satisfied;
those who seek the Lord will praise him—
may your hearts live forever! (Psalm 22:3-5, 25-26).
Although Jesus was fully persuaded that his suffering and death was the will of his Father and worthy of his obedience, Jesus also expresses the hope—the sure conviction—that although he must die as the sacrifice, death will not have the final word, for God is with him and will deliver him. That is the hope—the sure conviction—that God wants you to have too. Truly loving God is to be fully persuaded that he will do for you what he has promised. For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. Rather than punishing us for our sin, even though we would deserve it, God punished our sin in his own Son! It was Jesus who bore the wrath of divine anger on sin and evil on the Cross. Jesus Christ prayed Psalm 22 as the one forsaken by God. May our hope—our expectation—always be that we are never God forsaken. For having taken upon himself our sins, and the punishment for them that we deserved, he redeemed us, and triumphed even over death itself so that he could be truly God with us in whatever existence it is we are faced with in this life. In Romans 8, Paul put it this way:
Who will bring any charge against those whom God has chosen? It is God who justifies.Who then is the one who condemns? No one. Christ Jesus who died—more than that, who was raised to life—is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us.Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword?
No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 8:33-39).
From the Cross the innocent Jesus knew injustice yet still prayed for those who wronged him: “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they are doing.” From the Cross, Jesus, the one who came to give living water, said: “I thirst.” On the Cross, Jesus gave up his spirit. He willingly obeyed his Heavenly Father and gave himself over to death so that death might be undone. In his death, Jesus gives us life, in his condemnation we are justified through faith, as if we lived as perfectly as Jesus himself, in his suffering for sins, God won forgiveness and eternal life for the world.
Throughout the events of Holy Week, the writers of the Gospels show how the Scriptures of old have been fulfilled. What human beings could only begin by bringing death into the world, Jesus has finished. He has finished death off, for you, and by his own death, brought life to the world. The reign of death has been put to an end, and Jesus reigns forever. No other punishment, suffering, sacrifice or payment is needed to make you right with God. Everything Jesus has already accomplished for your righteousness, life and salvation is yours through faith.
Because of the Cross, nothing in this decaying world can change that. You can be confident, fully expect, and even demand God to be faithful to his promises for you, for “The grass withers and the flowers fade—and so do we—but the word of our Lord stands forever” (Isaiah 40:8).
Look to the Cross, and see the ram caught by its horns in the thicket. Look to the Cross, where, because of Jesus, we can say: “On the mountain of the Lord it will be provided.” Look to the Cross and see that you are never abandoned by God, ever. He has been with you from your first breath to your last, when he will breathe new life into you to rise and enter the land he has promised you to enter and take possession of…your homeland in heaven. Amen.
