Good In God's Eyes
Notes
Transcript
4.2.21 [Hebrews 10:5-12] River of Life (Good Friday)
Today, we gather to commemorate Christ’s crucifixion. It’s bloody. Barbaric. Gruesome. There is very little, if anything, that happened on Calvary that we recognize as beautiful, wonderful, or good. The words of Jesus may stir our souls, but his death turns our stomachs and breaks our hearts. Yet, we still call this day Good. Good Friday. Of course, you and I did not come up with this name. It’s not unique to our congregation or Lutheranism. Good Friday even unites Eastern and Western Orthodox Christianity. Which is saying something, because they cannot even agree on the date, but they do acknowledge the day of the suffering and death of the Son of God to be Good Friday.
Today is bloody. It is barbaric. It’s gruesome, but it is good. Because today God shows us, once again that he is good, and makes us to be what we were not, good.
This day and this death had been anticipated for quite some time. Jesus had spoken openly of his suffering and death in great detail to his disciples. But this day and this death had been anticipated long before that.
Two months to the day after the Lord had freed Israel from slavery in Egypt, the holy Lord God met his people at Mt. Sinai. He reminded them of his power and his love. (Ex. 19:4-6) You have seen what I did to Egypt, how I carried you on eagles’ wings and brought you to myself. Now if you obey me fully and keep my covenant, then out of all nations you will be my treasured possession. You will be for me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.
There are Mt. Sinai, the Lord gave his treasured people his covenant. The 10 commandments, the civil and ceremonial laws and of course the Temple system. Since that day, God’s treasured people became conscious of sins they had not known. They had always had the law written on their hearts. They already had a conscience, too. But now they were given guidance from God as to what to do with a guilty conscience. (Heb. 9:22) Without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins.
So day after day, God’s designated sacrificer, the priest, offered sacrifices. The blood of bulls and goats and lambs was shed because the people were sinful, because their consciences condemned them, because the law written on their hearts exposed their shame.
To our modern sensibilities, this is a gruesome way to deal with a guilty conscience. It’s bloody and it’s barbaric. Perhaps it even seems dramatic and excessive to say (Heb. 9:22) without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins. But what alternative do we have to deal with a guilty conscience?
Each of us has felt the pang of a guilty conscience. At times, our conscience stings us because some rotten thing we have done or some reckless things we have uttered. But our consciences aren’t just there to point the finger at our most memorable infractions. In quieter moments, the conscience recalls the good things we have not done. The hurting people we could have helped but chose not to. The smear campaigns we could have stopped dead in its tracks by just walking away. The problems we could have helped solve, but refused to roll up our sleeves and get to work.
How do you silence a screaming conscience? Sometimes, we try to distract our consciences by drawing their attention to others. We find people who we consider to be more guilty than we are. We search out those who bear a scarlet letter of shame—especially in the areas we know we have failed. If we struggle with impatience and anger, we find someone who is full of rage and abusive. If we struggle with greediness, we find someone who has more than we do and appreciates it less. If we struggle with a thankless spirit, we find that person who complains about EVERYTHING. And we try to throw our own consciences off the scent of our guilt and shame. The foolishness and the failures of others make us feel, for a moment, that our consciences are crazy for condemning us and therefore they can be dismissed.
But we haven’t silenced or satisfied our guilty consciences. All we’ve done is a carried out a character assassination on our own conscience. Like a slick defense attorney, we’ve tried to discredit the prosecution’s star witness. Even if that did work, here’s the problem. We want our consciences to testify for us. We want them to defend us. We want someone to tell us that we are good.
A silenced conscience is a dreadful state. Each of us craves validation. We want to hear and know that what we do matters to someone. Imagine two young boys with too much time on their hands and not enough supervision. One is sort of a troublemaker. The other wants the peer approval of being known as a renegade. They ride their bikes to a highway overpass and the troublemaker picks up some rocks. He begins to chuck them at cars passing by. The other boy’s conscience lights up. He wants to be cool, but he doesn’t want to get in trouble. So before he picks up a rock, he says: My dad would kill me if we get caught! The troublemaker responds Really? My parents don’t care what I do!
To that other boy, who craves the approval of his peers more than his parents, that statement my parents don’t care what I do! might sound like the most wonderful thing. You can do whatever you want!
But what an indictment on the parents of that troublemaker! If you lived in that community, what would you want his parents to do? Punish him, right? A good father would dole out punishment for this behavior. He wouldn’t make excuses about how boys will be boys. He wouldn’t claim ignorance—that his child didn’t understand what damage could be done. And he certainly wouldn’t wait to do something until one of those rocks did some real damage. A good father punishes bad behavior. He has to. Anything less would prove that he doesn’t care. Anything less would be lovelessness.
Good Friday shows that we have a Good Father in heaven who cares about us. So many of our sinful words and actions are far more destructive than throwing rocks from an overpass. Our good Father in heaven cannot just turn a blind eye toward our bad behavior. He must confront our sin and deal with our guilt and our shame.
But on Good Friday, we see the punishment for our sins fall upon God’s one and only Son. How can this be good? Isn’t it bad to punish someone who has only done what is good and let the bad one off scot free? Certainly. But that is not what is happening here. The good Son, who has done the Father’s will, has, of his own free will, decided to take the punishment upon himself. He came to shed his blood for the sin of the world.
This is what the bloody, barbaric, and gruesome Temple sacrifices were anticipating. Day after day, the priest offered sacrifices for the sins of the people because day after day the people sinned against their God. Year after year, the sins of the nation would be spoken aloud and over a goat that would be banished to the wilderness as their sin bearer. Year after year, another goat would be slaughtered and have his blood sprinkled over the mercy seat of the ark of the covenant which contained the 10 commandments so that when God looked down at his people and compared them to his law, he would see the sacrificial blood first. The message God was conveying to his people was clear. (Heb. 9:22) Blood must be shed for the forgiveness of sins.
But not just any blood. Those sacrifices were meant to be a regular reminder to the people of their sinfulness. But it was impossible for the blood of bull and goats to take away the sins of people. This law was a shadow of the good thing that was still yet to come. The One who has come to do his God’s will.
This One, the Son of God, met all of the Father’s demands. He was perfect in thought, word, and deed. He resisted temptation fiercely. He pursued paths of righteousness passionately. Sinful anger never filled his heart. Deceitful words never livened his stories. He spoke the truth and lived the truth because he loved the truth. Whatever the Father willed, he rejoiced to be and say and do.
But this One had not just come to show us that perfection was possible. He came to be perfection in our place. He came to make satisfaction for our sins. He came to atone for our guilt and reconcile shamed sinners to their good God. He had come to do his Father’s will. Not just in living righteously, but in dying sacrificially. We are told (Is. 53:10) It was the Lord’s will to crush him and cause him to suffer, to make his life an offering for sin. (Is. 53:4) He was punished by God. Stricken and afflicted by him. (Is. 53:5) He was pierced for our transgressions. He was crushed for our iniquities.
(Heb. 10:10) By that will, we have been made holy, through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, once and for all. Because Jesus did what no other priest could do. In offering up his own holy, precious, and innocent blood, he has taken away all our sins, our guilt and our shame. Because of his perfect obedience and sacrificial death, our Good God declares (Heb. 10:17) Their sins and lawless acts I will remember no more. And where these have been forgiven, sacrifice is no longer necessary. Because God’s own Son has done this for us, we have been declared good in God’s sight. We have (Heb. 10:19) confidence to approach our God, (Heb. 10:22) with a sincere heart and the full assurance that faith in his name brings. Our hearts have been sprinkled clean. The guilty conscience is gone. We have been declared Good in God’s eyes. And that makes this a very good day. Amen.