Sermons at Trinity Church

Matthew 14v12-26

WHY DID JESUS DIE? REDEMPTION AND CLEANSING

27^th February 2005

Steve Griffiths

 All Bible references in this sermon transcript are taken from the English Standard Version. This can be found at www.biblegateway.com

Introduction

Last year, in the province of Kompong Cham in Cambodia, we came across the family of one of our leprosy patients Lok Om.  Some years before there had been illness in his family and desperate to have cash to buy treatment he had borrowed a small amount of money from a local loan-shark to get his child treated.  The loan-shark had charged interest at 18 per cent per month.  Lok Om could not even pay the interest and so the debt had grown to the astronomical sum of USD250.00.  Any money that the family had was handed straight over in a futile attempt to pay back the debt.  Eventually, the family could no longer feed themselves.  The two youngest boys were sent off to the local temple where they would be fed from the left-over rice of the monks.  Although the father had become  sick, the remaining three children were taken from school and put to work alongside their mother in brickfields belonging to the loan-shark.  They worked all day every day.  All their supposed earnings went straight to servicing the debt.  But instead of reducing it, the debt continued to grow.  The family were enslaved.  They owed a debt they could never pay.  In spite of their best efforts, the debt continued to grow.  They were powerless to set themselves free. 

When this story was shared at our monthly staff meeting there was outrage.  But we knew any attempt to bring in the authorities would backfire.  Revenge would be taken on the family once the dust had settled.  So, Bou Sophal, one of our Khmer members of staff went to meet the loan-shark.  He redeemed the family by paying off the full debt with all the cumulative interest.  He took the mother and the three children from the brickfields and brought them back to their home.  He helped them set up a business growing and selling vegetables.  They were helped with a piglet and a bicycle to transport and sell their vegetables.  He visited them regularly, helped them to manage their money and enabled them to obtain some training in livestock management.  The family could never set themselves free.  But Sophal came in from outside the situation.  He redeemed them, he bought their freedom at a price that they could never afford.  Today we’re continuing our mini-series, looking at why Jesus died.  We will see how relevant this story is to our theme for today.

1.      Preparation Made 2. Passover Marred 3.Permanent Memorial

1.      Preparation Made

You will remember that centuries before, to escape drought, the Jews had left the Promised Land and settled in Egypt.  But the rapidly growing Jewish foreign minority in Egypt became a political threat.  So the Jews became an oppressed minority, forced into slavery.  Their male children were killed by drowning.  Violence and oppression rose.  The cries of Israel for release from bondage grew louder.  Then along came Moses.  He challenged Pharoah, the Egyptian King to let the oppressed Jewish minority go free to their own country.  The Jews were too economically important to Pharoah to do this and he refused.  God sent a long list of plagues on the land of Egypt – the water of the Nile turned blood-red, all the frogs left the water, gnats and flies came, anthrax – but in all these the Jewish area of Egypt was spared.  Pharoah was stubborn and refused to let the Jews go.  So finally God promised a punishment of death.  The firstborn son of every family would die.  The only way to escape this was to take a perfect lamb and kill it.  The blood of the lamb was then to be painted on the lintel and two door-frames of the entrance to the house.  The Jews were able to buy their lives from the Angel of Death through the price of a lamb.  That night the Angel passed through Egypt, killing the first-born son of every household.  But when he came to houses belonging to God’s faithful ones who had painted the blood of a perfect lamb on the door-frame, he passed over that house and spared it’s inhabitants.  As a result of this ultimate and terrible punishment, Pharoah ordered the Jews out of Egypt, out of captivity, out of slavery and oppression.  Israel was commanded to remember what God had done in freeing them from the power of Egyptian slave-drivers. “Remember that you were a slave in Egypt and the Lord our God redeemed you" says Deuteronomy 15:15.  So Passover was and is the ultimate festival of redemption.   In our reading today, the Passover festival was just about to take place.  Over two million Jews would have travelled from all over the world as customary law required that Jewish males eat this meal inside the city of Jerusalem.  If we look back to verse 2 we see that there was a plot afoot to arrest and kill Jesus.  Jesus could move fairly freely during the day inside the city as there were crowds about and any attempt to seize him would be met with resistance.  But night was a different matter.  So Jesus and his followers had left the city and spent the nights of this entire week outside it’s walls, at a destination unknown to the leaders of the Jews…this was why the offer that Judas made was met with such delight from them.  Here was a man with inside information who would be able to let them know exactly where Jesus was at a time when he could be arrested without causing a riot.

But Jesus is determined to eat this last time with his disciples.  So he needs a place to meet with them and to eat in peace before the terrors of the following day will descend on him.  He has made careful preparation and secrecy is necessary.  None of the disciples know where this place will be, especially Judas.  Two of them are tasked to go into the city.  They will see there a man carrying a water jar.  This was the secret, pre-arranged signal.  Women always carried water – never men so this one would have stood out like the proverbial sore thumb!  They were not to speak to him but simply to follow the water-pot servant to the house that he would go into.  Jesus had made a previous arrangement with the owner of the house, possibly the father of John Mark the writer of this gospel.  There was a pass-word of sorts, a phrase that they were to use which would indicate that they were real agents of Jesus and sent by him on this mission.  They were to get the room and the food ready for the arrival of the others.

Off these two men went and they found all to be organised just as Jesus had planned it.  They prepared the Passover meal.  A work written between 200-300 AD called the Mishnah tells us what a typical Passover was like.  It was (and still is) a religious service led by the father of the household.  There was a collection of bitter herbs (horse radish, chicory, endive) to remind the Jews of the bitterness of slavery in Egypt when they had cried out to God for deliverance.  There were loaves of unleavened bread, bread without yeast, which had been prepared in a hurry as the Israelites seized the opportunity given to them by God, left Egypt and escaped slavery.  There was the roast lamb to remind them of the lamb’s blood, which had protected them when the Angel of Death passed through Egypt.  Then there were four cups of wine, drunk at different stages of the meal.  The meal was also punctuated by the singing of Psalms 113-118.  The men got all this ready and remained in the room until night-fall.

Jesus then kept the rest of the disciples with him until evening came.  He then led the entire band, apart from those two that had gone ahead to the upper room – he knew the location of course but none of the others did.  Thus they were all together in this secret place where no-one could disturb them.  Why was it that Jesus went to all this trouble?  Because Jesus considered this a vital moment in his life’s work.  He wanted the disciples to clearly understand the crucial link between what had happened at the first Passover, fourteen hundred years before and what was about to happen to Him the very next day.  Just as the God’s work to free the Israelites from their slavery in Egypt came to a climax with the Passover of the Angel of Death, so Jesus’ work to free us from our slavery to sin was coming to a crucially important moment

2.      Passover Marred

As they reclined at a low table to eat, Jesus breaks the news to them that one of those eating with him, one of his closest followers would betray him.  This was a heinous wrong, especially in the Middle East where the law of hospitality was so strong that a man would give food and drink to his bitterest enemy, unharmed if he was to show up as his guest.

They were saddened, says the NIV but this is rather weak for what the Greek here actually means is violent emotion or shock.  They are shaken to the core, that one of their group would do such a thing.  They are so shocked that apparently they cannot even trust their own self-knowledge.  One by one they asked him, “Surely not I?”  “You can’t possibly mean me, can you?” Even hypocritical Judas asked him that question.  Judas had to do so, to be like the others and conceal his intentions from them.  But he could not conceal his intentions from Jesus.  Judas said too, “Surely not I?” Jesus gives Judas another clear warning but goes on to say that he was going to allow sin to have it’s way.  Although it may be prophesied about, although God will bring never-ending good out of it, his sin is still sin.  Wrongdoing can never be justified on the grounds of it’s good results.  The end can never justify the means.  Jesus is holding in tension here, the sovereignty of God and man’s responsibility for what he does. 

Here in this picture of Jesus and Judas is the situation between God and man.  We are taught that everyone who commits sin is a slave to sin (John 8:34).  We know that we all have sinned and fallen short of God’s glory.  We are told by Paul that in earlier days the Roman Christians had been “slaves of sin” (Romans 6:17).  Sin is our slave-master and a cruel one at that.  If there is no redemption, no buying-back from this cruel slave-master then we will receive our pay-packet - eternal separation from God Romans 6:23.  Because God really loves us he wants us to know the truth about ourselves.  I remember the tragic end of a friend of my father’s.  He was diagnosed as having tuberculosis and sent to hospital.  He was there for many months.  But he continued to lose weight, continued to deteriorate.  Finally the puzzled doctors admitted defeat.  He asked to go home to die.  In the vehicle on the way home he put his hand into his great-coat pocket and pulled out a huge mass of pills.  He told my father that he had simply put the pills into his mouth when told to then taken them out later and put them aside.  He was determined to believe that he did not have tuberculosis.  He consistently denied the truth about his condition despite the care and concern of the doctors and his family and relatives.  As he was being carried into his home he grasped the door-frame and clung onto it desperately.  He knew that he was going in to die.  It took two men to prise his fingers loose.  Once he was home, his wife repeatedly pleaded with him to trust in Jesus, to find redemption and hope with God.  His retort was always, “I have lived without God, I will die without God.”  A week or two later he finally got his wish and he died an unbeliever.  He consistently denied the truth about his physical diagnosis and paid the price for it.  He also denied God’s diagnosis of his spiritual condition.

Even to the dreadful knowledge that Jesus knows all about his wicked plans does not shock Judas into reconsidering them.  To this appeal Judas does not respond.  And then Jesus issues such a terrible warning that if we think about it clearly, it would make our blood run cold.  This is God himself speaking, in the form of Jesus Christ.  Here is the being that called all the universe into existence.  Here is the expression of infinite love and grace and honesty speaking about one of his beloved creatures.  God in his love appeals to us.  His truth spoken in love warns us.  It is our terrible responsibility that we can spurn the appeal of God’s love and disregard the warning of God’s voice.  In the end there is no-one but ourselves responsible for the consequences of our sins.  Either we say to God, “Your will be done.  Redeem me from my sin”.  Or God will say to us, “Your will be done.  I give you over to your chosen master.  Depart from me for I never knew you.”  And what is the verdict of Jesus on that state of being separate from God?  It would have been better if Judas had never been born.  What is our response then to God’s truth ?  Will we respond to his appeal of love?  If not then will we be shocked into action by the starkness of his warning?  As the writer to the Hebrews (9:27) wrote, “Man is destined to die once and after that to face judgement.”  Like Judas we are faced with this question - what will we do with Jesus?  Will we accept His gift of redemption, bought with his own life-blood?  Or will we like Judas, reject his appeal of love and find ourselves separated from God forever?

3.      Permanent Memorial

Once Judas has gone Jesus then acts as the head of the family would.  He takes the bread and the wine.  We can assume he told the Passover story as the head of the family would – but this time instead of saying words to link the bread and the wine backwards to the Exodus, He says new words linking them directly to the death he would die the very next day.  This is a Passover with a difference.  Jesus is about to go as a greater Moses, ahead of his disciples, ahead of Israel, ahead of the world into the presence of a greater slave-master than Pharoah to lead the world to freedom.  This meal explained the way that our freedom from the slavery of sin was to be bought.  Jesus gave thanks to his father and then he broke the bread.  He passed it out adding some critical words there, “This is my body”.  The symbolism was clear.  The body of Jesus would be torn and broken on the cross just as the bread he was holding had been torn and broken.  The tearing and breaking of bread is necessary before it is useful to us, before we can feed on it and be sustained by it.  The body of Jesus had to be torn and broken before his sacrifice could be of spiritual use to us, placating the anger of God against sin by the death of his Son.  Jesus was the Passover lamb taking our place and bearing our curse.

Now please note that there is no hint that this was in any way the institution of something mysterious.  Jesus was using the Passover meal with all it’s symbolism and charging it with a new symbolism.  It would be impossible for the bread and wine that he used to be literally his body and blood.  He was still in his body and the blood was still flowing round his veins.  So it was not a strange “spiritual food” nor a kind of ritual cannibalism.  In the ancient world to share a meal together meant to establish or perpetuate a relationship, to become one company with others at the same table.  Men often ate together to seal a contract or a work partnership of some kind.  To share such a meal together indicates a sharing with one another of close fellowship with Jesus, an agreement that we are in partnership with one another under his leadership.

Then he took the cup, gave thanks and offered it to them as a Jewish father would normally do as part of the Pass-over meal.  They all drank from it.  Once again Jesus word’s are critical.  “This is my blood of the New Agreement poured out for many.”  Once again there is nothing mysterious here. “Blood poured out” is a Jewish way of describing violent death.  So Jesus is demonstrating with future insight what kind of death he will die.  The cup represents his death which he interprets as happening on behalf of others.  To share the cup is to include oneself in the many for whom Jesus died and who are now called to follow him.  To share the cup and the bread are tangible reminders of the participation of believers in the salvation created by the death of Jesus.  Although these were sad and sombre moments, as Jesus speaks of his death and it’s effects, there was also a strong sense of hope there too.  The night would be long but dawn would finally break.  The road would be hard but the destination was in sight. Jesus was certain of his cross but he was just as certain of his glory.  For Jesus added that he would not drink wine again until the day that he drank it “new”.  He was looking forward to that day when all would be made new again. 

We live now in the in-between times.  The power of sin was broken by Jesus’ death and resurrection but it’s effects linger on.  This earth, this universe is groaning as it looks forward in hope to that day when God will make all things new.  There will be a new heaven and a new earth. There is a great and glorious hope for us all, epitomised in the memorial of the Lord’s Supper.  As we take it and we look back to the cross, there is the message of hope – we have been redeemed, bought back, set free from our sin by the death of Jesus.  And as we look forward to the future, as Jesus did, there is the hope of the Second Coming.  As we take the Lord’s Supper we look not only back at the cross but forward to the end of time. All those who have accepted the sacrifice of Jesus for their sin and his reconciliation to God will be there at that great banquet, together with their Saviour.  What a hope we have.  Our past forgiven and forgotten, our present in relationship with God and our future in a new heaven and a new earth….  Will you be there? And Jesus and his followers sang a hymn together, Psalm 118.  And when they had sung, Jesus went out to the Mount of Olives, to his betrayal, arrest and death.  He went out for his body to be broken and his blood split to pay the price for us to be set free from sin.  Let’s pray.