Sermon for Judica, 2025

While Christ’s Word this day brings His stern admonition, His Word also brings the sweet hope of the Gospel. “If anyone keeps My word he shall never see death,” Jesus says. The keeping of Jesus’ word means to hear it, believe it, and confess it. Keeping the words of Jesus means believing in His promises to not break a bruised reed nor quench a faintly burning wick. For God takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from his way and live. 

Furthermore, this means that those who hear and keep Christ’s word shall never experience the hell and utter torment of eternal separation from God that truly is death. Why? Because Jesus came to experience that for all of mankind. Christ Jesus drank that cup of suffering to the dregs so that you might be released from its power. In exchange for this cup of death and suffering, He gives to you the Cup of Life, that is, the New Testament in His Blood, at His altar. Clinging to His life-giving words and the promises found in them, you are delivered from death’s strong bands and its eternal judgment. 

As we learn from the letter written to the Hebrews, Jesus entered into the Most Holy Place as our High Priest, and there, once, for all, with His own Blood, obtained eternal redemption for His people: for you. Beloved, this was His plan from before the foundation of the world, for He, the timeless One, who was before Abraham, knew that just as Isaac would climb the mountain with the instrument of death on his back, so too would He climb that same mountain two thousand years later. And so, Jesus is the promised Son, carries the wood of the Cross up the mountain for the sacrifice. There, He is bound and laid, uncomplaining, upon the altar of the Cross, And there, a ram does not intervene; instead, He, the very Lamb of God, is sacrificed for the sin of the world. In Christ Jesus, God has provided for you the Sacrifice. 

Readings:

• Old Testament: Genesis 22:1-14

• Epistle: Hebrews 9:11-16

• Holy Gospel: John 8:42-59

Sermon: