Palm Sunday – April 17, 2011

THE PASSOVER LAMB - THEN AND NOW

(A sermon based on Exodus 12:1-11,21-30)

Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord! Blessed is the King of Israel!" What a marvelous day the disciples thought to themselves. Jesus is finally getting the praise he deserves. See how everyone crowds around the Master, singing their "Hosannas"! What a day! And then as quickly as it had started, it was over. Perhaps the children ran off to play; the women to the kitchens; and the men to prepare for the Passover. Soon the duties of everyday life would make that morning's parade just a memory.

For us today too, Palm Sunday looks like such a glorious day. After six weeks of the solemn hours of Lent, it comes like a breath of fresh air. And though it certainly is a great and glorious day in the life of our Savior, it is at the same time a most solemn, thought-provoking day. A day we dare never forget. Perhaps that's why many churches today no longer refer to this day as Palm Sunday, but instead call it the "Sunday of the Passion". In a sense it's more fitting and to the point. The spotlight of Palm Sunday is not focused on the cheering crowds and palm-lined streets, but on the spotless Son of God coming to Jerusalem for the last time.

And when we look at him, we might be a bit surprised at his reaction to the Palm Sunday crowd – Jesus receives all the fanfare in solemn silence. The chants of the crowd with its loud "Hosannas" remind him of the reason he has come. "Hosanna", which means "Save, now," tells it all. And Jesus knew what it would take to do just that. With his eye on the cross, Jesus enters the city of Jerusalem, intent on following his Father's will. He comes as the Passover Lamb of God, as the sacrifice appointed by God himself. He comes to die.

Fifteen hundred years earlier God had made a covenant with his people, a covenant that was sealed in the blood of a lamb. It came on the occasion of Israel's last night in the slavery of Egypt. That night God said he would humble the nation of Egypt and their hard-hearted Pharaoh. That night God himself would pass through the land of Egypt, striking down all the firstborn of men and animals. It was the tenth and final plague against a ruler who would not listen and acknowledge the Lord.

Through Moses God instructed his people what they should do. He told them: “Select the very best lamb you have, one without any blemish or defect, one that was a year old and in the prime of life. Slaughter the animal, paint the door frames of your homes red with its blood, and stay inside to eat the sacred, sacrificial lamb.” That night God himself would pass through the land of Egypt. He would bring tragedy and death to all who were not protected by the blood of the lamb. The first born of every unmarked home would die. Only those homes where the blood of the lamb was in evidence would be spared. Only there would the Angel of Death pass over. We listen as God relates this event in His Word:

Exodus 12:21-30 – 21…Moses summoned all the elders of Israel and said to them, “Go at once and select the animals for your families and slaughter the Passover lamb. ²² Take a bunch of hyssop, dip it into the blood in the basin and put some of the blood on the top and on both sides of the doorframe. Not one of you shall go out the door of his house until morning. ²³ When the Lord goes through the land to strike down the Egyptians, he will see the blood on the top and sides of the doorframe and will pass over that doorway, and he will not permit the destroyer to enter your houses and strike you down. ²⁴ “Obey these instructions as a lasting ordinance for you and your descendants. ²⁵ When you enter the land that the Lord will give you as he promised, observe this ceremony. ²⁶ And when your children ask you, ‘What does this ceremony mean to you?’ ²⁷ then tell them, ‘It is the Passover sacrifice to the Lord, who passed over the houses of the Israelites in Egypt and spared our homes when he struck down the Egyptians.’ ” Then the people bowed down and worshiped. ²⁸ The Israelites did just what the Lord commanded Moses and Aaron. ²⁹ At midnight the Lord struck down all the firstborn in Egypt, from the firstborn of Pharaoh, who sat on the throne, to the firstborn of the prisoner, who was in the dungeon, and the firstborn of all the livestock as well. ³⁰ Pharaoh and all his officials and all the Egyptians got up during the night, and there was loud wailing in Egypt, for there was not a house without someone dead.

In this remarkable way God delivered his people from the bondage of Egypt and brought them into freedom. And God wanted his people never to forget what he had done. So he commanded his people to observe the Feast of Passover each and every year, to teach their children about it, and to remember its lesson -- that only the Lord can save.

That annual festival served its purpose well. For 1500 years it reminded God's people of the great deliverance God had given them. But it wasn’t only meant as a reminder of God's former deliverance, but it was also a promise of the greater deliverance to come. It was a shadow of the cross. Each time it was observed it pointed ahead to the "Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world" (John 1:29).

Today, the shadow of the Passover lamb has become a reality. What it could only have pictured, Christ has fulfilled, as we heard from Paul’s letter to the Corinthians, "Christ, our Passover Lamb has been sacrificed" (1 Corinthians 5:7). So it is not so strange to look at the institution of the Passover on Palm Sunday when we understand what is taking place as Jesus enters Jerusalem.

God had commanded his people to choose the lamb for the Passover sacrifice on the 10th day of Nisan, to take care of it until the 14th day, and then slaughter it at twilight. Putting this into the language of the New Testament Christian Church, the lamb was to be chosen on Palm Sunday and sacrificed on Maundy Thursday. So as Jesus enters the holy city, he knows what is happening. God has chosen him as the final Passover Lamb. His Father has appointed him to die for the sins of the world. He knows that he will go on to the cross, that he will shed his blood so that the wrath of God could pass over sinners. God, his Father, chose him to be the "Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world."

And no other sacrifice would do. Only Jesus can be the perfect fulfillment of the Passover Lamb. That’s because only Jesus is without blemish - without sin; only Jesus can be the perfect offering for the sins of the world; only Jesus’ blood is the holy, innocent blood of the divine Son of God. So we see that this final week in Jesus' life confronts us with the truth about our God. He is the God who provides deliverance and salvation. Nothing is left to chance. Everything proceeds according to his well-established plan. When Israel first heard these instructions for the Passover feast, they were slaves in Egypt. Soon they would see the salvation of their God, as he brought them out of the land of slavery. But that deliverance was only a shadow of the far greater deliverance in Christ. In him the Passover reached its climax and conclusion as the Lamb of God entered Jerusalem and sacrificed himself on the altar of the cross.

And while many in that first Palm Sunday crowd soon forgot the excitement and wonder of that day long ago, we dare never forget. We dare never let the duties of our everyday life make this a distant or foggy memory. For that man entering the city gates was not a visiting celebrity, he’s not just a curious miracle worker, he's our Savior and our King. He is Truth and he is Life. He is the only Way to the Father.

Of course, our sinful nature would like us to think we don’t need him; that we can get along without him; that once these services of Holy Week are over, we can put him back on the shelf until next year, or until we might happen to need him again! Our sinful nature would like to think that we can just coast through life without having to think too much about sin and death and heaven and hell; that we can live by the motto, “anything goes;” and that repentance is for fools and all we have to do is try our best!

We live in a society that wants us to believe that all people are basically good, and we are fooling ourselves if we don’t think that our sinful flesh finds such a thought appealing. Books are being written that say hell doesn’t exist, people are taught to simply follow their hearts, and sin is downplayed and considered minor. But the Passover lamb then and now shows us a completely different reality. We aren’t basically good people trapped in an unjust society. We are by nature totally corrupt sinners in a godless society. The yeast of sin lives in us and remains in us at all times. It is impossible to put off our sinful nature. And no matter how dedicated we are to our creed, no matter how much time we spend in church or how many offices we hold, no matter how much money we give to our congregation, we cannot work off our sin. We cannot reform our lives and rise above our sin. Sin ruins us. It corrupts us. And it sends us to hell.

The only way that sin is done away with is by Jesus paying for it on the cross. And that’s exactly what he did. There he suffered for the outward sins we commit day after day as well as the sins in our hearts that no one sees but God. He wiped our guilt away forever. Now we are free from hell, free from guilt because God has declared us innocent through the blood of Jesus. By the faith he gives us we believe that what Jesus did counts for us. In the shadow of the Passover lamb we see Jesus, who frees us from the power of sin.

We who stand on the other side of the Old Testament can, of course, see this clearly now. Christ comes to Jerusalem not to receive the praise of the crowds. He comes to deliver, to save, to die. Palm Sunday then, is part of Lent, part of our Savior's Passion. Jesus is being led to the slaughter to satisfy the justice of God. All of this was part of God's plan to deliver the sinner, and to do it through the blood of the Lamb.

Where the blood of the Lamb is truly sprinkled on the doorpost of man's heart, there the greatest bondage of all is broken. There we find forgiveness and life and salvation, for "The blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin" (1 John 1:7). The Passover Lamb of God has come to take away the sin of the world. He enters Jerusalem for you and me and never looks back. Hosanna to the Son of David! Hosanna in the highest! Amen.