This is an adaption of the Easter Day sermon provided by the Concordia
Publishing House resources for Lent-Holy Week-Easter Day 2014 entitled “The
Crucified King”.
Hopefully, the old saying “better late than never” applies here.
“The King Raised”
In the name of the Father and of the X Son and of the Holy Spirit.
[Amen.]
Grace, mercy, and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our
Lord [Amen.]
St. Matthew 27:45–50 … 45Now from the sixth hour there was
darkness over all the land until the ninth hour. 46And about the ninth hour
Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, “Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?”
that is, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” 47And some of the
bystanders, hearing it, said, “This man is calling Elijah.” 48And one of
them at once ran and took a sponge, filled it with sour wine, and put it on
a reed and gave it to him to drink. 49But the others said, “Wait, let us
see whether Elijah will come to save him.” 50And Jesus cried out again with
a loud voice and yielded up his spirit.
Alleluia! Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! Alleluia!
In behalf of Pastor Marks and me, a most heartfelt and grateful
welcome to all of you [both in our sanctuary and listening on the radio] who
are with us for this Divine Service festival celebration of our Savior’s
resurrection from the dead! It’s very wonderful to see all of you who are
among our congregational membership, immediate and extended family members,
and other guests all of whom have come together this day to receive the
gracious gifts of forgiveness of sins, salvation, and eternal life that
almighty God serves us through His Holy Word and the Blessed Sacrament of
the Lord’s Supper. We pray that you will leave here today fully filled by
God with His steadfast love and compassion and motivated by the Holy Spirit
to return frequently to this spiritual restaurant to be nourished with the
divine menu items of Word, Bread, and Wine, even as we recall with
thanksgiving our relationship with Jesus through Holy Baptism.
Looking ahead at the devotional reading for today in Treasury of
Daily Prayer (Copyright © 2008 Concordia Publishing House, St. Louis, MO.) I
was reminded that “Easter is the oldest and highest of all Christian
festivals—the festival of festivals, the feast of feasts! On this day, when
Christ first stepped triumphantly from the ranks of the dead, all our
waiting is declared to be a waiting that is already completed; Christ’s
triumph makes all the waiting that follows in our lives of faith a building
anchored on the foundation that was laid when He whom the builders rejected
became the Cornerstone. [Alleluia!] Christ is risen! He is risen indeed.
Alleluia!” (Page 185.)
So recall with me that on the Sixth Day of Creation, God made
Himself a king. From the dust of the ground He brought forth His king and
placed him in a garden made just for him. He wasn’t just someone for an
all-powerful God to boss around like a common laborer or low-level worker;
this man was God’s representative on earth. And this king was not created
to lollygag around the garden all day; he was made to have dominion and to
rule. This king was created with feet, for God gave him work to do, and he
had to get around. His blessed work was to tend the garden and to guard it,
and that meant also guarding His bride, Eve.
But King Adam blew it. I mean to say that He blew it big time! A
preacher from hell, a demonic angel, Satan himself, snaked his way into the
garden. Beautiful and glorious on the outside, but ugly on the inside, Adam
actually let him in. And he went to Adam’s wife spewing his poisonous lies.
Now, Adam should have planted his feet right between his wife and the
serpent and said, “Eve, don’t listen to that preacher. He’s a liar.” But
that evil crawler was a very convincing preacher, smooth-talking, and
deceptively slick. All of us have been mesmerized by him too. God had
graciously forewarned Adam about the fruit of the forbidden tree in the
midst of the garden that “the day you eat of it, you shall surely die.” But
instead of moving his feet and standing up to the devil-in-a-snakeskin, he
was caught flat-footed and did nothing. Instead, he turned his toes to his
deceived wife. “Take; eat, Adam,” she enticed him … and he did.
Almost all kings leave some kind of legacy, something for which
they are remembered. David was the great warrior king, who purchased the
land for construction of God’s temple. Solomon is remembered for his wisdom
and for building the temple. But King Adam built nothing. His legacy was
death. His work brought tombs and graves into the world, funeral homes and
obituaries, sicknesses and diseases, fears and anxieties. Before they fell
into sin, Adam and Eve revered God with a holy fear. Now they were scared
of Him and afraid of everything else. Because of them, the world became
filled with fear. Little boys are now afraid of the dark. Teenage girls
live in fear of not being thin or pretty enough. Women now fear the
judgment of other women more than the judgment of God. Men fear conflict in
a world where they need to have courage, backbone, and self-sacrifice. But
men fear failure, causing many of them to “bury” their lives before they are
even dead. And then there’s our conscience. There’s a saying that says
that death and conscience make cowards of us all. And so we even fear
telling the truth and being honest about ourselves. Instead we re-label our
sins. You know, things like: “I’m not stingy.” “I don’t lack a generous
spirit.” “I’m good with money.” “It isn’t stealing if the other person has
more than enough.” Indeed, death and conscience now make cowards of us all.
So God drove His king out of the garden and placed security guard
angels at the door. Those angels stood at attention with flaming swords to
keep the man from the tree of life in the garden. Beautiful Eden was no
longer his home. Adam made mankind’s bed, and it’s a grave, and we’ll now
have to lie in it too.
But God loved the king that blew it and He promised one day to
send a Messiah ... the Seed ... a royal Seed ... His only-begotten Son,
Immanuel by name … God clothed in our human flesh … God with feet. Those
feet were not the feet of a coward, but the feet of a divine champion who
came into the world to restore all that King Adam ruined. His feet were the
feet that came to crush the head of that false preacher who deceived Adam
and filled the world with sin-stricken fear. But this king, our Lord Jesus
Christ, was not caught by the enemy flat-footed. He used His holy feet to
get just where He needed to be to help fallen man, heal the sick, give sight
to the blind, return hearing to the deaf, make the lame walk, feed the
hungry, call forth Lazarus from his death-tomb, and walk right into a
funeral procession to restore a widow’s son back to life.
He used his incarnate feet to get where He needed to go to
instruct the ignorant, to preach to them about entrance into a Kingdom that
they could never earn with wealth or works ... a Kingdom that He gave
without cost to all who receive it by Spirit-given faith in Him as Lord and
Savior. This King was just the right king and His feet were just the feet
that were needed to rescue us from sin, Satan, and death itself and to open
up the entrance to the garden paradise that Adam closed up. But the way
back to the Garden of Paradise meant that this Savior-king had to be sliced
up by undeserved whippings that ripped open the flesh of His holy body. He
was a king that had to bleed, a king that had to have the courage to
sacrifice Himself for sin-filled rebels, a king who would not give in to the
temptation by that preacher from hell to take the easy road and let the
world be damned. And, thanks be to God, King Jesus didn’t blow it!
His royal feet willingly staggered to the cross as this
Messiah-King carried all our sins to Calvary’s altar. His dead royal feet
then lay in the cold stone grave to heal our sin-seeking stumbling feet.
But what good is a dead king? What good are the feet of a king if
they can’t move? How can a dead king give out gifts, give out a share in
his kingdom, give glory and honor to his rebellious subjects? How can a
dead king share his royal feast of feasts? What good is merely a crucified
King, if that king is not raised back to life to show His wounds and bring
peace to our raging and guilty consciences? It’s no good. So God
resurrected this King to be our King Raised. The Crucified King rose from
the dead so that we might rise from our death and reign with Him forever, so
that we might see that we no longer own our sins that He has taken from us,
so that we might see that in Him death has no power over us, so that we
might hear and rejoice in the results that our King’s holy feet
accomplished, namely, Satan’s head crushed and the lips, tongue, and teeth
of His accusing mouth kicked in and silenced.
You see, our King was raised on this holy day that is at the same
time the first day and the eighth day, and what wonderful things we hear
about. We see the sad and scared Marys, pictures of God’s sad and scared
church, filled with joy and gladness at the angel’s announcement-sermon. We
see the stone rolled back and no body in that tomb, catching a glimpse of
our own future graves. Remember how those angels stood and guarded the
entrance to the garden of paradise? My, how different things are on this
resurrection morning. See the angel preacher in white—he has no sword, he
is not imposing, he has no scowl on his face, he’s not even standing on his
feet. He simply sits in a garden graveyard and preaches a short but
magnificent sermon: “Do not be afraid, for I know that you seek Jesus, who
was crucified. He is not here, for He has risen, as He said.” No need to
be frightened in this terror-filled world says the preacher from heaven.
This King dealt with and conquered on Golgotha’s cross all that could ever
make us afraid.
See how Mary Magdalene and the other Mary took hold of those
blessed feet of the Second Adam, as Jesus came to them and preached the same
sermon, telling them: “Don’t be afraid.” They grasped and worshipped at the
feet of their Savior and King who took the bed of death that Adam had made
for us, lay in it for three days, then emptied it of its dreadful dismay and
alarming power with His disarming resurrection-victory.
How great was that sixth day of creation when God made Himself a
king with feet of clay. But how much greater is what happened on this day,
the eighth day, the first day of a new creation, when God placed His divine
incarnate King back on His pierced feet, that, having been baptized into
Christ’s death and resurrection, we may now partake of His life-giving body
and blood that are really present in, with, and under the sacramental bread
and wine for the certain assurance of forgiveness, salvation, and eternal
life, and, therefore, reign with Him forever.
Alleluia! Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! Alleluia!
God grant it all for the sake of Jesus Christ, His humble Son, our
holy Savior. [Amen.]
In the name of the Father and of the X Son and of the Holy Spirit.
[Amen.]
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