Introit (Psalm 43)
St. John 8:42–59
In the name of the Father and of the + Son
and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Whenever we read the Psalms it is generally
assumed that we read them as our prayers to the Lord. That is correct, but there
is another, deeper way of reading many of the Psalms. You can first read the
Psalms as prayers of Jesus Himself, our God who is a true Man and who teaches
us how to pray to His and our true Father. Then, once you hear Jesus praying,
you can join your voice to His. Our Introit from Psalm 43 is a good example of
a Psalm about Jesus, His passion and death, and even the circumstances of our
Gospel reading.
In our Gospel reading Jesus is
surrounded by His accusers. They are an
ungodly people, deceitful and unjust men. And Jesus is quite harsh with
them. In His trial before Herod and Pilate, Jesus will stay mostly silent. But
not here. Here Jesus confronts His accusers who lie and so murder the truth. He
says they have the devil for their father, the
father of lies. And they are following in their lying father’s footsteps.
They reject the Truth: the words Jesus speaks and Jesus Himself. Their
hostility toward Jesus is mounting and will overflow in the lies and hatred of
Good Friday. They cannot stand who Jesus is and what He says. They cannot stand
that He is the one true God, the God whom they have sinned against, the God who
has now come to rescue them. They hate Jesus, because He is God in the flesh to
save sinners, and that means they cannot save themselves. Jesus and His words
show how desperate the sinner’s situation is – it takes nothing less than the
Lord Almighty to become a man and die in order for a sinner to be rescued from
himself. Jesus and His words show that they are not good and there is nothing
they can do. And that’s something they just cannot tolerate. This ungodly people, these deceitful and unjust men hate Jesus’
Truth. They call Him evil. They even say He has a demon. Proud and obstinate
people say stupid things. They go into a rage against the Truth even when it’s
staring them in the face because they cannot stand to be wrong. We hear similar
insanity from people who can’t stand God’s Word today. Maybe they don’t claim
that Jesus has a demon, but they say God is hateful and vindictive. They claim
that His Word is unfair and unkind. So they also persecute His Church, claiming
His people are irrational and intolerant. But these accusations flung at us and
at God are the lies of an ungodly people
and they come from the father of lies
who is constantly trying to murder the Truth.
But before we become proud in
ourselves and play the victim, let us also realize that Jesus confronts us. We
take the devil for our father whenever we sin and reject God’s Word. We dispute
with Jesus and are skeptical of the Truth because it is inconvenient for what
we would like to do. We can be just as obstinate, just as reluctant to confess
that we are wrong. Like Jesus’ accusers we reject the Truth because it means we
cannot save ourselves, but are entirely at the mercy of God. So we have also
called God evil and ourselves good, even though the Truth is so clearly the
opposite. Repent. Whoever is of God hears
the words of God.
Now through this whole confrontation
Jesus does not defend Himself. “I do not
seek My own glory,” He says. “There
is One who seeks it, and He is the Judge.” He has perfect faith in His
Father, that His Father is good and will defend Him and vindicate Him. His
Father will prove Him right in the end and glorify Him. Jesus’ accusers can do
their worst and say what they want, but the Father will raise Jesus from the
dead. All of this gets echoed as a prayer in our Introit Psalm, and Jesus is
the One praying it. Judge me, or vindicate me, O God, and defend my cause
against an ungodly people, from the deceitful and unjust man deliver me! For
you are the God in whom I take refuge. Only Jesus can truly ask without
fear for God to judge Him, because only Jesus is sinless and will be judged innocent
and righteous. That means He will be vindicated, proven right by the Father’s
judgment.
And that is exactly what does
happen. Jesus goes the way of light and truth: the truth of the Father’s Word
that Jesus preaches, the light of the Father’s Word that Jesus shows. And so He
goes to God’s holy hill and altar – not the stone Temple on Mount Zion, but the
wooden cross on Mount Calvary. The true altar of God is the cross where Jesus
offered the sacrifice of His body and blood for the sins of the world. And
though this sacrifice meant that Jesus was forsaken by His God, condemned in
the place of all sinners, Jesus did it with joy – the joy that His death means
our salvation.
We actually see this most
clearly in the Garden of Gethsemane, when Jesus prays, “Father, if You are willing, remove this cup from Me. Nevertheless, not
My will, but Yours, be done.” (Luke 22:42) Jesus was glad to obey His Father
and He wanted to save us. But there was still real pain for Him; not just the
pain of whips, nails, and physical death, but the pain of hell, the real pain
of being forsaken by the Father because of the load of sin He bore. The
firefighter doesn’t want to be hurt in the burning building but he still wants
to save the child and does it for the joy of sparing the child’s life. Jesus is
God, but He is also a real man. And just as Jesus can pray, “Vindicate me, O God, for you are the God in
whom I take refuge,” So He can also say, “Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you in turmoil within
me? Hope in God; for I shall again
praise him, my salvation and my God.” The hope of Jesus was not
disappointed. On the third day He rose from the dead. The resurrection is His
vindication by the Father. He is proved to be righteous. He died but His
innocent death destroyed the power of death and the grave could not hold Him. Jesus
was rescued from the lies of His enemies and from the devil, that ancient man of violence. What’s more, the resurrection
proves that the Father accepted Jesus’ sacrifice for sin. All debts are paid
for. The Lord is righteous and so He has cut the cords of wicked death and
devil.
These enemies tried to capture
Jesus but have been defeated. They still try to capture us and so we take up
this Psalm from Jesus as our own prayer, joining our voices to the Righteous
One, our Savior. When we pray, “Judge me, vindicate me, O God,” we are not
asking to be judged by our works or by our sense of justice. We want to be
judged by Jesus’ work, His sacrifice in our place. Jesus was delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification.
(Romans 4:25) The resurrection of Jesus not only means that Jesus is
vindicated as innocent. It also means that the guilty are vindicated with
Jesus’ vindication. The ungodly are declared to be righteous with Jesus’
righteousness. The sinners are forgiven. This is why Jesus can say, “If anyone keeps My word, he will never see
death.” Faith in Jesus and His Word means His death and resurrection count
for you. His proven-right-ness counts for you, so you will be vindicated with
Jesus and you will not see death. What we call death is not death for those who
have already died with Jesus in Baptism, who have been washed in the blood of
the Lamb and call upon His name. For them death is a doorway to life. To say
“Abraham is dead” is a lie from the father of lies. Abraham is not dead. And
neither are your loved ones who have finished their course in faith. They live
because Jesus lives.
Knowing this we still pray to
our God for rescue. We want to be rescued from ungodliness: separated from
those who persecute us and seek to murder the Truth. Separated from our own
evil thoughts and lies. We pray to be led by the light and truth of God’s Word,
to be brought to His holy hill, His dwelling, His altar. And the true altar of
God is the cross of Jesus. And even our altar reminds us of that true altar and
the sacrifice Jesus offered there. But our altar is also a table: the Lord’s
own Table where we feast on the sacrificial Lamb of God. The worthy Lamb that
was slain and shed His blood, meets us at His Table and gives us a taste of exceeding joy.
We are nearing the end of Lent. In
the weeks to come the face of God will be darkened and Jesus Himself will be
hidden, taken away and condemned with His death at the proper time. But that is
not the end. Easter is coming. Why are
you cast down, O my soul, and why are you in turmoil within me? Hope in God; for I shall again praise Him, my salvation and my God.
In the Holy + Name of Jesus. Amen.
