Word of Salvation – Vol. 33 No. 22 – June 1988

 

The Show And The Watchers

 

Sermon by Rev. A. I. DeGraaf on Matthew 27:36, 54

Reading: Exodus 14:5-15; Matthew 27:35-54

Singing: 84; BoW H.308; 354; H. 304; H.305.

 

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

“They watched Him…” it says in both verses about those soldiers on Calvary’s bald hill-top.  “They watched Him…!”  We know that term.  We do it several hours a week.  We watch, too: watch television.  We watch the show.  We sit and watch while others do the work.  We know of these TV people that they work hard.  Think of those news gatherers at the fronts where the bullets fly; they often risk their lives while they let the cameras roll.  But we sit… and watch.  They work, they rehearse and put it all together… we sit and watch.  Yes, but do you know John White’s book, “The Tower of Geburah”?  How those kids watched that strange TV set but all of a sudden they got drawn into the picture and became part of it all?  That can happen when we watch the show.  They show you the hungry in Ethiopia, and you become part of it and you ring that number and send money!  You get involved in the show and your life is not the same afterwards.  Let’s look at it that way and first see the show… and then the watchers.

1.  THE SHOW.

Don’t get shocked by that word when we think of Calvary.  It is, in fact, a very biblical word.  God was showing something there, revealing something for us to have a good look at.  In fact, all we can do is watch.  The Real Work there was done by the Son of God.  He accomplished it all and finished it all…  and all on His own.  No one else could add anything to it.

God showed there His wrath, His terrifying anger.  He had shown it before, in The Flood!  Then it was Noah and his family who could but watch.  God’s terrifying anger at our rebellion, our self-serving violence and pride!  Have a good look, little human being!  God is not as permissive as you think!  He sees a world full of selfishness and hatred, a world full of suffering and misery made by human beings created for love.  And He isn’t amused: He is angry!

He is not just a kind old granddaddy letting people do “their own thing” as long as it doesn’t bother Him.  It all does bother Him!  But there, on that bald hill, see Him take it out on His only Son!  There on that hill watch also the patience of God.  People murder His darling.  Soldiers nailed Him to the tree and gambled His clothing away…  but the soldiers stay alive!  One prayer of that Suffering Son: “Father, forgive them… HOLD IT!  Father!  They don’t realise what they are doing…” and the Father stays His Hand and the sun keeps shining on these evil ones even though it will hide its face from the Only One good.  His rain still falls on righteous and unrighteous but the rainbow still says: “No flood!”  Oh, the patience of God!  He showed it there on that hill as He shows it still today.

While we sit and look on… watch the show!  The soldiers guard Jesus but they need not fear, He will not come off that cross until it is all done!  For yes, God also shows there, together with His justice, His love.  But you really have to watch carefully to see that!  Your eyes have to be opened.  The eyes of your heart have to be opened, to see the Son take your place, and suffer that you might be forever sure of salvation!  Look!  The Lamb of God! …who takes them all away, these awful bitter sins of the world!  God’s justice and God’s love got married on that hill and what God joined together there, no man can ever separate any more.

God’s darling became the slaughtered sacrifice and you may just look… You can only look as the Israelites looked at the brass snake.  Look and be cured!  Look and be radiant!  It is as at the Red Sea: “The Lord shall do the fighting for you, scared little people!  All you need do is look at it!  Be still…!”  Do you see it?  The greatest thing God’s church can do on earth is tell that Good News!  Proclaim the gospel of the solitary doing and the lonely dying, the single-handed victory of that Son of God, Jesus Christ!

To tell that story is the best thing you and I can do and can give our children and our neighbours.  We cannot make a better world: Jesus did it.  We cannot bring in the Kingdom of God: David’s Son did it and does it and will do it.  The great thing youth leaders and catechism teachers and scripture teachers do is put their hand on the shoulders of other people’s kids as well as their own and say: “Look!  Watch the show!”  “Give heed to what He did!”  Oh sure, there is the call to a holy life.  There is the call to obedience!  But why?  What for?  Apart from showing God how grateful you are, it is so that by your walk the neighbour may be won for Christ.

So that by the hope that has become visible in your own day-to-day life they can.  see what God did and ask you questions about it.  Who is that Lord of yours?  How can I, too, become His and have hope for eternity?  Then you can tell him, tell her, tell them:
            “Not what my hands have done…
             Thy grace alone, O Christ, to me can pardon speak!”

The show is God’s… is Christ’s.  What we can do (must do for our life’s sake) is watch…see Him do it, and know: that was done also for me.  That is the show…!  Now what about…

2.  THE WATCHERS?

Those Roman soldiers had seen a lot in their days.  Many people they had seen die, often through their own action, like here where they had driven the nails and eventually would wield the spear, too.  They watched… and at first they did not understand.  But something strange happened to them: they got involved.  They came to make a confession which God’s own people had been loath to make.  It was for calling Himself the Son of the living God that Israel, God’s Own people, had wanted Jesus executed.  But these soldiers, at least their Commander, came to say it as they watched: “This is truly the Son of God.”

To say that of a shamefully exposed criminal and say it after He died, that is quite something!  God does that, with His Show.  He involves people and draws them into the picture!  Oh, there is nothing you can really do except believe; accept this Gift of God with empty hands.  Jesus does the work and pays the whole price.  And yet, when all that is done, and His victory has been shouted from that hill-top, and the everlasting doors have opened also for you, you do get the call to walk the way behind that Lord and share His suffering.  Yes, even to complete parts of His suffering in your own body as Paul says in Col.1.  You get a cross to take up and carry after Him.

It is impossible to remain just an onlooker on that hill.  It is not that kind of watching.  Either you are healed – just by looking at Him who was like the brass snake – or, if that is below your dignity and you think you can heal yourself, then you, One Day, Day, will be judged.  Either you are healed or you are condemned for taking part in that awful murder on that hill top where the only Just One got your nails through His Hands and Feet.  Then you will be charged with the vilest murder of all history, and that charge carries the everlasting death penalty.

Treat Jesus’ death, God’s show of justice, as something irrelevant for you, and one day you will find out that you watched the wrong way.  And if you did that as a church member, just listening to sermons about it and walking off unchanged, then the teenage rapists of Sodom will be better off than you.  But if you cry out to Him: “Oh God, be merciful to me, a sinner” then he says: “Just be quiet and look on: The Lord will fight for you!”  Israel saw it too.  They did not need to do a thing about those armed-to-the-teeth Egyptians.  But what they did have to do was, after the Lord had done it all, to walk through that path His might had made for them between the walls of water.  Walk that Way He made and take along into that freedom your children and other people’s children, your possessions and your pals, your neighbours and your associates.  The Lord who did say: “The Lord will fight for you, you just be still” goes on saying: “Tell the children of Israel to march on!”

Redemption is no redemption if it is not followed by gratitude.

All you can do is: watch.  But what do you do with what you have seen Jesus do for you?

I come from a place in Holland – Zeist – where one of the greatest little missionary.  movements in the world had its headquarters.  The Moravian Brethren, established by the rich German Count von Zinzendorf.  That man when he was young and rich and fun-loving, was stopped in his tracks by a painted picture of the crucified Christ.  Underneath it was a simple question: “This I did for you… now what will you do for me?”  Young Zinzendorf was never the same since.  He started a movement that preached the complete redemption given freely by the Lamb of God.  That movement went to the very ends of the earth to make that story known.  Thank God for what He has shown!  But thank Him also, for what that does to the watchers.  He has a marvellous way of getting people involved… for life.

Amen