Note: many of the images and ideas for this sermon come from the 2018 Easter Vigil sermon by Pr. Karl Hess.

++ JESU JUVA ++

The readings of the Vigil recount God’s faithfulness throughout history. But there’s also a dark side to many of them.

At the time God sent the Flood, the earth was filled with people — easily millions and millions, perhaps billions. Among the multitudes of pagans, the Church was an imperceptible minority — eight souls in all. Except for those eight, God destroys the entire population of the whole world. While God unleashes His wrath, Noah will be locked in a foul-smelling box — not unlike a tomb. Abraham is called by God to slay the son of the Promise, his own beloved son, and offer him as a burnt offering to the Lord.

At the Red Sea, God’s people are trapped between the chaos of the sea in front of them and the violent Egyptian army behind them. In Ezekiel, we hear of the valley of very dry bones. It appeared to be the scene of a massacre — a deadly battle where the slain piled upon the slain. At the Passover, God Himself would come to slay every firstborn. Jonah forcefully declares that in just three days the wrath of God would come to destroy them all. And Nebuchadnezzar demands personal worship under threat of burning men alive in the fiery furnace.

The sounds fill you with dread. The Lord closing and sealing the Ark’s door. The pounding of those outside begging to be delivered. Their cries fade into silence. The continual sound of the rain for 40 days and 40 nights. The cold, ringing scrape of metal on leather as dad unsheathes his knife to slaughter his boy. The shouts of the Egyptian army growing louder as they gain on you. The howl of the wind as you walk upon the floor of the sea — where no one has walked before.

The great defeat that led to the valley of dry bones. Walking among them, you hear bones crunching under your feet. The stillness that followed the observance of the first Passover. The cries of anguish as the Lord Himself brought death throughout the land of Egypt. The sound of a lone preacher, walking on foot, declaring that the wrath of God would pour down upon your city and destroy it — on Tuesday. Nebuchadnezzar’s threat and the sound of the crackling furnace, ready to receive you.

They all sound like the end. They’re the kind of sounds that are the last thing that someone hears before their life is over.

But there is a sound more final than these. For just as the world was created by the Word of God, so also the end. For with a shout, with a cry of command, and with a trumpet, the clouds will be rolled back as a scroll. The Lord Himself will return, and by His voice, the world will end. Final judgment will be rendered.

Yet for all who are in Christ, the end has already come. Over and over this week, we’ve heard what the end sounds like as we’ve meditated upon the Passion of our Lord. For with a great cry, Jesus breathed His last. Then His grave is shut as the stone crashes into place, and He is sealed in the tomb.

But the One placed into the tomb is the One who destroys death and brings it to an end. For He is the One who preserved believing Noah and his family — eight souls in all. He rescued the Church from the multitude of unbelievers. When Noah came out of the ark, his enemies — God’s enemies — were no more. He is the One who stayed Abraham’s hand and provided a substitute so that Abraham would receive his only son back from the dead. He is the one who opened the Red Sea and bid God’s people walk across it on dry ground. He baptized the children of Israel into Moses in the cloud and in the sea. He drowned hard-hearted Pharaoh and all his host in the Red Sea, and in the morning, they lay dead on the shore.

It is He who brought the dry bones together, who put sinews upon them and clothed them in flesh. It is He who sent His Spirit’s Breath to fill the slain so that they live. Now they stand on their feet, an exceedingly great army. It is His blood that marks the door of the houses, so that His wrath passes them over. It is He who relents from the disaster He had said He would bring upon the city, and He does not do it. It is He who accompanies His saints into the fiery furnace. The flames do not hurt them. He consumes their dross and refines their gold. The people of God are delivered.

Every single Old Testament account of salvation shows us the victory of Christ. For when Jesus breathed His last, when He was sealed in the grave, when it seemed all hope was lost — then Jesus was working His greatest victory. It was the ‘end’ — the end of death. The end of Satan’s reign. The end of the devil’s accusations. The end of sin. The end of alienation from God.

For the Word made flesh has unleashed His sword upon your enemies. The double-edged sword that proceeds from His mouth has vanquished all your foes. They have all been crushed in the winepress of His wrath. Why that blood His raiment staining? 'Tis the blood of many slain; Of His foes there's none remaining, None the contest to maintain. Fallen they are, no more to rise; All their glory prostrate lies. (TLH 209 Who Is This That Comes from Edom?)

Who is left to accuse you? In Jesus, your end has already come. So when you hear the sounds that accompany the end of your life — sighs and grunts; cries of pain; tears of regret; labored breathing; as the struggle to hold onto physical life gives way to deathly silence — then for you the end has come.

Yet your ‘end’ is not your End. This is merely what it sounds like for your sinful flesh to die, when your unholiness comes to an end, when you are being finally and fully delivered from evil. It sounds like defeat — it feels like it, too. But you are passing through this great trial into eternal life and everlasting triumph and never-ending joy. In this way, you participate in all these signs of the Lord’s victory throughout the Old Testament. These passages and accounts don’t frighten us, because we know how they end. And we have beheld their fullness in Christ.

Yet in our life and experience, this victory is not yet. It feels a lot more like we are waiting for deliverance than that we have it already. We feel more like Noah climbing into the ark before the door is shut; like Abraham having to prepare his son for sacrifice; like Isaac being bound upon the wood; like the children of Israel running for their lives before Pharaoh; like God’s judgment is imminent; like the world is on the verge of burning us up in the fire of its wrath. You are made a participant in these Old Testament accounts.

So we must consider them again. For every saint of old could not see the end, either. None of them knew exactly how things would go. Those events could have been the end of their physical lives. But they went forth by faith, trusting that God would keep His Word; believing that He would preserve them to the end and receive them unto Himself.

So we, also, must see by faith what we cannot see with our eyes. We must see that the Lord has already shut us into the safety of the ark. That He has already stayed His hand of wrath against us. That He has already destroyed all our enemies. That He has already raised us to new life in Him. That we have already received God’s mercy; that the Lord Jesus Himself is with us even now in the fiery furnace. That His blood now marks our door; faith points to it; death passes over; and Satan cannot harm us (c.f. LSB 458).

[114] Therefore, we finally sum it all up and say, “Dear Father, grant that we be rid of all these disasters.” [115] But there is also included in this petition whatever evil may happen to us under the devil’s kingdom: poverty, shame, death, and, in short, all the agonizing misery and heartache of which there is such an unnumbered multitude on the earth. Since the devil is not only a liar, but also a murderer [John 8:44], he constantly seeks our life. He wreaks his vengeance whenever he can afflict our bodies with misfortune and harm. Therefore, it happens that he often breaks men’s necks or drives them to insanity, drowns some, and moves many to commit suicide and to many other terrible disasters [e.g., Mark 9:17–22]. [116] So there is nothing for us to do upon earth but to pray against this archenemy without stopping. For unless God preserved us, we would not be safe from this enemy even for an hour. (Large Catechism, Seventh Petition).