Lent Midweek
Sermon (March 18, 2020)
“Behold the Man: A
God Exposed”
How things have changed. No, I’m not talking about how our lives have
changed with the coronavirus. I’m
talking about the definition of words. “Naked”
once meant innocent, selfless, and perfect.
Now, it just elicits giggles among junior high kids. But Moses records for us at the end of
Genesis 2 that the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed. And then there’s the word “shame.” Different from guilt, shame includes an
unhealthy preoccupation with yourself. That
Adam and his wife were unashamed though they were naked makes sense because
they didn’t have that level of self-awareness that comes from sinful, selfish
navel-gazing. But then, as soon as they
sinned, their eyes were opened to a new reality. Sure, they knew good and evil, knowledge their
Creator had withheld purely for their good. But now they see that they are naked. Exposed. Vulnerable. And when their eyes incline toward themselves
for the first time, they are ashamed. “Look
at me,” Adam thinks. “Look at me,” his
wife muses. But each is too preoccupied
with himself to notice the nakedness of the other. Sin does exactly that. It curves our gaze in on ourselves.
What could they do? Hide themselves, they hoped. Maybe these fig leaves will do? Far from it.
Fig leaves cannot hide sin and guilt from the Creator. So, after God exposes the pair in their
ashamed hiding, elicits their acknowledgement (though not their confession) of
their sins, and doles out the curses to the two and the serpent, He then
upgrades their wardrobes from bloodless fig leaves to garments made from skin.
And Adam and Eve learn quickly that God was not wrong in threatening death at
the moment that they ate from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. But He has mercifully stayed their executions
by shedding the blood of whatever innocent animal this was from which He took
the skin to cover the sin and shame of the first man and woman. Their nakedness would be covered at the cost
of an even deeper nakedness, for what could be more exposed than an animal
stripped of its skin. And so, the first
death, the first bloodshed, happened at the hands of the Creator Himself, to
grant to these rebels the luxury of hiding their shame behind the innocence of
another creature.
Though we’re not inclined to admit
it, this is the true nature of sin. You and I want to hide it behind
pious-seeming fig leaves, but these won’t do. No matter what you do to delete your browsing
history, you can’t hide your shame or obscure your guilt from the eyes of an
all-knowing God. No matter how you try
to couch your gossip in thinly-veiled requests to “just pray for them,” those
words remain reputation-damaging slander against your neighbor and render you
guilty before a Holy God. Even if you
call it “just getting what’s rightfully yours,” it’s still greed. Excuses why you can’t find the time to read
God’s Word don’t allow you to be assured of his promises there. These proverbial fig leaves can’t hide your
sin. And to say, “Well, everyone else
does it” is the flimsiest fig leaf of them all.
Repent of these and all other fig-leaf attempts to hide your sin and
trick yourself into thinking you’re blameless.
Sin can only be covered with skin.
No one knows what that animal was in
the Garden from which the Creator peeled its innocent hide in order to hide the
exposed and vulnerable parts of Adam and his wife. But, given the way in which young sheep are
often selected to be sacrifices – on Passover, in the Tabernacle, in the Temple
– it’s not unreasonable to suspect the first animal to die, flayed to stave off
death for mankind, was a lamb.
Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes
away the sin of the world, St. John the Baptist declared of Jesus. Behold, the fulfillment of every lamb with its
throat slit to render it a sacrifice in the Temple. Behold, the fulfillment of every Passover lamb
roasted and completely consumed the night before God brought His people out of
slavery. Behold, the Lamb who is not
actually a lamb but a Man. Behold God
with skin.
Behold the Man scourged by the Roman
soldiers with their evil flagrum,
designed to shred the skin from the back of a criminal, tearing away flesh,
nearly exposing his organs. Behold the
Man on whose head the soldiers pressed the crown woven of thorns to ridicule
Him as a madman with His belief in being King. Behold the Man on whom they draped a soldier’s
dirty purple robe, to intensify the jest. Behold the Man whom Pilate brought forth to
say “This is no king!” Here is God, with
skin, clothed in the mockery of sinful men.
Behold the Man who, when He was
nailed to the cross, was stripped naked. Behold the Man whose clothes the
soldiers divided amongst themselves. Behold
the Man for whose seamless tunic the godless gambled. Behold the Man, God with skin, whose skin is
shamefully exposed for all passers by to mock. Behold, God is naked.
Behold, this Man will bear your sin
and shame. Behold, this Man will suffer
in your place. Behold the Man whose
nakedness answers for Adam’s. Behold the
Man naked and unashamed, with nothing to hide, with no sin of His own to garb
in raiment and rationalization. Behold
the Man stripped bare to bear your own sins. All of them. The ones you try to hide and
obscure, the ones you pretend are not there, the ones that cause you the
greatest shame. All of them … there on
the cross with this Man, this God, Jesus, naked and dying for you.
Behold the Man, stripped naked so He
might clothe you in new skin. Behold the
Man who will hide your sin with His own righteousness. Behold the Man who gives you Himself to wear. For as many of you as were baptized into
Christ have put on Christ. Behold the Man in whose washing of Holy Baptism you
are clothed in the incomparable perfection of His own righteousness. Behold the Man who covers your sin with His
own skin. Wear His raiment. Wear Him. Your sin is gone, your shame covered, your
guilt removed. Behold the Man.
Adapted from
a sermon by the Rev. Jeff Hemmer
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