Christ S It Is Finished Job of Salvation Job Is Done. He Is Dead. Graveyard Dead. Now His

Holy Saturday Sermon

+ Jesu Juva +

Christ’s “it is finished” job of salvation job is done. He is dead. Graveyard dead. Now His corpse lays in the tomb on this Saturday Sabbath rest. Christ lag in Totesbanden.

The Lord Jesus is dead. “It is finished.” Salvation accomplished. All creation wrecked by Adam and Eve’s sin, is set right again because of His passionate and hard work. You are restored to a right relationship to God because of His very good work. Death, Satan, and hell have been stiff-armed and stuffed. They do not hold power over you anymore. Why? Because of Christ’s very, very good, Good Friday work.

His death is your salvation. His death is your life. All your sin is dead and buried in His dead and buried graveyard Body. The Lord, therefore, does not count your sin against you. You are forgiven. Now there is life and salvation for you in this dead body, the body of Jesus that lag in Totesbanden.

Just as God the Father rested after His six days of creative work, so now His Son rests from His restoration of creation work. Soon the stone will be rolled away. The darkness will turn to light. The Son will rise. And the whole world will know that death, your death, has been swallowed up in victory. Death gives way to resurrection. Christ’s. He is the light that shines in the darkness of death. His cup of tea is rescuing and raising the dead.

Jesus is the ark that rescued Noah and all of creation from the floodwaters of death. He is the ram that delivered Isaac from the altar of death. He is the pillar of cloud/fire that lead Israel from the dark Egyptian death all the way through the Red Sea to life in the Promised Land. He is the banquet that enlivens Israel even as she declines into death. He is the Word preached by Ezekiel that resurrects the dry as dust dead bones of Israel. He is Jonah – cast into the sea – swallowed by the great fish but is expelled from the watery grave alive.

He is there doing the big death – the Good Friday one. For the world and for you. What joy that you are baptized into Christ’s Good Friday Atoning For the Sins of the World death. What joy that you are raised with Him for a new life, now and forever when your body is raised from the grave.

Everything has changed for you because of Christ’s death and rest in the tomb for you. Listen: “We are convinced that one [Jesus] died for all, and therefore all died . . . So from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view. Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come. All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ” (2 Corinthians 5:14-18).