The Hour is at Hand

Matthew 26 and 27

Palm Sunday: Sunday of the Passion 

Grace, mercy and peace from God our Father and our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ amen.  The sermon text for Palm Sunday is our Gospel reading Matthew 26 and 27.  When a couple is engaged to be married, countless decisions must be made.  Among them are the day and the time of the wedding. First, there is the day.  What day works best for family and friends?  And then there is the hour.  When should the wedding begin?  Enough time needs to be allotted for pictures and for guests to go to the reception but not too much time.  Once the day and time are set the countdown begins until the wedding takes place.

On this Palm Sunday we discover that God is also concerned about time, in particular the day and the hour of His Son’s death, and rightly so.  The hour of Christ’s death is the fulfillment of the Old Testament.  When Adam and Eve sinned, God promised a time when the seed of the woman would crush the serpent’s head.  This prophecy was the first of hundreds more to follow through the centuries.  The Old Testament prophets declared who this Promised One will be:  the Messiah, the Son of God, a King from the line of David whose kingdom will never end, the suffering servant, and yes God himself. The prophets also described what the Coming One will do.  He will proclaim the Gospel, heal the sick, and give site to the blind.  Although He is Lord of all, He is the servant of all. He is the King but He comes to save not in power with horse and chariot, but in humility riding on a donkey.  He will be betrayed for thirty pieces of silver. He will be despised and rejected, mocked, and beaten.  His hands and feet will be pierced.  He will be stricken, smitten and afflicted as God lays our iniquity and the iniquity of entire world upon Him.  He gives His life as a perfect offering for our sin so that by His wounds we are healed. 

It was not only the prophets who foretold the hour of Christ’s death.  It was also the festivals, the sacrifices, and the temple of the Old Testament.  They all found their fulfillment in Christ’s death.  The coming of our Savior is the Year of Jubilee, His death the Day of Atonement.  He dies at the feast of Passover, for He is our Passover Lamb.  All the blood shed at the temple altar points to the shedding of His blood on the cross.  He is the temple, destroyed only to be rebuilt in three days. 

Thus, not only the Old Testament but the entirety of our Lord’s earthly ministry anticipates the hour of His death.  Before His first miracle, the changing of water into wine, He announces that His hour has not yet come.  There would be times when the religious leaders desire to arrest Jesus and put Him to death, but it does not happen because the hour has not yet come.  Finally, the chief priests and elders do conspire to put Jesus to death, but they plan on doing it after the Passover feast. But that is not the divinely appointed hour either, for the Lamb of God is to be sacrificed during Passover.  So, after praying in the Garden of Gethsemane to His Father in heaven, Jesus declares to His disciples, “See, the hour is at hand, and the Son of Man is betrayed into the hands of sinners.”  Now it is God’s time, the hour had come. 

The entire Old Testament, all of human history, centers on the hour, the ninth hour on Good Friday, three in the afternoon, when Jesus died.  His death was preceded by three hours of darkness, a sign of God’s judgment and wrath over sin.  Then at the ninth hour, the hour when the lamb was slaughtered at the temple, when all that was prophesied was fulfilled, Jesus yielded up His spirit.  No one took His life from Him, but He gave up His life of His own accord, at that time, at that hour.  The death of Jesus at the ninth hour on Good Friday fulfills prophesy and is the climax of our Lord’s earthly ministry and all of history. 

Not only is the hour of Christ’s death the center and focus of the Scriptures and all of history, but the hour of Christ’s death is the hour of your salvation.  At that hour, the Lamb of God shed His blood and offered His life as the sacrifice for your sin.  Your perfect Passover Lamb has been sacrificed.  All your inequities were placed on Him.  Good Friday is your day of atonement as Christ offered Himself as your substitute.  The blood of the Lamb is the means by which your sin-stained clothes are washed and made clean.  Jesus gives to you the robe of His righteousness. 

The hour of Christ’s death is the hour of your salvation.  When Jesus died, the curtain in the temple was torn in two, top to bottom. The hour of death not only reveals that He is the perfect Lamb but also your Great High Priest, who has offered the atoning sacrifice for your sin.  With the sacrifice of Christ, there is no curtain of separation.  The way to the Father has been opened to you through Jesus.  Your sin no longer separates you from God.  Instead, you have access to the Most Holy Place, the heavenly temple, were you will dwell in the presence of God for all eternity. 

The hour of Christ’s death is the hour of your salvation.  When Jesus died, there was an earthquake, and in that hour the bodies of many believers were raised from the dead.  This will not be the only earthquake with the opening of a tomb. On the third day, at an early hour, there will be yet another earthquake, and the angel of the Lord will roll back the stone from the  tomb that Jesus was placed.  The saints that were raised on Good Friday point ahead to Christ’s resurrection and to your resurrection on the Last Day.  As Jesus declares in John 5, “Truly, truly, I say to you, an hour is coming, and is now here, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live…Do not marvel at this, for an hour is coming when all who are in the tombs will hear His voice and come out” (John 5:25, 28-29). The believers raised from the dead on Good Friday reveal the purpose of our Lord’s death.  It is to save those who were condemned to die eternally. Since Christ died and rose again, an hour is coming when your body will be raised from death and you will enter with Him into the life that never ends.

The hour of Christ’s death is no coincidence.  The very hour, the very moment of His death was planned from eternity.  On Palm Sunday, Jesus entered Jerusalem with His eyes fixed on the cross.  During this Holy Week we will walk the way of sorrow with Him and remember the hour of His death, confident that it is the hour of our salvation.  Amen.