This is a two part article. It is a Muandy Thursday sermon I thought you might want to look at for next year.
Maundy
Thursday
1 Peter
1:18-20
"His Precious
Blood"
18 You know that you were ransomed from the futile ways
inherited from your fathers, not with perishable things such as
silver or gold,
19 but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb
without blemish or spot.
20 He was destined before the foundation of the world but was
made manifest at the end of the times for your sake.RSV
As we gaze at the cross, as we think about the events of this
week, as we turn our attention to the sacrifice Jesus made for us on
the cross, we will zero in on the reality of that event. The cross
was real, the pain, the suffering, the agony was real, so real that
the earth shock and trembled from the dread and awe of the event.
Jesus died upon that cross, he suffered, he bore pain, he felt the
sting of death, he felt the wrath of God, he lived in the human
experience of knowing what sin is like for a few hours. He lived
knowing what the constant battle with Satan is all about. The cross
of Calvary was at one time a horrible experience of suffering, but at
the same time an expression of love on the part of God for all His
children on earth.
AS we focus in on the cross of Christ, I would like our attention
to be drawn to the sacrifice he made for us. I would like us to
comprehend with our whole being that Jesus redeemed us with his
precious blood.
The crucifixion of Jesus has in our time been sentimentalized into
a pretty picture of an adoring Jesus who suffered with a smile on his
face. Jesus was not crucified on a cross in a cathedral between two
candles, but on a cross between two thieves; on the town garbage
heap, at a crossroads so cosmopolitan that they had to write His
title in Hebrew, and in Latin and in Greek, at the kind of place were
thieves curse, and soldiers gamble. Jesus died in a most worldly way,
a most inglorious way by the hands of men, at the hands of the Romans
who felt nothing, no remorse, no piety, no compassion.
Peter says in the text from his first letter that
"we were ransomed not with perishable thing
such as silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, like
that of a lamb without blemish or spot." Jesus' blood was let
