2026 03 22 - We Consider the Price of the Sacrifice - Popp

Grace, peace and mercy from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen. What a Great Lenten hymn, Mrs. Limer. That is such a good one. And it really sets up again this idea as we continue our path to the cross and the empty tomb in Lent.

Considering the price of Jesus sacrifice. Lately I've been talking a lot to young couples in premarital or to our junior high health classes or probably anybody that listen. I think I talked about Grandparents Day. This idea of being in a transactional world, I've recognized it more than ever. Everything we do, we weigh a cost.

Is my money worth what I'm buying? Is the job I'm expected to do worth the pay I get? Is the time I'm going to spend with this activity or this movie or this TV show worth what I'm going to get out of it? And if it's not, we don't do it. Even our actions.

It's amazing when a student chooses to do something wrong, they've already weighed that they think the discipline they're going to get was worth it. So we have to find something that makes it not worth it to write what, let's be honest, you could get home in half the time. Are you willing to pay the ticket? We measure outcomes. It's a transactional world.

And as we start to approach this time of Holy Week, I looked at today's scripture and of course it's a great story on Lazarus. But what are we looking at? The decision they made to kill Jesus. Let's jump in. We are close to this Palm Sunday parade and Holy Week festivities, but we have another week of Lent.

Today. We're looking at that John 11 and why the Pharisees decided to kill Jesus and the real price that was paid for his death. While today's Gospel reading is our three year lectionary focus in series A. And actually at one point I wanted us to read all of John 11. We're going to focus specifically on verses 45 to 53 at that decision to kill Jesus.

So before I get to that, what am I leaving out? Right? What am I leaving out? Today's gospel? What I want you to see, certainly the part we read was that thing, that obvious part where it's very important, verses 17 and 27.

Lazarus has died and Jesus is coming. Right.

Those of us familiar with the story know he wasn't that far away and yet he waited four days. Hmm. You know, it's always one of those moments. What is Jesus going to show us here? Right?

But what caught my eye, because I'm one of those who struggle with the Mary and Martha story, right? Mary sits at the feet and Martha's working that whole thing. In Luke 10, I don't like that because I'm Martha every Sunday morning, right? Supposed to be Mary. Think about the times in which you have been put in that role.

What am I supposed to do and how am I supposed to do it? We know in Luke 10, Mary was sitting at Jesus feet and Martha was upset. My sister's not helping me. Somebody's got to get things ready. But what do we see in this moment where they're grieving their brother's death?

It's Mary who stays in the house and Martha that runs out to be with Jesus. Now, those of you that have ever grieved the death of a close loved one, we can't even get into their minds to understand why they do the things they do or what they need at that moment. Every loss is different and how people handle it's different. But I thought this was an interesting part where it is Martha who runs to be with Jesus.

And it sets up this great moment, right? Martha said, lord, if you had been there, my brother would not have died. It's a bold statement. And again, what's behind it is if you had been there, or Lord, I know if you'd have been there, right? What we do know is when Jesus asks, do you understand what I'm saying?

Do you believe this? She said, yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Christ, the son of God who's come into the world. It's that bold confession of faith. And it's really important here because in those confessions coming verses we read next, when Jesus raises Lazarus from the dead, that statement would have made perfect sense after he's done it. But this is before.

This is total faith, what Martha has in Jesus. And when do most people come to faith here?

After they've seen it? After they've opened the tomb, after the stinketh come out, right? And they're like, oh, he's really alive. Jesus is powerful. Now, why not focus again on.

I'm off one. Why not focus again on Martha or Lazarus during Lent? During Martha or Lazarus Lent. As I'm looking at Lent on our walk to the Cross, what really again caught me was keeping our eyes focused on the cross and the empty tomb. And so why Lazarus death is certainly a moment where we're going to see why it was used to kill and why they made the decision.

I want to focus specifically on that death of Jesus and why he went to the cross. Okay, so let's. Let's jump into that. Raising Lazarus from the dead changed everything.

It's really a dark turn in our story. When we get to verse 45, we see this. Yeah, some of the Jews came to believe in him, and some ran to the Pharisees, not with good intentions or maybe to try to tell the Pharisees, hey, you've been telling us the coming of Jesus is going to be happening. I think it's here. You're missing it.

Regardless of the reason, we see the concern and the jealousy. And I know I wrote up here why the Pharisees decided to kill Jesus. You know, the Pharisees, they came to them, but of course they go to the chief priests. It's Caiaphas. He's part of the Sadducees and has come to the Sanhedrin.

And they're going to have this meeting, the meeting of the minds. If you grew up in the formative years of Andrew Lloyd Webber, you hear it perfectly right? That deep, dark voice. We have to kill him. And again, this is one of those where, as we're putting in perspective, I wanted to look at the different philosophies.

I looked at John 11 and I thought about what Caiaphas said. And it took me back to Acts 5. I'm always love Acts 5. Peter is broken out of prison after being told he was charged with speaking out for Jesus. They break him out.

He goes right back to the temple. They send him back to the Sanhedrin, and they want to kill him. And it's Gamalo who says, look, if this is of God, there's nothing we can do. But if it's not, it's going to go away like all the rest. Just let him go.

And they flogged him. And of course, he left rejoicing of being worthy of being flogged in the name of the Lord. If only we could all say that, right? But it's this idea of this political murder versus this retribution, this punishment for what they wanted to do.

Very different philosophies. And yet it shows again the thought process of why they wanted Jesus dead. He is taking everybody away from us, right? And of course, Caiaphas justifies Jesus murder, right? For the sake of the nation, he can't take us all down.

We're gonna kill this one man.

I want to put in perspective for all of you right now. Would you kill someone for God?

Would you? Would you kill somebody for God if God told me right, Would we kill somebody for God? The fact is, Caiaphas Thinks what he is doing is what's best for the nation and for God. Right. Goes back to the whole idea we're on a mission from God.

We do whatever we want that we think is best.

It really made me think about how we have to be careful sometimes what we are doing, how prayer and trusting in the Lord and allowing him to speak. Because in Caiaphas mind, this was a good thing. And yet we see it as what it is. So why did the religious leaders kill Jesus? Let's just break this down real quick.

Number one, penalty for our sins, right? No. We know what Romans 6:23 says. For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

We're sinners. It's so weird to be standing up here in a baptism with such a cute little guy like Ash and say he's a sinner. We're born with that original sin. There's only one way we can overcome that sin and join Jesus. Right?

There's the penalty. Jesus was that perfect sacrifice. He did what we cannot do.

I think one of the things about growing up in a Lutheran school and hearing the Reformation story every year is that reminder how Luther punished himself, beat himself, starved himself, trying to be good enough until he read where Scripture says, not about you, it's about what Jesus did. Jesus was a perfect sacrifice. It's God's unconditional love. You know, I love John 3:16, but again 17. For God did not send his Son to the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.

Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already because he's not believed. In the name God, Son of God. It's that powerful thing. And if you took an outline today, please write number four. I don't know why I left this off.

Number four is real simple. It was the plan all along. Check the Old Testament. Jesus was going to die. It's throughout Scripture.

It's what we've been talking about in Lent. It's all through the Psalms, Isaiah, throughout. He was going to be born. He was going to live perfect life. He was going to die.

He was going to be raised again. That was the plan. So it takes us through the whole Lenten purpose here. We need to consider the price for Jesus sacrifice, what he did for us.

So let's take a quick look at this. Number one for Jesus, the physical beating and death.

We've seen pictures. You might have watched movies. We don't like to talk about it. The whole idea of the crown of thorns and the beatings and the nails.

I don't know at what point it was explained to me about the nails to hold them there. But it's usually death by asphyxiation. You were going to die because you couldn't catch your breath. Because to catch your breath you had to lift yourself up to open up your lungs and take a breath. And.

And you're doing that with your hands and feet, which have spikes in them. That physical beating.

And that wasn't enough, of course. It's the emotional humiliation and abandonment. Everybody he knows. Leaving Peter denying it. The insults again.

The way God uses the two thieves on the cross. The one who's hanging on a cross, dying, mocking him. Really, I don't think we put very much into that first one. The idea of the emotional toll of what he did being abandoned. I want us to look out for two sets of people.

Obviously, the first one is the non believers.

The price of Jesus sacrifice to non believers is worthless because they don't get it. I heard an argument recently on social media. This guy says, well, look, I don't believe in Jesus or God, but I'm a good person. I help everybody out. I love everybody.

I don't know why I shouldn't get to go to heaven.

If you don't believe in Jesus, why do you believe in heaven? Right? I thought about that. Why, How. How does he know of heaven and want to get into it?

If you don't believe in Jesus, Jesus home. This is where God. I mean, that's where God reigns.

It kind of threw me a little bit. If you have a desire to be in heaven, you should probably know whose house it is. I mean, if we wanted to go into somebody's house, we better know whose it is or we're going to get arrested. That's true for heaven. If we want to go to heaven, we desire to be in heaven.

Let's talk to the owner. He's going to let you in. He loves you. He made you. It was that argument.

I thought about it with the dry bones and Pastor Rick and you were in a zone today. Pastor Rick. I thought I was going to have to tackle you there. That dry bones, as you're talking about, that dry bones, that breath of God. The dry bones could be fully brought back, but without the breath of God are worthless.

There's some wonderful people out there I love dearly who are refusing to understand whose they are and why they're here. They're living a breathless life without God.

To us it's priceless. Anything we can never afford that is given to us is pretty priceless, right? I mean, think about things you might have received from family or friends or something. You got that, oh my goodness, how much we want to take care of it because we could never afford it. And it's so nice.

And what's the price of what Jesus did? It's this walk during Lent that I think sometimes we take too lightly.

Pastor Rick also read in Romans 8, when we live according to the Spirit, we set our mind on things of the Spirit. What a great day to have that verse. As we bring ask Joseph to the waters of baptism. Of course, later baby Luka, as we come to waters baptism, that that Spirit comes upon them, the Holy Spirit. That is so.

May we always think of that cost. Not the cost that we paid because we didn't pay anything, but the cost that was really there, the cost that was paid for us.

I've heard way too much that sometimes people don't think as much about faith and belief in Jesus and going to heaven because they don't have to do anything for it. I mean, I'll make something up. Feel free. I'll be glad to tell you what you could do. It just isn't biblical or true.

Jesus did is that easy. We believe in him. As we prepare for Holy Week, it is important for us to understand the cost, the price that was paid for our forgiveness of sins and eternal life. For believers and non believers alike, it is a priceless gift.

May we all, may we help all of God's creation cherish this priceless gift God gave to everyone. Now, Wednesday, we're going to continue this journey with our family here in Psalm chapter 30, focusing on restoration and joy as we get closer to Holy Week. To God be the glory. Amen.