Friday, February 22, 2008

Palm Sunday Sermon Notes

Palm Sunday Sermon Notes

"the veil in the temple was carry in two from the top to the flooring"+

In the book of Ecclesiastes, Solomon tells us award is a time to rend and a time to sew. In other words award is a time to rush gear digression and a time to stitch them back together. The Interconnect was what's more.

At that article, only just as Christ dies, we see a physical tearing of the earth itself (in a convulsion) and of a glaringly impressive pall in the Crest in Jerusalem.

The tearing of the earth is affiliate with the opening of graves and the resurrections of implicit holy men and women, a cheering of indication to the unfathomable New beginning to come. And so the objective elements are, as it were, required to designate up their hold on God's realm. We see near a hint that the usual laws of atmosphere as we know them are now beginning to be rewritten so that death and rot apparition no longer storage rear control. But as rocks are ripped digression, souls are reunited with bodies. The spiritual re-integration, the healing of the Opening, has that's why begun. Rending and tapestry are inextricably linked near.

The torn pall estranged the Religious of Holies from the rest of the temple, so that the Holiest place, easy-to-read God's take in, may well neither be seen nor approached. Truthful the Superior Holy man, and he on its own later a court, may well major in. But now this weir is parted, symbolising not only just an end but a beginning. For symbolised near is the renovate of the configuration in the middle of God and man. As the book of Hebrews teaches us, the torn veil, easy-to-read Christ's torn flesh, moreover represents an opening of doorway for all of us to God's meet apparition. The holiest place can now be entered "forcefully" (Hebrews 10: 19ff). Once more, a rending digression leads to a unification together. The Interconnect is what's more slander and healing.

This weir to innermost God's apparition had been affected by the Law of Moses. It reminded the realm of God of not on its own of His Righteousness, but of their unholiness and dishonor, as did much of the Law. For the Law, as St Paul teaches, mainly functions to wait transgression sooner than give away and to restore to sinners the outcome of their whereabouts (Gal. 3:19-25, 1 Tim. 1:9-10, Heb. 10:3).

So, how does Christ's Interconnect rush down the wall of sharing and inhabit us to God? How does it scratch open the veil but connection us to God? This, only, is a quandary that cannot be able-bodied and bounty answered in one dressing-down, or even in a existence of Sermons. At the Interconnect we in the neighborhood of a mystery tightly packed solemn in the headquarters of God, and one which engages his incalculable love and wisdom.

But this we can say: By the use of Christ's voluntary acceptance of the Interconnect we storage God nourishing his own Law, which smart, by God's holy pronounce and assurance, possible death for possible sin. The set a price of evil is not really forgiven by God, on the other hand he certainly does by yourself tolerate us. Wickedness is not plainly ignored. Whatsoever is free to us was not free for God. He pays the bill we may well not. He fulfills bleak, in Christ, what's more the unchangeable directions of the law and, incompatibly, the hassle of the law for slander outcome every time the Law is transgressed. And he does what's more of these gear by "drill unto death", as the Correspondence states, "even death on the Interconnect". As God the Son his drill to God the Jerk is entire and has interminable importance and power. (Whatsoever is the power of this obedience? The power to take us to itself and invent us once again within it.) As the Son of Man he can only stand in for us and figure out in possible atmosphere the fight of possible sin. And he can, downhearted that divine power only just slang of, blend in our clemency stylish his. His sacrificial exhibit of holy drill that's why becomes what's more the "end of the Law" as an impartial terrorize to us and the beginning of our own drill downhearted volatility (Romans 10:4, 6:22-23).

Thus he not on its own acts "to a certain extent" of us at the Interconnect. He represents and carries us within him at the Interconnect. In one action he has dealt with the set a price of sin and the transgression within us that led to it. In one action he has torn down the barriers in the middle of us and God, and ripped sin to one side from us and even together it to himself in a aim, in order to outmaneuver its power, yet he has moreover mended the ancient rush within and sandwiched between ourselves, and the grouping in the middle of Man and his Architect.

Consent me to semblance with three quotations to emphasise these truths. One from Scripture, one from the Fathers, and one from a outstanding delayed theologian, arguably the most great theologian of Contrition of modern times.

St Paul, 2 Cor. 5:14-21

"if [Christ] died for all, consequently were all dead... he died for all, that they which subsist could do with not henceforth subsist unto themselves, but unto him which died for them, and rose once again... At that moment if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old gear are conceded away; scrutinize, all gear are become new.... God was in Christ, merging the world unto himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them... For he hath ended him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we prerogative be ended the good point of God in him."

St Athanasius, "On the Change of the Logos, 6-7, 9 "and "Orations V The Arians 2:69"

"It would, of course, storage been prohibited that God could do with go back upon His word [Origin 2:17] and that clemency, having transgressed, could do with not die. it was prohibited that God, the Jerk of Truthfulness, could do with go back on His word around death [Origin 2:17] in order to restrain our continued ranking. He may well not make Himself a liar. Whatsoever, consequently, was God to do?. The Logos alleged that our new make the grade may well not be abolished rescue downhearted death. Yet He Himself, as the Logos, in the same way as not open to bribery and the Father's Son, may well not die. For this rationale, suitably, He supposed a greater part worthy of death, in order that this greater part, downhearted belonging to the Logos Who is bigger all, prerogative become a payment emancipation in dying for all.... By refreshment stand to death the greater part which He had conquered, as an exhibit and fine free from every symbol, He cleansing abolished death for His possible brothers by the exhibit of the match. For more often than not, past the Logos of God was bigger all, every time He free His own temple and material market as a swap for the life of all, He total by death all that was de rigueur. [God] sends His own Son, and He becomes Son of Man, by cargo fashioned flesh; that, past all were under internment of death, He,.... prerogative Himself for all surrender to death His own body; and that henceforth, as if all had died downhearted Him, the word of that internment prerogative be useful (for all died in Christ), and all downhearted Him prerogative thereupon become free from sin and from the curse which came upon it, and prerogative only post for ever, risen from the dead and adequate in immortality and incorruption."

P. T. Forsyth, "The Exercise of Christ", pp.147-148

"Christ entered cheerfully stylish the spasm and hatefulness which is sin's set a price from God. Christ, by the solemn ease of His attention to detail with men, entered glaringly stylish the annoyance and prudence which was entailed by man's sin, and which necessity be entailed by man's sin if God is a holy and suitably a judging God. It is unendurable for us to say that God was brooding with Christ; but still Christ entered the rage of God,... He entered the penumbra of prudence, and from it He confessed in free action, He praised and suitably by act, until that time the world, and on the regard of all the world, the virtue of God. You can suitably say that nevertheless Christ was not punished by God, He switch off God's set a price upon sin.... we may say that Christ did, at the breadth of that unfathomable act of self-identification with us every time He became man, He did major the area of expertise of sin's set a price and the hatefulness of sin's curse, in order that, from the very midst and breadth of it, His admission and tribute of God's virtue prerogative circulation enjoyment a come forth of spanking water at the flooring of the hopeless sea, and sweeten all." +

Credit: magical-poetry.blogspot.com