Our Redeemer Lutheran Church
Quincy, IL
Third Lenten Midweek Service
Wednesday, February 20, 2008 at 12 N and 7 p.m.
Saint James Lutheran Church
Quincy, IL
Fourth Lenten Midweek Service
Wednesday, February 27, 2008 at 12:10 and 7:00 p.m.
Rev. Larry D. Troxel
“The Gospel According to Jesus’ Enemies:
The Gospel According to the Crowd”
(Matthew 27:24–25)
In Jesus’ name. Amen.
The Gospel of our Savior, Christ Jesus, is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes.1
Even when the Gospel is spoken by the most wicked person, the power is in the Gospel, not in the person.
So it is that the words spoken by the very enemies of Jesus were spoken in such a way
that God the Holy Spirit uses them to bring the Gospel into our lives still today.
When Jesus was turned over by the religious leaders to the Roman governor, Pontius Pilate,
a crowd gathered to see what the outcome would be. Incited by the words and the hatred
which the religious leaders openly displayed against Jesus, the crowd joined in,
demanding that Jesus be crucified. Repeatedly Pilate declared that he found Jesus
innocent of all charges.2 But the crowd had been so aroused
by their religious leaders that they were thirsty for blood. They willingly repeated anything that the religious leaders shouted.
The scene is awesome, both in its horror and in its Gospel proclamation. “So when Pilate
saw that he was gaining nothing, but rather that a riot was beginning, he took water and washed his hands
before the crowd, saying, ‘I am innocent of this Man's blood; see to it yourselves.’
“And all the people answered, ‘His blood be on us and on our children!’ ”3
Human blood innocently shed is a serious matter that brings serious consequences. When Cain committed the first murder,
the murder of his own brother Abel, God confronted Cain with his sin, saying, “What have you done? The voice of your
brother's blood is crying to Me from the ground. And now you are cursed from the ground, which has opened its mouth to receive
your brother's blood from your hand. When you work the ground, it shall no longer yield to you its strength. You shall be a fugitive
and a wanderer on the earth.”4 And still today we sing the Lenten hymn which says,
“Abel’s blood for vengeance pleaded to the skies; …”5
Still today the blood of murder victims, aborted babies, high school and university students who have been gunned down
in their classrooms and dormitories, the elderly and the chronically ill who have been euthanized, victims of drunken drivers,
and all others whose blood has been shed unjustly, their blood cries out for divine justice. For God said, “Whoever
sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed, for God made man in His own image.”6
But as serious as the shedding of innocent blood is, consider just how much more serious is the shedding
of the blood of Christ Jesus. Holy Scripture says, “Anyone who has set aside the law of Moses dies without mercy
on the evidence of two or three witnesses. How much worse punishment, do you think, will be deserved by the one
who has spurned the Son of God, and has profaned the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified, and has
outraged the Spirit of grace? For we know Him who said, ‘Vengeance is Mine; I will repay.’ And again,
‘The Lord will judge His people.’ It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.”7
I realize that there are people who take the shouts of the crowd to be justification for all the terrible things that people have done
down through the centuries to the Jewish people. Sadly, some so-called Christians have misused the words of Holy Scripture
in an attempt to cover their ungodly prejudices and persecutions with the false appearance of respectability.
What so-called Christians have done to the Jews down through the centuries certainly has been just the opposite of any Gospel-centered witness.
The truth is that the words which the crowd shouted apply to every human being, not merely to the Jewish race or nation.
For it was the sin of every human being that led to the shedding of Jesus’ blood. The great Lutheran hymn writer of the seventeenth century,
Paul Gerhardt, gave voice to this great truth in these words from his well-known Lenten hymn:
Who was it, Lord, that bruised You?
Who has so sore abused You
and caused You all Your woe?
We all must make confession
of sin and dire transgression
while You no ways of evil know.
I caused Your grief and sighing
by evils multiplying
as countless as the sands.
I caused the woes unnumbered
with which Your soul is cumbered,
Your sorrows raised by wicked hands.8
The words of the crowd first of all are a harsh proclamation of the Law. After all, just think how difficult it is to remove
a blood stain from any fabric. No matter what cleaning agent you use, no matter what the television commercials claim,
removing a blood stain is very difficult. But as difficult as it may be to remove a blood stain, think how even more difficult it is
to remove the stain of sin. Nothing clings or sticks so frightfully close to us sinners as do sin, guilt, and the justly deserved
punishment that divine justice demands.
The only thing that removes sin and guilt and satisfies divine justice is the shedding of blood. Holy Scripture makes this fact very clear.
Holy Scripture says, “Under the law almost everything is purified with blood,
and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins.”9 Notice that no exceptions are allowed.
“Without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins.” Holy Scripture is even more specific,
and the Law is even more damning. It says, “The soul who sins shall die.”10
The person who thinks that the crowd who shouted, “His blood be on us and on our children,” made only the Jews
responsible for Jesus’ death clearly has not taken seriously what Holy Scripture declares about all of us.
Our own sins of thought, word, and deed — the sins we have committed by doing what is forbidden and the sins
we have committed by failing to do perfectly everything that God’s Law demands of us — all of our sins make
each and every one of us responsible for the shedding of Jesus’ blood. His blood is on us and on our children and grandchildren.
In a more wonderful sense, the words which the crowd shouted ring out as the most pure, most wonderful Gospel. The blood of
Jesus is on us. The Good News is that “the blood of Jesus His Son cleanses us from all sin.”11
“He is the propitiation” — the atoning sacrifice — “for our sins, and not for ours only
but also for the sins of the whole world.”12
>The cleansing power of Jesus’ blood was applied to us in Holy Baptism. Holy Scripture says, “You were washed,
you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.”13
Very properly a Gospel hymn asks the question and then answers it: “What can wash my sins away?
Nothing but the blood of Jesus.”14 And Scripture says, “As many of you
as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ.”15 Thank God that the blood of Jesus is on us!
His blood makes us members of a much greater and more glorious crowd, “a great multitude that no one could number,
from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb,
clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands, and crying out with a loud voice,
‘Salvation belongs to our God
who sits on the throne,
and to the Lamb!’ ”16
How different is this crowd from the one which gathered before the Roman governor. How different are the words that are spoken.
And yet, how central is the mention of Jesus’ blood. For the glorious crowd of which we are members “are the ones
coming out of the great tribulation. They have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.”17
The crowd that stood before the Roman governor demanded that Jesus’ blood be shed. They cried out for His crucifixion.
Little did they realize the life-saving and eternal benefit the granting of their demands would accomplish. They wanted only the worst for Jesus.
The granting of their demands resulted in only the best for every sinner who ever has lived or ever will live. Now we earnestly pray
their very words but with a far more wonderful meaning. Yes, let the blood of Jesus always be on us and on our children and on our grandchildren.
Let the great salvation Jesus has accomplished for us and for all people always be applied to us and belong to us.
And let this wonderful Gospel be proclaimed to every person, that with us they may believe that “the blood of Jesus
His Son cleanses us from all sin.” Amen.
1. Romans 1:16
2. Luke 23:4; Luke 23:14–15; John 18:38; Matthew 27:23; John 19:4; John 19:6; John 19:12; Matthew 27:24
3. Matthew 27:24–25
4. Genesis 4:10–12
5. “Glory Be to Jesus,” Italian hymn translated by Edward Caswall, as found in Lutheran Service Book
(Saint Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 2006), hymn #433, verse 4 – public domain.
6. Genesis 9:6
7. Hebrews 10:28–31
8. Paul Gerhardt, “Upon the Cross Extended,” translated by John Kelly, as found in Lutheran Service Book
(Saint Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 2006), hymn #453, verses 3 And 4 – public domain
9. Hebrews 9:22
10. Ezekiel 18:4
11. 1 John 1:7
12. 1 John 2:2
13. 1 Corinthians 6:11
14. Robert Lowery, “Nothing But the Blood of Jesus” – public domain
15. Galatians 3:27
16. Revelation 7:9–10
17. Revelation 7:14
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