A killing rampage – when I say those words we all perhaps, think of the Virginia Tech horrors of this past week. It’s a tragedy of national proportions. There has never been anything like this reported in our press before. The unfolding of what took place, and the sick and sad things that happened to bring this about cause us all to shake our heads in wonder, sorrow and outrage.
But that is not the only killing rampage we need to talk about this morning. There is another one, a killing rampage… that was stopped. It was stopped before it happened, the way we all wish this one had been. You know what’s often talked about in things similar to this, like natural disasters? Where was God in all this? Why didn’t He do something about it?
Those thoughts and questions are natural to be asked, and when such questions are used by non-believers to accuse God, think about the basic premise behind such questions for a moment. The basic thought behind such a question is this, that I wouldn’t have allowed such a thing. This thinking goes something like, "I’m not God but even I wouldn’t have allowed such a thing to happen. I don’t have His love and wisdom or power and patience. But if I did, at least I would have stopped it."
If you think about it, that’s behind the question of ‘where was God?’ But such thinking doesn’t take into account God’s knowledge, or His holiness and justice. We can’t see what He sees. We don’t know what He knows. For us to assume we would’ve done something different is to assume we have all the facts / which / we / don’t. We don’t have that knowledge precisely because we / are / not // God.
Such talk may also lead to the question, ‘Why wasn’t God there?’ Well, we Christians know that He was there; He knew each of the victims… and even the shooter. What we know now is that there was more ammunition… and that went unused, we know that many escaped by various means and methods. What was terrible and tragic, could’ve been of an even greater scale and proportion. But it wasn’t.
We Christians know that God was there. In His word He tells us that not even a sparrow falls to earth without His knowing about it. Understanding that, we know that He did know what was going on. And, in His holiness and justice which, we can’t possibly judge since, because of our sinfulness, we are neither holy or just; and in His knowledge and might, which we can’t comprehend since His ways are not our ways and His thoughts are not our thoughts, in all of that, this was allowed to happen.
And God knows more intimately than we do the horror, the fear and the pain of such events. After all we’ve just come through Lent and holy week. We’ve seen the unjust trials and the undeserved beating and crucifixion of Jesus Christ. So God knows and understands far greater than we do, what went on and again, for reasons we can’t fathom, it was allowed to happen. People can choose to do evil, just as Pharaoh did, as Herod did and as Pilate did.
But let’s turn from this event now and look at the other killing rampage that we started talking about that was stopped. Look at the reading today out of the book of Acts. And look specifically at verse 1. There it says that Saul was what doing what? That’s right breathing out murderous threats. Breathing out murderous threats. Saul had a plan to go and capture the followers of the Way. That is, those who followed the Way of Christ, in other words Christians. Saul had a plan to go and ultimately murder them.
After all if you look back to chapter 8 of Acts, you see that Saul sanctioned the murder of Stephen. And in doing this, Saul made of Stephen, the first Christian martyr – the first person to die specifically because of being a follower of the Way of Christ. Saul was the one whose murdering rampage against Christians was stopped. And how was it stopped?
Well, looking again at the lesson from Acts we see that God used quite a variety of events, things and people to do this. First, Christ appeared to Saul on the road and blinded him. Then he was lead by the hand of others into Damascus and there Saul fasted for three days. Then without Saul’s knowledge God went to a follower of the Way called Ananias and convinced him to go and heal Saul. Like we said, God used a variety of things to bring about Saul’s conversion. His conversion was from one who breathed out murderous threats toward the followers of the way, to becoming one who breathed out Jesus Christ as The Way, and the truth and the life.
Look at verse 20; what does it say there... that at once Saul began to preach that Jesus is the Son of God. Saul, it says in verse 22 went on to prove that Jesus is the Christ that is the chosen one of God.
Saul came to realize what the way of Jesus Christ meant. Saul, by the power of the Holy Spirit was converted from a persecutor of the way, to a follower of the way. Saul came to understand that in Jesus and in Jesus’ blood alone; Saul’s sin was Covered, Cleansed and Cured.
Saul learned what we have come to know also, that we are covered by the blood of Christ to hide our sins from the eyes of God; we are cleansed by the blood of Christ that washes away the guilt of our sins so we may stand before God; and we have the promise that in Christ’s presence we will be cured of sin forever. This is what Saul, later Paul, came to understand. After all Saul knew the Old Testament well, he was a Pharisee and a brilliant one. And he understood the implications of what it meant for Jesus to be the Christ and to give His life for the world.
He knew and, through his writings along with the others of the New Testament, we have gained an understanding of what it means for Christ’s blood to be shed for us. We’re told in Paul’s first letter to the Corinthian church in chapter 15, that we will be fully changed; in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye. Our cure will come when we enter into the presence of Christ. When that happens, we are told that then, we will be changed. That means we will be something then that we are not… now.
Here and now we have sin. We say in our confession, ‘We are by nature sinful and unclean…’ and because of that, it’s only the covering of Christ’s blood that hides our sins. And that blood-covering, cleanses our consciences’ clean by its righteousness. The blood of Christ grants us Jesus’ righteousness by grace through faith alone. That’s what God tells us through Paul’s letter that he wrote to the Romans.
So, we do still have sin in us and sin will be what gets changed in us when we see Christ face to face. In 1 John 3 we’re told that ‘what we will be has not yet been made known, but that when He appears we shall be like Him for we shall see Him as He is’. Taken together these things tell us that we will be different then than we are now; then we will be cured of sin. Then, sin will no longer have any power or presence in our life. For now though, we remain covered and cleansed… all of the by the blood of Jesus.
Let me show you and idea of what I mean – (take off robe, stole and cross and show jail suit underneath.) This is what we all wish the Virginia Tech shooter could be wearing – prison garb so that justice could be done. Prison garb identifies a person as being judged guilty. Prison garb is like our sin. Our sin identifies us as guilty of breaking God's law of violating His justice. Like this jail outfit, sin is what marks us as guilty of breaking God’s law.
And just like this robe covers this prison garb, so also the blood of Christ covers our sin from the eyes of God. In the covering and cleansing blood of Jesus, God identifies us with Christ and not with our sin. God put Jesus to death on the cross to bear our guilt, our punishment and our shame. In doing that God used the cross, He used that wood and those nails and that spear in Christ’s side to create the river of blood that is now our covering.
Saul began teaching this truth from the time of his conversion. This was what he knew to be true of Jesus because He is the Christ of God. Saul knew that the blood of Jesus cleanses and covers the stain and guilt of sin.
Right now, and throughout our lives, (putting back on the robe etc.) our sins are covered by the blood of Jesus. That doesn’t mean we don’t sin, it does mean that Jesus’ blood hides our sin from the eyes of God. But we’ve been told, by this same man who was breathing murder against the Christians, we’ve been told that when we see Jesus face to face we shall be changed, we shall then have the cure for sin. And sin will no longer be what identifies us any more.
Until then, we are the way we are, but we live in and we live by the promise that our sinful selves have been covered in the blood of Christ and that we shall indeed be changed when He returns to take us with Him home to heaven. Then we shall be different. Then the binding of sin will be forever loosed / and we will be free / and we will be cured.
Right now we have God's promise of that change, of that loosing, to trust in. Then, when we see Jesus, we shall have that reality. We will live the cure.
But as for our days on earth, we live covered by the blood of Jesus. Hebrews 10:22 tells us that we have had our hearts sprinkled clean from a guilty conscience and that the water of baptism on our body has delivered this promise to us.
Because of Christ’s Easter resurrection from the grave, we can live life fully and freely on earth in the sight of God because our sin is covered, just as this robe covers me. We live and rejoice in the promise of Christ’s blood from the cross that does that.
We live now by the promise of Christ’s covering and cleansing. We will live then in the cure that is ours because… Christ is risen, He is risen indeed. Alleluia. Amen.