"Rescued, Realigned, and Recreated"

On Palm Sunday, we looked at Jesus' journey to the cross. We see the final leg of this journey in Mark 15, where Pilate (pressured by the Jews) condemns the innocent (Jesus) and grants freedom to the guilty (Barabbas), a picture-image of the freedom granted to each of us through the judgment Jesus suffered on the cross. And when we take in a larger frame of the biblical story, we see that Jesus' journey doesn't begin when he enters Jerusalem during his final week, but instead reaches back to the Old Testament and begins in places such as Exodus 12 and Psalm 22. In Exodus 12, God is actively at work delivering Israel from Egyptian slavery by sending an angel of death over the land. To escape this judgment, God instructs each family in Israel to slaughter an unblemished, innocent lamb at twilight and put its blood on the doorposts and lintel of their houses. The blood of the lamb would allow Israel to live when the angel of death passed over the land. When Jesus hung on the cross and died at twilight Israel was, that very same week, slaying their Passover lambs in celebration of Exodus 12. Paul noticed the parallels and wrote, "Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed" (1 Cor. 5:7). Before giving his last breath, Jesus quotes Psalm 22:1. This psalm begins in despair ("My God, My God why have you forsaken me?") and ends in hope ("Deliver my soul from the sword [and] . . . all the ends of the earth shall remember and turn to the Lord"). Jesus knowing both the despair and hope of Psalm 22 invites us out of judgment he bore and into hope he brings. Pastor Jon concluded with three thoughts on the crucifixion: (1) Jesus rescues you, (2) realigns your thinking, and (3) recreates you.