Text: Matthew 27:33
They came to a place called Golgotha, which means, “The place of the skull.”
Sermon
Grace to you and peace from him who is, who was, and who is coming, Amen. (Revelation 1:4)
Do any of you have to start working on your garden soon? Kids, do you have to put on your gloves and old clothes, and go out to the garden with your parents or grandparents, start pulling weeds, picking up branches and leaves, and digging dirt?
That’s no fun. That’s hard work,
I want you to imagine a very difficult garden. It’s dark, overrun, weedy, full of leaves, branches, and thistles. It was once a beautiful place. But it is sad, decrepit, and dismal.
That’s really no fun. That’s a tremendous amount of work.
Another place that became overgrown with death and overcome with darkness was Golgotha. It was also called The Place of the Skull. How does a place get a name as scary and foreboding as Place of the Skull?
Some suggest Golgotha’s hill looked like the face of a skull from a distance. Others suggest it received that name because it became a gruesome site where crucifixions were carried out.
However it got its name, it was a place where death happened.
But death isn’t limited to just one place. We are constantly walking through the valley of the shadow of death (Psalm 23). We could call this whole world Golgotha.
Have any of you been in the hospital? It’s kind of scary. Have any of you visited children in the hospital? It’s very sad.
But what’s even sadder is the death of a child. The parents are devastated. The brothers and sisters don’t know what to do. The friends don’t know how to react. Everyone is in shock.
It’s OK for us not to want to die. Death is creepy. That’s why vampires, zombies, and ghosts, are such scary monsters. They all remind us of death.
But vampires, zombies, and ghosts aren’t real. Death, though, is very real.
We wouldn’t be so bothered by death if death was natural. But death isn’t natural. We were not created to die. We were created to live. Death is one of the curses God placed on Adam after eating the forbidden fruit. “For dust you are and to dust you will return” (Genesis 3:19).
You know death is not natural. It’s sad and scary when you’re at the hospital, the hospice center, and the funeral home. There is discomfort and dismay. You see people hugging and crying. Even if you’re a child you know, “This isn’t right. Something is very wrong here.”
Death doesn’t just remind us that something is wrong here. It reminds us there’s something wrong between us and God. Otherwise, why would God let his people die? Why would God allow all the world to become like Golgotha, a place of death?
Death is God’s curse on sin. Death is our punishment. It is punishment like how you might be grounded or have your phone taken away or even spanked. That’s what the Bible means when it says, “The wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23). More than anything else on earth, death reminds us how repulsive, how horrifying, how forsaken sin and sinners are to God.
Death is also a reminder of how ticked God is over our sin. Why else would he let the crown of his creation die?
As bad and horrifying and despairing as death is, it’s only a foretaste, a sampling, of the horror and despair and terror that awaits sinners after death – the judgment of hell.
Many people today like to believe that Jesus and the Bible are all about love, acceptance, and tolerance. Certainly, Jesus is loving. But he doesn’t love evil. He doesn’t accept our sin. He doesn’t tolerate our rebellion.
People who believe this way are either purposely or ignorantly ignoring the numerous times Jesus speaks of souls being cast into the outer darkness where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Hell is the greatest terror because it is the one place in the universe absent of God’s presence and God’s love.
Hell is the reason why the dark and foreboding place of the skull is so important. On that dark Friday on Golgotha’s hill, we see Jesus on a cross between two criminals. He is nailed to a cross. His back is torn apart by scourging. A crown of thorns is pushed into his brow.
We see Jesus suffering. In agony. Dying. He is suffering … not for his sins but for ours. He is in agony … not just from the nails, crown, and scourging, but because he is enduring his Father’s anger over our sins. Even though he is God and cannot die, he is dying. As our WLS students sang today, “God was there on Calvary, God the Father’s only Son, dying that this world might live, there on Calvary” CW: 433).
This man who looked beaten, bruised, and abandoned was really God on Golgotha. The man who appeared to be a criminal like the other two was really Christ the King. The man who appeared to be dying was really the Lord of Life who was allowing himself to die to defeat death.
Death thought it was winning its greatest Victim – the Author of Life! But the Victim was really the Victor! God’s Son was too big and powerful for death to hold him more than three days. He burst forth from death’s belly and then turned around and swallowed death itself. The Bible says, “Death has been swallowed up in victory” (1 Corinthians 15:54).
This means that when you are sick in the hospital, you can be sad. But you don’t need to be afraid. You don’t need to be afraid of dying. If God lets you die, you get to go to heaven a little sooner than you expected.
If your friend or sibling dies, you can cry. You’ll miss them. But that’s why it’s so important that you keep sharing your Savior Jesus with them. Then your crying can be replaced with rejoicing because you’ll see your Christian friends and siblings in heaven when you die.
Jesus promises, “He who believes in me will live, even though he dies; and whoever lives and believes in me will never die” (John 11:25,26). Jesus’ death on Golgotha and his resurrection from the grave make death not so scary or terrifying. The death of believers is actually comforting. The Bible verse I often share with Christians when a fellow Christian dies, is Psalm 116:15: “Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints.”
St. Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians that the true sting of death is our sin. Human mortality is not beautiful. It is part of the divine curse on human evil. We do well to respect it and understand it.
But we do not have to fear it. The reason for that confidence is that our divine Savior Jesus Christ took on our humanity to experience fully every aspect of human life, including the experience of dying. He already went through the process of watching his life ebb away.
By bearing our death for us in that way, he took all the sting out of it. “Surely he took up our infirmities and carried our sorrows. … He was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed” (Isaiah 53:4,5).
This means that dying is not the beginning of the end of everything; it is the beginning of the beginning of everything. It doesn’t signify the loss of everything but rather the gaining of everything. Death is the beginning of life.
Do you know this prayer: “Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep. If I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take”?
Parents and grandparents, have you haver thought about this prayer we teach our children and grandchildren? We teach them to pray that they might die in their sleep! Isn’t that creepy? No, it’s comforting. Isn’t that terrifying? No, it’s terrific.
This is a wonderful prayer to teach our children and grandchildren. It’s a wonderful prayer to pray if you are a parent or grandparent. This is the calm, quiet prayer of a child of God. Because Jesus endured the terror of the cross, now death is nothing more than sleep for us and our children.
Jesus died and rose to life so we know when we die we will live with him.
This whole world is Golgotha. While we are playing on the playground, driving on the freeway, sitting at our desk at work or school, we are walking through the valley of the shadow of death. If we find our child in a bed in a hospital, or our parents on life support in hospice care, or our friends in a casket in a funeral home, we are walking through the valley of the shadow of death. Death is all around us. Golgotha is here. It’s the Place of the Skull. It can be a dark, dreary, overgrown garden.
This world is dark and overrun. It was once a beautiful place. But it is often sad, decrepit, and dismal.
But Jesus changes all that! Jesus was there on Golgotha’s cross. He removes the heavy horror that a name like Golgotha, The Place of the Skull, gives us. On the third day from now, we will see how he plows death under, overturning Golgotha’s gloom into a garden of glory. Darkness on Friday afternoon changes to glory on Sunday morning. Death is planted on Golgotha so that life bursts forth from the grave. We just need to wait and look forward to it. Amen.
And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Amen. (Philippians 4:7)