[Machine transcription]
There is no distinction, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God and are justified
by his grace as a gift to the redemption that is in Christ Jesus. You may be seated.
In the name of Jesus, amen.
Dear Saints of God, the Reformation, which was a debate about the grace of God and God’s gift
of repentance for 504 years ago and carried on since then, was carried forth not only
in conversation and printing but also in music and in art.
That hymn that we sang, Salvation Unto Us Has Come, the great ballad of salvation by
Paul Spiratus, was one of the hymns that was published in the first Lutheran hymnal.
It had eight hymns in it, four by Luther, two by Paul Spiratus, two from some other
guys, and that ballad carried forth this idea. By⦠by works of ours, can we do nothing
at all? Soon⦠we were lost without⦠without the Lord’s grace and mercy coming to us.
And the other way the gospel was⦠was going forth into all the world was through art.
I want to preach. I’ve never done this before. I want to preach on a painting, and that painting
is in your bulletin. It’s right in the middle of the bulletin, and I want⦠I want you
to look at it while we talk about it today because this painting encapsulates the, the
argument or the theology of the Reformation perhaps better than anything else. It’s called
The Allegory of Law and Gospel by, by Lucas Cronach the Elder. I want to decode it for
you because the whole thing is like a riddle.
Let me take you to the most obscure part of the painting first. If you look right in the
center, at the very back, behind the tree, you see a mountain in shadow. It’s kind of
a blue mountain. It, in fact, is a white mountain. It took me about three and a half years to
figure out what that was. Mount Sinai, that was my best guess, Mount Sinai or maybe Calvary
or maybe Mount Horeb or one of the other mountains of the Bible. No, wrong. Here’s a hint to
this mountain. The word white mountain in German sounds like this, Wittenberg. And this
was how Cranach would sign his paintings. He’d put in the background a white mountain
saying that this came from Wittenberg. Cranach was not only the famous painter at the time
of the Reformation, but he was in fact the mayor of the town of Wittenberg and a good
friend of Luther’s. So almost all of the paintings from the time of the Reformation
have that signature from Lucas Cronach. But if you come straight forward from that mountain,
you’ll see a tree dividing the picture in half. And you’ll notice that on the top left,
there is no leaves on the tree at all, but on the top right, it’s flourishing with leaves.
This is really a key to what’s going on in the picture.
The left side of the picture is life under the law and the law alone, while the right
side of the picture is the life that comes to us from the Gospel.
So we see, looking to the left, all the way on the upper left-hand corner, Adam and Eve
in the garden.
The Lord put that tree there in the garden, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil,
so that Adam and Eve could go to that tree and worship God, that they could believe by
faith the word that He spoke, that eating it you will surely die.
But instead of receiving that word by faith, they grab a hold of that which is forbidden,
they fell into sin, they ate the forbidden fruit, and they plunged themselves and all
of creation and you and I into the terror of sin and death. This fall affects us all.
We have inherited from Adam and Eve this sinful nature that is bent towards death and we can’t
do anything to save ourselves from it. If you look just to the left of the tree, you’ll
see a crowd there, a man dressed in blue holding two tablets. That’s Moses with the law, surrounded
by the Pharisees, the preachers of the law. But just as Paul taught us in the epistle
lesson from Romans chapter 3, through the law no flesh can be justified. You cannot
be saved through the law. You cannot be delivered through the law because you cannot keep the
law, all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.
That’s you, that’s me, that’s everyone born of Adam in all of history, and so the
result of the law is what you see in the middle of the page on the left, this skeleton, death,
and this demon, the devil and sin, driving this soul into the flames of condemnation.
And there Jesus sits above it, on the globe, coming to judge the living and the dead.
If you wanted a picture of the doctrine preached in the church at the time of the Reformation,
you could just take this left side of the painting.
Christ, sitting on the throne, coming in fearful judgment, to condemn and to cast you away.
And no matter how hard you try, and try we do, but no matter how hard we try, we can
do nothing to escape it.
The law reveals the depth of sin and makes us conscience stricken.
It drives us into hell on earth until it sends us to hell afterwards because none is able
to achieve the holiness that God requires to stand before Him on the judgment day.
Dear friends, the Lord has a word of law to speak to us.
He wants us to read the Ten Commandments and take them seriously.
He wants us to know how we ought to love our neighbor and he wants us to know that we have
failed to love our neighbor so that we turn the page, so that we look at what’s on the
other side of the tree, so that we know that we despair of ourselves but we do not despair
of God.
So let’s see where the tree grows.
You see a little village in the background of the painting, kind of right underneath
the leaves of the tree on the right side, but the upper left-hand corner, it’s a little
hard to make out, but that is the children of Israel wandering in the wilderness.
And I know that because you can see some of them laying on the ground, having been bitten
by the snakes, but there in the middle of the camp is a staff lifted up with a bronze
serpent hanging on it.
It’s very small, but it’s there, and this is because Jesus preaches to Nicodemus, just
like Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness.
Jesus, so must the Son of Man be lifted up so that all who believe in Him will not perish.”
Above the wandering Israelites, you see the opening of heaven and a little baby flying
out of heaven.
That’s Jesus.
And look at this.
I think it’s one of the best parts of the painting.
He brings a little baby cross with him, and he’s flying to Mary who’s standing on top
of the hill over on the top on the right.
This is Cronach’s picturing the incarnation, how Jesus for us men and for our salvation
came down from heaven, was incarnate of the Virgin Mary, or was incarnate by the Holy
Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary, but that Jesus came not to be⦠to live all that this
earth can offer, not to rejoice in all the wealth of the world.
He cameâ¦
Look, He’s the little baby with a cross.
He came to suffer and die.
That’s why he has a body, so that he would have something to nail to the cross.
It’s why he has blood, so that he would have something to spill.
You see between Jesus and Mary, just under Jesus’ left arm on the cross, you see another
little figure in heaven.
That’s the angel there preaching to the shepherds who are watching over their fields,
you see?
The Gloria in Excelsis, and there you have Christmas.
Jesus, and then going down and to the left you see in the center of it all, Jesus on
the cross, suffering, dead, for you.
I want you to see at the foot of the cross is the Lamb of God.
This is what John the Baptist preached for us in the most beautiful one-sentence sermon,
behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.
but I want you to contrast the two sides.
Do you see on the left,
there is this beastly, disgusting-looking demon
who’s driving with his stick,
prodding this man into hell.
But there on the right side is the gentle, kind lamb.
This is how Jesus is for you.
This is how Jesus treats you according to the Gospel.
This is Jesus who says, come to me, all you who are weary and heavy laden, and I will
give you rest.
For my yoke is easy, my burden is light.
He is meek and lowly of heart.
A smoldering wick he doesn’t quench.
Jesus isâ¦
Jesus according to His death and resurrection is gentle with us, compassionate, full of
love.
But not so death and the devil.
You see to the right that Jesus is there up out of the grave, and the skeleton and the
demon that are on the left prodding this fella into the flames of hell are now being trodden
under the foot of Jesus.
It’s part of my, maybe my favorite part of the picture.
There’s the devil, or there’s the skeleton with his tongue sticking out as Jesus tramples
on him.
And there’s the demon with the, with the same spear he was using to prod that guy to hell,
and now it’s being stuck down his throat.
Jesus is Lord.
He destroys death.
He destroyed your death.
When he came out of the tomb, he didn’t just come out of the tomb for himself, he came out
the tomb for you and for me.”
He made a way through death to life eternal and then he ascends up into heaven.
You see his feet leaving there up on the upper right hand, surrounded by the angels to go
and sit on the throne and rule and reign all things for your sake, it’s beautiful.
And there’s John the Baptist right in the front preaching to you, you’re the naked guy
with the loincloth, preaching to you, look, there’s Jesus, the Lamb of God who takes
away the sin of the world.
And the most important thing, which is the hardest to see, I’ll admit, is there from
the side of Jesus flows a fountain of blood.
You have to look very closely.
Blood being carried from the side of Jesus by the dove and landing right on the sinner’s
face and heart.
Can you see it?
And the blood being carried from Jesus to you.
This is the theology of the gospel.
This is the theology of the Reformation.
There was a time when Luther was writing, in this essay, it’s called Against the Heavenly
Prophets.
It’s a wonderful thing.
You should steal it from my library and read it.
And he says we have to distinguish between these two things, between the winning of
forgiveness and the delivery of forgiveness.
The forgiveness of sins is won
once for all by the death of Jesus on the cross.
There he was sacrificed in
your place as your substitute,
as the propitiation.
That means the sacrifice that takes
away God’s anger and makes him happy.
The forgiveness of sins was won
by the death of Jesus on the cross,
but it’s distributed not from the cross,
it’s distributed in the word.
The word read,
the Word preached, the Word sung, the Word remembered. It’s distributed in the Word
with the water in holy baptism and the bread and the wine and the body and the
blood and there Jesus gets his victory, his crucifixion, his triumph over death
and the devil. There he gets it to you so that you are clothed in the righteousness
of Christ. You are covered in the blood of the Lamb that washes away all sin. You are
declared righteous and holy in the name of Jesus. You are no longer driven by sin and
death and the devil, you’re set free from these things. You have Jesus and Jesus has
you. And this is the greatest news of all. There is, dear saints, nothing to be afraid
of. In death, Jesus has conquered death. In sin, Jesus forgives your sin. Of the devil,
You know, He’s been triumphed over by His death on the cross.
And this is our confidence and our peace.
Jesus is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.
God be praised, amen.
And the peace of God, which guards your hearts and minds through the blood of Christ, keep
you in His eternal promises to life everlasting. Amen.
