Good Friday 2024

0:00 You know, it seems like more and more every year, Good Friday and Easter kind of sneak up on me. I don't see it coming. I think part of that is because there's not a whole lot of societal preparation that the culture around us gives us for Easter. That's not true of other holidays. When we celebrate Christmas as a society, we celebrate Christmas for a solid month once Thanksgiving is over. November the 29th or sometimes even, you know, November the 22nd or November the 15th or whatever it is. The stuff is going up in the grocery stores and you're starting to see commercials on television.

0:35 And they all have Christmas themes. It's even worse for Valentine's Day because there's no holiday after New Year's Eve for six weeks. So the stores fill up with chocolates and red hearts and all the rest for that amount of time. Halloween is the worst because there's really no holiday from, say, Memorial Day all the way through. You get Labor Day, but everyone starts putting Halloween stuff up, it seems like, in mid-August. But that's not true for Easter. It's not true for Good Friday. You might see some Cadbury mini eggs on the store shelves, but that's going to be about it.

1:09 Society just doesn't prepare us. And so Easter, Good Friday, tends to sneak up. And we can find ourselves just kind of flying through it without even stopping to think and realize what really happened on that Friday about 2,000 years ago. You know, I've often wondered about the Roman soldiers who had the duty of crucifying Jesus. They had no idea who he was. They had no idea what his, they knew what his claims were. They knew what Pilate was accusing him of and what the Jews were accusing him of. But they'd crucified would-be messiahs before.

1:39 They'd probably written signs just like the one that Pilate wrote and put on the cross. This is so-and-so who claims to be the king of the Jews. This was a day job for them. So when they walked out that morning and they mocked Jesus and they scourged him and they finally nailed him to the cross and lifted it up to crucify him, They thought this would-be Messiah was not any different from any other would-be Messiah. They thought this Friday was no different than any other. They thought. It turned out, though, that what those Roman soldiers were witnessing and experiencing on that Friday was, in fact, something extraordinary.

2:18 And by the end of it, at least one of those who was there knew and testified that what he had seen was not just another crucifixion that they carried out day after day and week after week. This was something wonderful and terrible and awful and awesome. Well, I hope through the songs that we've sung tonight and the readings that we've read together, I hope you've come again to realize the magnitude of what was happening on that Friday afternoon. But just in case you haven't, I want to take a few minutes to point out a few things, most of them from the last reading that we've done in Matthew, Just a few things that if you think about them, if you meditate on these things just a little bit, might have the power to break through the mundane again and remind us all of just what a wonder, what an awesome and terrible and awful and crushing and beautiful thing it was for the Son of God to die.

3:14 Let me just point out a few things. For one thing, as we read the story there from the Gospel of Matthew, I want you to notice that there was just the way that Jesus acted while he hung on the cross. What he said to those people around him. You know, those Roman soldiers had seen so many crucifixions, they probably couldn't count them on all ten hands and all ten fingers and all ten toes. It was their day job. This is what they did. They crucified people as a living. And they knew how crucified people acted.

3:47 You got nailed to a Roman cross. Most of those people spent their last hours either crying or begging for mercy or hurling insults at the soldiers and the people that were watching around the crosses. Or they just hung on the cross groaning in pain. But not Jesus. What Jesus did, the way Jesus acted, was utterly different. I mean, even as he hung there, enduring all the insults of the Jewish rulers, the taunts of the men crucified on either side of him, The cold, calculating, disinterest, even of the Roman soldiers themselves.

4:18 What was different about Jesus' behavior is that he seemed to be moved by love and a concern for the well-being of those who were killing him. Nobody acted like that. Not when you're getting crucified. I mean, think about it. When one of the men, crucified alongside him, seemed to recognize him finally for who he really was, Jesus told him, truly I say to you, today you will be with me in paradise. You realize what an amazing reaction that is?

4:50 The man had been hurling insults at him, even as they were both nailed to the cross. And when the man finally comes to his senses and knows who Jesus is, Jesus' response to him is not, see, I told you so. I knew you'd come to see it. And now we're going to die together. You know, he says, today you're going to be with me in paradise. The soldiers throwing dice at the foot of the cross to divide up his clothing, which wasn't anything unusual. That's what the soldiers did. It was part of their payment. They got to divide up the clothing of the people who were crucified right there at their feet so they could see that the world, you're not going to be in the world anymore and you don't matter.

5:28 So we're going to take every little thing that you own and we're going to divide it up among ourselves to use on ourselves. It was one last mockery. It was one last insult to the man being crucified. When Jesus sees them doing that to him, he looks up into heaven and says, Father, forgive them, for they don't know what they're doing. And amazingly, even as he hung there dying, even as he hung there enduring the insults and the mockery, Jesus was loving and he was saving and he was giving hope to people around him.

6:02 It was the way he acted as he hung dying on the cross. There was also a thing that made it clear that this was an amazing thing that was happening. There was also his endurance of the mockery. The unending mockery that was going on at the foot of the cross. The Romans had started it all some hours earlier during the flogging. Matthew writes about it in the reading that we just did. They dressed Jesus in a strip of purple fabric. They put a reed in his hand to serve as a kind of makeshift mocking scepter.

6:34 And then they took some thorns and they shaped the thorns into a crown and pressed it down on his head so that the thorns went into his scalp and caused him to bleed. And then, thus dressing him like that, they bowed down to him in laughter and cried out, Hail, King of the Jews. Now, obviously, all of that was meant to mock Jesus, but it was kind of even worse than that. It was meant to humiliate and mock the entire nation of the Jews. You Jews think you have a king? You think you have someone that can rule, someone that can compete with the emperor in Rome?

7:05 This is your king. This flogged, beaten, crowned with thorns, loser. That's your king. Even as he hung on the cross too, even though they could barely see the irony of what was going on in their own mockery, Jesus' own people, the Jews joined in in ridiculing him. If you're the son of God, one of them said, come down from the cross. He's the king of the Jews, huh? Said another one, let him come down from the cross and then we'll believe in him.

7:39 Then there was another one, he saved himself, or saved others, but he can't save himself. The ironic thing, of course, about all the mockery is that if you think about each one of those taunts rightly, they were all true in their own way. He did save others. But because he did save others, he could not save himself. He's the king of the Jews, huh? Well, let him come down from the cross, and then we'll believe in him.

8:10 But what the mocker didn't understand is that to be the king of the Jews meant to die in the place of your people. He's the son of God, huh? Let him come down from the cross. But what he didn't understand is that to be the son of God incarnate was to die in the place of your people. Imagine Jesus hearing all that. Imagine Jesus knowing what it meant to be king of the Jews. To know what it meant to be the son of God, dying and fulfilling prophecy, just like the scriptures said. To be saving others and to know that the only way he could do that was by not saving himself.

8:45 And yet he remained silent in the face of all the mockery. And yet it was all ironically true. I love this quote by one old preacher. Listen to what he says about all the mockery, all the insults. He says, when Christ uttered in the judgment hall of Pilate the remarkable words, I am a king, he pronounced a sentiment fraught with unspeakable dignity and power. His enemies might deride his pretensions and express their mockery of his claim by presenting him with a crown of thorns, a reed, and a purple robe, and nailing him to the cross.

9:18 But in the eyes of unfallen intelligences, he was a king. A higher power presided over that derisive ceremony and converted it into a real coronation. That crown of thorns was indeed the diadem of universal empire. That purple robe was the badge of heavenly royalty. That fragile reed was the symbol of unbounded power.

9:54 And that cross, the throne of dominion, which shall never end. You see the point? It was all true. Everything that they said was mockery. It was meant as an insult, and yet in the deepest of ironies, it was all true. And yet through it all, Jesus said nothing in return. He simply endured. There was the way he behaved. There was the mockery that made it all seem extraordinary. And then there was the darkness.

10:26 There was the darkness that engulfed the land. The gospel writers, Matthew, tell us that from the sixth hour until the ninth hour, so that is from about noon until three o'clock in the afternoon, a thick darkness covered Jerusalem. Now people have wondered for years, what was this darkness? Was it an eclipse, maybe? That's not what the gospel writers describe. They don't describe an eclipse. The ancients knew what an eclipse looked like. They'd seen them before. And what happens in an eclipse is not wrapping the world in a thick darkness. On April the 8th, there's going to be an eclipse that traces its path right across Kentucky and right across Indiana.

11:01 And a lot of you are probably going to go to places to see it. And what you're going to see when totality happens is not thick darkness come over the land. It's just a weird kind of light. But that's not what the gospel writers describe. They describe thick darkness that wrapped the land. Luke, in this kind of eerie way, just says, the sun's light failed. What was going on there? Well, that darkness that engulfed the land was deeply symbolic of what was happening actually on the cross as Jesus died.

11:36 See, over and over again in the Bible, darkness is how the judgment of God is described. It's the blackness of death. It's the blackness of the grave. It's the blackness of nothingness. And there on Golgotha, this darkness of judgment enveloped Jesus, the Son of God, the suffering servant of Isaiah. When it lifted, three hours later, Matthew tells us that Jesus cried out in a loud voice, Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani. That's Aramaic. It's extraordinary that Matthew keeps it in Aramaic.

12:09 He doesn't translate it at first into Greek because he wants us to remember every single word. These words are precious. So I'm going to write them down, not translated, but exactly as Jesus said them. Eli, Eli, lema sabaxani. And he tells us what it means. My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? There's a quote from Psalm 22, a song in which King David symbolically suffers in the place of Israel. And then at the end of the psalm, he's finally resurrected in a metaphorical fashion.

12:43 God saves him from the death that he's symbolically experiencing. But what did Jesus mean by it? My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? What did Jesus mean by it? Well, what he meant was that in that moment, under the darkness of judgment, he was himself representing his people by taking in his own soul the punishment that his people deserved, which was to be abandoned and shut out and cast off and banished and forsaken. by God.

13:16 See what was happening is as Jesus hung on the cross all the sin of God's people was placed on Jesus' shoulders. Like arrows fired from heaven his soul was filled up with the sins of his people and he died for them in their place as their king and their champion and their substitute their sacrificial lamb. And so has Jesus bowed his head and died.

13:51 The ancient sentence of death that had been pronounced in Eden, and the day that you eat of it, you will surely die, was executed. The curse was inflicted. And Jesus, the Son of God, was forsaken by his Father because of the people's sins. And with a loud cry of, it is finished, he died. You know what happened next? We read it just a few minutes ago. And if you want to look again, you can look back at the reading. It's the very last paragraph of the long reading from Matthew.

14:23 Two things happened. And I think they're nothing short of amazing. Matthew tells us there in that very last paragraph, Behold, the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. 60 foot high, woven screen that separated the people of Israel from the most holy place where God's presence dwelt. That 60-foot wide screen was torn in two from top to bottom. 60-foot high. I mean, this building is something like that.

14:54 I don't know, 45, something like that. I'm not exactly sure. But imagine a 60-foot high screen being torn in two from top to bottom. And the whole purpose of that screen is to keep you as a person out of the presence of God. Do you see what's happening there? God, in the wake of his son's death, is taking his own two hands and ripping that curtain from heaven to earth and saying the doors to my presence are now flung wide open because of what he's just done. It's incredible, isn't it?

15:25 I mean, ever since Eden, ever since Genesis 3, human beings have been cast out of God's presence. Adam and Eve were sent off into the wilderness and two flaming swords of the angels crossed in front of the way into Eden, into God's presence. They were cast away. When the nation of Israel was in Sinai, we read about this too, when the nation of Israel went to Mount Sinai and God was going to come down to the top of the mountain and give the law to the people through Moses, do you remember what he said? He said, if any of you even set foot on this mountain, you're to be killed with arrows.

16:03 You do not come in to my presence. And then when the temple was built, this glorious instruction that there's going to be a cube in the center of the temple where God's very presence will dwell. But none of you can come in there or you'll die. And now here after the crucifixion, that screen that kept everybody out from the presence of God is ripped into from top to bottom, from heaven to earth, not the other way around.

16:35 From heaven to earth. And humanity is welcomed back into God's presence. Look at the other thing that happens here. The earth, this is right after that first sentence of the last paragraph. The earth shook, the rocks were split, and the tombs also were opened. And many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised, and coming out of the tombs after his resurrection, they went into the holy city and appeared to many. Now that's confusing to us and I think a lot of us in our mental movie about the crucifixion don't even include this because it seems so weird.

17:09 What it sounds like is that the tombs were broken open and people came to life and then they wandered around in the tombs, maybe like zombies, right? They just wandered around and then after the resurrection, well then, they came out of the tombs and went into the holy city and appeared to many. That's not what happened. Let me tell you what happened. At the minute that Jesus died, and the curtain was, this is all just Greek grammar. I'm just telling you what the text actually says and taking the confusion out of it. At the moment that Jesus died, the curtain in the temple was ripped from top to bottom in two.

17:40 And the rocks that closed up the tombs of believers cracked open. But nobody came to life yet. Jesus is the first fruits of the resurrection. And after his resurrection, the bodies that were in those cracked open tombs came to life and went into the city. That's what the Greek says. But think about that for a minute. And I saw somebody on Twitter or X or whatever you want to call it today. And they were just meditating on Good Friday.

18:12 And they said at the moment of Jesus' death, when Jesus cried out, it is finished, both Jesus and Satan thought they had won. And it was made clear on Resurrection Sunday who it was who actually had. Now that's true, but I think Satan got his heads up a lot earlier than that. I think Satan and his demons or minions or whatever they are were probably celebrating at the moment that Jesus bowed his head and gave up the ghost.

18:43 But do you know within a split second what they heard? Two things. They heard the curtain ripping and they heard the rocks break open. And I think the party in hell ended at that moment. This was not a normal death that the Roman soldiers saw. It was something extraordinary. I mean, look, the reality is that lots of people throughout history have died what we would call extraordinary deaths.

19:15 I mean, people have even imported significance into particular people's death throughout history. That's not all that unique. What makes Jesus' death really unique, really world-shattering, really good with a capital G is what it accomplished for his people. And then three days later, Easter morning coming fast on its heels. So yeah, this is a service that has some solemnity in it. And yet in the midst of the solemnity, we rejoice today.

19:46 This is why we don't call this bad Friday. We call this good Friday. because of what Jesus did for us when he died on the cross. He took the punishment for our sin that we deserve and he exhausted it in himself. And then on the third day, he rose. And because we're united to him, we have risen to in newness of life. And we're looking forward to the day when we will rise to the dawn of a brand new heavens and earth and spend eternity around our Savior's throne. Let's pray. Our Lord Jesus, we honor you and we praise you this evening as the risen and resurrected and reigning one.

20:28 You are the King of kings and the Lord of lords and your people who have been redeemed by your blood will spend eternity praising you and honoring you for what you did. Our Lord, as we come now to this celebration of the Lord's Supper, we pray that you would prepare our hearts to remember and to celebrate the fact that you are the great savior and the great redeemer who has won our salvation from sin and death and hell. We pray all of this in Jesus' name. Amen.