ME – When we aren’t having the Song of the Shadows and we have a Good Friday service I usually come to the same service of nailing our sins to the cross. I toyed with the idea of doing something different; (with not singing watch the lamb); (with not making Marianna cry); with not nailing our sins to the cross... but each time I came right back to this same very thing. To this same very point of Good Friday.
And I wondered why each year we come here? Why I come here to the drama of Good Friday?
• The “good” in it is knowing that He died for our sins!
• That as they say “Sunday’s Coming!”
• The good is to know that God loved us so much He was willing to sacrifice His Son on the cross to pay the price for our sins!
But looking at the events of “Good” Friday, I struggle to find much “good”!
• The crowd chose a murderer over Jesus!
• The soldiers whips were brutal!
• They mocked Him, spit upon Him, offered Him vinegar to quench His thirst!
• Nails driven deep in His feet and Hands.
• His mother and friends were helpless!
• In the hour of His death even God turned away from Him so that he could take the weight of sin upon Him and die a human death.
WE – But again, we do we come here each year? Maybe the real question is why do we humans come to this point in our life time and time again? A place where we have stumbled into our sin again. Not just a “good Friday” moment, but each month, and each and every day to the same point in our lives? To the
place where we are sinners standing in the need of God’s grace.
In the last year, I cannot honestly say that I feel I have been walking closer to God in Jesus than maybe I ever have. Not that I wasn’t walking with Him, but deepening the relationship; praying more; being more aware of the things that tempt me. Yet sometimes when I feel I have made the most progress, it seems the challenges are even greater; the mountain suddenly more steeper; the road before me with some obvious potholes glaring at me.
Have you ever felt like that?
GOD – I think the answer as to why we come here is found in God! He brings us here! He calls us to remember the sacrifice! He bridges the gap that sin caused! He calls us here to be reminded that the price has been paid and we are redeemed! So we come here to relive the drama of Good Friday! We come here to remind ourselves of the price that Jesus paid for our lives! We come here to be reminded that someone else took our place!
This Scripture text is among my favorites! Listen to these few verses again: Col 2:13-15 “13 When you were dead in your sins and in the un-circumcision of your flesh, God made you alive with Christ. He forgave us all our sins, 14 having canceled the charge of our legal indebtedness, which stood against us and condemned us; he has taken it away, nailing it to the cross. 15 And having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross.”
The law demands a punishment when it is broken! The sin that separates us from God requires a penalty. Disobedience demands justice! The wages of sin is death! And yet for a believer who repents of their sin and accepts Jesus Christ as Lord, God takes away the legal indebtedness, having exacted a punishment, having nailed it to the cross!
I once saw a cartoon that showed a young man wearing a t-shirt emblazoned with the word "sinner". In the next scene the same young man, same t-shirt which now read "Sinner" - "Saved by Grace".
YOU – So that brings me to you! And here we are again this year, emblazoned across our chest’s the word "Sinner", in big bold letters for all to see. And so I realized we need to come here each year to this very place because we are sinners in need of God’s grace. We come to this dark moment of the cross, to realize that in his painful death and suffering the lamb has been slain; and taken away the sins of the world. And more powerful is that when we apply it not to some in descript "sins of the world", but we bring it right home to you and me, and discover for ourselves that the sacrificial lamb took away our sins, yours and mine.
(1) There is a powerful Scripture in "Mark 15:39 "And when the centurion, which stood over against him, saw that he so cried out, and gave up the ghost, he said, Truly this man was the Son of God." It is like you and me standing here, recognizing for ourselves that Jesus was not only the Savior of the world, but our personal Savior.
WE – So we have a choice of where we are in this Good Friday drama! Part of the crowd that cries “crucify”, even if it is not with our voice, but with our sins that cry out, like the blood of Abel that cried out from the ground when he was murdered by his brother Cain. Or we can declare that Jesus is our Savior, who takes away our sins!
"There is a story of a man who heard that a huge box of gold had long ago been buried in the woods near his house. He got a shovel and went into the woods and began to dig everywhere. As he dug, he would run across these rough stones of reddish hue and angrily, he tossed them into a nearby well where they sank out of sight. As he dug deeper and deeper, he found more of the stones and threw them into the well--hundreds of them. One day a jeweler friend of his stopped to watch, and listened as the man spoke in frustration at not finding the gold. "All I’ve managed to find are these worthless red rocks," said the man. The jeweler friend, upon examining one of the rocks, said, "These are not worthless. These are rubies, and polished, they are some of the most priceless stones in the world."
The crowds on crucifixion day, were looking for something entirely different than the Christ, and in doing so, they missed the greatest treasure of all. The value of the crucifixion was not in the wood or nails, but in the sacrifice.
WHAT VALUE
What value did it have,
That old wooden cross,
The day on which Jesus died?
Just two beams of wood,
And three nails of iron,
On which He would be crucified.
But the world could not know,
The price to be paid,
By the blood that forever would stain.
For no greater cost,
Could e’er be attached,
To the cross where the Master was slain.
So the world will hold fast,
To that old wooden cross;
In its glory we gladly will share.
For that cross has been made,
More precious than gold,
By the price that was paid for us there."
And the Scripture proclaimed "And God made you alive together with Him, when
He forgave us all our trespasses, erasing the record that stood against us
with its legal demands. He set this aside, nailing it to the cross. He
disarmed the rulers and authorities and made a public example of them,
triumphing over them in it."
(1) - Pastor Jim Reeves
