Good Friday Service

[00:00:00] Happy Good Friday Church. It's good to see you all. [00:00:06] Good to celebrate this day with you. [00:00:10] Good Friday. I absolutely love this time. I love this service. [00:00:17] About 25 years ago, I walked into a Good Friday service at Christ Church. Back then, there were no campuses. We didn't exist. It was a little church about this size on. On Lund Road. I lived on Lund Road. That's why I went there. [00:00:34] It was the only church within sight. [00:00:37] But it was a Good Friday. Like I said, I was very young then. 25 years ago, right? I was super, super young. [00:00:48] I don't know why you think that's funny, but it was the first time that I. I really heard what this day meant, what it meant for Jesus to go to the cross, why that was necessary, and what that meant for my life. And I was sitting in the service, I was alone. I had a really sweet Denver Broncos jacket on, really puffy. They were super cool at the time. [00:01:18] But it was like the lights went on in my head and in my heart. And all of a sudden God made sense to me and Jesus made sense and the cross made sense. [00:01:32] And I left there and it changed my life. And it was Good Friday. So I love Good Friday. [00:01:41] And Good Friday is about the cross of Christ. And when the cross makes sense in our life, when the cross is something that we see as beautiful and the idea of what it means for us becomes clear, it is transforming. And so today I just want to talk about it and I also want you to invite you to honor God, to honor what happened on the cross, to worship Christ tonight for what he's done for us, to have moments of just reflection and commitment. So let me pray for us. Father, we love you and Lord, we thank you for this day. [00:02:30] We thank you, Lord, for how it truly, Lord, has changed everything. [00:02:38] Father, I pray it would make sense to us, but I pray it would more than make sense to us. I pray it would be beautiful to us. I pray it would be hope for us. I pray in it, Lord, we could see the ugliness of our sin, but more than that, the greatness of your love and redemption. [00:02:59] And Father, I pray our hearts could just worship you and you alone. Lord, we thank you for what you've done for us. We pray you would bless this time in Jesus name. Amen. [00:03:13] Well, we've been looking through the book of Luke, and tonight we're gonna look at the crucifixion scene in Luke. And tomorrow we're gonna look at the Easter account tomorrow and Sunday, the Easter account in Luke. But let Me read it to you. Luke 23, and I'm gonna start at verse 32. It says this. Two others who were criminals were led away to be put to death with him. So Jesus is going to the cross, and there's two criminals with him. And when they came to the place that is called the Skull, there they crucified him. And the criminals, one on his right and one on his left. [00:03:52] And Jesus said, father, forgive them, for they know not what they do. Those are powerful words. [00:04:04] And they cast lots to divide his garments. And as the people stood by watching, but the rulers scoffed at him, saying, he saved others. Let him save himself if he is the Christ of God, his chosen one. The soldiers also mocked him, coming up and offering him sour wine and saying, if you are the King of the Jews, save yourself. [00:04:28] There was also an inscription over him. This is the King of the Jews. One of the criminals who were hanged railed at him, saying, are you not the Christ? Save yourself and. And us. [00:04:40] But the other rebuked him, saying, do you not fear God since you are under the same sentence of condemnation? [00:04:50] And we indeed, justly, for we are receiving the due reward of our deeds. But this man has done nothing wrong. [00:05:00] And he said, jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom. [00:05:06] And he said to him, truly, I say, today you will be with me in paradise. [00:05:16] Now, there's a lot going on in this scene, and a lot of it is ugly and a lot of it is hard. [00:05:27] But I want you to see that as Jesus approaches this terrible moment of injustice. We didn't read about the mock trials and the false accusations and the betrayal, but it's all behind this. [00:05:44] And as Jesus approaches this ugly, horrific scene, Luke tells us that he says, father, forgive them, for they know not what they do. That Jesus approaches the cross and he has absolute forgiveness that he's bringing into this moment. Now, I think that's really, really powerful. Just to point that out. [00:06:14] You can read accounts in history about some of the great people of history and how they faced moments like this. And a lot of people will try to compare Jesus to those people. [00:06:30] But I will tell you, he's incomparable. [00:06:34] They're not the same. In fact, I recently reread one of these very powerful ancient scenes. It's when the philosopher Socrates is being brought to trial. And, you know, many people in our world today would consider him, like, the most influential philosopher in human history. So he's kind of a big deal. And there's the recording of him being falsely accused, and he's brought to trial, and he's kind of, you know, wrongly convicted. There's a lot of political stuff going on and things like that. And we hear Socrates talk, and the trial goes on, and eventually he's condemned to death. [00:07:23] And this is what he says when he finds that out. He says. I say, gentlemen, to those who voted to kill me, that vengeance will come upon you immediately after my death. [00:07:35] That makes sense to me. [00:07:39] That's kind of what you would expect, that he's angry, he's upset. He's like, all right, you're going to get it. He goes on a vengeance much harder to bear than that which you took in killing me. [00:07:52] And I just find that a huge contrast to what Luke shows us about Jesus. That Jesus faces all that. But he says, forgiveness is what I'm bringing into this moment. And in fact, what Luke tells us is that the cross was not something that was accidental, but it's something that Jesus knew was coming. And that Jesus set his face towards Jerusalem that many times. Jesus said, hey, this is gonna happen. These guys are gonna arrest me. They're gonna lie about me, they're gonna abuse power. I'm gonna suffer, I'm gonna die, and I'm gonna rise again. [00:08:35] And the reason is because this was absolutely necessary for the purpose of God. Here's what the Apostle Paul says. For our sake, he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. See, Christ went to the cross for your sin and my sin. [00:09:06] At the end of the day, that should be us on there. [00:09:11] That's what every human deserves before God. I know we like to think, you know, we're great people, and there's a lot of worse people than us. And that might be true, but at the end of the day, we all absolutely need the forgiveness of God. And the cross is what brings it to us. And Christ said, I'm going there, and I'm bringing forgiveness. Now, as he's on the cross, you can see there's a lot of mocking that is going on. You have the crowd and the soldiers, and then we have the man next to him mocking Christ while he's on the cross. [00:09:52] And I think that it's important to just think about this a little bit tonight, that I don't think probably any of us in here wants to be like that criminal or the soldiers who. Who are mocking Christ. But if we're not careful, we can miss the beauty and the power and the importance of Christ and in a sense, mock it in a subtle Way you see this criminal, he couldn't understand how Christ could be the Messiah, the Savior and still be on a cross. He says, look, if you are who you've said you are, then save us, save yourself. [00:10:39] Why and how are you allowing this terrible thing to go on? [00:10:45] And ironically, Jesus was saving people on there. But the cross was necessary. [00:10:54] But he couldn't comprehend in his mind that what he was experiencing was actually part of the purpose of God. And I think church. I think tonight the cross is a good reminder that I don't always have to understand God to trust God. You with me on that? [00:11:16] I don't have to. [00:11:19] He is a king with a cross. [00:11:22] And I think that sometimes we struggle in our faith because God acts in ways that we have a hard time reconciling. [00:11:33] But that's. He's God. One of my people I really admire is a woman named Elizabeth Elliot, and she is an author. But she went through some exceptionally difficult times. She lost her husband very young. He's actually murdered while serving God. [00:11:54] She lost her other husband to a very kind of vicious. She just had really, really difficult things. But yet through that she always had this radical trust in God. And she has this great saying that I love and the first time I read it, I've just always kept it in my heart. She just said, sometimes in life you have to let God be God. [00:12:20] You have to let him be God. [00:12:23] I don't have to always understand, to trust him. Because Jesus was a king. He was saving, but he wasn't doing it in the way that anyone expected. [00:12:36] Now here's the second way we can miss the cross is that we can think that we don't need it. [00:12:45] Here's the truth. We all need it. We need that forgiveness. [00:12:51] If you are broken and messed up, you're in the right place and the cross is for you and the cross is your hope. But if you think there is another way around that, then you're self deceived. [00:13:10] I like the analogy. It's like if we all go to the shores of Lake Erie and we say we're going to Canada, we're gonna swim there and you make it 500ft more than I do and then you drown. [00:13:24] You make it a mile further and then you're like, wow, I did way better than you. Yeah, we're both at the bottom of the lake though, aren't we? [00:13:32] Is that really all that much? [00:13:35] And that's the problem of comparing our righteousness and our sins with each other. Sure, you made it. You did really good. You Made it two miles. But guess what? None of us got to Canada. [00:13:47] None of us got to shore. We're all. [00:13:51] We will never do it. We'll never be able to. We need the forgiveness and the righteousness of Christ. [00:14:00] Here's what the cross also teaches us, is that the ways in our life that we dishonor God. [00:14:12] I want to be more sensitive and more serious about rooting that out of my life. You see, when we look at the cross and we look at the price that Christ paid, I think it's healthy on Good Friday to mourn the ugliness of our sin a little bit. To mourn the ugliness of our brokenness. [00:14:39] That Christ did this. He did this out of love, but he did this because that's the horror of human sin. [00:14:49] And I think that sometimes we go through our life and we're sorry that our decisions have consequences that are painful. But I think real repentance is. I'm sorry that it offends God and that it requires a cross. You see the difference there, Church? And I think that's healthy. I think it's healthy to say, man, I want these things to get better in me. Not just so everything in life goes really well, but because at the end of the day, I want to honor what Christ has done for me. I don't wanna insult the magnitude and majesty of his sacrifice for me. And I wanna live and I wanna honor him. Now, we do see the other man actually honor Christ on the cross. And this is what the guy that's known as the thief on the cross. And he's there, and he rebukes a man that's mocking Jesus. And he realizes that Jesus is not on the cross for the same reason as he is. [00:15:58] He says to Jesus, to the man mocking Jesus, he says, look, we deserve to be here. [00:16:06] He doesn't. [00:16:09] And in that moment, he knows something different is going on. [00:16:15] And when we look at Christ on the cross, do we see that same thing? Do we see that he is there for our sins? [00:16:24] He's there for a different reason. He is there for us. And then this man, he honors the cross by realizing that he has nothing to offer Christ. [00:16:37] He just throws himself to his mercy and his grace and his kindness. [00:16:44] Church, we don't have anything to offer God. [00:16:48] We don't have any. In fact, I'm going to really depress you tonight. The book of Isaiah says our best righteousness. It's like filthy rags, guys. You ever have just a nasty old rag in your garage, like I'm talking, it's got oil, it's got all of that stuff on it. It's been. You can't even open it because it's frozen and yuck. The Bible says that's the quality of your righteousness. [00:17:18] Thanks, Isaiah. [00:17:21] But what is it showing us? It's showing us that it's all grace, church. It's gotta be all grace. It's gotta be all mercy. God loves us not because of what is in us, but because of what is in Christ. [00:17:38] And he is our hope. He is our rock. [00:17:43] He is what it's all about. And we honor him when we throw ourselves at his mercy and his grace. Jesus tells the story about two men praying. And the one says this beautiful, eloquent prayer, all this stuff. And the other one says, God, be merciful to me, a sinner. And Jesus says, that guy, That's a good prayer. God, be merciful to me. I need your mercy. I need your grace. I don't deserve your kindness. I don't deserve your love. I don't deserve your favor. I don't deserve your blessing. But I know that you are the God of all grace, and I'm asking you for it. That's how we honor the cross. [00:18:29] We honor the cross. When we look to Jesus as the one who holds the power of forgiveness and the power of a better life, the thief looks at him and he says, remember me. [00:18:46] Now, I kind of hear in that, that his expectation is like, Jesus just. I'm just, like, throwing out, throwing this up here. [00:18:58] I see that you're different than me. I see that you're here for a different reason. [00:19:04] If there's any way down the road, you can help me. [00:19:08] Wherever we're going, whatever this all means, I'm asking that you would. [00:19:16] And I love how gracious he is. [00:19:21] Cause when you look at that, that's like, not. It's not a tremendously articulate statement of faith. [00:19:29] It's not a tremendous, you know, statement of commitment or anything like that. But yet Jesus still honors it. [00:19:39] You know, remember me? And Christ says, today you'll be with me in paradise. [00:19:48] See, he is so good to us. We just look to him in the smallest of ways, and he honors that. And he meets us and he helps us. [00:20:00] And I love that Jesus says, all your past is forgiven and your future is secure. You know, this is, to me, one of the most helpful stories in all of scripture. [00:20:18] Like, this guy had no time to clean up his act. He was literally dying. [00:20:22] He had no time to, okay, Sunday, I'll be in church. No, you Won't. Because you're dying Friday, right? [00:20:32] There's no like, okay, Jesus, you get me out of this, I'm gonna start reading my Bible. Nope, you ain't getting out of this. You with me? But there was nothing. It was all grace. It was all forgiveness. It was all the power and the authority of Jesus Christ at work. [00:20:49] And that shows us how powerful the cross is. [00:20:55] In our ugliest moments, if we just look to him and ask for help, he meets us in it. And it's instant, it's permanent, it's fulfilled. You said today, today you get it all. [00:21:13] You get it all. And you're like, that's not fair. It's not fair. That's why it's called grace and mercy. And trust me, you don't want it to be fair, by the way. [00:21:23] You don't want that. It's all grace and mercy. And Christ gives it to him. He says, today you'll be. And really, I love this statement. Cause you. You could just sort of end it here. Today you'll be with me. [00:21:38] Believe it or not, that's actually the lion's share of that blessing, is that that man got Christ. [00:21:48] He got the living God. Paradise is secondary. [00:21:54] Paradise is what happens in the presence of God. [00:21:58] It just follows behind. But the real gift and church, I want you to know, you have that gift today, too. [00:22:07] And you know, what a day to remember that and to appreciate that. [00:22:14] And so I want to just encourage you today, as we think about the cross of Christ, could we honor it in our heart of hearts? [00:22:25] Maybe for some of us, the way that we honor it is we just receive the unbelievable forgiveness that Christ freely offers to us. [00:22:37] Maybe some of us, we've just kind of been living in the weight of our own failures and our own sin. And this Good Friday, hey, you need to see, Christ took care of it. [00:22:51] And when you believe that you're not. You're honoring him. You're honoring the cross. You're saying, yes, that isn't. Nothing more needs to be done. It is finished, done once and for all. And we can trust him. Some of us today, maybe we need to honor Christ by just having some moments in our heart of just real confession and repentance. [00:23:22] Say, lord, I don't. [00:23:24] I'm allowing things in my life that are dishonoring to you. And your sacrifice is too great for me to continue that. And, Lord, would you forgive me? Would you heal me? Would you sanctify me? And maybe tonight's a time just to say, man, Lord, help me to Keep growing. Help me to not hold onto this stuff that. That is dishonoring to you. [00:23:53] Not just for my sake, but for the sake of Jesus Christ and his honor. [00:24:00] And then could we honor Christ tonight by just worshiping a king that is like no other? [00:24:08] Every other king in history says, come and serve me, but Jesus says, no, I've come to serve, but to serve in the greatest of ways. To give my life for you and to do what you and I, what we could never do for ourselves. Church he is worthy of our worship. He is worthy of our reverence. [00:24:40] He is worthy of all the respect and praise and majesty that we can give from our soul. He is worthy of that. [00:24:52] The Cross has proved that once and for all. And so let's not let this day end without just some real heartfelt thank you worship, honor and commitment. Let's pray. [00:25:12] Father, we just thank you so much for the meaning of all these things. [00:25:19] Lord. I pray in ways that these ideas can't be represented in language. I pray that your spirit would confirm them in our hearts. [00:25:33] I pray, Lord, we could just honor the cross. [00:25:38] We could see that. Lord, you are incomparable. [00:25:46] There is no one like you. There is no story like yours. [00:25:51] There is no one else who has done for us what we desperately need done. [00:25:59] There is no other fountain of absolute mercy and grace and love and forgiveness. [00:26:06] And so, Lord, I pray that none of that would pass by us tonight. [00:26:11] I pray we could just receive it. [00:26:15] We could worship you for it. We could celebrate it. We could just recommit ourselves to your purpose and your plan and your desires for our life. [00:26:28] Help us in all this and in all of it. Lord, we just pray that you would be glorified, that the name of Jesus would be exalted, and that you would be celebrated. We ask all this in Jesus name. Amen.