Sermon for Good Friday

Sermon for Good Friday

[Machine transcription]

Jesus said, “I am the light of the world; whoever follows me will not walk in darkness but will have the light of life.”

Dear children of the light, this Lenten season we have watched and reflected on the journey of our Lord Jesus Christ from Galilee. In Luke 9, it records when the days drew near for him to be taken up. He set his face to go to Jerusalem. Each week we saw him drawing closer and closer to the mount outside the city walls, where there would be three crosses erected for the climax of his coming into the world.

From afar, he could see the coming day when he would be hanging on the sinner’s one, sentenced to death by crucifixion for crimes he had not committed. This past Sunday, we saw him approaching the city, entering it with a great fanfare. But within a couple of days, the voices morphed. He went from “Hosanna in the highest” to “Crucify him! Crucify him!”

Now, on this night, we see him after many relentless hours of torture and humiliation, now struggling for breath while fighting to find a position where there is the voidance of pain, but there is none. As the blood drips from his weakening body, flowing from every wound from his head to his feet, caused by the thorns, the nails, the whips, the fists, Jesus fulfills the prophecy as foretold by the prophet Isaiah, inspired by God to write: “His appearance was so marred beyond human semblance, and his form beyond that of the children of mankind.” He was a mass of unrecognizable torn and swollen flesh.

Instead of looking to the cross where he was hanging high upon it, his view was now looking out over the world. Through the slits of his eyes that were full of blood and tears, he saw more than those individuals who were standing at the base of the cross, waiting for the final outcome. His view was beyond those that were passing on the roadway leading into the city. He was looking out at the reason he came into the world.

He saw his creation that he had created in concert with his Father and the Holy Spirit, perfectly without blemish, now under horrific eternal bondage, unable to save itself. He saw the consequences of the disobedience of Adam and Eve in the garden and the sin being passed down from generation to generation through original sin, causing all people to be born corrupted and enemies of God. He saw the spiritual darkness covering the world and eternal death brought upon all people. He saw the Prince of Darkness deceiving and manipulating the children of darkness. He saw you and me, conceived in sin, born in bondage, on the road to hell with no exit points. This was the reason he was hanging there.

Even though he was mentally in shock and emotionally drained, he knew that this was the only way to defeat the enemy and to pay the price for the sins of the world—to be the sinless, sacrificial substitute. The greatest event in all of the world’s history would happen on this day.

Jesus was the perfect epitome of the picture of the lion and the lamb. The lion being the most powerful beast in the different regions of the world, known as the king of the jungle, the king of kings and the Lord of lords, God in the flesh. We see the picture in the words of Jesus to his disciples in the Garden of Gethsemane, after one of them cut off the ear of the servant of the high priest. He said, “Do you think that I cannot appeal to my Father and he will at once send me more than twelve legions of angels?”

In terms of the Roman legion, a legion can range between 3,000 and 5,000 soldiers. So, in other words, Jesus could call down from His Father, asking to bring 36,000 to 60,000 angels as agents of God. Now that is authority with power. But Jesus continued by saying, “But how then should the scriptures be fulfilled that it must be so?” Then he turned and said to the mob that had come out to him, “Have you come out against a robber with swords and clubs to capture me? Day after day I sat in the temple teaching, and you did not seize me. But all this has taken place that the scriptures of the prophets might be fulfilled.”

At this point, his disciples left him. He was all alone, like a lamb being led to slaughter. He allowed the mob to seize him to begin his last steps to the cross and again to fulfill the prophecy recorded in the words of Isaiah: “All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned, everyone, to his own way, and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all. He was oppressed; he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth. Like a lamb that was led to the slaughter, like a sheep that before its shearers is silent, so he opened not his mouth.”

Before Herod, even though questioned at length, Jesus never made an answer. And when it was time, even with Pontius Pilate begging him, “Have you no answer to make? See how many charges they are bringing against you,” but Jesus made no further answer, so Pilate was amazed.

It was on the cross that we see Jesus. He was not concerned for saving himself, but his first words were for others: “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” “Truly I say to you, you will be with me in paradise today.”

All alone on the cross, Jesus cried out to his Father, “My God, my God, why have thou forsaken me?” Jesus, now the Son of God and the Son of Man, was in a place that he had never experienced before in all eternity. There was the withholding of grace and mercy from his Father communicated in absence, with all the sins of the world cast upon him. He became the object of his Father’s wrath. All the punishment of eternal death and damnation due for our sins was directed to Jesus, and he took it. He took it all, all without fighting back, but accepting it. He did it. He did it.

And now it is time to turn that last page of this chapter in his story, continuing to fulfill the prophecy. He said, “I thirst.” After receiving the sour wine from a sponge on a hyssop branch, Jesus proclaimed, “It is finished.” He has achieved his mission for coming into this world. He has defeated the enemy of the devil, and he has paid the price for the sins of the world. And in the same breath, for all to hear, he said, “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit.”

And having said this, he breathed his last, and Jesus’ work of salvation was accomplished. The first response to this act of God’s love for the world was from a Gentile, with the words of the centurion who stood at the base of the cross looking up to Jesus and seeing how he breathed his last. He said, “Truly this man was the Son of God.”

This past week, Pastor Wolf Mueller shared a detail of this last moment of Jesus being on the cross with a couple of different groups and individuals, so it’s relevant. It is in relation to Jesus bowing His head. It probably wasn’t just a slow, gradual, single motion to a stopping point, but it was probably a struggle to keep his head up, and then a final relaxing, giving a bobbing of the head in the final position.

This final motion would resemble a head nodding of “yes.” In sign language, this is communicated with the fist forward, resembling a head motion of up and down, “yes.” This picture affirms all that He had done for you, me, and all the world with the ultimate question: Is it finished? Is it finished?

And with the nodding of Jesus’ head, He is telling all the world, “Yes, yes. The mission is finished, and the victory is won.”

Like Jesus’ followers, his disciples witnessing the events on that day in the midst of the darkness, our world seems to be at war with God, seeking to destroy the truth of the word as it was on that particular day, and it appears that the children of darkness under the prince of lies are winning. The disciples’ world seemed to be turned upside down as they focused on the events of that day and not on the words of Jesus that he had given to them.

Where the sacred scriptures are clear that God is a God of truth, life, light, order, clarity, unity, love, peace, and freedom, it is the devil and his minions, chained with limited abilities, who hold the opposing view of lies, death, darkness, chaos, confusion, division, conflict, hatred, and bondage. Remember that conversation with Pilate: “What is truth?” And with those that struck Jesus, “What is right and what is wrong?”

The godless ideologies of this world declare that there is no such thing as absolute truth as they seek to dissolve the differences between right and wrong, good and evil in belief and practice, leaving people in the lie that there is no need for God and that sure foundation. They invest great energies to twist, dilute, and shroud the law and the gospel of the Bible to match their agendas and goals for the purpose of controlling people for self-gain.

In a godless environment, the truth is defined by each person based on the source of their opinions and desires, and no subject is off the table for self-definition. It is putting self in the position of God. Thus we saw of those before Jesus. Without the fear and the love of God called for by Him in the first tablet of the Ten Commandments, there is no motivation to give attention to the second. Ultimately, it comes down to this: all people are born in sin and are hellbound.

And there is only one way of salvation. It is by God’s grace alone, through faith alone, in Jesus Christ alone, as revealed in the sacred scriptures alone. There is one true God who is the source and the norm for faith and life.

On this day, Good Friday, we look to the cross and see God communicating His love, His love for all people. God desires for all people to come to the knowledge of the truth and be saved, but because you hold to this truth, you children of light, you become a target of the enemies of God and his Word. Jesus tells his disciples, “If the world hates you, know that it hated me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world will hate you.”

So don’t be surprised, for Jesus says in John 3, “The light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works are evil; for whoever does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest their work should be exposed. But whoever does what is true comes to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that his works have been carried out in God.”

As a child of light, you recognize and rejoice that you are a forgiven sinner through the blood of Jesus that he paid on the cross for you. And where there is forgiveness, there is salvation and eternal life. This is why we call this day Good Friday, because it’s good for us.

It comes down to this: at the end of the service, in the midst of the darkness, one light will remain in front and center. This one candle is reminding us that in the midst of the darkness of this world, Christ is also present in our midst with us and for us.

And for us to keep our eyes on him, holding steadfast and receiving the gifts that he has given to us now, while continuing to cling to the promises for the things to come. Yes, death and darkness fill this night, but wait, wait for it, because life will burst forth in three days, as he has promised. And the good news will be proclaimed as we live in great anticipation with the hope of living in the heavenly paradise one day with Him, where there will be no darkness.

But for now, remember when you depart this night, the light of Christ, your Lord Jesus, goes with you to bless you and to bless others. Amen.