Good Friday

Introduction

President Franklin Roosevelt saw suffering in his life and in the world in brutal ways

At 39 he contracted Polio and never walked again

He took office during the Great Depression and led the world against the worst evil the world had ever seen in Nazi Germany

He saw evil

He knew it would cost lives to defeat it

These are the moments where heroes are made

The moments where self preservation isn’t the response

Heroism isn’t natural

Roosevelt knew it

That is why he famously said - Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the assessment that something else is more important than fear.

It’s ok to be afraid but heroes have placed it on the scales and it’s been outweighed by something more important

All heroes point to the ultimate hero who set aside self preservation and found something greater then his fear

Isaiah 50:7 said the hero was coming

It expresses His complete confidence in God, declaring that He will not shrink back from His mission, despite severe suffering, opposition, and humiliation: “Because the Sovereign LORD helps me, I will not be disgraced. Therefore have I set my face like flint, and I know I will not be put to shame”

Set your face like flint is the figure of speech the prophet uses to describe the Messiah’s unwavering determination to persevere in the excruciating task set before Him.

Christ would endure humiliation on His journey to the cross to die for our sins. Nearly 800 years before it happened, Isaiah foretold the suffering of the Lord’s Servant: “I offered my back to those who beat me, my cheeks to those who pulled out my beard; I did not hide my face from mocking and spitting”

The hero we long for to win the war we cannot win has come

His courage was not the absence of fear…he sweat blood in the face of what was coming

His courage was the assesment that there was something greater on the other side

That something was obedience to the father where we have failed to win the war and get you home

What make the murder of God “good” on good friday

What makes it good is that he set his face like an immovable stone to suffer the seperation from the father we deserve to paint a masterpiece of saving a sinner like me

We see this with artists

They labor and agonize over every stroke

And then it happens

The perfect touch is painted and they sit back

In suffering that was the cross

He knew a little boy would be born on December 11 2000 years in the future

He knew that kid would hurt and cry

He knew he would grow into an adult who suffered addiction and loss and trauma

and he knew the cross was the only way to make all of those sad things come untrue

Saving a mess like me was the joy set before Him

And he was the master artist of my salvation

He nailed it

He leaned back and cried out Jason…IT IS FINISHED

All that will ever be needed to give me new life was done to perfection

What makes good friday good?

He was The Hero Who Set His Face to offer the masterpiece of perfection to all those he set his affections on before time began

Ephesians 2:10 CSB

For we are his masterpiece, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared ahead of time for us to do.

Just as at the first creation on the 7th day God sat back and said I nailed it

He sits on the throne now at the saving of people like me and says I nailed it

He knew the cross it what it would take

He knew it, and he didn’t flinch.

He was the Lamb for 33 years

But the Lion came out that day and that is who he is forever more

Hebrews 12:2 CSB

keeping our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of our faith. For the joy that lay before him, he endured the cross, despising the shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.

That is what makes Good Friday really really good

Lets Pray