Good Friday Service
Notes
Transcript
Intro:
Sounds of the Cross video
These are gut-wrenching sights and sounds.
Jeering crowds, hammers falling on nails, cries and groans of pain, thunder, earthquakes, even the “sound of silence” as the Father turns away while His Son takes His last breath.
Near the end, even all light is gone - even the sun hides as Jesus submits to the wrath of God for the sins of the world.
Jesus responds with “why?”
46 And about the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, “Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?” that is, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”
We would do well to ask the same question from a slightly different perspective:
Why forsake Jesus in of me?
Why, as His Son prays fervently, forgive the scoffers, the murderers, the real blasphemers.
Why abandon His Son and not us?
Jesus’ friend, Peter, helps us understand:
24 He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed.
Jesus came to open himself to all of our sin, rebellion. To be treated on the cross the way we should have been treated.
And the holy God of the universe allowed sin-purging judgment to flow over the sinless Son.
And John the Baptist’s prophetic words find their fulfillment:
29 The next day he saw Jesus coming toward him, and said, “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!
The message of Good Friday is summed up in Jesus’ final words from the cross: Why? Why have you forsaken me?
And the answer ringing through eternity is, “so you and I will never be forsaken.”
Prayer.