Good Friday: The Sacrifice

Introduction/Scripture

1 Peter 2:21–24 NIV

To this you were called, because Christ suffered for you, leaving you an example, that you should follow in his steps. “He committed no sin, and no deceit was found in his mouth.” When they hurled their insults at him, he did not retaliate; when he suffered, he made no threats. Instead, he entrusted himself to him who judges justly. “He himself bore our sins” in his body on the cross, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness; “by his wounds you have been healed.”

Pray.

The earliest picture we have of the crucifixion is scratched on a wall in Rome; it may be as old as the second century. It is a rather shocking image: a man with a donkey’s head strapped and nailed to a cross, and next to the cross a very badly drawn little figure wearing the short tunic of a slave, and scribbled above it, ‘Alexamenos worshipping his god’. Presumably one of Alexamenos’s fellow slaves had scrawled this little cartoon on the wall to make fun of him. But he knew, as Alexamenos knew, that Alexamenos’ god was a crucified God.

Williams, Rowan; Williams, Rowan. The Sign and the Sacrifice (pp. 5-6). Presbyterian Publishing Corporation. Kindle Edition.

The cross, a central symbol and sign for our faith. We wear them, we hang them on the wall. Before this cross was on the wall in Herd, a friend visiting the church immediately reflected as he entered the room and marvelled....he was also taken back by there not being a cross on display.

In many ways we know what the cross is, but we are inoculated. Like someone with an antibiotic resistance. We have had the cross too much and for too long and we are resistant to the radicalness of the symbol itself and its meaning in our life.

If we go back to the first church it is amazing that they biblical authors and the first christians would even embrace such a thing.

We can only begin to get some sense of what it might have felt like to encounter the symbol of a cross in the first couple of Christian centuries if we imagine coming into a church and being faced with a large picture of an electric chair, or perhaps a guillotine. The cross was a sign of suffering, humiliation, disgrace.

For These Christians to embrace it they had become convinced that everything centered around it.

Rowan Williams writes:

The early Christians must have felt that they had no option but to talk about the cross. They knew that because of the death of Jesus on the cross their universe had changed. They no longer lived in the same world. They expressed this with enormous force, talking about a new creation, about liberation from slavery. They talked about the transformation of their whole lives and they pinned it down to the events that we remember each Good Friday.

Williams, Rowan; Williams, Rowan. The Sign and the Sacrifice (pp. 4-5). Presbyterian Publishing Corporation. Kindle Edition.

Good friday is a moment for us to reflect on what makes this good. To be challenged once more of our part in it. And to celebrate the victory found here today. But also to leave here different than we came in. A proper journey to the cross should always leave us changed and positioned to offer something to God and to the world.

We worship at the foot of the cross but we also repent at the foot of the cross.

Why is this good friday?

Rescue Operation

First Jesus is the sacrifice for the evil acts of sin in the world. This is not about appeasing the wrath of God.

“In Christ Alone”

Is one of the most popular modern hymns. We sing it even here. But there has always been a line in that bothered me.

“In Christ alone who took on flesh Fullness of God in helpless babe This gift of love and righteousness Scorned by the ones He came to save Till on that cross as Jesus died The wrath of God was satisfied For every sin on Him was laid Here in the death of Christ I live”

In 2013 the Presbyterian Church decided to drop this hymn because of the words. They petitioned the artists to reconsider the lyrics and to change it to the “love of God was magnified.”

in place of the wrath of God was satisfied.

Michael Green: “The wrath of God is his settled opposition to all that is evil.”

The problem with this idea of Jesus satisfying the wrath of God is that it gets NT theology wrong and seperates the Trinity. The loving Jesus is saving us from the angry Father.

Jesus death is enough but it is enough for the sin of the world…not just to appease God. That is a different theology.

Let’s land this so it makes sense....because I think there are some of us that think....God is always angry at us. We might even come into this room emotional and worshipful because we know we messed up and Jesus in this incredible act saved us from destruction.

Well yes, but that destruction is not from an angry God, that destruction is from evil that sin has created.

The rescue mission is from our sin of destruction. The rescue mission is from the evil spurred on by our addiction to porn or pride that tears down everyone around us. Or from our addiction to the world that mistreats other people. It is the death that takes our death.

The rescue mission breaks the chains between evil actions and evil consequences.

At the foot of the cross is a forgiveness and reconciliation for all that we have caused in the world.

1 Peter 3:18 NIV

For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God. He was put to death in the body but made alive in the Spirit.

Catastrophe Avoided for the people of God

Jesus’ sacrifice is not just this individualistic death. It is not only that he died for you and you and you. Jesus died for the people of God.

To understand this we pick up a lesson God began teaching the Israel in Leviticus and the scapegoat

Do you know what a scapegoat is…every family has one, dont they....

Leviticus 16:7 NIV

Then he is to take the two goats and present them before the Lord at the entrance to the tent of meeting.

We read of it in Leviticus 16, beginning at verse 7, speaking there of the high priest: “And he shall take the two goats, and present them before the LORD at the door of the tabernacle of the congregation” and what follows. During the morning service, two look-alike goats, of the same value and age and colour, are brought to the high priest. The high priest places the goats next to each other “with their backs to the people and with their faces towards the sanctuary” (Edersheim). The high priest then draws two lots, laying one on the head of each goat. The one lot says that the goat is for the Lord, and the other lot says that the goat is a scapegoat. A scarlet-red cloth is tied around the throat of the goat designated for the Lord, and a scarlet-red cloth is tied to one of the horns of the goat designated as scapegoat. The goat, designated for the Lord, is slain as a sin offering-sacrifice.

Meanwhile, the scapegoat is turned around to face the people. After the one goat has been slain, the high priest returns to the other goat, facing the people he solemnly lays both hands on the head of this scapegoat, as we read in verse 21:

Leviticus 16:21 NIV

He is to lay both hands on the head of the live goat and confess over it all the wickedness and rebellion of the Israelites—all their sins—and put them on the goat’s head. He shall send the goat away into the wilderness in the care of someone appointed for the task.

Some priests would take the sin-burdened scapegoat through the crowd and through one of the gates of the city, and hand the scapegoat to a man appointed especially for that purpose, who in turn would take this scapegoat far into the wilderness and let it loose in a so called “uninhabited land.” Thus ends the ceremony of the two goats: the goat for the Lord, and the scapegoat.

There is another time that the bible brings forth two goats...

Pilate has before the angry Pharisees and Jews during the passover festival. A man named Barrabbas and a prophet named Jesus.

Instead of casting lots, they hand pick the goat. Jesus was beaten and mocked before being led outside the city walls to be crucified.

Jesus is the sacrifice for all of the people, for all of the evil. He is the one who makes a way for us to be with God.

We weep and worship today because Jesus died for America. For injustice and political conflation with the kingdom of God, for racism, for idolatry, for abuse and power hungry failures in the church. For the way the church can be a country club and social hour more than the people focused on the kingdom.

As a people we are not faithful. The old covenant symbolically placed the sin of the people on a goat.

God took the sins of the people on Himself.

Establishing and Reinforcing Covenant

Finally, this sacrifice make’s God’s covenantal commitment to his people louder than our failure and stronger than our wandering away.

How does Jesus do this?

The covenant was all about a faithful relationship with God and God’s people but they:

worship other Gods

they allow injustice

they lose their land in idolatry

unfaithful to their commitment.

Jeremiah 31:31–33 NIV

“The days are coming,” declares the Lord, “when I will make a new covenant with the people of Israel and with the people of Judah. It will not be like the covenant I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand to lead them out of Egypt, because they broke my covenant, though I was a husband to them,” declares the Lord. “This is the covenant I will make with the people of Israel after that time,” declares the Lord. “I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people.

Where we failed. God made a way. He sent himself as the God-man who would be faithful and restore and would bring justice as only the God-man could.

This is what makes today good.

He broke the power of evil, he saved the whole people, and he establishes this promise forever.

So we worship.

But, it is also that Friday.

Our only offering is obedience

And listen our offering of obedience is not just this well Jesus did so much for me so I better do something in return.

That is not love. Love between two people if it becomes something like that then it is a shallow version of love.

Obedience is our giving back to God the love he has given us. We love God and we love neighbor because he first loved us.

And today is a dark friday because we know that in so many ways we have not done that. The cross of Christ reminds us that we have death in us.

What God desires is for God to see his people take on his characteristics. Love.

Today we do not receive communion. The church has historically fasted on this good friday because holy communion is a celebratory feast of Jesus victory. Before we get to that day....we face again that the body is soon to break and the blood is soon to shed for the sin of the our hearts. for the sin of the world. and for the sake of the covenant.

So yes tonight is good. But it is also Friday and Sunday is sepearted from us by darkness.

Tonight our response is two fold:

We worship the good. We will sing to close. A song of worship giving thanks that Jesus has come.

but then we also repent.

The band will lead a congregational praise song. Then they will sing a song of confession, Kyrie Eleison which means “Lord, have mercy.”

During the final song the alter is opened. I invite you to come. Kneel, on the ground or the pads along the stage. Confess your sin, for he has taken it on. And when you are ready, you can blow out a candle on the altar.

The service is open ended. This space is yours. I will not close us out. Go in silent when you are ready. Let us praise the good, let us also be honest on this Friday.