We have gathered here tonight to solemnly celebrate the crucifixion and death of Jesus. Though I use the word “celebration” it is not a celebration in the exciting sense that we typically use the word; Good Friday is meant to be a sober celebration as we are reminded in graphic detail of the horror of the cross of Christ and the depth of our sin that placed him there. We simply come to worship at the foot of a bloody cross tonight.

Mark 15:1 – 5 says, “And as soon as it was morning, the chief priests held a consultation with the elders and scribes and the whole council. And they bound Jesus and led him away and delivered him over to Pilate. And Pilate asked him, “Are you the King of the Jews?” And he answered him, “You have said so.” And the chief priests accused him of many things. And Pilate again asked him, “Have you no answer to make? See how many charges they bring against you.” But Jesus made no further answer, so that Pilate was amazed.”

As we begin to worship God this evening, let this sobering thought set into your mind: Jesus could have defended himself against the charges brought against him, but he chose not to defend his innocence because your sin required a sinless, innocent, Savior’s, bloody and gruesome death on a cross.

Pilate’s amazement, in the passage we just read, is not the kind of amazement we should have this evening; Pilate was amazed in the confused sense of the word. We should be amazed and humbled that an all-powerful God named Jesus chose to surrender his power in silence so that you and I could be given the gift of salvation as we surrender at the foot of his bloody cross. 

CONFESSION OF SIN

Part of understanding the significance of what happened on Good Friday a few thousand years ago, is getting a proper understanding of your sin which nailed Jesus to that cross. One biblical scholar has said that “Until you see the cross as that which is done BY you, you will never appreciate that it is done FOR you” because of your sin.2

In Mark 15:6 – 15, we read that “Now at the feast he used to release for them one prisoner for whom they asked. And among the rebels in prison, who had committed murder in the insurrection, there was a man called Barabbas. And the crowd came up and began to ask Pilate to do as he usually did for them. And he answered them, saying, “Do you want me to release for you the King of the Jews?” For he perceived that it was out of envy that the chief priests had delivered him up. But the chief priests stirred up the crowd to have him release for them Barabbas instead. And Pilate again said to them, “Then what shall I do with the man you call the King of the Jews?” And they cried out again, “Crucify him.” And Pilate said to them, “Why? What evil has he done?” But they shouted all the more, “Crucify him.” So, Pilate, wishing to satisfy the crowd, released for them Barabbas, and having scourged Jesus, he delivered him to be crucified.”

In this part of the story, we are simultaneously placed into the shoes of both Barabbas and the crowd who shouted to crucify Jesus. We are simultaneously the ones who are set free as Jesus dies in our place and we are also the ones who shouted for his execution as we rebelled against him in our sin.

You and I cannot hide from the fact that our sins are more horrific than we can imagine. All we must do is imagine ourselves being set free like Barabbas (even though we are guilty like Barabbas) and then upon entering the crowd we turn around and demand Christ’s execution. Let the weight of your sinfulness rest upon you as we continue to worship our crucified and merciful King.

CONFESSION OF FAITH

Faith is a popular topic in our Western culture. The image of the cross has been relegated down to a trinket we wear on necklaces or an image to print on t-shirts. Jesus himself is depicted as a man who was full of wisdom, kindness, love, and acceptance of everyone including their sin; according to our culture, Jesus would never demand that we reject the sin that feels so pleasurable to us as we come to him by faith.

The Bible knows nothing of this kind of fake faith. On the contrary, the Bible depicts Jesus as a man who suffered greatly so that we could be set free from the penalty, presence, and power of our sin. A true confession of faith requires a true rejection of our sin at the foot of a bloody cross where Jesus suffered in our place.

Mark 15:16 – 20, says that “the soldiers led him away inside the palace (that is the governor’s headquarters), and they called together the whole battalion. And they clothed him in a purple cloak, and twisting together a crown of thorns, they put it on him. And they began to salute him, “Hail, King of the Jews!” And they were striking his head with a reed and spitting on him and kneeling down in homage to him. And when they had mocked him, they stripped him of the purple cloak and put his own clothes on him. And they led him out to crucify him.”

When we confess our faith in Jesus, we are confessing that we trust and believe that he alone is the one who suffered in our place. We should have been the ones who bore the crown of thorns, endured the humiliation, and were led outside the city to the garbage heap for a brutal execution by torture because of our sins against a holy God. But Jesus was the one who endured all of this so that we could be saved by grace through faith in his finished work at the bloody cross of Calvary. Let this be your confession of faith in the King of Kings tonight.

GOOD FRIDAY DEVOTION

In his book, Living the Cross Centered Life (2006), C.J. Mahaney remembers the impact of the movie, The Passion of the Christ by Mel Gibson in 2004, and as he remembers the impact of that movie, he makes a stunning observation when he says:

“Vast numbers of non-Christians watched The Passion of the Christ and witnessed its excruciatingly violent yet realistic images, and as a result, countless evangelistic opportunities opened up for our church and for Christians worldwide… [He goes on to say] Images, however, cannot adequately convey the gospel’s content. The gospel message isn’t visual; it’s truth. It is truth to be believed, not simply a collection of images to be viewed.”3

In our entertainment driven, visual society, it is difficult to understand that while the gospel is definitely visualized in the cross of Christ, it is so much more than a visual because it is a truth to be believed that will forever change your life from the inside out. Your life will be blood stained if you spend your life at the foot of the cross of Christ.

If the cross is the apex of the biblical story, the climax of the story of redemption, then it is on us to wrestle with the reason of why the cross had to happen at all. There is no better place to wrestle with that question other than Isaiah 53 – a passage that Charles Spurgeon called “the Bible in miniature and the gospel in essence.”4 For Mr. Spurgeon, “All of Scripture is blood-stained” but Isaiah 53 is uniquely blood soaked.5 Listen to the words of Isaiah 53…

1 – 3Who has believed what he has heard from us? And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed? For he grew up before him like a young plant, and like a root out of dry ground; he had no form or majesty that we should look at him, and no beauty that we should desire him. He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief; and as one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not.

4 – 6Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. But he was pierced for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed. 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.

7 – 9He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth; like a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent, so he opened not his mouth. By oppression and judgement, he was taken away; and as for his generation, who considered that he was cut off out of the land of the living, stricken for the transgression of my people? And they made his grave with the wicked and with a rich man in his death, although he had done no violence, and there was no deceit in his mouth.

10 – 12Yet it was the will of the Lord to crush him; he has put him to grief; when his soul makes an offering for guilt, he shall see his offspring; he shall prolong his days; the will of the Lord shall prosper in his hand. Out of the anguish of his soul he shall see and be satisfied; by his knowledge shall the righteous one, my servant, make many to be accounted righteous, and he shall bear their iniquities. Therefore, I will divide him a portion with the many, and he shall divide the spoil with the strong, because he poured out his soul to death and was numbered with the transgressors; yet he bore the sin of many and makes intercession for the transgressors.

This passage is indeed, soaked with the blood of our Savior at the cross of Calvary. It is as though every word of this passage is flooded with the blood of our crucified Savior. I agree with R.C Sproul and John Stott who with a combined voice remind us that this passage reveals that “The one from whom we need to be saved is the one who has saved us”because in this passage we see how “Divine love triumphed over divine wrath by divine self-sacrifice.”6

Those statements from Sproul and Stott along with the text we just read, beg us to ask some questions of our hearts. Do I believe? Do I realize that I am prone to being a runaway sheep? Can I see Jesus’ horrific, innocent suffering on my behalf? Do I believe that God wanted this to happen for me? How you and I answer those questions on the daily, is an indicator of how much the bloody cross of Jesus has affected us.

The reality from the text according to verses 1 – 3 is that we have all heard about Jesus. But we often fail to remember that he was not particularly attractive; we would not have been drawn to him because of some physical beauty. He would not have made the cover of Vogue magazine because he was not pleasing to the eye. Instead, he was despised, rejected, and carried the aura of sadness and grief; he did not show up with all the pomp and circumstance of royalty or Hollywood stars on the red carpet who so often catch our attention. Do you really believe in the Jesus of this passage?

When you examine verses 4 – 6, you meet a man who carried our grief and our sorrows; he literally took the heavy burdens of sin off our backs and put them on his own, beaten back so we could straighten up as we followed him up that hill to the cross of Calvary. Yet, instead of obediently following him, we saw him as a cast away, stricken, smitten, afflicted like a diseased hobo; we were offended by his presence rather than humbled by his presence when we were living in our sin.

Yet, he willingly chose to suffer for you and me so that we could have a chance at true eternal peace with our Heavenly Father who offers us complete healing in his presence. God literally did all of this to Jesus – his willing Son – so that we could be saved from the presence, the penalty, and the power of our indwelling sin. How often do you spend time coming to grips with the fact that you are a runaway sheep?

According to verses 7 – 9, Jesus suffered like an innocent, silent lamb; even though he is the Lion of the Tribe of Judah and the Creator of all living things (Rev. 5:5; Col. 1:15 – 23). In his suffering, he was cut off, severed, removed from his generation, and left all alone to die on a bloody cross. He died among the wicked, was numbered among the wicked, was executed like a wicked criminal and then buried in a borrowed tomb of a wealthy man – borrowed because he walked out of that grave on Sunday morning! You need to be here on Sunday morning to celebrate the depths of the significance of the empty tomb after we have soberly thought deeply about the implications of the bloody cross. Can you see Jesus in all his innocence as he suffers in your place at the cross of Calvary?

If this passage, these descriptions, and these questions, are hard for you to handle emotionally, that is good because it should be! But nothing is harder to swallow than the final verses of our text. In verses 10 – 12, it is absolutely clear that all of this was God’s will; all of this, all the suffering, all the beating, all the pain, all the torture, all the abandonment, all the abuse, all the rejection, all the sacrifice, every last bit of Jesus’ spilled blood and shredded body, was God’s will. It was God’s will for Jesus to suffer, to be your mediator, to be your substitute, and to become sin for you and for me. Do you really believe that God did this for you?

As I said earlier, every word of this passage is flooded with the blood of our crucified Savior. The question is, do you believe? Do you realize that you are prone to being a runaway sheep? Can you see Jesus’ horrific, innocent suffering on your behalf? Do you believe that God wanted this to happen for you? How you answer those questions on the daily, is an indicator of how much the bloody cross of Jesus has affected your life.

CALL TO THE LORD’S TABLE

The Lord’s Table is a tradition in the church that Jesus set into place on the night before his death where he took the cup of wine and the bread and breaking the bread he said, “Do this in remembrance of me”. What he did that night before his crucifixion was a foreshadowing of what took place the next day on a hill called Golgotha.

Mark 15:22 – 32 records the events this way, “And they brought him to the place called Golgotha (which means Place of the Skull). And they offered him wine mixed with myrrh, but he did not take it. And they crucified him and divided his garments among them, casting lots for them, to decide what each should take. And it was the third hour when they crucified him. And the inscription of the charge against him read, “The King of the Jews.” And with him they crucified two robbers, one on his right and one on his left. And those who passed by derided him, wagging their heads and saying, “Aha! You who would destroy the temple and rebuild it in three days, save yourself, and come down from the cross!” So also, the chief priests with the scribes mocked him to one another, “He saved others; he cannot save himself. Let the Christ, the King of Israel, come down now from the cross that we may see and believe.” Those who were crucified with him also reviled him.”

Can you hear the echoes of Isaiah 53 in what we just read? Jesus has been nailed horrifically to a cross in the garbage heap outside the city as everyone around him mocks him and makes fun of him. He has been stripped completely naked and he is hanging on that cross with his body shredded like he has just been run over by a large cheese grater. His blood is running down the cross and it is flowing down the hill of Golgotha like a crimson river.

RECEIVE COMMUNION, PRAYER, BENEDICTION

Mark 15:33 – 39 records Jesus’ final moments as he dies on that bloody cross. Mark tells us that “when the sixth hour had come, there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour. And at the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, “Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachtani?” which means, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” And some of the bystanders hearing it said, “Behold, he is calling Elijah.” And someone ran and filled a sponge with sour wine, put it on a reed and gave it to him to drink, saying, “Wait, let us see whether Elijah will come to take him down.” And Jesus uttered a loud cry and breathed his last. And the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom. And when the centurion, who stood facing him, saw that in this way he breathed his last, he said, “Truly this man was the Son of God!”

I hope your heart is wrecked by the sheer silence of the moment that Jesus died. He died forsaken, despised, tortured, and all alone on that dark hill we call Golgotha. Please let the reality of Jesus’ death settle into your heart as we receive the communion elements together. First, the bread which is the body of Christ broken for you and for me. Next, the juice which is the blood of Jesus poured out for you and for me. Let me pray and then I will make a brief closing statement as we all leave quietly, and soberly, thinking upon the bloody cross of Christ at Calvary. – Pray….

In closing, as you leave here tonight, in quiet, humbled, and sober contemplation of the bloody cross where Jesus died in your place, please hear these words from another preacher:

“God in abandoning His Son, is treating Jesus as a sinner so that He can treat you and me – who are sinners – as if we were righteous… all because of Jesus. He was cut off from his Father so that we can boldly say, ‘Nothing shall separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus. He’s forsaken so that we might be forgiven. He’s alone so that we might never be alone.”7

1 Unless otherwise specified, all Bible references in this paper are to the English Standard Version Bible, The New Classic Reference Edition (ESV) (Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers, 2001).

2 C.J. Mahaney, Living The Cross Centered Life, (New York: Multnomah Books, 2006), 90.

3 Ibid., 46.

4 Ibid., 49 – 50.

5 Ibid.

6 Ibid., 70.

6 Ibid., 94 – 95.