Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] Would you pray with me, Father? We come to a night like this, and all we can say is we recognize we are ruined sinners, and we're thankful for the gift of Jesus Christ, that in him we have hope, in him we have light, in him we have the blessing of resurrection. I pray, Father, that you would speak your good word to our hearts tonight. Night. I pray that we would be reminded of the sacrifice that Christ paid on our behalf and that our hearts would be lifted up to declare Hallelujah. What a savior. In Christ's name, we pray. Amen.
[00:00:40] In our modern age, we're very accustomed to light. Everywhere we go, there's a light switch that we can flip on. There's a screen available to us, lights in the parking lot, even a flashlight on our phone. But every once in a while, something out of the ordinary happens, and the lights go out, the power goes out, and the house goes dark. We're coming up next week. This once in a lifetime total solar eclipse where the sun should be shining bright, our worlds will go dark. And in those moments, we feel the darkness differently. We feel the weight of it, this physical darkness that we experience.
[00:01:20] But what about the moments of our life where the darkness touches our souls, where it bleeds into our hearts, it affects our thoughts and our minds? The moment you get the call with the bad news, the time you stood in the hospital feeling little to no hope, that time that a lie was exposed, a painful truth was revealed.
[00:01:44] Nothing really feels darker than standing in the presence of death, the death of somebody you love.
[00:01:51] Nothing really feels more bleak than when your people are hurting and you just can't do anything to fix it for them.
[00:02:00] We've seen. We felt the darkness of oppression and violence. We've carried our own darkness of guilt and shame.
[00:02:10] We felt that weight when hope seems lost and good seems impossible.
[00:02:19] We felt like we were drowning in the darkness of rejection, in the darkness of sorrow, we felt the moments where anxiety and fear and depression had a painful grip on our hearts.
[00:02:35] And though in these moments, it might often feel like it, we're not the only ones to have stood in dark and painful moments.
[00:02:45] It was in the darkness of night that Jesus Christ was arrested, betrayed, deserted by his friends, mocked and beaten by soldiers and leaders alike.
[00:02:58] It was in the darkness of night when Jesus was rejected by those who should have stood, stood by him the closest.
[00:03:06] He was taken before the leading priests and the teachers of the law.
[00:03:10] He was stood up for a trial before Pilate, the roman governor. Innocent. He was condemned.
[00:03:18] Crowds of people looked upon Christ and yelled, crucify him.
[00:03:24] He was sentenced to death and nailed to a cross.
[00:03:28] And crowds stood by and watched.
[00:03:32] The leaders scoffed, the soldiers gambled.
[00:03:37] And there was Christ taking it all with grace and dignity.
[00:03:44] And Luke tells us in his gospel in chapter 23 that as Christ hung on the cross in verse 44, it was about noon. Darkness fell across the whole land until 03:00. The light from the sun was gone, and suddenly the curtain in the sanctuary of the temple was torn down the middle. Then Jesus shouted, father, I entrust my spirit into your hands. And with these words, he breathed his last.
[00:04:11] When the roman officer overseeing the execution saw what had happened, he worshiped God and said, surely this man was innocent.
[00:04:20] When all the crowd that had come to see the crucifixion saw what had happened, they went home in deep sorrow. But Jesus friends, including the women who'd followed him from Galilee, stood at a distance, watching death on a cross buried in a tomb.
[00:04:40] Nobody thought Christ had won that day.
[00:04:45] They walked away with sorrow.
[00:04:48] The women who'd stuck by so closely stood at a distance and watched.
[00:04:55] His followers would go on to hide themselves away in a locked room, thinking, it's done. Surely this was the end.
[00:05:03] But Luke wants us to see here. This was not an ordinary day. This was not an ordinary death. When Christ died on the cross, a couple of completely unexpected things happened. The first, he says, at this point of the day, when the sun was out and bright and shining, total darkness swept in for hours. The lights went out.
[00:05:31] Nobody expected night to come in the middle of the day.
[00:05:35] And then Luke says, this thing in the middle there, he says, and the curtain was torn from the temple right down the middle. The curtain was made of this thick, heavy material, and it separated the holy of holies from everybody else, could only be entered one day of the year and only then by the high priest. But something was changing. What once was separated was being opened. And nobody could have predicted that this barrier that stood through generations would be torn by a hand that nobody could see.
[00:06:11] But Luke says there was a roman officer standing there, and he recognized something of God in this moment, an officer who was hardened by death, who'd inflicted this death time and time and time again, who'd seen men die day after day after day and didn't even bat an eyelash. He recognized something special in this moment, and it led him to worship God, to glorify him, to honor him. And nobody could ever guess that this hardened roman centurion would be awed by Christ and come to worship God, because Christ was something that nobody expected.
[00:06:58] Everybody has this picture. When we think of Christ victorious, Christ winning, Christ overthrowing darkness and evil and pain and sorrow, we all want to picture something different. We want the end of the Hollywood movie where the fight's been won and the battle's been saved, and it's the celebration and the party and the big hooray moment.
[00:07:22] But Easter doesn't come without good Friday.
[00:07:26] Resurrection doesn't come until death.
[00:07:31] In Christ's way of winning, it came so different. Through weakness and pain and anguish, his path to glory, his road to victory, it was marked by violence and mockery and defeat.
[00:07:50] And when we think of God showing up on the scene and changing things, fixing things, restoring things, the image we're given is Christ hanging on a cross, absorbing into himself all the evil, all the darkness.
[00:08:09] Christ showed up to do what no one had done before.
[00:08:15] People expected a king. People expected a nation to be led to victory.
[00:08:21] But Christ wasn't the king anyone expected.
[00:08:25] And yet good Friday reminds us he is the exact king that every one of us needs.
[00:08:32] He stood in a place we'll never have to stand.
[00:08:36] He suffered a cost we'll never have to pay.
[00:08:41] He endured a pain so deep, will never have to feel.
[00:08:48] When many of us would have turned away, when we would have cried, it's too much.
[00:08:54] Christ stood firm.
[00:08:57] He did not turn his back.
[00:09:00] He did not lose his resolve.
[00:09:04] Christ was alone, so that we never have to be.
[00:09:09] He turned towards all, all that came that day so that we could always turn towards him.
[00:09:16] He took our guilt upon himself so that you and I could be declared innocent, took the full darkness so we always have access to light.
[00:09:30] He gave it all, his very life that you and I might live.
[00:09:37] Christ showed up, and he did claim a victory that day, a victory that nobody else could claim.
[00:09:45] He did it in a way that nobody else could do.
[00:09:49] He took the cross, recognized for its offensiveness, its shame, the suffering it represented, and he turned it into a symbol of life and victory and hope.
[00:10:06] What seemed like the end that night just marked the beginning.
[00:10:13] So how do we respond to a king like this? A king we didn't expect, a king we wouldn't have pictured in this way, a king we wouldn't have chosen to do these things. How do we respond to this kind of kingdom? We find awesome ideas in this gospel of Luke. The first way we respond is with trust.
[00:10:36] In his last moments, in his last breath, Jesus shouted out, and he entrusted his spirit into the hands of God.
[00:10:46] I can't imagine or fathom what it must have been like for Christ in these moments. Body broken, alone in the darkness, surrounded by cruel, mean, taunting faces.
[00:11:03] But I do know this.
[00:11:05] When things were at their darkest, Christ trusted his dad.
[00:11:13] When things were as hard as they could get, when he felt the full weight and burden of sin and darkness, evil and agony, he had a God he could turn to and trust in.
[00:11:28] And he shows us. In our darkest moments, we have a God who knows us, a God who loves us, a God who will not let us down.
[00:11:41] When things are at their worst, we can trust ourselves to the loving hands of God.
[00:11:48] I've lost many things in my life, little things, big things, cheap things, expensive things.
[00:11:55] But what I've trusted into the hands of God has never been lost.
[00:12:00] He does not let it slip through his hands. Wherever you are, whatever you face, whatever darkness seems to overwhelm you in this day, you can trust it to God.
[00:12:16] No matter how lonely you feel, no matter how heavy the pain, the anguish, no matter how hard the fight, we do not do any of it alone.
[00:12:29] No matter how broken you feel. In spirit, good Friday reminds us that there is a God who is good, and he's faithful, and he loves you.
[00:12:46] From the breath we take today, until our final breaths, we trust our lives, our spirits, our hopes, our dreams, even our fears, into the loving hands of God.
[00:13:02] And maybe tonight, the prayer you most need to whisper in your heart is this, father, I entrust my spirit into your hands.
[00:13:13] Maybe the prayer you need to whisper is, God I trust the ones I love into your hands.
[00:13:22] Maybe tonight the prayer you need to whisper is, God, I trust you.
[00:13:30] And you place it in the loving, trusting hands of God.
[00:13:35] Maybe tonight you need to hear the tender whisper of your father just calling you to trust him.
[00:13:44] We respond to Christ with trust, but then we also respond with worship.
[00:13:51] Roman officers saw Christ take his last breath, and in everything he'd seen in his whole life experience that led up to this moment, he recognized the righteousness of Christ.
[00:14:07] He recognized in this moment, something different was happening, and it turned his heart towards worship.
[00:14:17] When we think of Christ on good Friday, enduring the cross, all that he went through, all that he took on himself, we can only respond with worship and gratitude, because Christ didn't do it for some general reason or some random idea. Christ walked into that day with intent and purpose, out of his great love for us. He did not turn from any of it.
[00:14:49] Not the taunting or the mockery, the slaps or the cruelty. He did not turn from the pain or the violence, the hurt of being abandoned or betrayed. Instead, he stood in it all. He turned towards it all, doing what only he could do, so that today you and I could stand firm in the knowledge.
[00:15:16] There is no darkness that we can be defeated by. There is no sin, no evil so great that Christ hasn't already defeated it.
[00:15:28] Something we could not do on our own. We worship because when we stand before Christ on the cross, we recognized we are ruined sinners.
[00:15:40] Christ didn't do this generally. He did it specifically for you and for me.
[00:15:46] It was my sin that he died for on the cross.
[00:15:52] It was our darkness, our evil that he overcame that day.
[00:15:57] And he endured it, the shame, the indignity of it, for the joy that was set before him, for the love that was within him, for the grace that radiated through him. He did all for you and I.
[00:16:14] Not for anything that we've done, not for anything that we've earned or anything that we've given. But out of his own great wealth of love, Christ gave himself fully for us. Entirely for us. Utterly for us. He held nothing of himself back that day.
[00:16:37] And when we come to Good Friday, I recognize how many days I held myself back and did not give enough for Christ.
[00:16:44] I recognize the ugly moments that Christ gave himself in those days.
[00:16:51] And I look at the loving eyes of Jesus Christ, and all we can do is fall down and worship him.
[00:17:00] And because he humbled himself, God exalted him, because he took it all. God gave him the name that is above every other name, that at his name every knee will bow, every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, that there is none greater than him, that there is nothing in this life or in the life to come that has greater value than him. Because of what he's done, because of what we gave, we worship him.
[00:17:32] And tonight we remember that without Jesus Christ, I am lost in the dark.
[00:17:40] I have no hope of finding my way out.
[00:17:44] We recognize that Christ took this darkness on himself, absorbed it, overcame it. That, friend, you and I will never stand in the dark alone. His light is always available to us. We've never been loved like we've been loved by Jesus Christ. We've never been seen as we are seen by by Jesus Christ. When his life was on the line, Jesus Christ did not abandon us, and he will not abandon us today.
[00:18:15] We have hope in the dark because our friend Jesus Christ is there to guide us out. And we trust in him. We worship him. We recognize the greatness of who he is and what he came to do. We agree with John Calvin, who reminds us of what Christ did. He was sold to buy us back captive to deliver us condemned to absolve us. He was made a curse for our blessing, sin offering for our righteousness marred, that we may be made fair.
[00:18:52] He died for our life so that by him fury is made gentle, wrath appeased, darkness turned into light, fear reassured, despisal despised. Debt canceled, labor lightened, sadness made merry. Misfortune made fortunate difficult made easy. Disorder ordered, division united, ignominy ennobled, rebellion subjected. Intimidation intimidated, ambush uncovered, assault assailed, force forced, back. Combat combated. War warred against vengeance avenged. Torment tormented, damnation damned. The abyss, sunk into the abyss, hell transfixed, death dead, mortality made, embrace immortal. In short, mercy has swallowed up all misery and goodness, all misfortune in the face of the greatness of Jesus Christ. His victory, his love.
[00:20:05] All we can do is worship.
[00:20:08] And maybe tonight on this good Friday we just need to look to Jesus Christ and worship him.
[00:20:16] Maybe you've never given him this spot in your life.
[00:20:20] Maybe he's never owned this part in your heart. And tonight you can say, Christ, I see you. I see who you are. I see what you have done. And I will follow you.
[00:20:35] You are worthy of it all. How good you are. I recognize that you are king of kings, lord of lords and savior of the world.
[00:20:46] I know it's not much. I know I don't have a lot to give this glorious king.
[00:20:53] But we show up tonight with hearts full of reverence, respect, awe and gratitude. And we kneel before the Lord and say thank you for Jesus Christ.
