There they crucified him.
Message for Good Friday
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Text: John 19:18 There they crucified him. |
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There they crucified him
The death of Jesus on a cross is
an event that has had a powerful effect across the world and throughout the
ages; that moment has been remembered forever in sculptures, paintings and
literature; it is the moment that is brought to everyone’s attention as they
gaze on crucifixes on altars, on church spires, in town squares, on the sides of
buildings, and even along country roads (especially in Europe).
Without a doubt, one of the most
frequent subjects of western art is the crucifixion and so you would think that
there would be a vivid description of what happened on Good Friday outside
Jerusalem in the Bible.
But there isn’t.
The record we have of Jesus’ crucifixion is surprisingly simply – it’s
just 3 words in Greek. All four gospels are extremely brief saying simply –
“they crucified him”.
That’s all they say to indicate that
Jesus was nailed to a cross.
The gospel writers give us a
good description of the verbal abuse Jesus suffered during the several trials
the night before he died, but they spare us the gory details of what happened to
Jesus’ body when he was whipped and nailed to the cross.
Can you imagine what a field day
60 Minutes would have reporting the
events of Good Friday? They would preface their report with a warning that some
viewers may find what they’re about to see as confronting and then proceed with
a detailed description of the events and reports from onlookers. They would tell
in detail the effect of a whip on human flesh, include video of the Roman
soldiers with hammer and nails, the spikes going through flesh and bone, the
gasping of the crowd and so on, and above all, the agonising cries of the
victim.
But the Gospel writers are not
60 Minutes reporters.
Even the apostle Paul is brief in his description of this moment on Good
Friday. He simply says,
“He
died for all” (2 Cor 5:14).
The writers of the Scriptures don’t want us to get hung up on the blood
and gore and pain of Good Friday.
They leave all that to our imaginations.
What is more important for those who
tell the story of the first Good Friday is why it happened.
They begin their gospel accounts with God taking seriously the state of
the world and the corruption of humanity.
God takes it so seriously that he enters the world as one of us.
He is announced by an angel as “the one who will save people from
their sin”. He is Immanuel –
“God with us” – who is born into this world and lives in this world with all
the cravings, difficulties, troubles, temptations and suffering that we
experience. God came amongst us for
only one reason – his love for all people.
He could not stand by and watch sin and death take control and leave us
without hope.
“He
died for all” (2 Cor 5:14)
Paul says, that means, he died for you and me.
Today, as we gaze at the cross, I trust we will reflect on these three things.
Firstly,
as we reflect on what the cross means for us, we will realise again how God took
on himself the burden of our guilt and shame and died in our place and defeated
the bitterness of death.
We will reflect on what God was prepared to do for us because he knows how
broken we are,
how often we fail to be the people he created us to be,
how weak we are when faced with choices that involve a decision between putting
ourselves or putting others first;
how hard we find it to love, to forgive, to be compassionate, to be inclusive,
to be welcoming and friendly and much easier to be harsh, judgemental and cold.
The cross is a sign of how God put all our shame and guilt the behind us.
Secondly, as we reflect on the
events of Good Friday, once again we remember how the cross is a sign of God’s
love for you and me personally, a symbol of God’s never-ending grace.
To understand the cross, we need
to understand God’s grace. There is
nothing you or I can add to the cross and its effect.
Christ has lovingly done it all for us through the cross.
God has fixed the gap between himself and us that our sin causes.
God has cleansed us from the guilt of our sin.
God has made it possible for you and me to enter his heavenly kingdom.
Through the cross, God has done it all.
Thirdly, as we reflect on the
cross of Good Friday, we are reminded that through the cross, we have a new
identity, a new life, a new hope, a new joy and a new strength.
While we are in this life, we still have to face the harsh realities of
suffering and trouble, but with the crucified and risen Christ, we have a
newness that enables us to face all these things, not with our own strength and
abilities, but with the new hope, joy and life that comes from trusting in the
risen Christ who walks this journey with us and gives us the strength to have a
longer and bigger view than our present troubles.
As we gaze at the cross let it
remind us that it was the sin and death in us that put Jesus on the cross.
Let it remind us that from the cross, the love of God beams down on us and
affects us, changes us, renews us, enables us to appreciate again how our past
has been wiped clean and our future has been made certain simply through
trusting in the One who has died for us.
The man who was crucified next
to Jesus saw his past, present and future in a new way when he looked at the Son
of God dying next to him. He looked
at Jesus and saw hope, newness, life and new possibilities.
He asked, “Jesus, remember me when
you come into your kingdom”.
Make this our prayer as we
remember the events of Good Friday that we too may fully enjoy all that it means
to be made new in his kingdom.
E-mail:
sermonsonthenet@outlook.com
30th March 2018
