Good Friday 2023

Peter Voorhees

Seven Last Words of Christ from the Cross • Sermon • Submitted a year ago • Presented a year ago

Matthew 27:46

Good Friday

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God has done it!

Notes

Transcript

The Opening Prayer

Oh, Lord, why do the nations rage and the people plot in vain?

The powerful, the elite, the God-deniers, the Messiah-defiers declare, “let’s get free of God”

Crucify Him, Crucify Him, they shout, let’s kill him… then we’ll be free

Free… as if we even know what that word really means. The shackles we place on ourselves in the name of freedom and autonomy are too heavy for us to lift.

You were despised and rejected by men, so that we might stand before the Father beloved and accepted.

You were a man of sorrows making grief a companion, so that we might have life abundant and that your joy would be our strength.

You bore the consequence of our sin so that we would not have to.

Your wounds bring us healing. Your chastisement has brought us peace.

We confess this is too wonderful for us. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned to our own way; yet YHWH has laid on you our iniquity.

You did what we could not do. But this has always been.

When we pass through the waters, you are with us.

When we have been tried by flame and refined in the furnace we have not been consumed.

You are our Lord, God, the Holy One, our Savior. You are the Lord and there is no other.

We are precious in your eyes.

Draw us this evening in an ever closer walk with you. Still our racing thoughts, speak peace to the storm inside, give us grace this evening to receive in great expectation what you have for us.

Be near this evening in ways that we can sense and in ways we can know. Help us in the uncomfortable moments and especially when sorrow enters in. Lord fill this place. For where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.

Amen.

The Fourth Word

The fourth word of Christ from the cross, from the Gospel of Matthew. Chapter 27, verse 46.

English Standard Version Chapter 27

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?”

If you and I were there that day, I can only imagine the sights, the sounds, the smells that would be consuming us.

It was the middle of the afternoon and it was dark, the Bible says “there was darkness over all the land”. I can’t help but think it wasn’t only visibly dark, but it felt dark emotionally, spiritually, and mentally.

Jesus, beaten, scourged, pierced, hanging on the cross… like a criminal, condemned, cursed.

Then in that ninth hour, about 3pm, Jesus cries out in Aramaic, “Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?”

Now you and I standing at the cross, much like John, the women, even the soldiers… it would be something we could not forget.

Does Jesus believe that the Father has abandoned Him? Has the Trinity even for a moment in the history of time been dismantled? Has what we understood to be the hypostatic union between the God-man been undone even for a moment?

Or, is there something deeper, something that upon further reflection and examination He’s calling us to understand.

This fourth word from the cross is a direct quote to Psalm 22. Where the psalmist starts off, as you might guess, Psalm 22:1 “My God, my God, why have you abandoned me? Why are you so far from my deliverance and from my words of groaning?”

It is in this lament, in the psalm that we find even more familiar language used by the gospels in describing what is taking place on Golgotha that day.

English Standard Version (Psalm 22:6-8)

But I am a worm and not a man, scorned by mankind and despised by the people. All who see me mock me; they make mouths at me; they wag their heads; “He trusts in the LORD; let him deliver him; let him rescue him, for he delights in him!”

English Standard Version (Psalm 22:14-15)

I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint; my heart is like wax; it is melted within my breast; my strength is dried up like a potsherd, and my tongue sticks to my jaws; you lay me in the dust of death.

But this is not the end. While hanging upon the cross, with grief, darkness, anguish, crushing weight of fear and sense of loss… Jesus points us to Psalm 22, because it is at the end of this Psalm we find hope...

The Message: The Bible in Contemporary Language (adaptation) (Psalm 22:29-31)

Kingship belongs to the LORD. All the power-mongers are before him—worshiping! All the poor and powerless, too—worshiping! Along with those who never got it together—worshiping! Our children and their children will get in on this. As the word is passed along from parent to child. Babies not yet conceived will hear the good news—that God has done it.

God has redeemed us. God has done it.