Sermon Tone Analysis

Call to worship

Welcome to our Good Friday Service this morning.

After the service will be tea/coffee and hot cross buns, so please stay and enjoy the fellowship.

Let us start by hearing the Psalm most relevant to this day in the Christian calendar.

Isn’t it incredible that a Psalm that could have credibly been written after Jesus’ crucifixion was actually written 1000 years before prophesying what would happen to Jesus?

The power of the cross

Of all the prophesies about Jesus there are none so explicit as the one I am about to read which was written 700 years before Jesus came.

Next hymn

Hymn

After last night’s ‘Objects of the Cross’ we may wonder if there is anything to add.

The fact is, that we could preach on this passage every single day and it will always being out something new for the cross is central to our understanding of the Christian faith.

Without the cross there is no salvation.

When Muslims and others say that Jesus did not die on the cross they try to undermine the foundation of our faith.

And indeed that is what the devil wants, he wants a bloodless death, a Christ who never died for our sins for this was his greatest mistake.

The devil and those in cahoots with him thought that by putting to death Jesus that they would win power over God but the devil overreached not realising that God’s plan from eternity was that Jesus should die for the salvation of the world.

Indeed we read in:

Even the accusation against Jesus: Here is Jesus, King of the Jews was meant to be insulting but it was, instead, the very truth.

But darkness came over the whole land from noon until 3pm.

This was prophesied in:

This would have been interpreted as God’s judgement, and they would have thought that it was His judgement against Jesus.

We understand that God did not judge Jesus but sin.

And this darkness hid, as it were, Jesus from the onlookers, whilst He suffered the most excruciating part of His torture, and no, it was not the cross itself, though that was plainly bad enough with the pain and the inability to get air into the lungs.

No, it was not the cross but the realisation that He had been abandoned.

We will never get the complete picture or depth of what happened if we do not realise that for all eternity Father, Son and Holy Spirit had never once been apart.

Together they form the Godhead.

Together they planned creation and its salvation.

Until now.

This moment in earthly history, for the very first time, their relationship was severed in a human way.

We are told by Paul what happened:

Jesus who had led a sinless life who very publicly asked:

I cannot imagine anyone of us going in public and asking this.

I have done plenty wrong - and I can think of just this week alone.

There is no way I would and I don’t think any of us would dare to put ourselves in the public sphere and declare that we are sinless daring others to prove us wrong.

But that is what Jesus did - and He could only do this because He WAS sinless.

For those final three hours of darkness upon the cross Jesus became sin.

In other words sin, personified.

It was in this way that God’s wrath and judgement against sin could be poured out in full, not on us but upon Jesus as He hung in utter darkness.

The sheer and utter desperation and stress that Jesus felt in that moment was because of us causing those haunting words of Psalm 22:

“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

pause

We come to another important aspect of what happened on Good Friday:

Whenever we see the news where there are bloodstained clothing because of an accident or because of war we immediately faced with the stark reality that we are all mortal.

When we think about what happened on this day even before He got to the cross He had been whipped within an inch of His life and a crown of thorns placed upon His head the blood was already flowing.

Then upon the cross the last drop of blood fell from His body demonstrated very clearly by the sword of the centurion.

Blood is very important - for without the shedding of blood there can be no forgiveness of sin.

But this was no ordinary man with blood loss.

It was poured out for us and was sufficient to save us.

Without Christ’s shed blood there is no good news, no gospel, no forgiveness, no justification, no sanctification.

God’s justice was only satisfied when Jesus paid for our reconciliation with His blood.

Today this is still considered to be offensive but it does not change the facts.

Jesus had to die this way to save us from the awfulness of sin.

We comfort ourselves with just how well we do compared to others especially with despots.

But how despots seem to us is how we appear to God for He is holy, holy, holy.

We are truly offensive to Him.

So Jesus’ shed blood was the only acceptable payment for sin and the only way for us to have access to a holy God.

We are only starting to scratch the surface of what happened at the cross of Jesus.

But I ask you, can we continue to live how we live knowing that Jesus had to go through all that for us?

Let me make it more pointed.

He went through all that for you.

You, individually.

Every one of you.

And, praise God, for me too.

We needed Jesus to come and save us.

We were in desperate straits and you still are if you have not invited Jesus into your life.

Do you now really think you are good enough to stand before God without the help of Jesus?

I certainly am not.

And nor are you.

Jesus is exclusive because He did the only work that could exclusively save us:

The curtain in the Temple was torn from top to bottom that separated us away from the Holy of holies in the Temple.

No longer was it just for the high priest once per year to go in but through the death of Jesus and His sacrifice we all have access to God at anytime anywhere through Jesus.

Like I’ve said we’ve only begun to scratch the surface of all that He has been done for us.

I’d like to read to you a poem:

It is high noon when day is bright

But instead becomes dark as night

Something is being forbidden

The Son of God being hidden

From curious people besides

From His Father’s face also hides

Three hours later horrendous cry

Abandoned!

Oh why, why, why, why?

Deep sorrows and desolation

The why of His incarnation.

He had come for this very hour

Giving up heavenly power

He became sin personified

God’s wrath and justice satisfied

The thorned crown declares: He is King!

It is finished!

Done everything!

Hanging upon the crimson tree

“My Spirit I commit to thee”

The hanging temple curtain torn

The day again begins to dawn.

(Ian)

Friday is here but Sunday is coming.

It is on Sunday we realise that the victory has truly been won.

We give our lives back in thanks to Him who saves us and has given us eternal life.

There was a day in 1986 that I committed my life of Jesus.

Was there a day for you?