Good Friday

April 2, 1999

Pastor: Wayne C. Eichstadt

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Hymns: 390, 175, 170, [371, 153 ~ Communion], 172(st.9-10)

Opening Prayer

Merciful and everlasting God who did not spare Your only Son but delivered Him up for us all so that He might bear our sins upon the cross, grant that our hearts may be so fixed on Him with steadfast faith that we may not fear the power of any enemy. Help us to remember and give thanks in this hour for our Lord’s suffering and death, that believing we may obtain forgiveness of sins and life everlasting. Amen.

Readings: Topical Passion History

SERMON

INI

Lo! stained with blood, the Lamb of God—the Bridegroom—lies before You, pouring out His life that He may to life restore You. [TLH #167 st. 4] Grace be unto you and peace from God our Father and from our crucified Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, Amen.

TEXT: Colossians 1:14

We have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins!

In Christ Jesus, whose blood sets you free, dear fellow-redeemed:

Afternoon: This is the time of darkness! As we worship this afternoon we are right in the middle of the 3 hours during which darkness came upon the earth the day Jesus was crucified. . .

Evening: The day is done. At this time on the day of Jesus’ death the sun had gone down, the Sabbath had begun, everyone was at home, and Jesus lay dead in the grave. Everyone was at home for the Sabbath, but you can be sure the events of the day were playing through their minds as they relived every painful (or depending on the point of view - every joyful) detail Before we find ourselves at home tonight, we also are reviewing in our hearts and minds what happened earlier in the day. . .

…To go back and view that first Good Friday is not pleasing to our senses. Our eyes see extraordinary darkness—an eerie darkness when it is supposed to be light in the middle of the day. We see death as it slowly comes upon three men hanging on crosses. Our ears hear the groans and cries of agony from the ones who are dying, the ridiculing laughter from some of those who are gathered around the crosses, and certainly weeping from others. To stand, watch, and listen on Golgotha is not a pleasurable experience.

What we see on Golgotha is something God never intended for us to see. Don’t misunderstand me, Jesus’ work of redemption is certainly something God intended and indeed Himself planned, but He did so only because sin entered into the world and brought death with it. The gloom, sorrow, pain, and agony of Golgotha are the gloom, sorrow, pain, and agony of SIN and DEATH, neither of which did God ever intend to be issues in our lives.

Like the two pieces of the cross coming together, so we see the effect of our sin and the redemption from our sin coming together in the blood that stains the cross on which Christ died. WE HAVE REDEMPTION THROUGH HIS BLOOD!

I. The sin from which we are redeemed

As we look upon the place of Jesus’ crucifixion, everything we see and hear should burn upon our hearts the seriousness and magnitude of our sin. On Golgotha, the enticing entrapments of sin are stripped away, the deceptive beauty and pleasure of sin is pulled away like a mask. As a result, when we look at Golgotha we are staring right into the face of sin’s grim reality and behind that face Satan and all the powers of hell grin in evil delight.

On Calvary we see two criminals being rightfully crucified for their crimes. The crimes that brought these two men to Golgotha are sin. The crimes which we witness in the world, the ones that bring such pain and sorrow, the hideous unspeakable crimes that are committed against fellow human beings, are all sin. All crime comes from the same kind of sin that is in each of us. We ought never think that we have a lesser, more humane kind of sin living in us, than that which lives in "those hardened criminals." We don’t. Sin is the same. Is staring into that reality of sin frightening? Yes! ...or at least it ought to be.

On Calvary we hear the ridicule, the jeering, and the laughter that isn’t joyful but rather that cuts because of its cruelty. Again, these things are not something we have trouble finding in the world of our day. The childhood rhyme may say...."words will never hurt me," but they do. If you cringe to hear the mocking at the foot of Jesus’ cross you are drawing back from sin. If you yourself have ever felt the sting of ridicule, or been the one who ridicules, you yourself know that face of sin too.

On Calvary we hear weeping. Thirty-three years earlier, Simeon had held the baby Jesus in his arms and told Mary, "..a sword will pierce through your own soul also..." (Luke 1:35). As Mary stood on Calvary there is no doubt that the heart of a mother was breaking with grief to see her Son die. The sorrow of losing a loved one into death, and every other sorrow or pain on this earth, are things which a sin-free world would never know or even be able to comprehend.

Crime, ridicule, and sorrow are all effects of sin which we see firsthand on Calvary and in our own lives. Above all else, what we see on Golgotha is DEATH.

Death is separation. Death on this earth is separation of soul from body. Spiritual death is separation of the soul from God. Eternal death is separation of both soul and body from God forever in hell. Death in all three of these forms is the unavoidable fruit of sin. On this point, God is abundantly clear: "In the day you eat of [the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil] dying you will die (Genesis 2:17); "The soul that sins shall die..." (Ezekiel 18:20). "The wages of sin is death" (Romans 6:23).

The three hours of darkness which we see at Golgotha is also a testimony to sin. During the time of darkness, Jesus was dying His earthly death and our eternal death—He was separated from God so that from that great darkness He cried out, "My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me." In that darkness, Jesus was enduring the eternal separation from God—a judgment which every sin deserves, but which for Jesus was multiplied by all the sins of the world because the Lord had laid on Him the iniquity of us all (cf: Isaiah 53:6).

II. The blood by which we are redeemed

The darkness of Calvary is the darkness of sin and death. The darkness of sin and death is the darkness in which sinners live. The eternal judgment against our sin is the wages we all earn. The kingdom of darkness, sin, and death, is the kingdom into which we are all born as citizens. However, in the words right before the text Paul writes, "He [the Father] has delivered us from the power of darkness and conveyed us into the kingdom of the Son of His love..." Paul then goes on to explain how this takes place with the life-giving words: "We have redemption through His [the beloved Son’s] blood, the forgiveness of sins!"

We see the effect of our sin on that hill of crucifixion. Thanks be to God we also see there, our redemption. The eternal separation from God is what we deserve for our sins. We are sinners to the core, but there is FORGIVENESS! We are born slaves to the darkness and powers of sin, but there is REDEMPTION! There is a setting-free of the slaves, a release from the bondage of sin. The PROBLEM is SIN, the REDEMPTION is the FORGIVENESS of sin.

There is only one such redemption and only one means by which to obtain it. It is the redemption that is obtained through BLOOD. It could be no other way. The wages of sin is DEATH. The shedding of blood in death is the punishment that was needed to pay the debt of our sins. It had to be the blood of the sinless Son of God because it had to be a precious enough ransom to pay the debt of the world’s sins and to buy back all sinners from the slavery of their sin. Peter wrote to the Christians, "You were not redeemed with corruptible things, like silver and gold from your aimless conduct received by tradition from your fathers, but with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot" (1 Peter 1:18).

Paul writes in a few verses after the text, "It pleased the Father...by [Christ] to reconcile all things to Himself...having made peace through the blood of the cross" (Colossians 1:19-20). Sin stands as a barrier between the sinner and God. Through the shedding of Jesus’ blood on the cross that barrier is washed away to leave the peace-filled relationship of a Heavenly Father and His beloved children. Being "in Christ" through faith we are at peace with God, because "in Christ" our sins are forgiven and removed.

Everything that was wrong on Golgotha was made right because it was Jesus’ blood that was shed there. There Jesus died as our substitute, just as He had lived as our substitute. He "has redeemed us from the curse of the law being made a curse for us..." (Gal 3:13). Jesus’ shed His blood on our behalf and by so doing He lifts off and takes away every one of our sins—those with which we are born and those which we have done and continue to do. He lifts off the darkness and the judgment, the misery and the sorrow, and reveals to us the light of life!

Gaze upon and remember the cross with sorrow. There on Golgotha we see sin in all of its infamy. It is a sight we dare never forget because such is the death from which we have all come. Yet, greater still is to gaze upon Calvary and see a cross of redemption shining before our eyes because the blood that was shed there was the pure blood of the Son of God. There the blood was shed to redeem us and give us life!

There is a fountain filled with blood drawn from Immanuel’s veins,
And sinners plunged beneath that flood lose all their guilty stains.

The dying thief rejoiced to see that fountain in his day;
And there have I, just as vile as he, washed all my sins away.

Ever since by faith I saw the stream Thy flowing wounds supply,
Redeeming love has been my theme and so it shall be ‘til the day I die.

Amen!

[TLH #157 st.1,2,4]

Prayer & Lord’s Prayer

"Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down His life for His friends..." Lord God, lead us to a complete realization and full appreciation for Your great love. Thank You Father for Your love which moved You to send Your Son into the world to redeem us. Thank You Jesus for coming and offering Your life and blood so that we could be righteous in the Father’s eyes and become His beloved children. Thank You Holy Spirit for patiently working in our hearts despite our frequent sins, and for true working repentance in our hearts when we stray.

Lord Jesus, help us to remember Your love and mercy in the Holy Supper we are about to receive. As we receive the bread and wine, fill us with the joy of believing that we also receive Your body and blood and through them forgiveness of sins and a renewing of strength toward holy living.

These things we ask in Your saving Name, O Christ, and also join together to pray....

—Pastor Wayne C. Eichstadt