Mid-Week Devotion: Good Friday

Well, happy Holy Week and Good Friday and Monday Thursday or Holy Thursday.

Holy Week is made up of those days.

On Friday, we celebrate and we contemplate the cross of Jesus, which we know this day is Good Friday.

The night before is called Holy Thursday or Monday Thursday.

And this is the evening that Jesus had the Last Supper with his disciples, which was a Passover meal.

Now the Passover meal was a tradition.

This would have been a traditional meal that people would have had.

These people would have had every single year to remember, to remember the Exodus.

Now, if you remember the Exodus, and that was the Old Testament, so let me catch you up to speed on that story.

If you've forgotten it or maybe you just never learned it, that was way back at the beginning of the Bible.

The people of Israel were enslaved in Egypt, and it's the story of their exit or their exodus out of Egypt, their rescue.

See, from the very beginning of the Bible, the entire biblical story, our story, is a story about moving from slavery to freedom.

And so the night before Jesus goes to the cross at the time of the Passover festival there in Jerusalem, they're having the Passover meal.

And Jesus is sharing this there with them because this has always been a story about moving from slavery to freedom.

And there, that's when Jesus gets up from the meal, if you remember the story, and he grabs a towel and he grabs a bucket of water, like the lowliest of servants would do, and he begins to wash the feet of his disciples.

Now, these aren't the beautiful, dainty feet of my wife that you know goes and gets her toes, you know, perfectly painted.

It's not washing those feet.

These are sandal wearing feet, walking dirt paths type of feet.

These are dirty, rough feet, and he is washing these feet.

This would have been a normal task of a servant.

And so we're just getting this clue, right?

It's like with Jesus, we get clue after clue after clue, image after image after image of who he is and what he's gonna do.

This leads us into Good Friday, certainly.

We can even remember there in John 13, 8, where Peter, this is going on, is washing of feet and Jesus washing the feet, his teacher washing feet, and Peter says, No, no, no, you'll never wash my feet, you'll never wash my feet.

And Jesus replies and says, If I do not wash you, you can have nothing in common with me.

And so this is Jesus saying, if you don't receive that you have nothing, and you have to receive me as your cleansing, this is the only way of relationship with God.

We are in right standing with God because of his grace to us, not our work toward him or anything in of ourselves.

It is God's grace and pursuit and regard and acceptance and absolution and righteousness to us in the person of Jesus.

And he delights in us because of Jesus.

So the next day, this Jesus, incarnate God, is crucified.

It's that moment in history where we see our sin put upon the cross and his righteousness given to us.

That's why Good Friday is a day that we see we have to contemplate this cross, this work.

That we know our forgiveness and we know our righteousness.

We know this amount of riches of grace for us.

So, in order for us to do that during this time, I want us to look through Isaiah 53 because Isaiah, prophet in the Old Testament, he wrote about this years and years and years, long before any of this happened.

So Isaiah 53, verse 3.

Isaiah 53:3

He, he's talking about the Messiah, he was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief.

And as one from whom men hide their faces, he was despised, and we esteemed him not.

So maybe you're wondering, can God even relate to the suffering we're feeling in this last month?

Can God even relate to people being sick or losing their jobs or being alone?

And maybe your question has been, how can God allow that?

And to that, there's not going to be an intellectual answer by which you will ever have peace in your hearts.

But God uses suffering, and he's in suffering, and he knows suffering, and he knows grief.

And that's what this passage is saying.

That's what Jesus shows us.

That he himself took on suffering and grief.

That we have a God who himself knows it and has compassion on it and on us as we process through it.

Verse 4 Surely He has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows, yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God and afflicted.

But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities.

Upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed.

So I do have a few points this morning.

One point relates back to Palm Sunday that we've talked about.

It's this point that God always moves toward us in humility.

God always moves toward us in humility and love, even while we don't move toward him.

So much of Palm Sunday is about that.

So much of Holy Thursday is about that.

The cross is about that.

And point number two is this healing and peace of our souls are by his wounds, not ours.

See, it's by his work, not ours.

It's by his grace, not our merit.

Healing and peace of our souls are by his wounds, not ours.

So if we skip down to verse 12 there in this Isaiah 53, the last passage for us to contemplate.

Therefore, I will divide him a portion with the many, and he shall divide the spoil with the strong, because he poured out his soul to death, and he was numbered with the transgressors, yet he bore the sin of many and made intercession for the transgressors.

Now, what does all this mean?

Just that first line, we can break that first line apart.

Therefore, I will divide him a portion with the many.

Now that could be or the great.

God will divide him a portion with the great.

As to say, Jesus will always be the great one.

Jesus will always be the glorious one.

It is with him that God is, God is dividing a portion with.

And then we get the second part, and he shall divide the spoil with the strong.

Okay, so God is dividing this portion with Jesus, this riches of grace, this riches of worth and glory.

And he shall divide the spoil, that spoil of riches with the strong.

And that word strong actually should be numerous, strong in number is what it means.

And he shall divide the spoil.

That's the reward, the good stuff, the riches of joy and peace.

Jesus divides that with us.

And that's point number three.

The spoils are shared with you because he is victorious and he is gracious.

The spoils are shared with you because he is victorious and he is gracious.

Nothing about the cross feels like a victory parade.

It doesn't read like that, it doesn't seem like that.

If you've seen the movie Passion of the Christ, it doesn't look like that.

But it absolutely was.

It absolutely was.

Verse 12 is the imagery of Jesus returning from a great conquest.

So the image that we have to behold of the cross and that we certainly celebrate on Easter Resurrection Sunday in a few days when we get new life and Jesus coming back from the dead.

But all of it is imagery of victory.

It is victory over sin.

It is victory over even death.

Never more than now.

Do we need a message of hope and the darkness?

Do we need a message of rest from demand, of comfort when we are in anguish?

And the cross of Jesus, the resurrection of Jesus is not only his new life, but we have the riches of the spoils.

That we too have the same power that raised Christ from the dead in us.

And we share in these riches.

That in him we have all of the righteousness we ever need.

We are beloved with God.

We are fully worthy, fully loved before we do a single thing.

So church rests in this cross of Jesus, where you find your complete absolution and complete righteousness.