Good Friday: Cancelled Sin - April 18, 2025 (Myles Holmes)

Hello and welcome to the Redemption Church Podcast.

We're a church in Newmarket, Ontario, Canada that exists to glorify God through the fulfillment of the Great Commission and the Spirit of the Great Commandment.

Thanks for joining us today.

Here is love vast as an ocean, loving kindness as the flood, when the Prince of Life, our ransom, shed his precious blood.

That is what we are here this morning for.

To remember that truth, the most holy, the most hope-filled moment in history when the Son of God gave himself for our sins.

Peter who wrote in 1 Peter 2, verse 24, he himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness.

1 Peter 2:24

By his wounds, you have been healed.

Love one, that's our goal this morning, to stand before the cross, to gaze upon the cross in all of its glory, but also in all of its horror.

Not only to see for many of us again, but to feel with fresh mercy anew, deep in our hearts, perhaps by the power of the Holy Spirit in a way we've never felt before, the weight of what happened on that day.

When we are told in Romans 5, verse 8 that God shows his love for us, and that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

Romans 5:8

There's no other place that we see it.

And so this morning we look at the cross, and as we begin, let me just warn you of a great danger that we have, not of ignorance, but perhaps of indifference this morning.

Maybe you've heard these truths time and time again.

Maybe you've celebrated Easter after Easter after Easter.

You've sung these songs.

Beloved one, I want you to know that the cross was never meant to be familiar to us.

It was always meant to shake us to the core.

It was always meant to humble us.

It was always meant to awaken us.

And so we begin our time this morning asking the Spirit to stir our affections, to reach a place of our heart and our soul that we cannot reach ourselves.

We find ourselves humbly dependent on him, asking him to do a work in us, that we might truly see him.

That you and I might feel the weight that Jesus bore on Calvary, that we might be led to worship.

This morning we're gonna do that in one simple sentence that Paul penned in Galatians chapter one.

He wrote this, the Lord Jesus Christ who gave himself for our sins.

And in this sentence, we are told who Jesus is and what he did and why it matters.

And we're gonna walk slowly through this simple but profoundly deep sentence this morning, breaking it up into three sections, responding each time in worship, because our goal this morning is not just knowledge, it is that the affections of our heart would be stirred to love Jesus Christ more.

We don't want to just be reminded, we want to be moved by the Lord.

So on that note, we turn to Him now in prayer, asking for the Spirit to do the work that we cannot.

Father, we find ourselves in a place where we are humbly dependent on you.

God, here on Good Friday morning, Lord, we repent of any familiarity with the cross of Jesus Christ that has led to apathy in our hearts.

God, we confess that we can take the truth of our redemption.

Lord, a glory so great that angels sing of the praise of our Redeemer 24-7, crying out, Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty, who was and is and is to come.

And God, that truth so great, so holy, so awesome, God can hit our hearts in a way that is so dull.

And so, Lord, we turn to you now in repentance and we ask that your Holy Spirit, Lord, would move us, would shake us to the very core.

That you would remind us this morning not only of what Christ has done, but who He is.

God, we praise you.

We praise you this morning.

We praise you as we remember that you are a sending God, that you saw us in the misery of our sins, you saw us bearing the weight of our iniquity, and you sent your Son Jesus Christ for us.

And so there is every reason for us to praise you.

And God, our prayer is that you would open our hearts now, open the eyes of our heart to behold a glory that is so wondrous and so weighty.

Lord, that you would meet with us.

Not that we might just be reminded, but that we might behold your glory and be transformed from one degree of glory to another.

God, we're filled with expectancy.

Knowing, Lord, that you are here.

Knowing, Lord, that when the cross of Christ is proclaimed, you meet us with grace and mercy that we need.

Show us him, Lord.

Show us your son.

Show us the Lord Jesus Christ who gave himself for our sins.

It's in his name that we pray.

Amen.

You stand and worship with us.

It was Charles Wesley who penned these words in 1739.

He breaks the power of canceled sin.

He breaks the power of canceled sin.

He sets the prisoner free.

And that is what all of our hearts long for.

We long for the freedom of redemption.

We long for the freedom from the slavery that we find ourselves imprisoned in.

But what Wesley so helpfully reminds us is of what Easter is all about.

That sin cannot be conquered in your life until first the guilt of it is canceled from your record.

The order of Easter weekend is of utmost importance, that first we celebrate Good Friday.

We think about what Jesus did when he hung on that tree and he canceled the record of our debt forever.

And only once we have meditated on the reality of that truth and truly come to understand it in the fullness of its weight, can we begin to understand what Easter is all about?

That when he rose from the grave, he conquered sin.

It is incredibly important that we get that order right.

And so many of us try to reverse it.

So many of us try to conquer our own sin, that we might have right standing with God, but God comes to us this weekend to remind us that he breaks the power of canceled sin.

He first cancels our sin, then conquers it.

And so our aim this morning is incredibly simple, but it is not at all small.

Our desire this morning is that we would not just know of what happened on the cross, but this morning, as we behold the cross, as we with the eyes of our heart and the power of our imagination gaze at the hill of Calvary, that we would truly feel what we were meant to feel on Good Friday.

That we would stand at the cross and behold him until the Holy Spirit works his truth so heavily on our soul that our hearts not only burn with a zeal and an affection for what Christ has done, but that our hearts would break before him.

This is Paul's goal in Galatians chapter 1.

Galatians 1 · chapter mention

Galatians chapter 1, he writes to a church that is drifting away from the gospel, and you could imagine the eternal consequences of drifting away from the only truth that can save.

Galatians 1 · chapter mention

And at a moment like that, what can you say?

And at the beginning of his letter, Paul speaks with such gospel clarity in a life and death moment.

He unfolds with such simplicity the glory of the gospel.

He cuts away all the fluff.

Paul, this morning, he removes all the fog, and with the simplest sentence I believe you could craft that some summarizes the full weight of the gospel with clarity, Paul speaks to us saying this grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, who gave himself for our sins.

One sentence filled with theology, so simple a child could memorize it, but so deep that angels look at it and marvel.

The Lord Jesus Christ who gave himself for our sins.

The sentence is it's Good Friday in a single breath, showing us the person, the power, and the purpose.

And so this morning we walk slowly through this simple yet profound sentence, unpacking each piece so that we might know who delivered us from sins, how our sins were canceled, and for the people for whom sins were canceled.

I want you to notice this first, the person.

Notice first the person, the Lord, Jesus, Christ, Paul says.

Now we can't begin to grasp the work of what Jesus did without first understanding the worth of the one who did it.

Before we understand what happened on the cross, we must understand who the cross happened to.

This is why John Owen wrote this so many years ago.

The glory of the gospel is that the one who died on the cross was the eternal son.

His person gives value to his work.

You know, we hear of the news that someone has died, and we're saddened to the very core.

But how much different does that news hit you when you find out that it was a parent?

When you find out that it was a brother, when you find out that it was your own child.

The news is made so much more intense by an understanding of who it was that died, and so it is with Jesus.

As we come to gaze upon the person of Jesus, our sorrow deepens and our wonder grows because we see who he really is.

And I want you to see first that he is the Lord.

He is the Lord.

There are many martyrs who have died in history.

You think of Socrates, you think of Martin Luther King.

But none of these martyrs were the Lord.

None of them were the eternal sovereign king.

None of them were the one who created the world by the power of his voice.

None of them were like Jesus, who all of eternity was worshipped by the song of Seraphim and cherubim.

None of them were the sustainer, who, while they died, by their very power upheld everything in the universe.

This is who Jesus is.

He is the Lord.

This is the king that hung upon the cross, those hands that were pierced with nails, those were the hands that shaped the world that we live in.

The voice that created the world that said, Let there be light, was the voice that cried out, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

We lose the lordship of Jesus.

We miss the miracle of the cross.

If this is just the death of a man, it truly is heartbreaking.

It's enough for us to gather around this morning and think about, but it's not just the death of a man.

It's the death of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Makes this reality breathtaking.

It's a miracle of his mercy, it's a miracle of his majesty.

Notice that it is not only the Lord, it is the Lord Jesus.

In his humanity, he was given a name.

Joseph was told by the angel, they shall call his name Jesus, and he will deliver his people from his sins.

Jesus took on flesh.

It wasn't smoke and mirrors.

He was the second Adam.

Like Adam in the fullness of humanity.

Like us in the fullness of our humanity, but nothing like us in the perfection of his character.

He was perfect in every way.

The second Adam, Jesus Christ, fell to his knees in a garden and sweat blood for his people.

Where the first Adam grasped at divinity, trying to become like God, Jesus came to the world and emptied himself of divinity that he might save his people.

Where the first Adam had a bride and blamed her as soon as the fall happened.

The second Adam came and bled for his bride that he might redeem her.

This is who Jesus is.

He is the true man, the faithful son, the obedient servant that God was always looking for in humanity.

We find him in Jesus Christ.

That's why the cross is so precious to us this morning.

Because Jesus was not a stranger to our suffering.

In his humanity, he bore our sin.

You know the weight of sin.

You know the weight of guilt that weighs heavily on your conscience, the things that you've said you wish you could take back, the shame that you feel for the way that you know that you have lived, for the evil that you know is inside of you.

And Jesus came and he bore the weight of our guilt, he bore the weight of our shame, he bore the weight of our sin.

In the flesh.

In order that he might make propitiation for us.

It was real blood that spilt on the same type of ground we find ourselves standing on this morning.

On the cross, it was real cries.

A voice that echoed in the air, just like my voice echoes in the air this morning.

It was the Lord Jesus dying our death.

Notice that it was the Lord Jesus the Christ.

The Christ.

Not a last name, but a crown that Jesus wore.

A crown that declared that he was the anointed one, that he was set apart by the Father, that he was chosen by the Father to be crucified, to be nailed to a cross.

Not by coincidence, not by accident, but because of the covenant love of God who looked at his people and would not let them go unredeemed.

And so he sent his son.

Sent by the Father.

Sealed by the Spirit.

Slain for sinners.

When we think about the name Christ, we marvel that God knew there was no other way.

He knew there was no other savior.

He knew there was no other hope.

This is the Lord Jesus Christ who canceled our sin.

Considered the person and beheld the Lord Jesus Christ.

And now we turn to the act.

The thing that the Lord Jesus Christ did.

Notice, loved one, that it was the Lord Jesus Christ who gave himself.

Who gave himself.

Jesus for all of eternity dwelt in the eternal love of the Father.

He was the Father's crown.

He bore a crown in heaven.

He gave that crown up, laying it aside that you and I, by faith this morning, might receive an eternal crown and reign with him.

Loved one, recognize that Jesus, for all of eternity, bore robes.

For all of eternity, the song rang out of Jesus' praise.

Because you cannot begin to scratch the surface of how worthy Jesus is of worship unless you sing an eternal song.

And that was the song that the angels sung for all of eternity past.

And Jesus left heaven, the place of that song, that he might come to earth and bring you and I to the place where angels dwell.

Step by step in Jesus' life, he surrendered everything.

He gave everything up.

He could have won for himself the comfort of this world.

But we are told that he was a man who had no home, who had no place to rest his head upon a pillow.

He had nothing.

He gave it all up until as he was being beaten, about to carry the cross to the place that he would be hung.

He possessed one thing, a robe.

And that robe was tattered.

It was clinging to him by the blood that had dried to it.

And loved one, he took that robe and he laid it aside as well.

Until for you, Jesus was rejected and naked and ashamed bearing the weight of our sins.

With nothing left except himself.

And in that moment where he did not even have the strength to carry his own cross, did not even own a single garment, he gave his hands to be nailed.

Loved one, for you, he bowed his head, giving it that a crown of thorns might be placed on it.

He gave his feet, uh feet that had been so quick to run to the help of those who needed him, he gave them to be fastened to a tree.

And when he was fastened to that tree, the only thing he had left was his heart beating, and they pierced that too until water and blood that is our life flowed from his side.

He could not give us more than he gave in himself.

If he were to give you all of creation in all of its glory, it is a gift, loved one, that would not compare to what he gave you when he gave himself to you.

If he were to give you all the comforts that you ever longed for, all the prayers that you had ever asked, if he had answered them, he would not have even begun to give you a portion of what he gave you on that cross when he gave you himself.

There's no greater gift.

There's no richer gift, there's no deeper gift, there's no more glorious gift.

He has given us everything.

He gave himself.

Loved one, I want you to notice here that it was given.

That the sovereign Lord Jesus Christ did not have life taken from him, but he gave his life for our sins.

He was not robbed, as though a thief could come and take his life without him knowing it.

His life was a precious gift that was in the hands of the Father, which was given to humanity to be received by faith that we might have eternal life.

Jesus was not trapped, as though when he walked into Jerusalem, he did not know what was happening.

He knew exactly what was happening.

He knew that he was the Lamb of God sent to take away the sins of the world.

And there was only one way for a lamb to do that, by his sacrifice.

Loved one, he was not overpowered.

Though it was Pilate who ran his trial, though it was the power of Rome that put him on the cross, though it was the crowd that cried out, crucify him, though it was the soldiers that nailed him to the cross, I want you to understand that none of those things were powerful enough to keep him there.

The only power that kept him there was the power that your sin had over your life.

It was the power of our sin.

So that John records Jesus saying in John chapter 10.

John 10 · chapter mention

He says, I lay my life down of my own accord.

No one can take it from me.

Loved one's life was not taken, it was given to you.

We have many examples throughout history of people who have given their lives for friends, of the courage and bravery of soldiers who jump on a grenade to save the lives of those around them.

And this is what Christ did.

He was not pushed there.

And he did not do it for friends.

He did it for us while we were his enemies, while we had lived lives of rebellion against him, dying for the very ones who nailed him to the cross, dying for the very ones whose sin was the very thing that held him there.

He stepped not into danger, but into the judgment of God.

Every time he was struck, not one of those blows that he received could he have received apart from granting a sovereign yes to it.

Every hammer of the nail required his permission.

He could have stopped it by his power in a moment, but he didn't.

He gave himself for our sins.

This is the act of the one who canceled himself, the Lord Jesus Christ who gave himself.

The Lord Jesus Christ who gave himself for our sins.

Next, I want you to see the recipient of canceled sin.

Having seen the person, having seen all that he did in giving himself, we now see the recipient of that work for our sins.

For our sins.

Until the diamond of the person and work of Jesus Christ, until the diamond of the gospel is held against the black backdrop of our sin, we cannot begin to comprehend what happened on the cross.

It's J.C.

Ryle who said, Christ is never fully valued until sin is clearly seen.

We must know the depth and the bitterness of disease, he says, in order to appreciate the great physician.

There are many ways for us to behold our sin.

There are many ways for us to see our sin clearly.

Maybe you've come to know your sin as you've come to know the holiness of God.

Maybe you have been like Isaiah at times in your life where you have perceived God's great righteousness, the perfection of his glory, the flawlessness of his character.

And as you have gazed upon his holiness, you have seen yourself in a mirror, and you have said, I am unworthy, because you have seen that as holy as God has been for all of eternity, you have been that much more unrighteous, almost at every moment, so that even your best works are like filthy rags in comparison to the pure holiness of God.

Maybe you've been like the prodigal son, and you have seen your sin in the light of the goodness of God.

You've seen God's mercy towards you.

You've seen that every breath that you have ever drawn in for life has been given to you by God, that every time your heart has beated, it has been granted to you by the Father.

Maybe you have seen the goodness of God, and as you faced your own rebellion, you have seen how you've rejected his kindness.

Maybe you've seen your sin in your own life as you look at the things that you've done, the things that you regret, the shame that you feel, the guilt that you carry.

Beloved one, none of these show us the blackness of sin, the vile nature of sin more than when we look at the cross.

When we look at Calvary, the exposure of our hearts is wide open to take in the horror of sin, the horror of what our sin did, the ugliness of it.

As we look to Jesus dying on the cross, we see the cost of our sin.

We see the price that you and I should have paid because of our rebellion.

We see what we deserved.

An eternal weight of judgment placed on our shoulders.

We see who it crushed.

Jesus Christ, the perfect Son of God.

And we look to that cross and we cannot help but to think that it should have been us.

It should have been me.

But it was him.

He was pierced for our transgressions.

He was crushed for our iniquities.

And so we can't just glance at the cross.

We must look.

We must gaze upon its horror.

We must behold the eternal Son of God crying to his father, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

We look upon the Lamb of God lifted up on the cross, nothing to bear his weight but the nails that he hung upon.

His body completely broken.

His face bloodied to the point that even those closest to him could not recognize who he was.

But the greatest pain of all, that his soul was forsaken by the Father.

He wore a crown of thorns that you and I should have worn.

He bore a weight of wrath that you and I should have carried for our sins.

It was not the power of Rome.

It was not the strength of the nail.

It was our sin that held him there.

He was crushed for us.

And lovely, I want you to understand that you cannot see your sin clearly until you press into the weight of this moment and see the perfect Son of God dying in your place.

He gave himself for our sins.

Our sin is not just a weakness.

Your sin is not just a slip-up.

Your sin is the very thing that murdered the Son of God, Jesus Christ.

Our sin held him there.

Because it was the Lord Jesus Christ who gave himself for our sins.

For our sins.

It was your name that was graven on his nail-pierced hands.

It was your picture that was on his heart.

It was the guilt and weight of your sins, each and every one of them, that he bore on his shoulders as he faced the wrath of God.

Christ took your sin.

And if your faith is in Jesus Christ this morning, I want you to understand that if Christ took your sin, it no longer has a hold on you.

This is the Lord Jesus Christ who gave himself for our sins.

And as we consider this love, how do we respond?

What do we do with a love like this?

Let me suggest this morning that we remember it, we proclaim it, we cling to it by taking communion together.

Now, if you didn't receive a communion cup on your way in, the ushers are coming to the front and you can just stick your hand in the air, and they would love to get one into your hands.

And if you are not one who has placed their faith in Jesus Christ, we would just ask that you let this pass by you.

This is for those who have believed in the Lord, in his death, and find no other way to salvation apart from him, and have professed that it is nothing but his broken body, his blood shed for them that can save.

This morning, as we take communion, we reflect on canceled sin, on the Savior who gave himself to us, the Lord Jesus Christ, who gave himself for our sins.

We spend time reflecting on that, that it was for us, that it was for you.

And as you reflect, the worship team is gonna sing a song over you, and you can take communion as you are ready at your own time.

And when you've done that, we would just encourage you to join us by standing and singing the song together with us.

Let's turn to him now.

He was despised and rejected by men.

A man of sorrows and acquainted with grief.

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

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 were healed.

All we like sheep have gone astray.

We have turned every one to his own way, and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.

The Lord Jesus Christ who gave himself for our sins.

On Sunday, we return to celebrate what this suffering accomplished for us, conquered sin.

But until then, we leave the silence in our soul, remembering his words from the cross.

It is finished.