Easter | The Death (April 10th, 2020) - Mike Armstrong

Well, good morning, church.

And hey, I just want to encourage you, if you haven't done so already, to take a few moments this morning and fill out one of our online connection cards.

It's really just an opportunity for you to be in touch with us and let us know how you're doing.

We would love to know what have been some of the specific trials and troubles and challenges and fears that you have been wrestling with these days.

But at the same time, we would also love to know what have been some of the unexpected joys and blessings that you have seen.

It would just help us to know how to care for you better, how to pray for you specifically and maybe even follow up with you in the coming days.

So please be so good to fill that out for us.

It would be a blessing to care for you.

Well, as we reflect today on the death of our Savior, I invite you to grab a copy of God's Word and open it up to Luke chapter 23.

Luke 23 · chapter mention

Now, on Good Friday, maybe you feel this way, but I'm always so conscious of the tension that exists, you know?

There's that awareness that today is simultaneously awful, and yet at the same time, it's awesome, right?

It really is.

And I think as Christians who understand the gospel, we're all so cognizant of that.

It's that tension between the heaviness that we all feel due to the reality of what Christ went through on the cross for us.

And yet at the same time, there's probably that presence of gratitude that you have for that.

And you sense that welling up inside of you, and you so badly or you're eager to get to Easter Sunday already and be able to worship and celebrate the empty tomb.

So looking forward to that in three days' time.

Well, hey, all of that tension uh that you probably feel today, all of that is normal.

I just want to let you know that.

All of that is absolutely appropriate, you know, and I think we even see that expressed here in these verses, and I just want to read them to us.

It's Luke 23, verses 44 down to 49.

Luke 23:44

It says, It was now about the sixth hour, and there was darkness over the whole lands until the ninth hour, while the sun's light failed, and the curtain of the temple was torn in two.

Then Jesus, calling out with a loud voice, said, Father, into your hands I commit my spirit.

And having said this, he breathed his last.

Now when the centurion saw what had taken place, he praised God, saying, Certainly this man was innocent.

And all the crowds that assembled for this spectacle, when they saw what had taken place, returned home, beating their breasts.

And all his acquaintances and the women who had followed him from Galilee stood at a distance watching these things.

Lord, as we even read these verses right now, uh, Father, we're we're filled with just a profound uh sense of uh gratitude for what you have done.

At the same time, uh, we feel uh kind of a somber mood fill us as well as we recognize what you went through and what you had to endure to take the penalty of sin upon yourself.

And so, Father, I pray that as we work our way through these verses here this morning, uh, God, I pray that you would soften our hearts.

Help us to absorb just the enormous reality of this.

God, help us to process properly.

Help us to be quick to repent of our sin, Lord, and be stirred and motivated to follow you every single day as hard as we can in your strength by the power of your spirit.

So, God, work again, work in us, transform us, change us.

Thank you for the cross, Lord.

We pray all these things in Christ's name.

Amen.

Well, this morning is uh going to look a little bit different for us.

I mean, Good Friday uh usually does, but uh, we thought that, you know, given the unique reality of this being an online service, we thought we would frame up our time in God's Word uh a little differently than even a normal Good Friday uh service would typically look.

So what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna, you know, work us through these verses as I usually would.

Uh, but along the way, what we're gonna do is give you actually three different uh time frames here where we're gonna pause our service and give you uh a few minutes in your own home.

So just work through uh some discussion questions with each other or alone, give you an opportunity uh to reflect and pray.

All of that is gonna appear on the screen, and it's just really to help each of us uh contemplate and reflect and process more deeply uh Christ's death and what that means for us and how that is to impact our lives uh going forward.

Now, more on all of that uh to come, don't worry.

Uh, but let's take a look at these verses again, uh, starting in uh verse 44.

Now, keep in mind it's only been five days uh since the triumphal entry, right?

You remember that from just last Sunday.

We looked at that and it was a lot of, you know, shouting for joy and praising God and Hosanna and thank you, God, for sending the Messiah who would come and save.

A lot of excitement and thrill.

Okay, well, just five days later, the entire mood and attitude uh has totally changed by this point.

Okay, the the excited crowds have kind of drifted into the background, and now it's the angry religious leaders that have moved into the foreground.

And at this point, they have completely laid their cards on the table.

They're not trying to hide it anymore.

Their intentions are we want Jesus out of the picture, we want him dead.

And so Jesus has been betrayed by Judas, he has been arrested, he's been abandoned by his closest followers and friends.

He has been through an absolute joke of a trial at the hands of the Romans.

I mean, who even they, remember Pilate?

He even knew himself that, you know, Jesus is innocent, right?

This guy doesn't deserve crucifixion, you know, this awful death that you are uh clamoring for.

That's what he uh said uh to the Jews, of course.

And yet the Jews uh prevailed, and uh Christ had, you know, was beaten and mocked and led away, and he was now been hoisted up on a cross at Golgotha, the place of the skull.

He was hung there between two criminals.

He was suffering and he was dying, and that's where we find ourselves now in verse 44.

Take a look.

It says, it was now about the sixth hour, and there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour.

So we're talking like a three-hour period here from noon.

That was the third or the sixth hour.

The ninth hour was three p.m.

So again, about three hours there.

It says, Well, the sun's light failed.

Now, some have tried to explain this as a purely natural phenomenon.

This is like uh, this is an eclipse, right?

That's what's happening.

The problem with that is that this happened at uh a full moon, okay?

And we know that because the Jews always celebrated Passover when the moon was full.

Now, what's significant about that?

Well, what's important is that to know is that an eclipse can't happen at a full moon.

It happens at a new moon.

And on top of that, an eclipse uh never lasted for uh three uh three hours, okay?

And so how are we supposed to understand what this darkness is all about?

Okay, well, it's not just a natural phenomenon, but it was also a supernatural one.

Okay, we're to understand this uh as this darkness symbolizing God's immense sorrow and displeasure and judgment, okay?

All of that towards humanity for murdering his innocent son.

And also it's the judgment of sin in that his wrath is being poured out on Christ as he is hanging on the cross.

All of that is happening on our behalf or for us in these very moments.

Now look at what it says next.

It says, and the curtain of the temple was torn in two.

Now, this is also a really significant event.

Okay, that that curtain there in the construction of the temple, it is what separated the most holy place.

You've probably heard it called the holy of holies.

Okay, the curtain separated the most holy place from the holy place where the the priests were able to minister and function, and then the the temple uh ground, the temple courts where where people could come in and worship and offer uh sacrifices.

Okay, so the curtain separated all of that.

The most holy place, also what we need to know about that is that represented where God's presence dwelt on earth.

Okay, so so this was this was huge.

This was no small thing.

And and the Israelites would have been very aware of this.

They knew their Old Testament, right?

They knew the Torah, they knew what the curtain was, okay.

And so that curtain, it was, it was actually massive.

It was nothing like what you have, you know, drapes hanging in your bedroom.

Okay, it's not like that.

It was like 60 feet high, it was 30 feet wide, it was about four inches thick.

That's about 10 centimeters for us Canadians.

Okay, and so again, it separated the most holy place where God's presence dwelt from all other areas of the temple.

Okay, and you have to know that there was extremely limited access into the most holy place.

Only, okay, only the high priest, the one guy, could go into the holy of holies, and that only once a year on the Day of Atonement, okay, and that was to make amends for the sins of the people.

Okay, so he functioned as a mediator between uh sinful people and a holy God.

And so that curtain, okay, uh, signified the spiritual separation that existed between the Lord and between uh his creation.

Okay, so all this highlighted really the significance of sin.

It's so easy for you and I to, you know, kind of treat sin like it's no big deal, and oh well, I'll get her next time, and and and we we often don't repent and and and we kind of drag our sin around with us and we don't we treat it like it's not that big of a deal.

But here, with this visual of the temple and the curtain and people's awareness of the scriptures, they knew that sin was deadly, deadly, uh serious business.

And so Christ's death here, as we read about it in verse 44, what it did was it brought man total forgiveness of our sins, and now because it was torn, direct access to God.

Okay, the curtain tearing from top to bottom, as Matthew's gospel tells us in chapter uh 27, it means that God himself tore the curtain.

Why?

Well, because Jesus' sacrifice on the cross satisfied his wrath and removed that barrier that existed between God and man.

See, up until this point, uh the high priest would have to, you know, enter the most holy place every year on behalf of the Israelites, uh, constantly.

Right?

Every single year he would have to do this because um sins needed to always be atoned for, right?

He himself was a sinful person.

That's the the high priest.

You know, animal sacrifices, the sacrificial system, it was imperfect, the Bible tells us.

It was only ever a temporary measure that showed us that we need Christ.

We need a perfect sacrifice, which he was.

Okay, and so Christ, because he never sinned, that is why he was perfect.

He was a sacrifice that was that that made the atonement complete once and for all.

That's why Hebrews chapter 9, verse 12 says that Christ, okay, as the great high priest, what an amazing picture that is, it says that he entered once for all.

Hebrews 9:12

His sacrifice was final.

It it was never needing to be repeated ever again.

The barrier of our sin removed for good, which gives you and I now direct access to a relationship with our Creator, with our Heavenly Father.

Okay, something that you and I get to enjoy immensely when you or or I, when we trust in what Jesus Christ did by faith.

And so I would just ask you that question.

I don't know if you're a church-going person or if someone just sent you this link and you've never been a part of our church or any church before.

Uh, have you done that?

Have you trusted Jesus by faith?

Have you trusted him as your savior?

Okay, uh do you understand that that his death that we're reading about here in Luke chapter 23, it satisfied God's wrath that was meant for you.

Luke 23 · chapter mention

Okay, it was meant for your sins.

You earned God's wrath.

I did as well through my sin.

But Christ's death removed that barrier that the curtain signified.

His death means that that you and I can now be forgiven, have our slate wiped clean, have our sins washed away, and be in a relationship with the God of the universe, exactly how God intended it.

Okay, your access to him through Jesus Christ, because of Jesus Christ, will never be denied.

How amazing is that! And what it takes for you is to understand these things.

Do you realize that Jesus did this for you?

Do you realize that your sin is a problem and it separates you from God?

Your sin is like that curtain, and you can't fix it.

You can't remove that yourself.

Jesus had to.

And so you can become a Christian today, right now, by admitting your sin before God.

You can do that silently in a prayer, you can do that out loud.

You can get a per the person that you're with to pray with you and explain these things further.

But all you have to do is confess your sin, which requires humbling ourselves and realize that we are lost and broken in our sin.

And we need the blood of Jesus Christ to cover us.

We need his death to become our own, his victory over sin and over death to become ours.

All of that becomes you the moment that you believe or trust that what Jesus did was for you.

Would you do that today?

I want to challenge you and encourage you.

Get in touch with us if you have any more questions about that, all right?

Now, like I said, I want to give us all here a few moments to further process these things, all these verses that we're looking at.

And so we're gonna have some questions come up on the screen here in just a moment.

And we really want you to take some time to, you know, get alone if that's what you're sensing, or if you're by yourself right now, or or maybe gather your your spouse and and your kids around and and and have a discussion through some of these questions, or or just take some time and pray through these things, okay?

This is a such a great opportunity for us here on Good Friday to really get our hearts right before the Lord, to repent of whatever ongoing sins we have, and and and again to just express our deep appreciation that Christ's death means that you and I now get to enjoy direct access to our Heavenly Father in a relationship with Him.

Now, if you need more than the five minutes that we're gonna give you uh before we resume the message today, no problem.

Just you know, feel free to pause the service and rejoin us uh when you're ready.

All right, so let's do this.

Uh let's go to the Lord now.

We know that is from top to bottom, and then it says here then Jesus calling out with a loud voice said, Father, into your hands I commit my spirit.

And having said this, he breathed his last.

Now, when when Jesus says there, you know, into your hands I commit my spirit, it actually comes from Psalm 31, verse 5.

Psalms 31:5

Psalm 31 is a psalm that expresses deep trust in God during times of distress and grief.

Okay, and you just think about it.

I mean, the anguish that Jesus must have experienced as he, you know, bore the weight of God's wrath and he absorbed that, the wrath for all of mankind's sin, past, present, and future.

I mean, that that must have been heavy, right?

That is an excruciating weight that uh we quite frankly can't even wrap our minds around.

But in Jesus' words here, as he says this, we see also just the voluntary nature of his sacrifice.

Okay, he wasn't being coerced uh, you know, against his desires to go to the cross.

He wasn't going kicking and screaming, he wasn't being forced, right?

His will was to do the father's will.

And I think when we think about that, we we are reminded of Luke chapter 22, where Jesus is praying in the Garden of Gethsemane and He's just absorbing the burden and the weight of everything that he's about to endure.

Luke 22 · chapter mention

And he says that he's sweating these great drops of blood, which is you know something that happens when we're under immense stress and pressure.

And he says here, if there's any way, Lord, remove this cup from me, but he says, and you remember it, not my will, but yours be done.

Right?

He just expresses there, and and we see it through his subsequent action here, his desire to fulfill the mission that God had given him because of the deep trust that he had in his father, right?

He's like, I commit to you my spirit, I trust you with it.

Right?

He knew that all of this would work out in the end for for our good and for his, for the glory of his father.

Right.

In this moment here, we just see this, you know, that that that perfect example of what it means to trust God.

Hey, Jesus, again, commits or or or yields up his spirit.

Again, that is his that's his human spirit.

That's not the Holy Spirit, it's the his human spirit.

He gives that into God's hands.

He's holding that all empty-handed, and he's he does that knowing, right, and believing and and trusting that that God is good, that his plans, his purposes, his promises will always prevail.

Okay, sin, the grave, none of that would have the final word whatsoever.

And so for you and I, it's just the the ultimate example here that we can trust our Heavenly Father.

No matter what you and I might be facing these days, and we know that uh these days are extremely challenging.

We're facing times that we never have before.

But what we have here in the death of Christ is the ultimate perfect picture, the model of what it means to trust God.

Hey, Jesus followed his heavenly father to the very end, knowing that it would bring about just the sweetest result ever that the world would ever know.

Right?

So it's a reminder again to you and and to myself that we can trust the Lord.

We can.

So let's let's just take another few minutes here and in our own homes and just really think about these things and and express our own trust.

Bibles again here as we look at the final verses of our passage.

You know, Jesus had just committed his spirit into the hands of his father, and you know, as this awful and at the same time awesome event transpires, what we notice here in these next verses is just the reaction and responses of those who witnessed this event unfold.

And so let's see this here in verse 47.

It says, Now, when the centurion saw what had taken place, he praised God, saying, Certainly this man was innocent.

He recognized this man is righteous.

That's another word for that.

He didn't deserve this.

Now, verse 48.

And all the crowds, that's the next group of people that had assembled for this spectacle.

That's exactly what it was.

Okay, when they saw what had taken place, returned home, it says, beating their breasts.

That means that they were they were grieved, they were uh troubled by what they saw, and they returned home, just contemplating these things from a place of sorrow.

And now, verse 49, it says, And all his acquaintances and the women now who had followed him from Galilee, what did they do?

Well, they stood at a distance watching these things.

You know, I I find it so you know interesting and fascinating to just observe the various responses of these people.

The centurion, he actually worships God.

It says that he he praised God.

He he realized this is the guy that was responsible for carrying out the execution.

He realized that Jesus didn't deserve this.

He says in another gospel, truly this man was God's son.

What an amazing reaction on his part.

It says that the crowds there, they beat their breasts, right?

Again, it's this expression of uh of grief over the spectacle that they that they saw, and again, this the sorrow that they were experiencing and feeling by watching this horrific event unfold.

It says that Jesus' acquaintances, so so people that he knew, it says some of the women that had followed him uh stood at a distance.

Right, and imagine them.

They probably you know don't really want to get any closer.

They they want to see how this unfolds, but Jesus was precious to them and they're standing there, they're probably in shock, they're they're in disbelief as to all of this in their minds.

All of this was a complete catastrophe, right?

It was it was an absolute disaster, not at all what they had been expecting.

You know, which naturally, I think, as we consider these three groups of people, I think it moves us to consider our our own reaction and our own response to the death of Christ, right?

Will we worship?

Will we worship him?

Or we were will we you know come through another Good Friday and another Easter Sunday and you know just kind of stay lukewarm and allow ourselves to be unmoved?

Will we praise him?

I mean, even the centurion was was was one who did that.

You know, will we, you know, appropriately grieve and express our sorrow as the crowds did, you know, but but understanding that that that's what he went through that for us, right?

We will we express the grief for our own sin uh that that that held him there.

You know, we'll you know, will we carefully observe and and and reflect on these things as Jesus' acquaintances did and and the women did and and seek to understand what does this really mean for me?

This is the most important event, the events of Easter that, you know, in in human history, this is to have a massive impact on how I think and how I act and how I live my life.

Will we reflect on all of that?

Okay, well, again, we want to give you a final few moments here to think about all of this and to and to reflect in these ways, again, in your homes, to just prayerfully express, you know, that that tension that I talked about that you're likely feeling this is a this is awful, and yet it is amazing at the same time to praise God for this, to express your own grief, that it was your sin that held him there on the cross.

And again, just to further reflect on his sacrifice, you know, for yourself and to do that between not just now in our service, but but even until Easter Sunday, when we will gather again uh to worship and to celebrate.

I just want to let you know that after this last time of of reflection and prayer, uh John is gonna lead us in a time uh of singing as we uh worship the Lord and thank him uh for what he has done.

So let's go to prayer now.