Good Friday | Murdered King (March 30th, 2018) - Mike Armstrong

Now today we'll have a much, much different feel, I think, than what our services here are normally like.

Good Friday, it really should take on more of a kind of a somber tone, right?

More of a somber feel to it, right?

As you know, we approach the tragic events of the cross as really as a memorial, right?

A memorial of all that, all that took place that day 2,000 years ago in Jerusalem.

Okay, all that Jesus did for us, you know, the extreme violence that He received at the hands of His very misguided and rebellious creation.

In fact, we we call it good, not because, you know, obviously, of the violence committed, the the execution that was heartlessly carried out.

Okay, that was that was unspeakable.

That was evil.

Rather, we call it Good Friday because of what was accomplished through his death.

What was accomplished for us through the murder of our King.

Okay, his death, of course, brought us life.

Now, we're gonna get to the celebration part uh just three days from now.

And oh, you better believe it.

There will be joy, there will be singing, uh, we will be, I mean, this place will be rocking for sure.

And while it's good for us to be, you know, looking forward to all of that in the anticipation of it and everything, for now, today we grieve.

Okay, so it's with kind of that posture, it's with that approach that we'll be working our way through the account here of Christ's death from John chapter 19.

John 19 · chapter mention

Now, don't worry about it if you didn't bring a Bible today or you don't have one.

These verses are all gonna be uh on the screen for you, so you can just kind of observe that way.

But we're gonna start off here in John chapter 19, uh, looking at verse 28.

John 19 · chapter mention

All right, so you can follow along.

He says, after this, okay, so so after what exactly?

Well, after a lot of the verses that were just on the screen uh that we were, you know, reading through as the band was playing there, you know, after Jesus had carried his cross through the streets of Jerusalem, after he had been nailed on it and hoisted up and hung between those two criminals, after the you know the soldiers had divided up his garments, okay, all of that, of course, to fulfill Psalm 22, verse 18, okay, after Jesus ensuring that his mother would be taken care of by basically commissioning John to do that, okay.

Psalms 22:18

After all this, it says that Jesus, knowing that all was now finished, he said to fulfill the scriptures.

Okay, what scriptures?

Well, that's Psalm 69, verse 21.

Psalms 69:21

The words of David there, this is what it says, it's I thirst.

That's what Jesus said.

So a jar full of sour wine stood there.

So they, the soldiers, they put a they put a sponge full of the sour wine on a hyssop branch and held it to his mouth.

Now, while you might be thinking, well, yeah, that's that's you know, pretty gracious of them, you know, pretty pretty merciful of them to give this poor guy a drink as he's suffering.

Um actually what they were doing was they were likely attempting to increase his suffering through this.

You know, you get very dehydrated, sweating and the blood and all of that that's happened through the torture and the beating that he's already received, and and they want to try and hydrate him and of course increase the amount of time that we'd be hanging there on the cross.

It's not even close to a kind act.

Keep going.

It says, when Jesus had received the sour wine, he said this, it is finished.

And he bowed his head and he gave up his spirit.

Those words that Jesus said there, it is finished.

That's a glorious, glorious declaration.

Right?

It's Christ asserting that my mission is complete.

The perfect life lived, prophecies from century past fulfilled, God's wrath appeased, our sin atoned for, Satan crushed.

Okay, and as much as even now, you know, even as I'm thinking this and I'm reading through this myself, I'm kind of sensing the urge that, you know, I want to rejoice and I want to applaud this sacrifice and this incredible act of love.

I mean, just look at what had to take place for these things to take place, right?

He had to die.

Now, Jesus had he had foreshadowed that all of these things that he was now enduring were going to transpire, and he did it as recently as a final meal with his disciples just a day earlier.

And the gospels record how Christ said that his broken body and his shed blood that we put would be poured out through the cross would usher in a new covenant, a new agreement, if you will, between God uh and man.

Okay, and though the disciples, as they're just you know having this meal with Jesus, they didn't really know uh what he was talking about.

They hadn't put all that picture together yet, and that would you know come eventually, it would come later.

Okay, the scriptures do teach us that that the old covenant, the sacrificial system, if you're familiar with all of that, which is you know where it was necessary, we see this through the Old Testament, it was necessary for an animal to die to atone for or pay for uh the sins of man.

Okay, well, the the sacrificial system, that system, the the old covenant, would be done away with through this one final sacrifice.

Jesus Christ, once and for all.

Hey, why?

Well, so that you and I could be forgiven.

Right?

That you and I could be forgiven forever, and that we could have a restored relationship with our Creator, with our with our Heavenly Father, so that all of that would be possible.

Okay, so as we continue to think about these things and press a little bit deeper into this throughout our time together today, uh what we're gonna do is we're actually gonna take communion.

And so I'm gonna have our servers uh come forward right now as we do this and and and just some things to uh, I guess, first of all, make you aware of, and and some of this is all you know, directional of all of that, but first of all, um I can only imagine and would and and can picture that there are we you know we have some guests with us in the room here today.

And I of course I'm not sure where every single person is at when it comes to uh God, when it comes to your relationship with Him, and and we're excited that you're here, I gotta say that for sure.

But we want you to know this, especially if you're a guest, and if you would say, or you're not sure, do I know God personally?

Have I trusted in Jesus Christ as Savior?

If you know that you haven't done that, or if you're not sure, I would just say this.

Listen, let these elements just pass you by as the servers are gonna go out in just a second.

Okay, let them pass you by.

You may be like, well, why?

Why you know why would I do that?

That's that's kind of weird, just let it go to the next person.

Yeah, because we we we just want you to know that you know, drinking some juice which represents Christ's blood, eating a cracker which represents uh his broken body, okay, doing that act seriously does nothing for you.

Okay, if you don't know Jesus Christ as Savior, doing that, as good as that might look on the outside, it does not address your real need.

Your real need is that you have sin in the way of your, of having a relationship with God.

And that's not me coming at it from my high horse, looking down on you, and it's like this judgmental awful way.

Let's not say the exact same thing about myself.

I had sin in my life as well.

The difference, really, between somebody who does not know God personally and someone who does is really forgiveness.

Christ followers, Christians, have been forgiven.

That's it.

We're not better people, we're not righteous.

The whole reason we come to Jesus Christ and invite him to be our Savior is because we're so painfully aware of our unrighteousness.

It's the entire reason Christ went to the cross.

Because Christ is saying, you're not good enough.

You didn't live a perfect life, you're messed up.

And so I live the perfect life for you.

And my death on the cross, it was a substitutionary death, meaning that it was you and I that deserved to be hanging there.

And so his broken body, his shed blood, which are symbolic in the elements that we're about to take together.

Listen, that was for you.

And so instead of just kind of this surfacey act of taking it, if you don't know the Lord, instead consider everything that I just said.

And I would really challenge you and plead with you to just admit your brokenness, admit your sinfulness before your God.

You can do that right now where you're sitting.

Just admit it.

Be open about that.

Stop trying to pretend that, well, I'm not as bad as the next person.

Who cares about the next person?

Worry about where you're at.

And just invite the Lord to be your savior.

Trust him today.

Trust that his death was for you.

You do that, and today will be the day of salvation for you.

Of course, if you know Christ, communion is extremely important.

And it's something that we do to commemorate this day 2,000 years ago.

It's something that we do to remember, again, in a somber, very humbling ourselves type of a way, what Christ has done.

Alright, so in a second here, the servers are gonna go out and we're gonna sing some more songs and all of that.

And the trays are gonna pass by in your row, and and you just need to know that there are there are two cups stacked together.

Make sure you grab both of those.

Both of those.

Alright, one of them has the cracker in it, one of them has the juice, representing again Christ's body and his blood.

And we want you to hang on to those.

Hang on to them today.

Maybe like, well, how do I, you know, hold a Bible and hold on to all of this?

Well, again, the screen, the verses are gonna be up on the screen.

We're gonna take them together in a few moments.

I'm gonna come back up, we're gonna work our way through the rest of this passage.

But as you're holding on to the cup, and maybe even in the inconvenience of that, and in the discomfort of having to hold on to that, think about it, allow it to focus your hearts, your minds, your demeanor, all of that on the sacrifice that our King made.

Let's pick it up again here in verse 31.

It says, since it was the day of preparation, and so that the bodies would not remain on the cross on the Sabbath, for that Sabbath was a high day, meaning it was a kind of a special, a special day because it was it happened to be Passover.

It says the Jews asked Pilate that their legs might be broken, so that they might be taken away.

You see, with the Passover uh fast approaching, we talked a little bit about the Passover uh just last Sunday, actually, and it was that that time of year where where the Jews would you know flock and make their way to Jerusalem and they would celebrate what took place uh years and years earlier when God saved his people Israel out of the hand of the Egyptians.

And of course, uh some of you, you know, even if you would you know not be a regular churchgoer, you might have you know seen the, you know, you're aware of the plagues uh that happened in Egypt and you know against Pharaoh, and the final one uh was of course the angel of death that swept over and and killed the firstborn uh son of every every family.

And and so what had happened was there was a warning uh by God through Moses to Israel saying, Hey, if you you know want to survive this, your family intact, uh kill a lamb and sprinkle the lamb's blood over uh the doorposts in your house.

Okay, so they would do that, and the angel of death passed over, and if they had done that, they would be spared.

Of course, the irony of what they were doing here in putting Jesus up on a cross beam and his blood being shed there to save people from sin, all of this irony completely lost on the crowd, completely oblivious were these Jewish leaders.

And so, again, with the Passover fast approaching, we see the Jewish leaders here.

They desire to speed up this process here, the crucifixion, the death, and so they ask for Jesus' legs and the other two criminals, that they would be broken, so they would not be able to, you know, kind of push up on them as they're hanging there on the cross and take a breath.

And that's exactly what would happen.

You just imagine the exhaustion uh that would set in, you know, as you're hanging there for hours and hours and days.

And what would happen is they would slump down and it would put an incredible strain on their diaphragm, and so they'd have to push up and take a breath just to survive.

And and oftentimes death would be by uh suffocation, and so a quick way to speed it up was to break their legs.

Now, about the the Jewish leaders, uh John MacArthur said this.

He said, nothing more clearly illustrates the extreme hypocrisy to which their pernicious or evil legalism had driven them.

They were zealous to observe the minutiae of the law, while at the same time killing the one who both authored and fulfilled it.

They were scrupulously concerned that the land may not be defiled, yet they were unconcerned about their own defilement from murdering the Son of God.

Okay, now understand here that hanging a man and not burying him that same day would defile their land, according to Deuteronomy chapter 21.

Deuteronomy 21 · chapter mention

And so what does this all show us?

It shows us that the religious leaders who hated Jesus and wanted to kill him, were far more concerned that their land might be defiled than they were about their guilt, the guilt that was on their heads from killing their Messiah.

Now, as we kind of consider that and you think about that, and as nauseating as that is for us, if you and I, if we're more repulsed by that than we are by our own sin, then at the end of the day, we're just as hypocritical and we're just as blind as these men were here, too.

We have to be really conscious here that it that it's our sin that put him on the cross.

It's our sin that held him there just as much as the sin of these men here at the scene.

That is why we gather at Good Friday.

To remind ourselves that that this is more, so much more than just a than just a brutal crime, as much as it was by, again, these these sinful individuals back then.

It's ultimately what we're guilty of as well.

You know, verse 32 it says this.

It says, So the soldiers came and and they broke the legs of the first and and of the other who had been crucified with him.

So the two thieves, they go ahead and break their legs.

But when they came to Jesus and saw that he was already dead, they did not break his legs.

But one of the soldiers pierced his side with a spear, and at once there came out blood and water, which is just clear evidence physiologically that he had in fact died.

And it says, He who who saw it has borne witness, his testimony is true, and he knows that he is telling the truth.

And so this is this is John now saying, I was there, I saw this happen.

This is his eyewitness account.

Why?

Why does he say that?

Well, the next words, that you also may believe.

Okay, for these things took place that the scripture might be fulfilled.

Not one of his bones will be broken.

That comes to us right out of Psalm 34, verse 20.

Psalms 34:20

It says, and again in another scripture it says, they will look on him whom they have pierced.

Okay, that was in there to fulfill the prophecy from Zechariah chapter 12, which, I mean, that prophecy took place 500 years before this event of Christ's death.

Zechariah 12 · chapter mention

Okay, so no question that Jesus died that day.

Right?

The soldiers themselves, these Roman soldiers, they were experts in death.

They simply had nothing to gain and everything to lose if they failed to carry out their mission.

If they failed to bring these criminals and Jesus to the point of death, they too would be killed.

And so John is an eyewitness, he records these events for us as he saw them play out.

Okay, our king.

He was murdered that day.

There's simply no historical, no convincing evidence whatsoever to suggest otherwise.

And again, it was for you and I.

Right?

It was it was for you and I that he gave his life.

That's the gospel.

That is the good news.

Okay, these which we just read and we're looking at, these are the appalling events that took place on Good Friday, of course, the awful, the awful slaying of an innocent king, so that we, his guilty subjects, very guilty, could have our guilt, our our shame, our our punishment, all of it just wiped away.

He took care of all of it.

And so with that, we're gonna take communion together today.