For Us | Died For Us (April 14 2017) - Mike Armstrong

You would turn in your Bibles to Luke chapter 23.

Luke 23 · chapter mention

Luke chapter 23 is where we are this morning.

Luke 23 · chapter mention

Now, before we get into God's word, I do want to give you a bit of a heads up, a bit of a warning.

Because it's Friday, this is typically a school day, right?

In the school.

So can you uh remember how they alert you that school clo that class is happening?

There's a bell, right?

There's an alarm.

So at some point this morning, I'm pretty much guaranteeing you that that is gonna happen.

All right, there's nothing really we can do about any of that.

So uh just so you know, it's not a fire alarm.

We need to scatter out of here, uh, as far as I know, anyways.

So uh start praying about that.

But uh, but no, honestly, it's we're it's gonna be fine.

We're just gonna keep plugging through it.

All right, just want to give you that little heads up.

All right, well, Luke chapter 23.

Luke 23 · chapter mention

Um now you'll you'll often hear people responding to uh the kind of tragedy where one's life gets cut short by remarking on what a senseless death it was.

You heard that before, you've heard that uh said.

I mean, all it takes really is just like a it takes a casual glance at the you know news headlines uh to feel the really the exact same way.

I mean, in the last week alone, uh we've heard about all kinds of senseless tragedies, right?

We've heard about, of course, the uh the terror attack in Stockholm, Sweden.

Or we've heard of that.

We heard maybe about the uh the school shooting in San Bernardino in the elementary schools, a murder suicide uh where an eight-year-old boy lost his life.

And then, of course, quite recently, we heard about the ISIS church bombing uh in Cairo where 50 people uh lost their lives.

Now we hear about senseless death all the time, don't we?

We hear about this quite a bit.

And I mean, some of us here in this church uh have uh quite personally and probably uh been struck by tragedy in your own right that you could probably chalk up to in its own way uh as senseless in its own right, right?

And then it all kind of leaves our hearts kind of aching, doesn't it?

It leaves us feeling like, oh, like there's kind of a numbness sometimes and and and such a deep sense of disappointment and grief, and and if we really kind of think deeply through all of that, uh we start to kind of wonder and think and realize that you know life, life isn't, it's just not supposed to go this way, right?

Isn't there something, isn't it supposed to be better than this?

Okay, well, today obviously is Good Friday, right?

It's Good Friday, and it's where we reflect, of course, on the death of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, and we we look at his suffering, and it's a death that on the surface, if you're kind of just, you know, reading about the events of it, the surrounding story leading up to his death, like we talked about last week, and it can kind of appear on one level as senseless.

Right?

You look at it and you're like, what's that all about?

Now, now, though it was certainly unfair, right?

It was undeserved, it was absolutely cruel, the crucifixion was, it was without question the most important death in all of history.

Do you know that?

Do you realize that?

It's because it was actually the furthest thing away from senseless.

It was so far from senseless.

Now, Jesus Christ, he did in fact die.

We're gonna be looking at that today, but in his death, he actually accomplished everything.

He accomplished everything because Jesus Christ died for us.

And so this is what we're gonna be looking at here today.

Let's read through uh this passage.

If you would actually stand with me as we do that today and uh honor the Lord through the reading of his word.

We're gonna be looking at verse 44 here and reading down to the end of the chapter.

It says this it was now about the sixth hour.

There was darkness over the whole land 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 is that had 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.

Now there was a man from named Joseph from a Jewish town of Arimathea.

He was a member of the council, a good and righteous man, who had not consented to their decision and action, and he was look and he was looking for the kingdom of God.

This man went to Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus.

Then he took it down and wrapped it in a linen shroud, and laid him in a tomb cut in stone where no one had ever been laid.

It was the day of preparation, and the Sabbath was beginning.

The women who had come with him from Galilee followed and saw the tomb and how the body was laid.

Then they returned and prepared spices and ointments.

On the Sabbath day they rested according to the commandment.

Let's pray.

Lord, as we kind of get our hearts and our minds focused in on the events of your death on the cross, Lord, I pray that we would not be stirred up in any way by any kind of fake emotion.

I pray that we wouldn't try and conjure up feelings of caring, feelings of sorrow and remorse.

Rather, Lord, we pray that you would stir these things up, Lord, in an appropriate sense.

Lord, that we would feel so broken and so at the same time thankful for what you have done for us.

Lord, I pray that you would glorify your name through everything that takes place here this morning, Lord.

Build your church, we pray, as we get to focus on uh the greatest weekend of the year for us.

That's the Easter season.

Lord, we pray that you would do all of these things.

We pray that you would do more in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Amen.

Well, you could take a seat.

Thanks so much.

Well, hey, we began our uh Easter series, our mini-series last Sunday, of course, and we were looking at how Christ suffered.

You remember that?

And we went in through kind of the verses preceding the ones that we just looked at today, and looking at how uh Jesus was crucified, and we talked about uh the awful torture that uh crucifixion was.

And so we really sought to kind of put ourselves at the scene and try and really understand what was taking place here as these events um unfolded.

Well, today we're gonna be looking at the actual moment of uh Christ's actual death on the cross.

We're gonna be looking at the significance of it as well.

What does that mean for us?

All right, so here's the first thing.

Now at our church, we have uh notes for you.

We've got those on the screen, we've got them uh in the bulletins, or if you were handed one of those uh when you come in or when you came in, we've got that all there.

You can write all of this down.

Here's the first thing Jesus died for us, obliterating the barrier between God and man.

He obliterated it.

So understand here, okay, that Jesus endured immense suffering.

Right?

He he went through the ringer, so to speak.

It was it was awful, it was torturous, it was long and drawn out, it was painful, it was misery.

I mean, in all of it, it was at the hands of the Roman authorities, okay?

The Roman authorities that kind of controlled that region, and then ultimately it was at the hands of his very own people.

Right?

It was it was the Jews that hated and despised him, it was God's chosen people who rejected the Messiah.

And so it was the religious leaders of the Jews who hated Jesus.

And they were like, We we hate this guy, we want him gone, we want to see him die.

And so they convinced the Roman authorities to release Jesus into their hands so that he could be uh uh crucified.

All right?

Okay, but look what happens here.

Uh verse 44.

It says, so he's been on the cross now for a while.

It says it was about the sixth hour.

The sixth hour meaning noon.

Okay, so it was noon.

And there was, this isn't the listen to this, and there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour.

Okay, so for three hours everything went dark.

It says until the ninth hour, when 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.

You know, as you read through this, you might be like, hmm, a couple of things I don't really understand that are happening there, or what's, you know, what's up with all of that?

Because what you notice there are some very uh unusual and even wild kind of physical phenomena, occurrences, uh, that took place here at the moment that Jesus died.

Okay, and and Luke's gospel, what it says here is that the the sun's light failed, all right, for three hours.

Okay, more on that in a second.

It says in the temple curtain was torn in two.

All right, so we're like, hmm, interesting.

Okay, the other gospels, and well, in Matthew's gospel for sure, it actually records a couple of other things that happened in this moment.

It says uh that there was also an earthquake.

It said that the rocks were split, and it even says this it says that that dead Christians, dead people who trusted God as Savior, actually raised from the dead and began walking around and appearing to people.

Now, again, put yourself at the scene.

If you're standing there, if you're watching all of this and you see these things happen, and in the middle of the day, right, when it's supposed to be its brightest, all of a sudden the sun just goes dark, it gets pitch black, there's a there's an earthquake, you see dead people talking to you.

Okay, maybe you hear about later the temple curtain torn in two.

What are you thinking?

I can tell you what you're not thinking.

You're not thinking, hmm, pretty standard day in Jerusalem.

Right?

You're like, you're thinking, this is unique, right?

This is different, and all of this, listen, all of this was signifying that this is what this was no ordinary death.

Okay, it's signifying that that Jesus wasn't just a good guy, right?

He wasn't just a good teacher, he wasn't even just a prophet.

It was pushing the people there to realize that this was, in fact, the Son of God.

All right, now, as unusual as the you know, the sun's light failing was, okay, and we know that it wasn't an eclipse because they would celebrate Passover at a full moon when an eclipse isn't possible.

So it was some other kind of unique thing that was happening here.

Okay, as unusual as that is, or or earthquakes and rocks splitting and dead people coming back to life.

Okay, the the temple curtain being torn in two uh likely carries the kind of the heaviest significance here.

All right, what you need to realize here is that that the temple, okay, the temple was the place where where holy, righteous, all-powerful God of the universe came to dwell among his people.

That's where it was understood that God himself resided, he and his glory.

He came and dwelled among sinners, and that's where he was.

Now, in the temple, maybe you know this already, there was this there was this inner sanctuary.

Remember what the inner sanctuary was called?

It was called the Holy of Holies, right?

And and and that's where, again, that's the location that God was as he came to dwell with his people.

Now, now only once a year the high priest, and not before, not until he had actually gone through this really intense and vigorous kind of cleansing process where he would confess sin and deal with his sin and sacrifice and purify himself.

Only once a year after doing that could the could the high priest and him only go into the Holy of Holies and make atonement for the sins of God's people.

Okay, so this was a sacred place.

Okay, this is a sacred place.

Okay, not anyone could just kind of roll in there, right?

We're so casual today as a culture.

You couldn't just be like, all right, I'm I'm coming into the Holy of Holies now to talk to God.

That's just that's just not the way it worked.

And because what the whole idea of it was to set up the idea that God is holy, He is perfectly pure and righteous.

And it was to it was to show that there is a barrier between God and man.

Man, left to his own devices is sinful, is separated from God.

All right, it was so serious, in fact, that they would they would actually tie a rope around the uh high priest's leg just in case when he went through his own purification process, if he didn't handle that properly or with the right reverence and the right respect and all of that, God would just strike him dead.

And so the rope was used to pull him out if need be.

Now, in order for the priest, all right, to be able to enter into the Holy of Holies, he had to pass through this curtain.

Okay, and it wasn't just like you know, curtains that you have over your windows in your living room, right?

You just kind of grab them and you shake them, you slide them across the bar, right?

And and there, boom, you cover it all up.

It's not like that.

Okay, this curtain was like made of very expensive material.

It was actually four inches thick, okay, really thick stuff, and it was actually 30 feet uh high.

And again, that signified the barrier that existed between a holy God and sinful men.

And so you're starting to understand, you're starting to put together what was happening here in this situation, right?

Christ's death caused God Himself to tear that curtain from top to bottom.

Matthew chapter 27, verse 51 tells us very specifically, it was from top to bottom, 30 feet high.

Matthew 27:51

No man is doing that.

You couldn't just grab that and rip it like a piece of paper.

Again, it was it was thick.

Now, what what does all of this mean?

Well, two kind of primary things.

Okay, first of all, it meant that the temple would no longer be the primary residence of God's dwelling.

Why?

Because through Christ, God would now dwell with man, he would dwell within him.

Okay, here's the second thing: God was now accessible to all people.

Okay, so it wasn't a once-a-year thing for one man uh only.

No, the sacrificial system was over.

No more uh uh shedding the blood of animals to uh to atone for you know the the the sins of man to compensate for the sins of man.

No, that was done.

We don't need a priest anymore because Jesus Christ himself is the high priest.

Right?

Through the cross, Christ's blood satisfied God's demands once and for all.

No need for the holy of holies now.

We can now have direct access to God the Father through what Jesus Christ did.

Right?

This is what we celebrate on Good Friday.

Now, Hebrews 10, you might want to jot this down.

Hebrews 10, 19 to 22.

Okay, this is later in the New Testament.

I love this.

Listen to this.

It says, Therefore, brothers, since we have confidence now, okay, confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus, by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain, that is, through his flesh.

And since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a uh with a true heart of full assurance and faith.

Right?

I love that.

That's what Jesus accomplished for us.

He came and gave us direct access, direct intimacy with God, that is, if we trust in his son Christ.

Okay, so so so far from his death being this, you know, this senseless thing, right?

That this pointless, you know, waste, it actually accomplished everything that it needed to.

Isn't that amazing?

Because it obliterated the barrier between God and man, and it did it forever.

Right?

So when we gather together on a day like this on Good Friday, what are we reminding ourselves?

We're reminding ourselves of the fact that this death was necessary.

Right?

We needed it to happen.

Okay, because without it, there would be no opening for us to come to God.

We would still be dead in our sins, we would have no other way.

All right, and here's the other thing we need to remember.

If Christ didn't come and do this and that barrier still existed, it would mean that God's wrath towards us would still be seething.

Now listen, that should terrify us.

That should terrify us.

We should be, you know, deeply concerned when we think about the fact that God's wrath could have been pointed in our direction.

Right?

That wouldn't have been a good thing.

You know, and then especially it should terrify us when we think about this, when we think about how we deserve the punishment.

The punishment wouldn't have been unfair.

We earned it.

God created us as his children, as his very own.

And what have we done?

Through sin, we rebelled.

We said, forget it, God.

I don't want to follow you and your ways.

I want to be God.

Essentially, that's what all of our hearts cry out.

We all have a God complex.

Right?

And we we reject him.

And it means we deserve his punishment.

Now, all of this really leads to the next thing.

Take a look here.

Jesus died for us, leaving us shaken by the guilt of having caused it.

All right, verse 47, read along.

He says, Now, 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 from beating their breasts, and all his acquaintances and the women who had followed him from Galilee stood at a distance watching these things.

Alright, so when the centurion saw this, okay, so the centurion was like the guy overseeing the entire crucifixion.

He would actually oversee a hundred Roman soldiers.

And so he's like Mr.

Big Deal on the scene.

All right, and so he sees this, he's the guy giving the orders.

When he sees it, you know, he's struck by how all of a sudden he just realizes that Jesus didn't deserve this.

Right?

He was he was innocent.

And when you see the reaction of the crowds, and all of a sudden the people that had gathered and had been, you know, you know, breathing, you know, threats of murder and then actually carried it out, they all of a sudden realize, and they it says that they beat their breasts as they went home, signifying grief and remorse.

And you start to kind of get the picture here that this sickening realization washed over these people as they realized we have committed maybe the grievous, the most grievous error of all time.

Listen, as much as the people assembled here were responsible for the death of Christ on that day, and they were shaken by the guilt of having caused all of it, listen, we should feel no different.

We should feel no different.

Why?

Because Christ came to die for the sins of the world.

Right?

John 3.16 tells us that, which means that all of our sin, all of us, our sin put him there.

Right?

And we should feel just as responsible as these various people, right?

The centurion, the crowd, you know, the religious leaders, right?

We should be every bit as grieved by it.

Right?

So Good Friday is good because he made a way to unite us with himself through the sacrifice of himself.

But the only way that we will ever grasp the magnitude of that, the only way that we will be able to truly worship with hearts so passionate and so grateful on Easter Sunday, that day is coming, amen.

The only way that we will be able to do that is if we properly first grieve our own sin.

The sin that put him there.

And so, what do we do on Good Friday?

We don't celebrate, not in not in the sense of Easter Sunday, right?

That day is coming, and it's gonna be a very, very different mood in here.

And we are gonna worship him, there is gonna be shouts of joy, there is gonna be all of that because Jesus is alive.

But listen, until then, we grieve.

We grieve.

We grieve the suffering that that God went through sending his only innocent, blameless son to die.

We we grieve the sacrifice that Jesus Himself made, suffering for us.

We agree, we grieve the atrocity of the cross.

That's what we do.

Because at the end of the day, listen, it's on us.

It's on us.

Okay, I'm gonna have the Worship team.

Come on up right now.

And we are going to have a time of communion.

Okay, and communion is really remembering everything that we've just talked about.

Right?

Communion is a memorial.

It's reminding ourselves that Christ did, in fact, die.

Now, I really want to speak to some of you in the room here.

And I want to speak to those of you who have potentially.

And we're good.

Right?

But I want to speak to those of you who have not put your faith in Jesus Christ.

Right?

And for you, the wrath of God is still aimed at.

Right?

And you are separated from God.

Why?

Because you have not accepted the gift of salvation from Jesus.

You have not given your sin an honest look.

You have made it a kind of a, it's not that big of a deal.

It's not an issue.

No, you need to realize that it's everything.

Your eternity is at stake here.

And so I would really challenge you here right now.

Don't take communion if you don't know Jesus Christ.

Right?

Because here's the thing.

It does nothing for you.

Right?

There's nothing mystical about eating a cracker and drinking juice.

It does not bring you closer to God by doing that act.

Jesus brings you closer to God.

Right?

And to receive that for yourself, you need to accept that his death was for you.

You need to accept that when he died, when he breathed his last, as we just looked at, God the Father looked at him and says, I am satisfied.

No more sin pointed in the direction of an unredeemed sinful people.

All of my wrath, all of that is poured out and satisfied through the sacrifice of my son.

Would you receive Christ today as Savior?

Would you admit your sinfulness before him?

I would really challenge you to do that.

Please do it.

Don't wait till Sunday.

Don't wait till your deathbed.

We're not guaranteed any time here, any any time beyond this very moment.

Right?

So think about that.

And then you can take communion.

Right?

And for the rest of us who have um have trusted Christ as Savior, this is again a time to reflect on all of these things.

Right?

To remember Christ's death.

It's to praise him for it.

It's to get our hearts right, it's to deal properly with ongoing sin that tends to plague us.

It doesn't affect our standing anymore once we get saved.

Amen.

But it does affect just our life.

And we know that God will, Jesus will, sanctify us as we continue to bring our sin to Him, as we continue to humble ourselves.