Good Friday 2015

Father, we thank you that we can gather to sing of what you have done for us by sending your Son to die on the cross for us. We'll never comprehend how much you love us, but we can know that you love us. We'll never comprehend how sinful we are and how much of your wrath we deserve. But we can know that we are sinners who deserve your wrath. We'll never comprehend all that took place on the cross on that Good Friday. Lord, we know that our Savior died in our place. Give us confidence in what he accomplished. Help us to unite around that truth that we are forgiven because he was forsaken. In Jesus name we pray. Amen. There are few things more painful than being rejected. The pain of trusting someone who has betrayed you, cheated on you, abandoned you. The more you love them, the more painful it is. Tonight, we're actually going to be looking at the most perfectly loving relationship. And we're going to see the most painful rejection. And we're going to see why it is good news for us. We're going to meditate on one of the last words of Jesus before he gave up his spirit. We're going to be in Matthew chapter 27. Page 834, if you're using a Pew Bible, if you are a guest and you don't have a Bible, please take that with you. It contains the words of life. Matthew 27, from the passage that Cliff read to us earlier, the very simple declaration, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Jesus cries out on the cross, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? This is one of the most mysterious declarations in scripture. How is it that the one God is forsaking himself? How is it that the perfect love between the Father and the Son is being broken? This last word of Christ is worthy of our meditation, not just tonight. What we first see is that this declaration from Jesus reveals that the perfect relationship between Father and Son in the Godhead is separated in this moment. The Father and the Son, they're both one God. but they're separated. It's important to remember God is love. What defines God most of all is love and it's because the father perfectly loves the son and the son perfectly loves the father. The son was always perfectly obedient and the father always perfectly caring for and leading and embracing his son. They're very identities. The father being the father of the son, the son being the son of the father are tied to one another. And in this instant, in this moment, why have you forsaken me? It reveals that that perfect love, that perfect relationship, it's broken. The father is forsaking the son. The father is rejecting him. He is not treating him as his beloved son. Rather, he's treating him as if a sinful man. One of the things that stands out about this verse is that this is the only time Jesus talks to God by calling him God. Any other time Jesus is speaking to God, he calls him father. This is revealing that our relationship has changed just in the very way Jesus addresses him. The son always calls him father, but now that very identity of father and son has been altered, broken, because now Jesus is standing not as the most beloved son, but as the judged sinner. All that mattered most to him His right relationship with his father was lost because he chose to come down and be treated like a sinner. There's a couple of questions we have to ask. Why? Why does the father abandon his son? Now, one of the other questions we could ask is how? The beautiful thing about Scripture is it answers the questions we need to ask. It doesn't answer that question. It doesn't tell us how this happens. It doesn't explain to us the mysteries that God had that we could never understand to begin with. But it does tell us why God rejected his son. It does tell us why Jesus was forsaken. It's so that we can be Jesus is rejected so that we can be reconciled to God. He's separated so that we can be brought near. He's abandoned so that we can be adopted. Jesus stands in our place on the cross of judgment. He is forsaken for our sins. In order to appreciate this, we have to understand what separates us from God. Why would we be rejected? Why would we be separated? Why would we be abandoned? This is very clear from the very beginning. God created us for himself. He created us to know him, to be known by him, to love him, to be loved by him, to enjoy and to delight in his very presence. He put us in the garden, His very special presence, so that we would have a place with Him. We were called to be obedient to Him, to worship Him. But man decided he wanted something other than God. He wanted what God told him he could not have. He wanted that one piece of fruit from that one tree that God said do not eat of when he had an abundance of fruit and an abundance of trees from God. He rejected God. The consequence of his sin was death and separation from God. Man forsook the blessed life with God when he chose the cursed life against God. We forsake the blessed life with God when we choose the cursed life that's against God. Listen to the account in Genesis three, after God created man and everything was good, after he appointed him the heir of all of the earth, after he set aside man and woman and sanctified them, gave them worth after they sinned, after he has given them the curse. Then the Lord God said, behold, the man has become like one of us in knowing good and evil. Now, lest he reach out his hand and take also of the tree of life and get and eat and live forever. Therefore, The Lord God sent him out from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he was taken. He drove out the man into the east of the Garden of Eden. He placed the chair of him and a flaming sword that turned every way to guard the way to the tree of life. because we rejected God, God drove us away. This was an act of mercy. This driving us away because we had rejected him was an act of mercy because we cannot stand in the presence of God while rejecting him, while refusing him and not be consumed by his righteousness. It was an act of mercy to send us away because if we come to the presence of God with our filth, with our rejection, we will be undone, we will be destroyed. Death is the consequence of sin. All of the Old Testament from this point forward is God executing a plan to bring us back. Everything God says, everything God does has the purpose of bringing us back even closer. We can see this, the steps, because he calls the people back to himself to worship him, but there's something unique about this worship. It's always distant. It's always distant. Because our sins in the Old Testament, they had not yet been truly and fully paid for. All those shadows of sacrifices, they were not yet the true substance. The great high priest did not offer the perfect sacrifice that would take away our sins. We have to see in order to appreciate this declaration, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? God created us to be with Him. God created us to have a relationship with Him. We were called to worship Him alone, but we rejected Him. Therefore, we die and are separated from God. We continue to long for love, but we look for it in something else that never satisfies. That's why, while we were still sinners, God sent his son. Jesus stood in our place on the cross. The one who had for all time shared a perfect relationship with the father, he was rejected so that we would be accepted. He had to pay the penalty for our sin that stands between us and God, that keeps us from delighting in the very presence of God. These words represent us. Because we have forsaken God, he rejects us. Jesus comes who would be accepted because he is perfectly obedient. But he takes upon God's wrath on himself. He experiences the forsakenness, the rejection, the abandonment that we deserve so that we can be accepted. Here's some of the declarations in scripture. He took upon our transgressions and our iniquities, from Isaiah 53. He was delivered up because of our transgression, Romans 4.25. He died for our sins, 1 Corinthians 15.3. He who knew no sin became sin on our behalf. 2 Corinthians 5.21. He became a curse for us. Galatians 3.13. He himself bore our sins in his body on the cross. 1 Peter 2.24. He died once for all, the just for the unjust. 1 Peter 3.18. He became the propitiation for our sins. He himself satisfied the wrath of God. He was perfect. He was righteous. He deserved to be accepted by God. Instead, he chose to be rejected. He took upon himself our sins so that the wrath of God being poured upon him was satisfied. So that when God looks at us, he no longer sees our sin because Jesus took that sin upon himself. He died in our place. so that we will not be rejected, but so that we can be reconciled. We now hear the call that in Christ, we who were once far off, we can be brought near. We who are once opposed to God and rejected to God, God is calling us not to just come to worship at a distance, but to come into his very presence because the perfect sacrifice that takes away our sin, It's been made. For us to be reconciled, it requires, first, we recognize that our sin deserves God's wrath. We have to see, while we will never fully grasp the fullness of our sin or the fullness of God's wrath until we die apart from Christ, if we die apart from Christ, we have to recognize that sin requires God's wrath. Secondly, we have to believe Jesus Christ. He died for our sin. He died on our behalf so that when we die, we will not have to give an account. We will be declared righteous. It requires that we repent of our sin. We can't see sin and what it deserves and what it did to our relation with God and continue to play with it. It's destructive. It's dangerous. Deadly. Christians, we now live in the presence of God because of Christ. We're reconciled. We're not rejected. We're adopted. We're no longer abandoned. This is the good news. He was forsaken so that we would be forgiven. If you were not a Christian, My plea with you tonight is that you would forsake the sin that keeps you from reconciling with God. What is it that you love and enjoy more and are putting in front of God and saying, this is better than you? You don't need to be a good enough person to become a Christian. You simply need to see your sin. your need of Him, and that Christ has purchased your, He has paid the debt for your sin by nailing it to the cross and acknowledging this is sin. I want to give it to Christ. He has paid the penalty. I repent. By remaining in your sin, you're exchanging the glorious love of God for something that will never satisfy. If you're a Christian, we come together to sing the name of Jesus. We boast of that name as we've just sung. We praise that name because it is the name of every name that actually gives us life. We don't only just sing the name of Jesus, we sing about the glory of the cross. That's kind of odd because the cross was the ultimate symbol of shame. We look at the cross and we see that we have received life because Christ died the most shameful death, not publicly on the cross, but suffering for all our sin. We praise him. We have confidence in him. The book of Hebrews constantly calls us, draw near, draw near, boldly praising Almighty God because of Christ. He was forsaken so that we can draw near. We will say one of two things for all eternity. One of two things will resonate in our minds and our hearts for all of eternity. If you reject Jesus and remain in your sin, you will say for all of eternity this, my God, my God, why did I forsake you? For all of eternity, that will resonate as you feel the full weight of God's glory up against your sin. Now that's different than what Jesus said, because Jesus deserved to be in the presence of God. He, being a righteous one, asked, why do you forsake me? Whereas us, when we come in the presence of God with our sin, we would say, why did I forsake you? Why did I love my sin more than you? How could I keep rejecting you? We'll see over and over again, every bitter thought, every evil deed, every opportunity to reject our sin and be reconciled to God, and we will cry out, God, my God, my God, why did I forsake you? The other thing you can say for all eternity, if you believe in Jesus Christ, you will say, My God, my God, why do you love me? How is it that you can love me? Because we will see forever how we were so undeserving of such a great love. We will forever be amazed by the grace of God because when we actually look at our hands and we think about coming to God into his presence with the filth that we have, we know we should be rejected. But we also know that same filth was nailed to the cross with the hands of Jesus so that that debt has been paid, that offense has been taken away. We now come with clean hands, purified hearts, because Christ suffered for us. Saints, we're forgiven. We're beloved, we're adopted because of his great love. Will you pray with me? Father, we thank you for how clear it is that you love us. We thank you that we grow continually if we pursue you to know more and more of your love. As we know more and more of our sin, repent of it and see how offensive it is. Help us, Lord, to love you more. Help us to see how wicked our sin is. As we meditate on the cross, help us to see how glorious our salvation is in Christ as we meditate on the cross. Help us to remember that he has been raised so that we can now walk and live in the newness of his life. In your presence, knowing you, being known by you, being loved by you and loving you. We praise you, our great and glorious God, for this salvation, for forgiving us, for drawing us back to yourself, for adopting us. In Jesus' name we pray, amen.