Latest / Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive / March 29, 2024 | Good Friday

Transcript

March 29, 2024 | Good Friday · Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive

• 0:10
  SPEAKER_00: Good evening.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_00: Father, we come before you tonight, and um this is always a um a heavy time.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_00: As we think of your blood and your sacrifice for us.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_00: Lord, we know what's coming.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_00: Uh yet this um this time is always heavy because it makes us reflect on our own sin and how we placed you on the cross.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_00: God, I pray that um I would be able to preach tonight and um and Lord that we might keep these things in mind as we uh we reflect on the cross, we reflect on your sacrifice, we reflect, Lord, on our depravity, and we also reflect on the hope that we have in the future, and then especially as we come together as a church uh to take your the elements, the body and the blood, um, Lord, that those would be a sweet time of remembrance for us as we uh think back on how deeply you love us.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_00: And it's in Jesus' name we pray.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_00: Amen.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_00: Um there are a couple things in my life, um, not too many, that are kind of before and after moments.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_00: Um I got my first dog for my seventh grade birth, or for my seventh birthday, it was a beagle I named Snickers, she was a great dog.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_00: That's like one of those watershed moments, like before I had my beagle, after I had her.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_00: Um when I got um when my parents got a divorce, that was a before and after.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_00: When I got married, that was a before and after.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_00: When uh we had a kid, that was a before and after.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_00: And um, I think that it is fitting to think of the the death of Christ as and the resurrection as as the greatest before and after that has ever existed.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_00: Um, all of the Old Testament is anticipating and awaiting and prophesying about that moment, and really all of the New Testament is sort of reflecting and remembering and pointing back to that moment, and even say, well, there's there's the future hope, obviously, that we have in Christ, but even that is viewed in light of what happened when Jesus died and he resurrected.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_00: And so it's really this moment uh that we get to look on, and they're kind of two sides of the same coin in the sense that tonight is uh is a heavy time where we think about why Jesus had to die, um, why we desperately need that, and why we continue to need it.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_00: And then for Easter we get to celebrate his resurrection.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_00: And both bring hope in different ways.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_00: Um of them, though, is focused, and this is tonight, is focused, though, on our desperate need for a savior.
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't know a better way to talk about this than to do what feels uh pastorally like trying to hold your head underwater a little bit, because there's an element of reflection on our own sinfulness that sometimes we just need to sit in and bathe in, because otherwise we think of Jesus' death as just a good thing that happened for our sake, and not always why we are lost without it.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_00: And the truth is that we we do fall short.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_00: We fall completely short.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_00: It is not even close.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_00: And when we think about what it means to try and walk the way that God has called us to walk, to do the things that He has called us to do, we are utter and complete failures.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_00: And even that begins to sear our consciences because there is very little of our lives where we like to be called utter and complete failures.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_00: Most of the time we are doing everything we can to not be seen as a failure in our own eyes and the eyes of other people, and yet part of coming to the cross is recognizing that we have been failures.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_00: And that failure comes because of our sin.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_00: It comes because we are rebelling against God, it comes because we decide that we want to go our own way and we want to make ourselves God.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_00: And what that does is it creates a gulf between us and the Lord.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_00: It creates a separation between us and him, between his loving embrace that he would uh most assuredly love to provide for us, but except for the death of Christ, we would not be able to feel that embrace in its fullest extent because we have pushed him away.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_00: It would be as if you had said that you could go to the Grand Canyon and by making a running start, you could hope to hop across to the other side.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_00: Doesn't make any sense, and it's not even close.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_00: And so it is this separation, this sin that we must reflect upon tonight.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_00: And there is there is hope.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_00: There's always hope.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_00: And there's an answer for what happens.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_00: But tonight, what I would really like to try and do in the brief time that we have is to help us to see together that there are only a couple things when it comes to our relationship with Christ that we only understand when you're kind of sitting at the bottom of the pit.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_00: And when you see and feel what it is like to recognize um how truly short we have fallen.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_00: Romans 5.8 says that God demonstrates his own love for us in this, that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_00: Um Jesus didn't die for a bunch of deserving people.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_00: Heck, he didn't really die for decent people.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_00: He died for people who were actively railing against him, mocking him, beating him, whipping him.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_00: And those are the kinds of people that he died for.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_00: And when we read these accounts, this is true when you look at those who were the mob that was trying to release Barabbas.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, this is true when you look at the uh the soldiers, this is true when you look at the Pharisees, this is true anybody who is mocking and reviling Jesus in the gospels, and we look at that, we go, that wouldn't have been me.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_00: That's me.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_00: I would have been outside that crowd.
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_00: Listen, you would have been in that crowd with me.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_00: The best parts of us that respond to Jesus and draw close to him, the part of you that goes, I would never do those sorts of things.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_00: I could, it's unconscionable that I would ever think of something like that, that I would ever treat Jesus that way.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_00: It's simply by the grace of God and the power of his spirit that you were able to respond in that way.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_00: At our base level, at our unimproved state, absent the grace of God, we are the people that say we want to free the murderer.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_00: And so it is a death that Jesus died for the undeserving.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_00: The extent of God's love for us is so amazing that we are constantly trying to wrap our minds around this truly unimaginable thing.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_00: That God would die for his creation which rejected him.
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_00: And because we have finite minds and God is infinite, we are always trying to take the things that he has done and put them into the box that can be sort of wrapped and tied and understood in an easy way for us.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_00: And one of the ways that we attempt to take the death of Christ and make it manageable to us, of course, it could not be that we are people wholly undeserving.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_00: But rather instead, we are people who are maybe not as bad as some others, or at the very least, that we didn't need, maybe we wouldn't say it this way, but all of the death of Christ.
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_00: We needed his help to get over the finish line.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_00: We needed his help to be able to take that next step.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_00: We needed him to be able to complete our relationship with God, but it was pretty good before then.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_00: And that's not true either.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_00: It is more reasonable for us at times to believe that we are deserving of a portion of God's mercy because of our good behavior than it is to believe that we deserve none of it.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_00: And so, what I want for us this evening, and this is part of our reflection on the death of Christ, is to just fully embrace this truth that we do not deserve his sacrifice, and we've done nothing to earn God's love.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_00: And if you can walk that road with me, here's the thing that you see at the bottom of the pit.
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_00: Instead, you see a people who are wholly undeserving and yet God loves them enough to save them.
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_00: You see a people who have done nothing to deserve their salvation, to deserve God's love, to deserve his favor, and yet receive it freely, because he is good and he is mighty.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_00: We see that we can also, because we can't go much deeper, we can do nothing to lose his love either.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_00: Every bit that we have received from him, which is unimaginable to us, is a free gift from God, and it is not one that we can return.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_00: God's love is something that is hard for us to imagine, but it is this complete 180 that we might move from appropriate despair to a radical thanksgiving.
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_00: And the depth of our understanding, and I would impress this upon anybody, that the depth of our understanding of our sin is directly related to the degree that we are able to worship and appreciate the gift of the cross.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_00: If you think you are a minor sinner in the kingdom of heaven, you're going to think his gift to be a minor act of love.
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_00: But if you understand how deep you are, and first of all, if you don't know me, I get that this is coming in hard and fast.
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_00: But I don't, I struggle to find a better way to tell you that Jesus died for your sins than to let you know that you and I are sinners.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_00: And so the last thing I say before we move on is that I don't want to do absolutely anything that would cheapen the cross for you.
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_00: That would take what Jesus has done and in some way undercut that before you.
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_00: That I would present the gospel to you, that all that God has done out of his love for you so that you might be reunited with him, so that I might be able to have a relationship with him, so that we might fellowship together in community with Christ, with one another, and that I would do anything to shorten that, to reduce it, by telling you that we are anything less than depraved people.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_00: Jesus had to die, he had to spill his blood, he had to be a substitute for our sins.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_00: Because we are people who cannot do it on our own and do not deserve his grace.
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_00: But Jesus let out a loud cry and breathed his last.
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_00: Then the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom.
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_00: When the centurion, who was standing opposite him, saw the way he breathed his last, he said, Truly this man was the Son of God.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_00: If you're not familiar with the Bible, the idea of a curtain being torn probably means very little.
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_00: That would make sense.
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_00: This is sort of one of those things that comes if you've read your Old Testament a little bit.
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_00: Let me get you up to speed real quick.
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_00: Jesus is being crucified outside the city gates in Jerusalem.
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_00: Inside Jerusalem, at the top of the hill, is the temple.
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_00: The temple has stood in various forms for over a thousand years as an institution of worship for God's people.
• 13:55
  SPEAKER_00: And there have been times where they were closer to God, and there have been times when they have been further away.
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_00: But you track it all the way back to the beginning of the Bible with the tabernacle, which was kind of the earliest form.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_00: And God has been providing a way for people to worship him since the very beginning.
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_00: God wants to have a relationship with his people, but since the very beginning, God's people have been rejecting him.
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_00: And so what you have instituted with the temple is a physical representation of a spiritual reality, which is that God is separated from his people because of their sin.
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_00: And there was a whole manner of a system, and that they might be able to draw closer occasionally to him.
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_00: And even then, only those who could draw the closest was a certain group of people who could do it once a year under special circumstances.
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_00: And what divided them was this massive curtain inside the temple.
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_00: There were things beyond it that faithful worshipers of God had never seen in their entire lives because they are people like we are, racked with sin.
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_00: And so this massive curtain, tradition says it took about 300 people to install it, it was so big.
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_00: That this massive curtain, the moment that Jesus was crucified, the moment he gave up his spirit, it was torn in two from top to bottom.
• 15:23
  SPEAKER_00: That curtain was a representation of the separation between God and his people.
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_00: And so, what did Jesus' death represent?
• 15:35
  SPEAKER_00: But the end of separation.
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_00: The end of a time where God's people needed to take a step back because of the sin.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_00: And you say, well, how is that possible?
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_00: Because it feels like we are drowning in our sin.
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_00: It feels like we can't do anything right.
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_00: And in fact, we can't, outside of God's will, outside of his spirit.
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_00: We are lost people.
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_00: How is it possible that we might not be separated from God any longer and that this curtain would be torn in two as a sign of that renewed relationship?
• 16:07
  SPEAKER_00: How is it possible not because everyone simply became sinless at the death of Christ, but rather that anyone who believes in Jesus as their Savior is not only forgiven of their sins, brought up from the bottom of that pit, but they are called righteous now in the kingdom of God, because they receive and are in fact seen the same way that the Father sees the Son.
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_00: And so the righteous one who died for the undeserving, he basically gives us his status in the kingdom of heaven, and people who do not deserve and have never done anything to deserve and will never do anything to deserve the goodness of God upon their lives.
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_00: Have received it.
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_00: And so what this propels us to do is not just stay where we're at, but to move forward.
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_00: We are not supposed to just sit in the guilt of our sin, but to repent of it and move on with the new understanding that we have a relationship with God that is renewed and is special and is glorious.
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_00: Because he no longer sees us if we have trusted in Christ as those who are dead in their sins, but he sees us as a new creation, and he sees us as people who can draw near to him beyond the curtain.
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_00: And the writer of Hebrews continues to go on, but we stop here because, brothers and sisters, we have now a boldness to go forward.
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_00: Beforehand, before you talk about any of these things, you say, Who has the right to go and stand before the throne of the king as they once were?
• 18:11
  SPEAKER_00: In their sin, in their depravity, in their rebellion, who can go before him and say that they can call him a friend?
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_00: But now, through Christ, we have this boldness.
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_00: And in fact, there's a connection that is made, and one that might make some of us uncomfortable between the flesh of Christ and the curtain, and the rending and the tearing and the blood and the horror of the cross, the nails through the hands and the feet, the crown of thorns, that these are the same things that are actually supposed to give us boldness to go before God.
• 18:52
  SPEAKER_00: Because we see upon Jesus was delivered this punishment that we deserved.
• 18:57
  SPEAKER_00: And so we are not, we are not supposed to stay in a depressed state.
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_00: We are not supposed to be people who wear black every single day of the year because the death of Christ accomplishes something.
• 19:11
  SPEAKER_00: And it did back then.
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_00: It is the before and after moment that has changed eternity for us.
• 19:19
  SPEAKER_00: And so in our final passage, Peter says this for Christ died for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God.
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_00: He was put to death in the body, but made alive by the Spirit.
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_00: Everything centers upon this point.
• 19:41
  SPEAKER_00: Every bit of your faith and your understanding and your hope for the future and the way that you can relate to God and have a relationship with Him today is based upon the death of Christ and His resurrection on the third day.
• 19:59
  SPEAKER_00: And as we look at the death of Christ, it is a disservice to the cross if you do anything less than recognize our depravity, how far we fall short.
• 20:12
  SPEAKER_00: And as much as we want to cling, as I do, maybe you don't, I do, to how good of a person I think I am sometimes.
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_00: What I have to keep in mind is one, it is only by the grace of God that I am able to do it, and two, that I still fall short, even in my best moments.
• 20:36
  SPEAKER_00: We cannot do anything to make the cross of Christ just a convenience for us.
• 20:42
  SPEAKER_00: It is a necessary reality.
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_00: And upon that cross, the world is going to be divided.
• 20:50
  SPEAKER_00: And you and I, we have an opportunity that God has given to us to draw near to him in ways that we haven't before.
• 20:57
  SPEAKER_00: Because maybe you have understood some of these things about depravity.
• 21:01
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe you have understood these things about sin.
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_00: And you go, that is a truth I tell myself every day.
• 21:09
  SPEAKER_00: Well then maybe what you need to remember and be reminded of is that Jesus has bought your freedom.
• 21:16
  SPEAKER_00: And that what he has done is given you boldness to enter into the kingdom.
• 21:22
  SPEAKER_00: And that now you have a relationship with God that is not dictated by your failure, but by his success.
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_00: And so we don't have to be people who are struggling in sort of this muck and mire any longer, but rather that we are walking forward towards the Lord with hope.
• 21:41
  SPEAKER_00: And yes, for Easter is when we get to the really fun stuff.
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_00: Talking about the future and hope and the resurrection and what that means for our eternity with God.
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_00: But even tonight, we can rest in this truth that we have a new position.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: In the kingdom.
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_00: Peter says it was done once and for all.
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_00: Every day we can go before the Lord and say, God, you have given me boldness to go beyond the curtain, to go deep before your throne, and to say, I know I am a sinner.
• 22:21
  SPEAKER_00: I know that I make mistakes.
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_00: I know that I rebel in your kingdom all the time.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_00: God, you have forgiven me.
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_00: Not because of anything good that I have done, not because I deserve it, but because out of your grace and your mercies, you love me and you desire to have a relationship with me.
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_00: It is only from the bottom that you can understand, and I can understand the truth of this.
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_00: So tonight, on Good Friday, we draw near to God.
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_00: We remember our sin.
• 22:56
  SPEAKER_00: We remember his sacrifice, and we remember our forgiveness.
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_00: Let's pray.
• 23:05
  SPEAKER_00: God, we come before you again as people, Lord, who I say it once more, God, do not deserve the gift that you have given to us.
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_00: Yet, Lord, we want it.
• 23:20
  SPEAKER_00: And we desire it.
• 23:22
  SPEAKER_00: And we want to be your people.
• 23:25
  SPEAKER_00: And Lord, I ask on behalf of everyone that you would forgive us for the ways in which we have trampled upon your gift by thinking that we deserve the good that you give to us.
• 23:39
  SPEAKER_00: But Father, from this humble position, from this position, God, we come before you and say, Lord, we are yours, and we desire to follow after you.
• 23:52
  SPEAKER_00: We desire to be your people, who both keep in mind what it is like to be at the bottom of the pit and what it is like to be lifted out forevermore.
• 24:05
  SPEAKER_00: God, we thank you for these things.
• 24:08
  SPEAKER_00: And as we turn, Lord, to your the elements of communion, to your body and your blood, God, let us remember these things.
• 24:18
  SPEAKER_00: In Jesus' name.
• 24:20
  SPEAKER_00: Amen.
• 24:48
  SPEAKER_00: On the night when he was betrayed, the Lord Jesus took bread, and when he had given thanks, broke it, and said, This is my body which is for you.
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_00: Do this in remembrance of me.
• 25:12
  SPEAKER_00: In the same way also he took the cup after supper and said, This cup is the new covenant in my blood.
• 25:18
  SPEAKER_00: Do this as often as you drink it in remembrance of me, for as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes.