Latest / Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive / March 30, 2018 | Good Friday Message - "Best. Story. Ever."

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March 30, 2018 | Good Friday Message - "Best. Story. Ever." · Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: It happened earlier today.
• 0:04
  SPEAKER_00: Just a few hours ago, in fact.
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_00: They killed the one we love.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_00: And that's what brings us together.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_00: And that's why the room is dark.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_00: We may call this Good Friday, but um make no mistake, it's a dark day.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_00: Darkness.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_00: So black, pain so deep, tears so hot, crucifixion so shameful.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_00: Um on a trash heap just outside of town.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_00: The death of the best man who ever walked this earth.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_00: Today's a dark day.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_00: But in the darkness of this day, I've seen a glimmer of light that I'd like to share with you.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_00: It comes out of the shortest gospel, the tenth chapter, and the 32nd verse.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_00: Mark chapter 10, verse 32.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_00: It's a little thing that happened uh, well, a week ago.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_00: It goes like this.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_00: They were on the road going up to Jerusalem, and Jesus was walking ahead of them.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_00: And the disciples were astonished, but those who followed him were afraid.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_00: It goes by so quickly, it's easy to miss.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_00: It's only two sentences long, 27 words, and um nothing to set them apart, no behold, no underline, no bold print or anything like that.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, the statement is so matter-of-fact that you might be forgiven for thinking that you know it's just a transition between what came before and what came after.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_00: But to miss that little verse would be to miss the glimmer of light in this dark day.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_00: So look back with me seven days to last Friday morning down in the Hot Jordan Valley by the Dead Sea, where Jesus and his disciples down there slip on their uh on their uh sandals, their thin sandals, and begin to make their way up the long road to Jerusalem.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_00: One of them, only one of them really knowing what's at the end of that road.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_00: So look back with me to that dusty day and the 14-mile climb through the canyon uphill all the way to Jerusalem with a cross at the end of the road.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_00: Because what we see a certain man do, that man, Jesus, on do on that day, and what we hear him say is the glimmer of light.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_00: Because what we see him do is something we've never seen him do before.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_00: We see him out in front.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_00: For we read, and he walked on ahead of him, ahead of them.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_00: And we've been watching him for three years now.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_00: And this is the first time we've ever seen him be out in front, at the at the front of the parade, walking in front.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_00: Pictures are all wrong.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_00: Pictures always have him in front of a group of people, but you never see him that way.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_00: He's not that way.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_00: He always seems to be in the middle of the crowd, says the disciples.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_00: He sent the disciples on before.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_00: The multitudes go on before.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_00: But Jesus always is somewhere in the middle.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_00: He's never in front.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_00: From the day he was born until the day he dies, Jesus is always surrounded by people, by his choice, rather than in front of them.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_00: We never see him in front of a crowd and the whole rest of the New Testament until now.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_00: Now is different.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_00: Now Jesus doesn't want anyone to be in front of him because now it's time to die.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_00: Because that's his cross up there, his cross to bear.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_00: I think you can tell a lot about a person by the way they die.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_00: And when it's dying time, Jesus gets out in front.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_00: He's like a point man.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_00: You know, in front of his platoon, in front of Peter and James and John and Philip and Bartholomew and Thomas and Judas.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_00: And with every step, Jesus stealing his own resolve by remembering that often-quoted verse from the prophet Isaiah: I have set my face like a flint, and I will not be ashamed.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_00: He's like a young soldier marching in front on his way to battle, his jaw set, determined, resolved to die.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_00: And so it's no wonder that it describes the disciples as stunned.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_00: They are all on the road, it says, going up to Jerusalem, and Jesus was walking ahead of them, and the disciples were astonished.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_00: And all of those who followed him were afraid.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_00: I can hear them whispering to each other, astonished.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_00: What's he doing up there, Peter?
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_00: That look in his eyes, it scares me.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_00: And there is that look that a man gets when he strides into battle with death on his mind.
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_00: I was I was just a kid.
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_00: I was in the middle of milking a cow when I heard my little brother scream.
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_00: It was a screech of a ten-year-old tear, and it was from the area of the of the chicken pins.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_00: There's a dog, he shrieked.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_00: And he's killing the chickens.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_00: And I left my bucket there, and I jumped up and followed my dad out of the barn, running up to the house where he grabbed his rifle and he was back out the door, and he was marching resolutely toward the chicken pins as he shoved the shell into the gun.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_00: And Stephen and I fell silent as we looked at him because we were struck by the awful look on his face.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_00: It was a look that we'd never seen before.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_00: It was a look of determination and dread and doom and death.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_00: His face was set in stone, and nothing was going to turn him away.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_00: And we fell back in amazement and fear.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_00: And years later, I've forgotten completely what the dog looked like.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_00: He got away.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_00: But I've never forgotten the look on Dad's face, that look of death.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_00: And seven days ago, the disciples saw that kind of a look on Jesus' face, their friend's face, and they were afraid, they were scared as Jesus strode up from the desert through the dust to certain doom.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_00: But then he stops.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_00: I take it he senses their fear and he turns and he motions for them to gather around and he explains to them what's going on because he knows they're scared.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_00: He says, Taking the twelve aside, he began to tell them the things that would happen to him.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_00: See, he said, we are going up to Jerusalem.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_00: The Son of Man will be, one, handed over or betrayed to the chief priests and the scribes.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_00: Two, they will condemn him to death.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_00: Three, they'll hand him over to the Gentiles.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_00: Four, they will mock him.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_00: Five, spit on him, six, flog him, seven, kill him.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_00: And then he will rise after three days.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_00: All the kinds of pain you can imagine are here.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_00: One, two, three, four, five, six, seven.
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_00: You want a heartbroken by a friend?
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_00: Betrayed to the chief priests.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_00: You want to be victimized by injustice, sentenced to death, despised and disowned by your own people, turned over to the Gentiles, insults, humiliation, physical abuse, death.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_00: It's all here.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_00: Jesus is marching directly toward this pain and this death.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_00: He's gathering all of this onto himself.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_00: And here's the thing, he had a detailed knowledge, clearly, of what was going to happen.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_00: So do you feel sorry for what happened to poor Jesus earlier today?
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_00: Get over it.
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_00: Do you feel like the Lord got trapped early this morning in the Garden of Gethsemane?
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_00: Forget it.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_00: Do you feel like Jesus got suckered onto the cross?
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_00: Get real.
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_00: For the journey to Jerusalem did not start this morning in Gethsemane or even seven days ago down by the Jordan River or even in Bethlehem.
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_00: The journey to the cross began long before, way back in the Garden of Eden, when Adam and Eve were spitting out their first grape seed, Jesus was already packing for Calvary because he knew what was going to happen, and he's going to die on purpose, no surprise, no ambush, no accident, which is why back there on the road, on the road, he's marching with that look in his eye, resolute and determined.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_00: And he's marching at the front of the pack.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_00: Why so determined to be in front?
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_00: Oh friend.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_00: It's because he knows he knows he's waiting at the top of the hill.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_00: He knows the demons of death are up there.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_00: He knows the devil himself is up there.
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_00: And if anyone else goes first, if you or I go first, we're goners forever.
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_00: If the disciples go first, they're dead meat.
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_00: If anyone else goes first to meet death and the devil and Hades before he meets them, they're lost forever.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_00: He must go first.
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_00: He must take them on.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_00: He must defeat them at the cross.
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_00: There's no other way.
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_00: There's an old country hymn I came across called Jesus Walks Ahead of Me.
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_00: And my favorite line in it is Satan cannot harm me, for Jesus walks ahead of me.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_00: Jim Bonham is a legitimate American hero, but the fact is he never even needed to be at the Alamo.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_00: Or much less die because he wasn't even a Texan in the first place.
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_00: He came from South Carolina, a young 29-year-old attorney, and he just moved to Texas three months before, but he loved freedom.
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_00: And when he saw, you know, the battle with the Mexican army, he decided he couldn't stop himself from joining the Texans in their fight for freedom.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_00: And so he volunteered.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_00: He volunteered to serve at a little mission called the Alamo, close to the Guadalupe River.
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_00: And there they were, 150 of them, and then here came Santa Ana and his troops filling the horizon.
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_00: And James Bonham broke through Santa Ana's line and rode east to Goliad to try to raise help.
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_00: Went in and talked to Colonel Fannon.
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_00: Begged him.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_00: He said, We've got 150.
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_00: Santa Ana's got 2,000 with more in the way.
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_00: We're all gonna die unless you help us.
• 11:33
  SPEAKER_00: And Fannon couldn't make any promises.
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_00: Said, I'll try.
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_00: Bonham knew what that meant.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_00: He went back out, swallowing his anger, jumped on his horse.
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_00: James Mitchner, who tells this, who tells the story, imagines the little boy stopping him at that at that point.
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_00: And the little boy says, Where are you going?
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_00: And Bonham says, I'm going back to the Alamo.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_00: The boy says, Are you gonna go back alone?
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_00: And Bonham says, I came alone.
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_00: And as the boy disappears, as Bonham disappears, the boy says to his father, Daddy, if things are so bad, if he's gonna die, why is he going back?
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_00: The father says, son, I doubt if he ever considered any other possibility.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_00: And Jesus knew there was no other possibility.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_00: And so he walked at the front, resolutely, with his face set, up to Jerusalem to battle the demons of death and hell, knowing that was the only way.
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_00: And he said, I'll walk before you.
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_00: And if we know what's what's good for us, we'll fall in line behind him.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm gonna give you a chance to fall in line in a way because Jesus asks us to remember his death by taking bread and taking cup.
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_00: And usually we pass it out, it's easy, there's a cracker and so forth, we'll do it differently.
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_00: We're gonna ask you to stand up whenever you want.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_00: There'll be music playing.
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_00: We've got tables around the auditorium.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_00: That's your whenever you're ready, just get up and come and take a piece of bread and drink the cup, and think of Jesus, who's out there walking ahead of you all the way to the cross.
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_00: Let me pray for us, Heavenly Father.
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_00: We thank you so much for sending a son, who though he knew what was what he was heading for, did not hesitate, but set his face like a flint and resolutely walked towards his death and towards the pain and walked ahead of us so he could deal with it, he could conquer it, and give us eternal life.
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_00: In Jesus' name.
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_00: Amen.