GOOD FRIDAY - IT IS FINISHED

GOOD FRIDAY 2019 19^th April

Jesus said, “It is finished!” 

Today is a day most holy.  In 1992 I was in hospital on Good Friday after giving birth to daughter number two, Brittany, and I noticed a strange stillness.   This was back in the days when the Mater was in the middle of town where those crazy parrots squawk so loudly, but even they were silent on that day.  I’ve noticed it since then…. It is as if there is a sacred stillness in all creation, remembering and acknowledging the sacrifice and the work that Jesus accomplished on the cross on the day we have come to know as Good Friday.

Even non-Christian historians have written about this person, Jesus, who we know as the son of God.  They wrote that he performed wonders and that he was crucified.  Because of him our system of counting the years came to be marked by the year of his birth…. Any sensible person must ask why the life and death of Jesus was so significant.

While many may tell you that Australia is no longer a Christian nation, and they may even try to say that all this Christianity is a myth, yet today is a holiday – or Holy day…. All over Australia.  Venues are shut.  On Sunday some of them will be open.  Today is the day MOST HOLY.  But why?

Today we celebrate that day when Jesus cried out, “It is finished”.  But what did he mean by that?

It all began back in the book of Genesis at the beginning of time when sin entered the world and mankind were cast out from God’s presence. 

These days it isn’t considered correct to talk about sin.  And people become quite defensive and uncomfortable if we suggest that they might sometimes sin, yet sin is simply anything that falls short of perfection, and in fact the Bible tells us that anything that is not of faith is sin…. Yet we all have times where we lack faith.  In Archery anything other than a bullseye is considered sin.  In fact, we can-not not sin…. It has become part of our DNA.

Unfortunately, sin separates us from God.  Now that is the bad news…. But it is a fact. 

God created us to be in relationship with him and he planned a way to bring us back into relationship with him.  The Bible tells us that justice must be served and there is a price for sin, and the price was death.  And this is not good news!

Way back in ancient times of superstitions and fearful pagan gods, there was a system that seemed to appease the ancient gods… it was a system of sacrifice.  Abraham lived in this ancient context and understood things in this way and so when God tested Abraham and asked him to sacrifice his son, Isaac, the concept was not completely foreign to Abraham, however it was odd in the fact that our God never required such sacrifice.  Yet Abraham obeys.  At this point in the story Abraham knows the promise of God to make him a father of nations, and the miraculous birth of Isaac, born to him in his old age and to his barren 90 year old wife, meant that Abraham figured that somehow God would save this child…. Or raise him from the dead, and by now, Abraham believed that God could certainly do it.

So in obedience, but no doubt with trepidation, Abraham sets out.  Just like Jesus carried his cross, we note that the wood for the sacrifice was laid on Isaac, who carried it to the place of sacrifice.  Scripture is so amazing that there are layers of meaning and prophetic messages about Jesus written hundreds of years before his birth.  Suddenly God calls out to stop Abraham and a lamb appears…. God did provide the lamb.  We know that Jesus is the Lamb of God, who is substituted for our death, (our debt for sin).  Here, before the Israelite nation is even born, is yet another message about Jesus and the purpose he would achieve.

The lamb was sacrificed in place of Isaac and the blessing was given, which proclaimed the people coming from Isaac as God’s chosen people…. Just like Jesus who died in our place enables us to be God’s chosen people.

Later in Egypt, in the history of Isaac’s people, the Israelites, God would command that a lamb be sacrificed and the blood painted on the door ways, while the Angel of death passed through the land of Egypt where the Israelites were living as slaves.  The Angel would pass over the houses with the blood of the lamb, and the firstborn of the family was saved by the blood of the lamb. 

A little latter with the giving of the law, the community would lay hands on a goat and confess the sins of the community…. This is where we get the term, scape goat, as the sins were considered transferred and the community was forgiven.

All through history God showed his loved and forged ways so that his people could be in relationship with him…. And yet they were not to take him for granted.  Make no mistake, God is holy, powerful and awesome.  His temple contained areas that were segregated such that one area was only for the high priest and even that was only under very strict guidelines involving animal sacrifice and with a rope attached in case the power of God overwhelmed them and they died, they could then be pulled out.  Sounds frightening… and though it was a way for the people to be relationship with God, still not the greatest of news.

However, our reading from Hebrews tells us that Christ offered one sacrifice for sins, an offering that is effective forever.  This is what he accomplished on Good Friday.  And he said, ……“It is finished.”

Another scripture written hundreds of years before Christ, from Isaiah chapter 53, tells us that Christ bore our sins.  His punishment made us whole

53:6 All we like sheep have gone astray; we have all turned to our own way, and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all. 

It also says… The righteous one, my servant, shall make many righteous, and he shall bear their iniquities….. he bore the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors.”  This prophetically tells us about Jesus and what he was accomplishing for us.

This is beyond what we can comprehend, but Jesus actually was baptized into all our sin… past, present and future and paid the price for us all.  Although our physical DNA has a natural inclination to sin, when we are baptized into Christ, it is as though we receive the Spiritual DNA of Christ, who has already paid the price for sin and is perfect.

Hebrews tells us that with one sacrifice, he has made perfect forever those who are being made holy.   What this actually means is that we now have the privilege that was once only for select few who’d prepared themselves through sacrifice and rituals.  We can now enter the holy of holies… the place where God is.   In one very natural sense we are still being made holy, but in another, we are already perfect as we only come to God through the sacrifice of Jesus, and when clothed in Christ, we are acceptable to God.

C. S. Lewis wrote the Chronicles of Narnia, fictitious children’s stories, but full of Christian imagery.  In The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, there is a scene where the Lion lies dead on the stone table, then as the dawn breaks there is a loud crack as the stone table breaks in two and the lion is resurrected.  He explains that there is a deep magic in Narnia that requires a traitor’s life to be forfeited to the white witch.  But then he explains that there is an even deeper magic that when a willing victim who had committed no treachery was killed in a traitor's stead, the Table would crack and Death itself would start working backwards.

At the beginning of time God had a plan to save us in this way as the letter from 1 Peter 1:18-20 tells us, “For you know that it was not with perishable things such as silver or gold that you were redeemed from the empty way of life handed down to you from your ancestors, but with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect.  He was chosen before the creation of the world, but was revealed in these last times for your sake.”

Finally it was accomplished.  So many of the things that happened in Jesus journey to crucifixion were written about in scripture hundreds of years before hand.  From the accounts in the Gospels we know that Jesus knew the sacrifice he willingly made, but that doesn’t mean it was easy.

Have you ever been accused of things you haven’t done?  It doesn’t feel good.  Do you remember a time when someone sat down with a needle to work a prickle out of your finger?  That wasn’t fun either.  Sometimes the knowledge of the pain to come makes it even harder to bear.  Jesus knew of the physical pain that was ahead and he was scared.  He knew that he was to be mocked for claiming to be God’s son, as if he was a fraud, but he knew that he was truly the son of God. 

All these things are horrible, but we can imagine what it may have felt like.  What we can’t imagine is what it was like to carry the sin of the world to the cross.  We know that Jesus was scared.  Yet willingly, Jesus continued to fulfil his destiny.  Why? Why would he bother?   Has he seen us, for whom he died?  John Newton was a ruthless and cruel slave trader.  When he came to understand the message of the Gospel he wrote;  “Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me.”  For all of us, even that person that you find completely ruthless and horrid, Jesus died.  Jesus paid the debt of sin for all.  And this sacrifice was done once and for all.  It is now finished.

A song that I teach my singing students is called Mercy walked in.  “I stood in the courtroom. The Judge turned my way, “it looks like you’re guilty, now what do you say.” I answered, “your honour, I have no defence” but that’s when mercy walked in.”  Imagine being found guilty of a crime and then discovering that the jail term has already been served by someone else.  The judge bangs the gavel and says, “dismissed… you are free…”

There are times when we think we are not acceptable to God.  There are times when we think we need to work at something to become acceptable to God.  Nothing but the truth is needed…. And that truth is that the debt has been paid. 

Do you recall the words of Isaiah which, when Jesus read them, said “today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing”?  Those words which Jesus prophetically proclaimed were: “The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor.  He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour.”

GOOD NEWS !  Finally!  We know the bad news about how we all sin and sin separates us from God, and now we know that the Good News and reason that this is Good Friday is because Jesus paid that debt for us and we are free.

I once heard an international Bible speaker say, “Christ didn’t come to die for your sins”.  And I thought he was speaking heresy.  Surely that is what Good Friday is truly about, Christ achieved his destiny by dying for the sins of the world…. But the speaker went on to explain something which I’ve come to see as vitally important…. Christ’s objective was to bring us LIFE.  However, to bring us life, our debt for sin needed to be paid.  God showers us with love and mercy and grace beyond our comprehension, and we can rejoice in the freedom and live an abundant life that starts now and goes into eternity.  But the Life that God brings us was not possible without the cross.

Good Friday is a MOST holy and important day, but we are NOT meant to stay here focusing on our sin.  As Jesus declared on the cross; “It is finished”.  Even sin in our future, is already paid for… nothing can separate us from the love of God…nothing….

This week I found an old letter from someone who said some very hurtful things to me.  All over again I felt like maybe I’m actually a horrible person and the hurt was as fresh as when I first received the letter.  I believe it was a timely find to show me that this is not how God see me and I need to live life in the reality of God and the life he gives me…  not someone’s hurtful perception. 

This is also an example of how our un-forgiveness of our brothers and sisters in Christ robs us and others of the life that Jesus paid so dearly to give us.

Do we comprehend the grace of God?  Psalm 103:10 “He does not treat us as our sins deserve or repay us according to our iniquities.”  Have you ever felt that things weren’t working out for you and you figured that maybe it was God punishing you… ?    I do this all the time but it is wrong! God does not do this- the cross took that away.  Jesus took that punishment.   

The cross was vital, and the powers and principalities operating meant it to be death and destruction.   But that death was only part one of the story.  Our debts are all paid.  We are loved and we are free.  Resurrection is coming….

 If we do not accept the gift of freedom and actually live the life that Jesus came to bring us, then Jesus’ sacrifice was in vain.  Let us this day, determine to step into that way of abundant God given life.  Let us determine to also set free the captives who have not understood the grace of God…. Let go and forgive them, just as Christ has forgiven us… set them free and live free and rejoicing in the knowledge of the abundant love of God.   He loves you so much and says, YOU are WORTH DYING for!