4/10 Good Friday Message – “Our Suffering Servant”
Today is Good Friday, the day that we commemorate the crucifixion of our Lord, Jesus, and His death at Calvary. Before reading our scripture lessons and message for the day let us pray together in one heart and mind…
Lord God, on this haunting holy day we come to the place of the skull, the place of the cross, the place of our salvation. In the face of such suffering, show us the face of our Savior. In the shadow of such evil, show us the light of Your grace; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
John 19:1-30
Isaiah 53:4-12
“Our Suffering Servant”
Today I would like for us to consider SIN. Not the pros and cons, not even the degree of sin. Yes, if pressed, I would have to say I believe some sins are worse than others. I would have to say that lesser sins are those whose consequences affect only the sinner. More serious sins are those that have consequences for not only ourselves, but also for others.
Now – let me say this – sin is sin. A sin by any other name is still sin. It’s crossing the line of God’s will for us. But that line is drawn at the edge of a cliff. To even lean forward is curtains. And the result of sin, any sin, is death.
Today I want us to remember the steps God has taken to eliminate our sins. It was because of sin, our sins, that the Son of God came to earth. One verse from the prophet Isaiah’s message sums it all up, 53:6, I like the Revised Standard Version: “All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned everyone to his own way; and the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity (or sins) of us all.”
I remember my pastor in college emphasizing this verse several years ago (we won’t mention how many). The verse begins with the word all, and ends with the word all. We have all sinned and Jesus Christ has taken on Himself the sins of us all. All means you and me. It also includes those at home with you now as well as your neighbor to your right and to your left. We all have sinned and need forgiveness. And Jesus paid the price for all our sins; yours, mine, and everyone else’s.
The official stand of the Church on sin is – “We’re against it!” We often kid one another about our short-comings, and say that it is a matter of human nature and\or circumstances: like it’s not really our fault. We try to blame others – hey, that sounds like what happened back in the Garden of Eden! “The woman gave it to me…” “The serpent gave it to me!”
We also tend to dismiss sin by making fun of it, but sin is a serious matter. The effect of sin is our eternal separation from God, or death.
Let’s see what the Old Testament has to say about sin, and a good place to begin is our Old Testament lesson, Isaiah 53. Without a doubt this is the greatest chapter on sin and salvation by grace in the Old Testament. It foreshadows the gospel message in all the essentials, offering free and unmerited salvation to unworthy sinners through the love of God.
Is it any wonder that early Christians used these suffering servant passages to describe the character and the suffering of Jesus?
You may remember the story of the Ethiopian eunuch found in Acts 8. The Ethiopian had been reading from the Old Testament and didn’t understand what he’d read. When Philip happened by, actually God sent him there, he asked the man what he was reading – do you remember what it was? It was this passage in Isaiah. The Ethiopian asked Philip, “About whom is the prophet speaking?” Philip used the passage to interpret the meaning of the life and death of Jesus; His exemplary life and the atoning death of Jesus.
It is a strange combination: suffering and good news. What is the good news about suffering? There is no intrinsic value to suffering merely for the sake of suffering. But, of course, we know that everyone in this world suffers: the nation of Israel, the prophets, Jesus, you, and I. We all suffer in one way or another. We must admit that everyone is acquainted with the sorrows of life in one way or another. However, life is more than one episode of pain and anguish after another.
Isaiah wrote this anthem of praise approximately 500 years before Jesus lived. It was written to the Jews who were in exile in Babylon. For Christians this, of all Old Testament passages, is the major prophecy predicting the saving life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. The early church saw Jesus as the suffering servant, despised and rejected by men, silent before His accusers, condemned unjustly to death, and buried in a tomb. The passage speaks also of the redeeming power of His suffering death, and indeed of His resurrection and exaltation at the right hand of God. Jesus died, was raised to new life, and ascended on high.
To understand the need for salvation and the grace offered to us we must understand sin, for what it is. Sin may be easily accepted as a part of the universal experience and excused on the grounds of extenuating circumstances, or of universal practice.
When Jesus’ life was threatened, as He was being arrested, Jesus responded in no uncertain terms, “Put away your sword… everyone who takes up the sword will die by the sword” (Matthew 26:52). These are the last words, the very last words, the disciples heard before they fled into the darkness: ‘Put away your swords.’
An article in an old issue of YANKEE magazine describes an interesting drama in nature. It seems that the author of the article had wandered out to his flower garden and noticed a bee on a flower. As he bent down to it, he discovered that the insect was dead and was rapidly being transformed into an empty shell.
Apparently, before the bee had flown into the flower, an ambush bug had hidden among the blossoms. When the bee landed, the ambush bug injected it with enzymes that both killed it and dissolved its insides.
The ambush bug was in the process of sucking out the liquefied insides of the dead bug. Soon it would be no more than a dried husk, an empty shell of what it formerly had been.
That, by the way, is not a bad picture of how sin works on an individual. A person approaches something that looks attractive and harmless at a distance. They may know better in their heart, but see little danger, “a little closer look is no harm.” However, venturing too close can be the beginning of the end. You can’t touch sin and not be affected by it.
How many of you have seen the Disney movie, “A Bug’s Life”? Do you remember the scene when two moths come close to a ‘bug light’? You know, the kind in back yards that zap pesky bugs. One of the moths says to the other, “It’s beautiful!” The other warns, “Don’t look at the light.” “But it’s so beautiful!” “Don’t look at the light!” ZAP!
Sin is like the bug light of life; it could also be called the ambush bug in life. It looks inviting, but it’s deadly. Once it has an opening, it begins to eat away at the inside of the person. Outwardly, things look the same, but inside, the peace and the joy of life are gone. The individual’s character is being turned into mush and drained off. We are not the person God intended us to be.
If sin is allowed to continue, it will slowly eat away the whole person, from the inside out. Where once there was a sensitive human being – full of life, there will now be only an empty shell. Outwardly the individual will look the same, but that’s a deception. Sin will have eaten away the very life of the person!
Do you know that Christianity is the only religion with a suffering God? All other religions aim at portraying their god in the most attractive light. Christianity is even more astonishing because it presents a God who suffers for us. Jesus took upon Himself the penalty for our sins, suffering He did not deserve, on a cross.
The suffering of the Son of God resulted in sinners being counted as righteous. It is a case of the penalty, the suffering, being paid or endured by another. It is not that sinners are righteous. Sinners are guilty, but for Jesus’ sake God reckons or counts us as righteous. It is a judicial pronouncement. Because Jesus suffered and died in our place, God has marked our balance sheet of life paid-in-full.
Divine intervention has done what we could not do for ourselves. It has removed our sins, and given us a source of hope and healing.
On this day, this sad day, this bloody day, we remember how Jesus paid for our sins on the cross.
So, first we must acknowledge that we are sinners, and cannot make ourselves right with God on our own, no matter how hard we try. Then, and only then, are we able to accept the grace offered through Jesus Christ.
Christ endured the pain and suffering for you! Of course, the challenge to each of us is to respond in faith to the awesomeness of God’s love, to cast off the sin that so easily besets us, and to give our lives to Christ Jesus as He gave His life for us.
Amen.
And so, we wait. Through the night, through the long, silent Saturday in the tomb. The battle is already won. Jesus has already declared His work finished – but we wait. We wait for the glimmer of dawn in the darkness. For the sliver of hope that lightens despair. We wait for the empty tomb. We wait for Christ to return.
Grace and Peace,
Rev. Christy Mitchell