Good Friday Service
Vern Peterman · Apr 18, 2014
Holidays
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://www.hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/4926424197929

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

So, you you Good evening. And it's actually a very, very good Friday. And as we gather here this evening, we'll be looking at the cross from the standpoint of three crosses. There were three people crucified that day. And so we'll be looking at that this evening as we gather together. And let's begin our time just with a word of prayer.

Lord, we thank you as we're gathering here today to remember this very, very good Friday. the day that you died for us. We thank you, Lord, that we have the privilege of gathering here together. We thank you for all that you accomplished for us there on the cross. We give you thanks, and we give you praise. In Jesus' name, amen. OK, let's stand. We'll sing Lamb of God, two verses.

Your only Son, no sin to hide, but you have sent Him from your side to walk upon this guilty sod and to be called the Lamb of God. Your gift of love they crucified, They laughed and scorned Him as He died. The humble King they named a fraud, And sacrificed the Lamb of God. O Lamb of God, sweet Lamb of God, I love the holy Lamb of God, You've washed me in His precious blood, My Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God. I was so lost, I should have died, But You have brought me to Your side, To be led by Your staff and rod, And to be called a lamb. of God. O Lamb of God, sweet Lamb of God, I love the holy Lamb of God. You've washed me in His precious blood, so I am now a Lamb of God. You may be seated. And Matt will read for us here, Luke 23, 24 through 37.

And Pilate pronounced, sentence that their demand be granted. And he released the man they were asking for who had been thrown into prison for insurrection and murder, but delivered Jesus to their will. When they led him away, they seized a man, Simon of Cyrene, coming in from the country, and placed on him the cross to carry behind Jesus. And following him was a large crowd of the people, and of women who were mourning and lamenting him.

But Jesus, turning to them, said, Daughters of Jerusalem, stop weeping for me, but weep for yourself and for your children. For behold, the days are coming when they will say, Blessed are the barren, and the wombs that had never borne, and the breasts that never nursed. Then they will begin to say to the mountains, follow us, and to the hills, cover us. For if they do these things when the tree is green, what would happen when it is dry?

Two others also, who were criminals, were being led away to be put to death with him. When they came to the place called the skull, There they crucified him, and the criminals, one on the right and the other on the left. But Jesus was saying, Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing. And they cast lots, dividing up garments among themselves. And the people stood by, looking on.

And even the rulers were sneering at him, saying, He saved others. Let him save himself, if this is the Christ of God. his chosen one. The soldiers also mocked him, coming up to him, offering him sour wine and saying, if you are the king of the Jews, save yourself.

When I survive The wondrous cross On which the Prince Of glory died My richest gain I count but loss And poor contempt On all my pride Forbid it's loss that I should boast save in the death of Christ my God feelings that charm me most I sacrifice them to his blood See from his heart, his hands, his feet, Sorrow and love flow mingle down. Did e'er such love and sorrow meet, Or thorns compose so rich a crown? Worthy whole realm of nature mine That were a present far too small Love so amazing, so divine Demands his soul, his life is all I'm a little shorter than most.

Well, I have the privilege of, tonight we're going to look at the three crosses on Calvary. So I have the wonderful privilege of presenting the Lord Jesus Christ, which I think you folks are the most familiar with, may not as familiar with the two other criminals.

So what's interesting is that we see, and it was read by the two readers, we see that there were two criminals, one on his right and one on his left, as depicted in this picture. They're called criminals in the Luke passage, which is the idea of evildoers or evil workers. But what's interesting in Matthew and Mark, they're actually called robbers, which kind of adds another little twist to it. Not a very positive twist. Besides being criminals, robbers is the idea of one who plunders by violence. So these were violent men.

But what's going to be very interesting is their response to our Savior. And that's what's going to be so wonderful. And both Mike and Vern have the privilege of doing that. So hang on. We're going to get to that in a little bit. But first, let's look at our wonderful Savior. First of all, He is holy and righteous. And that picture is all throughout scripture. He's a holy and righteous one. He's without sin. He's spotless. But what's amazing is that the so-called charges against him, there was not one charge that was valid. They all were false. They all were made up and pretend.

So I want to kind of cover that a little bit too. But first, there's several verses that talk about his holiness. And in Acts, in Acts chapter 3, we see that Peter, in one of his sermons there in Acts, says, The God of our fathers has glorified his servant Jesus, the one whom you, and he's pointing his finger, as it were, to the Jewish people that were there. He was speaking only to Jews. You delivered up and disowned in the presence of Pilate, when Pilate had decided to release him. You know, Pilate was ready to release the Lord Jesus. That was his plan. In fact, we're going to see shortly here, he said three times, he's not guilty. He's not guilty. He's not guilty.

And the crowd went crazy. They were bent upon crucifying Christ. So basically, Peter goes on to say, he says, but you Jews disown the holy and righteous one and ask for a murder to be granted to you. So basically, there's a first occurrence. He's called the holy and righteous one. Then we see down in Mark, if you look in Mark chapter one, you'll see that he's also called, and interestingly enough, by the unclean spirit in this passage. We're not giving a lot of detail, but he's an unclean spirit, and he knows who Christ is. Amazing. He says, I know who you are. You're the holy one of God.

And then Isaiah. Isaiah makes a very similar statement. He says, by his knowledge, the righteous one, my servant, will justify many so he will bear their iniquities. So we see at least three occurrences. There's more where he's called the holy and righteous one. He's called the holy one of God and the righteous one. And now let's look at the so-called trial. So what happens here is that Pilate's going to present a case for Jesus. He's convinced that Jesus is not guilty.

But he can't handle the crowds. And you see that today. You see, crowds, unfortunately, can rule. And that's what happened in this case. So Pilate, the Sanhedrin, the Jewish Sanhedrin, brings Christ to him. And they say, these are the charges. So here are the charges. Listen to this. See if these are good charges. He misleads our nation. That's one charge. He forbids us to pay taxes to Caesar. If you know that passage, you know that's totally ridiculous.

He says, grant to Caesar what is Caesar, what to God, what is God. And he says, he is the Christ, the King. And he did say that. That was the charges he brought to Pilate. So what was Pilate's response? So Pilate asks, he asks the Lord Jesus. He says, are you the King of the Jews? And Christ says, it is as you say. Just what you said is right. Then Pilate says to the chief priests in the crowd, I find no guilt in this man.

So that's the first of three times. The second time, it looks like Pilate was kind of forced into doing something to Christ. He takes him, he scourges him. He puts a robe on him, or he didn't, personally, the soldiers did this. He puts a robe on him. They put a crown of thorns on his head and they mock him. Hail King of the Jews. They slap him on the face. Then Pilate goes back out to the crowd again, to the priests and stuff.

He says, behold, I'm bringing him out to you shortly here. I find no guilt in this man. That didn't satisfy him. He does it a third time. He actually brings him out and he's wearing the crown and thorns. And he says, behold the man or behold this man. And Pilate says, so when the chief priest and the officers saw him, they cried out saying, crucify him, crucify him. And Pilate said to them, it's interesting, he says, take him yourselves and you crucify him.

Well, if you think about that, that was totally against the law. They were not able. The Jews were not the governing body. It's like you becoming the police force. They were not allowed to do that. Only Roman could do that. Rome could actually have the authority to do capital punishment. So, while it says, you crucify him, they wouldn't take any of that. So that was all for naught. So my point here is that we see he's a holy and righteous one. He's not guilty. By every court system that was available, he was not guilty. But here's the most marvelous thing.

But the plan, God's plan for all eternity, was that Christ was to die for the sins of the world. And Vern's going to be getting to this in a few months here, probably. Hebrews 13, 20. Now the God of peace, who brought up from the dead the great shepherd of the sheep, through the blood of the eternal covenant, even Jesus Christ our Lord.

You know, if you look through that, that's a wonderful passage. It talks about this thing called the eternal covenant, the eternity past. And we see this conference, this is mind boggling, between God the Father and God the Son. And they make an agreement, an agreement that's astounding. The world has not been created yet. Man is not on the scene. And they agree. In this passage, Christ is called the great shepherd of the sheep. Christ agrees to die for the sins of the world. And the Father agrees, the God of peace, he agrees to raise him up. And that's made before any of this world began. They already had it planned. It wasn't a surprise that man was going to sin. So that's wonderful. But there's another verse that always intrigues me. And it's not an easy verse, but I think hopefully I have some insight to shed here.

In 2 Corinthians 5.21, and this really speaks to what happened on the cross there.

He made him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf so that we might become the righteousness of God in him. Christ was, you know, it says Christ knew no sin. He never experienced sin. You know, we cannot personally think of a time when we didn't experience sin.

If we're honest with ourselves, we experienced sin. We feel guilty about it. We feel sorrow for it. We confess our sins as believers were supposed to do. But Christ never had any of those emotions. But what's amazing is the sin, and it's singular there, was placed on him. The sin or the source of sin, the sin nature, was placed on the Lord Jesus Christ there. That's just the engine of sin was placed on him for all men. It's just in addition to paying for the sins, plural, the very source of sin was placed on him.

And there was a wonderful reason for that, so that we might become the righteousness of God in him. And I like this quote by Miles Stanford. It says, Christ was made what we were, that we might become what he is. Let me say it one more time. Christ was made what we were. We were sinners, right? We had a sin nature that we might become what he is. So now we, with that wonderful picture in mind of a wonderful savior, who did everything to redeem us.

Now we're going to look at two men and the two different outcomes of these two men. Thank you. Oh, we have some more special music too. a Bye. Well, I have the task of talking about the other criminal. I think he's the guy on the left. And let's let's try to get the scene of what's going on here. And this is really a good rendition of it. We need to have a feel for what this this scenario is like. And to repeat a little bit, I want to talk about initially the attitude of everybody who's standing around at this point.

They crucified the Lord Jesus between two criminals and Roger talked about criminals and robbers, one on the right and one on the left. And the people stood by looking on. And even the rulers were sneering at him. These two guys right here. They crucified the two robbers with him on the right and the left in Mark 15. Those passing by were hurling abuses at him. Wagging their heads.

And saying, ha, he who is going to destroy the temple and rebuild it in three days, save yourself. Come down from that cross. In the same way, the chief priests also, along with the scribes, were mocking Him among themselves, saying, He saved others. He can't even save Himself. Let this Christ, who is the Savior, the King of Israel, now come down from that cross so that we may see and believe that chance. Those who crucified him, those who were crucified with him, they both, both of them were insulting him. In Matthew 27, 39, and those passing by hurling abuses at him and wagging their heads and repeating, you who said you would destroy the temple and build it up in three days, come down.

So what this points out is that everybody that's standing around, except for the few who believed in him, really are represented by this criminal. So I tagged him every man. He's every man. Everyone who was there, except that those who believed, had exactly the same attitude about who Jesus was. They had exactly the same opinion and they were engaged in exactly the same discrimination towards him.

Both criminals were insulting him. Passerbys were hurling abuses at him. The chief religious leaders, the priests, the scribes, the elders were mocking him. The rulers were sneering on him and the soldiers were mocking him. So and except for a couple of people there that believed in him, this was the prevailing attitude. of everyone that was there. Why did they have this attitude? Why did they all have this same attitude? And why were they engaged in this public display of abuse, all of them together?

Well, I took a look in Romans chapter 3, verse 10 through 18. And there are eight verses there with 14 of the most awful facts about the human race that you would ever want to read. So I thought we'd go through them. The first one is, is there's not a single one who is righteous before God?

No, not one. The second one is, is there is not a single one who understands divine things? Not a single one. There is none who seek after God, none of them. They have all abandoned the way of God. So the result is that they have all become unprofitable or they are useless. There's not a single one that does good, not so much as one.

Their throat is an open grave. By their tongues they keep deceiving. The venom of snakes is under their lips. Their mouth is full of cursing and bitterness. Their feet are swift to shed blood. Destruction and misery are in their paths. And the way of peace they have not known. And here's the real kicker. There is no fear of God in their eyes. You see any of those people fearing him?

If they did, they wouldn't be doing what they were doing. So it's interesting that every human being starts out this way. All of us are like this. Those of us who are believers have a sin nature, and this is what it's like. Those of you who aren't believers, this is really who you are.

There's no human being in himself who has ever been righteous. Humanity by nature understands nothing of the things of God. We must conceive of a race of creatures turned out of God's way as surely as Satan and his angels and his demons are. The whole race of men is by nature in that awful case. The human race is useless, and worse than that, they're useless to God. Corruption rather than holiness is what they practice. Selfishness rather than goodness and cruelty rather than kindness is the way of mankind. Death, decay, moral stance, and that not hidden, but wide open.

Thus a holy God describes the throat of every one of us by nature. We must remember we are here seeing man through God's all holy eyes. So these 14 indictments are true of every man by nature, and they are God's indictments against the human race, and they are the thing that put Christ up on that cross.

The people at the crucifixion were all of the same nature, regardless of whether they had social standing, whether they had political clout, what culture they were from, whether they were religious or not, or what their national association was. Every single one of them was from the same indictment. And the one that represents them all is the unbelieving criminal. All men fit under this category. If we don't believe who the person is on the cross in the middle and what he's doing, I must say, as an unbeliever, we fit under the heading of every man.

How deep the Father's love for us, how vast beyond all measure, that He should give His only Son to make us righteous treasure. The Father turns his face away As moons which mar the shores and run Bring many sons to glory Behold the men upon a cross It was my sin that held him there Until it was accomplished His dying breath has brought me life I know that it is finished I will not boast in anything, no gifts, no powers, no wisdom, but I will boast in Jesus Christ, His death and resurrection. I cannot give an answer Yet this I know with all my heart These wounds have made my answer Behold a man upon a cross, my sin upon his shoulders. Ashamed I hear my mocking voice, call out among the scoffers, it was my sin that held him there. Until it was accomplished His dying breath has brought me life I know that it is finished If We just look at this picture here of the three crosses.

Anybody who was coming by and looking would have said, well, there's three men who have met the same fate. They've all done something wrong and they met the same fate. They're going to be dead by the end of the day. And that's all you would have thought. But in fact, while on the surface, it looks like three men met the same fate, The reality is three very different things ended up happening with each of those men on the cross.

At first, both criminals, robbers, as Roger pointed out, both of them began insulting. It says in Mark 15, 32, those who were crucified with him were also insulting him, railing, cursing, the whole thing. At first, they both took the same stance. But then, Luke 23 verse 39 says, one of the criminals who were hanged there were hurling abuse at him saying, are you not the Christ?

Save yourself and us. And then in verse 40, a very interesting turn of events, a turn of heart as a matter of fact. But the other answered and rebuked him and said, Do you not even fear God since you are under the same sentence of condemnation? And we indeed are suffering justly for we are receiving what we deserve for our deeds.

But this man has done nothing wrong. We don't know why he concluded that this man, Jesus, has done nothing wrong. It may be that he was there standing by as Pilate questioned Jesus. It may be that he heard Pilate say, I find nothing wrong with this man, more than once. But somehow he concluded that Jesus had done nothing wrong. But the other thing that comes out here He rebukes the other one.

Do you not even fear God? There may even have been a thought, you're about to go meet Him. You're about to go meet Him. This isn't a good time for you to do this, right? You're about to go meet Him. And there's something else. He may even have recognized, wait a minute, that is God you're insulting. That is God you're insulting. But this thief, this robber, came to a place, verse 42, he says, and he was saying, Jesus, remember me when you come in your kingdom. Now, interesting, it doesn't just say, and he said, but it actually puts it, and he was saying. So he may have been saying that or something like it repeatedly. That or something like it repeatedly. An open recognition. Interesting in a whole crowd full of insults. This man may have been repeatedly saying the opposite.

Jesus, remember me when you come in your kingdom. But Jesus' response, He says, you don't have to wait that long. Okay? You don't have to wait that long. Because here's what He said in verse 43, Truly I say to you, today you shall be with Me, in paradise today. You don't have to wait until then. You believed, and so today you'll be with me in paradise.

Now, Jesus could easily have been rather preoccupied. I mean, He could have said, you know, I'm sort of a little preoccupied here, a little busy. But instead, He took the time to personally personally respond to this guy. And more than what this man said, Jesus knew his heart. Jesus knew his heart. And Jesus could have told him something like, before this day is out, before this day is out, I will have paid for your sins. Because that's exactly what he did.

Jesus, remember me when you come in your kingdom. Truly, I say to you, today you shall be with me in paradise. Now, that word paradise is a Persian word, actually, spelled out in Greek, but it's a Persian word. It means pleasure garden. And interestingly enough, this is the first time it shows up in the Bible. There are two more times, however, where the word shows up. The apostle Paul, talks in 2nd Corinthians chapter 12 verse 4 he talks about having been caught up into paradise himself and Paul says he heard there inexpressible words which a man is not permitted to speak but Paul himself was caught up to this paradise the same one that Jesus had told the thief next to him today you'll be with me in this paradise Well, we have something written to us about this paradise.

The church at Ephesus, Revelation 2.7, the church at Ephesus is given these words from Christ. He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. To him who overcomes, I will grant to eat of the tree of life which is in the paradise of God.

So Jesus told this thief, because he believed, that he would be in paradise with him that day. You and I will be in paradise as well. And we will get to meet that thief who believed. We don't know his name, but you will. We'll get to meet that thief who believed. The one who says, Jesus, remember me when you come in your kingdom. Oh, and you'll get to meet the Lord face to face too.

Take my body, broken for you I'll hurt freely, if you will choose Take my suffering, if you will choose Make my body broken for You Offer freely if You will choose Make my suffering And in the time you left this room All of my love, if you will trust Break my suffering, pour out more sins Come believe in me, take forgiveness work on the cross of His death.

We recognize that without that death, we would really be stuck back under indictment like we talked about. But because He did die and He satisfied you, we're free. We're free to behold His glory, to grow in the knowledge and grace of Him, and to serve Him, Father. We thank you and we pray in His precious name.

Amen. He took bread and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, this is my body, which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me. And Roger, could we have you give thanks for that? Dear Heavenly Father, we just thank you, Lord. We thank you for the sacrifice of your blood on the cross, Lord. We thank you that it was sufficient to cover the sins of the world. We thank you that it was spotless, undefiled. And we praise you that that was a sufficient sacrifice that pleased the Father.

We ask it in his name. Amen. In the same way, he took the cup also after supper, saying, This cup is the new covenant in my blood. 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.

Let's stand. O praise Him, O praise Him, O praise Him, O praise Him, O praise Him, O praise Him, O praise Him, O praise Him, O praise Him, O praise Him, And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. Jesus, our Redeemer, give us all your peace, and set us not astray. When you are gone and leave us so sudden The feeling of stillness takes over your tongue When I take a little break I can see it's fading Let us do the work that you did before my eyes. I did work for God, and He blessed my soul. He gave me the spirit of the Lord. Now I get to pray. Before I pray, afterwards, there's some refreshments out in the vestibule out there, so stop by and help yourself.

I don't know if you're like me, but I'm overwhelmed with what the Lord Jesus did. And, you know, you can call us up and ask him, ask us if it was OK. He just did it. because he wanted to, because he loved us. And if you're one of those people sitting out there tonight that does not know the Lord Jesus, all he asks you to do is believe in what you see, that he died for your sins.

He was buried and rose again. And if you do, You get to go to paradise. Pretty cool. And you get to go now. You don't have to wait. So let's bow our heads. Father, how thankful we are. for the work of your son on the cross to pay the penalty for our sins and to deal with us as sinners so that we would be the righteousness of God in him. We're totally acceptable to you. You desire to have us in your presence. You can't wait to shower your love and your personhood on us. And we thank you. We thank you so much today. And we pray in your son's precious name. Amen. OK, help yourself. you.