The Gospel of Luke 23:13-32 To the cross He goes

Good morning. We're going to be venturing here into Luke 23, 18 through 32. I first want to take just a minute, however, to kind of update on our missionaries. Here are the missionaries that Holly Hills supports regularly. And just so you know, you may have noticed that Ruth did not take off as expected for months and months over in Grand Junction, but instead will remain here. Apparently after going over there, it was discovered, oh, we thought something different. So anyway, she's back with us. And let's see, I talked to her or communicated with us on just a little less than a week ago.

But one of the things to update you on is right near the giving slot, the financial reports are available for you to take a look at. We list all of our missionaries, what we ordinarily give them from the church, and then people give additional funds through the church in support, and so that's what this is reporting. You may be concerned that there's nothing for Wabutwa, Hassan. He is given funds quarterly, so it won't show up for every month, but it will show up every quarter. So at any rate, feel free to take a look at that and to look at the support levels and to consider that prayerfully. And if you have any questions about that, feel free to ask.

Now, heading into this passage here in Luke 18-32, just to kind of recount, following the Jewish trials that went through the night, so no sleep for anybody that night, the leaders of the Jews, those of the Sanhedrin as we've been calling them also, along with a well-instructed mob, they head off, they take Jesus over to Pontius Pilate's palace.

Early on Friday morning, and as we say, the evidence has been increasingly pointing towards that date is April 3rd, 33 AD. Two or three Sundays ago, we went over kind of a summary statement of here's some of the pieces of evidence that are pointing towards that April 3rd, 33 AD. And there are evidence from different sources in different directions converging on that date. And you have this map. on page one of your handout, and we've been kind of tracking that as we go along.

The upper room where things started, essentially just less than 12 hours before, is over in the southeast portion of the Old City of Jerusalem. And then from there we went to Gethsemane, which is at the foot of the Mount of Olives, across the Kidron Valley from the Temple Mount there.

And then we went to the palatial mansion, which appears to have been Anna's house. It's a pretty large structure, about 10,000 plus square feet. It is the largest private mansion ever excavated in Israel. And that appears to be the place where Jesus was tried that night.

Then we have the place where Pilate had his quarters temporarily, because he would come over from Caesarea on the coast. And that's what was called Herod's Palace. Herod the Not-So-Great was the one who had that constructed. And then Pilate, when he was given the place of prefect, was brought there. So then we had Pilate getting his turn with Jesus, questioned Jesus about being king of the Jews. He found nothing that would deserve the death penalty, crucifixion. And so that was his finding. He was ready to just call it right there. Then he sent them all packing. He said, take off, go over to Herod Antipas' place. And so he went there.

This is a picture of a model of the palace, Herod's Palace, where Pilate would have been stationed. And it's the more distant portion of it that was a palace. This closer portion, the southern portion of that, was made into military barracks. And so the officers would stay in those quarters. And this is the Tower of David complex in west central Old City of Jerusalem. And it's underneath that that the remains of Herod's palace are found. And what you see is something like 40 feet below the surface is where that is now.

And one of the reasons for showing you this is that you will encounter people or may encounter people who will tell you, oh, that's just a bunch of myths and stories and legends and all that. And some of the things that we. you know, show here said, no, it's not a myth and a story. As a matter of fact, I'm going to show you some things later on that I think you may even find stunning in terms of evidence for the historical reality of these events.

So anyway, we'll be looking at that as we go along. Then Pilate sent them packing over to Herod's, Herod Antipas' place, which is now called the Hasmonean Palace. And a model of it, how it looked, looks about like this. And that's pretty much true to form. Both places are described by Josephus, so we have some description of them to work from.

Then Herod Antipas sent Jesus back to Pilate with a basic message of he's not guilty of anything deserving the death penalty. So Pilate proposed to just punish Jesus. In other words, essentially give him a light beating and let him off with a warning, right? And he was hoping that that would satisfy the Jews and just let him go.

Of course, that's not exactly what the Jews had in mind. So at any rate, so from the Hasmonean palace back to Herod's place. So Pilate was hoping that letting Jesus go would fulfill their custom of letting one of the prisoners go at the Passover time. Strange custom. But at any rate, so releasing a captive, he was hoping that that would fulfill that and the Jews would be satisfied and you guys would be happy with that. I'll let Jesus go, right? But that wasn't the answer that the Jews were looking for. And they couldn't pull off this Jedi mind trick, that's not the answer we're looking for, right? And so instead, they had to do this riot thing and start demanding and screaming and hollering and yelling. So, here's the way Luke 23, 18 and 19 starts out.

But they cried out all together saying, away with this man and release for us Barabbas. And he was the one who had been thrown into prison for an insurrection made in the city and for murder. And you also get from another one of the Gospels also robbery on top of that. This guy is one bad dude. Now, one of the things that's really clear is this thing is manipulated. Do crowds all of a sudden yell out, crucify this man and then start naming one guy?

No. This has all been orchestrated and scripted, right? So they've got this, they've got, you know, here's what you're supposed to do. And very likely with this crowd consists of a lot of the households of these, the high priests and all the, the others, and just get them all together. And they're all told, look, you, you holler this and you ask for this guy to be released. Right. And so they get it all scripted and just say this and just say that. Right. And you guys can say it all together. Okay. Now let's practice. Right. So crucify Jesus, the innocent man, right?

But release Barabbas that everyone knows to call out that guy's name, whom we've never heard of before, right? And there's no newspapers and TV shows and radios to listen to to get that scripted. So they have to practice that beforehand. So here's Barabbas would put in prison for insurrection, murder and robbery. As a matter of fact, he may have gone to the cross that day had it not been for this event. They want to let him out, but not this fellow Jesus who healed the high priest's servants here and raised Lazarus just less than a week ago.

Right? That's really strange. But this is all because it's scripted. Ah! Now, there's something else that comes very interesting in here, and that is a note from Pontius Pilate's wife is included in Matthew's account, which we'll add here. And it appears to be at about this point that that note got slipped to him. And so one artist put it together.

Here's Jesus, and here's Pilate, and here's Pilate's wife walking away. You know, and basically she said this, Matthew 27, 19, while he was sitting on the judgment seat, this is Pilate, His wife sent him a message saying, have nothing to do with that righteous man, for last night I suffered greatly in a dream because of him. So this is the note that she passed along to him. You may hear about books and stories and whatnot about Pilate's wife, and then they give her a name, which we don't have, and they even tell stories that are, in fact, legendary and apocryphal, but they're not based on historical reality. The Eastern Orthodox Church and the Ethiopian Orthodox Church have made her a saint and a martyr and a widow. So anyway, they've done all sorts of things. There's no factual basis for any of that.

So if you hear that, not so much. Okay, so here's Luke 23, 20 and 21. Pilate, wanting to release Jesus, addressed them again, but they kept on calling out, saying, Crucify! Crucify Him! Right? Now, so they're hollering out. This has them behind some kind of a grid. That may or may not have been the case.

The four Gospels, however, are consistent on this point. All four Gospels have the crowd yelling out, crucify him, crucify him again, again. All four record that they're screaming for the release of Barabbas. Screaming for release, so that all four Gospels are consistent on that point.

Pilate was strongly motivated to release Jesus and he kept going that direction, and probably his wife's note even pressed that further, had nothing to do with this man, and here he's going to end up with a crucifixion sentence. A quirk of Roman law, even though he found no guilt in Jesus, a quirk of Roman law is going to allow him to give Jesus a sentence of crucifixion. Isn't that weird? We'll talk about that in a minute. He's going to yield to the crowd's loud and persistent call for crucifixion, even though he knows Jesus is not guilty. But here's one of the other surprises.

Jesus just goes along with the whole thing. Yeah, Jesus goes along with the whole thing. Jesus Christ, who is the Messiah, the Son of God, the King of Israel, the Lion of Judah, the Prophet foretold by Moses. The Prince of Peace, the Creator of the entire universe, says nothing. Why? Well, He said nothing because of the Eternal Covenant, because He was and is the Lamb. He will be the Lamb forever on into eternity.

He is our Passover. He is the substitute. He died in our place. He died instead of me. He is the beginning. This is the beginning of our identification with Him forever. It's the start of who we will always be, having been crucified with Him. Luke 23, 22, and he said to them the third time, Why?

What evil has this man done? I found in him no guilt demanding death. Therefore, I will punish him and release him. So, Pilate does try. So, Dr. Luke says that this is the third time. He tried hard. I mean, you've got to give him credit for that, right? Pilate asked why they keep calling him for crucifixion when he hasn't done anything.

There is nothing worthy of death in this guy. I know he's a nuisance, but that's about it. So Pilate says he will punish him as a warning, give him a light beating. You got these guys all upset. Don't do that again, right? not to get these people stirred up, and then he's going to, after the light beating, just release him. Let him go. He's not guilty of a capital offense. Pilate knows it.

Pilate also would, if he could, release Jesus because of the custom that they release some captive at Passover time. Weird custom. Pilate and Herod Antipas had reached the same conclusion. They found nothing in Jesus' words or actions or inactions or anything that fit with a sentence of crucifixion. And by the way, that's a really bad sentence. Pilate's wife had even called Jesus a righteous man. And Pilate agreed. For our sakes, however, we don't need a Roman governor to say you're righteous, right?

For our sakes, Jesus had to be fully and completely righteous before God so as to qualify to be God's Lamb, the one who died for you and for me, who takes our sins upon himself. In John chapter 1, John the Baptist says, Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. That takes away does not mean he just makes the sins go away. It means He takes the sins off of us to place them on Himself. He died for you and for me intentionally. Behold, the Lamb of God takes off of us our sins, places them upon Himself for the whole world, everybody, so that anyone who believes that Christ died for their sins was buried and rose again, is saved. And it's that simple. Once believing that, God can declare us righteous. God can declare us righteous. So yeah, a good question. What evil has this man done? Nothing. And that's the only thing that would qualify him. To take our sins upon himself.

Here's Luke 23, 23 and 24, but they were insistent with loud voices asking that he be crucified and their voices began to prevail. Louder and louder and louder. Pilate pronounced sentence that their demand be granted. Here's the account in Matthew 27 which adds to this, verses 19 through 26, when Pilate saw that he was accomplishing nothing but rather that a riot was starting He took water and washed his hands in front of the crowd, saying, I am innocent of this man's blood. See to that yourselves. And all the people said his blood shall be on us and our children. And then he released Barabbas for them.

But after having Jesus scourged, he handed him over to be crucified by a quirk of Roman law. The Roman governors or prefects or whatever the specific title was, they were allowed to kind of take the temperature of the crowd and use that as a basis for judgment. We have record that a number of Roman governors did that at various times. And so it wasn't on the basis of the facts, but it was on the basis of these people, you know, think that he needs to be crucified, so I guess he'll be crucified.

But he himself wouldn't take responsibility for it. So then he had Jesus scourged, and so this was actually, instead of the light beating, this was the heavy beating. This scourging was so heavy that some of the criminals who were given this beating didn't live through it. It was that severe. And it would explain why Jesus, as he's going out, we'll see that in a minute, he collapses. And that's why they bring Simon of Cyrene into the picture.

So the crowd, knowing what they had been instructed to do, because this is orchestrated, this is scripted, right? And also because of this quirk of Roman law, knew that if they persisted loudly enough, calling for Christ's crucifixion, they would get their way. What's more? So this quirk of Roman law, the Roman officials could just kind of test the sentiment. Oh, you guys, I definitely see that you want him crucified. Well, OK. And that's what you get, right? Roman and public officials had an obligation to prevent riots and public disorder. And so by crucifying Jesus, we could keep this thing from getting too bad, because one of the other Gospels says it is turning into a riot, right?

Here's out of Matthew. So Luke 23, 25, and he released the man they were asking for who had been thrown into prison for insurrection and murder, this is Barabbas, but he delivered Jesus to their will. All right, you guys will get Barabbas out. He's out. Jesus, he'll be crucified.

I give the order, but it's you guys, it's what you want, not what I want. So this is an amazing time. It is, from a human standpoint and an earthly level, a horrible injustice. A man who truly deserves to be crucified gets let loose. And a man who did nothing to deserve crucifixion gets crucified instead. Now that, from a human standpoint, that was just horrid. Aside from which, you have this near-death penalty scourging first. to the point where some did die from the scourging that was so severe. They didn't even go to the cross. This was a horrible injustice on one level. But there's a very important point for us to take a look at here.

In order for God to extend mercy and grace to us, He had to be absolutely exacting on the sins that Christ bore. He couldn't say, you know, you just have to bear most of the people's sins, or some of them, or ten percent, a sampling. Every single sin of all time, even the ones we're not even aware of, or don't even think it's a sin, every single sin has to be dealt with.

No exceptions. God has to be absolutely demanding and exacting. Christ must bear every single one, no exceptions. And He must bear the full wrath of the Father as He bears that. So we have this huge contrast, terrible injustice that Jesus bore our sins. but also that the Father had to be exacting, demanding every single sin and that Christ bear the full wrath of the Father against those sins. Amazing, huh? No mercy and no grace for Christ in order that we be shown mercy and grace. So let's talk about this word will here.

Pilate delivered Jesus over to the will of the leaders of the Jews. That's what they willed. That's what they wanted. They and the scripted crowd of co-conspirators, the ones who cooperated with it. Jesus was obedient to the father, even to death, giving his own will over to the will of his heavenly father. Not my will, but thine, right? Now, why would Jesus do that? Well, we read in Revelation 22, 17, some of the last verses in the Bible. Jesus did this because, as it says there in Revelation 22, 17, the spirit and the bride say, come.

And let the one who hears say, come. And let the one who is thirsty, come. Let the one who wishes, that is, who wills, take the water of life without cost. He gave over His will to the fathers, so that whosoever will may come. Here's Luke 23, 26, And they led him away. They seized a man, Simon of Cyrene, coming in from the country, and placed him on the cross to carry behind Jesus.

So, here's Mark 15.21 that adds an additional element to this.

Let's look at Mark 15.21. Now, let's see why I bring that up. First of all, what they would typically do, is they would carry the cross piece out to the place of crucifixion. That's called in the Latin, the patibulum.

So they'd carry the cross piece, but even that, which is very heavy, was more than Jesus could bear. He collapsed under it. Why? Well, he hadn't slept all night, he hadn't eaten, and he'd gotten so severe a beating that it just beat all the strength out of him, and so he collapsed. And so this patibulum, which would typically be tied to his arms, they probably took their swords out and chopped it off and put it on the shoulders of Simon of Cyrene. So the typical lowest level Roman soldier was not very well paid. They were paid a denarius a day, which is about the same as a farm laborer. Not terribly well paid until you got to be up to the centurion level. But they did have certain privileges that others did not have. Among those legal privileges was to force someone else into labor. We see that actually elsewhere in Scripture.

Jesus talks about, for example, someone forces you to carry their load, go with him a second mile, go the extra mile, as it's sometimes said. That is an example of the kinds of things that the soldiers were allowed to do. They would pick someone, say, hey, you, you carry my stuff for a mile, right? And that's when Jesus says, carry his stuff for another mile. Go the second. And so it's those sets of rules that would allow them to have Simon of Cyrene be forced to carry this cross piece, even though he has nothing to do with it. He just happened to be passing by, and they catch him, right?

Now, you might say, well, where's Cyrene? Here's Jerusalem off to the east part of the Roman Empire. The area that's in green there is what was, during early New Testament times, was the Roman Empire, and then the Roman Empire expanded later to what's shown in purple. But Jerusalem is off to the east part of the Roman Empire, and Cyrene is in what we would call North Africa. It is west of Egypt. If you've heard of Benghazi, it's right near there.

Simon of Cyrene, that Dr. Luke and Mark and Matthew record the name of the man who was forced to carry the cross, is notable. Instead of just saying they had a passerby and that's it, You know and and not mention the name that might be expected to be normal But no they actually it's this specific guy Simon of Cyrene And then Mark has that additional piece of information the father of Alexander and Rufus. Oh Well, that's different because that shows that Here's here's someone who's has attention to detail possibly even knowing these people Mark even knowing these people are at least caring enough to ask Caring enough to ask. It also shows that someone was present to observe these things, and that's important. But here's what's key.

The practice in New Testament times up until about 60 or the 60s AD, was to first wrap a body in spices and aloes and things like that, and to put them in a niche in the tomb. And every time I look at this, I do a double take because I've never seen Nancy walking out of a tomb until this one.

Okay, so at any rate, so So they put them in a tomb and then they would seal up the tomb with a large stone and jam it so that it couldn't easily be broken into. And of course, you know, wild animals, you don't want them getting in there and tearing up bodies and that sort of thing. So now, it so happens that right across the Kidron Valley from Jerusalem is a burial place and One of the boxes they found are the bone boxes, because after a year they would take the bones out of the tomb and put them in a bone box in a longer-term storage tomb.

And one of the bone boxes that they found says, Alexander, son of Simon. That's not all, because that by itself wouldn't be definitive. But it's in a tomb. with other names that are not found in the area of Jerusalem, but are found in Cyrene. This is almost certainly the ossuary box of Alexander, son of Simon. One of the reasons I would tell you that is because you will have people, oh, that's just a bunch of myths and stories. Uh-uh. Uh-uh.

Here's the guy. The evidence is very clear. This is the guy. So here's the burial site there on the Mount of Olives, right across from the Temple Mount, where they found it in the 1960s. It's the real deal. South of Jerusalem, they found the ossuary of Caiaphas, his name written on the end, or Nate Carving, which you expect out of a more well-to-do household. And inside, the bones of a man about 60 years old, using forensic anthropology, of course. So, and there are more things like that.

Joseph Caiaphas' granddaughter. See, Joseph Caiaphas named one of his sons Yeshua, which translates as Jesus, right? And that son named his daughter Miriam, which translates as Mary. Oh boy. So Jesus and Mary. Okay. They found that bone box in the Ella Valley where David fought Goliath. So, very interesting. There is confirmation. These are real people. These are real events. Not just a myth. Not just a story. Here's Luke 23, 27, and 28.

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 yourselves and for your children. So one of the things here, the leaders of the Jews had been afraid of the people up to this point. Now that the leaders of Jews had gotten their way, the people who were not in favor of Jesus' crucifixion were mourning and lamenting him as he went through on the way to the crucifixion site.

And we'll talk about where that is next time. The crowd included a number of women. who had followed or at least sympathized with Jesus and didn't want this to happen. But even at that painful moment when Jesus had already collapsed under the weight of the petibulum, Jesus is not self-absorbed with his suffering. And we'll see that all the way along.

Jesus continues to interact with people and continues to show care and to deal with people very personally. Jesus told the lamenters to stop weeping for him. Weep instead for yourselves and for your children. You see, they don't understand, of course. Jesus will die that day, but it will only be a couple days, three days by Jewish way of counting days, that he'll be raised.

So he calls them, however, daughters of Jerusalem. It's interesting. In the Old Testament, daughters or daughter of Jerusalem shows up a number of times. And where daughter of Jerusalem shows up, it's always in the Old Testament prophets. And it's either in the context of his first prophesying about his first coming, his second coming, or talking about the judgments to come. So it's always intense where the phrase is used.

Here's Luke 23, 29, and 31. For behold, the days are coming when they will say, blessed are the barren and the wombs that never bore and the breasts that never nursed. Then they will begin to say to the mountains, fall on us, and to the hills, cover us. For if they do these things when the tree is green, what will happen when it is dry?

Jesus is referring, of course, to the 70 AD Roman attack on Jerusalem, and it would, as we've recounted previously, be a horrible, horrific time. It began by the Jews first successfully attacking a couple of Roman military installations in 66 AD, but that was followed by waves of Roman attack.

And actually, the reason that the Romans had waves of attack is it's like they couldn't get it together. They kept having problems with their emperors. And so that's how it happened. But finally, the Roman army surrounded Jerusalem, brought in plenty of troops from as far away as Britain. And they did a siege attack.

But what was sad was that the Jews actually killed many of their own. If you would not fight, you would be slaughtered. And so killing Jew was as great a tragedy as the Romans killing many. They didn't kill all of them. They sold as many as they could into slavery, but it glutted the slave market. There were so many.

Jesus says if they do these things, what would they do? They manipulate a Roman prefect into condemning an innocent man to a most horrid death. And it just so happened that the innocent man was the Son of God and the Messiah and will one day judge them. Can you imagine that? What a horrific mistake. A terrible mistake. Let's crucify the one who will ultimately judge me. That's just nuts, right? Then when the Son of God, their Messiah, is gone from their midst, things will get very, very bad. That is when the tree is dry.

Now, here's the way John the Baptist put it some time back when we were in Luke 3, 7-9. So John the Baptist said, So he began by saying to the crowds who were going out to be baptized by him, You brood of vipers, who warned you to flee from the wrath to come. Therefore, bear fruits in keeping with repentance, and do not begin to say to yourselves, We have Abraham for our father. For I say to you that from these stones God is able to raise up children to Abraham.

Indeed, the axe is already laid at the root of the trees. So every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. We have the additional insight that this crowd that he's talking to includes many Pharisees and Sadducees. That's why he's speaking with such harsh terms. Deuteronomy chapter 20 verses 19 and 20 gives the law for what trees the Jews may cut down. They may not cut down a fruit-bearing tree. That is why John the Baptist says you better start bearing fruit. Otherwise, what's going to happen? If you guys aren't bearing fruit consistent with repentance, God's going to cut you down. So he warned them. And this was a few years beforehand. But they didn't listen.

Here's Luke 23, 32. Two others also who were criminals were being led away to be put to death with him. And of course, they would carry the petibulum, the cross piece. as they carried them to the crucifixion site. So Luke recorded that Jesus was to be crucified along with these two others, and then Dr. Luke calls them criminals.

Matthew 27, 38 gives us the additional insight. These guys are robbers, or we might call them thieves, right? They steal. And as you already know, one of these thieves will come to faith in Christ. There, that before the end of that day. Isn't it amazing?

The thief is carrying his cross piece to go out to die. And at least as he was headed out there, he was headed for hell. But by the end of the day, his eternal destiny would be different. Jesus would speak to him personally. Today, you'll be with me in paradise. He won't be baptized. He won't be given last rites. He was never a good person. He was never good enough to get into heaven, right? Definitely not. What one thing did he do? Remember me, right? Spoke to Christ and understood. Remember me when you come in your kingdom, which also means you're going to be resurrected, right? He believed in the resurrection too.

So we are in this passage here, in this verse, right on the edge. We're right on the brink. We're right on the edge of one of the greatest moments in all time and in all of eternity. That's where this passage is taking us. We're right about there. Nobody else saw it as that great a moment, but we do, and we will. Massive, momentous things are about to take place. Huge things are about to take place. Things that are absolutely necessary for our salvation. Things that are absolutely necessary for our blessing.

The only one present who understands what all this means at this point in time is Christ himself. The best spiritual understanding, strangely enough, that day would be a Roman centurion, the one in charge of the crucifixion, and one thief on the cross. At least those two seem to understand better than even the disciples at that moment. So we're right on the edge. We're right on the brink.

Jesus is going to accomplish huge things that day. He will die for our sins in our place. That's going to impact every person born on this planet for all time, all the way from Adam to the last person born in the Millennial Kingdom. Christ's death makes the devil powerless for everyone who believes. Why? No longer is there a fear of sin and death.

Christ's death confirms Israel's new covenant. This is why just hours before, Jesus said, this is the new covenant in my blood. It is a confirming sacrifice. Christ paid the bride price for you and for me, for the church. It was the price that the father demanded. It's the price that the father allowed. He would accomplish that. He would pay the price of a slave or a flock. This is 1 Corinthians chapter 6, last couple of verses. This is Acts chapter 20.

Then for the church, we were identified with this crucifixion and with his death. You see, we weren't generally identified with Christ. You know that. Christ crossed the Sea of Galilee on a boat with the disciples. We weren't identified with Him in that, were we? Christ had the Last Supper with His disciples. We weren't identified with Him in that. This event that we're just about to look at here, we're right on the brink of, is the beginning of our identification with Christ. Our identification with this death, burial, resurrection, ascension, and seeding. And the order matters.

You see, it's going to be the most horrible, greatest day ever. Pilate will most likely have some marriage problems. That's probably not the biggest concern. I have no idea what Roman marriage counseling would be like. But anyway, he's going to need it.

The Pharisees and Sadducees will think that they have won. They will find out that they did not. And we'll find out next time that the Sadducees will have the worst day of their lives, starting at noon and going on into the evening. And we'll tell you why it will be the worst day of their lives next time. Many will lament and be perplexed by the crucifixion of Christ. Do you know that none of the disciples were rejoicing?

If you ask them, is this a good Friday? Of course, they wouldn't say Friday anyway. But if you ask them, is this a good Friday? Oh, definitely not. Right? Definitely not. They didn't understand. But for us who believe it will be a very, very good Friday, followed by the most marvelous and fabulous Sunday that ever was up to that time. And it'll even get better after that. Amazing, amazing day. It's the most horrible, greatest day ever. Let's pray. Lord, we thank You for that most horrible, greatest day ever. And we thank You for what You've accomplished in it. And thank You that You, for the joy set before You, endured that day, because You loved us so very much. For You and for me, He endured that day. And we just pray this in Jesus' name, Amen.