In the Name of the Father and of
the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
The
Lord created the earth, the heavens, and everything in them in six days. Sunday through Friday, God spoke into
existence all that there is: land, sky, flying things, creeping things,
swimming things, but on the sixth day of creation, He creates man from the dust
of the earth and takes woman from his side.
And after God had finished creating the sky, the earth, the heavens;
after He had finished His creation of man on the sixth day – Friday – He
relented from creating. It is finished,
the work of creating complete, so God rested on the seventh Day – on Saturday.
But
the perfect creation that God had created out of nothing, with a Word from His
mouth, fell. Sin entered the world and
with sin brings with it death and hell.
All of creation is effected, not one person is born without the curse of
sin, not one person is conceived deserving anything from God but His wrath and
displeasure, death and everlasting hell.
So it is for you.
God created the
earth, the heavens, and all that fills them in six days and rested on the
seventh. But it only took one moment,
one bite of forbidden fruit, one act of sinfulness to tarnish God’s perfect
creation with sin and death.
But God is
merciful. He doesn’t give what is
deserve, instead gives His Son for you.
We gather here to observe the Passion of our Lord. The thing for which He was born to do; to
suffer and to die on the cross for your salvation. His bloody death is intensely before our eyes
for us to behold. There, we see the cost
for our sins; the sins that we so flippantly commit, the sins we’ve planned,
the sins that are the evil we don’t want to do but keep on doing. We just sang in Paul Gerhardt’s beautiful
hymn, “I caused your grief and sighing, By evils multiplying. As countless as the sands. I Caused the woes unnumbered with which your
soul is cumbered. Your sorrows raised by
wicked hands.” It’s true. We look down at our hands and they’re red
with the blood of Jesus. My sin is what
pinned Jesus to the cross.
Yet,
this day isn’t about feeling guilt for Jesus’ sake. He doesn’t go to the cross so that you would
feel shame. Jesus didn’t allow Himself
to be nailed to the cross that we would look at His lifeless body and think,
“What have I done!”
Jesus’ cross isn’t
about feeling guilt over what our sins cost; rather, it’s about your
forgiveness, your salvation being complete, it is finished. On the sixth day, Friday, God created man, so
too, on the sixth day, Friday, God redeemed man. On the seventh day, Saturday, God rested from
His labor of creation, so too, on the seventh day, Saturday, the Lord, rests
from His labors of redemption in the tomb.
We call it Good
Friday because from the cross all good things flow. He’s there on the cross for you. He’s there for your salvation, for your
redemption. He’s there to set right that
what went so wrong in the garden. He’s
there for you.
Today the Creator
redeems His creation. He gives His life
up on the cross. He was buried. He rested in the tomb from His labor of
redeeming you. But He didn’t stay
there. We wait and we watch, for on the
first day, Sunday, the dawning of a new week, our Lord will be raised to new
life, just as He said. Amen.
