- Youth & Outreach Director, Hunter Newton, preached this message on March 29, 2024.
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Audio Transcript
We get to remember today what Jesus did for us. This is a serious thing. It’s a holy thing, it’s a right thing, it’s a worshipful thing. And we’re meant to feel the incredible weight of it. We’re meant to reflect on it all, the enormity of it all the incredibleness of its insert any appropriate adjective.
There were meant to feel it, to sit in it. Because all of human history culminated in the moment that Jesus of Nazareth took on the cross. All of human history culminates all of human history. This is the center of it. And we get to.
We’ll get to celebrate in just a few days his victorious resurrection. But we get to celebrate, sit and reflect and understand all the prophecy, all of the waiting, all the anticipating, all of the promises, all of the hope for the Messiah who was to come. All the ways that the Hebrew boys and girls would have said mom and dad, what is the Messiah going to be like? Happened on Good Friday, dying as he said he was going to die. Jesus was without blame.
If there’s anyone ever who can say I didn’t deserve it, I didn’t do it. I am not wrong, it’s him. If anyone ever could say that it’s Jesus, yet He did it for us. Luke 19:10 says that he came to seek and to save the lost Jesus came to earth on a rescue mission. Isaiah 53 predicts quite some time before his death what his death would be like.
And we there’s countless other promises, countless other prophecies way before he was born, the nature of what he’d be like, how he would die and what would be to come. But tonight I just want just to sit here and reflect on the fact that God took on flesh and died. Our big idea. We just want to look, we’ve sung about it already. We’ll sing about it some more that we are here healed by his wounds.
He had to do this. He wanted to do this. That’s just. We want to notice that we want to think about it. He.
We are healed by his wounds. Two quick other things I want to point out in the text is that he lived and died perfectly and that he lived and died for us. Our text is First Peter, chapter 2, verses 21 through 24. We can go ahead and turn there now. First Peter 2:21 24 for you were called to this because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example that you should follow in his steps.
He did not commit sin and no deceit was found in his mouth when he was insulted. He did not insult in return. When he suffered, he did not threaten, but entrusted himself to the One who judges justly. He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, so that having died to sins, we might live for righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed.
So we’re not going to spend a ton of time, but we want to spend some time reflecting, understanding, studying, and just acknowledging this. Like I said, we got two sub points we want to look at. First, that he lived and died perfectly. We’ll focus on verses 21 through 23. And these probably sound familiar to us.
These probably sound okay, I think I’ve heard that before. And you have. If you’ve read Isaiah, chapter 53, you’ve read a number of different prophecies about what Jesus was going to do. And these prophecies are still so right, still so true, still so good, still so applicable for us thinking. Think about this, friends.
Thousands of years before Jesus came, He was predicted to live the life that he did and die the death that he did. On the Friday before his victorious resurrection, Jesus was being led to his death, betrayed by presumably one of his best friends that he shared his life and ministry with for three whole years, waking up, eating, sleeping, doing everything. And he did not commit any sin. Not even one lie, not even one insult left his lips. The text here says that he did this, and we can follow in his footsteps after his example.
He’s writing here. Peter’s audience is a group of really oppressed believers who are living under Roman rule. And even right before this, he’s saying to people who have found themselves caught in slavery, he said, we have this great example in Christ.
He did not commit any sin. The example of a life of holiness is lived out in Christ before us. And yet he knew. He led this wonderful life, but he knew we were so helpless without Him. He knew that we couldn’t do it.
We couldn’t walk without sin. We couldn’t do what he did. And that’s something that we talk about all the time. But Lee and I were even just talking in the car ride over here. Yes, we believe that Jesus died for me.
This I know, right? For the Bible tells me so. We know this, we believe it. But how often do we sit and think about how personal this is? The God of the universe took on human flesh for you and for me and for all those who are going to put their trust in him.
Poured out. The wrath of God was poured out on him.
Not only did he avoid all the outward and obvious sin, those things that separate us from God. The things that are so clear that we can know without thinking, but not even a lie, not even a little fib to make himself look good in front of his fishing buddies. Not even lingering on a hateful thought about a nasty CO worker. And he hung out with Judas guys. He didn’t treat someone in a way that was less than what they should have been treated.
And we could list so much more all these things that he did not do, that he refused to do, that he wouldn’t do. But on the positive, on the. On the. On the things that he did do, he did all these things perfectly. He did them exactly how they were supposed to be, exactly how we should at all times.
Colossians 1:15 tells us that he’s the image of the invisible God. We do not have to wonder what the God of the universe would do or how he would interact with people, how he’d care for the poor, how he would treat people, because we get to see it in Jesus. What he did and was is exactly how the holy, perfect God would and does and is. And he did it perfectly, all the way up to his death, all the way to the end. As the whips kept coming with the bits of bone, as the muscles in his back are exposed, he didn’t let out even a single curse.
He didn’t curse the people who were doing this to him. The hands that he had made, he didn’t do that. He finished the race perfectly. And he didn’t even do things just mostly good. He didn’t even just do things technically right.
He did them perfectly right all the time. And if you’re like me, you’re bad at golf. And so you understand what the concept of a gimme, like if you’re three foot in, I should make that putt every time. I don’t. But I call it a gimme.
And my friends say, we’re good, we’re good. Jesus had no gimmes. He didn’t do things mostly right. He finished it perfectly to the very end.
He did things all the way right, all the time, exactly how he was supposed to do them, all the way through his last breaths. But why on earth would he do that? Why would he go about all this trouble? Romans 5:7 says, for rarely will someone die for a just person. Though for a good person, perhaps someone might even dare to die.
Friends, my list of people who I would die for is not very long. Maybe. Maybe you’re holier than me, maybe you’re a bit more selfless than me. But if I’M being honest. My list is probably my family and some good friends.
My list is not super long. The text here doesn’t say, though, that he died just for his family. It says that he lived and he died for us. Romans 5 doesn’t stop at verse 7. It continues in verse 8 saying, But God proves his own love for us, and that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
Not when we got our acts together, not when we looked squeaky clean, not when we got polished up, not after we got baptized, not after we did all these things that we’re supposed to do, not when we could defend a master’s thesis in theology while we were still sinners, when all of our sins were future sins, Christ took the cross for us, while on the cross all of our sin was future sin. 1 Peter 2:24 continues to say, he himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, so that having died to sins, we might live for righteousness by his wounds you’ve been healed. Our holy that’s just a church word for meaning. Totally set apart, totally without sin, totally blameless. God, our holy God took on flesh and paid for that sin that we had no way to pay for.
He experienced a less than pleasant union with it, said the Father turned his face away. He had never experienced that before. Friends, he did that for us.
Let it not be lost in us. What a sacrifice this was. Who was doing it? He did this so that we could be healed and that we might live for righteousness, that we might be able to please God. 2nd Corinthians 5:21 says, he made the one who did not know sin to be sin for us, so that we might become the righteousness of God, so that we can please God, so that we can be made right with the holy, perfect, awesome God.
So is Good Friday a somber day? Yes, it absolutely is. That’s why we’ve got a red drape on the cross and we’re going to have a black one later. We gather to remember. We gather to as contrary to the world as it sounds, we gather to celebrate his death, to remember it in communion.
What we’re going to take in not too long, we’re going to remember this death. It’s one of the two ordinances that he gives us as a visual sign. We remember and we proclaim his death. We’re not ashamed of it. We reflect on it.
But unlike the first Good Friday, no matter how many times he had told them, they still couldn’t get this right. Unlike the first Good Friday, we know that Resurrection Sunday is coming. We know we don’t have to wonder if Christ is going to rise from the dead and we get to celebrate that. But tonight I’m inviting us, the Word’s inviting us to just sit and reflect on how immensely personal this was. We don’t know all the ins and outs of how he would have thought, how he would have felt about the situation, or how all of his mental capacities worked in the dual nature of Christ.
And that’s not for us to know. But I’d like to imagine that he had you and me in mind.
The God of the universe took on flesh to die in our place. That doesn’t seem to make sense unless you know, Jesus to save us from sin, death and destruction, to save us from ourselves that we couldn’t do because of this. If we put our faith and trust in him. If we turn from a life of sin and self worship, of trying to do it on our own and turn to. It’s not just a turning away from it, it’s a turning to and trusting in putting our faith and hope in Jesus.
We can be healed by these wounds. We can be made right if we repent and believe this gospel, this gospel of grace. So there’s no earning to it. It’s just accepting and then getting to do what God calls us to. If we do that, if we believe that Jesus died all those years ago to make us right with him, then it really is Good Friday to close.
Let me invite the worship band back up and I just want to read some lyrics from a song that we’re going to sing after we take communion. And the words, I love them. They’re beautiful. They’re wonderful. It says, behold the 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. I will not boast in anything. No gifts, no power, no wisdom.
But I will boast in Jesus Christ, his death and resurrection. Why should I gain from his reward? I cannot give an answer but this I know with all my heart. His wounds have paid my ransom. Let’s pray.
God, we thank you. That that is right, that is true, that is good, and that we get to enjoy that. We thank you for your death all those years ago, Jesus, that we love you and we praise you for it. We thank you for these good gifts that you have given given us and for what you’re doing. We thank you for for this bread and for the.
The cup that we’re going to take as we proclaim your death again, as you called us to. Until you come, Lord Jesus, we pray. We pray that prayer, and we. We ask that you come quickly. It’s through these words.
We love you and praise you. It’s in your name, Jesus, we pray. Amen.