Deuteronomy 13:1-15:23, Luke 8:40-9:6, Psalms 71:1-24, Proverbs 12:5-7
Today is the 30th day of March. Welcome to the Daily Audio Bible. I’m Brian. It is a pleasure to be here with you on this Good Friday, a day intended for some serious contemplation as we consider Jesus death on a cross on our behalf. And we’ll talk about that in a little bit, but one of the ways that we honor this is to immerse ourselves in God’s word each day. And, so, that’s exactly what we’ll do. We’ll take the next step forward. And we’ve been reading from the Common English Bible this week. Today, Deuteronomy chapter 13, 14, and 15.
Commentary:
Okay. It’s hard to reconcile what today represents, the crucifixion of Jesus, with what we read about in the gospel of Luke today with Jesus healing people, bringing life back to that which had died. It’s difficult to go from that to a naked savaged body hanging from a cross bleeding to death in agony, right? I mean, how could such good and at the hands of such evil? And yet, this picture shows us just how far we have fallen. That story that we read way back on just like the second day of this year, Genesis chapter 3, Adam and Eve and a deception that caused a rebellion that separated humanity and divinity. And we’ve been watching this unfold the whole year up to this point. And everything that we’ve read, we can easily say it was never supposed to be that way. It just wasn’t supposed to be that way. We were supposed to experience wholeness continuously in perfect alignment, in perfect intimacy with God. And we see God in the middle of all of the stories that we’ve read so far and we’ll see God in the middle of all the stories that we will read. He is ever present, attempting to lead people back. And over and over and over and over we see people taking different paths away from God and where those paths lead. And they lead us to this day. They lead us to this man hanging from a cross in agony, this person who was true and this person who called out for anyone with eyes to see and ears to hear, to experience the truth. And the truth set people free and brought back to life where there was no life, and brought restoration were always devastated, but the truth could have unsettled everything around Him and was unsettling everything around Him. And, so we have the greatest irony, we have God’s people all the way up to the high priest in the temple of God Almighty, colluding with the very people that they wanted out of their land, right? The Roman people, colluding with them in order to extinguish this voice, this light, this truth. And we celebrate, you know, these days, Good Friday, Easter Sunday, this happens every year and we get all dressed up for church and wear our best and go to church on Sunday and rejoice that He is risen. And that’s good. It’s important that we do that because we’re celebrating the most monumental moment in human history. But it’s easy for us to just kind of move through the story. The way to really, really, access what’s going on is to try to put ourselves in the position of those who had been following along with Jesus, the oppressed, the hopeless, those who’d been hanging on to His words, those who would been moving toward the truth, those who had experienced restoration in His words and His deeds and His friends who had been with Him every step of the way, because even though Jesus had very clearly stated how this was going to go, they just did not fully understand the implications of what He was talking about. And, so, on this day that we commemorate this event, we put ourselves in their position, hearing the sharp thud of hammer on nail as it is driven through flash into wood, hearing agonizing cries from a human voice that had done nothing wrong. Watching a cross raised up for all to see. The awful price of rebellion against Rome and the price of blasphemy against God, if you can even imagine that. We have to put ourselves in the position of those who were nearby, watching from a distance and those who were close enough to talk to Jesus as he gasped for breath. His blood dripping and pooling at the base of the cross. We have to enter into their confusion. We have to watch their hope being erased as Jesus life drips away. We can’t just read this story or even consider this story and just skip to the end because were skipping all of the human points of it, we’re skipping all of the real gritty rawness of it. We just kind of cover it all over and give each other Easter eggs and its bigger than that. So many had put their hope and trust and faith in Jesus and had followed Him, many leaving everything behind to stay near Him. And it all comes down to this? These guys hadn’t celebrated this for years and years. They didn’t have an Easter Sunday. That hadn’t happened yet. Their watching their hope die along with the person that they had put their hope in, which is one of the things that makes this story so deeply compelling. And we find this theme over and over in the Scriptures, against all odds, when all hope seems to be lost rescue comes. So, on this day, Good Friday, we actually sit that. We put ourselves in that position, the position of confusion and hopelessness and sadness and disbelief that this could happen. We sit with the fact humanity had become so savage, so devolved, so fallen that it could not recognize God anymore. And all that was left was ritual and rules to follow that simply controlled people. And we can shake our heads. We can certainly shake our heads and say, I can’t believe this could even happen, because that’s what they would would’ve been doing, but what we’re seeing is the culmination of a human species trying to make life work devoid of God, separated apart from God. And it leads us to a cross where God is revealing His love and doing something remarkable. He’s taking all of the blackness, all of the darkness, all of the hatred, all of the envy, all of the jealousy, all of the conniving, all of the deceit, and rather than retaliating He’s sucking it out of the world. He’s taking it with Him into death, which makes Jesus words so much more meaningful - love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you, if someone slaps you on one cheek turn to them the other also, if someone takes your coat do not withhold your shirt from them, give to everyone who asks you, and if anyone takes what belongs to you so not demand it back, do to others as you would have them do to you. We see this in stark reality when we consider the cross. And we can shake our heads in disbelief just not even imagining that something like this could happen until we try to put ourselves in the position and wonder, where would we be in this equation? Because how well were living up to what Jesus is saying really dictates where we would be in the situation. And unfortunately, we may find that we would have been yelling crucify Him. And as hard as that may be to acknowledge, we should. Because this salvation that experience cost something very precious. And in giving it the honor that it is do, we have to take the bitter with the sweet. Today is supposed to be a somber day. It is supposed to be sad. It is sad that things came that because it was never supposed to be this way for us. And today we acknowledge and sit with what it cost to give us freedom freely. So, I hope this will linger throughout this day. That’s what this day represents. That’s the point of Good Friday. This is where humanity goes when it is separated from God. This is where we go when we are separated from God. And in spite of it all, God still loves you.
Song:
Were You There - Sherry Muchira
Lyrics
Were you there when they crucified my Lord
Were you there when they crucified my Lord
Ohhhh sometimes it causes me to tremble, tremble, tremble
Were you there when they crucified my Lord
Where you there when they nailed Him to the tree…
Were you there when they laid Him in the tomb…
And the darkness fled, and my sin was gone
He is risen, He is risen
All my fear and shame buried in the grave
He is risen, He is risen
Death where is your sting, where’s your victory
He is risen, He is risen
Christ alive in me, behold the hope of glory
He is risen, He is risen
Sometimes it causes me to tremble, tremble, tremble