Good Friday

Transcript (Auto-generated)

Thank you Linda. How are we going? We've got some noise. Yep, there's that Mike squeal. Good morning everyone. If this is one of the few times you're with us, whether you've been invited by family or you've been compelled by family to come, we want to extend a warm welcome to you and thanks for joining us. When we're in country churches preaching, I always used to think it was a blessing to have folk come to church not because numbers were good, it's just encouragement. So if you're here today, thank you for your encouragement. Well, we come to Good Friday and preparing the message today, I had this thought about what it means to say, well, Jesus is the Lord of Lord. He's the Lord of my heart, He's the Lord of your heart. We come today to actually acknowledge sometimes in sombatones, but also in celebration of what Jesus has done for us. And so as this Good Friday opens, let's open in prayer. Heavenly Father, we thank you, Lord, that we can sing of your faithfulness. Lord, we thank you too, Lord, that you speak to our hearts individually and personally. And Father, we thank you that when we come into this time of year, Lord, when we come to this day, Lord, it defines all that we are about and defines what all you're about and Lord, don't let that just pass away. Lord, just as a tick of the box or good, let's get it over. Lord, just savour the moment of being in your presence at the foot of the cross. Lord, it's just a privilege and a joy. We thank you for that. And Lord, pray as always, the words I speak ought to be your words. Lord, for your glory and your name, amen. So there's a meme getting around. I've seen it for a long time where a guy will sit in a place and he'll say, you'll write something on his bit of parchment and you'll lay it over the front of his table and he wants some declares, change my mind. Some of them can be quite humorous, some of them can be quite confronting. But it struck me as interesting that as believers, as those searching for God and those involved with God, is what does it mean when we say, I bring good news, who said it first of all, we're going to talk about that at the moment, but also change my mind. Why is it different? Why is this time at this point where Jesus changed the calendar of the world for all of mankind, that someone would dare to say, no, I don't think it's true. I don't think it is really good news. As we unload Jesus, unload our scripture today, we're going to be looking at Mark 1.14 and 15, just a few short verses and also 2 Corinthians 5.21. So how can you argue about it? Well, the good news that Jesus is going to bring today is not good news that will make you rich, but is good news that will change your life. It's not the good news where you might say, hey, this is going to be a physical advantage for me. It's a spiritual advantage. It's not like if you won the lottery and there'd be signs, but you wouldn't tell anyone about it. I think today's economy, that if you were filling up your tank, people would look across and say, oh, look at that person. They're pretty affluent. It's not about that at all, about something deeper the message God has for your heart today. Those of you who've been walking in faith for a long time, you may think, yep, I've heard this before, but my prayer is that you will find something new and refreshing in God's Word today. Let's have a look at Mark 1.14 and 15. Well, after John was put in prison, Jesus went into Galilee and proclaimed the good news of God. The time has come, he said. The kingdom of God has come near. Repent and believe in the good news. Repent and believe in the good news. When we are looking at Jesus saying those words, I had this thought about, yeah, it's interesting how the news today, we have all these sources of news, don't we? And we have all these places we could be trusted for the news. The CNN will say one thing, Fox will say another thing, and then you go over to ABC, which says something entirely different, and then you'll have all the other news sources. And I had a look at the history of Jesus and what it means. And if you're with us today and you're watching us online, take time to consider this. You might not be comfortable coming to church, but these are God's words for you. And just that when we look at this good news source, the angels sang about him, Mary cherished him, the shepherds rejoiced in him, Herod feared him and wanted to kill him, and the wise men worshipped him. That's a pretty good resume for a trusted source, yeah? No, yeah? Right, you are awake and good on this. The Old Testament prophets spoke about him, Isaiah, Micah, Zechariah and the Psalms. The Gospel recorded him, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. And at a very poignant time at the foot of the cross, after watching what Jesus had endured, all the things that Jesus had endured, a centurion stood there and he said, surely this is the Son of God. That is the credentials of the one who's bringing the good news for mankind today. He's still bringing the good news for mankind today, because mankind needs good news, needs salvation of Jesus. I had a thought driving around the other day, I was just thinking about all the different things and how our politicians simply make weird decisions and all these sorts of things, and it occurred to me that if we pray for those politicians to come to know Jesus as Lord and Savior and live out their faith, their decisions then will be controlled or guided by the Spirit of God. So instead of being, I think Christians should be apolitical. I'm saying it out loud. Perhaps I'm going to get shot for it, I might get cancelled. But if we're apolitical, we don't have a political party, we just have a kingdom party. When we pray for them, the world will be a different place, I believe. We can pray for peace in the Middle East, we can pray for fuel prices to come, they're all sorts of things, but let's go back and think about, well let's not look at what they're doing. How can we pray for them? But one day, when they read the Scripture, and you know, Parliament opens with prayer, that one will be able to say, surely that is the Son of God who spoke to us today. And I'm wondering whether the Son of God is speaking to you today. I don't care how long you've been a Christian, if God is speaking to you fresh and new today about something in your life, he wants you to do something about it today. That is what the cross is about, the cross is eternal, it's temple, it goes through time. And that's the message we have about the good news. The good news is, of course, that Jesus is our Saviour. Because He is our Saviour, we have a whole lot of things to unpack with that. He is the Son of God, He is the Light, He is the Gate, He is the Way. And John 14.6 says that Jesus answered, I'm the Way, the Truth and the Life, no one comes to the Father through me. If it's the first time you've heard that, or the fourteen hundredth time you've heard that, God is still saying it to you today. That all our actions, all our thoughts, all our prayers, all our efforts, all go through Jesus Christ. Here's the Way to God, here's the relationship with God, the Waymaker, if you will. There's one thing that stands in the way of us being right with God. Because when we look at the narrative around His birth, the angels are singing peace on earth and good will to all men, from whom His favour rests, sometimes people stop it and peace in good will, thinking well we're all right with God, we're all going to heaven. That's not what Scripture tells us. Scripture tells us a different thing. And that is that sin is the thing that stands between us and God. Sin stands between you and God. The sin in your life will hold you back from embracing God fully. And you can make all the justification you want, but sin will stop you from being right with God and understanding Him fully. Now, as it says up there, the Greek word is hamaratea, which means to fall short or come short. And so sin in our life brings us short of God's glory, it brings us short of relationship with God, all the efforts and things that we do. But in the middle of the word sin, what do you see? The letter I. And that letter I is so important, because the letter I speaks of so many things in our life. When we put I first and others last, we put I first and God last, we're out of kilter. And this is what sin's about. It's about us putting ourselves before God. We can make any justification we want, but it still won't get us right with God. Let's unpack that a little bit, shall we? It was the good news is that He came to save us. Our lives, Mr Mark. Right then and there, our lives, Mr Mark. If you've been walking with Jesus for a while or you're just searching for Jesus, just remember that truth, your life misses the mark. We need to be constant, reminded of that and humbled by that, if you will. The capital I in our language is about attitude of ego. And we have it all on our social media platforms. We have things like likes. You know, how many likes do you get? You put something up on Facebook and let's face it, you know, sorry, there was a pun. Let's face it, if we put something up on Facebook, do you check every end to see me likes you got? I don't see anyone confessing. Are you all thinking, thank you, I bless you for your honesty. Jesus, I love you. Instagram as well is about being instant gratification. It starts with an I. It's about getting us to think about how people reflect upon us. And there's a thing around called Snapchat. Snapchat only lasted up there for the length of the post. And that way you could put anything up on Snapchat and it would come down and no one would have a record of your sins except to God. And so when we have this ego intensity, this way of looking at how it suits me, we're not walking with God properly. We're not even in God's fellowship. We're saying, I'm more important than God. And the answers of the world, people tend to the world for the answers. And they are inadequate. They fall short of the glory of God. Everything we can try, all the things we come up with still fall short of the glory of God. Our efforts, our good works all fall short as well. You can be the best intention person in the world. You can do the right things. You can be in church and serve lots. But if your heart's not right with God, then you fall short as well. Romans 3.23 says that for all of sins and falls short of the glory of God. All of sin and falls short of the glory of God. Sometimes spotting sin in front of us is a bit like, oh, you know, Simon, when you have glasses, if you even notice those of us who wear glasses, those who don't, you're blessed with good vision or wonderful skilled operate surgeons. But when you take your glasses, when you get your glasses, the optometrist says, here's your little kit. Then your little kit to get, your little squeezy bottle with your little chamois. And he says, this is what you clean your glasses with. Now I clean my glasses every morning before I leave the house. Just to try and give me a bit of vision for the world. But have you ever noticed that when you take your glasses off, because you've got a spot on, the very thing you're trying to do is clean your glasses and get rid of that spot, but you can't actually see if you cleaned them or not. You just got a trust that you've got the and then you put it back up and you go, it's still there. And you'll rub again both sides. And yeah, okay, right. Oh, yeah, no, forget it. That's it. That's what it's like when we have sin in our lives. It still stays there unless it's cleaned and pure eyes. It's taken right out of the pictures wiped away from sin. The next time you put your glasses on, just think about what Jesus has done for you, taken away your sin or what he can do for you, take away your sin. But again, this sin thing, it keeps coming up. That's what we need to cross. And that's what we need a savior. This is why it's the good news, because it's inherent sin. That is eternal separation from God. It happened. It's been since the fall in Genesis three. And Romans five, 12 says these words. Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man and death through sin, in this way, death came to all people because all have sinned. Because of sin, we fall short. It's inherent. There has to be a decision made. There has to be a declaration somewhere. Yes, I'm going to change my life. I want to reach out to Jesus. But now we can cloak that with so many things, can't we? We can try and say, oh, yeah, you know, not just yet. When I used to ministry with the guys in the footy club, I talked to them about this, and they go, oh, yeah, Dougie, can we put it off to the end of the season? And you say, yeah, all right, put off to the end of the season, then you tap them on the shoulder at the end of the season. And they say, oh, can you just leave it? We're in off season now. They say, yeah, right, he goes. So you tap them on the shoulder at the start. Oh, I'm just doing preseason training, Dougie. My mind's full of it. Can we leave it till the start of the season? Yeah, all right, we'll tap it, and I'll just keep tapping. God does that to us. Every time we walk away from him, every time we have a thought that's not of his, he taps us on the shoulder through his spirit and he says, do you think you should be thinking that? It's that something you really need to do because the consequence of sin is guilt. And guilt makes us feel inferior. It makes us step back from God. It makes us step back from others. And Satan loves that. He would love that this thing didn't happen, this cross thing didn't happen. He would love that Jesus didn't take the place for our sin because he wants us to be defeated. He wants the world to be in confusion. That's not the message we get at Easter. The message of Easter has been enduring for thousands of years because inside of us, there's a part of us that says we need something. We need God. We require a once in a lifetime substitute. We require someone to take our place. I had this thought about this morning about actually getting a gavel and having one of the young people come forward. Every time I said a certain word, they hit the gavel on the piece of timber. Like the judge does, boom. Then I thought, who could I trust with a piece of wooden hammer? And I trust everybody. God made him Jesus who had no sin to be sin for us so that in him we might become righteousness of God. The good news is he came to save us from sin. He took our place from sin, took our place in sin. He died on the cross. He endured the cross for us. Jesus then said in the next part of that passage in Mark, he said, repent and believe the good news. This is the hardest thing for us to do is repent. Just to take stock of where we are and say, Lord, I need to humbly give my life to you. I need to stop what I'm doing. But sometimes we're not real good at that. We like to take things back. To repent means to not only believe, sorry, not only feeling sorry for your sins, it is also about intentionally turning away from your sin. When there are addictions we have in our society, and people who walk with God have addictions. When God confronts us about those addictions and God confronts you about your addictions, you've got to be able to leave them and walk away with his help. What we tend to do is we say, I'll just leave it, but it still draws me back. Acts 13, 319 says, repent then and turn to God so that your sins may be wiped away, that times of refreshing may come from the Lord. I'll wipe in your glasses, wipe them away, ask God to speak into your heart and say, okay, Lord, how am I going to do this? Because I can't do this on my own. He said, well, Jesus went to the cross for you, because this is the least of your worries. Confess to me and step into me. The truly repent of your sins is ceasing to commit those sins, otherwise our repentance is false. Have you ever heard that before? It's a thought that came across in my research, and I thought, I wonder how that sits with people, that if we don't have that total commitment to our repentance, what we said is false. It's blatantly obvious. If you say it's false, you're a liar. It says in 1 John, those who say they have no sin are a liar. That is why we need a Savior. That is why He came to die on the cross for us. Then Jesus said to believe that Jesus is our Savior. We accept Him as the Lord of our lives and obey Him. I wonder if you've done that recently. I wonder if you've done that in your life. I wonder if that's a prayer you could go back to and say, I remember when I gave my life to Jesus, I remember when I confessed that I was a sinner and I need Him as Lord as my life. Is that a message that strikes in your heart today, that the cross that Jesus endured was for us, that we could be right with God? When we come into this season of Easter, it's not about doing the traditional thing, not doing the religious thing, but about doing the faith and personal thing. Sometimes it's an opportunity for God to prompt us and say, hey, time to do stuff, time to do business with me. In Romans 10, 9, it says these words, if you declare with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. Let me read those words again. If you declare with your mouth and you believe in Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. If you declare with your mouth, you pray, I believe that Jesus is my Lord and Savior and I believe that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. Bible tells that. There's no tick box, there's no go and do so many push-ups or bypass to dug 14 copies, many of those sorts of things. It's not a work thing, it's a personal relationship thing. And that is what the cross is about, that is what the good news is about. You see, and why this is important is that just at the right time we were still sinners, Christ died for the ungodly. In all of history, we have this opportunity to say, well, even all the way through time, God has been dying for everyone who seeks Him and I think that's pretty good news to me and I pray it's good news to you as well. So, I bring you good news. The God so loved you that He sent His Son, Jesus, to die on the cross for you, that you may have a real and authentic relationship with Him. That's the good news and it's an open invitation to accept His good news. It has no time limit but a wooden galley. One of the challenges about bringing a message on Good Friday is that you get in your head, it's only an hour, it's only an hour, it's only an hour, take out four or five songs or three songs and you've only got this much time and sometimes the message is so short you think, what happened? I pray that God has spoken to you today in a deep way. I pray that He's challenged you through His Spirit because the good news continues on Sunday and I invite you all to come back on Sunday because it's going to be a day of celebration because when we celebrate His resurrection we have this picture of the empty tomb. We have an opportunity to lean into God and say, well, hey, this is really what it's about. We're going to learn more about this on Sunday. We're going to celebrate His rising from the dead with baptisms. We've got at least four, five baptisms on Sunday. We've got someone who's a bit struggling with illness, we're not quite sure but it's about the ultimate defeat of the cross. They're leaning into God and asking God, wow, if this is true then that means that all the other deities in the world are dead deities. All the other people that claim to have some sort of religious significant, unless they're risen from the dead, it doesn't count because Jesus is ascended. That's what we're going to celebrate on Sunday. There's going to be more than the average number of Hawaiian shirts, I believe, on Sunday because that's celebration day. If you haven't got a Hawaiian shirt, Lowe's has two for one offer. I'm not getting any product endorsement there. As we're singing our last song, I'm going to ask you and encourage you to spend time just contemplating the good news that you've received. Some of us will intend to get up and chat and say, hey, I haven't seen you for a long time, it's great to see you again, that's great. Can we just leave that for a little while as we just sit and contemplate what God has been doing in our lives, what God is about to do in your life perhaps. If you want to speak about that change, about that realisation, Pastor Dave, Pastor Dylan and myself will be available for a chat. Another believer who you know here, a person who says, I'm a believer Jesus Christ, I come to church all the time, they would love to talk to you about Jesus and share with you in prayer and that's going to freak some people out, but that's okay. We can't let today go without actually saying, well, what is the good news for me? Thank you Jesus for the good news. Worship team, if you'd like to come up and I'm going to close in prayer, I'm going to leave you with that short message today, because Jesus... Here is 12, verse 2 and 3, I believe, I'll never read, just to leave you with a thought today. Fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith, for the joy set before him, he endured the cross, scorning its shame and sat down on the right hand of the throne of God. Consider him who endured such opposition from sinners so that you will not grow weary or lose heart. Heavenly Father, we thank you, Lord, that history was stopped. The clocks were stopped in history a few thousand years ago, Lord, to mark something extremely important. Father, that was stopped because of us. Lord, if your death on the cross paid for our sin, it paid for all our sin. And Father, I pray that as we continue to go through this weekend, as we read the Gospels and the account, Lord, of the crucifixion and the resurrection, Lord, you'll instill in our hearts, Lord, that deep appreciation for you. Father, this was planned, that you loved us before we were even admitted to our mother's worms. The failure of plan for a redemption for us so we can be saved through Jesus Christ. We thank you for this in your name, amen.