Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
Sermon: Deep Sorrow (Good Friday)
116 Plays9 months ago
In this Good Friday Sermon, I break down the weight and cost of our sins and challenge us to examine where we have made excuses for sin still in our lives.
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to Good Friday Sorrow
00:00:00
Speaker
Hey, thank you so much for tuning into the Office of Theology podcast. I'm excited to share some sermons that I've preached with you. In this Good Friday sermon, I talk about how the appropriate response to seeing and finding sin in our life is deep sorrow. I hope you are challenged and encouraged by it.
Reflecting on Christ's Death
00:00:18
Speaker
You may be wondering, why Good Friday? Many of us know and care about the death of Christ.
00:00:28
Speaker
But why is it important to take time to reflect upon it and sit in it?
Counter-cultural Focus on Pain
00:00:35
Speaker
We're intentionally putting ourselves in an environment to take the time to strengthen what we care about most, Jesus. I know we remember every Sunday for part of true hope through communion
00:00:56
Speaker
But tonight we are disciplining ourselves, not just have it a part of the service, but the entire service. The entire focus of all that we're here to do.
Openness to Christ's Sacrifice
00:01:12
Speaker
In a society that runs from pain, in a society that runs from heaviness, runs from conflict,
00:01:25
Speaker
We're doing something counter-cultural tonight and choosing to sit in those things. I want to challenge you to feel, to think, to acknowledge the weight of Good Friday. Why it happened and the implications it has for you and it has for me.
00:01:49
Speaker
Because as we know, there wouldn't be a Resurrection Sunday if there wasn't a Good Friday.
How Does God Respond to Sin?
00:01:57
Speaker
So would you pray with me real quick, and if you feel comfortable, put your hands up. God, we come to You. Open-handed. We come to You.
00:02:18
Speaker
and full availability. Full readiness to feel the weight of what it costs you, Jesus. So we say, God, may our hearts be open. May our hearts be ready. May we choose to lean in and not try to escape this.
00:02:48
Speaker
Because God, when we see the cost it actually took to make us right with you, it'll transform and heal everything. So God, we say come and have your way.
00:03:07
Speaker
Holy Spirit, this is yours. Would you come and make yourself known, because you have a people waiting here saying, come Holy Spirit, have your way.
Sin, Dishonor, and Atonement
00:03:20
Speaker
We say this in your name, amen. I have a few key questions around Good Friday. How does God respond to sin
00:03:35
Speaker
And what has he decided to do about it? So first off, sin dishonors God, first and foremost. It is rebellion. It assaults his righteous glory. It deceptively treats him as inferior in value to what we prefer due to our sinful desires.
00:04:01
Speaker
One of the most important paragraphs on the atonement, the payment of our sins, is in Romans 3, 23. For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. In other words, we lack the glory of God. Sin is related to the glory of God, as is Romans 1 says this. We exchange the glory of God for the created things made in His image.
00:04:32
Speaker
In our sin, we have moved from glorifying God to giving glory to lesser things. When we give glory to lesser things or worship the created rather than the creator, as Paul says in Romans one, it is an effort born out of our sin to rob God of his glory.
Old Testament Sacrificial Insufficiency
00:04:58
Speaker
Here's the reality.
00:05:01
Speaker
God's creation, us, all of us, humanity, have one way or another devalued the glory of God. And we have sinned. Because when we devalue God, we choose and we rebel against him. Now the question this must bring up
00:05:28
Speaker
is how is this offense against God remedied justly? Payment for our sins and offenses towards God must be paid. Someone has to pay it. But who could carry such a weight? The weight of the sin of the world of all mankind for my sin and for your sin.
00:05:56
Speaker
Before Jesus came to earth, there were sacrificial practices. The book of Leviticus shows us how as a sinner to be cleansed in order to be close to God. This reminds us of this important truth, that God wants to be close to us. He's always wanted to be close to his creation, but he will not be close to or condone sin.
00:06:26
Speaker
So what do we do? What was done? As an illustration of this and all the sacrificial instructions in the book of Leviticus, so for God to be close to his people, we who are in sin, you have many sacrifices. Leviticus shows us how serious God is about sin and how serious he is about holiness.
00:06:55
Speaker
There's several offerings. There's the burnt offering that's done twice a day in the morning and the evening. There's the grain offering that goes with the burnt offering in the morning and evening saying, God, please let this be a sweet aroma to you. Do not forget our sacrifices. There's the peace offering to have fellowship with God that is twice a day. There's the sin offering for the atonement of sins. And then there's the guilt offering. We sang about the guilt offering just a moment ago.
00:07:25
Speaker
It's the restitution. The guilt offering is that the guilty person had to confess their sin publicly, offer the sacrifice, make a full restitution of what was defrauded, adding an additional 20% to what they wronged. Rather than a cheap or easy repentance, this cost the person who sinned dearly.
00:07:51
Speaker
The cost of atonement for sin was and is great. However, even with how costly and repetitious these sacrifices were, they still were not enough. They were insufficient.
00:08:17
Speaker
They could not permanently atone for the weight of the sin and the cost of the sin of the world.
Christ's Ultimate Sacrifice
00:08:24
Speaker
All of these sacrificial practices could not completely atone for sin. So something greater, or perhaps someone greater, had to bridge the gap, had to pay the debt, had to reconcile us back to God.
00:08:46
Speaker
Can Christ repair and satisfy the offense that we've created to God? Is his blood and his sacrifice enough for you? Is it enough for me? Is it enough for all mankind? The answer is a resounding yes.
00:09:15
Speaker
The good news is that Jesus emptied himself. He endured utter humiliation, betrayal, physical and verbal abuse, wrongful accusations, torture and death, something we deserved he took. Christ's whole incarnation and sacrifice
00:09:44
Speaker
was the reversal of our attack on the glory of God. His humiliation and death can cover all of our God diminishing, God dishonoring, and God defaming sins. And therefore, complete justice can be rendered in justifying the ungodly like all of us.
00:10:16
Speaker
So that sums it up.
Personal Impact of Christ's Sacrifice
00:10:18
Speaker
Jesus did it. He offered his very life for us. But the question we must answer before we leave this moment is how deeply has that impacted and changed your life?
00:10:39
Speaker
I want to read this again. The question we must ask before we leave this moment, everything I just spent the last 10 minutes talking about, how has that deeply impacted and changed your life? How you live, how you think, how you operate, how you assess, how you view people, how you view yourself.
00:11:05
Speaker
How does the significance of what Christ did heal and transform our lives?
James on Worldly Desires and Faith
00:11:12
Speaker
So I wanna bring your attention to the book of James written by Jesus' brother. James chapter four verse one through 10 reads this. What is causing the quarrels and the fights among you?
00:11:26
Speaker
Do they come, don't they come from the evil desires at war within you? You want what you don't have so you scheme and you kill to get it. You are jealous of what others have but you can't get it so you fight and wage war to take it away from them.
00:11:42
Speaker
You don't have what you want because you don't ask God for it. And even when you ask, you don't get it because your motives are all wrong. You want only what will give you pleasure.
00:11:58
Speaker
You adulterers, don't you realize that friendship with the world makes you an enemy of God? And so I say it again, if you want to be a friend of this world, you make yourself an enemy of God. Do you think that the scriptures have no meaning? That's not a real question. He's causing them to think. They say that God is passionate about the spirit. He has placed within us that should be faithful to him.
00:12:23
Speaker
He gives grace generously. As the scriptures say, God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble. So humble yourselves before God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you. So come close to God and God will come close to you. Wash your hands, you sinners. Purify your hearts for your loyalty is divided between God and the world. Verse nine.
00:12:51
Speaker
Let there be tears for what you've done. Let there be sorrow and deep grief. Let there be sadness instead of laughter and gloom instead of joy. Humble yourselves before the Lord and He will lift you up. You might be thinking, what does this have to do with Good Friday?
Worldly Desires vs. God's Will
00:13:16
Speaker
And I want to propose these quick three main observations from the book of James to help tie that together. When evil desires win, point number one, we become friends with the world. A realization that our desires are still at war within us, even in Christ. The battle is that what we desire for ourselves versus what the Lord desires for us.
00:13:43
Speaker
It's a battle of what I want for myself opposed to what God says is best for me.
00:13:49
Speaker
It would be ignorant for us to not realize that there is still a sinful desire at war within you and within me, battling the will of God in all that we do. To realize that we have this brokenness is to realize that no matter how long we've been following Jesus, or how many things he has healed and delivered us from, there's something always more to be freed from.
00:14:18
Speaker
And if these desires are not put in check, they will run rampant. They will dominate your life. And so when these desires are allowed to win and dominate our lives, they make us friends with the world, which in turn is my second point. When we become friends with the world, we become enemies of God. James uses really harsh language, but it's accurate language.
00:14:49
Speaker
Friendship with the world and its passions and desires is being unfaithful to Jesus. James has strong words for those of us who choose to partner with the world. He calls us adulterous people. This is because we are created to be in relationship with God over everything.
00:15:11
Speaker
So when we choose, we're making a choice to choose the world over him who are being unfaithful to the one who we're designed to be in a relationship with. God. We have traded the creator and sustainer of all things for cheap imitations of him. We have traded security for wandering.
00:15:35
Speaker
We have traded peace for temporary satisfaction. We have traded trust in Him for self-sufficiency. We have traded love for lust. We have traded rest for wandering. We cannot play both sides.
00:15:51
Speaker
A lie that we are fed in our current culture is this, that we can have the best of both worlds, but this could not be further from the truth. We cannot go with the world and go with Jesus. No matter how hard we try, no matter how bad we want to, we cannot go with the desires and the passions of this world while going with God. Because James tells us they're enemies.
00:16:22
Speaker
You might be thinking, sitting in here, well, I'm not an enemy of God. I'm new in Jesus. True. But let me ask you this question. Who is James writing to? Christians. He's trying to help us realize that there are still areas in our lives that are partnering and friendship with the world.
00:16:44
Speaker
If we are partners and friends with the world, then those areas are still at odds with
Embracing Humility and Repentance
00:16:50
Speaker
God. Plainly said, those areas of our heart are still enemies of God. When we realize, maybe you're sitting here and you're like, there's some areas in my life that are still friends with the world.
00:17:12
Speaker
There's areas deep down that no one knows, even my spouse, that I'm still choosing to partner with the world. Now let's look at verse nine. When we realize we're still in friendship with the world, it should provoke a response within us. And James tells us what that response and reaction should be. And verse nine says, let there be tears for what you've done.
00:17:41
Speaker
Let there be sorrow in deep grief, not worldly sorrow, but godly sorrow that leads to repentance and leads back to Him, just to clarify. Let there be sadness instead of laughter and gloom instead of joy, which brings me to my third observation. As enemies of God, we need to humble ourselves and repent to be cleansed.
00:18:04
Speaker
James says, let there be sorrow and deep grief. Why such seemingly and intense, harsh words? See, we as Christians, even though Christians are commanded to be joyful always, when one has sinned grievously against God, heartfelt weeping is a proper expression of humble sorrow for disobeying our lovingly Heavenly Father. Sometimes,
00:18:34
Speaker
If you're like me, as time goes on, as it will, we can become desensitized to the sin that still remains in our lives. We can think, well, all the quote, big stuff is dealt with. Don't worry about that little stuff. It's not as big as that stuff was. And we completely miss that all sin grieves the heart of God.
00:19:06
Speaker
not just our rationalizing to make ourself feel better and to not be faced with the truth that we are still deeply broken. And we're still deeply in need of Jesus. And when we make excuses for those things deep down, we cheapen Good Friday.
Surrendering to Christ's Freedom
00:19:34
Speaker
the extent that He went to set us free. God helped me for choosing to stay in sin when freedom is available.
00:19:56
Speaker
James is trying to help us look deeper into the sin that is still at war within us, and that is causing us to be friends with the world still. In a passage that levels the plain ground for everyone is Romans chapter three, nine through 20.
00:20:14
Speaker
So you might be coming in here, well, my sin's probably not as bad as this person. Well, this guy's preaching so clearly. He has less sin in his life than I do, or in his life than I do in mine. We can create this sort of scale of people that are less sinful than others. But Romans nine, Romans three gives us no chance to come in ahead of someone else or behind someone else. It says, well then, should we conclude that we Jews are better than others? No, not at all.
00:20:45
Speaker
We have already shown that all people, whether Jew or Gentile, are under the power of sin. As the Scriptures say, no one is righteous, not even one. No one is truly wise and no one is seeking God. All have turned away and all have become useless. Not one does good, not a single one.
00:21:06
Speaker
Their talk is foul, extents from an open grave. Their tongues are filled with lies. Snake venom drips from their lips. Their mouths are full of cursing and bitterness. They rush to commit murder. The destruction and misery always follow them. Listen to this. They don't know where to find peace. They have no fear of God at all.
00:21:29
Speaker
Obviously, the law applies to those whom it was given for its purpose is to keep people from having excuses and to show that the entire world is guilty before God. For no one who can ever be made right with God by doing what the law commands, the law simply shows us how sinful we are.
00:21:58
Speaker
This is really bad news if Good Friday didn't exist. So the truth is that we all fall short. And there's areas that we still fall short. But the temptation is the longer that you're in this environment, we can tend to downplay the areas that still need the healing hand and the finished work of the cross to fully get to.
00:22:28
Speaker
for some reason. We live in a society that wants to downplay our sinfulness. Rather than seeing the severity of it, they want to celebrate it. If that were true, we should celebrate our sinfulness. Why would Christ have to take on our sin and punishment? It's easy to think of Good Friday as this event that happened over 2,000 years ago.
00:22:59
Speaker
But he died for all sins, for all mankind, including yours and including mine that we still hold on to. This also includes the area of our lives that are still in partnership with the world's ways and desires. That includes the sin that we've downplayed and made excuses for, the sin that still grieves the heart of God. Why would we settle
00:23:28
Speaker
for partial freedom. Why would we settle for freedom in certain areas that seem bad enough that Jesus is the only one that can heal, but then sometimes we think that the little sins that live deep underneath are really sneaky or really, we've prettied up and made it look better. I can deal with those sins, but Jesus, you can deal with these sins. Who are we to say, Jesus, you can't deal with all of them? Good Friday.
00:23:57
Speaker
is a reminder that He has come not for part of your heart or portions of your heart or certain brokenness in your life, but for all the brokenness you have. Why would you sell yourself short of the freedom that is available?
00:24:26
Speaker
So I want to end with this last question, a very practical question. Where in your life are evil desires winning and you are making excuses for it? Where in your life are evil desires winning and you're making excuses for it?
00:24:56
Speaker
Let's pray. Jesus, forgive us for not fully leaning into the freedom that you have purchased by your blood.
00:25:21
Speaker
God, forgive us for the ways that we've made excuses for our own sin. God, I pray that right now in this moment, it begins, that Holy Spirit, you begin highlighting these areas in our lives and that we don't choose to run away from the conviction, but we lean into that conviction, which leads to repentance because it's the kindness of you, Jesus, that leads us to repentance.
00:25:47
Speaker
So God, we say we're not coming to Good Friday for a tradition. We're not coming to Good Friday because it's a religious holiday. God, we're coming to Good Friday to come face to face with you and to see you for who you really are and allow the freedom that you have purchased to be true for every single one of us, God. So Holy Spirit, we say come and have your way and maybe repent and return to you in this moment.