Good Friday Archives - Christ Church

Slaying the Sea Dragon (Good Friday A.D. 2022)

Christ Church on April 15, 2022

If you would slay sea dragons then you must go down into the sea. It is dark down there, of course. But there is just no way to crush the head of the sea serpent without going down into the waters. Our Lord’s passion can be considered under many themes and slaying the sea dragon is one of them. Dragon slaying appears a fair amount of times in Scripture.

God will slay the sea dragon once and for all on a future day when Christ returns. The prophet Isaiah tells us, “In that day the LORD with his sore and great and strong sword shall punish leviathan the piercing serpent, even leviathan that crooked serpent; and he shall slay the dragon that is in the sea” (Isaiah 27:1).

But we don’t have to wait until that final judgment to see God slaying dragons. Asaph says in Psalm 74, “For God is my King of old, working salvation in the midst of the earth. Thou didst divide the sea by thy strength: Thou brakest the heads of the dragons in the waters. Thou brakest the heads of leviathan in pieces” (Psalm 74:12-14). Asaph here speaks of God burrying Pharaoh and his army under the Red Sea. Isaiah addresses the same event when he says, “Art thou not it that hath cut Rahab, and wounded the dragon? Art thou not it which hath dried the sea, the waters of the great deep; that hath made the depths of the sea a way for the ransomed to pass over” (Isaiah 51:9-10).

Isaiah’s words remind us that not only did God wound the dragon Pharaoh in the sea. But he also made his people Israel pass through the depths of the sea. We know from Exodus that they passed through the sea at night, which certainly would have made the whole event far more scary (Exodus 14:15-25). Being in that dark and watery dragon’s lair is not foreign to the saints’ experience. In Psalm 44 the saints cry, “Though thou hast sore broken us in the place of dragons, And covered us with the shadow of death.” Now we often wonder why the covenant people must go through the place of dragons. We are sometimes like the poor Jewish milkman Tevye from Fiddler on the Roof, who upon receiving news of another wave of trials, looked to heaven and prayed, “I know that we are your chosen people and all, but just for once, could you choose someone else.” “Why are we in the place of dragons?” we ask. And the answer is God has dragons to slay down there.

This is the very thing we see on Good Friday as Christ, our older brother, goes to Golgotha, the place of the skull, to strike the head of the serpent. It is remarkable that all of the dragon battle stories, be they legend like St. George and the Dragon or biblical like Michael warring against the dragon in heaven or David warring against the armour-scaled Philistine in the Valley, all point to this central conquest of our Lord over the old serpent. Christ is the seed of the woman who ultimately crushes the sepent’s head. And he does so as the Greater Jonah who went down to a watery Sheol. Jesus himself said that the sign of Jonah would be the only sign given to the evil and adulterous generation. As Jonah spent three days in the whale’s belly so Jesus said he would spend three in the heart of the earth. In so doing, he struck the dragon’s head. In fact, we’re told in Revelation that upon Christ’s passion an angel came down from heaven, laid hold on the dragon, bound him with a chain and cast him into the bottomless pit where he awaits final judgment when he will be thrown into the lake of fire.

Now the saints do pass through dragonish places. But the death of Christ, his descent into Hades, and his triumph over the principalities and powers has radically transformed things. We go through dragonish places after Christ, not before. Jesus took up the cross. And we must also. But Jesus said, “Take up your cross and follow me.” He did not say, “Take up your cross and lead they way, I’ve got your back.” Jesus has already passed through the watery deeps where the dragon lived and crushed his head. We follow him through those waters and are promied that God will crush Satan under our feet, too. We are not promised that we won’t pass through the waters. But God does say to his covenant people, “When thou passest through the waters, I will be with thee; and through the rivers, they shall not overflow thee” (Isaiah 43:2).

So as Israel faced the dark waters of the Red Sea and went forward, and as Christ set his face toward Jerusalem and went forward, likewise you must face the dark waters and go forward. What are the dark waters? That sin that you really don’t want to face up to and confess. That family trouble that you’ve been refusing to address. That bitterness you’ve been holding on to. That sacrifice for the welfare of your children and grandchildren that really is costly. That forgiveness you know you need to seek from your brother. That godly decision you know you are to make that will certainly lead to persecution. That discipline and self-control that you should have exercised long ago.

And if you are tempted to say, “I can’t go into those waters, it is going to kill me.” God’s response is twofold:

First, He says, “You’ve already died in the waters.” The Apostle Paul says in Romans 6:4, “Know ye not, that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into his death? Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death.” You are not going to die in the waters in front of you. You have already died in the waters.

Second, He says, “Those waters you fear are now truly dragonless.” Jesus went down into them before you and took care of that problem. And he turns to you saying, “The dragon is behind you, bound and in the bottomless pit. The dragon and his army is behind you, and God has come between you and him, putting him in darkness and shining light upon you. You must come follow me through the waters, and they won’t hurt you.” For, “O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory” (1 Corinthians 15:55)? In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, amen.

I Adjure You by the Living God (Good Friday 2021)

Christ Church on April 2, 2021

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The story of our Lord’s passion is a story that is saturated in ironies. One of those ironies is found in how the high priest got Jesus to speak at His trial, and what the Lord included in His answer. Just as Jesus made the good confession before Pilate (1 Tim. 6:13 ), so also He spoke the truth before Caiaphas—making the good confession there also.

And the high priest arose, and said unto him, Answerest thou nothing? what is it which these witness against thee? But Jesus held his peace. And the high priest answered and said unto him, I adjure thee by the living God, that thou tell us whether thou be the Christ, the Son of God. Jesus saith unto him, Thou hast said: nevertheless I say unto you, Hereafter shall ye see the Son of man sitting on the right hand of power, and coming in the clouds of heaven. Then the high priest rent his clothes, saying, He hath spoken blasphemy; what further need have we of witnesses? behold, now ye have heard his blasphemy. What think ye? They answered and said, He is guilty of death. Then did they spit in his face, and buffeted him; and others smote him with the palms of their hands, saying, Prophesy unto us, thou Christ, who is he that smote thee? (Mt. 26:62–68).

This remarkable exchange will repay careful attention, and is almost a call and response. An adversarial call and response, to be sure, but still. Or perhaps it was more like parry and thrust.

“I call upon you in the name of the living God.”

“I will answer you from the throne of the living God.”

The high priest Caiaphas was a shrewd and hard-edged politician. When he speaks to Christ here, he uses the language of his people from ancient times and says, “I adjure you by the living God . . . are you the Christ? The Son of God?” And Christ’s response is in effect “you have said it.”

And He follows this up immediately by saying what amounts to “you yourself will see the living God.” You will see the Son of man sitting at the right hand of power, and coming on the clouds of Heaven—and this description is taken from the seventh chapter of Daniel. But it is not referring to the Final Coming of Christ to earth. Rather this is the moment when the one like a son of man is ushered into the presence of the Ancient of Days, where a universal kingdom is then bestowed on Him.

And there was given him dominion, and glory, and a kingdom, that all people, nations, and languages, should serve him: his dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and his kingdom that which shall not be destroyed (Dan. 7:14).

But not to belabor the obvious, in order for a dominion to be an everlasting dominion, in order for the kingdom to be one that will not be destroyed, the king over that dominion must be a king who is alive. And He must be a king who is alive forevermore. And if He is alive, seated at the right hand of power, at the right hand of the Ancient of Days, this means that He is the Son of the living God. He is the living God. I hope you can begin to see why Caiaphas, given his premises, was compelled to tear his robe.

“I adjure you by the living God . . .”

“I am the living God . . .”

When Caiaphas adjured Christ by the living God, he was drawing on a long line of examples in the Old Testament. Every time the phrase living God is used there, the word for God is El, or Elah, or Elohim. This is the Creator God, this is God Almighty—this is the name for God that is used in the first sentence of the Bible. Further, this is the name that Christ used in His cry of dereliction from the cross—“Eloi, Eloi . . .”

The Sanhedrin had, in all their carnal wisdom, maneuvered themselves into the position where it turned out that they had God Almighty on their hands. They had Jehovah incarnate in custody. Confronted with such holiness, they were filled with hatred and bitterness and malice and spite, and could not help themselves. The trial was a sham and a pretense. They wanted it to look judicious and wise and dignified and legal, but they were conducting their illegal trial in the middle of the night. And after the verdict was rendered, they could not keep the bile from spilling out—they spit on Him, they buffeted Him, they slapped Him with their hands.

With the truth in front of them, they told their lies. With the resurrection and the life standing before them, they rendered the verdict of death. With Christ the Way laid out before them, they utterly refused to even consider that road. With everlasting life in front of them, they cried out, “death, death, death.”

So what is the spirit of Hell? Confronted with life everlasting, the only thing that Hell wants to do with such life is crucify it. This is the mystery of lawlessness.

How did the apostle Peter put it?

But ye denied the Holy One and the Just, and desired a murderer to be granted unto you; And killed the Prince of life, whom God hath raised from the dead; whereof we are witnesses (Acts 3:14–15).

The thing that made the crucifixion of the Lord Jesus necessary was our sin, but because of the depths of the wisdom of God, and the work of the Spirit here with us now, we are enabled to see the gospel ironies that deal efficaciously with us and our sins. When Jesus, the life of the world, was brought bound before the Sanhedrin, that life was the aroma of death to them. And when we come, bound prisoners to the judgment seat of the crucifixion, that death is our everlasting life. We look at that twisted body on the cross, something marvelous happens. He was hanging there because our representatives in the Sanhedrin had cried out, “death to Him—death, death, death.” And we look, and the only thing we can think to say is “life from Him—life, life, life.”

In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, amen.

Truth & Lies (Good Friday 2021)

Christ Church on April 2, 2021

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Pilate therefore said unto him, Art thou a king then? Jesus answered, Thou sayest that I am a king. To this end was I born, and for this cause came I into the world, that I should bear witness unto the truth. Every one that is of the truth heareth my voice. Pilate saith unto him, What is truth? (Jn. 18:37-38).

And you shall know the truth, and the truth will make you free (Jn. 8:32).

Freedom and truth go together, hand in hand. Freedom is not merely lack of constraint or the power of choice. Because it if were, truth would have no bearing on freedom. You wouldn’t need truth to be free. But Jesus says that you cannot be free apart from the truth. The truth is what makes a man free. And therefore, lies are what enslave. Lies are captivity. “Therefore my people are gone into captivity, because they have no knowledge…” (Is. 5:13).

The truth is what makes people free because then they may act and live in a way that corresponds to reality – the world as God actually made it. Truth is solid ground. Truth is true all the time, everywhere. Truth is granite. It holds fast. Truth reaches all the way to heaven. If something is really true, it is even true to God. Francis Schaeffer called this “true truth.” It’s true all the way the down, all the way up, all the time, everywhere, absolutely. So we may build on it. We may live in light of it. In this way, we may say that freedom is simply living honestly before God.

But a lie wants the world to be different than it actually is. If you lie about what happened yesterday, you are lying about history. If you lie about who you are, what she said, what he did, what you have done, what belongs to you, you’re attempting to twist the world into your control. A lie lays claim to rule the world. It may be a very small lie, a very small part of the world. But in that one place, a lie declares war on God and His world. And you cannot start only a very small war with the Ruler of the Universe because to declare war, any war against God is fundamentally to declare war on all of it.

A lie is also a false claim to absolute truth. It’s false, but it necessarily collides with God and His truth. Therefore, lies divide. And lies divide in the same way that truth divides. Either you believe or you do not. A lie makes an objective claim that people will either live according to it or not, just like the truth. But a lie hobbles you, hampers you, and ultimately enslaves you. In this way, a lie is always necessarily violent and coercive and full of malice.

“A lying tongue hateth those that are afflicted by it; and a flattering mouth worketh ruin” (Prov. 26:28). While God often restrains the impact of many lies, they all fundamentally are at war with God and His world and therefore are always ultimately attempts to ruin everything.

You may have seen the story on CNN this last week reporting on Gov. Kristi Noem’s executive orders in South Dakota prohibiting biological males from playing in women’s athletics. Quite apart from whatever is going on in South Dakota, in the article, the CNN reporter wrote: “It’s not possible to know a person’s gender identity at birth, and there is no consensus criteria for assigning sex at birth.” And as far as I know the writer still has his job at CNN, as do his bosses.

There are of course the surface lies about whether it’s possible to know someone’s gender identity at birth and whether there has been any consensus on assigning sex. But there are other lies underneath those lies: the assumption that a gender “identity” is even a thing to be discerned or that sex is something that is “assigned.” But underneath those lies are additional lies about the glory of male and female, the glory of the image of God. And beneath it all is a seething hatred of God, His image, and His world. But what is ironic is that all of these lies are begging for submission, begging for consensus. There is not consensus about whether someone is a boy or a girl, he claims, beckoning everyone to agree with him.

Lies always invite belief. The truth invites belief and freedom; every lie invites belief and slavery. But of course lies do not advertise the slavery part. Lies are almost always full of flattery. If you eat this fruit, you will become like god, knowing good and evil.

“For there is no faithfulness in their mouth; their inward part is very wickedness; their throat is an open sepulchre; they flatter with their tongue” (Ps. 5:9). Speaking of Israel, Psalm 78 says, “Nevertheless they did flatter him with their mouth, and they lied unto him with their tongues.” Flattery and lies go together. But the flattery and the lies are always a set up: “A man that flattereth his neighbour spreadeth a net for his feet” (Prov. 29:5).

The set up is this: if you don’t go along with my lie, there will be consequences, maybe initially just awkwardness, no friendliness, no compliments, no flattery. And if it’s just one person, that can be odd or challenging, but what we are witnessing in our day is the multiplication of lies on such a massive scale and widespread belief in them, such that now, to not believe the lies is to be considered a threat to the peace and unity of society. If you don’t believe that a man can put on a dress and become a woman, if you don’t believe that two men can be married, you are now a threat. You are a threat to the attempt to remake the world with lies. You are a threat to the consensus.

And many Christians say, why won’t they just leave us alone? You can do your thing over there, and we will do ours. But this is to radically misunderstand and underestimate the claims of truth and lies. And as the lies multiply, the liars frequently understand far better than the truth-tellers, that lies are absolute claims. Lies are necessarily absolute claims because they contradict God’s absolute truth.

This is why Christians must hate all lies. All lies, all deception, all falsehood is an attack on the living God, His world, and His people. Liars may not be consciously aware of the full extent of their rebellion, but it is there, all the same. Lies aim at the destruction of everything. To put up with a little bit deception is like putting up with a little bit of poison, a little be of nuclear fallout, a little bit of murder.

So tonight, we gather with Christians throughout the world to celebrate and proclaim the truth. We gather to sing and pray and hear once more the Truth of the crucifixion of the Son of God. But this is not just a small truth. It is the Truth, the truest Truth of them all. That God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son. And that Son, who is the Truth of God, willingly laid His life down for the sins of the world. The Truth became a Man so that the lies of men might condemn Him, slander Him, mock Him, beat Him, and kill Him. And that True Man let them do it because He intended to take all their lies, all our lies and crush them.

If you are a descendent of Adam and Eve, you have been born into a world full of lies. And you have trafficked in them from time to time, whether in the world around you, whether in your own heart, or in your words, or in what you have been willing to think or do or believe. And that world of lies is not freedom. It is only chains, and snares, and threats, and ruin.

But Jesus came to set you free. He came to set this world free. He did not come to flatter you. He did not come to tell you lies. He came to tell you the honest truth, which is that you are the problem, your sin and rebellion are the problem, and you have committed treason against God and you deserve to die. But the truth is also that God is love. He is not the love of Hallmark movies or Disney. He is not the fake love that is only sentiment and feeling and emotion. He is not the fake love of mask mandates only wanting everyone to feel good or look like He was doing good. No, He is true love, truthful love, honest love, and He came to actually do good. He came to do what needed to be done, not what anyone thought He should have done. He came to take to the penalty for your sin. He came to bear God’s wrath against your rebellion. He came to tell the truth about your lies. He came to suffer what you deserved.

And so He did. And it is finished. If you look to the Truth on the Tree, the Lamb of God, you can see your sins there. You can see all of your lies there. You can see your guilt and shame there, dead on the cross. And you should also notice that Jesus is no longer there. He is alive. All of this is true. It is true all the way down, and all the way up, and all the way into the throne room of God, now, and every day, and forever. And all the lies in the world cannot change it. Nothing can take it away. Nothing can separate you from that love.

And so, all of this is why Christians must not put up with lies: whether pronouns, or history, or creation, or sex, or marriage, or money, or Christ. Christians may not go along with any lies. Lies are at war with God. Lies are at war with His Cross, with His Christ, with His church. And so we are at war with all lies because we have been made free by the truth.

Clean From Unclean (Good Friday 2018)

Christ Church on March 30, 2018

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Jesus is the Lord of reversals. To understand this, we have to understand the backdrop of the older covenant.

Throughout the Old Testament, if someone came into contact with an unclean body—a leper or a dead man—mere contact made him unclean himself. The disease, the death, the corruption was all contagious.

“Thus saith the Lord of hosts; Ask now the priests concerning the law, saying, If one bear holy flesh in the skirt of his garment, and with his skirt do touch bread, or pottage, or wine, or oil, or any meat, shall it be holy? And the priests answered and said, No. Then said Haggai, If one that is unclean by a dead body touch any of these, shall it be unclean? And the priests answered and said, It shall be unclean. Then answered Haggai, and said, So is this people, and so is this nation before me, saith the Lord; And so is every work of their hands; And that which they offer there is unclean” (Hagg. 2:11–14).

Under the older covenant, the unclean thing had the power to corrupt the clean thing, it had a way of spreading its qualities that a clean thing did not have. The dirty affected the clean. The clean could not transform the dirty.

But when the Lord Jesus conducted His ministry throughout the land of Israel, it did not work this way. Jesus entered into this broken and fallen world, and everywhere He went, He made things run backwards. For example, He went everywhere touching the corrupt, the diseased, and the leprous. His was a ministry of contagious cleanliness, contagious holiness. If Jesus reached out His hand and touched a leprous face, this did not make Him unclean. Rather, it made the leper clean.

“And there came a leper to him, beseeching him, and kneeling down to him, and saying unto him, If thou wilt, thou canst make me clean. And Jesus, moved with compassion, put forth his hand, and touched him, and saith unto him, I will; be thou clean. And as soon as he had spoken, immediately the leprosy departed from him, and he was cleansed” (Mark 1:40–42).

We have something remarkably similar in the death of Jesus. In fact we have the crowning instance of it. Remember that when He was nailed to the cross, this meant that He died under the curse of God.

“Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us: for it is written, Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree” (Gal. 3:13).

Everlasting blessing and joy arise from the cursed thing. Jesus was lifted up like the bronze serpent was (John 3:14), and as everyone who looked in faith upon the impaled serpent was healed of the serpent’s venom, so also everyone who looks upon the poisoned cross of Christ with faith leaves all their poison there.

Not only that, but when He died, His cursed body became unclean as well. He died under the curse of God, so that He might provide propitiation for our sins, and this act of sacrifice culminated in his dead and unclean body hanging under an angry sky, threatening to contaminate the land. This is why the Jews wanted to break the Lord’s legs, so that His unclean body could be removed before it could defile their high holiday.

“The Jews therefore, because it was the preparation, that the bodies should not remain upon the cross on the sabbath day, (for that sabbath day was an high day,) besought Pilate that their legs might be broken, and that they might be taken away” (John 19:31).

But when the soldiers came to do this, they found that the Lord Jesus was already dead. Jesus was cursed, dead, and unclean. To ensure that He was really dead, one of them rammed a spear into His side, and blood and water came out (John 19:34). This is a crucial detail, as John makes plain in the next verse. “And he that saw it bare record, and his record is true: and he knoweth that he saith true, that ye might believe” (John 19:35). John wanted us to know that blood and water came out. Why? So that you might believe.

But consider for a moment what this means. We are cleansed by the blood of Christ. We are washed by this blood and water. But this means that our cleansing comes from the blood of a dead man. His uncleanness makes us clean.

“This is he that came by water and blood, even Jesus Christ; not by water only, but by water and blood. And it is the Spirit that beareth witness, because the Spirit is truth” (1 John 5:6).

His curse is our blessing. His defilement is our washing.

“How much more shall the blood of Christ [of a dead man, mind], who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without spot to God, purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?” (Heb. 9:14).

A purged conscience is the work of the Lord’s blood.

“Elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, through sanctification of the Spirit, unto obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ: Grace unto you, and peace, be multiplied” (1 Pet. 1:2).

Sanctified because sprinkled with an unclean thing.

“But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin” (1 John 1:7).

The blood of a unclean dead man cleanses. Not only does it cleanse, but it cleanses us from all sin.

“And from Jesus Christ, who is the faithful witness, and the first begotten of the dead, and the prince of the kings of the earth. Unto him that loved us, and washed us from our sins in his own blood” (Rev. 1:5).

We are washed in an unclean thing and, stupefying as it is, this is our cleansing.

I began by saying that Jesus is the Lord of reversals. Is this not a reversal of staggering magnitude? Just as Eve was taken from Adam’s side, so also the new Eve was fashioned from the side of the second Adam. But this means the one who was to be without spot or wrinkle or any other blemish was taken from the side of a corpse.

The only reason this can work is through the process I mentioned earlier, which Scripture calls propitiation. Because Jesus, the sinless one, died under the wrath of God, this means that the uncleanness of His death was the uncleanness contributed by you and by me. The reason your diseases are left behind when you touch Him is that He obeyed His Father and identified with you completely. This means that your sin became His, and you left all of it there, and that His righteousness became yours, and you took all of it with you.

“For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him” (2 Corinthians 5:21).

Bearing shame and scoffing rude,
In my place condemned He stood;
Sealed my pardon with His blood.
Hallelujah! What a Savior!

I want to conclude with a Good Friday invitation. If you are not a Christian, if you are not forgiven, if you don’t know God, then know this.

With an unclean world behind you . . .

With an unclean Hell below you . . .

With an unclean heart within you . . .

Come then, to the cross of Christ, and touch the unclean thing. And if you do, then you will come away, everlastingly and eternally pure.

In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, amen.

Our Gibbeted Christ (Good Friday 2024)