April 3, 2015
Tonight Christians around the world are celebrating the Lord’s Supper and the Lord’s Passion. On this day, known worldwide as Good Friday, there are many celebrations and observances of the Lord’s last day here on earth before His crucifixion. Literally hundreds of millions of Christians, at least professing Christians, have been celebrating this day and especially this night. Some have been celebrating all week, beginning last Sunday with Palm Sunday, the commemoration of our Lord’s triumphal entry into Jerusalem.
Thanks to Jesus’ death and resurrection, you and I were brought into the kingdom, and the kingdom moved its headquarters to the New Jerusalem on high. He was no longer a mere king of the city of Jerusalem and the little kingdom of Israel, but the King of the whole universe, the kingdom of God!
He was the King of kings and Lord of lords and the King of the entire universe, as well as the whole world and heavenly Jerusalem—rather than a mere earthly, physical, ancient little Middle Eastern city called Jerusalem. He became the King that He was and showed His power by dying on a cross, crucified like a common criminal. But even in that moment of His death, God showed His power that this was His Son in whom He was well pleased, as the earth shook and heaven thundered and people trembled at the manifestation of the wrath of God over their iniquity.1
Nearly the whole world is compelled to honor Jesus’ birthday and His death day, the two most outstanding events in His life, and one more, Easter Sunday, His rising day, Resurrection day, to live aloft forever in an immortal, eternal body, which shall live forever—like us—in the heavens. “We know that, when He shall appear, we shall be like Him; for we shall see Him as He is.”2
Hundreds of millions of professing Christians around the globe—be they Catholic, Protestant, or nondenominational—are celebrating the last day of Christ’s life here on Earth before His mortal death, as well as the Last Supper. The Feast of the Passover was a celebration, a feast in which the Jews were celebrating an event of their salvation from death by the blood of a lamb killed in a certain ceremonial way that night, cooked in a certain ceremonial way, and eaten with joy and thanksgiving that God had saved them from annihilation in Egypt.
The original Passover event was a happy occasion, a feast, a holiday. Jews came from all over the world, and Gentile believers as well, to celebrate the Passover in Jerusalem. It was a happy occasion, not at all sad. It was only going to be sad for one small group eventually, but at first it wasn’t necessarily sad. The Lord found His disciples a place to have the supper by a miracle, and I’m sure provided the food for them, and they sat down and enjoyed a good meal. And then they had the first Communion or Eucharist.
They even had lamb stew that night. We know it was a kind of a soup, otherwise they wouldn’t have been sopping the bread in it.3 They drank wine that night too. And it wasn’t until they were through eating and drinking that the Lord suddenly took more of a sober bent and train of thought and began to predict what was going to happen and to somewhat solemnly lead them into a ceremony, one of the few that the Lord commended. It seemed to be something which He considered believers would want to observe to commemorate His death. “As oft as ye do this, ye do it in remembrance of Me.” And Paul said, “Ye do show the Lord’s death till He comes.”4
The Lord was beginning to illustrate for them what He was about to do. That night His body was to be broken, scarred, torn, pierced, lacerated, His blood shed and finally His life given. His body was broken for us. He suffered pain and agony of the physical body, as some suffer today in sickness and in pain, that He might bear our sufferings in His own body. “For by His stripes ye are healed.”5 Not by His death on the cross, not by His final shedding of His blood in His life; that was for our salvation.
He had to suffer not only all His life for 33 years all of the things that we go through, so He could sympathize with us and empathize with us and feel what we feel, but He also had to suffer the final excruciating agony of the physical body to heal our human ills, as well as save us from our sins. He said, “Take, eat, this is My body which is broken for you.” “He bore our infirmities in His own body,” God’s Word says, “and by His stripes ye are healed.”
And He said, “Take, drink, after the same manner the cup. This is My blood of the New Testament shed for the remission of your sins. Drink ye all of it.”6
In other words, He was saying, “I’m also going to suffer agony and pain and illness in My body to empathize with you and your physical troubles and distresses and afflictions to let you know that I know how you feel. I’ve been through it. I know the pain. I know the agony. I know the suffering! I’ve been through it all, even worse than you. I know what you’re going through, so don’t worry.”
“Many are the afflictions of the righteous, but the Lord delivereth him out of them all.”7 He was as good as saying, “You need all these afflictions. You’re going to have to have them to keep you righteous. But I will deliver you from them all, one after the other, time after time.” You and I are no exceptions; we have our ups and downs, even discouragement sometimes.
The common people had heard Jesus gladly!8 Thousands upon thousands had heard and believed His message, received it, been healed and fed, and they loved Him. But where were they that night when the religious leaders and their paid mercenaries were shouting, “Crucify Him!”? They must have been home watching television—they certainly weren’t there to stick up for Him. No doubt quite a few of them were even deceived by the lies and figured they had been deluded and deceived and it had turned out He was a false prophet. They thought He was true, thought He was right, but they were so easily deluded and deceived and misled.
The seed had fallen on shallow or stony ground, and had been choked out by thorns and bore no fruit, and they were led astray and led away.9 Perhaps afterward some of them were sorry when they saw how far the enemies of Christ went and how horrible it was. Let’s hope they were convicted and repented and came back, and a lot of people did. There were lots of Christians led by the apostles and disciples who were left, so that on the Day of Pentecost 3,000 got saved with one sermon, and a few days later 5,000 with one healing!10
The ground had been sown and watered and softened and prepared, so that even after Jesus was crucified, many were prepared to understand, comprehend, believe, and receive the whole truth, to then know that Jesus was the Messiah, the Son of God, and to receive Him as their Savior. Not just to follow a personality, a human being, His words, His miracles, His free meals, but to finally understand the deep spiritual meaning of it all, that He was the Messiah who had been expected to come for thousands of years.
Jesus died for our sins; He’s the only one who could have done it. Only the Son of God could pay for our sins on the cross. Only God Himself in His Son could have taken our sins in His own body on that tree and borne the suffering of a dying sinner and taken our punishment for us and suffered for us. Only God could have done that in the person of His Son Jesus.
God’s message was: “Only I can save you; you cannot save yourself!” Christ’s message was clear, His death was plain. The message of God was very clear throughout the Old and New Testaments—especially the New Testament, but very clear even in the Old Testament. Abraham was the father of the faithful because he was a man of faith, demonstrating faith that he couldn’t do it himself, he just had to have faith in God.
Tonight hundreds of millions of Christians around the world are commemorating the death of Jesus. And millions of others know it as well and are hearing about it, knowing that this is a very special holy week for Christians. Virtually the whole world is hearing the message, and even if they’re not Christians, even if they’re of other religions, they know that this is the Christians’ holy week and this is its holiest night of all.
Considering the extent of communications and the dissemination of information today, probably the whole world, in all countries, of all faiths, nationalities, and religions are hearing about this week and know that the Christians are celebrating their holiest days of the year, and they are at least getting a little tiny glimpse of the message of Christ or hearing about Jesus, even if they don’t understand it.
Millions of Christians who understand the message of Christ and His death are choosing this week and this night to commemorate this event, and of all the nights in the year, it seemed that we should celebrate the Lord’s Supper on the night in which He and His disciples celebrated that First Supper.
So we thank You for Your sacrifice, Lord, Your blood shed for the remission of our sins, the New Testament in Your blood which was shed for us on that tree that we are commemorating this night—Your suffering, Your love, that You died for us in our place. You took our punishment for us. Instead of us dying for our sins, You died for them, Lord. And we now attest and testify and witness our faith in You and Your death for us and Your sacrifice of Your blood for our salvation to wash away our sins.
What we’re commemorating should not be a sad event, but a happy one, because if it hadn’t been for tonight, we wouldn’t be saved. Praise the Lord for the night that Jesus died for us! He not only died for us, but He went down into the bowels of the earth, three days and three nights in the heart of the earth, and He preached to the souls in prison down there to give them a chance to be saved too. Think of it! Isn’t that wonderful? A lot of people don’t believe that, but I do. The Bible says so. So why not believe it?11
And then, praise God, come Sunday, we’ll be able to sing all those wonderful hymns about “Up from the grave He arose!” Let’s not just remember the death of the cross; let’s not always be seeing just a Christ on the cross and a crucifix, the suffering and the death. We don’t have a Jesus on the cross; He has left the cross! We have a bare cross. Jesus is no longer there! We don’t have a Christ in the grave. “O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?”12 We don’t have a dead Christ hanging there on a crucifix; we have a live Jesus living in our hearts!
Up from the grave He arose,
With a mighty triumph o’er His foes,
He arose a Victor o’er the dark domain,
And He lives forever with His Saints to reign.
He arose! He arose!
Hallelujah! Christ arose!
—Robert Lowry, 1874
He lives! He lives! Christ Jesus lives today.
He walks with me and talks with me along life’s narrow way.
He lives! He lives, salvation to impart.
You ask me how I know He lives. He lives within my heart.
—A. H. Ackley, 1933
Originally published April 1984. Adapted and republished April 2015.
Read by Simon Peterson.
1 Matthew 27:51.
2 1 John 3:2.
3 John 13:26.
4 1 Corinthians 11:25–26.
5 Isaiah 53:5.
6 1 Corinthians 11:24–25; 1 Peter 2:24; Isaiah 53:5.
7 Psalm 34:19.
8 Mark 12:37.
9 Matthew 13:7.
10 Acts 2:41 and 4:4.
11 Matthew 12:40; 1 Peter 3:19, 4:6; Ephesians 4:9.
12 1 Corinthians 15:55.
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