Matthew 27 | Barabbas + The Cross

Drake Daniels preaches on Matthew 27. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to Salt Company. How are we doing? Good? We're feeling good tonight. That's great. Awesome. Hey, if we haven't met, my name is Drake. I get the privilege to be on staff with King's Church. Excited you guys are joining us here tonight. Salt Company is my favorite place to preach. I love you guys. I love what God is doing on this campus. And hey, Owen's out. Pray for him, okay? He texted me yesterday. Hey, I'm sick. You're taking the reins tomorrow preaching. And so pray for that dude. He's got some incredible Ephesian sermons on the docket for y'all. But with that, he kind of gave me the freedom to preach uh whatever I wanted tonight. And so the manuscript, the outline on my notes might be uh completely detailed in, but this has been in my heart for a little bit. And so uh excited for it because I don't know you. I mean, Carly mentioned it. Uh hopefully you guys realize this Sunday is Easter Sunday, okay? Again, we'd love to have you guys join us at King's Church for that as we celebrate the fact that there is a tomb outside of Jerusalem that is empty. Uh and and even I love celebrating Easter for the fact one one of my favorite parts of the gospel is in uh the book of John. You see, some of the disciples they're running to the tomb to investigate. Okay, wait, we heard that Jesus really did rise from the grave, which they should have known the whole time. But anyways, but they go to the tomb and they they peer into it to see is Jesus in there or did he actually raise from the grave? And what uh the book of John says is that they actually see the linens, the clothes that Jesus was wrapped in when he was buried, folded nice and neatly over as if to say the resurrection was light work for the king of the universe. Okay, and so uh excited for Easter Sunday. Hopefully you guys uh can join us for that. Uh, but if you're tracking, there's a pretty significant moment, a significant event that had to take place before the resurrection. Okay, and it took place on a Friday. We call it Good Friday, and it's the day that Jesus was crucified. And so Owen was like, man, you're you're you can preach whatever your heart is full of. Man, this is what I'm thinking about tonight. Uh, what happened 2,000 years ago on a Thursday night going into a Friday? And so if you have your guys' Bibles, you can go ahead and open them up to Matthew chapter 26. Okay, Matthew 26 is uh where we're gonna be camped out in our time together tonight. Uh, I'll be covering a lot of ground, okay? I'm gonna be flying over some parts, um, giving kind of like the Drake summary of some versions, but want you guys to open up your Bibles uh originally to Matthew 26. As always, we want you guys to see that we're not up here ever making anything up. We simply want to stand on the word of God. Uh, because what what we are doing tonight is we're gonna be looking at the climax of Jesus' life. Okay, really the climax of the entire Bible, the most important event in all of history. Like this is the ultimate scene. Okay, if we were thinking about this in terms of movies, this would be like when Jack gives himself up in like the Titanic movie to Rose, like gives her the door so that she can float, even though there was room for both of them on the door. Okay, we all know that. But this would also, this would be like Iron Man sacrificing himself and snapping his fingers in endgame. This would be like Shrek running into the wedding to save Princess Fiona from marrying Lord Farquad, because we all know women would rather marry an ogre than a short guy. Um this would be like this would be like Simba finally coming back to the pride ran's pride lands to reclaim his rightful spot on the throne and overtake his evil uncle Scar. This is that type of moment because tonight, what I want to do is just in remembrance of Good Friday, is I want to look at the pinnacle of the Bible. I want to look at the most important event in history, the death of Jesus on a cross. And and maybe you're here tonight and you're wondering, like, how did we even get to this point? I don't know if you know you're familiar with the Bible, if this is all somewhat new to you, but maybe for you, you you've never read through the gospels or you're unfamiliar with some of the stories, but all you know is that you've heard some stories where uh it seems like things are going amazing. Like Jesus is healing people, he's doing all these crazy miracles, uh, he's teaching incredibly. There's all of these crowds coming to follow him. And so, how do we get from like those moments to this moment here where he goes to the cross? Like, how do we get there? Well, as we progress throughout the gospels and the life of Jesus, we see that Jesus has kind of gotten sideways with some of the uh religious leaders and some of the secular leaders of the day. Okay, the religious leaders were jealous of Jesus because he had been threatening their authority in the religious realm. The secular leaders were kind of annoyed with Jesus because he was a little bit of a nuisance. He didn't, you know, tremble at the almighty power of Rome. The Jewish individuals of the day, they were hoping for this Messiah that was gonna come and kind of help them overtake Rome and the oppression that Rome had over them. And so they were they were kind of bummed when they realized, hey, this Jesus, he's gonna not gonna come in this power and might and completely overtake Rome like we thought. And the disciples, they were just overall kind of confused about who Jesus was like. Jesus had been telling them over and over again, this is my identity, and yet we see by the end of tonight, on Thursday, 2,000 years ago, by the end of the night, all of his disciples abandoned him. One betrays him, one denies him. And so we get to this place where we're like, man, how did Jesus go from all these amazing things to eventually to the cross? And that's what I want to look at tonight because everything in the Bible, from Genesis 3, when we see sin enter into the world and fracture the cosmos all the way until this moment, every single point of the Bible has been like a highway leading to this exact moment that God had orchestrated and purposed all of human history to land us here in Matthew 26. And so tonight I simply want to look at this monumental moment in kind of two different realms. I want to see the story of this man named Barabbas and how he fits into the picture of the cross. And then I actually just want to look at the cross and what Jesus accomplished on the cross. But we're gonna start in Matthew chapter 26 in verse 1. When you got it, say I got it. Let's go. When Jesus had finished saying all these things, he told his disciples, You know that the Passover takes place after two days, and that the Son of Man will be handed over to be crucified. Then the chief priests and the elders of the people assembled in the courtyard of the high priest, who is named Caiaphas, and they conspired to arrest Jesus in the treacherous way and kill him. Not during the festival, they said, so that there won't be an uproar among the people. Okay, this will kind of help us get our basis right. We're 26 chapters into the Gospel of Matthew. We've seen 26 chapters of Jesus displaying through his words and through his works who he is. And yet, even with these displays of greatness, even with all these miracles, even with these unbelievable teachings, we see that the leadership of the Jewish nation wants Jesus dead. Okay, Jesus all throughout the Gospels. Again, he has been challenging their authority. He had proven through his works and his words that he really is God in the flesh, that he is the Son of God, and yet they didn't like that and they wanted him dead. And yet with Jesus' kind of rise in popularity, all of these crowds coming in to see him, the religious leaders of the day, they know, okay, we can't arrest Jesus in broad daylight, or else there's going to be an uproar among the people. And so what happens is that they know they need to get Jesus alone. And so we end up seeing that Judas, one of the disciples of Jesus, he goes and he comes to the religious leaders of the day and he says, Hey, I know just for 30 pieces of silver, basically a day's wage, I know where you guys can get to Jesus, where he will be alone, isolated, and vulnerable. A place where you can go and get him, where he won't be able, or nobody would be able to cause an uproar. And here's the irony in all of it is that they think, I love the way Matthew and Mark say it in their gospels, they think they're about to get to Jesus by stealth, but Jesus already knows he's going to die. Okay, he came to earth knowing that this was his purpose. He came, he lived to die. And so, sorry guys, sorry, religious leaders, Jesus already knows it. In fact, all of it, like the betrayal of Judas, the abandonment of his friends and disciples, even this exact moment where Jesus was being arrested, none of that's a mystery to Jesus in this moment. Okay, he's not caught off guard here. He knows that his time has come. And so Jesus, he gets arrested and betrayed and then put on trial by the Jewish leaders of the day, which by the way, this is like Thursday night going into this. Like, right, this is like right about now. Jesus has his last supper with the disciples, and then right after this is happening, he gets betrayed, he gets arrested, and then he kind of bounces back and forth between these different trials of what was happening and the religious elites. And and all they needed to do was basically, according to Jewish custom, they needed two eyewitnesses to agree on a crime. And if they just agreed on that, just two eyewitnesses to come together, if they just agreed on that, then they could put Jesus to death, and yet they couldn't do it because Jesus was blameless. And yet, uh what we see is that Jesus bounces around between these three different trials, and finally he ends up at the last one in front of a man named Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor of the area of Judea. And what you need to know about Pontius Pilate is basically that he was not in good graces with kind of the higher ups, right? So he doesn't want any of these problems with his religious leaders in this Jesus thing. Like he doesn't want that to get above to his bosses, and so he just wants to keep the peace. And yet he doesn't find any guilt in Jesus, and so he doesn't know what to do, right? Like, like he's he sees Jesus, Jesus is kind of like presenting his case, all these people are talking, and he doesn't find any guilt in him. And so Pontius Pilate, he has a choice in this moment. He's like, Man, do I sentence Jesus to death in order to keep the peace among the people and ultimately to keep my job? Or do I do right by this innocent man? And it's in this moment where we come to our encounter with Barabbas. Flip over to chapter 27 of Matthew, and we're gonna go down to verse 15. It says at the festival, the governor's custom was to release to the crowd a prisoner they wanted. At that time they had a notorious prisoner called Barabbas. So when they had gathered together, Pilate said to them, Who is it you want me to release for you? Barabbas or Jesus who is called Christ? For he knew it was because of envy that they had handed him over. While he was sitting on the judge's bench, his wife sent word to him, Have nothing to do with that righteous man, for today I've suffered terribly in a dream because of him. Verse 20, the chief priests and the elders, however, persuaded the crowds to ask for Barabbas and execute Jesus. And so the Gospel of Matthew, right here, provides the longest encounter with Barabbas that we see in any story. Okay, Barabbas basically, we don't know much about him. Okay, he pretty much only shows up in this section of each of the gospels, and what we know about him isn't great. Okay, verse 16 it says that he was this notorious prisoner. Okay, other gospel accounts are gonna say that he's a murderer. Some say rebel, some say insurrectionists, okay, that he tried to overthrow the government at the time. And so, overall, not a great track record for this dude. Okay, girls, probably not the type of guy you're real eager to bring home to meet the family over the holidays. And so we come to this scene where Pilate he reminds the crowds that during this, during this holy week, during during this uh holy day, Passover, that there was this custom where they would release uh one of the prisoners on death row where they wouldn't have to pay for their crimes anymore. And so it's basically like Pilate is setting up these two men on the stage, and to the Jewish people he presents Jesus, the Son of God, or Barabbas, this criminal, rebel, insurrectionist. And he's looking at all of these people in the crowd and he says, Who do you guys want? Who do you want to set free? Who do you want that they don't have to pay for their crimes anymore? And I'm like, oh my gosh, this has got to be one of the craziest scenes in the Bible. Like, what? How can you even compare the two? I mean, Barabbas, this is a rightful prisoner. This is someone who the crowd would have known deserves to die. He deserves his change, he deserves the cross, he deserves death row, someone who the crowd, honestly, they probably don't even want back in the streets for fear of their own safety. And so Pilate, he's presenting Barabbas, and then Jesus, the healer, the one who brings people back to life, the one who can open up blind eyes and heal deaf ears, the perfect one who restores, who gives life, and who do the people want to set free? Verse 21, the governor asked them, Which of the two do you want me to release for you? Barabbas, they answered. Verse 22, Pilate asked them, What should I do then with Jesus who is called Christ? They all answered, Crucify him. And then he said, Why? What has he done wrong? But they kept shouting, all the more to crucify him. Barabbas instead of Jesus. That the crowd chose a murderer over someone who can bring dead people back to life. They chose the evil one over the one who is perfectly just and full of grace and truth and mercy. And if you're like me, you gotta at least be thinking, man, what in the world is Barabbas thinking at this at this point? Like maybe, maybe he's up on the stage with Pilate and everyone, but honestly, most likely he's down in his prison cell. And you just gotta imagine he's he's down in his prison cell, and all of a sudden he starts hearing these shouts of crucify him, crucify him. And you gotta imagine he's thinking that's for me. And so when he hears these guards coming down to get him out, he's like, Man, they're about to give me this cross, it's about time for me to die. And yet, when they open up the doors, they don't give him a cross. Instead, they release him from his chains. And as he walks up and all of a sudden he starts hearing these chants of crucify him and crucify him, again, all of a sudden he looks around and he realized those chants, they're not for me, they're for this other dude, this Jesus of Nazareth. And so the very cross that he probably imagined carrying moments earlier is now being carried by another man that his cross becomes Jesus' cross. His death was now Jesus' death, his freedom came at the cost of Jesus' freedom. And so we get to this point where, man, it feels like I mean Jesus is betrayed. All of his friends left him, the crowds chose Barabbas instead of him, and Jesus he stood silently by just watching it all unfold. And I think it could be so easy at this point in this story to think Jesus lost. The crowds won, Jesus lost. You see, but here's the reality is that Jesus, he was not outsmarted by his opponents. This was no mistake, this was no accident, this was not God's plan B for salvation. This had always been the plan. The slaughter of the innocent Son of God for the redemption of mankind had always been his plan from day one, from eternity past. This was the plan. You see, the Jews, they that day on this Passover day where they could have uh released anybody, the Jews they chose the wrong man. Okay, they they chose the murderer, they chose the insurrectionist. The Jews chose the wrong man, and yet what I want you to see is that God put forth the right man. God put forth the right man in this moment, and that's the gospel. Romans 5.8, while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. 2 Corinthians 5.17 is that God, he made him to be sin, who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. And so, in all of it, when we're looking at the story of Barabbas honestly, we see who Barabbas really is. It's me. It's you. It's us. You see, God wants us to pay attention to Barabbas in this moment because in Barabbas we are to see ourselves. See, one pastor says it like this is that God had to treat Jesus like Barabbas so that he could treat Barabbas like Jesus. God had to treat Jesus like a guilty man so that he could treat guilty men like the perfect son of God. God had to treat Jesus like he should have treated you so he could treat you like Jesus. You see, guys, and let me tell you what, your your the greatest battle in your spiritual walk, the greatest battle in your walk with Jesus, it's not gonna be your disciplines, it's not gonna be your devotions, it's not gonna be your focus. No, the greatest, the hardest thing in your spiritual walk is going to be believing the gospel over and over and over and over and over again, that we have a God whose love is so deep and so wide and so vast and so expansive and so scandalous and so amazing that when we deserve death, that when we deserve our shame, that when we deserve our guilt, that when we deserve our cross, we have a God who would step forward in that moment and he says, Let them go, I'll take their place. That's the kind of king that we serve. You see, Saul Company, Jesus, he did not just die on the cross for you, even though that's true, Jesus died on the cross instead of you. That's the gospel. And man, we have no idea how Barabbas responded in this moment. I don't, I honestly don't think the gospel writers were too concerned about this. We have no idea. Did he thank Jesus? Did he continue to live his life how he wanted? I don't know, but I think really what's happening in this moment is that the gospel writers want to turn the mirror on us. How are we going to respond? How are we going to respond to a king who would take our place, who would take our shame, who would take our guilt? And so that's the encounter with Barabbas, and it's an un, it's a scandalous encounter. It is crazy, and yet it's not even the crazy thing that Jesus did on this day. There's another encounter that we need to get to, another lens that we need to focus on. It's the ultimate one, and so let's move down to verse 32. Jesus, he has now begun his journey to the cross. And it says this. As they were going out, they found a Cyrene man named Simon. They forced him to carry his cross. And they came to a place called Golgotha, which means place of the skull, they gave him wine mixed with gall to drink. But when he had tasted it, he refused to drink it. And after crucifying him, they divided his clothes by casting lots, and they sat him down and were guarding him there. Above his head, they put up the charge against him, writing, This is Jesus, the King of the Jews. They didn't mean that in that moment. You see, the Gospels, they don't give too much details. They don't give us too much details about the cross. And honestly, though they didn't need to. People of this day would have been really familiar with it. But here's just kind of a brief snapshot of what Jesus would have gone through as he carried his cross. You see, Roman crucifixion, it it wasn't an efficient way to kill someone. And that's not the point. Okay, it was designed for maximum pain and suffering and humiliation. We get this idea of excruciating pain from this idea of crucifixion. And so the Romans, what what they did was that they made the cross so unbearable, so brutal, so horrific to look at, that it had just as much to do with dissuading other criminals from committing crimes as it actually did putting someone to death. And so Jesus in in this moment, I mean, his face would have been completely battered. He would have been totally unrecognizable. His back would have been completely open. You probably could have seen his spine from all the whips and the flogging and everything that he had gone through. His nervous system would have gone in almost complete shock at this moment. And the point, like the point of his physical suffering, it would have been almost unbearable. He's almost unconscious from all the pain and all the physical suffering. And I think, man, there's a few errors that we can make when we're looking at the physical suffering of Jesus. And the first one you can do, and maybe you're tempted to already do this in this moment, is just to not even want to think about it. To just look away, like, no, I don't, I don't want to think about Jesus going to the cross for me. I don't want to envision that. I don't want to even think about that. But I at least think that we have to look at it in this moment because in it, we see the unbelievable love of Jesus as he wants to carry out his Father's will and as he wants to bring humanity back to him through the redemption of his blood. And so I think the first error that we make when thinking about the suffering of Jesus is to just want to look away, to not even think about it. And yeah, I think that the second error that we can make when we think about the suffering of Jesus is to think that the physical suffering was the extent of his suffering, because it wasn't. And so look down at verse 45. It says, From noon until three in the afternoon, darkness came over the whole land. About three in the afternoon, Jesus cried out with a loud voice, Ela, Ela, lema Sabactani, that is, my God, my God, why have you abandoned me? You see, in Jesus' deepest moment of pain, in his worst hour, he cries out, and what he cries out is actually scripture. It's a quotation from Psalm 22, and we see that the pain that he cries out about, it's not about the physical pain in this moment. He's not crying out about the crown of thorns in his head or the nails in his feet or in his arms. He's not crying out about the social pain from his friends abandoning him and the humiliation of dragging through the streets of Jerusalem. No, he was crying out about the spiritual pain. My God, my God, why have you abandoned me? Or why have you forsaken me? You see, the deepest pain that was happening in this moment was the spiritual pain. Because what we know is that many people throughout history, in this time, especially, had gone through crucifixion. Like this wasn't a novelty thing for Jesus to do, but nobody had gone through what Jesus had gone through in this moment. Because in this moment, Jesus was completely forsaken by God so that we wouldn't have to be. Jesus, he drinks the full cup of God's wrath so that we can have peace with God. Jesus, he experiences hell on earth so that we can experience heaven with him. Jesus, he takes on all the sins, past, present, and future, in one moment so that we could enter into his presence. And guys, guess what? That's why we call it Good Friday. Not because what happened that day on the surface was good. No, it was horrific and brutal. But in it we see that the worst thing that has ever happened in human history, the murder of the Son of God, turned out to be the greatest thing, the best thing that ever happened in human history. Because what we see on this Good Friday, we see that only God Himself, this infinite being. Why did Jesus have to be the one to die on a cross? Well, because it was only an infinite being, God Himself, that could handle the weight and the guilt and the infinite sin that we had against our Creator. And yet, the very worst moment in history is the very best moment in history for those in Christ. It's the very best moment. That's why we call it Good Friday. It's not because these events are awesome, but it's because of what happened as a result, that God could redeem anything for good, including our own sin. I mean, I have so much more in my notes, so much more that I'd love to talk about, and yet we're we're running low on time for what I want to do. And so this is what I want to do to close. I think if you're like me, uh you can get somewhat caught up in the facts and the story of this Good Friday and the cross and the events around it, and yet we can forget that this actually matters for us today. That this wasn't just something for 2,000 years ago, but it means something for us here in Denton, Texas, as well. You see, sometimes I think we can think about the cross and think about Christ and be like, man, yeah, that was good. Like I'm thankful for what happened 2,000 years ago, but I don't know like how this affects me today. Or we can think, yeah, like following Jesus and placing my faith in him. It's a great decision for my future. I just don't know how much it impacts me today. And what I want to do to close our time is just show some applications for how Jesus dying on the cross, this Good Friday, is good news for us right now, and some facts around this. And so everything I'm about to say, man, would be some things that if I could go back and sit down with the college version of Drake, I would love to share with him these three things. Like these three, these three things are things that are 100% true of you if you are in Christ because of Good Friday. And so tomorrow, when hopefully you're thinking about the things of like Good Friday, what did Jesus do for me? I hope that you can think about these three truths, because these three truths are 100% true for you today if you've placed your faith in Jesus. And number one is this is you can't save yourself. You can't save yourself. You see, what the story, what Good Friday shows us, and I hope you've heard this before, we've said it here before, is that you can kind of summarize the gospel in four words. Jesus in my place. You see, here's the here's the reality, and we got to keep beating this drum over and over and over again because I know there's so many people with this temptation, but here's the reality is that thinking you can earn your way to heaven, thinking your good works, your good deeds, your good acts, your good anything can get you the approval and the smile of God. It's not just a wrong way to think about salvation according to the gospel, it's actually unbelievably offensive to God, and here's why. Because if we think that there was any other way, like if there was any other way for you to be saved, I think God could have figured that out. I think God would have picked another way for you to be saved. Rather than the father crushing his beloved son, if there was any other way, a less brutal way, I think God could have figured it out. But this was the only way. It was the only way for us to be saved because you can't save yourself. No resume you put together will ever be enough to make you holy before God. Okay, no good deeds, no works, no sacrifices, no confessions you make on your own will ever stack up enough. No matter if you're amazing for your entire life, you think that you are the best in your class, it's not going to stack up enough for heaven. It is impossible. You see, the cross and Jesus on the cross, breathing his last, this is what it shows us is that we aren't saved because of how committed we are to Jesus. We are saved because of how committed Jesus is to us. Okay, we we aren't saved because of how much we love Jesus. We are saved because of how much he first loved us. And so that's the first truth because of Jesus dying on the cross. The second truth that the cross shows us the thing that is 100% true of you because of Good Friday is this is that you are completely forgiven and fully loved. You are completely forgiven and fully loved. You see, the beauty of the gospel is not just that Christ has forgiven us, though that's amazing. The beauty of the gospel is that not only does Christ forgive us, but he also gives us his righteousness. That Jesus, in this moment on Good Friday, he took on all of our sin, all of our pain, all of our embarrassment. He took all of that to the cross, and in its place, we get his righteousness. It's what theologians have called the great exchange. And that's so important because as I meet with people, as I examine my own heart, here's what tends to happen is I think that we can tend to think of Jesus' love kind of like uh like a whiteboard where you would write something on it, and then when you erase it, you can still see like the marks, right? Like you can still see, well, okay, I wrote something there, but but my sins have been erased. And we think, all right, you know, like Jesus, he's he's forgiven me and I'm thankful for that. He's kind of erased it. But honestly, if Jesus wanted to, he could go right back to that whiteboard and say, look what you did. And he could throw it right back in my face. I think at least that's the posture of my own heart. But because of the cross, because of the gospel, here's what I want you to see is you aren't just a cleaner, wiped off version of yourself. No, you are a new creation. The old is gone, the new has come. You are basically a new whiteboard. Okay, you have his righteousness. And so maybe as man, we start to wind down the semester, we finish up the semester. I know that there are some people in this room because this was me, my junior year of college, and you're in this room with the semester winding down, and you think, I blew it. I blew it. I messed up, I went, I went farther than I wanted to in some areas. I stayed longer than I should have. I shouldn't have let my eyes wander there. I shouldn't have let my hands go there, I shouldn't have done those types of things. But I want you to know that on your worst days, on your darkest moments, your ugliest moments, if you are in Christ, you are completely forgiven in Christ. Completely forgiven, fully loved and completely given. I mean, I'm sure that there are people walking in here tonight and you feel like you're carrying so much pain, you're carrying so much shame, and you just don't know. I just don't know if Jesus can carry this. I don't know if he can do it. And I want you to know, scholars estimate that when Jesus carried this cross up this mount towards Golgotha, they estimated that the cross weighed about 200 pounds. And yet that had no comparison to the weight of shame and guilt that he was carrying for us. It was like Jesus was carrying us up the mount. And so for me, man, I'm thinking, Jesus, you carried me. I'm thinking you carried me up the mountain. You carried all of my shame, all of my guilt, all of my mistakes, all of my shortcomings so that I wouldn't have to. Completely forgiven. And some of you are like, man, but Drake, you just don't know my story. Like, you have no idea what I've done. And I want to say, yes, I don't know your story, but I do know our Savior. Okay, I know what happened on this Good Friday. I know what happens. If you place your faith in him, fully forgiven, completely loved. That is true for every single person in Christ. And I want you to feel that. I want you to understand the gospel goodness that comes from this moment. No shame, no guilt, no mistake has more power than the cross. You can't outsend the cross. You can't do it. And so you're completely forgiven, you are fully loved. And the last thing that I want us to see is that because Jesus died on the cross, we can defeat the very sins that put Jesus on the cross. Because Jesus died on the cross, we can defeat the very sins that put Jesus on the cross. So this is the other side of the coin is that absolutely you need to see that you are completely forgiven from your sin. You need to see that it was your sin, like that song, it was my sin that held him there. We need to understand that. And then as a result of that, we should do everything we can to defeat our own sin in our own life. That we have in Christ the spirit of the living God who lives inside of us who's able to do this. And so when we think about Good Friday, we think about the one who gave his life for us. He deserves all of our life, not just a part of it. Okay, and I think there's two kinds of pitfalls that we can fall into is I meet with people who fall into both of these. And the two pitfalls with this is that I meet so many people who are just absolutely wrecked by their sin. And they don't know how they can keep going. They don't know if they are loved, they don't know if anybody will like them. They don't know. They're like, yeah, Jesus, maybe he loves me, but I don't think he likes me. And they just sit there in their shame and guilt. And to that person, I want you to know you got to go back to point number two over and over again. Okay, that you are completely forgiven and fully loved. But on the other side, on the other side of the coin, if you are never sad about your sin, if you don't feel conviction, then you at least need to let tonight let Good Friday. You need to see what your sin is and what it does. That it nailed Jesus to the cross. That honestly, the nails in his hands and feet were nothing compared to the sin that was covering him in that moment. He could have gotten off that cross, but it was our sin that held him there. It was for the joy set before him that he endured the cross. What was the joy? It was redeeming his people, and the only way to redeem his people was to stay there in the shame and the guilt that we poured on him. And so I've heard it said like this is that it's really hard to say that you love Jesus and you are fully devoted to him while you are actively pursuing the very things that put him on the cross. It's really hard to say that you love Jesus with everything you have and that you're fully devoted to him while you actively pursue the very things that put him on the cross. Soul Company, the same power that raised Jesus from the grave, now lives inside of those who have placed their faith in Jesus, every single believer in the room. And so the sins that ultimately put Jesus on the cross, they don't have to be the defining markers of your life anymore. The defining moment of your life, it isn't the sin that you committed last night, it isn't the sin that you committed last week, it isn't what you touched, it isn't what you saw, it isn't anything like that. The defining moment of your life, it isn't any of those sins, the defining moment of your life is what happened 2,000 years ago on a cross. And because of that, we should feel this overwhelming joy, we should feel this overwhelming weight lifted off our shoulders, and we should have this unbelievable, grace-driven pursuit to look more and more like Jesus. Because his grace is too sweet, his mercy is too amazing for us to experience it and yet not be changed by it. Guys, Saul Company, this is the climactic moment in the Bible. It's the climactic moment of your life. And so the band's about to come up here. I mean, I do hope that there is a sense of this heaviness, this weight to what Good Friday is. It's supposed to be like that. We're supposed to feel this weight. That Easter Sunday, man, I hope we celebrate like crazy the good news of the resurrection on Sunday, but we don't get to experience the amazingness of Resurrection Sunday without first feeling the weight. Right? Good news is good news because it invades dark spaces. And so maybe, maybe for you, I don't know what needs to happen in this moment as we begin to worship. I don't know if you if you need to sit there for the whole worship set and just think about the amazing love that our Savior has. I don't know if you need to think about some sin that you need to confess from some of your connection group leaders. I don't know if if you just need to worship like crazy to thank God that we have a king so amazing and so brilliant that he would come to earth as a baby and sacrifice himself for us. I don't know what you need to do in this moment, but what I do know is Psalm 5117 says that the sacrifices of God, what does God want? The sacrifices of God are a broken and humble and contrite heart. A broken and contrite heart, oh God, you will not despise. And so Psalm 51, 17, what would it say? Is that actually a broken and contrite feeling right now? That that is more sacrificial to God than any worship song that you could sing, just externally. And so I hope that we do sing. I hope that we give amazing praise to Jesus from this broken and contrite heart, knowing how terrible we must have been that Jesus had to come and save us, and yet how loved we are that he would actually do it and delight to do it. For the joy set before him, he endured the cross. That's unbelievable news for us. And so I don't know what needs to happen in this moment. I'm I'm so pumped to sing with the worship team. I don't know what it looks like for you. Maybe it's praying, maybe it's getting to connection, your connection group and confessing sin, but whatever it is, I hope that you have a broken and contrite heart, because that are the sacrifices that are pleasing to God. So the band's gonna sing. Let me let me pray for us in this moment, and then they'll sing for us. And what you did for us. I'm thinking 2,000 years ago, right now, probably on this very day, on a Thursday night, you had the last meal with the disciples, and you knew what was before you. And so you go to a garden and you begin to pray to the Father, and you even ask him in that moment, you say, Lord, if it's possible, will you let this cup pass from me? Because you didn't want to be separated for a moment, you didn't want the spiritual pain of what was about to happen. And yet, Lord, I'm thankful that because there was no other way, you said yes. You said yes to go to the cross for me, for my sin, for every single believer in this room. And so, Lord, would you allow us to feel the weight that tonight should have? And I'm so looking forward to Easter Sunday, where we can celebrate the fact that our sin that put you on the cross, that put you in the tomb, you defeated. And yet, Lord, in this moment, right now, I'm thinking about how much I should just be thanking you to save a wretched sinner like me. I am Barabbas. And yet, Lord, you let me go. You let me go free. And so, Lord, with my whole life, I want to give thanks and praise to you. Would you help me to do that? Would you help us to do that? In your name we pray. Amen.