Good Friday

I was part of the annual, Community Good Friday service held this evening, as has been for all the years we’ve been here, at the Lutheran church.

This year, we changed the format from the seven last words of Jesus to taking the account written in Luke 23:26-56, dividing this up into four and having four speakers provide short sermons on each.

I also volunteered to sing a solo. I chose The Weight of the Cross by Christopher Machen. This was placed near the beginning of the service.

The passage I was given to speak upon was Luke 23:50-56. What follows is the detailed outline of the sermon on this passage.

• Joseph of Arimathea "was looking for the kingdom of God"
• This is the final mention of "the kingdom of God" by Luke in his gospel account
• The kingdom of God is one of the major themes in Luke
• By placing Joseph's request of Jesus' body immediately after "looking for the kingdom of God," Luke may be saying that somehow, in Jesus and in his death, the kingdom of God is realized
• Just a few minutes ago we heard that one thief asked Jesus for entry into the kingdom, and Jesus promised that he would be
• What is this kingdom?
• We need to turn back to the very beginning of Jesus' ministry
• Luke 2:43, Jesus said, "I must preach the good news of the kingdom of God to the other towns as well; for I was sent for this purpose."
• This good news describes the kingdom of God
• What is the good news?
• Luke 2:18-19, Jesus, in Nazareth read from Isaiah, "18The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, 19 to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor."
• This is the kingdom that Jesus proclaimed and which now Luke portrays as being realized in Jesus through his death
• Why do I say this?
• The final sentence of Luke 23: "On the Sabbath they rested according to the commandment."
• Here is the Sabbath commandment in Deuteronomy 5:12-15
  • 12"'Observe the Sabbath day, to keep it holy, as the LORD your God commanded you. 13Six days you shall labor and do all your work, 14but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the LORD your God. On it you shall not do any work, you or your son or your daughter or your male servant or your female servant, or your ox or your donkey or any of your livestock, or the sojourner who is within your gates, that your male servant and your female servant may rest as well as you. 15 You shall remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the LORD your God brought you out from there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm. Therefore the LORD your God commanded you to keep the Sabbath day.

• Did you catch the last two sentences?
• Are the similarities between this commandment and the last part of Luke 23 coincidental or intentional?
• The command to rest on the Sabbath is tied to deliverance from slavery
• This deliverance was accomplished through an outstretched arm
• Jesus' mission was to "set at liberty those who are oppressed"
• Jesus outstretched his arms on the cross and had his hands nailed to the tree to deliver us from slavery to sin
• Heb 4:9-10, the author of Hebrews writes, "9So then, there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God, 10for whoever has entered God’s rest has also rested from his works as God did from his."
• Through Jesus and the cross, God completed the work of making freedom from sin available to us
• Jesus, having completed his work through his death, rested on the Sabbath
• The choice is now ours to make
• Do we enter the kingdom of God and the Sabbath rest it offers?
• Will we choose to cease our attempts to save ourselves and instead, rest in God's completed work of salvation?
• May each of us here this evening enter into the promised Sabbath rest