Found on Good Friday
by Scott Hamilton on Friday, 14th April 2017
Do you know who you really are? Why are you here? What is your life supposed to look like? Does it look like what you imagined it would, how you hoped it would end up? The struggle with meaning & identity that we often have and that we see in the world around us points to the reality that most of us have lost a sense of who we are.
So we try to obscure our mess by saying that we are #blessed. We make pretending a way of defending a life that feels like it is being constantly upended. We are lost.
In many ways getting lost is the where the Easter story begins. It starts in a garden. Not Gethsemane with a grief stricken and praying Jesus accompanied by His narcoleptic disciples. But in Eden with Adam and Eve created in the image of God, living in relationship with God, walking in the garden with God and then choosing to eat from the tree because somehow they believed they could be satisfied by something other than God.
And that’s where it all started. The first rebellion, the original rejection, the breaking of the relationship between God and people like you and me. The got lost by getting confused about what they ought to prize most. And we preserve that pattern today in so many different ways.
Now at that point God could quite rightly have torn the whole thing up. Yet He continued to sustain life, He continued to show steadfast love, He was continually working His salvation plan. His goal is restoration. His design is to return you to what you lost when you looked to something other than Him for help, hope or salvation.
But let’s hit pause for a moment and consider once again the question… Who are you? The garden reveals the answer. For before the temptation, before the rebellion, before the apple was eaten and man’s heart defeated and God, from the throne of our hearts, was unseated. We were created in the image of God. He made us to be like Him and to be loved by Him. Tellingly that is still evident to those who know. V. 10 of Matthew 18 Jesus tells us that when the angels look at us they see the face of His Father who is in Heaven.
Maybe u walked in not sure what would greet you. Maybe you have experienced rejection and now that is all that you are expecting. Jesus says… nobody better look down on you or disregard you. That’s what the word despise here means. It is calling us to be constantly vigilant that when you walk through the door of this building or when you spend time with the people who make up this church you are reminded that God loves you. Good Friday allows us to tell you, to remind you about the extent of His love for you. It involved a cross, and the death of His Son in your place, for every time you have turned your back on Him or turned your nose up at Him or turned to do your own thing.
You are made in the image of God with all of the dignity and value that entails. The problem is that you have lost your way chasing after things that can only end in loss. That’s what sin does… it gets you lost and ends in loss.
Yet you have been made by God in the image of God. That means care… it means family… it speaks of dignity and value. He cares for you… and the parable that Jesus tells here is designed to illustrate that.
A shepherd has one hundred sheep. One day He notices that one is not where it needs to be. It is outwith the safety of the flock, away from the protective care He wishes to give it. It has gone astray. Distracted by something appealing that has drawn Him away from the voice of the shepherd. Determined to go it’s own way thinking it to be more satisfying than the route designed by the shepherd. Does that sound like anyone you know?
It is the very thing that makes us lost. It is in many ways the practical outworking of sin in our lives. Inattention to God and misplaced affection away from God. Sin makes us hear other things louder and like the look of other things better… and makes us eternally lost.
Now with 99 sheep in the fold and only one stupid, stubborn sheep straying off we could imagine that the shepherd might easily satisfy himself with sitting by the fire, staying right where he is. But he cares enough for the welfare of the sheep to mount a search for it.
That is what Easter is about. It is the culmination of Jesus the shepherd coming to find you the sheep lost in sin because you have preferred it to Him. You are the one who went astray. I am the one who went astray. The sense here is that if you or I were the only one that went astray Jesus would still have come. He is about the One. He came for you. He is seeking to rescue you. he loves you.
And the measure of that love is found in what the rescue looked like… Isaiah 53: 5-6 sums up the parable, our predicament and what Jesus provided for us by His death on the cross…
But he was pierced for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned—every one—to his own way; and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.
So we see the lost sheep… astray… each of us turning to our own way and then Jesus intervention.
Pierced for my transgressions
Crushed for my iniquities
Chastised for the chaos of my wrong choices
Wounded by my worship of other things above God
And he offers me peace… He holds out to me healing.
Because the Lord has laid on Him… He carried it… He carries you and all your mess and mistakes and sin and disgrace. His cross was for you crimes. His death was for your disasters, defeats and the things you have done.
All your iniquity… every time you failed to measure up… every time you fixed your heart on something other than Him to treasure. Jesus carried it so that you don't have to. Jesus bore it because you are unable to. Your sin was laid upon Him. Your debt was paid by Him… Pierced, crushed, wounded, crucified, subject to God’s holy anger at your sin because He loves you.
That is Easter… and listen to Jesus… really listen to Him because He isn’t just talking about some abstract, feel-good story. He is talking about Himself and the death He is going to die and the people for whom he is going to sacrifice Himself. He is helping us to understand the rescue we need Him to perform in our lives.
And that is where Good Friday brings us to. Betrayal and brutality. Jesus, perfect and innocent. His opponents cruel and indifferent. The religious leaders threatened by His spotlessness, thirsting for and end to this. Pilate motivated by politics, washing his hands pathetically, wanting no part in this. The disciples scattered and watching from a distance, denying Jesus with vehement insistence.
The soldiers crucifixion no long shocking, lazily gambling and mocking.
Then Jesus. Silence in the face of violence. The whip lashing into His back, the piercing of His flesh with nails for all the righteousness we lack and the way our flesh fails. Then hoisted and dropped for all the world to see with a crown of thorns of mocking majesty of the king before whom all will one day bow the knee. Pulling himself up in agony on nail broken hands, gasping for breath to satisfy the death that my sin demands. Calling out words between agonised breaths. Family, forgiveness, forsakenness finished. All he offers us and had to go through to offer us this. Then the final act… He took my sin on Him in such a way that God the Father could no longer look upon Him. The wrath of God came upon Him because He carried my sin. It was my sin that caused Him to be there. It was my choices that caused God’s holy anger to be channeled towards Him. It was His love that found a way to save me from a lost eternity.
He IS the shepherd… We ARE the lost… and He really has gone to every length possible to rescue us and bring us home.
Every length included being rejected by friends… betrayed by those He trusted… abandoned by the legal system… falsely accused, imprisoned and executed… dying in the most unimaginably painful way ever invented… the fulness of God’s righteous anger not just for all of my sin but for all of the sin of humanity in it’s entirety.
The shepherd goes and seeks out the lost… and if He finds it... Truly (Do you hear Him looking them straight in the eyes?). Truly… if He finds you… If He brings you home… if He takes you to safety. He rejoices over it more than the 99 that never went astray.
Get that idea clear in your mind
You rejected Him
You refused to walk in His ways
You ruined the life that He gave you
Your sin meant he experienced the wrath of God
He was rejected by God instead of you
His righteousness was marred by what he carried for you
And yet He rejoices over you when he rescues you. What would make you reluctant to run to Him. v. 14 says that he doesn’t want any one of these little ones to perish. The little ones are those who with simplicity of heart turn to Him for security, reach out to Him for rescue and trust Him with our eternity. When we do that we will not perish. Jesus death on the cross demonstrates what we deserved… and what God willingly gave without reserve so that your eternity with Him could be preserved. He offers you an alternative to the pain of pursuing a perishing path. He offers you the promises of peace today and being eternally present with Him.
He invites you to not be lost any more. He lays down for you the path of forgiveness and healing if you will forsake your rebellion and turn to Him. You are lost because you insist on living your own way. God invites you to turn back towards Him and live a life that gives Him the final say.
Are you not tired of being lost? Weary from wandering. Restless from how relentless life so often seems. Disorientated by where your choices have dragged you to. Don't you sometimes just want it all to stop. Don't you sometimes long that all the things that are going on in your heart and in your mind… that starve you of rest and peace. Did you hear what Jesus said on the cross? It is finished. There is nothing more for you to do than to turn around and trust Him.