Good Friday?
John 19:15-16, “They therefore cried out, ‘Away with Him, away with Him, crucify Him!’ Pilate said to them, ‘Shall I crucify your King?’ The chief priests answered, ‘We have no king, but Caesar.’ So he then delivered Him to them to be crucified.”
Today we celebrate Good Friday. It is the day that Jesus was handed over to Pilate to be put to death for the false crime of treason and blasphemy. The Jewish law forbade the execution of people, so the Chief Priest Caiphas gave Jesus to the Roman Governor Pilate. They wanted him to do their “dirty work”, after trying to release the man, Jesus, Pilate was finally forced to hand Jesus over for execution on a cruel Roman Cross. This was and still is one of the most terrible ways that man has ever invented to execute.
Let’s take a look at the term we use to define this day. We call it, Good Friday? It was the day that the foundation of the Christendom was executed by the Roman Government and the Jewish High Priests. How can we use the word ,Good, to define a day like that. It is a paradox that defines the entire Christian faith. Many times, God uses the terrible days in our lives to bring forth something beautiful, more fantastic than we can even imagine.
On the day that we call, Good Friday, the hearts of many broke, and tears filled the houses and streets of Jerusalem. But if Jesus had not been crucified then we, Christians, could not call on the Lord and be saved from our sins. We are told in Hebrews that without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins. So, while it was a horrible day for those at that time who lacked the understanding it is also a great day as we look at it because it is only because of the sacrifice Jesus made that we can come to the Father.
I Corinthians 6:20 says, “You were bought with a price. Therefore, glorify God with your body.” The price that bought our salvation is the body and the blood of the Lamb, Jesus Christ.
When I was in college I was a member of the Baptist Student Union. The campus minister would sometimes read us his favorite book called, “Alexander and the horrible, terrible, no good, very bad day.” I can’t remember the whole story, but things kept going wrong for Alexander, and at the end of the book he decides that if he moves to Australia his life will get better.
I don’t think we need to do anything as drastic as changing our address; I think instead we should change our attitudes. When we get our attitudes in line with God’s aim then our problem’s seem a lot smaller.
People ask me what the secret is to keep from getting depressed when things go wrong. Well, the first and most important key is keeping your eyes(focus) on God. We tend to be like the people of the Bible. We’re so focused on the problems before us that we miss the solution that is(9 times out of 10) staring us in the face.
We have very short memories; we forget that Jesus never promised us a life of ease and comfort, but rather He promised us a life full of hardships and problems, but He said that He would always be there for us; and He would never let us have any problems that we could not handle. Yes, bad things are going to happen to us. People that we love are not going to love us back; family members are going to die, but in the middle of the hardships we know that God is always and will always be there to comfort us in our times of mourning.
I just feel a need to share with you one of my ATF(All-Time Favorite) verses of Scripture that the Apostle Paul penned to the church in Rome. I’ll be honest when I first heard it I was confused because it didn’t make sense to me, but over the years I have watched as God has proven the truth of this verse to me. I still don’t totally understand it, but God reveals more to me everyday.
Romans 8:28 says, “And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God; to those who are called according to His purpose.”
It takes a lot of faith to believe that; more faith than you or I have. That is why our faith must come from God, and then we can call those horrible, terrible, no good, very bad days GREAT.
Yes, You Can Ministry 