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Good morning my “Walking with Jesus” friends, I greet you today in the name of the crucified Jesus, who on this weekend, nearly 2000 years ago, gave His life so you and I could have new life, free from our sin guilt! This is a special SATURDAY edition of “Walking with Jesus” because, this Saturday is unlike any other in the year.
Today, “Dark Saturday”, the day between Crucifixion Friday and Resurrection Sunday, I’d like to give you a fresh perspective. There is little detail in the Gospels about what took place on this day. Matthew tells us in his chapter 27:62-66 that on this day “,,,the chief priests and Pharisees went to Pilate.” They asked that he would issue an order to make the tomb of Jesus as secure as possible, fearing the disciples might steal His body and claim a resurrection had taken place. So Pilate ordered that the tomb be secured and sealed with the official seal of Rome and a 24 hour guard be placed at the tomb.
It was the Jewish Passover Sabbath, and overcrowded Jerusalem, with thousands of Passover visitors was busy with the special Passover Sabbath celebration. But for the friends and disciples of Jesus, we can imagine they were in quiet seclusion, distraught, trying to understand what it all could possibly mean. Their friend, their teacher, their Lord was dead and buried. What could the future possibly hold for them now?
Did you know there is a very significant Old Testament chapter, Isaiah 53, written 700 years before Jesus was born which speaks to this dark day? The Holy Spirit led the prophet Isaiah to write amazing detail of what Jesus would experience and what it means, from God’s perspective!
While the Gospel accounts help us stand in the crowd and watch the events of this weekend, Isaiah helps us stand alongside the throne of God in heaven, and look at it all from God’s perspective. Think about that for a moment. Everything which happened this Passover weekend, was part of the purpose for which HE, Almighty God, had sent His Son Jesus to earth!
Come with me, let’s go into heaven. Let’s consider Crucifixion Friday and Dark Saturday from heaven’s perspective. Look around… hundreds of millions of people here, from every part of the world, perhaps many of your ancestors are here. The only reason any of them are here is because of what took place that Friday on a hillside outside the Jerusalem city walls, nearly 2000 years ago.
Let’s stand in the throne room of God, looking at this weekend from God’s perspective. Isaiah 53:1 asks the question God was asking then and now, as it all unfolded: “Who has believed our message and to whom has the arm of the LORD been revealed?” (Is. 53:1) This, the most important weekend in human history, the weekend in which God would pay the sin price for all humanity… who will believe it? Down through the generations, who will understand what God has revealed about Himself and His holiness, but also His love for humanity and His mercy, through the events of this weekend? Do we understand it my friends? Have we allowed these events to change our lives? And what about the majority of the people where you live?
“He grew up before him like a tender shoot, a like a root out of dry ground. He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to Him, nothing in His appearance that we should desire Him.” (53:2) Jesus grew up like any other young boy in Nazareth in the first century Palestine area of the Roman Empire. There was nothing unusual about Jesus in appearance or his experiences which would draw people to be amazed by him as a boy or teenager.
“He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and familiar with suffering. Like one from whom men hid their faces, He was despised, and we esteemed Him not.” (53:3) This one verse describes Jesus’ adult experience beginning with the day He was run out of Nazareth, His hometown, when He read the Scriptures in the Synagogue, and declared that He was the fulfillment of those Scriptures (Luke 4:21), all the way to His crucifixion during Passover weekend. While His miracles were celebrated, He suffered the doubts, the ridicule, the skeptical questions of people constantly.
“Surely He took up our infirmities and carried our sorrows, yet we considered Him stricken by God, smitten by Him and afflicted.” (53:4) Jesus was wonderfully compassionate. He healed and helped many people with the burdens of life they carried. Yet it was God who poured out His wrath on Jesus for the sins of our world.
“He was pierced for our transgressions, He was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon Him and by His wounds we are healed.” (53:5) This is an astounding statement. The horrific things which were done to Jesus were done for us! He had committed no crime, He was sinless. The nails driven through His hands and feet, the crown of thorns crushed down on His head, the beatings from the soldiers, the agony beyond description, was all God’s justice poured out on the wickedness of humanity. Jesus took our place. He took our sin guilt upon Him, and thus He received the full outpouring of God’s sin punishment on Him. What Jesus experienced we deserved, for our sinful rejection of God.
“We all like sheep have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way; and the LORD has laid on Him the iniquity of us all.” (53:6) Every person has turned away from God (Ps. 14 & Romans 3). Turning to our own way in life we have rejected God. God laid all our rebellion on Jesus and then poured out His justice punishment on that rebellion, on Jesus His Son! Our human minds struggle to grasp the significance and magnitude of this. It’s called Propitiation. (1 John 2:2) “He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours, but also for the sins of the whole world.”
Jesus took our place and punishment. God placed our sin guilt on Jesus and then poured out His justice sin punishment on His sinless Son, Jesus. So that when we repent of our sin, God can then declare us forgiven and place Jesus’ holiness upon us. But, it requires that we understand what God has done and in repentance we turn from our sin and turn to Jesus, fully trusting in His full payment as sufficient for our sin debt.
Do you see my friends, our salvation is not a flippant few words uttered, nor a card signed, not even a hand raised. It is a huge decision that requires my acknowledgment that I am a condemned sinner who justly deserves death because of my rebellion against God. But Jesus took my sin punishment. He died in my place, so I can be forgiven by God IF I will fully trust Him. It’s the single most important decision I, or you or anyone, will ever make!
“He was oppressed and afflicted, yet He did not open His mouth; He was led like a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is silent, so He did not open His mouth.” (53:7) Amazingly Jesus did not argue, He did not retaliate. He could have! He had proven His miraculous power many times. He could have struck His accusers deaf and mute. He could have paralyzed those who beat Him. He could have struck the Religious leaders with leprosy or even struck them dead.
Instead Jesus was silent, and allowed humanity to reject and abuse the Son of God. Roman soldiers and political leaders / Jewish Religious leaders / and the general population, even, we presume, some who 5 days before had cried out “Hosanna, blessed is He whom comes in the name of the LORD” as He rode on the donkey…they all turned against Jesus and He remained silent. He restrained His power, He allowed Jerusalem to horrifically torture Him, as humanity rejected God.
“Yet it was the LORD’s will to crush Him and cause Him to suffer, and though the LORD makes His life a guilt offering, He will see His offspring and prolong His days, and the will of the LORD will prosper in His hand.” (53:10) This was God’s great, glorious purpose. As God poured out His justice on the sins of humanity which Jesus was carrying, it was making salvation possible for billions of people who would repent of their sin, turn to Jesus and trust God to save them because justice had been accomplished.
“After the suffering of His soul, He will see the light of life, and be satisfied; by His knowledge My righteous servant will justify many, and He will bear their iniquities.” (53:11) Standing in heaven with God, we have watched the horrific torture of Jesus the Son of God, on Friday, ultimately ending in His death and burial. I wonder what you feel? What does God feel?
We notice God has not turned away as though it’s all over, He keeps watching planet earth. His grand purpose is not yet fully accomplished. Dark Saturday passes as soldiers try to make the tomb as secure as humanly possible. (Matt. 27:62-66) Roman soldiers carry on their jobs as normal and Jewish religious leaders participate in Passover Sabbath, as though nothing unusual had happened on Friday. The disciples and close friends of Jesus are confused, hiding in fear. But in heaven, a smile is growing on God’s face. He is looking ahead. God is anticipating the Easter Sunday resurrection miracle which will shock the world. That great resurrection of Jesus, the Son of God, will change everything.
As Isaiah wrote, the risen Jesus will bring the ‘light of life’ to billions of people who trust Him and what God accomplished on that bloody Friday! As people come to the knowledge, the understanding of what God did on that Friday as He poured out His justice on Jesus, billions of people who repent of their sin will be declared JUSTIFIED by God! “Just as if they had never sinned”, because Jesus bore their guilt, their iniquities! The Apostle Paul will write about it to the Christians in Rome. Do you understand this my friends? Can you imagine how God the Father was feeling as He anticipated Easter Sunday and the HOPE Jesus’ resurrection would bring to our world?
Isaiah concludes with this: “For He bore the sins of many, and made intercession for the transgressors.” (Is. 53:12)
700 years after Isaiah wrote this, the Apostle Paul explained the WHY Friday had to happen in God’s great Purpose: “Who will bring any charge against those whom God has chosen? It is God who justifies. Who is He that condemns? Christ Jesus who died – more than that, who was raised to life – is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or nakedness or danger or sword? No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through HIM who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers…will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Romans 8:33-39)
Remember Jesus had said to His friends on that Thursday night in the upper room: “I am the way, the truth and the life, no one comes to the Father except through Me.” (John 14:6) “Greater love has no one than this: that he lay down his life for his friends.” (John 15:13)
Now my friends, as you consider the events of this Good Friday as described in Isaiah 53, it is my hope this fresh perspective, looking at that day from the throne room of heaven, and seeing it as God was watching it, gives us a whole new understanding of the Sovereignty and Majesty of God and His eternal purpose of making salvation possible for every person, of every generation, who lives any and everywhere in the world. God poured out His wrath on His Son Jesus for YOU and me. What is our response, my “Walking with Jesus” friends?
Bible images provided with attribution to www.LumoProject.com.
Click to read today’s chapter: Isaiah 53; Matthew 27. (At the top you can choose a different translation.)
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Pastor Doug Anderson 262.441.8785
“Let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, with our eyes fixed on Jesus…” (Heb. 12:1,2)
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