Why Good People Need Good Friday

April 15, 2022

Preached by Tony Pitts

*We apologize, there was no recorded audio of this service. You will find the sermon manuscript below.

Good evening. My name is Tony Pitts. I’m one of the pastors here at Community. I haven’t preached a lot, and in a few minutes that will be painfully obvious. I hope not, but I will say this. It is a great blessing to prepare a sermon. To thoughtfully go over a passage from the Bible and think about the best way you know to communicate it to others causes you to think about it more deeply, consider it more thoroughly, and to appreciate God’s awesomeness in a different way. So I’ll just start out expressing my gratitude to all of you and more importantly to God for that blessing. I hope too that you are blessed by hearing it. Will you pray with me.

Pray for God’s grace to convince us of his goodness, our inability to be good enough, and an appreciation for a love that can do for us, what we could never do for ourselves.

So why do good people need good Friday? I’m guessing that most of the people at a Good Friday service know why we call this Friday before Easter Good Friday. But I won’t assume it’s true of everyone here.

And I have to say that despite having heard it said all my life that this Friday before Easter is Good Friday, I was well into my twenties before it made any sense to me. I mean why would people who say they love Jesus call the day that he was beaten and nailed to a cross good? 

So look with me at 2 Corinthians 5:20-21 it’s page 908 in the pew Bibles. This is the apostle Paul speaking to the church at Corinth. He is telling them who they are (ambassadors), what it is that God is doing through them (making an appeal to be reconciled), and then reminding them of how that reconciliation is possible.

20 Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. 21 For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

As I am preaching this evening I will emphasize the definition of a few words. I am not doing this because I think I’m using such lofty words that the average person won’t know what they mean. I will be doing it because I think some words can be talked about so often that if we don’t stop and think about what they mean, they can almost become white noise. 

And so, what is an ambassador? An ambassador is a diplomat sent by a country as it’s official representative to a foreign country. 

As a Christians we are God’s ambassadors representing God’s kingdom to yes… a foreign country. We’re told in the Bible that as Christians this earth is not where our most important citizenship resides. 

And verse 20 tells us how God is using us where we are now. In a place that is not our home. To make an appeal to people who are apparently foreign to our home. And the appeal is to be reconciled to our king, our God. 

What does it mean do be reconciled? 

Again, I apologize for this sounding like a vocabulary lesson, but I think the more we focus on the meaning of these words, the clearer it becomes that we might want to start calling Good Friday, Great Friday.

Reconciliation means to be brought back into a friendly relationship. In this case with God himself. Think about that. Paul is telling them and us that God wants to have a relationship with us, where He can call us friend. Friends with the God of the universe. But the fact that there is a need for reconciliation tells us that the relationship is broken. That the natural state of this relationship is not friendly. The natural state of this relationship is so broken that the Bible calls the person in this state…God’s enemy.

So how did this relationship get so broken?

The simple answer…We did it.

The Bible shows us a picture in the beginning where God and the 2 people he created are living as friends. Not equals, God is the creator and these 2 people are his creation. But their relationship is harmonious. 

Now I’m going to define another word that gets used a lot, but I think often without a lot of thought. That word is authority. At it’s root is the word author. And so I’ll start by giving a definition of the word author. I think usually we limit the meaning of this word to someone who has written a book. But the meaning of author is actually broader than that. An author can be someone that has written something but it also refers to someone who has invented or created anything. You could say Thomas Edison authored the light bulb. Or Leonardo Davinci authored the Mona Lisa. 

This is important as it relates to God and these 2 people He created, in a garden that He created, in a world that he created. The fact that He was the author is what gives Him author ity…authority. And so because God made these people and the world they live in, He, not them, gets to make the rules. And He had given the man a very clear rule. He told him not to eat from one particular tree, and that if he did the consequence would be death. That tree was the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. A crafty serpent enters the picture and persuades these people to do what God had told them not to do…eat the fruit. The fruit that will enable you to have the authority to decide for yourself what good and evil are. Even though they were not in fact the authors they wanted to have authority. And this is what the Bible refers to as The Fall. This is when the relationship between God and man was broken. And this brokenness entered humanity to be passed down generation after generation. Like a virus, sin had entered the human race and it’s presenting symptom a broken relationship with God. 

To this day our fallen condition as humans has us putting ourselves in the position of deciding good from evil, rather than admitting that the God who made us should take care of that. And because of that we are guilty. The fact that we spend our lives trying to suppress the truth that there is a God, and we are not right with Him.

But this effort to suppress the truth, the truth that the earth and everything in it belongs to God. Is exhausting. Suppression is not a once and done denial of the truth. Suppression is more like trying to hold a beach ball under the water. If you’ve ever tried holding a beach ball under the water you know what happens the second you let it go. Whoosh! It pops up in your face. This is the kind of effort it takes to deny Gods authority. Constant unrelenting effort. We do it with busyness, with drugs and alcohol, with self-righteous ranting about the bad people out there. But the minute we stop…whoosh! It’s right back in our face. There is God and I’m not right with Him

I hadn’t worn this suit for a while, and when I put this jacket on and buttoned it this morning…I thought man, talk about suppression. The button on my jacket is doing it’s best to suppress my belly. In fact you people up front stay alert. If this button gives way…whoosh! But really like the person pushing on that beach ball, like the button on my jacket…Suppression makes us weak, it makes us tired, really really, tired. It distances us from the God who made us and loves us so much that He appeals to us…Be reconciled. 

But how? Stop suppressing what you know is true. And I know that is hard. The longer we do it, the harder it gets to admit we’re wrong. We live in a world that use to tell us I’m ok you’re ok, but now it tells us I’m awesome, you’re awesome. Tim Keller in his booklet “How to Reach the West Again” says that “Today’s culture believes the thing we need salvation from is the idea that we need salvation” In other words what we really need to be saved from is the idea that we are not already perfect just the way we are. There is nothing about me that would make it impossible to have a relationship with a God who is holy holy holy. I’m good enough on my own. 

And this brings me to the title of my message. Why good people need Good Friday.

So, why do good people need Good Friday?

Simply put…because we’re not as good as we think we are. At least not good enough to be friends with a God who is perfectly good. We’re good the way that Mount Everest is high. At just over 29,000 feet high it towers over smaller mountains like our own Blue Mountain. This is the “mountain” that you can see from Linglestown Road. It’s slightly more than 1,000 feet high. But when you look at the earth from space…well you’d be hard pressed to tell the difference between the 2. In fact if you were to shrink the earth down to the size of a bowling ball, the earth with all of it’s mountains and valleys would be smoother than the bowling ball.

God speaking to us in His word tells us:  For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts. 

When we look at ourselves compared to another person we might come to believe we are good. Even though the Bible tells us that apart from being reconciled to Him none of us are. But when we compare ourselves to a God whose goodness is so far above ours that the height can not even be measured. We should be humbled. God’s goodness makes our goodness look puny. Scripture describes our goodness apart from God as filthy rags.

This difference in goodness is what we refer to as sin. Yes sin, that thing many of us want to pretend doesn’t exist in us. It is the difference between our goodness apart from Jesus and God’s goodness. Essentially what we are saying when we say we have no sin, is that when I compare myself to a perfect, holy God… I see no difference. While anyone that knows you would say…good luck keepin that beach ball under the water. 

Some people know that they need help. Some have enough humility to know that they don’t always treat others the way they want to be treated. They don’t always love God with everything they have. If you asked them if they are good, many of them would tell you no. They are the poor in spirit. And Jesus said they are blessed. The person that knows they are not reconciled and they know it’s a problem they can’t fix themselves. This is a person ready to answer the appeal to be reconciled. 

Years ago I was teaching a 2nd grade Sunday school class. It was right around this time of year, just before Easter. We were doing a lesson using a set of the colorful plastic eggs that many people use to put candy in. This set was different though. These were called Resurrection Eggs. I’m guessing many of you have seen them. Inside each egg was something corresponding to events around Easter. You would open the egg and maybe there was a small donkey and you would explain that Jesus rode in on a donkey and how that was foretold hundreds of years before his birth. And one of the eggs had a small whip inside. And the instructions were to have the children slap the top of their desk and count. One…two…three, all the way up to 39. 

I was to then explain that this is how many times Jesus was whipped before he was nailed to the cross. And then I asked, does anyone know why Jesus was whipped 39 times. And while many of the children were still somewhat giddy from all the noise the desk slapping had made. There was one little girl that was not. With glassy eyes and a smile on her face she raised her hand, waited to be called on, looked me in the eye and said “for my sin” Jesus was whipped for my sin. 

I looked back at her and said yes, and for mine too.

Are you able to say mine too?

 Verse 21  of 2 Cor 5 tells us that For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

This summarizes what has been called the gospel or the good news. It’s what makes Good Friday good. I don’t think it would be an overstatement to say that it’s what makes Good Friday Great. 

God takes all of the wrath stored up for a rebellious people, puts it in a cup for us, and Jesus steps in and drinks it. He takes the beating that was ours, he takes the public humiliation that was ours, and  he takes the cross that was ours. And the Bible tells us that He does it while we were his enemies.

Knowing that there was a broken relationship we couldn’t mend, and a penalty we couldn’t pay. Jesus who was with God and who was God, becomes flesh and dwells among us. Lives the perfect life we couldn’t live. Dies the death we deserved, and rises from the dead to say to us, now that you know who I am, come and follow me. Now that you know how much I love you, come and follow me.

Are you tired of holding that beach ball down? Tired of trying to be good enough? Tired of trying to earn something that always seems out of reach? Take your trust off of your goodness and try trusting the God who made you and the world you live in. 

And Christians, I’ll ask you. How are you doing with being an ambassador for this great news? If you were to get an evaluation from your king what would the results be. Are you being used by God to make his appeal to people who need more than anything else to be reconciled to a loving God? We’re beginning a Sunday School class next week on evangelism that hopefully will help with that.

And if anyone here would like to know more about what it means to follow Jesus, I’d be happy to talk with you after the service. Or you can call the church, or ask someone you know that’s following Jesus. I won’t pretend that letting go of that beach ball you’ve been holding your whole life will be easy. But, I can assure you it will be worth it. 

Jesus said if anyone would come after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me. This is His appeal, and a new life with a loving God is His promise. 

And God always keeps His promises

Will you pray with me. The Holy Spirits conviction. Know the reality of sin, the reality of God’s holy perfection and the grace that reconciles the two.