Good Friday at Believers Center

Welcome to Good Friday service

Well, welcome to Good Friday service, everybody. We’re glad to have you here tonight. If you haven’t already noticed, it’s a little bit of a different kind of vibe tonight. This isn’t a sermon service that we usually have on Sundays, but instead, tonight is a night about remembrance. Tonight is a night that we all get to sit together and remember what Jesus did for us, all leading up to Sunday.

Tonight, I believe that there is something that a lot of us take for granted sometimes. That we skip over Good Friday just to get to Easter. Instead, I think that Good Friday should hold a much bigger place in our hearts because it’s exactly what was before he defeated death. So tonight we’re gonna have three prayers, all of which are built around what Jesus said on his final moments on the cross. Hit the words he said to the Father right before he passed.

In between those prayers, we’ll have songs, normal worship songs. But tonight, I encourage you to stand, to sit, to kneel. All of tonight leads back up to the Father. After worship and all the prayers, Pastor David’s going to lead us in communion. If you didn’t receive the elements and you walked in, when it’s time for that in service, host team will come and find you.

Set your heart on the Father

But before that, my encouragement to you is that you set your heart on the Father tonight. That you set your heart on exactly what Jesus did before he defeated death three days later. The blood has already washed over you so that you can be here tonight to appreciate what he did. Tonight we get rid of all performance. We get all rid of all self-righteousness. We get uncomfortable tonight if we have to give glory to the Father, to give all ounce of praise to what Jesus did tonight. Tonight is something really special.

So before we move on, if you would bow your head and close your eyes with me. Dear Jesus, thank you so much for what you did on the cross. Father, the impact is still with us, Father. We remember how you were beaten, how you were mocked, how you were tortured and hung up on a cross, Father. All for us, Father. Father, you gave it all to us, so tonight we give it all back to you, Father.

Father, we lift every hand possible in the room, God. We lift every praise we can give, God. We use every ounce of our energy to feed it all back to you. Because Father, you gave it all to us. God, every word we sing, Father, every prayer we pray. None of it is for our own self-doing, but it’s completely for you tonight, Father. Father, we don’t take for granted what you did for us. We don’t take for granted that we get to be here together, all with the same objective, which is to glorify your name tonight, Father. So, Father, you’ve already set the tone in the room. We’re just here to obey it. Father, thank you for tonight. Thank you for the atmosphere you’ve created. And thank you for paying a price none of us could pay or ever repay you for, Father. Father, we say this all in your name. Jesus’ name, amen.

Father, forgive them

As the soldiers led him away, they seized Simon from Cyrene, who was on his way in from the country, and put the cross on him and made him carry it behind Jesus. Two other men, both criminals, were also led out with him to be executed. When they came to the place called the skull, there they crucified him along with the criminals, one on his right, the other on his left.

Before the blood has dried, the first words out of his mouth are a prayer, not for himself, but for the people killing him. No explanation, no theology, no speech about what this moment means. Just Father, forgive them. Let’s think about that. What do you think the Father says? Yes. This is what we do. Absorb sin into love. Recycle it into forgiveness. God does not fight violence with violence. God takes the worst thing we can do to him and turns it into the best thing he’s ever done for us.

And look at who the prayer covers. The soldiers who drove the nails. The crowd who screamed for it. The religious leaders who orchestrated it. Even Judas was offered a place at that table just hours before. And if we’re being honest, that’s all of us, none of us do. This is the prayer that opens Good Friday, not wrath, not judgment. Mercy.

Let’s pray. Jesus, your first words from the cross were forgiveness. Not for people who earned it, for people who didn’t even ask for it. We confess that we have needed it more than we have known. The weight you carried to that cross was ours. What you endured, you endured for us. Thank you for a mercy we didn’t earn and cannot repay. Help us to receive it tonight. Amen.

My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

Those who passed by hurled insults at him, shaking their heads and saying, You who are going to destroy the temple, build it in three days. Save yourself. Come down from the cross if you are the Son of God. In the same way the chief priests, the teachers of law and elders mocked him. He saved others, they said, but he can’t save himself.

From noon until three in the afternoon, darkness came over all the land. About three in the afternoon, Jesus cried out in a loud voice, Elo Ilo iluma sabacthanai, which means, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

My the psalm Jesus is praying, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from me from saving me, so far from my cries of anguish, my God, I cry out by day, but you do not answer by night. I find no rest. In the middle of the darkest prayer, for three hours darkness covers the land, and in that darkness, Jesus prays the opening line of Psalm 22, an ancient lament. This is not a performance. This is real agony.

Notice something. The word Father disappears. In the first prayer, he says, Father, forgive them. But here he can only say, My God. There is intimacy in that. There’s tenderness in that. He is saying, You are mine. Where did you go? But the familiar warmth, Jesus is gone. Jesus knows what it feels like to call out to God and not feel him there. And yet Jesus is praying, even here, in the abyss. He quotes scripture. He brings the pain to the Father, and even when the Father feels absent, this is what faith looks like in the dark. Not certainty, but refusal to let go.

The whole Psalm 22 is giving him a voice to the opening line. But the whole psalm is there. If you keep reading Psalm 22, past the cry of abandonment, it turns. Anyone in the season where the darkness feels heavier. We thank you that your son came down and went into that place ahead of us. That he knows what it feels like. That because he went there, we will never go there alone. Meet us in those moments, God. Not someday, but tonight. Amen.

Father, into your hands I commit my spirit

It was now about noon and darkness came over the whole land until three in the afternoon, for the sun stopped shining, and the curtain of the temple was torn in two. Jesus called out with a loud voice, Father, into your hands I commit my spirit. When he had said this, he breathed his last.

The word Father returns. In the first prayer, he said, Father, forgive them. In the second, he could only say, My God. But here at the end, it is Father again. The intimacy returns. The last word from the cross is not a cry of pain. It is trust. This is not the prayer of victim. Jesus said earlier, no one takes my life from me. I lay it down of my own accord. He does not die defeated. He entrusts himself. He commits his spirit the way a child falls asleep in a parent’s arms.

And what happened at that exact moment? The temple curtain tears from top to bottom. It could not have been done by man. It had to be done by God. And what it said was this: the way into the presence of God is wide open for anyone. And the first person to respond is a Roman centurion, a pagan executioner, who looks at the way Jesus died and says, Surely this was a righteous man. The outsider sees it first. The cross makes the way open for everyone.

This is what surrender looks like. Not giving up, but giving over. Placing ourselves in the hands of a God who has already proven he is faithful. Let us pray. Father, tonight we hear your son’s final words, and we want to pray them back to you. Not because we are dying, but because we are learning to live with open hands. We place into your hands the things we’ve been carrying on our own. The weight, the worry, the need to control. That was true on Good Friday, and it is true tonight. We trust you, not because we have to, but because you’ve shown us who you are. And so, in the name now above every name, Jesus. Amen.

The amazing mystery of the cross

Hasn’t it always been about the same thing? Lord, bring us back to simple things. You be the center of it all. My heart belongs to you. My Savior all in all. You’re the one I hold on to for the beauty of your day. Jesus I love you. Teaches to discern the moment when to serve and when to sit here at your feet. Keep us awake to what’s important. Just like Mary chose the better thing. For the beauty of a way, my soul believes to say, Jesus.

And if my days tell a story, let it be of you only everything for the honor of your name in my whole life for your glory, my whole work, for your everything, for the honor of your name, and in my days, tell a story, let it be I do only everything for the honor of your name Jesus my whole life for your glory, my whole world for you all every day for the honor of your honor my days tell the story that it be all the honor in my whole life for your glory my whole work for you all be every day for the honor your day tell the story every day for the every day for the honor of your day Jesus standing for how I love you Jesus the love in my whole life for your glory my whole world for you all the honor your day and if my day tell the story that every for your every day for the honor You are the center of it all. My heart belongs to you, my Savior only. You’re the one I hold on to the beauty of the man. My soul will live to say. Jesus, I love you.

If you didn’t, you can raise your hand. Our host team will find their way to you. And yeah, I want to say just how grateful I am that you’d be here. I know it’s an interesting night, a different night, Friday night. Some of y’all have been working all week, and you’re tired, but to me, to me, I’m just so I continue to be even after I’ve been following God as long as I have, captivated by the amazing mystery of the cross, and it just means it means everything to me to see what God is really like.

Because a lot of people have a lot of different ideas about how they might be, but when the chips are down and you’re in pain, you see what a person’s really like. And it’s just so life-changing to get a revelation of who God really is and what he’s done. And tonight we went over three prayers. Hopefully you followed most of that. But the first one is Father forgive them. It’s the first thing he prays. He prays it for his killers, but it’s also a prayer that he prays for all of us.

I can think of no more appropriate prayer in this time for the world, which is this father forgive them, they don’t know what they’re doing. And it’s a prayer that he prays for them, but it’s a prayer that he prays for you and all the different ways that we all trespass against God in our words, in our actions, in our motives, and for him to pray for you, Father forgive them.

Mercy, pain, and trust

And the second prayer is a prayer that I bet a lot of us have prayed too, which is it’s my God, why Jesus knows what it’s like to feel pain, he knows what it’s like to feel abandoned, and in those moments, I hope that what’s communicated to you is that if you’re feeling that tonight, that he knows what that’s like. So I could think of no worse thing that when you’re going through something, not only are you going through something, but you feel truly alone.

The truth is this the cross shows us that it’s not just that you aren’t alone, it’s that you’ve never been alone. And when you pray to God, just know this that he’s been there too, and he’s felt the same as you. And then his final prayer is this, Father, into your hands I commit my spirit. It’s a prayer of trust. And in his last breath before dying, he entrusts his spirit to a loving father.

So it’s three prayers. It’s mercy, pain, and trust. And I hope that you when you think about those, that you would get an idea that that might reflect a little bit in a way, your life as well. That if we’re honest about it, I bet we would all admit that we’ve all been through all of those different seasons. There’s been times when life calls on you to forgive people who have wronged you. And you’ve also been through seasons of great pain, and all you can say is this my God, why?

But then for the Christ follower, the place that we all inevitably end up at this place of this. I may not understand everything. Doesn’t mean that life has been perfect, but God, I trust you. I trust you with my life, I trust you with my family, and I trust you with my future. You know, the cross is so amazing in that it simultaneously shows us the depravity of mankind and the loving heart of the Father.

And so for us as Christians, if someone were to ask you, well, where is the center of the Christian faith? Well, we would point to the cross and say, right there. And we would say, if someone might say, like, well, well, how do we know that God loves the world? Well we would look to the cross and we would say right there. And this is one that people miss if someone were to ask you, what is God like? Well we would point to the cross and we would say right there.

And what I want to do, we’re going to do something a little bit different tonight, which is this we’re gonna do, I don’t know if we’ve ever done this before, but we’re gonna do one minute of silence, which is longer than it sounds. But what I’m wanting to do for this one minute of silence, if you would enter into this with me, I want you to go back to that first prayer Father forgive them. And just this amazing idea, you know, for for me I was whenever I would go through something hard as a kid I would always maybe I would go to Pastors Marshall and Cindy and ask them to pray for me because I think man their prayers will get through you know I mean like I don’t I appreciate your prayer but I need their prayers because their prayers get through and I just I just to me I just think about the idea of Jesus praying for me and Jesus praying for you too that not just not just is he willing to and he he prayed this prayer of forgiveness not to people who at not for people who asked for it but for people who didn’t even know that they needed it.

And so we’re gonna spend one minute of time just contemplating this statement if you would here we go here’s the statement he prayed for you before you ever prayed to him he prayed for you before you ever prayed to him. So I’m hoping you would just sit in that reality for one minute of silence. Here we go.

Thank you. I want to read to you. It’s a communion invitation. This is a it’s an ancient communion invitation that I came across many years ago, and it’s meant a lot to me, and I’d like to read it to you to hopefully orient you before we receive communion. This is the invitation. This is the table, not of the church, but of the Lord. It is made ready for those who love him and for those who want to love him more.

So come, you who have much faith and you who have little, you who have been here often and you who have not been here long, you who have tried to follow and you who have failed, come because it is the Lord who invites you. It is his will that those who want him should meet him here. So come to the table. Allow me to pray for you.

So, Jesus, tonight, we’re just so in awe of how amazing you are. And it’s just so easy to skip to the punchline where you conquer death and forget the very real reality of what you went through for each and every one of us. And so, Jesus, we’re so grateful. We’re so we’re undone with humility to remember that as much as you we didn’t do anything to deserve it, anything to earn it. It’s just this free gift that you would give us.

And Father, we’re so grateful. We’re so grateful for you, Father, that you would send your son. This was not something against you. This is this is what you had in your heart as well. And so we come boldly to you, grateful, and as we remember your death, Jesus, we would ask that you would give us the grace and the power and the help to live our lives, every everything that we do, every every day that we live, that we would become more and more like you, self sacrificial love, even to people who don’t deserve it.

Help us to embrace what you’ve done and devote our life to living it out to other people as well. And so, Jesus, tonight, we say that we remember your death, we proclaim your resurrection, and we await your return. We proclaim your resurrection, and we await your return. And to you, my brothers and sisters, I say, This is his body that’s broken for you. And this is his blood that’s poured out for you. Do this in remembrance of him. Let’s eat the bread and drink from the cup together.

There is only one who saves, there is only one we praise there is only one worthy of them, one say, glory to the king who reigns, glory to the work, worthy of all. There is only one who saves, there is only one. We praise there is only one Worthy of all Glory to the Lord. One slave, glory to the King, who rains, glory to the Word, who’s worthy of all. There is only one who saves, there is only word. We praise there is only word worthy of all to the word glory to the word whose worthy of all there is only one who says there is only word we praise there is only words worthy of all holy one to four is glory is on before Christ is in a mind we praise you we lift you magnify we glorify we chose you stole you we told you Hallelujah wonderful Marvel Son before Christ and mind We praise we practice we glorify we chose we only we to the one saints glory to the king Yes he rains glory to the work whose worthy of all there is only there is only work who says there is only one We pray there is only work is worthy of

Thank you all so much for joining us for Good Friday service. We have our Easter Sunday service. We would love to see you there at 10 a.m. You guys are dismissed. Have a good night.