Why do we call what happened on Good Friday ‘good’? If you owed your life, and someone came along and gave theirs up so you didn’t have to, wouldn’t you say that it was good?
To talk about God loving us independent of the cross makes the love of God nothing but mere sentiment. Who cares? In the midst of my misery – depression, fear, loss, divorce, debt, grief, rejection, cancer – what does it matter if God “loves” me?
But, it was the deep, deep love of Jesus that kept Him from saving Himself.
It was His selflessness that made Him endure the humiliation and horrors of Roman soldiers inflicting the prescribed method of crucifixion and death.
It was His selflessness that allowed Him to experience the weight of the sin of all of mankind heaped on Him at once.
It was on what we call Good Friday that He endured the just wrath of God, His father, on our behalf!
Good Friday Seen Thru Music Written About That Day
You may not be familiar with Michael Card’s biblical and doctrinally-rich music that helps us embrace that historic Good Friday event just a bit better. This is one songwriter you will not want to miss.
We’ve sung his music all the way back to when we rocked our babies. He’s like an old friend to us!
The three songs that follow are in the actual sequence of that Good Friday evening.
The Basin and the Towel
Scribbling In the Sand: Best of Michael Card
In an upstairs room, a parable
Is just about to come alive
And while they bicker about who’s best
With a painful glance, He’ll silently rise
Their Savior Servant must show them how
Through the will of the water
And the tenderness of the towel
And the call is to community
The impoverished power that sets the soul free
In humility, to take the vow
That day after day we must take up the basin and the towel
In any ordinary place
On any ordinary day
The parable can live again
When one will kneel and one will yield
Our Saviour Servant must show us how
Through the will of the water
And the tenderness of the towel
The space between ourselves sometimes
Is more than the distance between the stars
By the fragile bridge of the Servant’s bow
We take up the basin and the towel
And the call is to community
The impoverished power that sets the soul free
In humility, to take the vow
That day after day we must take up the basin
And the call is to community
The impoverished power that sets the soul free
In humility, to take the vow
That day after day we must take up the basin
That day after day we must take up the basin
That day after day we must take up the basin and the towel
Take up the basin and the towel, basin and towel
Good Friday, In the Garden
The Life – The Complete Recorded Trilogy Of The Life Of Christ
Trembling with fear, alone in the garden
Battle before the final war
Blood became tears, there in the garden
To fall upon the silent stone
There in the darkness the Light
And the darkness stood still
Two choices, one tortured will
And there once the choice had been made
All the world could be saved by the One in the garden
The light of the dawn, was seen in the garden
By gentle eyes so sadly wise
The angels appear, they come to the garden
Clothed with sighs, they realize
The One they adored from the start
Will be broken apart
By the ones He had come to save
So their here simply now to be near
He’s no longer alone, they sit by moan
The Death of A Son – Psalms 22 and Psalms 69
Eli, Eli
(My God, my God)
La ma sabach thani?
(Why have You forsaken me?)
Eli, Eli
La ma sabach thani?
Why are you so far from saving me?
So far from the words of my groaning?
By night and by day I cry out in pain
So why do you not answer?
Yet you are enthroned as the Holy One
In you our fathers trusted
They cried out to you and were saved
They were never disappointed
I am a worm, no longer a man
La ma sabach thani?
(Why have You forsaken me?)
They have pierced my feet and hands
La ma sabach thani?
I looked for comforters, but found none
Oh, how could you forsake me?
Oh, my Strength, come quickly, come
Come now, oh Lord, and save me
For You would never despise or disdain
The suffering of the afflicted
In the congregation I will proclaim
That from the grave You lifted me
In the miry depths I sink
La ma sabach thani?
They gave me vinegar to drink
La ma sabach thani?
La ma sabach thani?
“For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.” ~John 3:16
It was indeed (for us) a Good Friday!
“In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus:
Who, being in very nature God,
did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage;
rather, he made himself nothing
by taking the very nature of a servant,
being made in human likeness.
And being found in appearance as a man,
he humbled himself
by becoming obedient to death—
even death on a cross! “
~Philippians 2: 5-8
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