Good Friday Passion Week - Matthew 27

Hi everybody, it’s Pastor Dave Shepardson at Word By Mail with another Alone With God journal guide for you today, on Good Friday. Good Friday to you on THE Good Friday. We are moving toward the culmination of our Passion Week devotions today on Good Friday. We are going to talk about the Cross.

First, if you have an Alone With God journal, grab it and open it to your “Encountering The Father” day. That’s what we do on Friday. If you don’t have an Alone With God journal, you should get one from wordbymail.com. And so, you’ll have the journal that we’re guiding you through in these devotions.

On your “Encountering The Father” page, this is the day that we look back over the previous four days and ask, and this is the first question on the “Encountering The Father” page, “What did God reveal to me in our alone time together this week?” And so, I’d really encourage you to look back over – especially the last three days, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, where we really dug into God’s Word – and remind yourself what did God reveal to you in your alone time with him this week.

And then, in the next section on the “Encountering The Father” page, it asks, “What Scriptures is he highlighting?” And hopefully, he is. This is a little bit of a challenge to say: have you given God the time to highlight scriptures for you this week? I pray that you have, and I pray that you can flip back through your journal and write those scriptures down because it gives you time to reflect on them, to go back and remember them.

And then the last section is “How is he changing me?” How is God changing you right now? We know that God is always, always transforming us. 2 Corinthians 3:18 says we are being changed from glory to glory into his image. And so, it’s super good to be honest about, is God changing you? And if not, then you have something else to write, like, “Please, Lord, change me.” But we pray that you would sense where and how God is changing you.

So, that’s the “Encountering The Father” page. It’s a super important page. We love this page, but it does take some time on your part to look back over the previous devotions.

Here is your Good Friday devotion to get you ready for Resurrection Sunday. If you have a Bible (and I hope you do), turn it to Matthew Chapter 27. Today, I am going to read out of the New King James Version (NKJV). I spent about twenty-five years or so teaching out of the NKJV before I switched to the NLT and the ESV.

Matthew 27:45-46 (NKJV)
45 Now from the sixth hour until the ninth hour there was darkness over all the land.
46 And about the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, “Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?” that is, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?”

Guys, when Jesus cried out, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” he was experiencing being separated from God as he paid the full penalty for our sin. Jesus is not questioning God. He is quoting from Psalm 22. And this is an unimaginably intense cry that, as Believers, you and I will not have to experience. This is the immeasurable anguish of Jesus being separated from the Father for the first and only time in eternity. And not only is it the anguish of being separated from the Father, but maybe even more so, it is the immeasurable, unimaginable anguish of taking on the sin of the world and experiencing the full penalty of that sin, the full wrath of God that must fall upon our sin. Your sin and my sin.

And Jesus is doing it so that you and I would never have to experience this wrath upon our sin. Not because God has overlooked it but because it’s been fully paid for by Jesus on the Cross. This is Jesus becoming sin for us, becoming our sin so that we can be righteous before God in him, in Christ, through our identification with Jesus by faith. 2 Corinthians 5:21 says, For he made him who knew no sin to be sin for us that we might become the righteousness of God in him. Maybe you want to write that down next to Matthew 27:45 in your Bible. That is the phenomenal verse explaining what is happening right at this moment on the Cross.

And it wasn’t just for a moment. This horror that Jesus experienced was for hours. Covered in darkness for three hours, Jesus experienced the full wrath of God upon our sin. And he did it for you and for me so that we can receive reconciliation with God, so we could be clothed in the righteousness of God, and so that we could spend eternity in the glorious presence of God. All by us putting our genuine faith in Jesus Christ as our Savior and Lord and putting our faith in the work that Jesus has done on the Cross
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Guys, this was the God of All the Universe giving his Son to die the death that we deserve and to suffer the separation from God that we fully, completely deserve. And he did it so that you and I could be declared righteous in God’s eyes, in God’s presence, and so that we could be welcomed into the glorious presence of God for eternity.

Man, I really pray that you get time to meditate on this today and to be moved by this incredible, incredible truth, and this incredible love of God for you.

Let’s pray. Heavenly Father, we honestly can’t imagine what it took for you to give your Son, Jesus, to die in our place and pay the full penalty for our sin. And Lord, Jesus, we will never be able to imagine, and we’ll never have to experience the horrors of the wrath of God being poured out on you in our place. We’ll never be able to fully understand what it meant, the anguish that you experienced when you became sin for us and took the penalty in our place. Lord, Jesus, we are left in awe. We are left in awe that you would do this for us, that you would leave the throne room of Heaven to become the perfect sacrifice to pay completely for our sin. And so, Lord, all we can do is receive you as our Saviour and our Lord and give you our life in return. Lord, you’ve given us eternal life. You’ve given us the righteousness of God and freedom from being separated from God for eternity. Lord, in response, we give you our life. We surrender our life to you. We make you our Lord, and we thank you for being our Saviour. In your precious, precious name, Jesus, amen.

Amen, guys. Alright. That’s a Good Friday devotion for you. I pray that you would take it as you go today. If you need an Alone With God journal, you can get one at wordbymail.com. You can find out about this Bible-teaching ministry there. And if you need anything at all, you can text us at (877) 790-WORD. (877) 790-9673. Text us for any reason, and we’ll reply back to you. Love you guys. Thanks for being part of the Word By Mail family. See you soon. Bye-bye.