It's no surprise that Good Friday is about the cross. That's no surprise to any of us. But sadly, in modern culture, the cross has been reduced to a piece of jewelry, some kind of artwork or decoration that we display. But originally it was a tool of terror. Rome didn't just execute people. They made an example out of them. Crucifixion was intended to shock and terrify onlookers, all while humiliating and torment the person being crucified. Because a cross wasn't just about death, it was about wrath. It was about Rome saying, This is what happens to you when you oppose us. And Jesus died on one. Not by accident, not by surprise. You spill something by accident. The cross wasn't Jesus' accident. He said himself in John 10, no one can take my life from me. I sacrifice it voluntarily. He didn't spill his life's blood on a Roman cross. He gave it. And at the same time, this display of how far God will go to extend us mercy. I think there's something in every human heart that demands justice. When we see abuse, we want justice. When we see evil, we want justice. When we've been wrong, we want justice. We all want justice until that justice turns toward us. And justice makes us angry. The world is full of all that stuff out there. Evil, abuse, betrayal. But we're also full of all the stuff in here. Shame, regret, sin. And if we were going to be really honest, I think we want a God who deals with evil. We just don't want him to deal with ours. All over the world today, pastors, priests, spiritual leaders are going to lead people in conversations about the cross and how the cross is a beautiful picture of God's grace. And it is. But before we can appreciate the beauty of grace in the image of the cross, we have to understand the fierceness of God's wrath. Everybody wants to have the grace conversation. Nobody wants to have the wrath conversation. We have a hard time reconciling the wrath of God with the grace of God. What most people don't understand is they read the Bible, they read about the wrath of God, they hear the word wrath, and they immediately think emotional rage. But that's not accurate. God's wrath has nothing to do with him losing control or flying off the handle or losing his temper. The wrath of God is his settled, holy opposition to everything that destroys what he loves. God loves people. Sin destroys people. So God turns his wrath towards sin. If God is good, he has to justly deal with evil. Otherwise, he would cease to be good. But here's the problem. Sin isn't just out there in the world. It's in us. This isn't just a God in humanity thing. This is about God in you. This is about God in me. No shaming here, just honesty. Sin is in us. Pride, lust, greed, bitterness, secrets. Every single one of us has contributed to the brokenness in the world that we hate. So here's God's dilemma. A just God can't ignore sin. At the same time, a loving God doesn't want to destroy people. So what does God do when justice demands payment, but love wants mercy? The Bible clearly reveals this tension in the heart of God. The writer of Hebrews says, without holiness, no one will see the Lord. And we're told in other places in Scripture that our righteous efforts at being holy are no more than filthy rags. We will never achieve God's standards of holiness on our own. Someone or something has to raise us to the level of God's standard because if not, we will never see him. His holiness demands that sin must be dealt with, and somehow, some way, we have to become holy, or we'll never see him. But the Bible says at the same time in 2 Peter 3, he is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance. You got to see the love there. You have to feel the mercy and compassion in that verse. He is so pure and holy, he has to judge sin. Yet he is so merciful and loving that he is waiting patiently while our sinful, wandering hearts decide whether or not we're gonna come to repentance. So I asked the question again: what does God do when justice demands payment, but love wants mercy? The answer to that all-consuming question is found in a powerful prophetic psalm. In Psalm 85, the psalmist pins what is known as a messianic psalm, which means hundreds of years before Jesus was ever born, he's writing about Jesus and he's writing about the cross. And he writes this in Psalm 85 and 10. Unfailing love and truth have met together. Righteousness and peace have kissed. Where does God's unfailing love and his truth and justice meet together? Where does his demand for righteousness and his desire to be at peace with man kiss or reconcile at the cross? One beam of the cross, one arm of the Savior reaches out to satisfy the righteous requirements of God's law, his justice, and the wrath against sin that his holiness requires. The other beam of the cross, the other arm of the Savior stretches out to satisfy the unfailing love and mercy of God. The cross is where righteousness and peace get. The cross is where wrath and mercy meet together. And it all goes back to what we said a moment ago. We have to understand Jesus was not a victim there. He chose to step into that moment as your substitute. On the cross, Jesus took responsibility for what he didn't do so we could be forgiven of what we've done. The cross is where God's justice is satisfied. It is where the wrath of God against sin was poured out, but not on us. God's righteous justice doesn't allow him to be our doting grandfather that turns the other way and sweeps our sin under the rug. His justice demands payment. So he pours out his wrath on his own son. And Jesus willingly chooses to absorb that holy wrath meant for sin so we can experience the Father's mercy. God didn't ignore sin. He absorbed it. So he wouldn't have to lose you. The cross is not where God stopped being just. It's where he was most just and most loving at the same time. It's where his wrath against sin met his mercy toward you. Again, this isn't about humanity's sin. This is about my sin. Your sin. This is personal. And it wasn't nails that held him to the cross. It was love. It wasn't their sin that put him there. It was mine. The shame you carry, the regrets you hide, the patterns you can't break. Everything you're carrying, he's already carried. Good Friday is not just a reminder that God is holy. It is a reminder that God is merciful. His word says in 1 John 4, this is real love. Not that we love God, but that he loved us and sent his son as a sacrifice to take away our sins. Outsiders and newcomers to the Christian faith often want to know why the Christian faith is so bloody. They want to know why we talk about the blood of Christ, preach about the blood of Christ, and why so many of our songs are about the blood of Christ. This is why. And Jesus, the perfect Son of God, chose to absorb wrath towards sin so that we might experience the mercy of God. Centuries before Jesus was ever born, the prophet Isaiah foretold of the day when and of the person in whom the wrath of God and the mercy of God would meet. He said in Isaiah 53, but it was the Lord's good plan to crush him and cause him grief. Yet when his life is made an offering for sin, he will have many descendants. He will enjoy long life, and the Lord's good plan will prosper in his hands. When he sees all that is accomplished by his anguish, he will be satisfied. And because of his experience, my righteous servant will make it possible for many to be counted righteous, for he will bear all their sins. I will give him the honors of a victorious soldier because he has exposed himself to death. As an act of worship and reflection, we're going to sing about the blood of Christ. I'm going to come back in a moment after this time of worship. And we'll give you specific directions on exactly how to respond and experience tonight in response to the act of the cross and Jesus' sacrifice. But right now I want you to make the cross personal. Not an artwork, not a date on the church calendar. But I want you to think about what it means to you. Shut everybody else out. For God so loved not the world. For God so loved, put your name in there. So God so loved your name that He gave His only Son. And I want you to think about it personally tonight as we sing. And we sit in this moment. Just reflect. This whole song will be new to you, probably. But let it settle in. Would you stand with me across this place today? Let's just have a moment of worship. I'll come back and lead you into the experiences to encounter the Lord in those ways. But just let's let's be in this moment together. Come on, sing this. You probably noticed there were unique areas around the auditorium as you've walked in today. We have four specific areas for you to reflect and experience God's presence in a personal way. There are the crosses, there's communion elements available for you, candles, and then our we have some staff members that are going to be serving in places for prayer for you to come for prayer tonight. And you can come to one of these. You can work and go through all four of these stations. We've intentionally made the whole service really about this moment and your response. The cross. Nail your past, your sin, your burdens, go to the cross. The cross is the meeting place where God's justice meets his love. It represents the forgiveness of our sins. It's where we leave our burdens. Paul said in Colossians 2, he canceled the record of the charges against us and took it away by nailing it to the cross. And that's what we're going to do tonight. There are people have already done it. You can see there are hammers and nails, and there is paper there. And as people write on those and nail them to the cross, we will hear for the next few moments the sound of hammering nails and a wooden cross. And it is a constant reminder to us what today was all about. Communion. When you came in, there was a card on the seats that gave you direction about all four stations. But specifically, if you've never led a communion moment in your family, there is a communion prayer to help you do that. I'm not going to lead it from the platform. This is a personal moment, private moment for you or for you and your family to worship the Lord. So we're going to ask that one person from each family would come and get the elements of communion and go back to where you are. So we keep the aisles as uncongested as possible. There are communion trays in the middle section. There are communion trays up front on the far walls on both sides, whichever is easiest for you to access, get them, go back and have a moment together alone or as a couple or as a family. The bread of communion symbolizes that he was broken so that we could be made whole. That he redeems our brokenness. The cup represents the power of God to forgive. The price for our sins. And let me just say this we we open communion to any believer. You don't have to be a member of our church. We practice an open communion here. If you are a Jesus follower, we want us to participate as the big family of God. We want you to join us today. The third station is prayer. We're gonna have some staff members. They'll be designated with lanyards up along the walls on the outside walls of the sanctuary. Um, and if you need prayer, we're believing this is an incredible night for God to heal and save and work miracles. Anything that you may have in your life, he saves and heals and restores, nothing is impossible for you. And let me just say this: if you have never made the decision to follow Jesus and you sense the Spirit of God tugging at your heart today to step over the line of faith and surrender it to Him, you have heard enough of the gospel tonight to make that decision. You need to go to the prayer team first. It would be no greater honor for them than to pray a prayer of surrender for you, and then you can move to these other stations, and they will be so much more meaningful to you when you have had all that canceled by the blood of Christ. The candles that may be different for a lot of us, but it's just another way, another touch point for us to prayerfully invite Jesus, the light of the world, to descend into the broken places of our lives. Some faith traditions light candles to saints or to the deceased, that's not at all what we're doing today. Jesus said in John 8, I am the light of the world. If you follow me, you won't have to walk in darkness because you will have a light that leads to life. And in the opening lines of John's gospel, it says, In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. If there is a dark circumstance in your life, Good Friday is all about Jesus, the light of the world, descending into the darkness of human brokenness. And as an invitation for Jesus to shine his glory into that situation in your life, the larger candles up front are the Christ candles. Take a wick, light it, and then as you prayerfully light another candle, that is you symbolically, ask, say their name, name the situation, call it out. You are inviting the light of Christ into the darkness of your life. It is an act of invitation. We've structured tonight so you have plenty of time to respond. You're used to me coming up at the end of service praying a benediction. I won't do that on Palm or on Good Friday. I won't do that on Good Friday. Because there's not supposed to be an ending to the service tonight. We're not going to put a period where God has put a comma. There's more to come to the story. So no benediction. It'll just be our worship team in the background leading and making this a moment of worship and you responding as you feel led to one or all of these stations. And when you're done, you're free to go. Would you stand with me all over this room today? I am going to ask you to be patient as you move. Don't be in a hurry. We're not. Not another service after this one. Our team is going to position themselves. It may feel like organized chaos because not everybody's not going to the same spot, but it always just works. It's holy. It's sacred. Don't just check boxes. Make it personal. Jesus, I don't know how to say it. I'm just afraid we're going to come and hammer it in or light a candle or take communion and just go through the motions. But God, somehow, would you strip off all the religious formality? And may it be a moment where I feel seen by God. I feel the embrace of your mercy. I see the cross for what it is. It was for me. And may I feel the weight of your love on me. Your attention pointed at me. And may it melt my heart tonight. Jesus, will you make the next few moments holy, sacred, and life changing in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Feel free to move about as you feel led to begin to respond.