Cries No.2 with me in paradise (full)

Let's turn in our books to 520 as we continue to think about the greatest day that ever there was and the most remarkable week in human history. So this hymn that comes from many centuries ago in the history of the Christian Church focuses our attention upon the heart of the gospel, the death of our beloved Savior. Bernard of Clairvaux's great hymn, O Sacred Head Once Wounded, 520.

Grief and pain weighed down, How scornfully surrounded With thorns thine only crown! How pale art thou with anguish, And swore abuse and scorn? How does that visage languish, Which once was bright as morn? O Lord of life and glory, What bliss is now was thine? I read the wondrous story, I joy to call thee mine. Which shall I borrow? Let me find rest to watch thy way. Hear me, Lord, when receiving, From Jesus shall not move.

For he who does believe, Dies safely there. That's a beautiful hymn. What language shall I borrow to praise thee, heavenly friend? For this thy dying sorrow, Thy pity without end.

Lord, make me thine forever, Nor let me faithless prove, O let me never, never abuse such dying love. I gave some explanation, not that one was really necessary for these services this week. I just wanted the discipline myself of standing again in front of the cross and contemplating the death of the Lord Jesus and asking that question that I've never satisfactorily been able to answer.

Why did you do it? What's it all about? I guess there never will be an answer that's adequate, apart from saying that God is love, and in his love he made it possible for us to know his salvation. A great man of God who lived many centuries ago says this of God, For it is from the abundance of thy goodness that thou art good to those who sin against thee, and in the depth of thy goodness is hidden the reason for this kindness. Let's take that again as the mic was blowing just for that moment.

For it is from the abundance of thy goodness that thou art good to those who sin against thee. And in the depth of thy goodness is hidden the reason for this kindness. Let's pray.

Father, we thank you. An old rugged cross becomes clear again on the skyline, and we focus in on the heart of the Christian gospel, Jesus Christ and him crucified. We thank you that you have caused us to take this hour or so to look into your most holy word, and to reflect upon these inspired hymns of yesteryear that compel us to survey the cross in some futile fashion to take a measuring line and to go to the height and try to go to the depths, survey the length and the breadth.

We realize that we can never be successful in our attempts, but it is good for us to engage again in contemplating you and all that you have done in and through our Lord Jesus. We thank you for this week. We thank you for the concept of Good Friday, Jesus and his death for us.

Not just Jesus the Savior, but the Lord Jesus Christ, God manifest in the flesh, dying for people like ourselves. Lord, we marvel. We're staggered at the thought of your condescension, and we want to offer you our humble and heartfelt praise in the name of the Savior.

Amen. So we've been taking our readings from the Gospel of Luke and the 23rd chapter. Luke, as I mentioned yesterday, has a particularly sensitive way of writing, as one might imagine, coming from the heart of a man who was a doctor, a beloved physician, a Gentile.

He had the incredible privilege of being close to the Apostle Paul, and according to a very reasonable, strong tradition, which I think is unassailable, he also was close to Mary, the mother of the Lord Jesus. That's the reason why information that he gets in his gospel that's peculiar to him seems to have Mary as its source. Luke writes with a compassion about the final hours at the human level before the mighty resurrection of our beloved Lord.

And so it's within the 23rd chapter that we dip once again to remind ourselves of the incredible events of that day, the like of which there never was before, and there never will be again, the day when the author of life died for the creature, for people like you and me. So verse 26, As they, that is Pilate's men, led him, that is the beloved Lord, away, they seized Simon, possibly a black Jew from Cyrene, who was on his way in from the country and put the cross on him and made him carry it behind Jesus. A large number of people followed him, including women, who mourned and wailed for him.

Jesus turned and said to them, daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for me, weep for yourselves and for your children. For the time will come when you will say, blessed are the barren women, the wombs that never bore and the breasts that never nursed. Then they will say to the mountains, fall on us, and to the hills, cover us.

For if men do these things when the tree is green, what will happen when it is dry? What is that expression referring to? Well, if there is physically such a demonstration of the love of God in the life of Jesus when he was here on earth and for three years an attestation of God's grace so visible, so public, if at that point when things are green, men so treat the Son of God, what will they do when it is dry, when the Lord is physically no longer present? What then will be their reaction to God's intervention in history in salvation? That is the explanation of that proverbial expression. If men do these things when the tree is green, when Jesus is here in person, what will happen when physically he is no longer present? Two other men, both criminals, were also led 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.

Jesus said, Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing. They divided up his clothes by casting lots. The people stood watching.

The rulers even sneered at him. They said, He saved others, let him save himself. He is the Christ of God, the Chosen One.

The soldiers also came up and mocked him. They offered him wine, vinegar, and said, If you are the King of the Jews, save yourself. There was a written notice above him which read, This is the King of the Jews.

One of the criminals who hung there hurled insults at him, Aren't you the Christ? Save yourself and us. But the other criminal rebuked him. Don't you fear God? He said, Since you are under the same sentence, we are punished justly.

For we are getting what our deeds deserve. But this man has done nothing wrong. Then he said, Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.

Jesus answered him, I tell you the truth. Today you will be with me in paradise. Let's move on in our hymn singing to 521.

Oh, teach me what it meaneth, that cross uplifted high. Let's listen to the verse being played through once, and then we'll stand and sing. Oh, infinite redeemer, I bring thou of our plea.

Because thou dost invite me, I cast myself on thee. Because thou dost accept me, I love and I adore. Because thy love constraineth, I'll praise thee evermore.

One of the great mysteries to me has always been, not that God offers his salvation to the likes of you, but that he has any concern for my life, that he invites me to belong to him. I say that not with any attempt to be unduly pathetic. I say that because it's a very felt conviction.

I don't really understand why God should save me if I'd have been him. I wouldn't have taken the trouble. And I guess the only way in which I get any semblance of an explanation for God's grace towards me is by going again to the cross.

I was mentioning yesterday that I guess I've been at communion, taken the bread and wine a thousand times, perhaps even more. And though I'm guilty of many things, there's never a time when the bread does not bespeak of the broken body of Christ. Never a time when the wine does not remind me afresh of the awful death that Jesus paid.

I'm so glad that here at the tab, we're around the Lord's table once a week at least. And there is that visual reminder of the essentials of the gospel. One of the problems I think with evangelicalism is that we take our salvation too lightly.

One of the ways in which I think that is demonstrated is that we don't really understand what it costs God to forgive. Because we think of the forgiveness of God in the same way as which we think of our forgiveness. For me to refuse to forgive you would indicate that I have never been forgiven.

Part and parcel of genuine forgiveness is an ability to forgive someone else. One of the most trying, testing, demanding bits of pastoral work I had to do some years ago was to try to get a lady to forgive her husband who had lived promiscuously. And as a result of his lifestyle, he had impregnated her with a sexually transmitted disease.

I can think of very few things that would challenge a woman to the depths of her being than to have to forgive in that circumstance. But I could give her no help. The Christian gospel can give no help unless having been forgiven, we also forgive so that we never nurture any bitterness in our hearts.

But there is a sense in which being human, it is easy to forgive. Rather than looking at forgiveness from the point of view of God, who has never transgressed, who has nothing to apologize for. Sin, you see, is not really something that you do against one another.

That is a secondary consequence. Sin is a violation of the law of God. Sin is impugning the integrity of God against you.

You only have I sinned and done this evil in your sight. And the problem with evangelicals and their approach to the doctrine of forgiveness is that they don't start where they ought to start, and that is with the doctrine of God, who He is, a holy God, a perfect God who gives an impeccable law. And if you break that law, you in effect assault God.

And this is the dilemma of God. What does He do when man rebels against Him? If He were just to cover it up, if He were to say, well it doesn't really matter, in effect He would be going against His own nature. It does matter.

His law has been broken. His integrity has been questioned. So what does God do? This is the dilemma.

This is the reason behind the cross, because God in His infinite grace engages in something which shall ever be a marvel to humankind, sinful, forgiven people, and a mystery to unfallen angels. You see, what happened? And what this day, the like of which there never was before, and the like of which there will never be again, the day when Jesus died, what happened is this. When our Lord Jesus came on earth, there was a change in the very Godhead.

I mean by that, that the second person of the ever-blessed Trinity took upon Himself flesh and blood. Jesus became what we are, in order that one day we might become as He is. Jesus, the second person of the Trinity, became man.

And when you meet Him in the Gospels, you see Him as human, but you also see Him as divine. And when, on that day, that remarkable day, He is pinned to a cross, what is happening there is that the author of life is being crucified. God in human flesh, dying like ordinary people die, but in a very cruel and a very callous way.

But not only was there a change in the Godhead inasmuch as God becomes flesh, but there is also a dislocation. This is high doctrine, this is profound teaching, but you need at least to have some semblance of an understanding. Because on that day, the like of which there never was before, and there never will be again, there was a dislocation in the Godhead.

My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? What caused the Father to forsake the Son? And the answer is this, the Son of God, God manifest in the flesh, took upon Himself the consequence of your sin and my sin. So, you see, you cannot really come to the doctrine of forgiveness and understand it at a purely human level. You have to start with the person of God, what God has done in order to achieve your salvation.

There has been a change in the very heart of the Godhead. So, when you start at that point, and then you move into the twenty-third chapter of Luke's Gospel and all the parallel accounts of the death of the Lord Jesus, you are well poised, if not to fully grasp, for no one can do that, at least you are positioned to begin to understand a little bit more about what happened on Good Friday. The cries from the cross of our Lord Jesus, they increase in their intensity, and there is also a diminishing in terms of the public nature of them.

There were seven cries. The first was addressed, as we saw yesterday, to a group of people who were not sympathetic to Jesus. They were the soldiers.

They were the religious representatives from Jerusalem. They were the ordinary people, verse thirty-five and verse thirty-six. When you put what they had to say together, when it is congealed, actually they are mocking Jesus.

They are shooting out their lips, and they are ridiculing him. From our Lord Jesus comes that first cry, Father, Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing, verse thirty-four. And then, as the hours of the passion go by, Jesus retreats, so to speak, obviously not physically, but emotionally, intellectually.

He withdraws from the outside group, and he narrows things down. And in his second cry, he has in mind the thief who is alongside him. And in the third cry, he has in mind his mother.

And in the fourth and the fifth and the sixth and the seventh cry, he no longer relates to the circumstances of the people who surround the cross, for there is darkness now. They are obliterated. It is the Lord Jesus and the Father together.

And the penultimate cry, even the Father seems to be distant from the scene. Jesus on his own, why have you forsaken me? And then the seventh cry, the Father comes back into the scene, and Jesus, with the shout of a victor, says, it is finished. Father, into your hands I commit, I commend my spirit.

Now, there is obviously a reason for us to say that even starting from the theological vantage point that I set up, and coming to the events in this context, we shall never fully understand what is happening. But taking it like this, you at least find the framework a little bit more clear. You need time and time again, brothers and sisters, to do battle with this twenty-third chapter of Luke and the parallels.

You need week by week to come around that rugged cross and appreciate again the nature of God and the magnificence of his forgiveness, and what he has gone through on your behalf, on my behalf, so that we shall never cheapen our salvation and sponge upon grace. Listen to John start, we learn to appreciate the access to God which Christ has won for us, only after we have first seen God's inaccessibility to sinners. We can only cry hallelujah with authenticity after we have first cried, woe is me, for I am lost.

It is partly because sin does not provoke our own wrath that we do not believe that sin provokes the wrath of God. Why did Jesus die? Because of your sin. Why couldn't God just cover it over? Because of his own integrity, because of his law, which is intractable, which cannot be changed, because the law of God flows from the heart of God, and God's law, if it is assailed, a remedy has to be found.

So, you find our Lord here depicted as dying for the sins of men and women. I've called the words that he utters the cries from the cross, but I want you to appreciate this. They are cries, they are not whimpers.

My little cat Joshua, he came on board my lap this morning. He always does when very early on I'm doing battle with my computer, and he moved from my lap onto the window sill, and my little study at home, it overlooks the garden, and the light was just beginning to shine, the light was just beginning to break, and he could see the squirrels on the grass, and he didn't like it, and there was a whimper. It was a whimper of annoyance.

These cries, they are not whimpers. These are authoritative statements. In the Middle Ages, the suggestion was put that you can understand the cries of the Lord Jesus almost like the nightingale who sings in the dark.

Here is a lovely evaluation that from within the passion, the Lord Jesus, fully in control, sings out his reactions. The nightingale which sings a song of pure love, said the folk in the Middle Ages, from the May tree of the cross, the nightingale is singing out of the thorny tree. His heart is full of loving.

He sings for you and me. The criminal died, peace I pray, and he was given the prize. The nightingale sings on today with me in paradise.

What prize was the criminal seeking? Well, he was seeking to be with Jesus in the eternity that was yet to be. One of the criminals says to Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom, and the nightingale sings in response. I tell you the truth, today you will be with me in paradise.

Interesting brothers and sisters, isn't it? That as our Lord narrows down the circle of communication, as he is pinned to the cross, his second bit of conversation is directed to a criminal, a scoundrel. Make a list of all the sinners that there have ever been, and then get your surname and run your finger down to S or W or whatever the surname is, whatever letter it starts with, and sure enough you will find yourself. Sergeant John Anthony Sheffield, 1941.

I am there amongst the list of transgressors, as was this criminal who is unnamed by the sight of the Lord Jesus on a cross. But go back to that list and check the surnames under N and go to N-A-Z, Nazareth, Jesus of, and he is there. He identifies himself with sinners.

He is numbered amongst the transgressors. It is not by chance, it is by design that the Lord Jesus, in complete control of His circumstances, even though He is pinned to a cross, takes as His last conversationalist, a scoundrel. Not the disciples, not the priests, a deep-dyed sinner, and He says, I tell you the truth, you will be with Me in paradise.

You see, though it is astonishing, in one sense it should not be. If you start where you ought to start, with the person of God and with the person of the Lord Jesus, do not just come straight to this chapter. See the framework.

When you meet Jesus in His ministry, how do you meet Him? He is a friend. Friend of who? Theologians, the top brass? Well, He has interest in them. But the people that He directs His attention towards are those who need His help, those who do not go to church, those who have been broken on the rocks of life, those who have disgraced themselves.

He is known as the friend of sinners. So here He is on the cross, and His time is drawing to a close. And who does He single out as to be the recipient of His cry, of the demonstration of His magisterial authority? He singles out this man, a scoundrel, a Judas type.

I am glad He did that, because it helps me. I am leveling. I am being honest.

I am toying with my emotions. But it helps me to understand why He goes for me, as well as this man. Isn't it wonderful? Charles Spurgeon, who always manages to pull something out that you've never seen before, and having read it, you think, why on earth didn't I spot it myself? He says, Have you never heard of him who dreamed that he stood without the gate of heaven? And while there he heard sweet music from a band of the celestial portals.

He heard sweet music from a band of venerable persons who were on their way to glory. They entered the celestial portals, and there was great rejoicing and shouts. Inquiring, what are these? He was told that they were the goodly fellowship of the prophets.

He sighed and said, Alas, I am not one of those. He waited a while, and another band of shining ones drew near, who also entered heaven with hallelujahs. And when he inquired, Who are these, and whence came they? The answer was, These are the glorious company of the apostles.

Again he sighed and said, I cannot enter with them. Then came another body of men, white robed and bearing palms in their hands, who marched amid great acclamation into the golden city. These, he learned, were the noble army of martyrs.

And again he wept and said, I cannot enter with these. In the end, he heard the voices of much people and saw a greater multitude advancing, among whom he perceived Rahab the prostitute, Mary Magdalene, David the adulterer, Peter, Isaiah, Manasseh, Saul, who was privy to the death of Stephen. And he aspired especially the thief who died at the right hand of Jesus.

These all entered in a strange company. Then he eagerly inquired, Who are these? And they answered, This is the host of sinners saved by grace. Then was he exceeding glad and said, I can go with these.

Why does Jesus direct the second word from the cross to a scoundrel? So that some of us, maybe all of us here, might appreciate the reason why he called us, because he has a love for us as is typified in the way that this man on the cross addresses Jesus and as is exemplified in his response. So let's consider in this second cry the prayer that was surprisingly made and the answer that was surprisingly given. Lord, remember me? What about the background from which this man emerged? Well, he was perhaps one of Barabbas' men.

Certainly he had been an anti-authority man all his life. And he was a man who went through a mind change at the end. If you are conscious at the point of dying, the days that run into your death, that is a very steadying experience.

This man is conscious. He starts off blaspheming, shooting out his lip, mocking Jesus. But there is something about the demeanor of Jesus that impresses this man as the hours go by and he begins to respond to that first cry where Jesus says to his Father, forgive those who are my tormentors.

There is something about the Lord Jesus that gets through to this hardened criminal. The other man who shared the third cross had similar ideas about Jesus. Both of them at the beginning, they acknowledged that there was something different.

Aren't you the Christ? If you are the Christ, save yourself and us. But you know, it is not just the historical recognition of Jesus that will save you. It is the abject realization of your utter hopelessness.

The man who makes this surprising prayer begins to do this. Jesus is unique and he, the scoundrel, is hopeless. It is to the degree that I understand my hopelessness that the cross can become a benefit for me.

So from this strange background, the man offers this surprising prayer. You know, he had such demerit, this man. What do I mean? Well, when Jesus interacts with him, what can this man offer? Nothing in the past.

His past was a mess. That's the reason why he's on the cross. Nothing in the future.

The hour is nearly through. The sand has gone through the glass. There is no potential of service in the kingdom.

You can't take him to a brethren assembly and let him take bread and wine. You can't take him to a Baptist church and dip him in water. You can't take him to a discipleship class and improve his theology.

He really is the most hopeless of cases, and yet he gasps out a prayer. Remember me. Remember me.

He has so much demerit, but he has this desire to be associated with Jesus in some future. Remember me, however long, however many hundreds of years, however many millennia. But Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.

Strange, isn't it? The man prays, and the second cry from the cross is an answer that is equally surprisingly given, as Jesus looks at this man and tells him, I tell you the truth. The thing that again causes my emotions to break when I look on this scene, which I repeat, for I have brought it to your attention, is the way that Jesus is completely in control. I tell you the truth, verily, verily.

You see, this was a magisterial expression, which Jesus alone is found using in the whole of Scripture. The apostles, the prophets, they never said it. They say this is what God says, and rightly so.

Jesus never said that. Jesus always says, verily, verily. And when he uses that expression, he is indicating that he, the second person of the ever-blessed Trinity, is laying down an assertion which is undeniable, which cannot be broken.

When he speaks, what he says will be, for he is God. I tell you the truth. Today, you will be with me in paradise.

And he uses that assertion, directs it to a scoundrel. Not to John, not to Peter, not suggesting they are not involved in the implications of the assertion, but he makes it to someone who is of the least, of the lowest, uneducated, full of demerit. I tell you the truth.

Today, you will be with me in paradise, with the authority of Jesus. Do you know why our Lord wouldn't receive any drugs? Because he is not going to be inebriated. He is not going to have his mind dulled.

He will not be smashed on the highways of crucifixion. He will have to the end an ability to intellectually relate to all that is happening, and with clarity of thought, and with magisterial authority, he tells this man what he has ruled out in terms of the future, and what he has ruled in. You say, what do you mean? Well, listen.

I tell you the truth. Today, you will be with me in paradise. That rules out certain things.

What does it rule out? Well, for starters, it rules out purgatory. I mean, if ever a man ought to go to purgatory, it's this guy. He's absolutely foul.

If there is a situation that exists beyond the grave where you can be improved, then you know, he's a classic case for somebody to get to work improving him to such a state that eventually, give it a few thousand years, he can be elevated to heaven. I mean, that's the teaching of one branch of the church, isn't it? You die, you go to purgatory. You go through a period, an unpleasant period of being souped up spiritually.

I'm not speaking in a denigratory fashion. I can understand where they're coming from. I just think that it's completely wrong.

Jesus rules it out. I tell you today, you will be with me in paradise. He rules out purgatory.

You see, He rules out any idea of waiting to be in the presence of God after death. It's not a question of the millennium. It's not a question of the second advent.

Jesus is saying to this man, today, you will be with me in paradise. You can't do what the Jehovah's Witnesses do here in some of the sects. You can't put a comma.

Today, I'm speaking today, I tell you, I'm telling you this today. The actual word today is qualifying the verb. Today, you will be with me in paradise.

Otherwise, the incorporation of the word today is absurd. It's utterly unnecessary. I tell you the truth.

Today, you will be with me in paradise. He rules out purgatory. What does He rule in? The immediacy of the benefits of believing in Jesus Christ.

Today, you, me, paradise. What is paradise? Well, it's a translation of the word garden, the garden of bliss. When the New Testament, when the Old Testament writers think of paradise, they think of Eden as it was before the fall.

And the whole idea in biblical revelations, they look to the future. It's for a restoration of that. I've preached on this so often, those of you who are regular on this ministry fully understand at least the concepts.

No one can understand it in detail. Eden was marvelous. It fell fresh from the hands of the second person of the Trinity who is the Creator.

But He's going to make Eden even more wonderful. Today, you, me, in paradise. What He rules out, purgatory.

What He rules in is immediacy. Do you want something for your tomb, for an epitaph? Today, the Lord Jesus, me, paradise. Isn't that wonderful? I mean, you've got a blissful, you really have, you've got a blissful summary of the benefits of the gospel in the second word of Christ from the cross.

How could you interpret that as a whimper? It's a tremendous declaration. The first fruits of the cross work of Jesus Christ come into the life of this criminal who is the first beneficiary. The dying thief rejoiced to see our Lord Jesus Christ in His death and recognized that through that death, He would have salvation.

Today, what speed with me, what company in paradise, what bliss. So I bring you to a conclusion of considering this second cry from the cross. The first to outsiders, the second narrowing the circle to a man who came within the church, so to speak, who benefited from the death of our Lord Jesus, the first fruits.

And tomorrow, well, we'll consider Jesus and His concerns for Mary and for John, and then because I don't have time, there aren't enough days left, on Good Friday, we'll look at Jesus and His final comment, finished, into your hands. I commend my spirit, the final triumphant assertion of Jesus from the cross of Christ, from the cross of Calvary. Let's pray.

Father, we thank you. We stand and we gaze on the cross. We imagine its scene, the horror and the splendor, the ugliness and the beauty, the foulness and the winsomeness.

It repels and it attracts, causes to hold our breath, it causes us to bow our knees, it causes us to extend our hands and to say, my Lord and my God. Father, we thank you that you didn't just cover over sin, for then you could not have remained God in all your integrity, the God of holiness, the God of justice, the God of wrath, the God who directs anger towards that which offends you. We thank you that the way of the cross was the only way.

The cross is the answer to the predicament in which you found yourself, wanting to forgive that you could not forgive in the way that we forgive, wanting to forgive and yet to retain your law, to retain your holiness. We praise you for the solution with which you came up, the sending of the second person of the Trinity into the world, to become what he never was before, to take on himself human flesh and eventually for the foulness of our sins to be rolled upon him, so that he becomes repugnant in your sight. We thank you for the mystery of redemption, paying the price for us.

We thank you that when the darkness is lifted from the scene at Calvary, that blood-stained figure is taken down and entombed. And on the third day, in the light of a new morning, a morning that will last forever, he arose, triumphant, victorious, the man of the cross, the man of the empty tomb, the God-man, the second person of the Trinity, your Son and ever our Saviour. Thanks be to God for the unspeakable gift of our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ.

Amen. So, brothers and sisters, thank you for coming. Let's conclude our service by singing, There is a fountain filled with blood drawn from Emmanuel's veins, 6-7-1.

It's not the sort of hymn that you can really give out to a mixed congregation. It has to be sung by those who are in the family secret, for whom the jarring expressions in the first verse become acceptable and understandable because of the context in which we have viewed the death of our Saviour. 6-7-1, there is a fountain filled with blood drawn from Emmanuel's veins, and sinners plunged beneath that flood lose all their guilty stains.

6-7-1. The dying thief rejoiced to see that fountain in his day. And there may I, though vile as he, wash all my sin away.

I eclam your precious blood shall never lose its power. Till all the ransomed church of God be safe to sin no more. Their sins by faith I soar the stream, your flowing wounds supply.

Redeeming love has been my theme and shall be till I die. In a nobler, sweeter song, I'll sing your power to save. When this poor limping, stammering tongue lies silent at your door.

Just to correct what I said a moment ago, tomorrow I won't look at the comment our Lord made in regard to his mother. Rather, I want to take you to the loneliest verse in the Bible, his penultimate cry, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Our preacher on the loneliness of Christ. This evening we're meeting here for a special service in which David Alton will be our speaker.

You can be present and we'd be glad for your company, 7.30. Father, at the foot of the cross we have stood. Help us to live our lives under its shadow with joy and with happiness, but occasionally with sobriety and ever with awesome contemplation and what you did on that day, the like of which there's been nonsense and there never was before. Good Friday, the pivot of human history.

We thank you for our Savior and we thank you for his mighty resurrection. We thank you for the atoning work and we praise you that he speaks a word to scoundrels and gives us consolation and encouragement and hope. So may the blessing of almighty God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit ever be ours world without end.

Amen. Good morning.