Daily Meditations: Journey with Jesus to the Cross (Day 15)

Today it is Good Friday.  Let’s take a look at what happened that first Good Friday. Read Mark 15:33-47. 

It was the 6^th hour of the day. High Noon. And suddenly it is dark. Darkness covered the land for 3 hours that Good Friday. Darkness as God turns His face away from His Son. To have God’s face turned toward you is to receive His blessing. It is the light of His face shining on you. But to have God’s face turned away from you is to receive the wrath of His judgment. It is to receive the full force of the curse for sin. God’s face turned away is utter darkness. For three hours Jesus hung there on our cross in the darkness drinking from the cup of wrath. Mid drink He cries out: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” With the full judgment of our sins on His shoulders, He drinks the cup of God’s wrath all the way down to the dregs and at last cries out, “It is finished!” and breathed His last breath.

The earth shook. Rocks split open. Tombs that once held the dead were now empty as saints who had once been in them walked the streets of Jerusalem alive! The curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom, opening the way into the holy place of God - the presence of the most holy God now accessible. 

What is finished, Jesus? What is finished???

What is finished is the reversal of Genesis 3.

It was a tree in the midst of a garden called pleasure that brought on the curse of death and sin. Suffering and sorrow. Judgment and wrath. 

But it is THIS tree - high on a hill in a place called “the skull”  - that offers the blessing of life. It offers mercy in place of judgment. 

Eating from the first tree - so beautiful and delicious - brought us under the curse of the wrath of God, exiled from the presence of God, made slaves to sin, and victims of suffering and sorrow. 

But eating from THIS tree - that looks ugly and bitter - brings us freedom from sin and judgment, eternal and abundant life, and most importantly entrance back into the presence of God.

And with His final breath, all that He had come to do was finished. And there on the hill stands THE tree of life. Take and eat. It is good. Very good indeed.