Greg Laurie and Harvest Ministries recommend the bestselling book Cold Case Christianity from former detective J. Warner Wallace. That's a book we're offering this month to our listeners. Cold Case Christianity written by detective J. Warner Wallace, a homicide detective, investigates the claims of the gospel. So get your own copy of Cold Case Christianity. It's our offer for this month for your gift of any size.
Request yours for a limited time at harvest.org. Well, as we talk now about Good Friday, Good Friday, the day we remember when our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ died on the cross for our sin, paying the penalty for the debts that we incurred because of our sin. We call it good, of course, though, because of the resurrection on Sunday. Now you're probably saying, Jonathan, that's coming in two days.
Okay, well, spoiler alert. Jesus rose again from the dead after Good Friday, and that's why we call it good because of what he did for us and because of his resurrection. But something interesting happened on Good Friday. Something interesting happened that maybe you haven't thought about before. Maybe you've experienced this in different capacities.
There's a term that we call it today. It's called being ghosted. You ever been ghosted by somebody before, right? You make lunch plans to go meet someone, and when you show up, they're not there, and you're sitting at the table for one ordering appetizers, getting a Coke, waiting for them, and they never show up. Hopefully this doesn't happen to you on a date.
That's really sad. But you're texting the person, are you still coming? And they ghost you, right? They don't respond. It's called being ghosted. Or worse of all is when you text someone, and then they read it, and then they don't respond.
That's called being left on read. That's like being ghosted, but with confirmation that, yes, that person is in fact a jerk. A lot of times you get ghosted when someone owes you money. You get ghosted when someone is saying they will drive you to the airport at 6 a.m. to LAX, and they're willing to, and then you're like standing out there waiting.
My friend was telling me about how when he was first learning how to surf, he had a neighbor that said, oh, yeah, we'll take you surfing, and he took him early in the morning, and so they started going on a regular basis. And then a couple of times he showed up waiting under the streetlight, him and his brother, 5 a.m. in the dark, in the cold, and the guy just completely ghosted him. He said they sat there under the streetlight for like two hours waiting for his friend to come. He ghosted him. He never showed up. Oh, it's so sad.
I thought it was hilarious. But it's a bad feeling, isn't it? It's a bad feeling being ghosted. It's a bad feeling being left unread, especially when that person owes you money. Usually we figure out if there's a pattern of this behavior. We realize this is not a dependable person. This is not necessarily a trustworthy person to pay me back. Some of you are those people, by the way, that are here today and you need to repent. You only text back when you need the ride to the airport or when you need your couch moved when you're moving from your apartment to wherever.
But having someone you love do this to you can be extra hard, right? Being ghosted by someone you love, a spouse, a parent, a child, a loved one, whatever. I heard someone ask the question, and this is pretty good. They said, if someone offered you a million dollars to pick up your phone right now, call someone in your phone book, and it was a guarantee they would not answer, who would you call?
And I thought about it for a second. How many of you would say your spouse? Be honest. Raise your hand. Like you knew beyond the shadow of a doubt you could call your spouse right now and they would not answer. Honestly, wow, just me?
Okay. But if we're honest, sometimes it can feel like we are being ghosted by God. It can feel like we're being ghosted by God. And the times that we need God's presence and the times that we are calling out to him when it's an emergency trip to the hospital or when someone you love is making a series of bad choices or when that conflict you were having with someone blows up and you need divine intervention. You've got that loved one that is now suffering and has health issues, those spiritual attacks, and you call out to God and you're met with what seems to be a deafening silence. That can be a lonely place, can't it?
It can be a lonely place. It can feel like God isn't available. Now, before you go and have like a holy hot flash moment here and say, Jonathan, you just don't have enough faith.
Okay, fair. But just know that the great heroes of the Bible also expressed this very sentiment. We see it in King David. We see it in Job. We see it in the prophet Jeremiah, the prophet Elijah. We see it in Habakkuk. We see it in John the Baptist.
And guess who else we see it in? Jesus Christ himself. You remember the words when he hung on the cross.
What did he say? My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why have you forsaken me? He's cried out to his father in heaven. And so if you've ever felt like heaven was silent, you're in good company.
And here's what I've learned, though. And here's what many of you have learned as well as you've gone through those seasons and you've walked through difficulty and God was seemingly distant during that time. It is often in the silence that God is doing his greatest work. It is often in the silence that God is doing his greatest work. That's where we learn what real faith looks like. That's where we often see our faith being forged in the fire, where we stop just believing in God and we begin to depend on God because the best part of walking with God isn't just what he does for us. It's what he does in us. You understand what I'm saying? It's not just what he does for us, blessing us, giving us this, getting us the front row parking spot, whatever it might be, answer my prayer, do this, kill my enemy, right?
Whatever it might be. It's what God does inside of us. It's how God prepares us. It's how he strengthens us. It's how he molds us into his own image.
It's what he does inside of us despite the circumstances. What's Good Friday 2025. This is the day that churches around the world come together and remember in unison the day that our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ died on the cross for our sins, triumphantly conquering death, triumphantly conquering sin and taking our place. And we are so thankful for that. It's amazing thinking Christians across the face of the earth right now are worshiping our Savior in this very moment. Amazing.
Yes, beautiful. And so if you're new to church today, you haven't been before or maybe you've been, but Good Friday is still a little rusty in your mind. I know that the main thing is the crucifixion, of course.
Let me help refresh your memory before we jump into our text. After the Last Supper, right? After the Last Supper on Thursday night, Jesus and the disciples retreated to the Mount of Olives. Jesus went and he began to pray at the Mount of Olives with the disciples. He asked them, come and pray with me. And what were the disciples doing? Do you remember? They were sleeping.
That's exactly right. They probably had a big celebratory meal, lots of bread. It was right before Passover when their fast was going to begin for the weekend. And so they were just sleeping. They were sleeping.
And you can imagine what Jesus knew was coming. More than ever, he needed the company of his friends. He needed the spiritual support, the prayers of his brothers, his disciples. And what were they doing? They were sleeping. They were sleeping.
They were unavailable. Jesus knew what was coming and they were sleeping off a big Passover meal instead. While Jesus was praying, suddenly Judas appeared, his betrayer, and he showed up with the chief priests, with the scribes, with the elders, along with a detachment of Roman soldiers, all armed with clubs and swords.
He got dragged through a corrupt legal system where the verdict had already been decided. Jesus was then mocked. He was spit on.
He was beaten. He was scourged and he was paraded through the streets of Jerusalem, carrying the cross they would nail him to. And then they arrived at Golgotha, Calvary, the place of the skull.
And there they crucified him. If you think about the way you would like to spend the last moments of your life, I think all of us would agree we want to be surrounded by loved ones. We want to be, hopefully, on a comfortable bed. We want to be hearing the beautiful memories that maybe our children or grandchildren are reminding us of and ultimately praying for us. And it would just be a beautiful, peaceful transition as we enter into the next life. Or, of course, we hope it happens when we're sleeping.
That would be ideal. Jesus' crucifixion, Jesus' death, was the exact opposite of that. It was not peaceful. It was not comfortable. It was public.
It was painful. It was in the public space where anybody that was making the pilgrimage outside of Jerusalem coming in for the great festival of Passover would have walked right by Jesus and seen him naked, shamefully hanging on a cross. And they would have said, oh, isn't that Jesus that we've heard so much about?
So sad. So sad putting yourself in the shoes of our Lord. Just five days after Palm Sunday, he was being heralded that day as the Messiah, as the new king. They were hoping that he would be the next king of Israel. And he was being so celebrated as the son of David. The same city who celebrated his arrival was now calling for his crucifixion. And so after all that, all the crowds, all the teachings, all the miracles, the worship, the shouts of Hosanna, Jesus hung there bleeding, gasping, and dying.
A sobering thought. And that is when he cried out, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Jesus, the son of God, was crying out and getting no reply. And so let's read together in Matthew's Gospel, chapter 27, starting in verse 45.
My message title today is When Heaven Was Silent. When Heaven Was Silent. We read this in verse 45.
At noon, darkness fell across the whole land until three o'clock. At about three o'clock, Jesus called out with a loud voice, Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani, which means my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Some of the bystanders misunderstood and thought he was calling for the prophet Elijah. And one of them ran and filled a sponge with sour wine holding up to him on a reed stick so that he could drink.
But the rest said, wait, let's see whether Elijah comes to save him. And then Jesus shouted out again and released his spirit. At that moment, the curtain in the sanctuary of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. The earth shook, rocks split apart and tombs opened. The bodies of many godly men and women who had died were raised from the dead. They left the cemetery after Jesus' resurrection, went into the holy city of Jerusalem and appeared to many people. This is the resurrection before the resurrection. Pretty wild. We often skip over that part. You can imagine the surprise of the loved ones who just buried Uncle Harry coming back for Passover celebration.
Hey, what's for lunch? Didn't we just bury you? That's pretty wild. Anyways, verse 54 and we'll end here. The Roman officer and the other soldiers at the crucifixion were terrified by the earthquake and all that had happened. And they said, this man truly was the son of God.
That brings us to point number one. The prayer met with silence. The prayer met with silence. Sometimes when I'm in a crowded place with my dad, a mall at the airport or something like that, I'll call out and try and get his name. No, I don't know what it is about my voice.
Maybe it's just like the frequency that I'm saying his name at. Dad! Dad! I don't know what it is, but a lot of times he just doesn't hear me. And so what I will do then is go, Greg! And then he hears me, he turns around, he looks right at me, right?
I don't know what it is. My son recently did this to me. We were at a grocery store.
We were walking down an aisle and he was trying to get my attention. And he goes, Dad! Dad! And he goes, Jonathan! I'm like, that is so weird hearing you say my name like that.
So I guess I'm in that place now. Now, I don't like to call my dad Greg. I don't like to call him that name, but I do it to get his attention, right? Well, here in verse forty six, we see Jesus call out to his father in heaven differently than he has any other time recorded in the gospels. Jesus calls out to his father in heaven and calls him Eli, Eli, Elama, Sabatini, my God, my God. In John's gospel alone, Jesus calls out to his father as father. He says my father in heaven. That's how he refers to God.
He says he is my father. And so we see this throughout the gospels. He calls him my father, but here he calls him my God.
The role had changed, that something had shifted here. What we see here is not so much Jesus trying to get God's attention because he was unaware or distracted or hard of hearing. What was happening was not as though God was oblivious or distracted. No, Jesus saying my God, my God. These were the words of a man who was literally being forsaken by God for a time.
He was merely stating the truth about a situation. When Jesus cried out, this was no ordinary suffering. This was the moment that he was enduring the wrath of God and he had taken on the role of sin itself.
He took our place in that moment. It is at this moment Jesus took on the form of sin and God's judgment and wrath was poured out on him. Second Corinthians 521, Paul tells us he became sin who knew no sin that we might become the righteousness of God in him. He became sin.
He became the very embodiment of it. And God poured out his righteous indignation, his righteous anger upon Jesus Christ. Galatians 3 13, the apostle Paul also tells us Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse, having become a curse for us. Jesus was made to be the embodiment of sin. Jesus was made to be the very curse that God allowed to go upon nature and across the whole earth because of the sin of Adam and Eve, the original sin, as well as each and every one of our sins today, past, present and future. This moment is the crux of what theologians refer to as substitutionary atonement.
That's a fancy theological term, but it simply just means that Jesus' blood was the substitute payment for our sins, substitutionary. And by doing so, Jesus provided the atonement for us. It is the single most important and universe altering moment and all of time and eternity.
This moment right here, the single most universe altering moment and all of time and eternity. Again, it was the moment when all sin, past, present and future was being paid for. The silence of heaven, Jesus calling out to his father, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? The silence from heaven was not indifference and it was not injustice. This momentary silence of God at the cross was the sound of justice being satisfied.
That silence was the sound of justice being satisfied. The Bible tells us all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. Now, this may come as a surprise to some of you, but you are a sinner. You are a sinner. The Bible tells you, the Bible says all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, right?
Now, you might say, well, Jonathan, I try and live my life by the golden rule, treat others as you would have others treat you. I try and make sure that my good deeds outweigh my bad deeds. They don't. But that's nice that you might think that they do, but they don't.
Right? None of us have our good deeds outweigh our bad deeds. And even if they didn't, it's inconsequential. It doesn't matter how much of a good person you are. The righteous requirement for you to get into heaven is perfection, is righteousness. And we have all sinned.
We have all missed the mark and failed in that way. Jesus says, if you have offended one point of the law, you have offended all of it. And Jesus even takes it a step further. He says, if you've looked upon a woman with lust in your heart, it is as though you have committed adultery with her.
If you look upon your brother and you have anger or hatred in your heart, it is as though you have committed murder. So we're all guilty, right? We are all guilty and fallen short of the glory of God. You are guilty.
I am guilty. Mankind is guilty. And again, this moment that Jesus became sin for us and heaven went quiet. It's when Jesus endured the wrath and the separation and judgment for us. God turned his face from the sun so that he could turn his face toward us. Let me say that again. God turned his face from the sun so he could turn his face toward us. You should applaud for that. Jesus took our place.
That brings us to point number two, the plan behind the silence. Let's read Isaiah 53. If you want to turn there, Isaiah 53 and verse five. But Jesus was pierced for our rebellion. He was crushed for our sins. He was beaten so that we could be whole. He was whipped so we could be healed. All of us, like sheep, have strayed away.
We have all left God's path to follow our own. And yet the Lord laid on him the sins of us all. He was oppressed and treated harshly. Yet he never said a word. He was led like a lamb to the slaughter.
And as a sheep is silent before the shearers, he did not open his mouth. We see the silence of Jesus now. Seven hundred years before Jesus was born, before crucifixion even existed, Isaiah, the prophet, recognized the kind of death that Jesus, the Messiah, was going to suffer.
One thousand years before Jesus was born, King David wrote Psalm 22. And he described what kind of death the Messiah would suffer and what statements would be made from the cross, including my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? All of this to say the silence of heaven, the silence of the cross, it was all part of the plan. You can imagine how the disciples must have felt in this moment, watching Jesus, their master, this man who had raised people from the dead, this man who had done miracles, who had walked on water, who had been able to predict the future, was now being executed before their very eyes. He had been beaten and scourged as though he was completely helpless.
Talk about feeling ghosted or feeling let down. They anticipated that Jesus was going to be the next king of Israel, not for him to be executed on a rough timber cross, scourged, naked and shamed for everyone to see. But again, it was all prophesied and everything was going according to schedule.
But before Jesus uttered those words, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? There have been three hours of darkness and three hours of silence. Now, this was a supernatural darkness. This isn't like a cloud came over the sun or even an eclipse that happened.
This was a supernatural darkness that took place for three hours and the whole earth was surrounded in this darkness. You would think the people that were doing this to Jesus, the religious leaders, the Romans, they might have said, what is going on here? This isn't good.
This is probably a sign we're doing something wrong, right? The sun has been blotted out, but rather they just continued on with their plan to execute Jesus. And people do the same thing today.
People do the same thing today. They know that Jesus is the light, but they choose to stay in the darkness. They live in the darkness. They dwell in it. They see Jesus as the light.
But Jesus reminds us they love the darkness rather than the light because they ultimately want their wicked deeds to be concealed. And so, again, it was three hours of darkness and it was three hours of silence. But this silence was broken when Jesus uttered these words, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? He called out with a loud voice. This was a willful surrender. These were not the dying, gasping last words of Jesus.
These were words calling out in a loud voice. He was in control the entire time. He didn't suffer by accident. It was God's sovereign plan. Even further than Isaiah and David, way back in the Garden of Eden, it was prophesied by God himself in Genesis 3 15. He talked about how Jesus, the Messiah, there was coming one who would bruise the serpent's head and the serpent would bruise his heel.
As many as 300 prophecies were filled in the life and ministry of Jesus and as many as 28 just on the day of his crucifixion. The silence that Jesus endured was planned even before the world was created. And so when we feel God may be silent, we too can know that the same God is continuing that work of salvation inside of us. He's continuing to shape us. He's continuing to mold us and teach us not only with his words, but by drawing us out into deeper dependence on him. It could be that if you're going through that difficult season, that time of trial, the bad news from the doctor, whatever might be happening, and you feel when you call out to God that he's ghosting you or he's absent from you, what God is actually doing is he's drawing you out.
He's drawing you out. He's teaching you to take a step of faith and to have deeper faith. You think about when, for those of you that have kids or nephews and nieces or grandkids, when they're first learning how to take those first steps, are you holding their hands the entire time? Maybe for them initially to get their balance. But then you take a step back and they take a step to you.
Good job. And then you say, let's try another step. And they start and they take that first step. But instead of going right to them, you take a step back.
And what do they do? They have to reach for you. They have to go towards you. I did this with my kids in the pool as well. We'd say, hey, just swim from me to mom.
And then slowly we'd scoot back and make them keep swimming further and further, right? God is drawing us out in those times of silence. He's not ignoring us. He's testing our faith.
He's proving it. He's trying us by fire. And by doing so, we are learning to trust God even more. He is there. He is teaching us to just take a step of faith.
C.S. Lewis said, God who foresaw your tribulation has specially armed you to go through it, not without pain, but without stain. The silence from heaven wasn't indifference. The silence from the cross wasn't weakness. It was fulfillment. It was all part of the plan, even in the darkness, even in the silence. God was orchestrating the most important moment in all of eternity.
And that brings us to point number three. Lastly, the purpose of the silence. The purpose of the silence. John 19.
I'll read to you says this. Jesus knew that his mission was now finished and to fulfill the scripture. He said, I am thirsty. A jar of sour wine was sitting there.
So they soaked a sponge in it, put it on a hyssop branch and held it to his lips. And when Jesus had tasted it, he said, it is finished. And then he bowed his head and gave up his spirit. These final words of Jesus were not spoken in agony, but in victory. It is finished to tell us die. Now, I've said that phrase a handful of times.
It is finished. Usually it was after I was attempting to put my kids down to sleep for the third time that night. And as I laid them down and they were finally all asleep, the whole house was quiet and I was tiptoeing out of the room like a Mission Impossible scene. I stepped on the dog and the dog lets out a loud yelp and I said, it is finished. And what I really meant, what I really meant was and I am done and I am over this. Tap out, wife, your turn. Or it's like when you finish your Ikea furniture and you do it for the third time, taking it apart, putting it back together.
And at the end, you're still left with 12 random screws. And at the end of it, you say, I am done. It is finished. And what it really means is I have given up.
This is as good as it's going to get. But when Jesus said it is finished, he wasn't saying it because he was giving up. He wasn't saying it because he was tapping out or because he was exhausted by the process. He was declaring victory. That word to tell us die is the same word that Jesus would have used as a carpenter. And then it's the same phrase he would have used as a carpenter and whatever he was building, whether it was a chair or a home or framing something, putting something together. And when the job was done, when it was complete, they would say to tell us die.
Jesus was saying to tell us die because he had accomplished everything that needed to be done to bring salvation to us. In that moment, the veil and the temple tore from top to bottom. The earth shook.
Rocks were split open and tombs were opened. Now listen, the veil in the temple didn't tear to give you better feelings. It tore to give you better access to God.
That's what happened in that moment. And when it tore, it was as though God was saying, you can come in now. You are not condemned. You are not unworthy.
You are mine. Hebrews 4 16 tells us, let us therefore come boldly to the throne of grace that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need. That veil was a symbol of the separation between God and man inside of the temple. Behind that veil is where the Ark of the Covenant was.
Yes, the one from the Indiana Jones movie. But before Harrison Ford, that Ark of the Covenant symbolized and literally not even symbolized. It was the very presence of God, the priest that would go back there to to burn incense and go in there. They would wear bells on their clothing. So if they went back there and the people that were hearing outside of the veil heard that the bells stopped jingling, they would also tie a rope around their ankle.
It would mean that if the bells stopped ringing, that they weren't worthy. They hadn't asked for forgiveness or they were they were not in the right place to go back there. Their sins hadn't been atoned. And so they would pull them out.
The person would be dead. That's what happens if we stood before a righteous God without the righteousness of Christ. And so when Jesus said it is finished, what happened?
That veil tore. And that is why we now have access to God. Heaven was silent so you could come and speak boldly before the throne of grace.
And God is still doing that today. When God feels silent in your suffering, he hasn't forgotten you. When God feels distant in your time of need, he hasn't left you. Your friends may ghost you. Your family might ghost you. Your pastor might ghost you.
Sorry. But God doesn't ghost anybody and he won't let you down. Jeremiah 29 11 tells us, for I know the thoughts that I think towards you, says the Lord, thoughts of peace and not of evil to give you a future and a hope.
And then you will call upon me and go and pray to me and I will listen to you and you will seek me and find me when you search for me with all your heart. God isn't ghosting you. He is drawing you out. He is working in you the same way he was working during the silence on the cross.
He's working not to make you comfortable, but to make you holy. Think about that idea of being drawn out for a moment. As we as parents and uncles and aunts and everything, if our goal was to just make our kids comfortable, we would never put them down. We would carry them everywhere that they go and we would always push them around in a stroller.
Now, some of you are like, I would still like to have that happen today and be carried. That happens later in life. But when you're younger, you need to walk, right? You need to walk. You need to run.
You need to learn how to be dependent on yourself and take those steps on your own. Some of you are still wanting to be pushed by God around in a stroller. Some of you are still wanting to be carried around by God everywhere you go, never having to take a step of faith. I just want comfort. I just want complacency.
I want that. God wants to make you strong. He wants to make you holy. And that's how he does it.
He calls you out. The reason we call today Good Friday is because the tomb of Christ is empty today. That's why we call it Good Friday. It is the only tourist destination that people will line up to see something that isn't there.
I've been there, right? There's nothing in there. The tomb is empty. Mohammed is dead. Joseph Smith is dead. Charles Darwin is dead. Mohammed is dead. Buddha is dead. But there are 600 world religions, but there's only one empty tomb. Jesus Christ is alive.
Friday is good because Sunday is coming. Hey, everybody, thanks for listening to my podcast. Before you go, I wanted to let you know about the important work we're doing here at Harvest. You know, we've had the same goal these last 50 years, which is simply this. We want to know God, and we want to make Him known. And we do that in a lot of ways. Documentary films, animation, radio, television, large-scale evangelistic events, and more. If you want to be a part of what we're doing to fulfill the great commission, you can support us with whatever you can give at harvest.org slash donate. Again, that's harvest.org slash donate, and thanks so much.
