Good Friday Message

The roots of the Christian Gospel are found in Isaiah chapter 53.

In fact, I think it is probably the clearest declaration of the meaning of sacrifice and atonement found in all of the Bible. It's all about a resource that will help you live with purpose and hold fast to your faith so you can make an eternal impact on the world. The desire to fit in, to be thought of as normal, is a basic human instinct. But would you believe that children as young as three years old already want to follow the crowd and fit in with the group? That's what researchers found in a Duke University study. Yet in the Bible, we learn that some of the people who've made the most impact have done so by defying normal.

Here's Skip Heitzig. I think the Bible calls us to a holy defiance of the status quo. Paul the Apostle said, do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.

So what does it take to go from conformed to transformed? Find out in Pastor Skip's book Defying Normal. Our thanks to you when you give $35 or more to help expand this Bible teaching ministry. And when you give today, we'll also include the booklet, What on Earth Am I Here For? by Rick Warren.

Get your copies of these two bold resources when you call 800-922-1888 or give online securely at connectwithskip.com slash offer. Now, let's dive into the teaching. We're in the first chapter of John as we join Skip Heitzig for today's study. This is he whom I said, after me comes a man who is preferred before me for he was before me. I did not know him, but that he should be revealed to Israel. Therefore, I came baptizing with water. And John bore witness saying, I saw the spirit descending from heaven like a dove, and he remained upon him. I did not know him, but he who sent me to baptize with water said to me, upon whom you see the spirit descending and remaining on him. This is he whose baptism is with the Holy Spirit.

And I have seen and testified that this is the son of God. Again, the next day, John, with two of his disciples, stood and looking at Jesus as he walked, he said, Behold, the lamb of God. Now, John the Baptist was an eccentric fellow, as I mentioned, sort of an odd person.

He was, I guess, like an ancient hippie who dressed weird, wore lots of leather and ate bugs. And he lived out in the wilderness, the Bible tells us. And yet Jesus in the Gospel of Luke said, John the Baptist was the greatest person who up to that point had ever lived. Well, that's an amazing statement, especially coming from the lips of Jesus.

Think of it. John had written no book. He was not an influencer on Instagram or Twitter.

He had formed no institution. He didn't even live a long life. He certainly didn't have a long ministry. And yet Jesus said he was great.

In fact, not just great, but the greatest person who ever lived. Now, in this short little story, John basically does two things. John the Baptist. John refers to himself and he reveals his savior. He talks about himself, but only in passing. He doesn't really have a message about himself. And the only reason he talks about himself is because they question him. They say, Who are you?

Oh, we need to give people an answer. Tell us your identity. So he refers to himself first negatively, then positively. First he says, This is who I am not.

And then he says, This is really what I am. So he says, I am not the Messiah. I am not the Christ.

Christ is the Greek word Christos, and it refers to the Messiah. I am not the long awaited Jewish Messiah that you all been waiting for. I'm not that one. The other person I am not is I am not the prophet Elijah. The Bible says Elijah would come before the coming of the Lord. So he says, I am not Elijah the prophet. And then he says, I am not that prophet. That prophet was a prediction from the book of Exodus chapter 18 that God would send the prophet.

And so they had this idea that perhaps John was one of those three people, the Messiah, Elijah, or the prophet. He goes, Nope, I'm not any of those people. But positively, I'll tell you what I am. He said, I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness.

What a description. Because you see to John, it really isn't about him. He's there to point to to introduce people to the Messiah, Jesus Christ. That's what he was. He was the forerunner of Christ.

He was the one to make the announcement. So he says, I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness. That's a quote right out of Isaiah chapter 40.

So think of this. He's saying, I am not the message. I'm just the messenger.

I am not the word. I'm just the voice. I'm the mouthpiece announcing somebody else who is coming. And he said, My task is to make ready or prepare the road or the way of the Lord. So John the Baptist says, Look, I'm just a divine road worker.

I'm here to prepare the way of the Lord. Now, I find John's answer about who he is very revealing because, you know, John could have said, Oh, you mean you don't know who I am? Don't you know that my father is Zacharias, a very famous and important priest in Jerusalem? Don't you know that I'm that kid who was filled with the Holy Spirit even while I was in the womb?

Don't you know that I am the forerunner of the Messiah as predicted in the Old Testament? He goes, No, I'm just a voice crying in the wilderness, pointing the way to somebody far more important than I am. John was a voice. He was a messenger. He was, in effect, the last Old Testament prophet and the first New Testament preacher. And John was a miracle child.

That is, he had or was born of a miraculous birth. You see, his parents were quite old. Zacharias, his dad, the priest I talked about, was married to a woman named Elizabeth. They had never had children before, and they were quite elderly.

So it was humanly, physically impossible for them to have children. But one day when Zacharias is out in the temple doing his ministry, an angel appears to him. Not just an angel, the angel Gabriel shows up and says, You know what? Zacharias, you and your wife are going to have a son. And he is going to be great in the sight of the Lord, and he's going to turn the children of Israel back to their God.

And God is going to use him in a tremendous way. Well, Zacharias sees this and hears this, and you would think for anybody with a thinking mind, that would be enough for them to be convinced. Hey, an angel shows up, gives you a message, and then disappears.

But Zacharias is this kind of old, crusty guy, and he says, You know what? That's good, but how do I really know it's going to happen? And so the angel says, Okay, well, you didn't believe me when I told you and I appeared to you. I'm like an angel, and you need more proof than that.

How's this? Well, you won't be able to talk for the next nine months. While your wife is pregnant, you won't be able to utter a word. Now I'll tell you what, that would be very frustrating to any wife when her husband comes home, and she wants to talk about what happened during the day, and he doesn't say a word. Most men are quiet anyway, but he couldn't say anything.

It's very frustrating for him to hear his wife talk all the time, and he couldn't respond. So nine months go by, and when the child is born, Zacharias said, You will call his name John. He writes it down on a tablet because he can't talk.

He writes it down. Call his name John, J-O-H-N. He spells it out because that's the name the angel gave him.

And then Zacharias was able to speak. Now because Zacharias was a priest, what that meant is his son John should also have been a priest because he was part of the lineage, the physical lineage of the priesthood. So if you have a priest who's a father, that's what you will do. You will go into the priesthood.

You are trained from that from a young age. But John was a different sort. He was unconventional. As I mentioned, he dressed weird. I'm sure that when Zacharias would come home from time to time, Elizabeth would say, Honey, John's doing it again. He's wearing leather, and he's out in the backyard eating bugs.

What are we going to do with this guy? The Bible also tells us he was a Nazarite, which was a specific vow that one could take mentioned in the Old Testament where he didn't cut his hair. He could not be around or touch a corpse. Not that anybody would want to, but he was forbidden to do that. And also he could not have anything that came from grapes.

Couldn't eat grapes, couldn't eat raisins, couldn't have wine. All of that he would abstain from as a sign of a lifelong dedication to God. So that's John the Baptist, and he refers to himself a little bit. I'm just the voice of one crying in the wilderness. But really what he's all about is to reveal the Savior. And so he talks about Jesus. He talks about Jesus' person, and he talks about Jesus' mission. He says, somebody is coming who is preferred before me because he was before me. And then John says, and by the way, he's the Son of God.

Now, that's a mouthful. Let me just quickly explain. He's preferred before me, meaning he is in higher rank than I am. He is much more important than I am. You guys are asking me about me. What you need to be doing is thinking about somebody else that I'm about to introduce to you. He is preferred before me.

He's ranked above me. And then John says this, because he was before me. Now, to me this is fascinating, because John the Baptist was six months older than Jesus. They were probably cousins.

We are told in the Bible that Mary, the mother of Jesus, and Elizabeth, the wife of Zacharias, that they were cousins. They were probably first cousins, which would make John the Baptist and Jesus second cousins. John was born first. Jesus was born second.

So they were related to each other. But here is John saying, Jesus is actually somebody who existed before I did, and he's the Son of God. So according to John the Baptist out in the desert, he speaks of Jesus' person as preexisting. He lived before he did, and he was indeed the Son of God.

Now, I'm spelling this out for this reason. To me, it makes the authenticity of Jesus Christ by the testimony of John the Baptist much more profound. I mean, how many of you would ever say of your cousin, this is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. How many of you would say of your cousin, my cousin here is the Son of God?

No, you would say, you know what, when we get together, I fight with my cousin. So for John the Baptist to say, my cousin, the one who's younger than I am, is the Lamb of God who will take away the sin of the world, and he came before I did is amazing, the Son of God. That's his mission, the Lamb of God who would take away the sin of the world. Now, what do you think John the Baptist had in his mind when he said, behold, or look, or check it out, there's the Lamb of God. What do you think he had in his mind? Well, he could have had several things. Perhaps in his mind, he was thinking of Abraham and Isaac in the Old Testament, when Abraham walked with his son, Isaac, up a mountain and was about to kill his son in obedience to God before the angel stopped him and said, don't do it.

I can see that you are willing to do it. You are fully committed to God, but do not kill your son. And Abraham said, the Lord God will provide himself a lamb. Maybe he was thinking of that, that sacrifice of a father killing his only begotten son. Or perhaps in John's mind, he was thinking of the Passover feast. After all, it was the time of Passover when Jesus would die, and he definitely fulfilled that. Maybe John the Baptist was thinking back to the time when the children of Israel were in Egypt. They were in the desert, and God delivered them, and the sign of deliverance was the lamb that was slain, and the blood was placed on the lintels and the doorposts of the house. Maybe John was thinking of the Passover lamb, but my guess is that when John the Baptist said, behold the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, he was thinking of Isaiah chapter 53.

And here's why I believe that. John had already quoted Isaiah chapter 40 when he said, I'm the voice of one crying in the wilderness. That's a quote right out of the prophecy of Isaiah.

And from the things that John speaks throughout his lifetime and in these early moments, we can tell that he was a student of the prophecy of Isaiah. And so probably he was thinking of Isaiah chapter 53, a portion of which I want to read to you now. Now Isaiah chapter 53 is a passage in the Old Testament that rises above just about every other Old Testament prophecy of the coming of Christ. The roots of the Christian gospel are found in Isaiah chapter 53. In fact, I think it is probably the clearest declaration of the meaning of sacrifice and atonement found in all of the Bible. I think it's an even greater and clearer depiction than the book of Romans itself. Isaiah 53 is an amazing passage. It was written 600 years before Jesus was born. And Isaiah 53 is a sad song, a painful song of a suffering servant.

In verse one of Isaiah 53, who has believed our report and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed? For he shall grow up before him as a tender plant and as a root out of dry ground. He has no form or comeliness. And when we see him, there is no beauty that we should desire him. He's despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows, acquainted with grief.

And we hid, as it were, our faces from him. He was despised and we did not esteem him. Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows. Yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions.

He was bruised for our iniquities. The chastisement for our peace was upon him. And by his stripes, we are healed. All we, like sheep, have gone astray.

We have turned every one to his own way, and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all. He was oppressed. He was afflicted. And yet he opened not his mouth. He was led as a lamb to the slaughter. And as a sheep, before its shearers is silent, so he opened not his mouth.

That's a prophecy, a very clear prophecy of the suffering servant, the Lord Jesus Christ, who would come as the lamb of God, as a lamb before its shearers is silent, so he opened not his mouth. You know, sheep are interesting creatures. They get dirty very easily.

They grow wool, and they exude this kind of waxy, oily film called lanolin, and it clogs up all the pores. And one of the happiest days in a little lamb's life is when an owner picks it up and cuts all the hair off. When it's shorn, when he shears off all of the wool, that lamb loves it.

And he's used to somebody picking it up and handling it and taking off its coat and feeding it and taking care of it, so much so that later on when somebody picks it up to kill it, didn't say anything, because he's always been handled with care. So that's why Isaiah said, as a lamb, as a lamb before its shearers is silent, so he did not open his mouth. I think that's what John the Baptist had in mind when he saw his cousin come down. And he said, behold, the lamb of God, which takes away the sin of the world.

But you know what the problem was? The Jewish people of that time were not looking for a lamb. They were looking for a king.

They wanted a conqueror. They wanted somebody to say, behold the king, behold the lion of the tribe of Judah. Not behold the lamb, because a lamb at best is weak. A lamb at worst is dead. That's what you sacrifice with a lamb. You kill lambs on the altar in Jerusalem. And the Jews were not looking for a lamb.

They were looking for a Lambo. They were looking for a conqueror, a king, a warrior, because they didn't understand they needed a lamb. They needed somebody who would take away their sin.

And because they didn't know they needed it, they were not looking for it. What they wanted was a sovereign. God gave them a substitute. What they wanted was a conqueror.

God gave them a lamb. What they wanted is somebody to come and kill all their enemies. What they got is somebody whose enemies would kill him. Weak, seemingly.

Doesn't say a word. Offers himself willingly for death. But what they needed to know is they could never have a king until they first had a lamb.

The lamb must come first. And that is what the Scripture always promised from way back in Genesis chapter 3, the very first prophecy of the coming of Christ when Adam and Eve fell in the garden and God said there is coming somebody called the seed of the woman who's going to crush the head of Satan. He's going to crush the skull of the devil. And the reason Good Friday is so good to us, and by the way if you are wondering what the meaning of the strange motif they have at Calvary of a skull and a snake crawling out of it, you need to read your Bible a little bit more.

Because here it is. At the place of the skull, which is what Calvary is, Calvary means a skull, Golgotha, that's where Jesus died. At the place of a skull, the skull of Satan was crushed. And sin was dealt with. Just like the prophets predicted.

Because here's the big deal, here's the main thing. Sin, which infects everybody, kills. Sin is 100% fatal. It is far worse than any coronavirus.

It is 100% fatal. But the blood of Jesus Christ is the vaccine. And what we are about to take in a moment, these elements, that's symbolic that we have taken the vaccine. The blood of Jesus Christ, God's Son cleanses a person from all sin. And by the way, it's a lot better efficacy than Pfizer or Moderna.

They're like 94%, 97%. The blood of Jesus Christ is 100% effective. It can cleanse you from all your sin. That's why we make a big deal out of this day.

It's not even Good Friday, it's Great Friday. Because God did such a great thing and we believe Jesus to be such a great Savior. And so John said, look, behold, that's the Lamb of God who will be able to take away the sin of the world. And I hope and pray He's taken away your sin.

If you've never trusted Him personally, now's the time for you to do it. That concludes Skip Heitzig's special Good Friday message. Now, here's Skip to share how you can help keep this broadcast going strong, connecting you and others around the world with the gospel. As we wait for Jesus to return, our prayer is, your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. You know, one day that prayer will be answered in full.

In the meantime, God chooses to work through His people to further His gospel in the world. And you can partner in that work today through your gift, expanding the reach of this radio ministry and the teachings you love to more and more listeners. Here's how you can give a gift right now. To give today, simply call 800-922-1888. That number again is 800-922-1888. Or visit connectwithskip.com slash donate.

That's connectwithskip.com slash donate. Tune in tomorrow as Skip Heitzig shares about the suffering Jesus endured and the hope it gives you in your own suffering. In the Bible, it would seem that God's plan always included a garden. God's creative plan, God's redemptive plan, God's restoration plan all speak of a garden, all revolve around the use of a garden. Make a connection, make a connection at the foot of the cross and cast all burdens on His word. Connect with Skip Heitzig is a presentation of Connection Communications, connecting you to God's never-changing truth in ever-changing times.