The First Good Friday

It is impossible adequately to describe the horror of that day. Events had moved quickly from the arrest in the Garden of Gethsemane to the trials and Peter's denial of his Lord, from the trumped-up charges, to the near-acquittal, to the mocking, the scourging, and then to the handing over of an innocent man to the howling religious mob whipped to a frenzy by the chief priests. Horror enough you may say, but now, Jesus whose beard had been yanked out, whose back had been laid open to the bone all over, whose flesh must have been hanging from Him like so much raw meat, was forced to carry His cross to the final place of execution.

This stumbling, agonising and breath-sapping procession was through streets (Via Dolorosa) thronged with a crowd which just a few short days ago was heralding Him as their king, but was now raucously deriding Him. He had been sentenced to death and was therefore regarded as a dead man already. He was fair game for all the horrors which could be inflicted on a condemned man on the public road to His death.
       

Was He kicked, pushed from side to side of the street, jeered, spat upon, and reviled? Perhaps rubbish and sewage was thrown over Him.... perhaps we shall never know, but human nature today allows us to think that the final footsteps of His life were more horrific than we might care to consider.

Whatever happened, Jesus could carry His cross no longer. The Roman executioners pressed Simon from Cyrene in North Africa into carrying it the remainder of the way. Finally, at the place called Golgotha - the place of the skull - Skull Hill, Jesus was flung to the cross and nailed there. The common practice was to use spikes through the forearms so that as the victim hung upright, He would not tear the spike through His hand and free His arm. 

Spikes were driven through His feet - probably His ankles, rupturing tendons, ligaments, muscles and joints - you see nobody cared anymore, Jesus was just another condemned non-entity, a joke, He would be dead in a few hours anyway. And then they hoisted the cross up ............ do you think they carefully put it in the ground so as not to jar the body more than necessary!? I don't think so.................

You saved others, but you can't save yourself ................ Get yourself and us down from here ......... Perhaps Elijah will come and get Him, let's wait and see ............ What's that He said? ......... Why is the sky getting dark, it’s hardly past lunch-time? It's pitch black!! .......... Why is the ground shaking? ..........Who are those people? ..........What's happening?!!!!!!

Questions: Dare you answer them truthfully?

·                     What would you have done?

·                     What stand would you have taken in this final unfolding of horror?

·                     Do you jeer at injustice now?

·                     Who is Jesus to you?

·                     What claim does the Son of God have on your life?

See how to receive all that Jesus died to give you, He loves you more than you have ever been loved before. For the eternal value of all our lives, this Friday is the best ever. Check this new life out at 'Joy for Life'

http://www.joyforlife.org/index.php/living-with-jesus-01/