church

INI
Good Friday
April 2, 2010
Ascension Lutheran Church, Tacoma WA
Paul Naumann, Pastor

A Searching Question for Good Friday:
"IF THEY DO THESE THINGS IN THE GREEN WOOD, WHAT
WILL BE DONE IN THE DRY?"
Luke 23:27-31

Grace and Lenten peace be multiplied unto you, in God our Father, and in our
Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, Amen. The text for our Good Friday meditation is
found in the 23rd chapter of the Gospel of Luke, beginning with the 27th verse:

And a great multitude of the people followed Him, and women who also
mourned and lamented Him. But Jesus, turning to them, said, "Daughters of
Jerusalem, do not weep for Me, but weep for yourselves and for your children.
For indeed the days are coming in which they will say, 'Blessed are the barren,
the wombs that never bore, and the breasts which never nursed!' Then they will
begin 'to say to the mountains, "Fall on us!" and to the hills, "Cover us!"' For if
they do these things in the green wood, what will be done in the dry?" So far the
holy Word.

In the Name of Jesus Christ, who was "wounded for our trangressions, and
bruised for our iniquities," Dear Fellow Redeemed,

In the summer of 1988, many South Dakota firefighters got a good look at
what happens to dry wood. In the depths of a three year drought, two huge fires
- the Galena Fire and the Westbury Trails Fire - swept through the Black Hills.
Forestry officials said that at the time of the fires, the standing timber of the
Black Hills contained less moisture than there is in kiln-dried lumber. The trees
were literally drier than match sticks. With the timber in that condition, all it
took was a spark and a brisk wind for tens of thousands of acres to go up in
flames. It was predictable - almost inevitable - that such dry wood would
eventually be destroyed. It only made sense.

By way of contrast, on this day some two thousand years ago, a destruction
took place that seemed to make no sense at all: the Son of God was destroyed
on the cross. (Jesus was like green wood - He was sinless, innocent of
transgression, perfectly obedient to His heavenly Father. And yet, on Good
Friday this "green wood" was consumed by God's wrath over sin. That forces
us to ask a dreadful question. It's the same question that Jesus asked of the
women of Jerusalem, and it's a searching question we should ask ourselves:

"IF THEY DO THESE THINGS IN THE GREEN WOOD, WHAT WILL
BE DONE IN THE DRY?"

Traveling in my car the other day I heard a reporter from National Public Radio
discussing the "deep spiritual significance" of Holy Week. She talked a lot
about remembering the death of Jesus, but I think she misunderstood what
Good Friday is really all about. A lot of people do. They see Jesus merely as a
good man who died a brave and undeserved death at the hands of his enemies.
"Such a kind and gentle person," they say. "Such a cruel death...what a shame!"
I'm sure most Americans, to the extent that they think about it at all, view
Good Friday this way. (They're missing the whole point. Good Friday isn't
about sympathy and sentimentality - it's about sin, and the punishment for sin.

That Friday morning, Jesus, bruised and bleeding, was being led down the Via
Dolorosa to His death. A crowd followed Him, including many women of
Jerusalem. When they looked at Jesus, they didn't see their Savior. What they
saw was simply a young man unjustly condemned. And they sympathized - they
cried for Him. But Jesus knew their unbelief, and He told them to save their
sympathy: "Daughters of Jerusalem," He said, "do not weep for Me, but weep
for yourselves and for your children."

Don't cry for Me, cry for yourselves! You're the ones who have rejected the
Savior God sent to you! -The Jews of Jerusalem had indeed rejected Jesus. He'd
spent years trying to win them for the kingdom of God. He said he'd wanted to
"gather them together as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings." But in the
end, they refused to repent of their sin and accept Him as their Savior. And
their judgment was coming!

Yes, Jesus was suffering terrible agony - the torn and bleeding back, the crown
of thorns...soon the nail wounds and the slow, grating torture of the cross. God
was laying on Him the punishment for the sins of the world. But Jesus had a
searching question for them: "(If they do these things in the green wood, what
will be done in the dry?" If God did this to His innocent Son, what would God
do to the sinful Jews of Jerusalem who rejected their Messiah? What terrible
judgment would they have to bear?

Jesus gave them a dreadful hint of that coming judgment: "For indeed the days
are coming in which they will say, 'Blessed are the barren, the wombs that never
bore, and the breasts which never nursed!'" Normally, being barren was
considered the worst thing that could possibly happen to a Jewish woman. But a
judgment so terrible was coming that it would make mothers wish they had
never had children. "Then they will begin 'to say to the mountains, "Fall on us!"
and to the hills, "Cover us!"'" A period of suffering so severe was coming upon
Jerusalem, Jesus said, that people would rather be buried alive than endure it.

The Jews of Jerusalem were hardened, unrepentant, unwilling to turn to their
Savior and live...they were dry wood. And forty years later, in 70 A.D., the
world got a good look at what happens to dry wood. In one of history's
bloodiest massacres, the Romans attacked Jerusalem and leveled it to the
ground. Men, women and children were butchered. The historian Josephus says
that blood ran in the streets, in some places as deep as the horses' bridles.

It's horrible, isn't it? Jesus was right when He predicted, "For then there will be
great tribulation, such as has not been since the beginning of the world until this
time, no, nor ever shall be." -- Mat 24:20-21. Some of the details recorded
about this slaughter I can't even mention - they're just too horrible, too obscene.
But on Good Friday it's worth remembering this terrible judgment, because it
has to do with something our world of today would rather forget: (sin, and it's
punishment. So many people in this world think that they don't need a Savior
from sin. Or else they try to be their own Savior, deciding for themselves how
to live, what is right and what is wrong. Nobody in our world seems to take sin
seriously anymore - or at least not what the Bible calls sin. And it's true that you
can avoid the problem of sin temporarily. If a person keeps sinning long enough,
his conscience will cease to bother him about it. He can pay psychiatrists to
help him get rid of his "guilt feelings." Ignore sin long enough, he thinks, and
maybe it will just go away.

But sin won't go away. Make no mistake - every single sin must be paid for.
The Bible says that "the wages of sin is death!" And if you don't believe that,
one look at the cross should convince you! As the hymnist wrote:
Ye who think of sin but lightly,
Nor suppose the evil great,
Here may view it's nature rightly,
Here its guilt may estimate.

All the horrible consequences of sin are plain to see in the tortured body of
Christ on the cross. He suffered for our sins there - yours and mine. As Isaiah
said, "All we like sheep have gone astray, we have turned every one into his
own paths, and (the Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all." By rights, our
sins should have landed us hell. Instead, they landed Jesus on the cross!

Today, as we gaze upon our suffering Savior, it's time for us to ask that
searching question: "If they do these things in the green wood, what will be
done in the dry?" Or to put it another way, the writer to the Hebrews asks,
"How shall we escape if we neglect so great a salvation?" -- Heb 2:3. My fellow
Christians, if you're not afraid of sin, then you'd better (get afraid of it (right
now! If you're cherishing a pet sin in your bosom that you're unwilling to repent
of...beware! If there's some part of your life that you're unwilling to conform to
the will of God...beware! If the cares and pleasures of this world are beginning
to monopolize you attention and crowd out God's Word...beware! These are
sins that can lead you away from Christ. They can dry out your Christian faith.
If you don't catch them in time, they can eventually turn you into "dry wood."
And God has shown us only too clearly what happens to dry wood!

About a week and a half ago we passed the vernal equinox, which means that
day and night are exactly the same length. The long nights of winter are now
officially over. And yet in a spiritual sense, we have today reached the darkest
day of the year. Good Friday is a warning - even to us Christians - not to take
sin lightly. "Therefore," Paul says, "let him who thinks he stands take heed lest
he fall." -- I Cor 10:12. Our Savior's cross reminds us of the fearsome
consequences of sin. It urges each of us to daily contrition and repentance, for,
"If they do these things in the green tree, what shall be done in the dry?"

But a Christian is never without hope, and there is hope for us even on this
darkest day of the year. The bad news of Good Friday is that our sin has a very
high cost. The Good News is that Jesus paid that cost. God's wrath over sin is
fierce...but Jesus bore the brunt of God's wrath on the cross, so that we should
never have to bear it. Paul says simply, "We were reconciled to God through
the death of His Son." -- Rom 5:10.

Can you remember playing "tag" when you were a kid? I do. We always had
one place that was "safe" - a car or a tree or a fencepost; if you were touching
that object, you were safe, and you couldn't be tagged. For sinners, the cross is
safe. As long as we're touching the cross of our Savior, sin has lost it's power to
condemn us, and we are safe. The terrible fate of the dry wood will never befall
us if we abide in Christ.

Let us rely on the cross of Christ. Let us make God's Word our delight and our
meditation. Then we won't be dry wood, but rather, as the Psalmist says, we
"...shall be like a tree Planted by the rivers of water, That brings forth its fruit in
its season, Whose leaf also shall not wither; And whatever he does shall
prosper." -- Psa 1:3. AMEN.