Real Meaning of Good Friday and Easter
4//12/68
___(??) are really the greatest mysteries of the Christian faith and I say mysteries advisedly, for listen to the words as you read them in the 4th chapter of the Book of Mark. He turns to the inner circle, his disciples, and he said, “To you it has been given to know the mysteries of God, but for those outside everything is in parables” (verse 11). The story to everyone outside of those who heard it from within is a parable. A parable is a story that is told as though it were true leaving the one who heard it to discover its fictitious character and then learn its meaning, its lesson.
Today, millions, possibly hundreds of millions, went to this three-hour service. An equal number and maybe greater will go on Sunday to Easter service, and they do not know it is parable. It’s a story of which they are totally unaware until it is given to them from within. So Paul said, “Great indeed is the mystery of our religion” (1Tim. 3:16). It’s a mystery, it’s a great secret. Now this mystery is not something to be kept forever as a secret, it really is a matter that is mysterious in character. How can man grasp it? And when it is told, not everyone who is told it from within will accept it. For many heard it, as we are told in the 6th chapter of John, and they were considered disciples, followers, but they could not accept it, and many left him, never to walk with him again.
So tonight, I will take these two, for we will not meet until Monday and these two will be behind us. We’ll take them tonight and see if you can accept it. It’s entirely up to you. I’m speaking from my own personal experience. I’m not theorizing, I’m not speculating; this mystery I have experienced. So we’ll take this day and here we call it the day of the crucifixion and people think now this is the day on which he died. Well, that is not what scripture teaches if you read it carefully, but certainly not what one knows from experience. “I have been crucified with Christ; it is not I who live, but Christ who lives in me; and the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me” (Gal. 2:20).
I can hang forever on the cross, but that is not his death. We think this is the death of the Son of God. The death, as told us in the 27th chapter of Matthew, the 23rd of Luke, in the 15th of Mark, and they all give this as the cue of the death. Listen to the words carefully: “And he cried out again with a loud voice and yielded his Spirit. And behold, the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom; and the earth shook and all the rocks were split” (Mat. 27:51). So we are told that his death was marked by the tearing of the curtain of the temple, from top to bottom…that is his death. I can hang on the cross indefinitely, but I do not yield the Spirit until this even takes place. When that event takes place then the Lord died. It’s two sides, this day, to the coin. It’s a twin event. I yield completely and then comes the complete severance of the curtain of the temple, which we’re told in scripture is the body of God. At that very moment then he ascends into the Holy of Holies. So the death is marked by the tearing of the curtain.