The Weight of That Friday

The angels watched, hands on swords, waiting for Him to speak.  Their faces must have showed a deep pain but they could not understand what He was doing.  For them SIN was a single moment in time, a solitary choice, follow the fallen or soar in Holiness.  There was no temptation, no weight of daily anguish and sin.  They stood by waiting for Jesus to give them an order and they waited.  Waited to announce the victory over death, over sin, over the prince of the fallen.

Borrowed, with thanks, from 

http://www.keepbelieving.com/blog/2011-3-28-50-good-friday-easter-sermons/

Jesus, by this time on that Friday, had been tried, found guilty and was battered and bruised both physically and emotionally as a man but also He was preparing to bear our weight, the weight of all the sins of the world past, present and future.  I don't know that He was in a hurry but the rest of the persecutors were!

He rushed to betray him!  They rushed to capture him!  They hurried to judge  him!  They pressured and cried to kill him!  They couldn't wait to rid themselves of this dangerous man not realizing they were rushing us towards salvation.  They didn't know, couldn't know that their sins that day were most necessary and would be used by God and His Son to save us all.  Especially those they thought not worth saving - the unclean, the unholy, the human.

I've thought a lot about the weight Jesus bore on this day.  How much that Friday must have weighed!

For the human Jesus there was the physical pain, and mental anguish that came from betryal, persecution, assault and execution.  The anticipation and the knowledge that it was necessary was something He knew.

Psalm 103 ~ as far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us

For the Son of God, the Jesus who willingly came to be wholly human there was an impending weight to be born.  A weight for all time.  A weight that was more than anyone could understand.


To understand what Jesus did for us we have to think about how our own sin makes us feel.  It has a weight on our body, mind and spirit.  It pulls us down.  Imagine Him carrying all at once the sins of everyone.  Knowing that if He dropped the net our sins would spill out and drown the world.  Knowing that if He couldn't bear it for us, we could never do it alone.  There aren't enough fires and lambs in the past, present and future of the world to atone for humans.


God knew this.  God knew this on the first day that Adam and Eve walked out of the garden in shame.  He started getting the world ready, He started getting Jesus ready.  The along with the Holy Spirit created a Holy plan to redeem us all once, and for all, and give us the choice in that redemption!


The God self of Jesus knew WHAT He had to do, the human self of Jesus had to bear the physical weight of the task.  While His body rested in the tomb, Jesus wrestled with the weight of us and didn't lose a single sin or a single act.  He carried it all...my eyes fill with tears imagining in my limited way what He did for us!


Let yourself become exhausted, don't eat or get proper rest. Let your body get worn down.  Then in the middle of the night, be betrayed, then beaten. Then dragged around a city under the cover of darkness, knowing that daylight would come, and it would only get worse.  Bleeding, bruised, exhausted and utterly alone.  That, just for a human mind and body would be crushing, deadly and cruel.  When we are injured and tired the very weight of our own breath can be too much.  Add a totally human emotional weight - why me? What did I do? I'm innocent! and the weight can drive you to your knees!

Read Job - he bore all the weight that God would permit the fallen prince to put upon him.  He, human man, but one who loved God bore it with God's help. Jesus bore what we all have done, all we did and all we would do alone because He needed to give us empty baskets of sin to approach the Father.

Jesus, the ultimate fisher of men, wove nets of love to catch us on the cross.  He also wove nets of love to hold our sin.  And not one wiggling, not a single lustful or murderous one escaped him.  He took them all, carried them all and that weighed more than all the world that Friday.  He carried that net full and dropped it in the hole between East and West and allowed God to forget our sins and through His Son see us as clean and worthy.

I am so thankful that I have an empty net, that I can go before God redeemed, and know that the net I have woven for me in Love shows that Love.  My sins no longer are stuck in my net, they are by the blood and love of Jesus washed clean and cast away.

The devil, the fallen one, gathered every sin he could find and poured it onto Jesus.  Knowing that if even one fell from his net, if even one wasn't carried by Him, that all would fall and so we all would fall.  I dislike imagining him, but I like to smile at his chagrin when he realized that love is so much stronger than he could know.  That not one single sin fell out and that Jesus carried it all.

Thank you, God for your Son.  Thank you Jesus for not letting us fall, for carrying away our sin. Thank you for sending the Holy Spirit to us. Thank you for the weight of that Friday that you bore for us all.