Good Friday - Hebrews 4:14-16; 5:7-9 – Membership has its privileges

Good Friday

Text: Hebrews 4:14-16; 5:7-9 – Membership has its privileges

Some years ago American Express ran a marketing campaign with the slogan:

“Membership has its privileges”.

It was to encourage you to apply for its credit card which was to stand out when you went places and paid with it.

It was supposed to get you recognition that other credit cards didn’t.

These days just about every organisation has a membership program that offers you privileges and discounts to try and get your loyalty.

When you sign up they give you a loyalty card with member only discounts and invitations to special events.

I’m sure if you look in your wallet or purse you’d find one or more membership cards.

When doing our annual statistics one of the statistics we report on is “Baptised Membership”.

Baptism is considered as a membership status of the church.

What sort of privileges does this sort of membership offer?

On this most solemn day in the church calendar, St Paul explains to us what we are joining when we are baptised.

He says: “all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?”

What does that mean.

He goes on further to say:

We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life. (Romans 6:3,4).

Jesus’ death is a very solemn day which we acknowledge by the starkness of our church today.

No flowers, no coloured paraments, no adoration of the altar or sanctuary whatsoever.

Make no mistake – this was not a glorious day for Jesus or his Father in heaven.

“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me – why are you so far from helping me” (Psalm 22)

It was not a glorious day for Jesus but it is the most glorious day for us.

The writer to the Hebrews makes it very clear what Jesus death now means for us:

It means that we can now approach the throne of grace with boldness, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need. .

Because of his death Jesus became the source of eternal salvation for all (Hebrews 4:14-16; 5:7-9).

When Jesus died we read in Matthew’s Gospel that the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom.

That curtain was a barrier to the throne of God in the Holy of Holies – the most holy place in the temple that only the High Priest could enter.

You and I could not come near the throne of God’s presence

We could only hope that God would hear us through his high priest.

There was only one member in that elite tribe who had access to God’s throne of grace – the High Priest.

But by his death Jesus has torn down all barriers and invited us to approach God’s grace with boldness

Boldness not in the sense of arrogance, but with confidence.

Confidence that God hears us when we cry out to him for help, as he did for Jesus:

In the days of his flesh, Jesus offered up prayers, with loud cries and tears, to the one who was able to save him from death, and he was heard.

So too God hears us because of Jesus’ death.

His death has torn down all barriers symbolised by the temple curtain being torn in two.

We now have confidence in being saved from eternal death, as Jesus, through his obedience and death has become the source of eternal salvation for all.

There is a solemness and sadness about today and we should never lose that even though it is such glorious news for us.

And we should never forget the cost of our salvation and that it was because of our disobedience to God that Jesus’ obedience included his obedience unto death – even death on a cross (Philippians 2).

It was a horrible death, a death of torture and pain and suffering.

Bloody and bruised, mocked and derided, stripped naked and nailed to the cross, Jesus endured the suffering and felt the pain.

But there were no cries of pain by Jesus until he felt the pain of our sin.

It was then Jesus felt the greatest of all pains – abandonment by God – true hell.

But because of his pain, suffering and death we will be spared the pain of abandonment by God.

We will be spared the pain of hell.

A pain to which there is nothing to compare.

Abandonment by God.

True hell.

Because of all that Jesus went through, for us, we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who in every respect has been tested as we are, yet without sin.

And so the cross is no longer a place of shame and torture.

It is a place of love and hope.

In fact John’s gospel doesn’t have an Ascension account because he sees the cross as the throne of God where we now come to to find God’s love and our hope of eternal life.

Let us therefore approach the Cross of Christ, the throne of grace with boldness, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.

Membership has its privileges.

Baptised into Jesus’ death and as members of God’s family has its privileges – eternal life in heaven.