Do television commercials really work? Why do companies spend millions of dollars a
year for their 30-second spots---silly jingles and skits that we often mock or
try to avoid? You can be sure that I
have never deliberately referenced a commercial while I was shopping, or been
deceived enough to say, “I will buy THIS soup, because the lady on TV once said
that it was better for me!” Yet,
advertisers know that their job is not to appeal to us on a conscious,
decision-making level, but rather simply to create trust and believability. The commercial is not a mandate for me; it’s a brainwashing of me. If the commercial leaves me with the “feeling”,
vague and undiscerned, that McDonald’s is “fun” or “clever” or “cool,” then the
writers have accomplished their mission.
The issue is credibility, not intelligence.
And Satan knows that, too. His war on the Bible is generally not waged
on the conscious, decision-making level either.
While at times he has employed the use of obvious assault, he is also
famously subtle (Gen. 3:1). Like a
commercial writer who knows better than to think I will race out to buy a McRib
today just because someone told me to, he is not trying to have a logical,
academic discussion with me. Satan just
wants me to doubt God. We can read our
Bibles and go to church, but if Satan can leave us with a vague and undiscerned
“feeling” of doubt--that somehow the dots are not being logically connected--
then his mission is accomplished. He’s
good at his game: He’s been playing it
for 6000 years, ever since he first questioned Eve, “Yea, hath God said?”
The credibility of
God depends on Scripture. After all,
what do we have of God without the Bible?
Have we seen Him? People have
tried to find God outside the Bible, through mystic experiences and phenomena,
but we can argue that those “events” only point to a power. They don’t identify a source. If God’s Word is found faulty, the apostle Paul reminds
Christians that we are “of all men most miserable.” (I Cor. 15:19) We have
staked our eternity on this Book. It
must be right, or misery is indeed ours.
When Jesus was on this earth, He spoke freely of His
coming death and resurrection. He referred
to His body as a “Temple.” He constantly
warned his disciples that this “Temple” would be torn down, but that in three
days He would “raise it up again.” (Jn. 2:19) Yet, despite all those warnings,
John admits that he and his fellow disciples “knew not the Scripture, that He
must rise again from the dead.” (Jn. 20:9) When the disciples went home on that dark
afternoon, leaving the battered body of Jesus in a borrowed grave, they were
not waiting for a resurrection.
The credibility and deity of Christ depended then—and still depends today—on the
resurrection: Not just the reality that
it took place at all, but also that it took place exactly as Jesus said it would. And here is where tradition becomes a tool of
Satan to dismantle the credibility of Christ.
For centuries, every denomination (including the Baptists—and I speak as a Baptist), has celebrated Good Friday as the day Jesus was crucified, and Easter Sunday as the day He rose from the dead.
Several Scriptures help to frame the context for this
discussion:
Colossians
2:8, “Beware, lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after
the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ.”
John 5:39, “Search
the Scriptures.”
II Timothy
2:15, “Study to shew thyself approved unto God.”
It is our responsibility to question tradition, and to search the Scripture. Everything we believe and practice must be found in Scripture, or it is merely “tradition of men.”
What does the
Bible say about the crucifixion of Christ?
1. Jesus promised, “For as Jonas was three
days and three nights in the whale’s belly; so shall the Son of man be three
days and three nights in the heart of the earth.” (Matt. 12:40)
The trouble with our tradition comes with the “three
nights.” Good Friday allows for three
partial days, but three nights (even partial nights) would place Jesus’
resurrection on a Monday morning! Yet,
we know that the ladies went to the tomb as soon as dawn broke, “on the first
day of the week” (Mark 16:2) to anoint Jesus’ body with spices (Jn. 20:1), only to discover an angel at the
entrance of an empty tomb.
2. What about the “Sabbath”?
The tradition of Good Friday is the result of
misunderstanding the Sabbath. While most
people understand that the Jews celebrated a weekly Sabbath on which rest and
holy observance was mandated (Exodus 20:8), John explains what kind of Sabbath the
Jews were really preparing to observe as Jesus died on the cross:
“The Jews therefore, because it was the preparation,
that the bodies should not remain upon the cross on the Sabbath day, (for that Sabbath day was an high day,) besought Pilate that their legs might be broken, and
that they might be taken away.” (Jn.
19:31)
John points out that “that Sabbath” was specifically a High (Holy) Day. This was not the weekly Sabbath, and it was not on a Saturday. To confuse these two “Sabbaths” is to change the whole story. The Jews were not allowed to work on either Sabbath, and the story of the crucifixion ironically finds these religious liars orchestrating the execution of an innocent Man and then scurrying to take Him off the cross in time to keep their “Sabbath”.
The week of the crucifixion there were two Sabbaths. The observance of the High Sabbath—not a Saturday rest, but the annual celebration of the Passover (when the death angel had “passed over” the believing Hebrew homes)—began at sundown, three hours after Jesus declared, “It is finished!” and died. Once Jesus was taken to His grave, the Jews hurried home to begin recognizing the annual Passover Sabbath at sundown. The following day, no one could go anoint Jesus’ body (due to Sabbath restrictions). The next day, Saturday, they again could not anoint Him because it was now the weekly Sabbath. Did you ever wonder why the ladies did not try to anoint Jesus’ body until He had been in the tomb for three days? They had to observe two separate Sabbath rests before they could “work”. The break of dawn, on Sunday morning, was the earliest time they were permitted to arrive at the tomb with their spices.
Equally compelling, though, is what exactly this
High Sabbath signifies. The story of the
slavery and exodus of the Hebrews from Egypt culminates with the death of the
Passover Lamb. (See Exodus 12.) God provided a way for the Hebrews to be
spared the final plague (the death of the firstborn child), for anyone who
would paint the doorpost of his house with the blood of an innocent lamb—following
these specific qualifications for the lamb:
“Your lamb shall be without blemish, a male of the first year: . . .
And they shall take of the blood, and strike it on the two side posts and on the
upper door post of the houses, wherein they shall eat it . . . And the blood
shall be to you for a token upon the houses where ye are: and when I see the blood, I will pass over
you.”
That night, when the “great cry” rang throughout Egypt as
each household made the grim discovery of the death of the firstborn child, the
believing Hebrews were spared. Someone
else had died—that spotless lamb, whose blood was still shining in brutal
reminder from their door posts, had died in their places that they might live.
Why does it matter? While it’s unproductive to debate just for
the cause of arguing, there is good reason to study this issue out. Simply:
Because Jesus doesn’t lie. Either
He was in the tomb for three nights, or He wasn’t. Either we can take the Bible
literally and seriously, or we can’t. Opponents
of Scripture aren’t afraid to scrutinize the Bible and test its words against
themselves, and we ought not to be afraid
either. When people want to attack
the credibility of Scripture, what story do they often question? How many times have we heard people say, “I
can believe the ‘God is love’ parts, but I have trouble with stories like ‘Jonah and
the whale.’” Jonah and the great fish,
besides being a true and important story in the Old Testament, has an even
greater purpose: It’s where we get the
math for the resurrection! Satan craftily
chips away at these “small” details in order to leave us vulnerable to the greater error of doubt.
And secondly, what does the High Sabbath mean to me? Two thousand years later, I can look back on
that day and see that the High Sabbath was when Someone died for me. While hypocritical priests and cruel
Roman soldiers committed the greatest crime in history, God deliberately allowed
His Son to be spit on, mocked, scourged, and then savagely hanged on a Roman
cross . . . for my crimes. I
should have had to pay for my own sin. Like
all those Egyptian firstborn, I should have died in my own sin, paid my own
debt, and suffered in hell forever.
But there was a Lamb.
But there was a Lamb.
When I called on Christ to be my Savior, His blood was painted over the door posts of my own
heart. He covered me in His own blood. I cannot produce my own righteousness and
save myself; only the blood of that
perfect Lamb could wash my sin away.
Just as the Hebrews were not instructed to do good works, or perform religious
rituals, or demonstrate piety in order to preserve themselves, I also had only
one option: to be covered under the blood
of the Lamb.
While it would be proud and foolish to judge others who
celebrate Good Friday, or to create a silly debate that detracts from a larger
cause, I hope to encourage us all not to allow religious tradition to rob us of
the reality of the resurrection, or to cast doubt upon the literal truth of Scripture.
Jesus told it exactly as it came to pass: He was buried for three days and three
nights, and then He rose again, just as He said He would.
“Let God be true, but every man a liar.” (Romans 3:4)
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