He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed. 1 Peter 2:24 ESV
 
When I was a kid, I was very confused on why it was called Good Friday. God the Son was murdered in the most awful way possible. So why is it called good? Although I understand now what makes Good Friday “good,” I’m sure there are some still confused. It almost doesn’t feel right to call it Good Friday. I don’t think it is a bad thing to feel this way, in fact I think it is exactly how we should feel.  Good Friday should be a day filled with joyful grief. 
 
For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. John 3:16 ESV
 
Good Friday is good because God the Son died as a sacrifice for our sin so that whoever believes in him will gain eternal life. “…without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins” (Hebrews 9:22b ESV). Without Christ’s sacrifice we have no hope. If Christ is not nailed to the cross, if his blood was not poured out, our sins would not be forgiven. We would be left to pay sin’s eternal price. Thanks be to the Eternal Son of God who paid that price for us on the cross! “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Corinthians 5:21 ESV). Not only did God the Son take our sin but He also gives us His own righteousness. Jesus didn’t just wipe our sin debt to zero, he also added to our account His infinite righteousness. Considering this, we can see how just how GOOD, Good Friday is! There is overwhelming joy for those who believe in the Lord Jesus Christ! 
 
Now as they were eating, Jesus took bread, and after blessing it broke it and gave it to the disciples, and said, “Take, eat; this is my body.” And he took a cup, and when he had given thanks he gave it to them, saying, “Drink of it, all of you, for this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins. Matthew 26:26-28 ESV
 
Like I said above Good Friday should be a day filled with joyful grief. There is joy in knowing that we have peace with God, however, the price that had to be paid was great. Before Christ was betrayed, Jesus instituted the Lord’s Supper. Good Friday and the Lord’s Supper should bring us joyful grief. The grief is in understanding that Christ suffered in such an awful way because of OUR sin. “But he was pierced for OUR transgressions; he was crushed for OUR iniquities” (Isaiah 53:5 ESV emphasis added). The sinless Holy Holy Holy Eternal Son of God, the one who created all things and holds all things together, was viciously mocked, beaten, and murdered because of OUR sin. His flesh being broken, and blood poured out, is the price that had to be paid to reverse the curse of OUR sin. We are so undeserving of His sacrifice. This makes me feel like the Psalmist who said “what is man that you are mindful of him and the son of man that you care for him?” (Psalm 8:4 ESV). The grief is in remembering what my depravity cost Christ, the joy is in His great love for me that He would die for me! “but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8 ESV). 
 
Then I looked, and I heard around the throne and the living creatures and the elders the voice of many angels, numbering myriads of myriads and thousands of thousands, saying with a loud voice, “Worthy is the Lamb who was slain, to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might and honor and glory and blessing!” And I heard every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and in the sea, and all that is in them, saying, “To him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb be blessing and honor and glory and might forever and ever!” Revelation 5:11-13 ESV
 
What ultimately makes Good Friday good is that God gets the glory! Good Friday was not an accident. Jesus’ death was not a mistake or miscalculation. Jesus’ death was an act of God’s sovereign providence. “Yet it was the will of the Lord to crush him; he has put him to grief” (Isaiah 53:10a ESV).  This was God’s plan from the beginning! The Lamb who was slain is the object of heaven’s worship! God is glorified in the redemption of man through the sacrifice of the Son of God. 
 
And behold, the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom.
Matthew 27:51a ESV
 
The curtain in the temple represents the separation between God and man because of sin. On Good Friday when Christ died that curtain was torn, showing that through Christ, the Mediator between God and man, we have access to God. Today take time to confess your sins to the Lord and repent. Thank Him for dying for your sins, paying the price you could not. Then take time to join with the angels in heaven and sing “Worthy is the Lamb who was slain!” Grieve your sin with joy, knowing that Christ has paid the price! With joy remember Sunday is coming!
 

Then he poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples’ feet and to wipe them with the towel that was wrapped around him. John 13:5 ESV
 
The day before Christ would go to the cross and die, He did something far beneath Him. When Jesus and His twelve disciples gathered in the upper room to celebrate the Passover meal, it was just them present. There was no servant there to wash their feet. None of the disciples volunteered to take that role and were satisfied to just have stinky, dirty feet. This was not just a servant’s job; it was usually reserved for the lowest servant. No one wanted this job. However, Jesus gets up to do this job. 
 
He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones of dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him. And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together. Colossians 1:15-17 ESV
 
Jesus is the Eternal Son of God. He is the creator of heaven and earth. He establishes thrones and dominions. He holds all things together. Yet He gets up, kneels, and does the work of a servant. In Luke’s gospel he tells us that during the Passover supper the disciples get in an argument over which one was the greatest. No wonder not even one of them thinks they should do the job of washing feet. 
 
He came to Simon Peter, who said to him “Lord, do you wash my feet?” Jesus answered him, “What I am doing you do not understand now, but afterward you will understand.” Peter said to him, “You shall never wash my feet.” Jesus answered him, “If I do not wash you, you have no share with me.” Simon Peter said to him “Lord, not my feet only but also my hands and my head!” John 13:6-9 ESV
 
Was Peter confused? Absolutely! Jesus’ response to Peter that “If I do not wash you, you have no share with me” shows us that Jesus washing their feet had a greater meaning. By Jesus doing the job of a servant and washing the disciple’s feet He was humbling himself. The next day Jesus will humble Himself even more so. The Son of God will be mocked, spat upon, beaten, and killed. With His own blood He will wash not feet but souls. 
 
Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. Philippians 2:3-11 ESV
 
As Christians we are called to humility. The Eternal Son of God took on flesh. He humbled Himself as to become human. The Creator of the Universe came down to our level for what reason? To be beaten, mocked, and brutally killed and by doing be a sacrifice for our sin. God served man. As Christians we are to see Christ’s humble act of servanthood as an example to how we are to live our lives.  The best way we can be humble and serve others is by sacrificing our time, energy, money, and effort to share the gospel with the world around us. 
 
As we enter the Easter weekend pray now and prepare now to share the gospel this weekend! To share the gospel, it will take time it may inconvenience your plans even. But count others more important than yourself. Count other’s eternal souls as more important than your plans. Count the glory of God through the spreading of the gospel more important than yourself! 

​Rod Dreher is an American journalist, a member of the Easter Orthodox Church, and a three-time New York Times Bestselling author. His book Live Not by Lies: A Manual for Christian Dissidents stands as a prophetic warning for believers in the West to prepare for Soft Totalitarianism that is already taking shape here in the United States. There are two parts to this book, the first explains what soft totalitarianism is and shows how it is already gaining ground in the United States. The second part is showing us how to survive in in a totalitarian state and how to overcome it by looking at the testimony of Christians who lived through communism’s totalitarianism in the Soviet Union. 
 
We can see this Soft Totalitarianism all around us in the culture. As I finished reading this book, the American Media was in a storm over the popular independent American journalist Tucker Carlson going to Russia to interview Russian President Vladimir Putin. The American thought police or “media” was trying to discredit Carlson by calling him a “rightwing conspiracy theorist” and a “Kremlin propagandist” before the interview was ever aired. The European Union even began to discuss leveraging sanctions against Carlson for daring to do what journalists have always done. A couple weeks before, MSNBC refused to show President Donald Trump’s speech following his victory in the Iowa Caucus. MSNBC anchor Rachel Maddow said “…there’s a reason we and other news organizations have stopped giving an unfiltered live platform to former President Trump. It is not out of spite, it is not a decision that we relish…it is not an easy decision. But there is a cost to us as a news organization of knowingly broadcasting untrue things.” Instead of allowing its audience to listen and make their own decision on the truthfulness of President Trump’s speech, they will tell you what is and isn’t true. They will edit out what they deem to be lies. What we know and see as cancel culture, is just the totalitarianism of the post-Christian American liberals and woke capitalism. 
 
The goal of the Western soft totalitarianism is to be “devoted to liberating the individual to seek his own pleasures and to managing emergent anxieties” (p.11). It is to get rid of anything that blocks the individual from seeking out anything he thinks will bring him pleasure and happiness. This is a “soft” totalitarianism because unlike the totalitarianism of the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany, it does not use torture, public execution, and imprisonment as its tool to bring the dissidents to heel. In soft totalitarianism “dissenters from the woke party line find their businesses, careers, and reputations destroyed. They are pushed out of the public square, stigmatized, canceled, and demonized as racists, sexists, homophobes, and the like” (p.9). Any of this sound familiar? 
 
A few months ago, US Speaker of the House Mike Johnson was bashed by the media because he and his son use an app called “Covenant Eyes” which sends an alert if one of them looks at porn. A father protecting himself and his son from the filth of porn was considered “creepy” by the mainstream media.  Dreher says “In therapeutic culture, which has everywhere triumphed, the great sin is to stand in the way of the freedom of others to find happiness as they wish” (p.13). In order to get the society to buy into this and in order to get rid of those who might stand in the way of this ideology, the totalitarians must lie and lie a bunch. Dreher says,
 
“In our time, we do not have an all-powerful state forcing this on us. This dictatorship is far more subtle. Under soft totalitarianism, the media, academia, corporate America, and other institutions are practicing Newspeak and compelling the rest of us to engage in doublethink every day. Men have periods. The woman standing in front of you is to be called ‘he.’ Diversity and inclusion means excluding those who object to ideological uniformity. Equity means treating persons unequally, regardless of their skills and achievements, to achieve an ideologically correct result.” (p.15)
 
 
Although we as Christians hear these things all the time and know that they are lies, are we doing anything to combat these lies? Dreher has some thoughts about why Christians haven’t been able to stop this ideology or even slow it down. 
 
“Christian resistance on a large scale to the anti-culture has been fruitless, and is likely to be for the foreseeable future. Why? Because the spirit of the therapeutic has conquered the churches as well—even those populated by Christians who identify as conservative. Relatively few contemporary Christians are prepared to suffer for the faith, because the therapeutic society that has formed them denies the purpose of suffering in the first place, and the idea of bearing pain for the sake of truth seems ridiculous.” (p.13)
 
Forget suffering for our faith, we won’t even be inconvenienced for our faith. The bare minimum a Christian does is go to church on Sunday, but if we can find something better to do, or if we are just “tiered” we won’t go. Another bare minimum activity of the believer is Bible reading and prayer but let’s face it, most of us spend much more time vegging out in front of our tv’s or phones. 
 
We must prepare ourselves because persecution is coming for Christians. I want to encourage you to get a copy of this book and read it. At the end of every chapter is a section marked “See, Judge, Act” pay close attention to this section. We must prepare now! Many “Christians” have already rolled over and given themselves over to the woke mob leading this soft totalitarianism. We must prepare now to be dissidents, to live not by lies, but to live for truth. Christ suffered for us, let us now prepare ourselves to suffer for Him! 

Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it. Proverbs 22:6 ESV
 
Proverbs 22:6 is a principle not a promise. It’s not guaranteed that a child who was “raised right” will grow up to follow the Lord. We know this from experience. As a pastor, I can’t tell you how many times a parent or grandparent grieved by their child, or grandchild’s actions have come to me and said, “This is not the way they were raised!” And let me tell you I believe them! Many of those who have come to me and have said this are God loving and fearing people. No parent is perfect. All children are born with a sin nature (Romans 5:12). Children will grow up an make their own choices, the best we can do is to teach them the gospel from God’s word and pray that the Lord would take their hearts of stone and turn them into a heart of flesh (Ezekiel 36:26). 
 
A disciple is not above his teacher, but everyone when he is fully trained will be like his teacher. Luke 6:40 ESV
 
Several years ago, I was looking at some football pictures of me and my brothers. One noticeable thing was that when we stood on the sideline, we all stood the exact same way. We found a picture of my dad when he was in high school playing football and sure enough, he was standing the exact same way. That’s not all that crazy. It’s actually the simple concept of “monkey see, monkey do.” Children learn by watching their parents. They watch them do EVERYTHING even how they stand! Your children are watching you, what do they see? Do they see their dad studying God’s word or studying football stats for fantasy football? Do they see their mom praying with and encouraging other moms, or do they see them gossiping about others? Do they see their parents make plans around church or do they see their parents make plans to miss church? As we think about these questions let me also encourage you to never say “Do as I say not as I do.” That is one of the stupidest things you can tell your child. Live the way you want your kids to live. If you’re doing something you don’t want your kids to do…STOP DOING IT! 
 
Whoever spares the rod hates his son, but he who loves him is diligent to discipline him. Proverbs 13:24 ESV
 
Discipline is a necessary good. In fact, true love for your child demands discipline. There is a way to show grace, mercy, and forgiveness while also practicing discipline. To do so, parents must resist the urge in the heat of the moment to let their own emotions get the best of them. Sometimes it’s probably best to send them to their rooms while you take a moment to cool down and collect yourself. “A man of wrath stirs up strife, and one given to anger causes much transgression” (Proverbs 29:22 ESV). There is a big difference between wrath and discipline. God does not pour out His wrath on believers (Romans 8:1) but in love He disciplines them (Proverbs 3:11-12). If you let your emotions get the best of you in the moment, you’re not really disciplining them as much as pouring out your wrath on them. Don’t be afraid to bust their rear ends, ground them, or take away privileges, just make sure you do so with all self-control, explaining to your child that the discipline comes from an abundance of love and care for their well-being. 
 
Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need. Hebrews 4:16 ESV
 
Like I said above, no parent is perfect! You have and you will make mistakes. The gospel teaches us that we are not perfect and because of that Jesus had to die in our place to pay for our sins. “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9 ESV). Confess your failings and shortcomings as a parent and then draw near to the throne of grace. Practicing this kind of humility and dependence upon the Lord is good for your soul and its good for your children to see as well. 
 
And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. Deuteronomy 6:6-7 ESV