Good Friday Service

Welcome & Notices

Song: The Price Is Paid   

Prayer

Reading

Song What kind of man is this?

Contemplation on the cross session

Refreshments

Contemplation on the cross session

7 stations around building

Equipment required:

Posters for each station and hand-outs

2The Price is paid:  prison, padlock money box	3Wipe out: dry markers and dry marker boards, cloths to wipe off
4Making Friends: Bracelet making materials	5Death Brings life: Pots, compost, runner bean seeds plastic bags
6Making Good: Matzos, grape juice, cups and basket	7Trading Places: Sun, cloud, post-it notes
8Jesus loves me:      Pictures to colour, colouring pens, Bibles

 

 

 

 

 

THE PRICE IS PAID

 

It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery.

Galatians 5:1

“Redemption”

When Jesus died on the cross he paid the price of sin so that you may go free from the guilty and penalty of all that you have done wrong. If you put your faith and trust in Jesus, you are free. Spend a moment reminding yourself that you are free from sin and death. Allow the Holy Spirit to let you know that you really are free. Let go of the guilt, turn sorrow into joy as you know that God has released you, Jesus having paid the price on the cross. Commit yourself to living as a free person. Ask for help from God to throw off addiction to selfishness, greed, lust and anything else God reminds you of.

 

The Bible does not condemn slavery outright but because the cross means release from the slavery of sin, Christians have always sought to release those caught up in slavery.

https://www.stopthetraffik.org/uk

 

WIPE OUT

 

Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand.

Romans 5:1-2

‘Justification’

God, as creator and sustainer  of the universe is the Judge. Imagine you are in the dock in court and all the crimes you have committed against God are read out. Then Jesus stands up as your lawyer and says he has taken the punishment for your crimes. The crime sheet is wiped clean. You are free to go. It is “just-as-if-I’d-never-sinned’ because when you put your faith in Jesus all your wrong actions and thoughts are wiped clean.

Spend some time confessing your sins to God. Then remind yourself of God’s promise in 1John 1:9

 

If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.

 

MAKING FRIENDS

 

All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God. God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

2Cor 5:18-21

‘Reconciliation’

Since Adam and Eve sinned, humans have had a broken relationship with God. God wanted to be friends with humans, that is why he created us, so rather than give up and exterminate the human race, Jesus came to act as conciliator, to reconcile God’s perfection with our waywardness. He did this by Jesus, who was perfect becoming the one who took on our wrong-doing so the offence was removed and we are able to relate to God as a friend.

       Think about relationships that you have had that have broken in some way, maybe consider taking steps to restore that relationship because you have discovered God has done it for you.

DEATH BRINGS LIFE

 Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade. This inheritance is kept in heaven for you, who through faith are shielded by God’s power until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time.

1Peter 1:3

‘New Birth’

Jesus, when speaking to Nicodemus, explained that it was not enough for us to have a ‘make-over’, we actually needed to have a second birth, because our human lives end in death but our new life is forever. When we die our spirit lives on and we go to heaven. But for that to happen, Jesus died on the cross and was raised to life again. So Christians talk of being ‘born again’ to living the life that God created them for. The ‘new life’ begins when we trust him and we spend the rest of our lives developing into spiritual maturity which means developing the love, joy, peace and faithfulness that God wants to see in us.

 

Ask God to help you assess where you are in the new life growth process and ask for help to develop as a Christian.

MAKING GOOD

 For I received from the Lord what I also passed on to you: The Lord Jesus, on the night he was betrayed, took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, “This is my body, which is for you; do this in remembrance of me.” 

       In the same way, after supper he took the cup, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood; do this, whenever you drink it, in remembrance of me.”26 For whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.

1Corinthians 11:17-26

‘Atonement’

Jesus said, at the last supper that his body was ‘given for you’. He satisfied the necessity that God requires. He gave his life in your place. So he was your substitute, taking the blame and punishment you deserve. The New Covenant is a sort of contract where instead of you having to work or suffer, you receive new life as a free gift from God. Jesus has paid the full price in your place and you can enter into the relationship with God that Jesus has with his Father.

 

Thank him for dying in your place. Thank him for giving you salvation freely, by grace. Thank him for all the blessings you have.

Trading places

Tasks:

1. Take a blank post-it note from the cloud of God’s punishment; write your name on it. Put it on the sun of God’s glory and move a post-it note with Jesus’ name on it to the cloud in place of the post-it note you moved.

2. Ask someone if they would like you to pray for them. Then pray for them, as if you were in their place, with their problems and ask God to act on their behalf.

 The next day John saw Jesus coming toward him and said, “Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!“                                                              John 1:19

“The Lamb of God”

Throughout the Bible there is a thread of a lamb being a substitute or sin-bearer. In Genesis 22, Abraham  told Isaac when he thought he was to sacrifice Isaac “God himself will provide the lamb for the burnt offering, my son.”  … Abraham looked up and there in a thicket he saw a ram  caught by its horns. He went over and took the ram and sacrificed it as a burnt offering instead of his son.

Genesis 22:8 & 13

          In Exodus 12 at the first Passover, a lamb was sacrificed and its blood used as a marker of the faith of the Israelites to save them from the angel of death..

          Leviticus  describes a whole series of sacrifices, the key one where a goat was made the sin-bearer for the nation. All the sins were announced over the goat and it was then driven out of the camp to carry the sins away.

          So when John the Baptist said “Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!“  he is describing Jesus as the substitute, the saviour and the sin bearer.

God loves me

For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.  For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. 

John 3:16-17

‘A demonstration of God’s love’

But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Romans 5:8

       Take this opportunity to think about all the ways God shows his love to us. You may take away the 4points leaflet to read at home.

 

       Read the story in either Matthew 27:32-61; Mark 15; Luke 23 or John 19 and say to yourself  and to others around you “ God loves me”

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