“The Final Stone”
The
6th Part of a Sermon Series Entitled “The Journey of Stones”
Key Scripture References:
Isaiah 53:1-9, Matthew 26:36-27:61, Mark
14:32-15:47, Luke 22:39-23:56, and John 18:1-19:42.
59 And
Joseph took the body and wrapped it in a clean linen cloth, 60 and laid
it in his own new tomb, which he had cut out in the rock; and he rolled a large stone against the
entrance of the tomb and went away. - Matthew 27:59-60 (NASB)
Good Friday" is not misnamed. Good
Friday is not Success Friday. Good Friday stands as a solemn reminder that the
true winning side is not the side of success, but the side of righteousness.
Whether someone is “successful” is of less consequence than whether someone, or
something, is good, true, and beautiful. You don’t back a winner. You back the
truth, whether it’s winning or not. The measure of a person, or a mission, is
not found in temporal consequences or apparent success, but in adherence to
goodness, beauty, and truth. Worth and winning do not always align. –
Leonard Sweet
The final
stone is the most painful of them all.
“Scourging
produced deep stripes like lacerations and appreciable blood loss, and it
probably set the stage for hypovolemic shock, as evidenced by the fact that
Jesus was too weak to carry his own crossbar to Golgotha. Accordingly, death resulted primarily from
shock and exhaustion asphyxia. Jesus’
death was ensured by the thrust of a soldier’s spear into His side.” - The
Journal of the American Medical Association
As hard as
we may try, we cannot remove the stone ourselves.
The
final stone represents the stone that sealed the tomb of Jesus on that first
Good Friday.
This
stone represents the stone that stands between us and a Savior.
May
we never forget the final stone that changed the course of human history.