Sunday Morning Service - March 24, 2024 - “For GOD So Loved the World” - On a Dark Friday

Mar 24, 2024 • Kenny Rodgers

As we approach Holy Week, I would like to share the great love of GOD with you as we observe this mysterious and majestic event in Jerusalem about two thousand years ago...

Here are some quotes from Klaas Schilder that I hope you will meditate on through this week.

“Hence for Him if it was suffering and not the cause of a false glorification when light was taken from Him for the space of three hours on Golgotha. Now all the generations may rejoice because of that darkness and say:

‘In Thy light we see the light.’ Hence we must follow Him into the darkness.”

“Naturally, GOD is the first of all speaking about and speaking to His Son, the Surety of our soul. For this is ‘the hour and the power’ of darkness. He said so Himself, and consequently He must experience it as such. Hence GOD comes to express this truth which in its essence touches on the invisible world, in visible forms also. In Bethlehem night was once converted into day; on Golgotha day is metamorphosed into night. In Bethlehem there are many angels whose light dispels the darkness. On Golgotha there are many devils who - as it seems - gain a triumph in the conquest of darkness over light.”

“And it is not true that in this world the hour of darkness is peculiarly the time of intense experience? The daytime and the daylight speak to us in successive, in quantitative language; these count out their hours and their minutes, and permit us unintentionally to measure time and space. But darkness and the night and especially the strange darkness, the artificially created night surpass the succession of moments from the active consciousness (to the extent that they can) and permit the influences being brought to bear on us to have their full effect of intensity (to the extent that they can). Counting is the work of the day; weighing is the work of the night. The night puts the concept of depth in the place of the concept of length,”

“What shall we say of it, you ask? Not too much learning perhaps, and nothing surely, that can serve to ‘explain.’ Attempts at an ‘explanation’ of this darkness have bene undertaken, but they mock themselves. There are people, after all, whose pet ambition it is to ‘explain’ by natural means what

GOD does by miraculous means - as if GOD and nature were antitheses, as if nature were not as miraculous as a miracle..”

“Thus far He has done His work among men. He has dealt with and dispatched the last point on the ‘social’ program of the day. Light does not make sense to Him any longer. There is nothing to do now, except to achieve the great sacrifice. As far as He is concerned, He has been shut out of the range of

communion. The Mediator who comes to achieve His most unique function no longer needs an intermediary. The light is a means of communication; what can one do with it after great excommunication?”

Today's Music

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"New Doxology"

Words by Thomas Ken | Thomas Miller

Music by Genevan Psalter | Louis Bourgeois

"Thousand Tongues"

Words & Music by David E. Moffitt | Jeff Pardo | Travis Cottrell

Da Bears Da Bears Da Bears Music | Meaux Jeaux Music

"In Christ Alone"

Words & Music by Keith Getty. Stuart Townend

"Is He Worthy?"

Words & Music by Ben Shive and Andrew Peterson