Sometimes, when listening to a sermon, I feel a little like a man standing at a train station admiring the scenery while forgetting to ask where the train is actually going. That was something of my experience listening to this Good Friday sermon. Events surrounding the crucifixion were described carefully, reverently, even beautifully at times, yet one leaves asking whether the sermon ever truly arrived at the theological destination demanded by the cross itself.
This sermon, preached by the Rev Brian Harvey at Heathmont Presbyterian Church, opens with a discussion of the word “gospel” itself, defining it broadly as “good news,” yet without substantially establishing the theological framework that gives the gospel its meaning and necessity. In many ways, this sets the tone for the remainder of the sermon. The events surrounding the crucifixion are narrated carefully and reverently, and the atmosphere of Good Friday is vividly portrayed, yet the deeper theological significance of those events often remains unexplored.
The sermon’s dominant feature is not God, nor even Man, but the events surrounding the crucifixion. Golgotha, darkness, the cry of dereliction, the torn curtain, Joseph of Arimathea, the women witnesses, the sealed tomb. The preacher walks us steadily through the scenes. In that sense, the sermon possesses a seriousness and restraint often lacking in contemporary Easter preaching. There are no gimmicks here. The atmosphere is reverent. Scripture governs the movement of the sermon externally.
Yet externally governed is not the same as theologically penetrated.
The sermon repeatedly describes what happened without fully opening the significance of what happened. Darkness falls, but why? The curtain tears, but on what judicial basis? Blood is shed, but what does that blood accomplish before a holy God? Jesus cries, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” but the sermon never fully answers the question.
Instead, the cry becomes largely a bridge into human experiences of abandonment and loneliness. The hearer is invited to see that Jesus understands emotional forsakenness. That is pastorally true as far as it goes. But the cross is not fundamentally about Christ sharing our feelings. The cross is about Christ bearing divine judgment in the place of guilty sinners.
The sermon does not merely leave the new birth unstated; by failing to expose mankind’s spiritual death and condemnation before God, it functionally removes the necessity of regeneration altogether.
Humanity appears wounded, lonely, drifting, perhaps even cold toward God, but not spiritually dead in Adam. The congregation is not truly brought beneath God’s verdict. Sin is present mostly as condition rather than condemnation. Consequently, regeneration becomes muted because the sermon never presses the hearer into awareness of being judged and dead in Adam.
One can speak warmly about access to God through the blood of Jesus, but unless we explain why access was impossible in the first place, the blood loses its dreadful glory. The sermon mentions sacrifice and fulfilled sacrifices, yet rarely opens the logic of atonement itself. Why must blood be shed? Why can God not simply overlook sin? Why must the Son endure forsakenness beneath divine wrath? These questions hover over the sermon largely unanswered.
Even the resurrection trajectory remains underdeveloped. The repeated theme, “The King is dead,” carries immense Biblical potential, yet the sermon never unfolds the paradox that the King reigns precisely through His death. Nor does it sufficiently show that Christ’s resurrection is the Father’s vindication of both the Son and the sufficiency of His atoning work.
And so the sermon leaves the listener observing Good Friday more than standing condemned and redeemed within it. The hearer observes the cross carefully, respectfully, even emotionally, yet is rarely made to feel that apart from sovereign grace and new birth he remains spiritually dead beneath the judgment Christ came to bear.
As the sermon draws to a close, one becomes increasingly aware that many central Christian doctrines are present only in outline form. The deity of Christ is affirmed, the historicity of the crucifixion is strongly maintained, and references are made to sacrifice, the blood of Jesus, the torn curtain, fulfilled temple imagery, and Christ dying “for our sins.” The sermon clearly wishes to preserve the reality and seriousness of Good Friday. Yet the doctrines that explain why these events were necessary remain largely absent. There is little meaningful treatment of original sin, Adamic condemnation, total depravity, divine wrath, propitiation, penal substitution, imputation, covenant curse, satisfaction of divine justice, repentance, union with Christ, regeneration, or the necessity of the new birth. The resurrection itself is anticipated mainly as the next event in the narrative rather than as the Father’s vindication of the Son and the declaration of new creation life for those united to Him. Consequently, the sermon recounts the scenes of Good Friday with reverence and care, yet seldom penetrates deeply enough into their theological meaning to expose the hearer’s desperate need for resurrection life in Christ.
Without these theological doctrines, the cross risks appearing as a profound and moving series of events rather than the necessary divine intervention required to save condemned sinners dead in Adam.
